10 Things Advertisers Look in Paid Posts – Earning Money from Blogs

Most of the rich bloggers earn significant money. Lorelle VanFossen, one of the best Wordpress authors, has her article on Blogging Jobs. My earlier posts on:

• making money from Google & Advertising
• making money from affiliate sales & shopping ads
• 15 great ways to make money from blogs

all talk of some of the best ways to make money blogging. While most of the high earning bloggers either sell their own products or their affiliates, there is a large section of serious bloggers who earn money by writing syndicated posts.

From my personal experience, almost 20% – 30% of a blogger’s income could come from writing for someone else. It could be a per-post payment, or a fixed price payment based on the total number of posts one has to make per month. While many professional bloggers often outsource their entire work to content providers, they always keep a keen eye on the quality of the content.

I have been talking to a lot of advertisers who buy blog reviews & pay for posts from aa, bb, cc, aaa to get a first hand idea of what they expect from a bloggers when they pay for a post.

1. Unique – fresh & well thought content that helps other readers get a fresh perspective or clears a lot of doubts about the subject. Since topics could also be controversial, a great post would have to be assertive & sober at the same time
2. Readability – the content should be written in a manner that is very easy to read. The writing style matters – people love to read informative posts that contain examples, illustrations & well researched references. The post should be written for human readers more than they are for search engines
3. Search Engine Friendly – keywords should be present in the Title as well as within the posts. Important key phrases could be enclosed in bullets, H1 or H2 tags, highlighted in bold etc
4. Facts and not Fiction – the content should be based on facts. Although conjectures are alright, they should be based on legitimate information. Pointing to authoritative people or to published articles in reputed websites also help build credibility
5. Detailed Post – most paid services require in-depth knowledge of the product or service. While some pay just to get back links, most advertisers wish that they highlight the uses, benefits & features of the product or services. Many blog advertisers also like it when the blogger compares their product’s strength with other competitive products
6. Impartial posts – advertisers general wish that paid reviews be of a positive nature, talking about the good things of the products. That being said, to maintain your credibility with your readers, you must be impartial & unbiased. If you cannot find anything good to write about, it is wise to reject the paid review offer. On the same topic, you dont have to be harsh on competition either. If you focus on the features & benefits, competitive products could pay you to write for them as well
7. Post length – typical advertised posts are 200 – 350 words in length. Such a post will be long enough to hold the readers’ attention. A longer post will be helpful for search engines and will be more search friendly
8. Credits – advertisers love when bloggers show statistical information on the value or popularity of their products & services. While it is accepted that the advertiser will speak good of their own products, it adds a lot of conviction to readers when bloggers credit famous people or organizations who publish data
9. No unwanted links – advertisers will also wish to build inbound links from advertised posts. Too many links will cause search engines like Google to suspend your site for spam. It is also a formality not to include links to competition or other advertisers links
10. Summary – a short summary at the end of the post helps emphasize the key facts. This also helps to build a few phrases into the reader’s mind. Much like titles, using keywords & key phrases makes the post extremely search engine friendly

This is a short summary of how good blog reviews & advertised posts could be written. Experienced writers could write great articles in simple english (or any other language) in about 200 – 250 words. But one has to learn over years how to write them.

Experiment writing blog posts on various topics of various length. It is quite possible that for your niche posts, the optimum word count could be different. You should also experiment with writing titles & foot notes to see how keywords could be used effectively all throughout the posts.