Buying a Blog Post

[terrytowel]

What does that mean? And what are the good and bad aspects of selling your blog post.

[RDude]

I've never heard of that before myself. But, why would you want to sell a blog post anyway if you're trying to make sales with it? If it's got your affiliate ID in the links out, how is that even possible?

Do you mean sell the post to a sponsor? This is an odd request to me. Someone else may shed light on it for you though.

[QueerLust]

Buying blog posts happen all of the time on mainstream blogs.

Essentially, a company pays you to post a blog entry for them. Sometimes they provide you with everything and other times they ask for you to write in your voice a favorable post on them.

That is how a lot of the "mommy" blogs are monetized. A baby food company will send the blogger a sample of food, some cash and the mother will feed it to their kid and write a review.

For tech blogs its oftentimes a company giving a blog a couple hundred dollars to hype their new product in a blog post.

It can really mean lots of things but at the end of the day it's someone buying a post off you...

[QueerLust]

I should add...

In adult, "buying a post" is pretty much the same as buying a TGP gallery spot.

Not only does the buyer get to make money from that post, they also get SEO options.

I'm just throwing out numbers, but if you have a blog that averages one sale per post at $35, then you may sell a post for $45-60.

[rawTOP]

For mainstream sites, buying a blog post is an excellent way to do marketing. There's even someone doing it in the buy/sell forum (http://www.gaydemon.biz/showthread.php?t=13094)... Either you pay someone a flat fee for writing a blog post about your site, or you write it for them and they just post it. There are no affiliate links 'cause basically the site owner has been paid up front for the post.

You can do it to get sales, but more often it's done for SEO value. "Editorial" links in the body of a post are worth A LOT more than sidebar links.

The issue is Google and their war on "paid links". If they catch you selling links your site will get penalized and will be barred from passing PageRank (and you'll probably never realize it). In general though it's almost impossible for them to detect a paid blog post if it's done informally which is why they're so popular - big benefits, little risk.

Thing is 90+% of porn sites let spiders crawl their affiliate links, so IMHO, porn sites generally don't pass PageRank anyway. I mean seriously, if you have a lot of links to refer.ccbill.com that redirect to a porn site, it's not very hard for Google to figure out you're site is all about paid links. I really think this is one of the primary reasons why porn sites tend to have low PageRank - it's almost impossible for them to accumulate it when all the sites linking to them are incapable of passing link juice. [And the reason why I've rarely ever bothered with link exchanges.]

So bottom line is that selling blog posts on a porn blog is a dubious activity. Unless the site is clean and blocks spiders from following affiliate links then there isn't much SEO value in links from the site. You can do it for the sales, but people would rather pay for performance with rev share or PPS.

[RDude]

Interesting QueerLust. Thanks for the information.

Pardon my ignorance on this subject. I sell sidebar spots on my blogs, but the post buying process for adult blogs is new to me. I write reviews etc in the mainstream market and know it's common practice, but I wasn't sure about doing the same for adult.

[dzinerbear]

It's not just on mainstream blogs. You can buy a post on a few gay blogs. Butch Dixon did it a while back. You simply send them the content, write the post yourself (or they'll do it), give them the links you want, and pay the fee. On the specified date your post appears.

It's a great way to test the waters on a blog before you commit to a bigger advertising budget.

[pocoloco]

It's not just on mainstream blogs. You can buy a post on a few gay blogs. Butch Dixon did it a while back. You simply send them the content, write the post yourself (or they'll do it), give them the links you want, and pay the fee. On the specified date your post appears.

It's a great way to test the waters on a blog before you commit to a bigger advertising budget.

True, it happens with gay blogs as well. Same goes for affiliates who buy posts on other affiliate blogs (in return for a post or money).

[QueerLust]

Thing is 90+% of porn sites let spiders crawl their affiliate links, so IMHO, porn sites generally don't pass PageRank anyway. I mean seriously, if you have a lot of links to refer.ccbill.com that redirect to a porn site, it's not very hard for Google to figure out you're site is all about paid links. I really think this is one of the primary reasons why porn sites tend to have low PageRank - it's almost impossible for them to accumulate it when all the sites linking to them are incapable of passing link juice. [And the reason why I've rarely ever bothered with link exchanges.]

Redirect scripts do not appear to work anymore for cloaking links...Google WM Tools now shows links to my sites where its a redirected link...I guess Google figured out everyone was doing redirects and decided to ignore them and count the redirected link as an actual link.

Come to think of it, sites like bit.ly/Twitter are probably to blame.

[dzinerbear]

Porn sites had lousy PRs long before Google started obsessing about paid links. I have rarely ever seen a porn site above a 4 or 5, and this is way back to 2003. There were a couple of exceptions, but not many.

[rawTOP]

Redirect scripts do not appear to work anymore for cloaking links...Google WM Tools now shows links to my sites where its a redirected link...I guess Google figured out everyone was doing redirects and decided to ignore them and count the redirected link as an actual link.

Come to think of it, sites like bit.ly/Twitter are probably to blame.

Cardinal rule number one for googlebot is do not violate robots.txt. That hasn't changed and never will.

"Cloaking" is entirely the wrong term. Cloaking is showing one thing to the bot and another to the user. That's not what's happening here.

But to address your issue - yes, WMT will show redirected links (e.g. from bit.ly), but it won't show links from robots excluded redirect scripts. I actually pass bit.ly URLs through a robots excluded script in order to avoid this very issue. Bit.ly is very open to spiders and I don't want that for sponsor links from my site.

Google has data on robots excluded URLs from Google Toolbar and Google Analytics, but it doesn't use that data for things like determining PageRank and indexing (other than in the aggregate like they do with site speed) - it would be completely against the rules they swore to live by back when they introduced GT and GA... Robots exclusion is still robots exclusion - it takes the URL out of the index. Period.

Plus, Google was the one who asked for sites to make it so spiders couldn't crawl paid links. Paid links mess up their algorithms. They don't care if we have paid links, they only care if the paid links are indistinguisible from natural/organic links. All they want us to to is make the paid links non-crawlable (rel="nofollow", robots exclusion, etc). If we do that we're golden 'cause we're not messing up their system. It would be crazy if they penalized the people who are following the rules they set down. They're smarter than that.

[QueerLust]

Cardinal rule number one for googlebot is do not violate robots.txt. That hasn't changed and never will.

"Cloaking" is entirely the wrong term. Cloaking is showing one thing to the bot and another to the user. That's not what's happening here.

But to address your issue - yes, WMT will show redirected links (e.g. from bit.ly), but it won't show links from robots excluded redirect scripts. I actually pass bit.ly URLs through a robots excluded script in order to avoid this very issue. Bit.ly is very open to spiders and I don't want that for sponsor links from my site.

Google has data on robots excluded URLs from Google Toolbar and Google Analytics, but it doesn't use that data for things like determining PageRank and indexing (other than in the aggregate like they do with site speed) - it would be completely against the rules they swore to live by back when they introduced GT and GA... Robots exclusion is still robots exclusion - it takes the URL out of the index. Period.

Plus, Google was the one who asked for sites to make it so spiders couldn't crawl paid links. Paid links mess up their algorithms. They don't care if we have paid links, they only care if the paid links are indistinguisible from natural/organic links. All they want us to to is make the paid links non-crawlable (rel="nofollow", robots exclusion, etc). If we do that we're golden 'cause we're not messing up their system. It would be crazy if they penalized the people who are following the rules they set down. They're smarter than that.

So wait, I use nofollow but was always afraid that Google would think I was trying to game the system by using it too much to avoid the passing of PR.

But Google actually wants me to use it more to help them? If so, I'm game!

[rawTOP]

So wait, I use nofollow but was always afraid that Google would think I was trying to game the system by using it too much to avoid the passing of PR.

But Google actually wants me to use it more to help them? If so, I'm game!

Yes, nofollow is just fine. HOWEVER it's not the same as robots exclusion - it's more transparent and not as absolute. For example Google can choose not to honor the nofollow and pass PageRank anyway, where that can never happen with robots exclusion where they don't even know there is a redirect...

That said, both robots exclusion and nofollow slow or stop the flow of PageRank from one page to another. But they're about the same in that respect.

[zbuckz_lloyd]

Porn sites had lousy PRs long before Google started obsessing about paid links. I have rarely ever seen a porn site above a 4 or 5, and this is way back to 2003. There were a couple of exceptions, but not many.

The highest PR of any gay porn site I know of now is a 6.

[QueerLust]

Yes, nofollow is just fine. HOWEVER it's not the same as robots exclusion - it's more transparent and not as absolute. For example Google can choose not to honor the nofollow and pass PageRank anyway, where that can never happen with robots exclusion where they don't even know there is a redirect...

That said, both robots exclusion and nofollow slow or stop the flow of PageRank from one page to another. But they're about the same in that respect.

Interesting...I have something new to research now...robots exclusion...thanks!

[Teddy]

What does that mean? And what are the good and bad aspects of selling your blog post.

In the US, weren't some laws passed so that bloggers who are compensated for a product endorsement have to admit they get compensated? I can't remember if this started because a company hired someone to specifically blog about their product or there were just too many mommy blogs out there getting kick backs.

[QueerLust]

In the US, weren't some laws passed so that bloggers who are compensated for a product endorsement have to admit they get compensated? I can't remember if this started because a company hired someone to specifically blog about their product or there were just too many mommy blogs out there getting kick backs.

Yes, there was. Apparently nothing has changed though...

[terrytowel]

Is selling spots going to be a trend now?

I was on another gay web board and someone placed an ad to buy posts on gay blogs.

But the post also said

'All posts are unique with 2 outgoing links each other.'

What does that mean?

[RDude]

But the post also said

'All posts are unique with 2 outgoing links each other.'

What does that mean?

What the means to me is that someone who doesn't write very good english is trying to sell their blog posts. Either that or they don't check their grammar. lol

[basschick]

probably just typed "other" on the end by accident. it makes sense if you read it as "all posts are unique with 2 outgoing links each."


Is selling spots going to be a trend now?

I was on another gay web board and someone placed an ad to buy posts on gay blogs.

But the post also said

'All posts are unique with 2 outgoing links each other.'

What does that mean?

[RDude]

probably just typed "other" on the end by accident. it makes sense if you read it as "all posts are unique with 2 outgoing links each."

Yeah, makes sense. I was just being a smart ass. ;) Besides, I made a typo in my post too. LOL.

[dzinerbear]

I wouldn't say it's going to be a trend. If you don't have traffic, you can't sell posts. Well, you can, but you won't have any repeat business. Tony, it's just a different form of advertising. Since surfers don't click banners like they used, people are just getting creative.

[tigermom]

In the US, weren't some laws passed so that bloggers who are compensated for a product endorsement have to admit they get compensated? I can't remember if this started because a company hired someone to specifically blog about their product or there were just too many mommy blogs out there getting kick backs.

Yes, and many affiliate companies insist on blogs implementing that. All it takes is a disclaimer somewhere on your "about" page. It's for any kind of compensation - selling posts of promoting affiliate products.