PayPerPost.com is the largest sponsored content marketplace in the world. This online-only company, owned by Izea Inc., boasts tens of thousands of bloggers who interact with advertisers to help them in their viral marketing tactics. Bloggers are compensated for distributing unique content subject to the acceptance of the advertiser.
As described on the website, and as I have found myself, the process is very simple. Advertisers first create an account, where they are required to set up some sort of payment plan for the activity that will transpire on the website. After the account and credit card, PayPal, etc. is set up advertisers are free to create what is called an “Opportunity”, also known as an Opp. An Opportunity is basically a detailed outline that tells the blogger what you would like them to post about.
“Think of an Opportunity as a posting on a bulletin board or a listing on an auction site,” Izea says. “The Opportunity is exposed to bloggers who are willing to create content on your behalf and post it to their blogs in exchange for payment.”
Bloggers who see the opportunity and want to post submit an entry, which PayPerPost (PPP) then reviews to make sure it meets the requirements that the advertiser has set. PPP then facilitates the exchange of money and takes care of any tax filing.
PPP very clearly runs a brokerage business model. A third party, in this case PPP, bring in buyers (advertisers) and sellers (bloggers) and act as the liaison for the exchange of services for money. This particular type of brokerage business model is focused only on business-to-business transactions. Unlike many other brokerage pure play businesses like eBay or Travelocity, PPP is a tool for professional advertisers, not consumers.
In order to generate revenue for itself, PPP takes a small percentage of the amount of money that is paid to each blogger.
I think that it is pretty easy for PPP to evaluate the success of their business. They can easily keep track of how many opportunities are being posted, as well as how many opportunity responses the advertisers are getting from bloggers. Another way for PPP to evaluate their performance is to track how many new accounts are being created versus how many accounts are remaining inactive. This will tell them first, if the business is growing and attracting advertisers. Secondly, it will tell them how satisfied advertisers are with the service. If there are more accounts being left inactive than accounts being created, it will say a lot about how happy the advertisers are with PPP. The company can also evaluate its performance by tracking how many bloggers are signing up to be a part of the company. The more bloggers that are creating accounts to respond to opportunities and be a part of the site, the better PPP’s business is doing. I’m actually surprised, however, that a survey isn’t available on the site to evaluate PPP’s performance to a more detailed degree. I think sending out a survey to the advertisers and the bloggers would be a really good way to further improve the business
