A Publicity Story

When launching a new company, product or service, it’s crucial to get some word-of-mouth and publicity not only to get the word out about the new brand but to also give it some credibility as people need validation of a concept from others especially those whose opinion they respect before adopting it.

Some growth hungry businesses people will usually claim that any publicity is better than no publicity (even if it’s bad).

PayPerPost.com, a new website that promises advertisers free blog posts (ads) about their products and offers money to bloggers to endorse products is getting some major publicity in the blogosphere and even in Business Week.

All would have been great if the publicity was positive. Instead, some super bloggers (aka: bloggers who influence bloggers who influence the rest of us) are not too impressed with PayPerPost.com and are not shy in giving their honest opinion in their (non paid for) posts.

For instance Darren Rowse says that he’s left feeling uneasy about this concept while Jason Calacanis bluntly calls it stupid and evil. Business Week, Techcrunch, Naked Conversations, Post Bubble, Publishing 2.0, Inkblots and more blogs are clearly not making life easier for PayPerPost.com whose chances for growth seem slim to none thanks to the bad rap.

Pay Per Post sure did get its launch buzz and people are becoming aware of it. It’s just going to be interesting what comes out of this negative publicity. Personally I can see a few ways they could get out of this mess but will keep my mouth shut, as I am not to keen on their concept either.

Moral of this post? Whoever said that all publicity is good publicity is wrong tell him or her about the PayPerPost.com saga.