The buzz is on. SponsoredReviews finally launched - officially on Monday, March 12.
With the backing of 360 Enterprises, Inc., which has a large base of advertisers, the team at SponsoredReviews are banking on a flood of ads to come their way.
At first glance, SponsoredReviews appear ready to give the competition a run for their money. They first announced their intention in mid-January and had called on bloggers to register early.
I'm sure many who had done that had been notified by email to sign up immediately.
Here are their carrots for advertisers:
- They'll be the first paid-blogging system to allow advertisers and bloggers to be both passive and proactive.
- Advertisers can post opportunities to attract bids from bloggers
- They can search through bloggers' profiles and purchase reviews directly.
- They are charging lower fees - at a flat 35% (with no per-transaction fee) - than their two largest competitors. According to SponsoredReviews, this is the lowest on the market.
And for bloggers:
- You'll get paid on a bi-weekly basis. You don't have to wait 30 days. That's pronto!
- Manual pricing for bloggers. That means you set your own price and their system will make recommendations based on their automated ratings system.
- Their bidding system allows publishers and advertisers to negotiate pricing.
- Oh yes, bloggers are required to provide full disclosure.
- To insure that only quality blogs are allowed into their system, SponsoredReviews have set minimum standards for blogs.
Internet marketing consultant and expert Andy Beal has just posted on his blog Marketing Pilgrim that very soon there'll be another player joining the ranks of ReviewMe, PayPerPost, Blogitive, Blogsvertise, LoudLaunch and a host of others.
All these folks have one thing in common - they'll pay bloggers to review websites, products and services.
So, who's this new kid that's coming on the block? According to Andy, the name is SponsoredReviews, and the parent company behind it is 360 Enterprise, Inc.
You can visit Andy's blog for more details and read what he has to say.
My perception is that love it or hate it, there's no stopping the phenomenon growth of blogs. And marketers know where a huge chunk of their ad budgets are heading.
I'm just wondering. Despite all those ethical debates about blogging for money, how come more marketers are eyeing blogs? Are some of these advertisers testing the waters or do they see that blogs are the new frontier for marketing niches? Possibly a really huge one.
If the trend picks up, there'll be a great divide between those who stay "pure and true" to traditional blogging and those who are looking at it from a business point of view.
Heather Armstrong of "Dooced" fame is making an income from her blog to enable her family to live comfortably. Her blog is an enterprise. Is that wrong?
There are over 800 million Internet users on this planet. In a few short years, the blogging fraternity has hit over 50 million and still rising.
In a special focus on "Blogging for Dollars" in the September issue of Business 2.0 last year, the magazine noted that an increasing number of bloggers have gone from "self-indulgent hobbies to flourishing businesses."
According to web ad agency Organic, ad spending on blogs was about $40 million last year - that's a small market. However, it is expected that web advertising will continue to grow and more ad dollars will come to blogs.
With two new blogs being launched every second, according to blog search engine Technorati, it's not difficult to figure out where blogging is heading.
More and more advertisers are targeting blogs, especially those that are making the noise in blogosphere.
Has anyone ever wondered that a blog is just another kind of website? Maybe running on a different kind of juice. Remember the Blues was once dubbed as "devil's music," but today it's great music for many!
Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938)
Johnson's songs have
been recorded by artists
as diverse as Lee Roy Parnell
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
