The Knitting Fiend

Do your online yarn store or blog need to gain visibility with readers of knitting blogs? Here’s interesting news for you: PayPerPost has launched a nifty method to help you find knitting blogs to publicize your products by writing blog ads. The method is called “PPP Direct”– and if you look to the right, you’ll see I joined.

Now, if you are an advertiser (or a blogger who is interested in possibly finding advertisers to help defray your costs, you may want to know some particulars. The program very easy to use and here is how it works:

First, the knitting blogger signs up, places an ad on their knitting blog. (Look to the right. See the “Hire me via Pay Per Post” text link? That’s my ad. )

When the advertiser sees a suitable blog showing the link, they click the link, and a text box opens up. (Now click the “Hire me via Pay Per Post.” You won’t be obligated yet– you’ll see the first easy to use form. )

The advertiser fills out the easy to use form to make an offer. Ultimately, the blogger can accept, reject or negotiate the offer. But first let’s see what you, the advertiser can ask for:

You can ask for three types of posts: A review, buzz or opinion. You also ask for a neutral post or a positive post. Neutral means the blogger can mention bad things about your product; positive means they can’t.

You can also specify the number of words in the post.

The advertiser then describes what they want the blog post to discuss in rather general terms by filling out a text box. (If you are new to advertising on blog, you may want to actually email the blogger to ask questions about what sorts of things are reasonable request! You have a lot of flexibility here. However, do remember, advertisers are required to disclose the posts are ads. I do so at the bottom of each ad, and also write “Buzz” in the title.) The advertiser must include at least one link to a page they would like to see linked in the post; for example, a sock yarn vendor may want to a link to their current sock yarn page which is advertising a sale.

When you click submit, a box appears showing billing information. You fill this out, agree to terms and conditions and click submit.

At this point, the offer is sent to the knit blogger, who may either accept, reject or negotiate. You’ll find higher traffic blogs with better Google page ranks insist on more money; lower traffic blogs ask for less. You’ll find some bloggers will refuse positive only reviews. Some will only take short posts. Some will take tons of ads and riddle their posts with a zillion links. Some will only accept ads that really fit the blog; some will take anything!

Now, negotiating may seem like a pain, but it will actually make for better promotions. Believe it or not, negotiating is a good features– and is also unique to PPP Direct. The knitting blogger may actually check your links to make sure you didn’t screw up, and ask you to change the offer so they don’t end up posting a totally useless post with dead links! After all, as a blogger I’d prefer to post a live link alerting knitters to your sale rather than a dead link to nowhere!

Now, of course, as an advertiser, you may be wondering: Can’t I already just click the email and deal with a blogger directly? Well, sure you can. But first: You know perfectly well some knit bloggers just aren’t going to take your offer.

Second, Pay Per Post acts as an intermediary. This means that if there are any disputes between the blogger and the advertiser, Pay Per Post will intervene. (Supposed you paid your $10 and the blogger forgot to include the link? Or gave you a very negative review? Or deleted the post immediately after you paid? Pay Per Post will verify the blogger met your stated requirements and give you your money back. )

Sure, you could verify completion yourself. You probably will read the posts. But say you forked over $5 to $20 for an ad and the blogger did a bad job, are you going to court over this? That will cost you more than placing the ad. So, using an intermediary has tremendous advantages for both advertisers and bloggers.

Are there other reasons to use Pay Per Post? Absolutely: PPP charges a handling fee of only 10%. This is by far the lowest of any service. (Others charge 35% to 50%.) Also, PPP has created very nice tutorials to step advertisers through the process. You can see the video or read details.

Obviously:
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