I am referring to the masses and not the special orders. Masses mean those campaigns where advertisers pay between USD5 to USD10 per post to a big pool of bloggers to review their products. The advertisers may have paid a handsome sum of money but they should think how much the bloggers are getting. They may pay USD5K but the bloggers may get only a mere USD10. Which is peanuts, really. Someone please tell me how much is a regular meal at McDonalds comprising a coke, fries and burger?

These are some of the ridiculous demands I have seen from advertisers :

1) Asking bloggers to participate in their services by signing up an account. (eventually we are spammed with lots of mails)

2) Demanding a 400-600 post when their own sites hardly have anything near to that or contain any intelligent interesting subject.

3) Giving threats to bloggers that they will be penalised if the bloggers did not ‘perform’ well.

4) Expect ridiculous page ranks for peanuts. Remember that a PR0 site today may be a PR4 in a couple of weeks or months. And PR5 sites will tell you to take a hike with your five bucks. :)

5) Expect traffic spike when they pay only less than USD10. Remember that you are only paying for the link which will help in SEO.

6) Expect traffic, exposure, link and all the thingamajic with just USD5.

7) Limiting their posts to only certain countries. Remember that on the internet, the power of a site is not limited by where the blogger lives. It is how smart the bloggers are in their SEO skills. Usually, the amount they pay, for e.g. USD7 is not attractive in the USA and sometimes, the type of bloggers who took up their campaigns may be just blog-for-money sites. Meanwhile, some countries whose citizens are very aggresive and dynamic in SEO skills may find the USD7 translated into bigger amount of money. So, these advertisers have lost out a lot.

What are your grouses as a paid post blogger? Do you often find some advertisers being very ridiculous and over demanding? This is not meant to snub those advertisers whom had generously pay me. But it is more to bring awareness to the advertisers that we bloggers are human too.

I have been on both sides of the fence and I found that sometimes, we advertisers have to close an eye and not be too calculative. During my last campaign, I found a few bloggers who wrote very good reviews but their site doesn’t generate much clicks for me. I do not mind because I know it was worth my USD8.50 just to read their review of this site.

8 Comments
Blogging, Tips