Me:

I am going to pass on the whole project unless you can provide me with
one personal finance blogger that I know (I know almost all of them) and
they can provide me with real numbers.  The whole thing seems like a
mixture between MGID and Benzinga neither of which I am too thrilled
about.

Alternatively if CF would like to provide payment upfront for an
estimated amount the ad tags would make then maybe that is something we
can work through. 

There are still questions I don't get:
I still don't understand why you need my entire feed? Link to me if you want.
Are using my feed to populate your site?
What are these CF Tags? Are those outbound do follow links?
Why are the CF Tags mixed in with this traffic scheme? 
If
you want to send me traffic send it to me, why does there need to be
any agreement? I guess this going back to why do you need my entire
feed? 

Thanks for the opportunity, but my distrust is way too high.

 

Me again after reading Sandy's Post (like 30 seconds later lol):

I think I just figured out something (with the help of another blogger
you approached) are you suing our entire feeds to build a separate
vertical site?  So my stuff + 14 other personal finance bloggers would
end up on ABC.com ?

 

His reply:

Evan, you hit the nail on the head.

We aggregate different bloggers in the same topic-sphere and create a hub (eg. sample . com)
which would be a starting point for new readers to learn about your
content and then find and consume your content directly on your site.

The CF ad tags are standard ad-tags like google or
any other ad network and all they do is display advertising on your site
when our CPMs are higher than what your other networks are able to
generate.

NO OUTBOUND LINKING OR OFF-SITE TRAFFIC WILL HAPPEN.

I
wouldn't consider this a traffic scheme. If you must, look at it as
huffington post for different verticals, with the KEY difference, that
we do not provide the full content; only the headline and image to drive
the traffic from our hub to your site.

Thoughts?

 

My reply:

Martin,

I appreciate that you took the time to help me
understand it, and it seems like a great deal for you guys, but I am
absolutely not interested in the hub part of it.  Considering how much
time you took with me, I'll explain why in detail:  

I work hard on most of my posts and I am not willing to give away my
material for the hope that you may send traffic back to me, and that
traffic will convert.  The link back on the hub is worthless to me - it
is likely to be a no-follow link from a PR0 plus in the end it could
hurt me if google figures out what is going on. 

I don't mean to sound rude, but if you'd like to create a hub pay
some writers for some original material sort of like American Express
did with their CurrencyBlog.  This is more or less a much more
sophisticated scrapper site.  This is nothing different than Benzinga
except they provided me with the hub url. 

As far as the CPM:
Currently, I am also not interested in a CPM with a company I am not familiar with.  I have worked with media.net
and a few others and in the end I always feel let down by the
relationship.  I prefer to be paid upfront even if that means a lower
revenue per thousand rate.  So if you are saying $2 to $4 CPM I'd be
willing to put the single ad up for $80/month for example my blog has
20K pageviews, but that payment would be made up front.  Why am I able
to request this? Because that is what I get for my text link ads so why
would I use anything else. 

Again, you seem nice and I appreciate the time you took but there is
little likelihood of you changing my mind.  Again, please do not scrape
my feed and let me know about the alternative arrangement.   

Thanks!

The way in which this is different from MGID is that they are building entire blogs/websites in specific verticals dedicated to one niche and populating that website with your content which links back to you.  Kind of reminds me of the scraper sites.  I wonder if Big G would penalize for such low quality links since they are essentially link farms.

With the CPM I guess if you have to media.net or big G option then you consider it.

For me, it was all a no for YIAC.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but this is what I get from the exchange:

- they republish your feed.  They say it will drive traffic.  But I think MJTM makes a great point that it also drives content for their site as well.  I guess if the traffic were significant it could be worth it?

- They give you ad tags to put on your site that will pay you based on CPM.  - Is this just code?  Does it contain links back to them?  What drives the CPM?

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog.....38;ret=all

http://yakezie.com/forums/blog.....38;ret=all

But this seems like a mixture?

Wish I had something to offer, but I don't.  Are you considering trying it out?

Evan,

sorry for the late reply. It has been a busy week.

Actually,
I am not sure we are understanding each other. For the service we offer
you, you will not have to pay anything to anybody, but you would only
allow us to reproduce your feed. People who are interested in your blog
will still come to visit it, yet joining the network you will have the
opportunity to increase your traffic getting viewers who click on the
title of your article on our network. More people visiting your website
means more ad revenue.

In simple words, you do not pay anything. We do not
make money out of you, but of the companies that advertise on our
network. You will lose nothing, yet you will probably gain something. It
is no cost, just mutual benefit for us and for you.

I hope I explained myself well.

Martin,

Sorry if I was unclear.  Unless you are paying
me...please do not reproduce my feed.  CustomerForce makes a profit (or
at least is trying to turn a profit) I am only interested if that profit
is shared with me, not the traffic that may come and push my bounce
rate through the roof and not click anything. 

Evan

To which he replied:

Evan,thanks for your patience here. Naturally you will get paid, but here's how it works;

a)
your content headline is promoted on the network. Only people who are
interested in your content will click to your site. These people are as
likely to view and or click on your ads as are your existing readers;

b) part of the program allows you to install the CF ad-tags on
your site, which will generate additional and increased revenue for you
($2-4cpm) - so you WILL get paid from CustomerForce in this form of
high-yielding advertising;

c) we cannot pay you for your headline content on
the network site, since any revenues derived from that aspect is used to
drive additional traffic to the network, which in turn will read and
click through to your site. There is no content other than headlines on
the network page, which is why you are almost certain to see an increase
in INTERESTED traffic (not bounce-rate increasing traffic);

d) you will not have to install any widget or
re-targeting information to push traffic off your site; we do strictly
one-directional -> inbound traffic to your site.

My
suggestion would be to try it out - it's free for you and the ad-tags
are completely under your control, with a dashboard to turn them on/off
as necessary and the ability to clear/ban certain advertisers - although
we pre-clear advertisers to the network to ensure it's suitable (and
profitable) for our publishers.

Naturally, it's up to you; but we'd love to run a trial and see what kind of results you get!