Charging for advertising on blog

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[kathiemt]

I've had a genuine approach for me to write about a site on my blog and being paid to do it.  I've not done this before and wouldn't even know what to charge.  Does anyone have any clues?  I had heard of some doing this - think Darren Rowse does, doesn't he? But he's in the big league and I'm not yet quite in his category but I'm thrilled to have received this approach. I just need to know how to action it now.

[Lightening]

I read an article recently (sorry, I can't find it again now) that suggested $50-$100 was a reasonable fee for a guest post.  Not sure if that would apply to writing an "advertising" style article on your own blog.

I assume it's a legitimate site that you're happy to endorse?

[goatlady]

Do a search on "pay per post" - it was a big topic of discussion a few months ago.

I think the important thing is to clearly state that it's a paid post.

As for how much, it all depends on the advertiser and how much you think they'll get out of the link/review. But Lightening's $50-100 sounds reasonable to me.

[kathiemt]

Ok, thanks - will do the search. Wasn't sure how or what to search for. And the rate sounds reasonable - I believe it's a US company and yes, I do believe they are legit and worth writing about.

[Snoskred]

Do they want you to link to them, and does the link have to be do follow?

If it is allowed to be nofollow, then go ahead and do it. But if they won't allow you to no follow the link, then the link is what they want to pay for.

You need to specifically state that you won't do follow the link otherwise you could get google slapped, but if they are still willing to pay after that then all is well.  :rwink:

Cheers,
Snos

[kathiemt]

Thanks, I still don't understand about the Google thing - if they're selling advertising and encouraging it, why penalise people when they do it from other sources?

I have the dofollow plugin on my blog so I'll have to do the code specifically for their post if I do it.

[Meg]

Within days of taking on an advertiser on my blog, I mysteriously lost 1 point in Page Rank (5 to 4). I mentioned the advertiser in a post (and used no follow) and I no followed the links from the banners. The only link I didn't change was the original post I wrote about their service (some months ago), as it was entirely unsolicited and I had no association with them back then. But in the absence of a regular page rank update, I'm left wondering if I was in fact "slapped" 

Anyway, I told them upfront it would all have to be nofollow and fortunately they were cool with that. They're after branding and exposure rather than link juice.

I'm just saying that you need to be careful. Another thing to consider - are you planning on disclosing that you have been paid to write the post?

[kathiemt]

I'm starting to feel like this might be more trouble than it's worth.  But how do all the professionals manage it when they get paid?  And how can Google tell a paid post from an unpiad one?  I often write about different things I've found and whether I think they're good or bad.

[Sephyroth]

Thanks, I still don't understand about the Google thing - if they're selling advertising and encouraging it, why penalise people when they do it from other sources?

And therein lies the hypocrisy of the whole situation...of course, the defense from Google is that by selling links in this fashion, you supposedly throw off search results. It's the passing of pagerank that the frown upon, which makes some sense, because if an advertiser is in it for getting a link from a high PR site, then it is selling pagerank, but I think it's all a ploy by Google to tell you who you can an cannot link to...

Yet, there are sites which sell links left, right, and centre (i.e. news sites, etc.) and don't get penalized in the same fashion.

And how can Google tell a paid post from an unpiad one?

They can't automatically. What they rely upon is people dobbing others in via their webmaster central site, using the "report paid links" function. I reported Google for Adsense, but strangely never heard anything back from them...

[kathiemt]

I didn't even know till today about reporting to Google about webmasters.  Again, a whole new ballgame to me. I've been a webmaster for several years and didn't know that function existed.

[scotty]

The way Google penalises you is by reducing the PageRank they assigned to your site, which makes it more difficult for you to sell links to advertisers, who are willing to pay high price for obscure links only because of the PageRank Google gave you...

Can't see anything wrong with that.

Google's main business is in search and contextual PPC advertising so it is their best interest to protect the relevancy of their search result pages, which have been distorted by paid links. The very reason many of us dropped AltaVista in late 90's for Google is because of their search result relevance. Obviously they don't want to see the same mass migration to the next hot search engine because their result ceases to be relevant.

I am pretty sure Google is happy for publishers to make money on their sites. They have relaxed their AdSense policy last year so you can use more than one contextual advertiser on every page so I can't see it as hypocrisy on anti-monetisation. So far I think Google is only not happy about if you

(1) sell PageRank (so distorts their SERP)
(2) use another ads that look/feel like AdSense ads on the same page (brand protection?)
(3) click fraud on AdSense (to protect their advertisers)

(there might be others but all within reasons from my PoV).

[kathiemt]

I heard back from the guy and it turns out that what he wanted was a post which pretty much promoted my competition on my blog.  Come again?  Once I knew that I said 'not thanks' and explained why.  I wonder if he understood?

[apollyon]

Don't bother with paid articles, its not worth and it bring down the value of your blog IMO

I've had many offers, up to $1,000 for articles, but its not worth it still, if u do it once, credibility can be hard to regain.

In the business I am in, most people naturally assume that if I give a positive review, the car company has paid me to do it - but having built that trust with our readers that we never take cash for comments, we have created a reputation that money can't buy.