Is PayPerPost/Izea Setting the New Standard for Marketing Transparency Ethics?

Many of today’s bloggers (luckily) weren’t around last year when Google completely shook up the blogosphere with their crack down on paid links. Whether you agree or not with Google’s stance on the issue, Google felt like companies were too easily able to game their search engine rankings within the search engines by buying links on blogs.

Bloggers who had been selling text links in a wide variety of ways were suddenly being penalized for their actions. Most of them, myself included, were pretty much blindsided by the move. Most bloggers only sold sidebar text links or did paid reviews for companies that were relevant to their topics and that they wanted to endorse anyway. We were faced with a decision: lose our text link advertising and/or review revenue by putting “NoFollow” tags on paid links, or risk getting de-indexed by Google.

Bloggers weren’t the only ones that paid a heavy price after this shakeup. Two companies hardest hit by ‘the new sheriff in town’ were TextLinkAds and PayPerPost.

But PayPerPost had been under fire well before the Google fiasco. As a written review broker, they didn’t require their bloggers to disclose that the reviews were sponsored. This no only pissed off WOMMA, who was setting the ethical standards of word-of-mouth-marketing, but it also pissed off a lot of bloggers. I did a handful of paid reviews through another company, and set a high bar of transparency and disclosure when I wrote them. I didn’t want PayPerPost’s bad reputation to rub off on me – so much so that I stopped doing paid reviews at all because there were too many people doing it wrong and I didn’t want to be a part of it.

Soon after the Google shakeup, PayPerPost changed their name to Izea. I wasn’t phased. I assumed it was a simple rebrand of PayPerPost and I continued to keep my distance. Izea even asked me to present at their IZEAFest in 2007 and 2008 and I completely blew them off. I wouldn’t touch it.

Fast forward to now, and I am at a party at BlogWorld this last weekend. I run into Ted Murphy, the founder of PayPerPost. I had really enjoyed his panel last year at BlogWorld07 about finding & obtaining venture capital funding and we started talking. And then he starts pitching me on the newest initiatives with Izea. I do an internal eye-roll and look for a way to get out of the conversation. (LOL)

But then Ted tells me about SocialSpark and their new ethics standards. Bloggers in the program are required to adhere to 100% disclosure, 100% transparency, 100% real opinions, and (this is when my jaw dropped) 100% NoFollow on any links in their review posts.

I was completely impressed. Oh, my gosh, I thought, Izea finally got it. They listened. And they acted. But then it got even better. Ted told me about their plans to roll out an affiliate network that would require affiliates to disclose that the links are affiliate links. Suddenly Izea not only had worked to meet the ethics standards of WOMMA, but they were now exceeding them. And there is NO other affiliate program out there requiring this level of disclosure.

I interviewed Ted at BlogWorld this year, because I think they are a fascinating case study:

• You might have to work years to overcome bad first impressions. Had I not run into Ted at that party, I would have continued to ignore Izea forever.
• Work fast to correct mistakes. I’m not sure how long it took PayPerPost to transition it’s business model to what it is today, but if they had reacted sooner when all of the bad attention was on them, they would have been able to correct people’s assumptions about them much faster.
• They listened. They may have been resistant at first, but they listened. I completely respect them for that.
• They are walking their talk. Izea was recently accepted as a member of WOMMA, which is no small feat. They didn’t have to go beyond WOMMA’s ethics standards, but they did. That tells me that this isn’t just a show, but they mean it.

Lastly, I can only imagine how hard this was to go though for Ted. As an entrepreneur, you want to build something based on your vision. But when your vision doesn’t jive with most of the population you are trying to appeal to, it must be difficult and humbling. Rebuilding your company like Ted did is SO MUCH WORK, and quite frankly, a lot of people would have given up faced with these challenges. But I find it inspiring that he has been able to push through so much and reposition his company in a really respectable way.

By the way – here’s my disclosure: The only reason I’m writing this post is because I wanted to. Ted didn’t ask me to do this, nor is anyone paying me to. I just love seeing what other entrepreneurs are doing and spreading the word when they deserve it.