What are your thoughts on "Sponsored Content" as a seller

[bernard]

Sponsored Content aka selling links under the guise of advertorials is big business.

In my country, it is extremely common, and despite several negative articles about it in the media and even focus from the consumer watchdogs, everyone is doing it, from niche blogs to major newspapers.

There's a lot of money to be made, with a minimum price of around $150 for a decent site up to $500 or even $700 for some sites (most I've seen).

I'm seriously considering it, but I can also observe that a lot of sites, that begin selling blogposts, eventually turn into poor PBNs. There has to be a point at which the sponsored content to real content reaches a ratio, where your site gets demoted as spam.

Where is that limit? Is it 1 to 10, 1 to 2?

What are your thoughts on sponsored content?

 

[WinMore]

Most magazines that I have seen do this have at least 50 pages and 2 of those stories max (usually1 or 2 pages, so let's say 4 total).
That's a little less than 10%. The free newspaper I used to read (don't, it's garbage) did 4-6 pages (but a newspaper has fewer pages than a magazine I guess).
Considering the newspaper is free (metro), I would take the magazine as a "guide".

But I would also make it depend on timing. So basically, every month no more than 8% of the articles would be sponsored content. If a month has fewer articles being published, the sponsored content goes down as well. Otherwise, your recent content becomes more garbage and you don't want that to be associated with your brand.

You could argue that affiliate articles are often like this, but I kind of disagree because at least they help you make a choice. Usually, your website isn't plastered with only one brand and there are at least some valid arguments made.

Also when I noticed these sponsored articles my "respect" for the magazine and newspaper instantly dropped. For the magazine, I rationalized it, because their industry is "dying", but I still considered them less trustworthy. Every issue that arrived, this kept being reinforced. This could be an argument to go even lower %-wise....

If I had the option to try it, I would stay below 8% and track my statistics like a hawk, and start trying to hide the sponsored articles as soon as I saw a hint of trouble. (Not remove them, stay true to contract)

That's my 2cents, but I'm currently only making real money off e-commerce so yeah... Take with a giant grain of salt

 

[JamaicanMoose]

I rarely do it. When I do, it's legit brands that I've heard of. Pricing depends on my mood that day... generally between $250 and $500. They write the post. Has to be educational in nature.

Pricing higher means I get fewer sponsored posts but end up making nearly the same revenue with much lower risk.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I ALWAYS tell whoever it is, no matter who it is, that yes, we can do it, but it has to:

• Be written as an informational article. No sales copy of any form allowed.
• It must be written as if it was written by the staff of my website and not by them.
• I provide the topic based on keyword research, they provide the content.
• They can include one outbound link to their website, and nothing that's a hard sales page.

Essentially I talk them down into writing an article for me and paying me for it so they can get a backlink to their relevant page in the article. Sponsored post quickly moves through undetectable guest post to just being another post that was funded and provided by them.

The thing is, if it says "sponsored" or "guest post" or has a guest's author box or anything like that, then you're putting yourself at risk by not using nofollow links, which the buyer doesn't want obviously, unless you run a massively popular site with social media and are truly selling them the eyeballs and not the link.

 

[bernard]

The thing is, if it says "sponsored" or "guest post" or has a guest's author box or anything like that, then you're putting yourself at risk by not using nofollow links, which the buyer doesn't want obviously, unless you run a massively popular site with social media and are truly selling them the eyeballs and not the link.

If you don't put Sponsored, you risk huge fines in the EU though.