Anyone have Experience with CustomerForce | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I got the same email and was wondering the same thing. 

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

I received an email from them too but didn't pay too much attention to it.

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?

Sandy Thanks! You helped me figure out what the hell was going on this was the rest of our convo:

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!