Picky advertisers
September 26th, 2007 | 
Author: Although the vast majority of the paid posts which we do are accepted without any problem, now and again you get a rejection, usually because we’ve missed something or other in the requirements or simply because we’ve mistyped a URL for one of the links.
Fair enough in those cases, and they’re generally easy to fix and resubmit.
What’s becoming more and more common though are rejections because the advertiser decided after he’d bought the advertising that really his criteria for acceptance weren’t those that he had stated originally ie he changes the goalposts. Now I do accept that it can be difficult to know in advance what you really want from a blog based advertising campaign but what’s not acceptable is to put a “ban” on someone who has written a post in good faith.
For instance, I recently received one of these “bans” which stated that my blog wasn’t hosted in the UK and didn’t cover female topics. In fact, it is with a UK host and this just goes to show that the advertiser doesn’t know that 1and1.co.uk actually hosts sites in Germany; regardless of that it is a UK hosting company. No, my blog doesn’t cover female topics but then the advertiser didn’t ask for blogs that did in his requirements, so why should it?
Or what about the one on plastic surgery who decided to pull the advertising after everyone had written about it in their blogs? Why loudlaunch agreed to let them do that, I don’t know.
Finally, there are the advertisers who choose not to approve posts for a very, very long time. This gets them free advertising all that time and they may well not approve the post at the end of it. Both Wendy and me are sitting with a number of posts for well over a month with no pay for them yet. Interestingly, sponsoredreviews only requires you to leave a post online for 30 days, yet how will the advertiser approve such a post if we, as we are allowed to, have deleted it once the 30 day limit is reached?
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Posted in Blogging
Howdy,
My name is James, I work for SponsoredReviews.
Please read the Sponsoredreviews guidelines on your next login. They can be found in the guide on the help page, on the bottom of the homepage, and at the top of the “find advertisers” page.
You must bid, and have your bid accepted by the advertiser, prior to you being paid to write reviews. Unless the advertiser buys the review directly from you, then in that case they have already approved for you to write the review.
I’m sorry if that was not clear enough, but it is stated in several places.
I am looking into how we can make the rules even more prominent so they are not missed.
Thank you for using our system.
The main problem with the SponsoredReviews system is the time allowed for things. For example, I have around 20 bids made in July which have neither been approved nor rejected for them. However, although those have been sitting for over two months, if any are approved then I have only 5 days to write about them. That doesn’t seem reasonable nor practical. For instance, if all 20 were approved today, then I would have to write at least 40 separate posts within the next five days which isn’t practical.
Also, we do read the guidelines and haven’t written about anything before a bid is accepted. However, we have written at least one post over a month ago that still hasn’t been paid for. As I say, the 30 days for which we have to keep it online has already expired.
Hello Arnold,
Your points are well taken, and your not the first to make them, but the formula we are using has proven to be the most successful for both bloggers and advertisers. It is not perfect for sure, but the numbers have shown that it is working well.
Advertisers have 60 days before bids expire. Very few advertisers have the budget to purchase all of the reviews from the 500+ bids they will get, all at once. Giving them 60 days allows them to purchase more bids then if we expired them after a short period of time.
The other option would be to expire them quickly, unfortunately that would have the exact opposite effect from what you are hoping. Our metrics show that roughly 40% of the purchases are made from bids that are over 30 days old. This is due mostly to budgetary constraints by the advertisers.
As for your scenario of having too many posts to write all at once, while that could happen in theory, we have yet to have a blogger complain about it actually happening. You are not going to get approved for every job. The approval rate is about 5-20% depending on the quality of your blog, how much you are bidding, and how well your site matches the industry of the advertiser.
and a quick correction, it is 7 days not 5 to complete posts.
As for unpaid posts, all completed/finished posts are paid every two weeks and you would have already received your money. That information can be found in “My Account” > “Payment Details”. If you have not received the money it would be due to a problem with your Paypal account.
Please.. If you are having problems with our system, enter a support ticket. Our staff is quick to respond.
We know the system isn’t perfect, and we appreciate the feedback. We are constantly adding features that improve the interface for both bloggers and advertisers.
In the mean time we suggest maximizing your time by only bidding on opportunities that match the subject of your site. You will get many more jobs with much less work that way.