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.
I have read it. Many of you have read it. Chris Anderson's much-talked about visionary business book, The Long Tail, has captured the imagination of many people. It's about the new marketing niches and sub-niches. It's about the limitation of yesterday's market choice and the economics of abundance in today's marketplace. And thanks to the Internet phenomenon for that.
It's all about the consumers of the future, their shifting demands, moving away towards the niche markets of the "Long Tail" and why the major media giants are feeling the effects.
Social media such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and others are getting the spotlight. The new consumers know what they want and that's not so good news for those depending on the traditional "Top 10 Hits" lists.
TV ratings are heading south, newspapers and magazines are losing circulation, Hollywood box office is slipping, sliding away, and top-selling albums are figuratively down by the millions.
So where do we go from here? Well, slide down the "Long Tail" where it straightens out at the base. That's where the niches are and they are gathering momentum if statistics, facts and data are any indicator.
How about a niche like Blogkits?
Imagine Adsense is not generating enough dough for you these days. Assuming you want to ditch Adsense, then who do you turn to for your new web income source?
How about Blogkits for starter? Blogkits who?
Entrepreneur Jim Kukrai created Blogkits in 2004. It was acquired by global affiliate marketing company Forge Corporation early this year. and it was launched recently.
The promo says it's the "world's first true performance marketing network built just for bloggers."
Your blog don't have to be a high-traffic one to get approval. Blogkits is based on CPA (cost per action) so the bane of click fraud does not arise. If you still want to retain Adsense on your blog together with Blogkits that's not a problem.
You have to sign up your blog and get approved. You grab a tracking code and place it in your blog template. And you'll be earning whenever a sale is made.
It looks like this is one of those new niches that are positioning themselves at the tail end. This may well be an alternative to Google Adsense for website publishers with low-traffic blogs to get an extra piece of the online pie.
> The man behind Blogkits and his blog
