My Adventure as a PPP Advertiser...

I will decide on the best ones over the next 48 hours or so, but for now here is the full list of blogs that did reviews for Shadowscope via my PPP Opp. Most of the posts seem to have been up for about five hours. I have yet to get a single hit from any of them, but it is early AND it is a holiday. Time will tell if it is worth it or not...

Over at How Internet Business Works there is a pretty good little review that I enjoyed. I couldn't find a pseudonym or anything so I'm not sure who writes this blog.

Squareface thinks I should make my Google Ads a bit more prominent. I pretty much had a decision to make with this. Here, and at TheAppDotNet I do have my advertisements placed a bit more prominently, but Shadowscope is my personal site and too much advertisement is NOT a good thing...

Samm likes the pictures. Hey, me too. Saves time.

I enjoyed the post over at NOWG.net very much. I'm not 100% positive who writes the site, but I did enjoy the post. Even if it is 100% bullshit (quite a few of my reviews have been) it's still a good one.

Mommy to Chumsy also has a post up.

Clare has also posted about my site.

Anak Datuk Bloggers has a review up. He/She thinks I have too many posts on the page. They may be right. Hell, I only have seven days up.

Lee also has a post up. One of the more personable blogs that I have seen post the review and one of the three I have found so far that I like. I have not finished with the list, but this is the best thus far.

I don't know anything about improving the blogosphere, but News, Views and Reviews also has reviewed the site.

It was nice to see one of the bloggers I "know" take the post. I will talk about it a bit more at the end of the post, but I prefer seeing personal blogs that are REALLY about someone or their interests. They don't have to use real names, but it's nice being able to say "Karen wrote a really nice post and is currently one of the top four right now" rather than "someone unnamed at this site wrote a review". THAT's what blogging is about.

Malin writes an extremely thorough review (thorough for five bucks anyway) and one of the few negative ones that I have seen so far. The fact that she? actually spent enough time for just $5 really impresses me. The negative points she mentions are valid, and something that I thought about when I was creating this template. All of this puts her among the top five reviews so far and unless I find another one that I like better I have them picked already. When I posted the opp I explained that it could be positive, negative, or whatever and I was serious. Hell, any advertising is good advertising! Still not sure why the post shows up on an entry page, but not on her main page yet though.

Doris Chau also wrote a pretty good review. The only thing that might have kept her out of the top five is that when the page loads you see the header, sidebar and Auction Ads, then Google Ads, then some other affiliate ad, then another google ad. After you hit page down you get to the content. The post itself I still will rate with four tacks, but if it had not been for the advertisements that I didn't pay for obscuring the review I would have given her five.

Connect06 also posted a review. Damn, Admin sure does get around on quite a few blogs :) I was pleased with the review though, and now there are six I like so I will have to load them all up later and pick the six. The only two I know for sure are staying are Malin and Karen so far.

Khai Khee has also written a pretty good review. Go check out Down Memory Lanes if you get a chance.

So here is my take on all this. Take it for what it's worth (only about a hundred bucks which is what I spent). So far for the day I have had about 350 hits, which is slightly less than normal for a Monday. That's mainly due to the holiday. 90% of them have been from google, which is also normal. The other 10% or so have been from other sites that I frequent.

Was it worth the $100 I spent for fourteen reviews? Nope, not a chance. I would have been better served paying the five best $20 apiece than the fourteen of them $5, or possibly two (or maybe even ONE) blogger(s) all of it to get a very thorough review where I might get more hits. Now I know what my brother is talking about and why he doesn't do any more PayPerPost campaigns. The old adage "you get what you pay for" is extremely true. I suppose if you are willing to spend several thousand dollars to get a 50 word post and a link to your site on a couple thousand sites it might be worth it in PR, but for a blogger or small business person like me it is most definitely not worth it.

I will use PPP as an advertiser again, but next month (I am going to use $100-200 a month for advertising) I will just make a maximum of one or two posts and see what happens. I know that I have been writing a few posts through Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, and am really excited about PPP Direct for the same reason. When I am being payed a comparable amount, I am much more diligent in what I am posting.

Now, this certainly isn't meant to offend anyone, but after having read all fourteen posts I noticed something. There are a few that are really bloggers that happen to like making some duckets. Maybe it helps pay the bills, maybe it buys the beer, whatever. MOST of them seem to be there strictly to make money and they could really give a flying horses ass about blogging, bloggers, or anything else. Now don't get me wrong. There are days where every other damn post on my site are sponsored but for the most part the aren't. I have somewhere in the vicinity of 3000 posts between the three blogs (most of them at Shadowscope) and less than 10% of them are paid for. The number NEEDS to be even less than that. One thing I like that Sponsored Reviews does is that they require THREE interim posts between each review that you write for them, rather than the one that PPP does or the none that others do.

Blogs are about content just like magazines. I would no more pick up a magazine that is nothing but ads with a bit of drivel in between than I would hang out at a blog that is the same way. That is one thing I need to move away from with my Business Blog. I have too many sponsored posts there, at least for my liking. I am interested in the content that I write about, but just don't have quite as much to post about there as I do on my other two sites.

I am cross-posting this at my Business Blog as well as at TheAppDotNet. When I have decided which five of the six posts I like the most in the next day or so I will post a link to them at Shadowscope. If I get time I will post a review of a couple of them as well. It just depends on how much time I get. I am halfway through my twelve day week right now and don't have any time off until NEXT Sunday. The reviews actually sound like a good idea though, cause ya gotta have them interim posts :)