The Blogitive Directory
When we started working on Blogitive, we knew the idea would have it’s opponents, and we knew we would quickly see competitors in the space. We have tried to learn from both. Here are some of the complaints we get from bloggers:
1. I don’t like having to write about companies in the thread of my blog.
2. Having to write two postings between each sponsored post makes me feel like I’m writing 3 posts for one payment.
3. My site is very popular, so I want to make more money per post.
4. I don’t have the time to keep logging into the system to find offers, and they go very fast.
5. I find a lot of products or services that don’t lend themselves well to the theme of my blog, so I have a hard time writing about them.
And here are the top complaints we get from our clients:
1. Some of your competitors are making this business look very bad by having bloggers give false testimonials.
2. We would like to see the blogs that would be posting about us first.
3. Some of your bloggers have said un-kind things about our company. (note the irony with issue #1)
4. We want better control over the copy.
5. The price is too high, and we think your margins are too high.
And just for the fun of it, here are our biggest complaints:
1. The same bloggers seem to grab all the offers, and many of those blogs are not the higher quality blogs.
2. It’s a lot of work to go through and read each posting, and then often have to make edit requests.
3. Many of the blogs I love won’t participate in Blogitive either because they don’t want to add the posts to their thread, or because the payment is not high enough for them to take the time to write a full post.
4. We spend a lot of time defending the business model to people.
5. We want bloggers to make more money.
I have heard a lot of opinions about Blogitive since creating it. And I spend a lot of time defending the model. To me it’s very simple; we pay bloggers to write about press releases we put out. They can write whatever they like about that release, as long as they mention and link to the company. Clients pay us for the service of getting their name out there, which then goes out through RSS and helps build some links back to their site for their SEO efforts.
Most people who complain about Blogitive have two issues. First, they take offense that bloggers are making money by talking up companies. But the fact is that our bloggers are only being paid to mention the client, not saying anything either good or bad. But because some of our competitors made the decision to go the other route, they get a lot of press and weaken our position. This leads to a lot of people feeling that when a bloggers get paid for a post, they should have to disclose this. In my opinion, that is up to the blogger. It’s not Blogitive’s place to tell bloggers how to manage their blog past the point of the post they are being paid for. But because we don’t require it, we are accused of trying to hide something. The fact is that many of our bloggers do mention that the post is sponsored. It makes no difference to us.
One side note here: I have noticed that the loudest opponents of our model seem to be those who make a very significant (more than $5 million per year) amount of money off their blog from advertisements. I’m not sure they are speaking on behalf of the entire blogosphere as much as they think they are.
We listen to all the concerns out there, whether they were real issues, or just perceived issues. We kept in mind that the more Blogitive’s business model was accepted by companies, the more companies would work with us, and the more offers we could put out to bloggers.
Blogitive Directory works by adding a simple Web directory to your blog. Initially we will be testing this product for WordPress blogs only. (Not WordPress.com hosted blogs, they don’t let you make money from your blog on that system)
When you sign up for Directory, you are given a plug-in for WordPress that adds a directory to your site. You choose if you want the link in your Meta, Categories or Blogroll. Because it’s a plug in, your theme is put around the directory. (Obviously some themes will require some cosmetic work on your end to make them look right.)
You set the price point for your directory during the sign up. The minimum price is $5, but you can go as high as you like.
When the set up is complete. You will then be listed in Blogitive’s list of directories, which will eventually be open on the Blogitive site.
You can see a sample of what a Directory on a blog looks like here.
When a visitor to your blog decides he would like to submit to your directory, he simply clicks on the Add Your Site link, which takes him to a page of Blogitive.com to sign up. The clients then fills out the form with the information about his site, and makes payment through Paypal.
You will then receive an email from Blogitive with all the information submitted, as well as links to Approve or Reject the directory submission. If after reviewing the site you click Approve, the client is charged and you earn your fee. If you click Reject, the client is refunded. The client is notified of either decision.
After the client goes through the check out process, they are brought to a Thank You page, which contains a list of other directories in the network. This will allow the community to help each other build their directories.
Because this is your directory, you are able to add entries to your own directory whenever you like at no charge, and we would encourage you to do so.
There is 3 ways you may get a company to submit to your directory. First, a visitor to your site that notices the directory. This could act as a sort of tip jar for readers who enjoy your site. There is also the traffic that may come from the thank you page of another directory submission. These will often be people interested in promoting their website on blog directories. The third channel is directly from Blogitive’s list of directories on the website. And the fourth channel will be from Blogitive directly. We have a lot of clients who wish to get their name in as many directories as possible. So Blogitive will be keeping a list of Directories we like, and direct submissions to those blogs.
We decided to follow one main rule in the development of this product. This is your directory. You set the price, you can add whatever you like for free, and nothing goes on your directory without your approval.
If you go back to the beginning of this post and look over the complaints, I think you’ll find that this system should make many people much happier about Blogitive.
We will maintain the Blogitive Web Release program, and I imagine that it will still be very popular. And we will continue to try to make that system better and better over time.
We will be launching a closed beta of the Blogitive Directory next week. If you’re interested in participating with your WordPress blog, fill out the contact form and let us know.
I think this is going to be an exciting product that helps bloggers make even more money from their blogs in a more unobtrusive fashion.
I’m sure there will be a lot of questions, so feel free to post them here.
Thanks,
Ed
March 17th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I think the Blogitive Directory is a great idea! Unfortunately, I cannot participate because all of my Blogitive-approved weblogs are hosted by Blogger.
Will this change in the future?
March 18th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I have one blog that uses wordpress, and I have added the directory but I’m not sure on the instructions of how to add my own listings as well as how to fix the template for the directory, it looks pretty bad and there is not a template showing up in site administration for it for me to tweak it. It’s a learning process though and it looks promising…
:-)
March 19th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
A question… when you add the directory to your blog and someone pays to be added to it what length of time have they purchased with the price you’ve set? For example let’s say I decide to charge $10 and someone comes along and is willing to pay that to be added to the directory on my blog, have they paid the $10 for a week, a month, a year?
The reason I ask is because with WordPress, having a link in a directory that shows up in your categories or blogroll doesn’t count as one link. It counts for as many pages as your blog contains. As the categories and blogroll show up on each and every single page the buyer of such a link has in fact purchased anywhere from hundreds to thousands of links back to their site. Even one link in a single post is multiplied at least five times generating more links. With WordPress you have the post page, the blog page, date page, month page, category page, archive page etc. Each of these are a separate and unique URL with the same link contained in all of them.
I would appreciate some input on this particular aspect of the new Blogitive directory. Thank you!
March 20th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Jono Cono - Good question. The length you will be agreeing to is 1 year.
But, I think there is a mis understanding on how the directory links to the site. You can link to the directory from your Blogroll, Meta or Categories section. You do not link to the client from those sections. The link in those sections go to the directory, where the client site is indexed in a relevant folder for their type of site. This keeps your blog looking clean.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
just asking here, any one get directory ads now ? anyone?
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:25 am
It’s a good idea, but there are always bugs here and there.I’ve installed but unable to locate where my links will go.
Anyway,I’m looking for a means to migrate off new blogger too, so once that goes, hopeful it will do better.
azrin @ http://www.azrin.net
March 28th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I’ve installed the directory and have just been playing around with adding entries to it for free.
The following functionality would be useful at some stage:
* The ability to edit entries that I have added for free.
* The ability to delete entries that I have added for free.
* The ability to change the price I have put on the entries. As the blog increases in popularity, it would be good to then be able to charge more.
* The short description doesn’t show up anywhere, it would be good to display this after the link as a descriptor of the link rather than forcing the user to load a new page to read about every entry.
* A link within the directory pointing the visitor to a sign-up form to have their listing entered would be nice, so that people know that they can add their link for a cost.
That’s my initial feedback. I LOVE the idea and I’m looking forward to really getting into it as it evolves.
Julia
March 29th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
This is a great concept. My question is would Google penalize a site because it is in a blog directory or would they look upon it favorably.