Long Overdue Praise For PayPerPost    BY JOHN REESE

Posted: Wed, 09 May 2007 08:08:32 +0000

  As many of my longtime ezine subscribers already know, I love to travel.

Well, in the past 10-12 months I've done a lot of traveling.  I took trips to Japan, Scotland, England, France and Italy.

 And I finally made it to China for the first time.  Unfortunately, I got really sick and it ruined the trip.

I went on all those trips because I was feeling a bit burned out from all the business projects I had going on.  I desperately needed to get as far away from the computer as possible.  So I did.

While I was away I had a lot of time to think...  to figure out what was and wasn't making me happy in my life.  I did some serious soul-searching.  And as I previously wrote in my ezine, I decided to pick just one project and get out of the rest - to keep from going insane and to be able to focus on doing one thing great rather than several things fair.

As a serial entrepreneur this is something I have battled with my entire life.  There's never a shortage of opportunities and it's just too easy (especially online) to try and conquer multiple projects at the same time.  But it rarely turns out as well as it would have to just focus on ONE project.  So I had to make a major change...

That decision process led me to take my 'side business' of teaching Internet Marketing and to focus on helping as many people as I possibly could with it.  And that's exactly how Income.com came about.

But while I was traveling around the globe I still took time out to check email here and there as well as catch up on my favorite blogs and other news sources.  (Internet cafes rule.)

During the time I was away a major FIRESTORM of controversy hit the ‘Net.  Blogs all over the world were going crazy.  People were getting fired up.  Mainstream media outlets got involved.  It was nuts.  And it was all concerning one little startup company...

PayPerPost.

If you're not familiar with them, PayPerPost is an advertising network that pays bloggers to post ‘reviews' of products and services on their blogs.  Products and services that belong to the other side of PayPerPost's system, their advertisers.

I believe there were essentially TWO things that got people really heated over the launch of this new company...

1.  It was encouraging people to post ads within blog posts.  Many hardcore blog readers think of blog posts as pure content written by the author(s) that run that specific blog.  There are plenty of other places to display ads on a blog layout - on the sidebars, headers, and footers.  At least that's what the popular reaction was to this new business model.  Many said it was another form of "blog spam" regardless of point #2 below.

2.  The blogger was not required to disclose that they were being compensated to post the review.  It was left up to the blogger to decide if they should disclose that they were getting paid to post their review, or to just post the review and let their readers decide for themselves if they thought it was a regular content post or not.

Shortly after PayPerPost's launch, BusinessWeek ran an article titled, Polluting The Blogosphere.  In the article, Jon Fine basically rips PayPerPost a new one and more or less implies that the whole process is DISHONEST and poisonous for the Internet.  His harsh stance was based around the lack of required disclosure.

Many other bloggers chimed in and expressed their negative thoughts neck-snapping-reactions about how EVIL PayPerPost was for creating such a business model.  The majority of this negativity also focused on the disclosure (or lack thereof) issue.

Some of these bloggers were some of the most respected (and most visited) bloggers online - like Michael Arrington and Jeff Jarvis.

Once these "A-List" bloggers started bashing PayPerPost it couldn't get any worse for this little company.

Or could it?

Introducing... Jason Calacanis.  The self-appointed PayPerPost Bash-Fest Commander-In-Chief.  More on that in a moment...

Jason is an old school ‘Net guy.  He was the founder and editor of a magazine called the Silicon Alley Reporter.  It covered Internet and other new media companies in the NY area.  It was actually pretty solid stuff.  In the late 1990s, if you read SAR, Business 2.0, Wired magazine, and a few other trade journals, you had the entire Internet Universe well covered.

Jason co-founded Weblogs Inc. and sold it to AOL for $25 million.  He was also the GM of Netscape at one time.

I actually have a lot of respect for Jason.  As many of my ezine readers know, one of the traits I respect most is hard work.

The true hard workers are few and far between.  Most people just want to do the bare minimum.  And this is no exception when it comes to entrepreneurs - many of which never actually take much action.  They spend most of their time planning and dreaming.

Jason has worked very hard and has made some important contributions to the Internet industry.  I respect that.

But don't let Dr. Evil fool you.

Jason pretty much took it upon himself to try and rid the Internet of PayPerPost - and he set his sights on Ted Murphy, the Founder/CEO of the company.

Jason has bashed Ted Murphy and PayPerPost at every opportunity he could find.  And he was downright brutal at times.

He was yet another blogger that had a huge issue with the optional disclosure policy of PayPerPost - i.e. their bloggers were supposed to police themselves and decide if they should or shouldn't add a "Disclosure Statement" on their blogs to clarify that their ‘review' posts were paid advertisments.

For the record, I believe these bloggers should have to post a disclosure statement if they are making posts that they are being compensated for.

And I actually side with Jason in his opinion that each of these paid posts should start with some sort of disclosure, even a small one, at the top of the post.  It's similar to the fine print "ADVERTORIAL" you often find in a magazine.

You know, that full page ad that looks just like the articles in the same publication; yeah, the hundreds or thousands you've probably glanced at and never even noticed that tiny "disclosure" and still to this day think it was a legit article.

If it's not perfectly clear that a blog post is a paid ad (or ‘review') then that actually could be a form of deception - because blog readers naturally expect to be reading content that isn't a paid ad.  And if their natural expectations aren't being met (especially without them knowing it) they are essentially being ‘tricked'.  It's a very fine line.

PayPerPost eventually changed their policies and now requires their bloggers to have a disclosure policy on their blogs.  It's not necessarily a disclosure within each post (unless the blogger chooses to do so) but it is a required, published disclosure on the site that states they are being compensated for some of the posts they are making.

Part of me (through this entire 'saga') wished that PayPerPost had launched their company with the disclosure thing in place to start with.  Then they wouldn't have had to deal with the huge backlash and negativity, right?

 BZZZZZZZZZZ WRONG.

I would bet anything that they still would have experienced the massive backlash and negativity.  It might not have been on the same scale, but it still would have happened.

Why?

Because many of the ‘complainers' were primarily pissed about...

...the concept of ADS APPEARING IN BLOG POSTS.

Or worse, an advertisement actually taking up an entire blog post.

Think about it... phrases like ‘polluting the blogosphere' and ‘the last thing we need is more blog spam' have absolutely, positively nothing to do with disclosure.

NADA. ZILCH. NOTHING.

It's a mindset, and a reference (even if a subconscious one) that screams...

"I Don't Want To See A Bunch Of Advertisements In The Form Of Blog Posts All Over The Internet!"

Can anyone honestly say that if PayPerPost (from the beginning) had all their bloggers start each post with the small text, "ADVERTORIAL" or "PAID REVIEW" that there still wouldn't have been a backlash against them?

A backlash was inevitable.

This is exactly what happens when someone creates a Disruptive Business Model.  And this is what PayPerPost did.  They shook up the blogosphere.

Hahahaha.  I'm sorry, I have to actually laugh outloud...

Blogosphere.

I crack up when I read or hear that term.  A lot of the blogger purists like to throw that word around... these are the bloggers that actually think they somehow live online in their own controlled universe. 

It reminds me of a great quote from Shawshank Redemption... when Red is facing the parole board at the end of the movie...

Red: Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means...I know what you think it means. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job.

I think the same thing when I hear certain people (not all) throwing around the world blogosphere like it's this thing they govern or have ownership over.

Here's a little secret for those folks... it's just a made up word.

There's another major issue with some of the anti-capitalists and purists that were so quick to bash PayPerPost and their model... and here's a major NEWSFLASH they all need to realize...

IT'S NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CHOOSES TO PUT ON THEIR BLOG!

Someone can make every post an advertisement AND have a non-stop Flash animation of donuts bouncing around their nav menu.  It's THEIR BLOG.  How dare they try and tell them they can't post paid reviews of products or fill their blogs with ads. 

They can do whatever they want!

It was like the implications were that PayPerPost was enslaving bloggers to make paid posts. 

And somewhere in the middle of all the heated discussion there was a huge FACT being overlooked... thousands of bloggers were willingly signing up at PayPerPost and were happy about participating.

Again, it's their blog, they can do whatever they want with it.  The Mighty Blogosphere doesn't get to decide what they should or shouldn't put on their blog.

Jane, a work-at-home mother with two small kids, writes a blog about bird watching and has the right to post anything she wants on her blog.  If she chooses to post a paid review on her site, or put more ads on her blog than Times Square, that's her right. 

And she, or anyone else, that makes such a decision to flood her blog with ads should not be bashed for it.  Again, it's her right.

Move along, nothing more to see here.  Mind your own business.

And enough about this notion that blogs are somehow this MAGICAL thing online.  They aren't.  It's a freakin' piece of easy-to-use software that makes adding content to web pages easy.  Let's not forget that.

The Internet is made up of content created by its citizens.  It was the same in the 1990s and it's the same today.  It doesn't matter what tool they use to create it, or what label you put on it.

Whatever someone creates is THEIRS and theirs to do with as they please.  People need to respect that and just worry about themselves - For those so concerned about too many ads on blogs, that is.

If It's Really Only About Disclosure For Some PayPerPost Opponents And Not The ‘Model' To Create More Advertising On Blogs That They Truly Have A Problem With...

Where's the concern over the Multi-Billion Dollar Affiliate Industry?  It makes the blogosphere's potential disclosure issues a tiny spec of the Internet's realm of deceptive advertising practices.

How many thousands of Fake Review sites are online and promoting affiliate and CPA offers right now?

How many ‘non-disclosed' affiliate links exist on millions of web sites all over the Net?

How many millions of dollars (a day) are being exchanged through shopping comparison sites for arbitrage purposes?

And Why Aren't The Most Influential Bloggers Going After Google and Yahoo for non-disclosed uses of their PPC feeds?

There are millions of pages populating the Internet right now that users stumble upon and truly think is a ranking of the most relevant web sites for the topic they are searching for.  Too bad it's all PPC links where one of Google's or Yahoo's partners is earning their revshare on the click activity.

When an entire page is filled with sponsored listings from a feed a user no longer has a grasp on what's a paid ad and what isn't.

That's about as deceptive as it gets.

I'm certainly not defending PayPerPost's old policy of non-disclosure.  As I already stated, I believe full disclosure is a smart thing.

But my point is, how much time and energy was wasted on bashing some young startup company when there was no Evil Plan to destroy the blogosphere or anything even close to it?

There are now other companies with a similar model, like ReviewMe.  They are doing fine and others will surely follow.

I, personally, think PayPerPost is to be PRAISED for what they've done.  They took some major risks to bring their concept to market and truly rocked the boat in the process.

This is a good thing for the Internet.  I just wish more people would realize it...

It opens up discussions about formulating disclosure policies... best practices... and often results in new startups and new technologies being created that, ultimately, makes the Internet better.

Ironically, PayPerPost is located in Orlando, Florida and so are we.  However, I've never met (or even talked to or exchanged emails with) their founder and CEO, Ted Murphy.  I've lived in Orlando since 1999, but I have never crossed paths with Ted.

But I think I know the reason why...  to run into people you usually have to actually leave the house and get away from the computer.  Oh yeah.

In all seriousness, as far as Ted Murphy is concerned, I think the guy deserves some major recognition.  He truly deserves some kind of crazy award for his massive COURAGE.

Think about it... a young guy starts a company and ends up with people all over the Internet publicly bashing him... many looking for every excuse possible to tear down the company he's working hard to build... 

He's being constantly insulted...  and many of the industry leaders that I know he respects (and probably admires) are doing nothing but talking trash about him - as if he's O.J. Simpson.

So under tremendous public scrutiny for what he's trying to build what does Mr. Ted Murphy do?

He doesn't run from but he runs to everyone that challenges him to do an interview and talk about the situation.  I don't think the guy has ever dodged an interview.  I'd hardly say that's someone trying to hide something or purposely do wrong.  Clearly it's a matter of miscommunication on both sides of the fence.  It has to be.

And as for his worst critic of all, Jason Calacanis?

Ted got on a plane and flew to Jason's office to sitdown, face-to-face, with Dr. Evil himself...

And they recorded a video interview which is awesome - I highly recommend you check it out.

But talk about courage... how many people would have flown to their most vocal critic for a confrontation?  Not many.

As I previously said, I've never run into Ted here in Orlando.  But I did recently meet two of PayPerPost's employees when I was in San Francisco for Ad:Tech.

I spoke for awhile with Randy Mountz their VP of Sales.  He was very nice and very professional. 

I also met Britt Gustafson their Communications Specialist.  She, on the other hand, was extremely rude and unpleasant.  I'm only kidding, she was very nice.

Randy and Britt are good people and I briefly brought up the whole "controversy" stuff.  I could see it in both their faces that they are pretty tired of the whole thing.  I could tell they just wanted to be able to focus on their jobs and work hard to help the company - and not have the distractions of people putting them down, etc. 

I think it's LAME to bash a company and it's employees that are simply working hard to build something they believe in.  Sure, you may not agree with what they are trying to do, but I think a little more sensitivity should be used when it comes to situations like this.

No one can honestly say that the team of hard-working folks at PayPerPost is doing nothing but sitting around and thinking about how they will carry out their sinister schemes to deceive Internet users and take advantage of bloggers.  Puhlease.

It's quite the opposite.

Look at their blog... look at their Rockstartup series. 

I've done my own research on the matter and all I see is a hard-working group of people that actually care about their customers.

It's obvious they are having a good time and enjoy being part of a 2nd family that they are creating at that growing company.

Thank you for reading this entire rant of sorts.  I guess, after meeting Randy & Britt in San Francisco, and having followed the entire saga during my travels, I just felt inspired to take a stand for their company.  After all, I gotta support the home team.  

But seriously, I thought a lot of the blog posts that were made against PayPerPost were a bit unfair and uncalled for.  I would never want to see this type of thing happen to one of my student's companies.  Or anyone for that matter.

I hope the Internet community never forgets that entrepreneurs are the ones that built and truly developed the Internet.  If we're so quick to judge the few courageous people that are willing to take big risks online to stretch the boundaries of known business models then we're doing nothing but hurting the progress of the Internet.

And it's also important to remember that the Internet will always take care of itself organically.  Its users ultimately ‘vote' and decide what survives and what doesn't based on the VALUE that is being offered to the community.  If it's a bad idea, it will be rejected.  If it's a good idea, it will thrive.

But that will always be decided by a community of CUSTOMERS and not by pundits.

SPECIAL NOTICE:

I want to make sure and state that I am in no way, shape, or form affiiated with PayPerPost.  I am not one of their affiliates, advertisers, marketing partners, bloggers, or anything else.

I was not paid one penny to make this post nor even given a free block of cheddar cheese in a complex barter deal.

I was also not coerced, threatened, or guilt-tripped into making this post.  Nor was I threatened with an ice cream cake plow which could certainly burn your nose hairs and cause a serious medical problem.