In the early morning hours of May, 24th, Pay/perp0st launched Pay/perp0st Direct. P Direct, as it’s come to be known in the short time that it has existed, was created to let bloggers interact and accept advertising offers directly from advertisers. Just as the name implies.

Over the last year I’ve work with a number of companies that have been created in order to allow advertisers to use a new form of advertising to promote their companies, services, or products on blogs. Each company is a little bit different from the other in the way that they do business with bloggers and advertisers.

Poy/perp0st direct is the best deal around:

I can only speak as a blogger, as I’ve never signed up with any of these companies to create advertising opportunities of my own. Therefore, from a bloggers standpoint, I have to say that P Direct offers both the blogger and the advertiser the best deal all round. Pay/perP0st direct only charges an extra 10% on top of the fee that the blogger sets as his or her price for a post. 5% of that fee goes towards covering the cost of Paypal and credit card transactions.

I say this because I know that each of these companies either take fees from the bloggers stated price for writing a paid post, or they add fees on top of what the blogger is paid to write an article.

I’ll break it down for you.

The original, and still available Pay/perp0st:

Pay/perp0st still allows bloggers to get paid to bl0g through the system that they began using back in July of 2006. That system allows advertisers to create advertising opportunities for whatever amount they’d like to pay, with the minimum payout to the blogger being $5. The bloggers can then pick and choose which opportunities they’d like to create as a post on their blog.

On Pay/perp0st this method of advertising costs advertisers a $5 service fee whether they create 1 opportunity or several hundred. There’s also a 35% charge on top of each opportunities fee. An advertiser could get 14 posts for $99.50 for a cost of $6.75 per post. The blogger would get $5 for a post that costs the advertiser $6.75.

100% markup at Rev1ewMe

Sites like Rev1ewMe have 100% markup. Tricia’s Musings is listed in the Rev1ewMe marketplace. When an advertiser decides to have me write a post through Rev1ewMe my price per post is listed at $150 at Rev1ewMe. I only get $75 of that fee, and Rev1ewMe gets the rest. I don’t know if Rev1ewMe charges the advertiser any other fees on top of the outright fee of $150 that he or she would have to pay to have me discuss their site or product on this blog.

I believe the lowest price that a blogger can charge at Rev1ewMe is $40, with of course $20 going to the blogger, and $20 going to Rev1ewMe if that bloggers site is chosen for a post.

35% removed from bid price at Sp0nsoredRev1ews

Spons0redRev1ews takes 35% of whatever I bid on any advertising opportunities that are listed in their marketplace. The amount that I bid on Sp0nsoredRevi1ews depends on what the advertiser is asking for, and what price limits they have set.

If an advertiser posts an opportunity and they say they are willing to pay between $10 and $125 for a post, well, I’ll usually bid $80 for a post on this blog. A bid of $80 would pay me $52 for a post if my bid was accepted, with the other 35% going to Sp0nsored Rev1ews. Again, I don’t know if Spons0redRev1ews charges advertisers any other fees on top of the full price bid by each blogger.

The lowest price an advertiser can list on Sp0nsoredRev1ews is $5, but with 35% being taken off the bid it’s really not worth it for a blogger to do a post for $3.25.

There are several other companies out there where advertisers may create writing opportunities for bloggers. The fees vary at each of the companies.

Pay/perp0st Direct:

P Direct is just the first part of a new Pay/perp0st release. I believe the second part will be the creation of a marketplace on Pay/perp0st where advertisers could easily pick and choose which blogs they’d like to offer a direct writing opportunity. I don’t know yet if Pay/perp0st will increase their low 10% service charge for advertisers that use the marketplace, but if they do, I would imagine that it will still be the lowest price of any service.

The way P Direct works at this time is:

1. Bloggers place a P Direct Badge on their site. Mine is located in the top left sidebar.

2. If an advertiser, or perhaps another blogger happens across a blog with a Badge on the site, and they decide that they’d like to have that blogger write about their website, company, product or service they can simply click on the badge and a form will pop up that looks like this:

If the form comes up with an error the advertiser should be sure that they are using the address listed in the top right of the pop up form. Sometimes the inclusion or exclusion of the www causes an error. I believe that is fixed now, but if you get an error you know what you should try – check that the url is the same as what’s listed.

3. The advertiser would then fill out the form, listing exactly what they’d like the blogger to write about, and specify the amount of words from 50 to 300, whether the post is a detailed write up, buzz or opinion, and the tone of the post. At this time the tone is set by default to positive, but the an advertiser could choose neutral or negative if they’d like.

Considering that most bloggers write their best posts in a neutral tone, and are not comfortable with being asked to write a positive article my suggestion would be for Pay/perp0st to make the default tone neutral. I for one prefer neutral requests.

The lower right corner of the offer form clearly states what the bloggers minimum fee is set at, and that there will be a 10% charge on top of the fee offered.

At this time I’ve set my fee at the low price of $20. I believe this is an excellent price for a detailed article such as this one on a popular blog.

An advertiser using P direct to request a post would be charge 10% on top of my $20 charge for a total cost of $22. Considering that an advertiser would pay 35% to 50% more, plus possible service fees either through regular Pay/perp0st, Rev1ewMe, Sp0nsored Rev1ews, or another service I think this is a pretty good deal.

4. Once an advertiser has finished creating their P Direct offer they would hit the submit button and I believe they will be taken to the Pay/perp0st website where they can either sign in with their existing advertising account information, or create a brand new advertising account. The advertiser would also have to deposit money into their advertising account to cover the cost of the offer they just created. I believe that an advertiser can use a credit card or Paypal for their payment.

5. The blogger would then be sent an email message telling them that they have a new P Direct offer. To discover exactly what the offer is the blogger would have to sign into their Pay/perp0st account and visit the P Direct area by clicking on the Opportunities tab in the dashboard.

The P Direct area as viewed by a blogger:

6. They would be able to see any P offers that they have waiting once they reach the P Direct area. A blogger could use the arrow buttons on the left of each offer to expand one offer at a time in order to see the specific offer.

Here’s what this P Direct offer looked like:

7. The blogger could accept the opportunity immediately or, if a blogger decided that the request deserved a higher price due to amount of words or links requested, or would prefer a different tone of post than was requested by the advertiser they could click on the negotiate button and send a message to the advertiser, to which the advertiser would have to respond in order for the blogger to be able to accept or decline the offer.

To learn more about how the P Direct system works for advertisers and bloggers you can view the video in this Pay/perp0st Direct blog post. The video is an excellent tutorial and I only wish that they had more tutorial videos throughout the whole Pay/perp0st website.

Why use P Direct?

Now the big question. Why would a blogger and advertiser use this system rather than deal with each other directly? For security reasons of course. Pay/perp0st offers the security and safety of an escrow-like service.

The money deposited for the post is held while the blogger writes the post. The advertiser has up to four days from the time the completed post is submitted to decide if they approve of the post or not. During that time period the advertiser could also request changes to the post if necessary. Payment is made to the blogger when the advertiser is happy with the post, or once the four day time period elapses.

Sure, bloggers and advertisers could deal directly with each other but what happens if payment isn’t made when stated or when one party isn’t happy. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the security of that middleman?