Thalasar Ventures

PPP – the long tail of blogging

It’s clear that my last post on ReviewMe vs PPP didn’t cover all of my thinking. So I decided to do this follow-up post.


The strategy that PPP has taken is a long tail strategy. They have largely wrapped up the long tail of blogging which are the smaller bloggers. ReviewMe’s strategy of having a handful of A-Listers (John Chow etc) is the wrong strategy and here’s why.
A-List bloggers don’t need ReviewMe
A-Listers can get approached about opportunities without having a marketplace involved. They simply don’t need ReviewMe but it’s certain that ReviewMe needs them. The absurdly high 50% revenue generates all of ReviewMe’s revenue. I get approached quite a bit about posts. In fact some of my highest paying opportunities come from private placements. I am sure A-Listers should get approached all the time.
PPP wrapped up the smaller bloggers
Pay Per Post went the long tail approach to bloggers trying build a system for the small to medium sized blogger to use. That’s why they managed to get thousands of bloggers signed up in their system. I have taken this chart from Florida Venture Blog. It’s apparent that PPP is largely kicking everyone’s ass in this marketplace. Don’t worry Dan I saved it locally so it’s my bandwidth/server.
Pay Per Post's number of paid reviews. Yes they are kicking ass
Notice how much more popular they are than everyone else in the marketspace. That’s what big ticket advertisers want to see. They want to see a single marketplace that will give them the significant coverage of a medium. They don’t want to spend time wandering through something that covers 5% of the market.
Tier One Advertisers – the real bucks
Pay Per Post has executed a direct sales strategy with sales reps working with the best interactive agencies in the world. I cannot repeat how important this is. These agencies control access to real dollars, not the smaller dollar amounts that you see being thrown around in the marketplace right now. We are just beginning to see dollars flow into this marketplace. The dollar figures in this marketspace are tiny right now. ReviewMe doesn’t seem to understand this issue and isn’t executing on the same strategy. They relied almost exclusively on their A-List bloggers to drive traffic to their marketplace. Well after the initial push and flurry of activity, they aren’t growing. In fact their audience metrics are fairly static at this point. More importantly they aren’t going after the real dollars in the marketplace – large agencies and Fortune 500 advertisers who control real dollars. I am pretty impressed by Ted’s execution over there. He knows where the real money is.

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