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Trouble at PayPerPost?

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pppPayPerPost is offering a $5 per post special according to a report at iMedia Connection.

Here’s the thing, it sounds like PayPerPost (PPP) is getting desperate by heavily discounting paid posting by dropping premium pricing. I know spin when I see it, and sampling offers are usually a sign that there’s a lack of advertisers, and hence a lack of liquidity in a business.

Ted Murphy’s spin:

This promotion provides an incredible opportunity for blog marketers to experiment with our system in order to determine what price and segmenting options provide the maximum return and fill rates in our marketplace

Decoded: we are running out of paid advertisers so we want to offer lower rates so potential advertisers can check the product out and hopefully become long term buyers.

Now I’m not even trying to get involved in the PPP/ ethics debate, I don’t use PPP although I did sign up for an account there when they launched so I could check them out. It’s not my thing, but having said that I’m not everyone so I don’t begrudge anyone running paid postings. But I can smell a fish from a mile off, and this one smells a little off color. Whether it’s the first sign of the end of PPP…it’s too early to say, but you don’t run these sort of offers when the advertisers are queuing at the door.

Originally posted on March 30, 2007 @ 1:13 am

Comments

  1. Duncan,
    I can assure you that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. We have had back to back to back record breaking months with huge increases in advertiser deposits, signups and most importantly the amount of opportunities that have flowed through the marketplace.

    This promotion has to due with market forces. It is an opportunity for advertisers and ourselves to understand the true clearing price of opportunities at various levels of ranking within our system. It will allow advertisers to set their own price based on the return they are seeing and will provide us with more insight to guide our advertisers in the future.

    To be clear:
    The platform allows advertisers to target the sponsorship opportunities they offer to blogs and bloggers who meet certain criteria such as a minimum Technorati Score, Alexa Score, Google PageRank, and quality or “Tack” score in the PayPerPost system.

    The Oppapalooza promotion suspends, for a limited time, the required premiums previously assigned to various levels of these ranking metrics. For instance, the required minimum offer to a blogger with a Technorati score of 10,000-19,999 was previously $25.00. If an advertiser added the requirement of an Alexa score of 800,000-1,000,000 the minimum increased to $30.00. These premiums are now replaced with a single minimum price of $5.00 per post, no matter what segmentation an advertiser chooses. PayPerPost will provide guidance with a “Suggested Offer” based on the targeting parameters required by the advertiser. Advertisers are encouraged to use the Suggested Offer as a guide when setting their offer price, though the advertiser is ultimately in control.

    One thing I will admit is that we have had to deal with a huge influx of bloggers signing up because of the viral nature of many of our programs. This has slightly outpaced advertiser signups at times which is natural. In the beginning we had more advertisers than bloggers and it has flip flopped a couple of times since. Oppapolooza not only provides advertisers with an incredible chance to experiment with price/value ratios, it also provides an increased supply to bloggers hungry for additional PPP opportunities.

  3. Thanks for the coverage Duncan — keep it coming! On the heels of another record growth month, Oppapalooza is the perfect time for curious bloggers, videographers and sponsors to take PayPerPost’s marketplace for a test drive…you know you want to ;-)

  4. What about the possibility of pulling out of Iraq, letting Iran invade and lose resources fighting their own kind,
    and then come in and mop up the dregs?