The first part of our series talks about the essential elements of a blog to win more advertisers while the second part explores the things you can do to your blog to attract more advertisers. In the third and last part of this series, I’ll be talking about reaching out to your advertisers to win more sponsored posts from them.
Win More Sponsored Post – Tips When Joining Review Sites
Sponsored posts are directly offered to you by advertisers when your blog is popular and receives a huge traffic. Otherwise, you have to find your luck through review sites such as; SponsoredReviews, PayPerPost and ReviewMe.
3 out of 4 bloggers I interviewed told me that more than 80% of the sponsored posts they did were offered to them through review sites. These days, 96% of advertisers who wish to sponsor posts use the services of review sites for convenience. Because of this, creating an account on review sites is essential if you want to earn more money doing sponsored posts.
Aside from the things you can do to your blog to win more sponsored posts, you can get more opportunities with these practical tips:
1. Choose Established And Reputable Review Sites
Joining all review sites will only waste your time and will not result in higher review offers. Instead, you’ll just be wasting time and energy.
A wise blogger would rather join the most popular, established and reputable review sites. Most of advertisers on the other hand, do the same. They choose to avail of the services of the larger and more established review sites over the relatively new ones. Choosing to work with established and reputable sites minimizes the risk of getting scammed.
Among my personal favorite review sites are SponsoredReviews and ReviewMe. These two review sites have good track records to both their advertisers and publishers.
2. Reminders When You Register For An Account
To increase your chances of getting more sponsored posts, here are some tips to bear in mind when registering for an account with review sites.
- Make sure you submit your blog to the appropriate category.
- Use descriptive title for your blog. (i.e. Online Marketing Strategies)
- If you’re required to set a minimum price for a sponsored post, be reasonable.
- Carefully go through the TOS of the review site before you agree to them.
- Make sure your blog meets the minimum qualifications required before attempting to submit it.
3. Be Active. Reach Out To Your Advertisers!
After you register for an account in review sites, don’t just sit and wait for advertisers to pour in. Not unless your John Chow or Jeremy Schoemaker, you need to do extra efforts to reach out to advertisers. In other words, if the review site allows you to bid, like SponsoredReviews and BuyBlogReviews, take the opportunity and place your bids. Again, be reasonable with your bid.
Usually, review sites add new opportunities from time to time so regularly check your account for new opps. Some review sites don’t notify you for new offers but if they do, make sure to subscribe. Being able to bid early means, you have a better chance of winning the bid. Remember that most advertisers set a budget for their campaign so once their budget is exhausted, bidding stops.
4. Display Badges Of Review Sites
Most of the review sites have badges available to their publishers. PayPerPost for instance have a badge for PayPerPost Direct, where advertisers can offer sponsored posts directly to blogger displaying the badge. Although displaying these badges can lead to more sponsored post offers, it could also be the reason for your blog to be penalized by Google. Displaying PayPerPost Direct, for instance, gives Google the idea that you are doing sponsored posts. In effect, Google will penalize you by lowering your page rank or worse, banning your blog from appearing in their search result page.
I am still on the process of compiling a list of some dirty tricks that bloggers do to get more sponsored posts from advertisers. Some of the tricks include faking your Google page rank, number of inbound links and getting to Alexa top 100K blogs in 1 month. Make sure you check back for my future posts or better yet SUBSCRIBE TO MY FEED so you won’t miss any blogging tips. They’ll all be delivered to your email. 
Thank you for your time! And like always, your thoughts and suggestions are most welcome.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
frankly i join much pay per post program. due to my PR was drop so i have to reduce my every bid to lowest price e.g reduce to 40%
sometimes win and some lost
I used to write for SponsoredReviews and BuyBlogReviews, but the offers lately are very seldom. Yes, I believe that one should have a lot of traffic to gain more offers.
Anyway, I would like to add one thing on the comment above the PR. My blogspot blogs remained PR3 even they had paid posts, and I ask this matter on top webmaster forums. I realized that the big G does not really reduced a blog’s PR if it has paid posts. One of the major requirement of a blog to have paid post is to be ‘no-follow’, but increasing your links can help you maintain your PR.
But then, I care less about PR. For me, it is only a status symbol. SERP is better because it really drives traffic to a blog.
Just my 2 cents. Thanks!
@Angel,
SponsoredReviews is by far the best of all the review sites I’ve tried. I made alot of money with it when I was still blogging for BloggingMix. Unfortunately; Google page rank, Alexa and Technorati are still widely used by review sites to gauge the worth of a blog. Also, advertisers prefer blogs with high page rank and low Alexa/ Technorati ranks.
And, I do believe page rank still plays an important part in the Google Algorithm that determines your position in SERP. While other bloggers would say that PR should be the least thing you should worry about, I would suggest otherwise. There’s just too many factors affected when you get bitch slapped by Google.