Personal Finance and Investment

Sponsored Blogging - the state of play

This seems to be a rough concensus over the state of play in the sponsored/paid/whatever blogging sector.

Currently this market is embryonic - similar to that for search engines around 1998, when early leaders, eg Altavista, Northern Lights, were eclipsed by one operation with a clearly better technical/business model. However, as it stands, the major brokers are:

Reviewme
Hand-in-glove with Text Link Ads - and probably the market leader. Had some problems with their scoring algorithm refusing to update and being open to manipulation - as are they all - but in general appears a competent operation, with potential for growth.

Payperpost
Took a lot of the flak over the ethical issue, has courted the good/bad publicity ever since and seems to be doing well enough for itself despite. Relatively low number of qualified posts for bloggers starting up.

Loudlaunch
As the name suggests, made a considerable noise but, ironically, problems with their startup. Lost a significant number of user accounts and could take up to six weeks to approve a blog. Seem to be getting their act together now.

SponsoredReviews
USP is was that bloggers bid the advertiser for the opportunity over price - advertiser may decline/accept. Bloggers seem to like this - except for the relatively large numbers of bids left hanging because the advertizer simply ignores and fails to decline - the blogger cannot plan ahead how much work may or may not need to be done.

Blogitive
A complex model, involving third-party, “ghost” blogging and a serious number of mail-order brides. May become big, probably won’t.

Other entrants: to early to judge, although Smorty shows promise, they look to have absorbed lessons from the other’s early mistakes.

What do you reckon? - if you’ve got any experience or feedback that contradicts all this completely, let us know…