Archive: Featured
Sometimes creating an Opportunity ("Opp") in the PayPerPost Marketplace can be a daunting task. And yes, this is a basic function but one that will certainly determine the outcome of your campaign. So we've decided to put together a few tips and tricks to creating a successful Opp. Hopefully it will either be 1) beneficial new information for you, or 2) a great refresher for those Advertisers who have been with us for a while.
1. What exactly are you looking for? Ask yourself this question each time you're creating an Opp in the Marketplace. "Do I want buzz about my new site?" "Do I want bloggers to review a product?" "Do I want to consider product sampling via PostiePacks?" Having a predetermined, specific goal will allow you to clearly relay that information to the bloggers so you, in turn, will get the types of posts you are looking for.
In Section 1 of the Opp Creation page you will go through and give the main details of the Opp. Most of the requirements are self-explanatory but there are a few areas that consistently hang-up Advertisers:
- Post type: There are 3 options: buzz, opinion and review. They are pretty intuitive -- if you want bloggers to review a product then choose review; if you want buzz about a new aspect of your site choose buzz; and if you want an honest opinion about a new clothing line then choose opinion.
- Tone: This is used in conjunction with post type. You can choose positive, negative or neutral. One very important thing to note: if you choose to have the blogger give their Opinions you MUST choose neutral. For true Opinions, Neutral is the appropriate tone. If the Positive tone is more important, you may choose Buzz or Review type posts.
2. The Opp Description. This is where you will describe what you want the bloggers to write about. There are a few key things to remember:
- Don't give the bloggers too much information. If you do they'll likely not visit your website and familiarize themselves with it. This is extremely important, particularly when you're looking for them to give their opinion.
- Be clear as to what you want, but do not tell the bloggers exactly what they should write. You want to give guidelines but not stifle their creativity. After all, it's their unique voice that you're looking for....
- Bullet points are always helpful. It gets your message across quickly, clearly and easy.
3. The next very important area in creating an Opp is Section 3, 'Targeting and Pricing.' Keep in mind the pricing for an Opp often correlates with the quality of the posts you get. For example, a $5.00 for a post with 5 links, an image and 300 words is not necessarily the most attractive opportunity. The more time-consuming and creative an Opp, the higher the payout should be.
4. CATEGORIES! Categories can often be an issue for advertisers and bloggers alike. (The first "Tip of the Week" feature was on the importance of bloggers selecting the appropriate categories for their blogs.) Remember, the categories are what the bloggers choose for their blogs because it is what they write about. For example, from a blogger's perspective, if I have a blog about cooking I would choose the category 'Cooking/Cuisine.' When creating an Opp we normally select at least 3-5 categories to get the niche that is most relevant to what I write about. If you don't care as much about what categories the blogs will be on you can keep all categories selected and get a little bit of all the blogs from our Marketplace.
5. Linking. Before making your Opportunity live make sure and verify your URL is correct and your anchor text is spelled correctly. This ensures the Advertisers are giving the bloggers exactly what they want and the bloggers are, in turn, putting what the Advertiser wants in their posts. After all, as an Advertiser you don't want an Opp with a dead link out in the Marketplace, or a post that has anchor text saying 'dogs' and linking to www.cats.com!
Interested in a Press Release Opportunity?
1. Please note when creating (or taking) a Press Release Opp, the Press Release that is included in the Opp MUST BE copied and pasted directly from the Opp into the blog post! So Advertisers, please realize, the Press Release should be an acceptable length. If the Press Release is 3 pages long it will likely not be approved because we cannot require the blogger to copy and paste that much material into their individual posts.
2. The Press Release must be an ACTUAL Press Release. Information about the Opp or what requirements the bloggers have should go in the Description, not the Press Release area.
3. This one is for the bloggers -- the minimum word requirement DOES NOT include the Press Release. For example, if the word requirement is 300 words and the Press Release is 200 that DOES NOT mean you only have to write 100 additional words of original content. You must still write 300 words of original content IN ADDITION to the Press Release.
If you have any questions about creating an Opp, feel free to use our new live chat feature. You can also visit the FAQs page for additional information. The "Advertiser Den" section of the IZEA message boards is also an extremely valuable resource for Advertisers. In fact, the first discussion thread in this section is titled "Writing an Appealing Opportunity for Bloggers."
** Special thanks to Junior Account Manager Crystal for concepting this post. **
Happy Friday, lovely people!
As part of a new push to enlighten and keep our users informed of all the features and enhancements PayPerPost offers, I'm here to give a little information on FLAGS. As you know, we provide many tools to help you target the best Posties for your campaigns, as well as communication tools to help guide them in the right direction.
So, let's get right to it- FLAGS: What/where are they, what are they for, who gets them, what do they do and how do I see them???
Once you have created an Opportunity and have received submissions to your Opp, you are then able to view the submissions by clicking on the title of your Opp, from the Manage Opportunities page. Then, the next page will show you your Opp's description and segmentation, scroll past it to view the titles of each submitted post.
To the far right of each title is a little green flag. If you notice that the post submitted missed a part of criteria you requested, click the flag and let us know! Flags are handled by the lovely Account Management team, specifically, Crystal. Crystal is a whiz at helping reach out to the Posties that need a little guidance or she can help you reword your description so that your directions are more clearly stated.
Remember, if a post has been manually approved in error, we can certainly reach out to the blogger and ask for the specified changes. If we're unable to reach out to the Postie, we can simply refund the cost of the post, due to our error. Yay! Posts that are auto-approved are still able to be rejected, too.
Note: Flags are answered via the 'View Flags' area of your account, not through the Parature system of support. So, to view your flag responses, click on your 'Account Info' tab, and the 'View Flags' button is under the 'View Bans and Benches Button,' in the middle of the page.
The times, the are a-changing...and so is our system! We've been working far harder than Santa's elves to help make the Opportunity creation process more streamlined and efficient. If you haven't had a chance to look over the new features and capabilities, I'd be honored if you join me for a brief walk-through.
Remember that creating an Opportunity in the Marketplace is typically meant to release your Opp to multiple people. If you'd like to create an Opportunity for just one blogger, you can use PayPerPostDirect and hand pick your blogger from the PPPDirect[ory].
First, the Disclosure Badge. Since we do require disclosure from our Posties, you can create your own Disclosure Badge for the blogger to place directly in their post! This is not a new feature, but it's a great way for bloggers to fulfill the Disclosure requirement, while adding an extra link for you! I encourage you to use the Disclosure Badge, as it has been shown to have great effects for Advertiser campaigns!
Here is a previous blog post that Ted wrote, about the advantages of using the Disclosure Badge: http://advertiser.izea.com/blog/2007/10/disclosure-badg.html
Second, let's take a look at some of the segmentation features. Segmentation is the ability to filter your Opportunity to a specified group of individuals by certain factors such as rankings, location, categories, and blog domain. You can read a little more about the segmentation features offered here.
Currently, an Advertiser can target his Opp to the right bloggers by specifying a minimum average tack rating, excluding free-hosted domains, categories, and by location [geo-targeting]. The newest capability is the ability to not only get your Opp to the right place, but help reach your own goal of focusing on either SEO or traffic by way of choosing either segmentation through PageRank or RealRank.
I'll highlight a couple of the most misunderstood features:
Tack rating: Advertisers are able to rate a blogger based on the quality of the post submitted, in correlation with the given Opportunity description. In other words, if you choose a 4-5, which are the highest scores, you will be receiving posts from bloggers that fellow Advertisers have rated highly.
Geo-targeting: When you select a region or a specific country, you are limiting your Opp to bloggers currently living in that area. This is incredibly helpful if your particular business is well-known in that region because then you have bloggers who are able to provide better content since your service directly relates to them!
RealRank: RealRank is our dev team's newest brainchild. Basically, RealRank snaps a far better reflection of a website's actual traffic, and influence. It's formula is quite simple and is easily explained here. RealRank is far more accurate that Alexa, and entirely more reliable than PageRank, it's really all you need!
Remember, when creating an Opp, you can choose either RealRank, if your goal is geared toward traffic and page visitors; or PageRank, if you're seeking SEO.
Third, we recently added the choice of making your required links either followed, or nofollowed. Simply, when requiring a link, if you do not wish for search engines to qualify the link, choose the nofollow option. This causes search engines to ignore the link, so it will not count toward SEO. The links section also has a field for you to enter any links from your own metrics/analytics accounts on third-party sites.
I hope this brief look at how you can better target your Opp to just the right blogger has been helpful. Last, there are plenty of areas to get help with the system and/or your campaign. Here are a few links to help guide you.
Advertiser FAQs: http://payperpost.com/advertisers/faq.html
Best Practices: http://www.payperpostu.com/bestpractices.html
Advertiser Tutorials: http://www.payperpostu.com/advertiser.html
And, if you have any questions, please feel free to send us a note by clicking on the 'Contact' link at the bottom of any page from within your account. Thank you!
Imagine the value of having key influencers experience your product first hand and blog about it. This is one of the many services we offer as part of the PayPerPost Ecosphere.
For some examples of previous successful sampling campaigns, see the photos below!
I am pleased to announce that we have added geo-targeting to the PayPerPost marketplace. Geo-targeting allows advertisers to make Opportunities available only to those who reside in selected geographic regions. To utilize this new feature click Create Opportunity. When you get to the creation page section 3 allows you to make your targeting selections.
The targeting options are broken down into two categories. The first is general targeting by continent:
If you click "Show Area Specifics" you will see a break down by individual country:
This is has been a feature request for some time and I am happy to say it's finally here! We look forward to your feedback about this new segmentation option.
Advertisers often ask me ''How can I optimize my campaigns to achieve the highest level of success?'' The most fundamental advice I can give is to KISS, keep it simple silly!
Our Posties see hundreds of opportunities, so it is important to ensure yours is as appealing as possible. The more Posties that are attracted to your opportunity, the better the results you will experience. Making your opportunities clear, concise, and simple is an easy way to attract bloggers.
The following screenshot is a great template to use when writing opportunity descriptions:
When creating opportunities, it’s critical to keep in mind your goals. It is best to optimize an opportunity for a single specific goal. For example, an opportunity geared towards driving traffic would be drastically different than a campaign geared towards generating buzz. If you have multiple goals; then create multiple opportunities, each for one of your goals.
By doing this you can effectively determine which opportunities will advance your specific goals. Approach your opportunities with a clear strategy. For example, you can create two opportunities to generate buzz and one to drive traffic. This allows for an emphasis on buzz while keeping increased traffic in the equation.
Keeping it simple will make your opportunities fun, focused and most importantly, effective!
Always remember that the PayPerPost Sales Solutions Team is here to provide insight and assistance. Please contact Randy Mountz at Randy (at) PayPerPost (dot) com to have the Sales Team consult on your campaigns!
I don't know how many blog postings and articles I have read that have falsely assumed that readers don't click through on sponsored posts. People like Jason Calancanis, Mike Arrington and others would have you believe that nobody is interested in this content and the value it provides. I believe many of these people are the same people that said nobody would ever click on a sponsored search result (enter Google representing 1/3 of all online ad spending on the back of sponsored search).
We now have data from over 40k bloggers and 8k advertisers to prove the naysayers wrong. The truth is that not only do people click on sponsored posts, on average they click through at a higher rate than any other media I am aware of. 10.545% average CTR to be exact (this is an average over all opportunities, obviously some will be much higher and some will be much lower).
My experience in buying Google AdWords is to expect an average of somewhere between .5-1.5% CTR. Sure, I have had keyword campaigns that might have hit as high as 5% or 6% in extreme cases (like buying the keyword "payperpost"), but that is few and far between. I also know that a good campaign on MySpace might deliver a .05% CTR and that other campaigns I have run through Adbrite and similar media networks deliver a lower CTR than search marketing in my experience.
What does this all mean? Does it mean you should dump search or display advertising? No. I have always been a big believer in diversified media campaigns. What it does mean is that sponsored content delivers eyeballs and real, qualified traffic to your site.
UPDATE : There has been talk in the comments about the purchase of products that Posties have been exposed to. Did you buy something you saw on PPP? Let us know in the comments below.
[Hey folks...this is Dan, not chicken hat Dan, but venture capital Dan. I managed to hack into PPP's new blogging platform (hint: Ted's passwords are names from his Littlest Pet Shop collection) and access the Advertiser blog. I wear various PPP hats -- advertiser, postie, investor -- so I'm hoping to hack into all the blogs eventually. Until then, I'll share some thoughts, perspective and experiments for advertisers here. Shhh...I think I hear Mark reconfiguring some firewalls or something...]
As an advertiser and investor, I draw a lot of analogies between sponsored search and sponsored social media. GoTo/Overture was the PayPerPost of sponsored search and pioneered the multi-billion dollar pay-per-click (PPC) search revenue model that funds most of the "cool stuff with no revenue model" that Yahoo, Google, MSN and others provide today. Early adopters of the two platforms were also similar -- with measurement-minded direct marketers leading the way for broad-based online marketer adoption.
Although PPP offers a broader ROI than sponsored search (like the branding benefits, viral opportunity and ROI growth over time from persistent posts), it's worth monitoring best practices in the PPC field for PPP insights. One that hit my inbox recently, was a MarketingExperiments (MktgExp) report on the importance of relevance in paid search campaigns. The folks over at MktgExp reported the results of two case studies:
1) Click-thru-rate (CTR) Impact of Ad Title Relevance, and
2) Conversion impact of Keyword Relevance
I'll leave the detailed process/results to MktgExp, but takeaways from each case study were:
1) The ad title that including the purchased keywords generated 147% more
clicks than those that did not, with CTR almost two and a half times
that of the next-highest treatment. For example, "Encyclopedia Britannica" had much better CTR than "Brittanica Sets" and "2007 Brittanica Set" for visitors searching variations of "encyclopedia" and "brittanica".
2) Purchasing indirectly related keyword terms yielded a higher CTR than directly related keyword terms.
However, the conversion rate decreased from an average of 0.8% for
directly related terms to less than 0.01%. So, despite increased CTR,
the indirect key terms performed much worse where it counts: conversions.
So, how could these results improve PPP ROI? It comes back to relevance: both in the opp description and the link text. Bloggers, readers and searchers are the same people, so the psychology of rewarding relevance remains. All else being equal, opp descriptions that are more relevant to your product or business may garner more interested bloggers (higher opp-take-rate, OTR). Sponsored posts driven by relevant opp descriptions and relevant link text may garner more interested readers (higher click-thru-rate, CTR). And, last, click-thrus driven by relevant opp descriptions and relevant link text may garner more conversions.
My experience has been that CTRs for sponsored posts are already significantly higher than banners and sponsored search. That makes sense given the reader's interaction with sponsored posts versus other online advertising. However, it never hurts to review PPC lessons to optimize PPP efforts. Relevance is relevant!
Guest blogged by Dan...an entrepreneur in venture capital clothing
About a month ago PayPerPost rolled-out two new marketplace features impacting both Advertisers and Bloggers, called "Bans" & "Benches." If you're not already familiar with them here's a little more about each feature:
"Benching" is a feature allowing Advertisers to expand the reach of their audience by 'benching' bloggers from accepting a particular Opportunity. Think of the analogy of "sitting this one out." Benching essentially allows for high-targeting by spreading links around to a variety of bloggers. A benching period can be for any reason--at the discretion of the Advertiser--and it can be up-to 90 days.
What is a "ban"? Well, a ban is different from a bench in that a ban will prevent a blogger from accepting any future campaigns launched by an Advertiser. If you're an Advertiser and you decide you would like to ban a blogger, you will be prompted for a reason as to why the blogger is being banned. Bloggers will have access to their bans so they can know why a particular Advertiser has opted not to use them anymore. Please be mindful if you make the decision to ban a blogger as it does have a negative effect on their tack ratings.
You will be able to use the "ban" & "bench" options once you have created a campaign in the marketplace. You can also view any current or past bans & benches after logging-in to your account.
Let's walk though this so you understand how they work:
1. Log-in to your account by clicking on the "Log In" button on the top of the page.
2. Click on the "Manage Opportunities" tab at the top of the screen.
3. Select an Opportunity by clicking on one of the links in the "Opportunity Name" column.
4. Scroll down to the "Posts for this Opportunity" area.
5. Chose a post.
In the last two columns you'll see the "Ban" & "Bench" features.
If you're choosing to "ban" a blogger click the "Ban" button, and you'll see the following box appear:
Remember, a blogger has access to their "bans" so include a reason, that way they can learn from your concerns.
If choosing to "bench" a blogger click on the "Bench" button and from the drop-down menu select the amount of time you'd like the blogger benched. You can select either 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. Here's what you'll see:
After you've selected the appropriate time click the "bench" button, and you'll notice the green strike through graphic disappear. As long as this blogger is benched this graphic will be gone -- you can't ban and bench a blogger at the same time.
You can always log-in to your account and reverse a ban or a bench, but please remember when you "ban" a blogger it impacts their tack rating.
If you have any questions about "bans" or "benching" please don't hesitate to contact us.
