The report focuses on a number of high profile examples like the case of KMart. For those of you who don’t know the case: Kmart gave some bloggers a free shopping spree in exchange for a blog post about the experience. The results of this sponsored blogging campaign were quite impressive. More info on the IZEA case study page.

The topic of paid blogging is highly controversial. Paying bloggers to write about a specific product yields many opportunities but at the same time also some risks. If you want arguments against paid blogging, read Marshall Kirkpatricks article on ReadWriteWeb.

The requirements to make sponsored conversation work are often stated as sponsorship transparency and blogger authenticity. When these requirements are met, I am convinced that this new form of advertising holds many possibilities. After all, in this digital age, corporations can’t neglect the potential benefits of engaging the consumer with their brand by participating in active communication.

Jeremiah Owyang has written a good article on how to make sponsored conversations work. Check it out on his blog!

Since the report is only available for a whopping $795, I did not yet get the chance to read it. Maybe an extra link to Forrester Research can entice them? Wishful thinking, I presume…

The empirical research on the feasibility of the uMarket.it concept was split up in two successive parts. First, I launched an online survey among a sample of Belgian bloggers in which we investigated their position on getting paid for writing a blog post. Secondly, I launched an experiment among a sample of the survey respondents to act as a proof-of-concept and test if the survey results were realistic. A set of bloggers was asked to write a paid blog post on a commercial subject and another set was asked to blog on a non-commercial topic. The data was then analyzed with SPSS and linked to the survey data. To conclude, I complemented my own research with desk research on the online advertising expenditure and the way surfers interact with online advertisements such as display advertising. I also dove deeper into research on a phenomenon called ‘banner blindness’. The methodology, results and findings, and conclusions are described in detail in the document that is available for download below.

Some key findings of the survey:

- 62 percent of the respondents have some form of advertisements on their blog
- Google AdSense (35 percent) and banner advertising (41 percent) are the most popular forms of advertising
- more than 50 percent of the bloggers earn less than 50 EUR per month
- According to the survey, Business/ICT is the most lucrative blog category
- We can conclude with a confidence of 95 percent that between 59 and 75 percent of the blogging community is willing to blog about a product, service or event in return for compensation.
- Most of the bloggers who rejected the idea of getting paid to write blog posts indicate that the main reason is a conflict with the purpose of their blog.
- Next to the conflict with the purpose of their blog, some bloggers are also concerned that participating in sponsored blogging will affect their image as a neutral source.

Download the Research Paper : Tom Michiels – Research, Survey and Experiment on Paid Blogging (PDF, 4,5 MB)

Visit the uMarket.it Experiment Site