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Originally Posted by rafiki
Awesome thread, thanks so much.
Anyone know a way to pay to be featured on blogs to circumvent this rather lengthy process?
Once I have a quality product, I'd much rather pay someone to blog about it than organically grow the stuff in that link. There's so much other organic stuff to worry about, I'm not entirely sure I've got it in me to do that much more.
The trick is paid sponsors feel different than someone organically doing a review, if you pay (and legally you have to disclose) but you do a good job integrating it with the content. When you see the blatantly sponsored Macbook on House, it feels normal because it makes sense. When you see the sharks on Sharktank make an awkward call on the new Nokia blah blah, you roll your eyes and throw up a little in your mouth.
When Joe Rogan talks about Onnit on his podcast which he has a direct financial stake in (and has disclosed) you can still feel his passion for quality performance enhancing products. Whether or not the products are effective his endorsement of them is genuine and you can tell.
Organic is trustworthy because you're leveraging a trusted source who you already engage with. It's human nature. The only reason it doesn't happen with paid is because people get lazy when they are paying, you can still do the same thing. A trusted source can't lend trust if you pay them to do something notably out of their character.
I've done scalable campaigns on both sides, if your cheap sponsorship is paying off, no reason to stop but also I would expect those gaps to close eventually. I made a large company several million setting up a very clever sponsorship campaign that was completely disingenuous, my entire team (including me) quit doing it when it got to a certain point and just stopped taking their money because we didn't want to be associated with it. The long term partnerships between quality content and good product are always the most sustainable however.
Last edited by cwar; 09-07-2016 at 11:13 AM.