Another shot at this monetization thing: PayPerPost

Many of you have probably read about how I've been experimenting in ways of monetizing this blog. My goal has never been to actually make a good amount of money through my blog, although that would be nice, but rather just to find out how it's done in order to better understand it.

For my next trick, I'm using PayPerPost. For those of you who don't know what PPP is, it's a company that lets advertisers make bids for people to write about them or a certain product on their sites. Basically, paying people for word of mouth advertising. Now, immediately in this whole thing you should be questioning the ethics of this company. I did when I first heard about them. But they try to make it known that certain blog posts using PPP are sponsored by an advertiser by using little disclosure badges saying "This post sponsored by: ____". You can check out their explanation of that on their word of mouth ethics page. I think that, if the reader knows this post is sponsored, then it's fine. They can choose to take every word with a fat grain of salt.

Personally, while I'm using it, I'm going to write about stuff only if I can express my honest opinions about it. You can still take my words with a grain of salt, but I just want to make that point known.

Anyways, I heard about PayPerPost through a blog that, ironically, was discussing the ethics of it. I investigated a little bit, and found that, while the ethical issues are relevant, I thought this was a really inventive business model. It connects marketers with customers through a new avenue. Well, word of mouth advertising existed before this, and may have been even less ethical. You remember that person in that bar the other night that offered you a free shot of some vodka after she gave you a big schpeal about it? Or when that same sort of thing happened in the coffee shop? Yeah, that person might have been paid to do that.

Anyways, I am new at this whole monetization thing, so now I'm trying PPP and will see if it works. I'm beginning to find that there are a lot of experimental ways of doing this right now, mainly because people don't yet understand it, so a lot of them don't really work. Hopefully I can find one that does work, but hey, it's an experiment right? If I make any decent money on it, I'll let you guys know, and maybe buy you a beer. Hey, have you tried this new kind of beer...?