The LinkyLoveArmy.com is launching a beta program this week.  Today, they released several insights into their Internet marketing 2.0 of strategies.  They are forming an army of bloggers to leverage the numbers of bloggers and blog campaigns in the direction and shape reminiscent of a wedge formation.

You lazy this type of structure they hope to penetrate advertising campaigns and in particular keyword searches that generates large amounts of traffic such that the bloggers can directly market to business-to-business and business-to-customer groups.

Up until this point in time, those Internet marketing 2.0 firms have offered up a bit of a free-for-all where advertisers come to purchase reviews with contextual links inside of his and bloggers respond acting as individuals in the marketplace offering up individual benefits.  The LinkyLoveArmy hopes to organize those bloggers with a much more focused strategic objective and at the same time harness a new revenue model for bloggers yielding a higher return on effort.

Here is a short video that they are offering on their website today:

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Another company has launched a blog marketing 2.0 service.  SponsoredReview officially launched today.  Many people are expecting some good things from this company as they are partnered with SEOMOZ.org (the same group that brings you the concept of page strength).

I’ve been waiting for the launch of this company so that I could test their services both as a blogger and as an advertiser.  I did not participate in their beta program - no invite 

Blogger Setup

Regardless my first impressions upon signing up as a blogger were positive.  They do offer a requirement that is probably the most strenuous I’ve seen in this category today.  They require a three to one ratio of nonsponsored articles to sponsored articles for a blog to be approved.  That means for every four articles in a blog three of them have to be unpaid without any sponsorship whatsoever.  I suspect that does not include articles with affiliate links, however its not specified.

The only other existing service that comes close to that type of requirement is blogitive, which requires a two to one ratio.  However blogitive’s ratio is not for paid to unpaid, but instead to one non-blogitive articles to blogitive articles.  So for every three articles a person might have is blogitive only one of them can be a blogger to sponsored article.

Otherwise the setup process was relatively easy with sponsored review.  Depending on the strength of your blog your blog will be categorized into different potential price ranges which you can manually increase or decrease.  This is very similar to the new process offered at Reviewme.  Sponsored review does perform a manual check of the blogs apply, and so it will take some time before blog is actually available in the marketplace to pick up reviews. 

Disclosure is required, however I have not yet seen the disclosure requirements in detail meaning I don’t know what you have to say or how you have to say it.

Advertising Setup

I set up an advertising account.  Similar to all the other services appears to do not have a blogger account and an advertiser account in the same setup.  No one that I’ve seen to date in offers a combination account which is unfortunate.

For an advertiser’s perspective the setup was relatively easy.  I establish my first opportunity and that was relatively easy as well.  However there are a number of aspects about the opportunity area that are undefined.  For example I attempted to put in several requirements, however I was not sure to what extent I might be a will to set or establish requirements.  For example I did not know if I could limit page rank, or if I could limit blogs to for example exclude my space blog’s, or if I needed to exclude blogs that included no follow links within the body of a article.  There are no FAQ’s yet in the FAQ section refers you to their blog, with a link to an actual article as opposed to the generic blog such that you have to cut a chunk of code out of the URL to get to the actual front page of the blog.

After I finally created my opportunity hoping for a little bit of luck in getting the opportunity to set up correctly, I realize that there was no way for me to actually fund the opportunity.  This was unfortunate as they were offering $100 incentive for first-time advertisers that spent $100.  I wanted to spend $100 and I wanted to qualify however their system did not allow me to do that.  There is no place I could find or I could actually pay my hundred dollars even though I had set up a credit card.  This was a little confusing. 

So I went to the blog I left a comment underneath the section where it talks about the hundred dollar incentive.  Then after the fact I found a ticket section where I could submit a  Help ticket, which I submitted to sales.

As I was trying to navigate back and forth between the blog and the help ticket and the FAQs page, the system kept getting confused about which user I was.  He couldn’t quite seem to be a wiki but if I were a blogger or if I were an advertiser and I can never tell when I was truly “logged into the system” versus looking at the generic website.

In addition to contact us tab doesn’t actually lead to a phone number or e-mail or any other way to contact them so that couldn’t get a simple question answered such as “How do I pay you?” 

This problem immediately reminded me of PayPerPost.  PayPerPost is notoriously difficult to get in touch with and you may get something fixed or solved in a hurry.  Obviously, sponsored review is still in their initial launch is the first day, however it has been my first can experience at a company that actually provides a phone number allows you to contact them is typically going to be easier to deal with than a company that does not.

As I finish this review its been approximately 30 minutes since I submitted my help ticket request.  And I suspect some other more fortunate advertiser has already claimed the hundred dollar prize or incentive that is.  So the potential for goodwill from that incentive is a bit lost now.  I do hope they work through some of these kinks.

As I’ve been working in the center strain now for close to nine months I’ve seen these types of issues pop up with many of the companies in the same industry competitors of sponsored review and I’ve seen just how these same problems can at times make or break a company to the extent that it will attract or permanently scare away a new advertising customers.

Initial Review During Launch - Incomplete

For a fledgling industries such as Buzz marketing or Internet marketing 2.0, it’s essential that a solid first impression is made.  In this regards sponsored review doesn’t quite come away with the and A, at this point they look promising it might be worthy of a B, however I’ll have to reserve that grade and currently give them an Incomplete.

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The PayPerPost sponsored PostieCon ‘07 conference is confirmed. The event will take place on June 1 through June 2. Is a weekend to Memorial Day weekend.

Roberts Scoble will headline the event is the keynote speaker. The theme of the event is that lawyers are a rock star.

The goal of the blog conference is to bring bloggers together and help them learn new and better methods for blogging gaining traffic and monetizing their websites with PayPerPost.com.

The registration price is $200 if you register late after May 18 the price goes up to $250. The event will likely be a an excellent. opportunity. There will be in award banquet and an open bar which probably justifies the $200 price tag.

Other Speakers and Moderators

David Ponce, Dan Rua, and Paul Lewis

Events and Sessions

The itinerary for the events are not filled up yet. PayPerPost still looking for additional speakers and moderators. This is the first event for PostieCon. So it’s probably to be expected that it’s going to be a little green or rough around the edges. The big advantage of this event will be for bloggers to network with other bloggers. Everyone will get a chance to learn a great deal of information and benchmark about best practices.

The event is not open to other paid to post companies or networks. So this should be really looked at as an industry event but as a private event. It remains to be seen what type of turnout will show up for this event. PayPerPost has over 10,000 blogs in its networks these days and a couple thousand advertisers. However this is a company that’s based on an Internet model with people blogging and advertising from all around the world. Many of the bloggers have been categorized as “mommy bloggers” and it’s unknown whether any of those bloggers will actually be able to show up for event such as this.

So as these shows go especially when they’re launching, missile and probably par for the course. No big great opportunity for people it to attend to get in at the ground level because PayPerPost is will will only be a little less than a year old at the time this event takes place.

Softduit Partners Attendance

I will likely be at the show representing Softduit Partners as well as several of our advertising customers. For any of my readers or fellow bloggers or my sponsors and advertisers that we’ll be able to go, I look forward to meeting you there!

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ZDNet revealed last week that PayPerPost will target the top 100 bloggers with the rollout of a new system upgrade geared towards advertising segmentation and offering a new standardized disclosure policy that will trigger BubbleAds to appear when a user hovers over the disclosure badge in an article.

The increase in disclosure and transparency are noble advances in the correct ethical direction. 

However, Considering the PayPerPost business model, how will targeting their system towards the top 100 bloggers further business?

The Top 100 Blogs according to Technorati achieve their rank primarily according to the number of other blogs that link in to them.  At the high end of the 100 Engadget has 25,682 unique blogs linking in and at the low end the blog that has no English name has 2,995 blogs linking in.  For the sake of comparison, there is currently at least one blog in the PayPerPost network that has about 1,300 blogs linking in.  While this blog (Maven Mapper’s Information)  has 145 blogs linking in according to Technorati.

But what exactly will a new disclosure policy and a new ad delivery engine do to entice a blog like Engadget to seek sponsors from the same poll that Maven Mapper utilizes?

That I do not know and do not understand.  I do understand that one of the great powers of the type of Buzz Management or Internet Marketing 2.0 services that PayPerPost and many of its competitors such as Blogitive, Blogsvertise, LoudLaunch, iWebTools and others provide is the ability to connect advertisers with the leveraged power of thousands of bloggers and websites. 

Content is King on the internet and the strength in this model is in the vast army of content producers.  The Queen of course is Search.  If you cannot find the content then the king will be dethroned.  Building web buzz by leveraging the masses through both their discussions and their links is the second strength of this model. 

The fact that these services combine the power of the masses from all around the globe to generate content and push that content up such that it can be found is amazing.  Not to mention the fact that these blogs take their advertising sponsors and their keywords with them on that upwards journey in the Search engines.  This is truly where the power of the model comes into play.

The top 100 bloggers already have the ability to illuminate content they deem worthy, by shining a Google Page Rank 8 mega spot light towards a website or advertisers promotional link (using Engadget and Boing Boing PR examples).  They do not need a middle man.

From an advertisers perspective it would be the equivalent of purchasing a Super Bowl commercial from your local TV stations ad agency, and who does that? 

The top 100 bloggers cover their advertising sales and placements very well already.  Similarly, speaking companies that can afford a big ad spend are typically going to be covered in relationships already. 

The Real Penetrating Power of Buzz Management

PayPerPost can offer a buzz coverage and band width that is phenomenal (rumored to be over 10,000 blogs and growing every month).  Would a big company like to hit the same 100 blogs they are all ready hitting through a new middle man, or would they like to get access to the marketing bandwidth of 10,000+ bloggers downstream?  (Multiply that by two or three and elliminate duplicates to consider the entire industry.)

In the long tail model the theory goes that if you have blogs that have an average of 500 visitors a day (some on the low side an some much higher).  10,000 bloggers will bring you 5 million hits per day.  With an average ad spend of $10 per ad (including fees), a big advertiser could run a single campaign for $100k (10 x 10,000) across all 10,000 blogs.  Plus that is with an ad that is relatively permanent.  It will likely be there until the demise of the blog.  There are blogs that are in the top 500 that charge that kind of money for a single weeks worth of ads, with daily hits in the 1 million range.

An advertiser can get 35 million eyes on their ad in 1 week for $100k through PPP theoretically in the first week and long tail eyes for months and years to come compared to 7 million eyes through traditional top blogs.

So what happens to the bloggers in the long tail of the blogosphere when the service refocuses on the nub of the tail? 

The risk is that the long tail will be neglected.  Unless the systems and organization are built out to cover the long tail needs in an automated and streamlined manner.  Instead of focusing on growing the blogger base from 10,000 to 50,000 or 100,000, PayPerPost seems to be opting to push up the average ad rate for top blogs chasing after someone else’s pie.

Step in the Right Direction

Now to their credit PayPerPost is working to put on a mass training event called Postie Con in Orlando next summer.  The event will bring some of the PPP Army of bloggers to learn new trends, improve their skills, grow their blogging business and increase the quality and effectiveness of their work.  This is excellent.  Analogizing the blogger masses to the elite 100 blogs, this is taking the grass roots, growing the yard larger and fertilizing it to nurture a healthy ecosystem.  Importing a patch or two of high quality sod however, will only stick out like a sore thumb and prove a distraction.

PayPerPost and the other Buzz Management organization should be pushing their network of writers, which I refer to as a Writer’s Collaborative.  The push should be towards improvement and growth.   With these simple Goals:

1. Establish more segmented blogs
2. Write Better
3. Write more (but spread on the additional blogs)
4. Optimize, Promote, and Grow Readership and Subscribers
5. Reform the long skinny tail into a muscular fat wagging tail capable of shaking up the internet with every swing!

To accomplish this, the Buzz Management industry needs to sponsor more education and provide more support for their ecosystem.  Possibly even utilizing technology found in common elearning solutions and virtual conventions such as the EcomExpo.

Closing Perspective

The world is closing in on 10 billion people.  The United States will likely hit 400 million people in the next 15- 20 years.  A network of 100,000 experience content producers five years from now could significantly shake up the world of media as we know it.   That would be 1 content producer for every 100,000 people world wide.

The Missing Dynamic - Collaboration

Let me also offer that this is just one aspect of the dynamic taking hold on the internet.  These numbers all assume that the content producers are working in a vacuum.  If you add in the other major trend the internet has enabled, and these producers collaborate, well then you have an entirely different topic and a much different entertainment, news, education and information industry.

For more Information:  See ZDNet Article PayPerPost to Launch disclosure badges, new tools; targets top 100 bloggers by Larry Dignan - January 30, 2007.

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A new Web Marketing 2.0 company launched in the Buzz Marketing industry at the beginning of January and I missed it all together.

No surprise there as I have been traveling far too much and not working the blogosphere to full effect.

LoudLaunch launched just after the start of the new year. They offer completely disclosed reviews by bloggers of websites, software, products and anything that can e put in a press release with minimum self run campaigns of $50. Depending on the breadth and depth of a campaign total campaign spends will vary significantly.

Unlike some competitors in this industry aside from one, LoudLaunch charges advertisers and pays bloggers amounts that rate up or down depending on the PageRank rating of the blogger. The higher the PageRank the higher the advertiser’s fee and the more the blogger receives in compensation for having a more popular blog.

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

Technorati tags: LoudLaunch, Web 2.0 Marketing, Buzz Management, Buzz tools, Internet marketing 2.0

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