At first glance, readers of Surviving NJ, a popular personal blog written by Deborah Schwabe of New Jersey, might have thought a recent post about Royal Caribbean Cruises was just an off-the-cuff observation by the author. "They have a new Celebrity Cruise," Ms. Schwabe writes. "Imagine the style and sophistication on the Celebrity fleet line. … Head over to DirectLineCruises.com and have a look around. You'll be ready to book a cruise when you see all the great choices!"
In fact, the innocuous post is actually a paid advertisement written by the blogger. While such messages of praise were once hard to come by in the freewheeling and unpredictable blogosphere, any business willing to pony up a little cash — just $7 (U.S.) in this case — can get a glowing review of whatever they want.
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Do you think "blogvertising" is smart marketing or deceitful trickery. Answer the poll question at Globetechnology.com
Called "blogvertising," marketers are using this method of advertising to grab readers' attention through the burgeoning networks of paid bloggers. Services such as ReviewMe.com, PayPerPost.com and SponsoredReviews.com have sprung up in the past year and connect businesses and advertisers with bloggers for hire.
John Chow in his home office in Richmond, B.C. May 8, 2007. Mr. Chow's blog is near the top of the heap at ReviewMe.com, where advertisers browse through blogs and then hire bloggers to write about their clients' products or services. PayPerPost and LoudLaunch use a more passive advertising method where advertisers list opportunities at a fixed price per post. Any blogger that meets the offer criteria can accept the offer and write a post. (JOHN LEHMANN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
While the praise expressed in paid reviews may sometimes be contrived, the marketing potential is very real. Mississauga-based firewall manufacturer Borderware Technologies Inc. saw immediate results from a recent blogvertising campaign. Borderware targeted a small set of bloggers who write about network security topics and paid them to write reviews of the company's image spam-blocking software. Within days, the targeted blogs directed new traffic to Borderware. "We found it was a highly targeted method of generating buzz about our products," says Borderware's Justin Cook.
Similar enthusiasm exists among the thousands of bloggers looking for ways to monetize their blog traffic. Vancouver-based blogger John Chow was one of the first to sign on for ReviewMe.com and it has become his best earning program, bringing in $2,500 last month. Today a review on johnchow.com is worth $300. "A few companies have told me that within 48 hours they got enough sales to pay for their review," he says.
For many marketers, the real benefit of paid blog reviews is realized over time in the form of improved search engine rankings. The volume of inbound links is an important factor in the algorithms that search engines use to rank websites, as are keywords used in the link. Paid reviews enable the purchaser to choose link text that bloggers will use to direct their readers to them. By accumulating a network of keyword-targeted links from bloggers, businesses can artificially convince search engines their website is an authoritative source.
Toronto-based consultant JP Richards employed this method to increase the traffic of his client, Columbus, Ohio-based Go BIG Network, an online marketplace that connects entrepreneurs with start-up financiers. Go BIG spread a total of just $460 among about a dozen blogs, each of which wrote a review and linked to Go BIG Network's site — but not directly. Instead, a hyperlink was attached to the phrase "small business funding." So any reader who clicked on the phrase would be directed to Go Big's website. "We had been targeting that phrase for some time," Mr. Richards says. "But when we did the campaign, pretty much immediately after that we broke into the Top 10 for that term in Google."
Some search engines, long on the lookout for attempts to "game" their ranking systems, have made their position on paid blog posts quite clear: "Look, if you want to buy links for traffic, fine. Just don't make it so they affect search engines," says Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team.
The practice also has many detractors among bloggers. Steve Rubel, author of Micro Persuasion, a new media blog, warns that disingenuous reviews can alienate loyal readers. "It's great that they're pushing the boundaries but they have to understand what the vibe is in the community," Mr. Rubel says.
Many paid reviewers maintain that their integrity is not compromised since they are not required to write positive reviews. However, some advertisers will demand "positive tone only," and in some cases a rating system exists for advertisers to rate their opinion of a paid post. Getting a good score with advertisers improves a blogger's ability to earn more.
One area on which most bloggers agree, is that some form of disclosure is essential. Mr. Cutts believes that a clear statement such as "This is a paid review" should be included in the paid post itself, rather than the site-wide disclosure statement that some providers recommend.
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