The even that has prompted this blog post is the release of the new service LinkNerve.  We are working on a few items in Beta, but this is ready to release, so we want to cover some of the details here.

LinkNerve is a new system that will prompt bloggers via email for offers to link internal text that already exists on their website.  Most of you may have already received an email explaining the system.  And the email that you get with your first offer will explain things in even more detail.  But one misconception I wanted to cover was the idea that we are trying to get links that were purchased by other companies.  We indexed all the blogger pages from Google, and it’s near impossible to filter out previous paid postings. The system does filter out terms that are already linked, so you are never being asked to replace a link.  But if accepting an offer from LinkNerve violates the terms of service from another network, you should reject that offer.  Rejecting an offer does not mean you won’t receive offers in the future.

Let me know if you have any questions about the system.

Also, we will be sending out the first offers through BDN hopefully next Monday. We want to work as many bugs out of the system as possible before we start launching campaigns.

For those of you who have installed the BDN plug in and given feedback, thank you. We are working hard to answer all your questions and make this work even better.

Update: I just got asked a very good question.  “What if their site has been around longer than 30 days, but they add a WordPress blog to the domain so they can just include the directory?”

The answer to this is yes, we will accept them.  If their site is older than 30 days, and they add WordPress and the directory, we will accept them into the network.

We have just launched the Blogitive Directory Network.  This new network will allow bloggers to add a simple directory to their blog.  This product is initially for bloggers who use WordPress, and maintain their own domain name.  Here are a few facts about the Blogitive Directory Network (BDN):

1.The BDN application is a simple plug in for WordPress.

2.Bloggers maintain complete control over their directory. You decide the price you wish to charge per submission (min. $5.00). You also have the option of approving or rejecting any submissions to the site; nothing is posted to your site without your approval.

3.Bloggers can submit their own directory submissions for free.  This is your directory to use as you like.

4.Blogitive passes through 85% of the revenue directly through to the blogger.  If you charge $20 for a directory submission, you get $17.

BDN Requirements

The only requirement to participate in BDN is that you have a WordPress blog, and that you have your own domain name.

How to get submissions

There are three ways to get paid submissions to your directory

1.You should promote your directory on the first page of your blog.  This will allow your visitors to easily find out about your directory and possible submit their own site.

2.Secondary submissions – After a site owner submits their site to any of the directories in BDN, they are taken to a page that lists all the other directories.  This will provide you with some great traffic from people looking to get their site out through directories.

3.Direct Blogitive Offers (DBO’s) – Blogitive has many clients who are interested in submitting their sites to directories on the Web, and our internal sales staff seeks more clients everyday. We will help site owners submit their site to directories in our network by sending out offers directly to the bloggers. These will be at a set price that may be lower than your normal price. Keep in mind that you do not have to accept any offer received.  We encourage you to review the submission and make sure it would add value to your directory.

How to sign up

If you are already a Blogitive blogger, you simply log-in, click on “Blogs”, select which blog you want to add the directory too, and you will find the WordPress plug in.  After that you are ready to go.  The screencast will walk you through a pretty thorough process:

http://my.blogitive.com/screencasts/directory_tutorial

How payments work

Payments to bloggers work very much the same as they have been.  We will be paying weekly through Paypal.  At this time, we only pay through Paypal.

[tags]blogitive, wordpress[/tags]

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

The new system should be working pretty smooth now. We will be making some mild tweaks and enhancements throughout the next month, but for the most part it looks to be settled down.

Even though the system looks mostly unchanged, there are actually a lot of improvements on the backend that will allow us to be more efficient in approving your posts and pushing out offers.

The entire back end was re-built using some really great technology. We moved from PHP to Ruby on Rails, and the entire application is now hosted on Amazon’s new EC2 service. We have seen a tremendous performance increase in speed due to some major architecture changes we made.

Along with the new backend architecture, we added some cool features and products that we will be rolling out very soon. One of those products is our Directory product, look for a post very soon explaining how that works.

We are now working on some additional changes to the Blogitive site. One item that is being discussed now is whether or not we should have a forum on the site. I thought I would ask our bloggers what you thought, so leave a comment letting us know if you think a forum would be helpful.

Thank again for your patience and for helping make Blogitive so successful.

You may not realize this but transferring your blog to your own host is actually better for you in the long run. Blogging has becoming a way for regular “Joes” to generate an income. Paid blogging, Affiliate Marketing and Adsense are a few of the options available to bloggers these days. Whatever you choose to do don’t limit yourself by limiting your blog growth.
So what are the options?

Hosting Your Own Blogging Software

Hosting your own blog will allow you to have complete freedom with design and the ability to generate income however you please. Wordpress is by far the best blog software available. Wordpress not only is easy to use but it has the most free templates, plugins and information available. Hosting your own Wordpress account would be the best choice but you will have to pay for a web host. There are hundreds of reputable web hosts that offer one click installation of wordpress software at very affordable prices. There are many web hosts that don’t require a contract. My suggestion is that if you are just starting out with web hosting you should find one that allows you to pay month to month. I have a favorite web host that I wrote about on my blog.

One important suggestion when looking for a web host is to find one that uses Fantastico software installation. The is literally a “few clicks and your done” type of installation. As far a price goes, there is no need to spend more than $10 a month for a web host. Another benefit of finding a good web host is that you can host other software such a discussion forums, guestbooks, wikis, image galleries and mailing lists.

Blog Hosts That Charge a Fee

Another option is paying for blog hosting. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with these companies but I have been to many blogs that use them. MovableType is one that does offer a free account but in the terms of use it says that you are not allowed to use an affiliate type advertisings. They also have paid accounts started at $49.95 a year that I think you have more freedom with. SquareSpace is another blog hosts that requires a fee. They have a basic package that starts at $7.

Free Blog Hosting

Blogger.com is still a good options for those of you who don’t want to attempt to host your own blog. Blogger is a bit limiting but they do allow advertising. LiveJournal is another free host that allows advertising (according to terms of use).

LiveJournal offers a free account that permits advertising. On the downside, they also display their own ads on your blog. You can also upgrade to a premium account with no ads except your own.

There are probably other free blog hosts that allow advertising but these the only two I have any knowledge about.

After choosing one of these three options you will have to decide what you want to do about your previous posts on the old hosts. You can either start a brand new blog from scratch or your can transfer the posts to your new hosts through feeds. I have experience transferring data using blogger.com and wordpress software so I will be posting a little tutorial in a few days. Here is an example of a blog I just transferred - click here then here (both are wordpress). I am still researching how to do this with Bloggerparty and Writingup type platforms.

Those of you using Wordpress.com my suggestion is that you save your rss feed as soon as possible and find a new host. You don’t want to loose all of the blog posts you have already entered.

One last suggestion, keep your old blog account open even if you don’t plan on posting on it regularly. You can always stop in and post about your new blogs which will help with your link popularity.

Mona
My Blog

So, Blogitive MAY be down between those times, but hopefully not.

Starting on Dec. 4th, we will no longer be able to accept or provide offers to blog hosted on services like writingup.com and blogparty.com. There is a short list of these types of sites that allow you to post content on their site, and then add your AdSense account info to earn money trough clicks. I will not name the companies, but we have gotten at least two companies like these that object to Blogitive being used on their network and have pulled down pages, as well as closed accounts. We are going through our network one-by-one, if you use one of the networks we are discontinuing, we will let you know through email.

Another site that seems to not be Blogitive friendly is WordPress.com. We have gotten feedback that some bloggers accounts there were suspended after posting for Blogitive. So, it looks like we have to knock those blog from the network as well.

I know that this will be disappointing for some of you, which I understand. But keep in mind this is disappointing for us as well. We spend a lot of time and energy into recruiting bloggers to the system. We only approve around 20% of bloggers who apply. So it’s no fun to go back through and narrow the network more.

I would like to make the suggestion that people start creating blogs that live on their own domain. I know it has a cost associated to it, but you can pick up a domain for less than the price of blog posting from us. I could see a time in the future where we make that an unfortunate requirement. We want to work with all bloggers, but sometimes things are out of our control.

Just to be clear, if you have already accepted a posting opportunity, and you on those networks, you will be paid.
[tags]blogitive, writingup.com, blogparty, wordpress.com, wordpress[/tags]

First, feel free to check out how I use Blogitive. My personal blog is www.oneblogtoomany.com. (It’s under a little construction right now, so please excuse the potential mess when you get there) You will notice that I don’t get to post as many Blogitive releases as I would like, and I of course don’t want to take opportunities from our users by doing them myself. But when I do post I use 2 different ways of posting.

The first way is to simply place it under my Press Releases category. Since this is an editorial take on a press release, I don’t feel the need to tell readers that it’s sponsored. I’m sure some will disagree with that.

The second form of postings I do is under Website reviews. For this I do a basic, and honest review of the website. Once again, I don’t feel I’m pushing people to go to the website or buy a product, so I don’t mention that it is an endorsement.

My personal feelings are that this is my blog where I just talk about stuff that has to do with my personal life. I don’t claim to offer world news, or unbiased product information. I usually rant about things that barely interest my friends and family. I am an ethical person, but I don’t feel there is an ethical breach in doing paid reviews or mentioning a press release on my personal blog.

That being said, I do agree that there are blogs where this wouldn’t be a good idea. Obviously TechCrunch is a highly regarded source for news. I would love to get my company mentioned there, and I would even be willing to pay for it (call me Michael, we’ll work out a price), but I’m pretty sure that Michael Arrington wouldn’t be interested in giving me a mention at a price. That’s what paid advertising is for. But TechCrunch is not a personal blog. It is a site that has set out to be a reliable source for unbiased news and information.

Some would say that even if TechCrunch disclosed the fact that a posting was sponsored, that would be a breach. I don’t agree. I get plenty of business magazines and see sponsored advertorials all the time.

Now, on to whether or not Blogitive should make bloggers disclose sponsored posts. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. What authority do I have to tell you how to manage your blog? I’m simply paying bloggers to post about our client’s press releases. It is up to each individual blogger how they wish to manage their blogs, and determine what it ethical for their blog.

But when I say that, people like to think that I’m encouraging bloggers to not disclose the sponsorship. The truth is, I don’t care either way, either does the client. When you write about the press release, you are helping them build buzz, and giving them a boost in the search engines by linking to them with a relevant page of content.

So, each blogger should decide how they feel comfortable working with Blogitive and proceed with a clean conscious.

I’m sure this will spur some opinions on both side. Please leave your feedback here and let us know what you think. Remember, we work for you.
[tags]blogitive, blogging, ethics, techcrunch, michael arrington[/tags]