molly.com
Friday 28 January 2005
marqui: challenging the model
A HIGHLIGHT OF the Blog Business Summit was meeting the folks from Marqui and being able to talk to them face to face about their marketing goals.
Much of the discussion surrounding Marqui’s approach to paying bloggers as a means for marketing a product have been profoundly controversial. A major argument against Marqui’s approach has been the concern that despite their desire to be “transparent” doesn’t necessarily represent other companies that might try to do the same thing. That, along with the fact that some bloggers might not fully disclose what they are doing and why.
Certainly, we should always question new approaches. I question the entire approach myself, for numerous reasons which I’ll go into over time. But tonight I want to point out that sometimes there is no better way to measure the integrity of how a company works than by its people. This week, I had the good fortune to meet some Marqui folks face to face. And I have to tell the naysayers out there: If you haven’t met this group, you need to.
Most people have good bullshit detectors. I like to think mine is, at this point in my life, pretty well refined. Every interaction I had with Marqui during the Blog Business Summit was honest, fun, genuine. These folks aren’t out to take anything away, if anything, they’ve been putting their own product out there in a way that challenges our beliefs about what marketing on the web is, and what is should be.
Interestingly, when I returned home, there was a call from Google (a company I also respect greatly) wanting to talk to me about adding Google ad options to molly.com. It’s getting difficult in light of the popularity of this blog to not begin thinking in terms of how to support the hours I spend on maintaining it. I have extremely mixed feelings about this, and yet contrary to popular opinion, writing books does not typically make one rich. Or even able to make the mortgage payment.
So, advertising has a place. Whether its place is here on my site, I’m not entirely convinced. But I also can’t help but be interested in improving my own financial circumstances. I want to do it with integrity, and with companies that have integrity, such as Marqui or Google. If I do it at all over the long term.
Let me ask you, dear readers, which you would prefer:
- Clearly marked advertorials from Marqui no more than four times a month
- Google ad options
- Conventional web advertising
- All of the above
- None of the above
Have a different opinion, or a concern or question? Sound it out here.
Filed under: blog slut, blogging, professional
Posted by: Molly | 23:19 | Comments (14)
[...] ommons License.
January 29, 2005
The ethics of
Molly has asked an interesting question of her guests and readers: Let me ask you, dear rea [...]
Was that your Marqui quota for the week and how much did you get for it?
It’s not really up to us – the occasional readers of your site – but yourself to decide how you best make your way in the world. I would not have thought any reasonable person would take umbridge at any of the methods you have cited.
This is a difficult question. To advertise (in any form) on a blog is controversial. I know people that would immediately leave a blog that carried ads.
I would think that as long as the “sponsored postings” were marked and/or the google ads were invisible to a printer, you would maintain most of your readership.
Personally, I would continue to read your blog under those conditions.
Thanks for asking!
I, for one, would rather have the Marqui model.
Google ads take up space that was devoted to content and are omnipresent. They’ve reached the ignorability of banner ads.
Banner ads are too ignorable and ruin a beautiful visual design.
The Marqui model is much more of a marketing technique and much less of an advertisement. I have found that I agree with Molly on many topics and would love to be able to ask her opinion on every web product I was going to try. This method is quite transparent enough for me and as long as the general consensus is that Marqui isn’t trying to slip something by and we’re really worried about how other companies are going to abuse the same technique, then I’ll worry about that when it starts.
I agree with Molly, it’s a way of trying something new out to see how it works. Plus, unlike ads, I can choose whether or not to even read them since they’re clearly labeled and not stuck poking out of “unbiased” Molly commentary (quotes because I don’t believe her post-vertisements have been influenced by Marui). Now if only that were true with the other ad revenue methods mentioned above.
Keep it up, Molly! I’ll even read the Marqui posts because I am looking for info on CMS tools and I’m interested in how a veteran sees one.
Advertising on one’s site is a reflection of the image that one is trying to portray. Any advertising or marketing quickly turns it into something more than just a personal site. I feel the content that I get (a paid review of a product is a-ok) is worth the cost (the ads that I see). You have to be careful then to draw the line between the personal and business information that you provide and how you provide it.
Thanks for asking, Molly. The question deserves lots of thought. Seems to me that blogs are still evolving. I see lots of Google Ad Sense ads around. They don’t bother me at all anymore, though they did at first.
I can’t help but feel that you’re going to have to decide if you want your blog to tilt towards an evolving blog review format (a sort of e-magazine) or not. Magazines are supported by advertising. While most decry it, advertising dollars influence which products get full reviews in most magazines that do product reviews.
You have devoted a fair amount of your monthly space to Marqui. You have to decide what proportion of your time and space to devote to product reviews.
If you go with too high a proportion, I might read you less, unless I’m interested in the subjects. I was interested enough in Marqui to read what you’ve written. But if you had 3 or 4 such contracts at a time, I doubt I’d read them all. And you would be becoming a professional reviewer. Is that what you want to do with your blog?
I’d rather read about a sponsor in THIS context (“These are my sponsors. They’re good people and they support this site.”) than in the context where you talk about a product you’re not that interested in. In fact this is the only Marqui post on any weblog that has actually increased my respect for Marqui.
Barring that, I’d rather see Google ads.
The thing that continually strikes me about Marqui is that it’s a CMS – something you could run a site on, like a weblog, right? Movable Type is a CMS, and Wordpress is a CMS. Both of them are talked about on all kinds of weblogs constantly, because webloggers use them, and are interested in them. Marqui is talked about because webloggers are paid to talk about it. This does not give me any confidence in Marqui, all of the “buzz” seems very fake.
I have lots of experience with Google ads and conventional advertising on various sites. I could probably give you a good estimate of how much you’d make with those if you email me with a rough idea of how much traffic (unique users per day) you have here.
You might want to look at what John Gruber is doing (http://daringfireball.net/2005/01/promotional_consideration) to make his blog more self-sustaining.
Patronage
Nearly 2 months into my 3-month Marqui sponsorship, so I thought I’d write down some of my thoughts at this point…
We have recently tried the exact same thing and almost immediately it yielded excellent results.
yotube
oh.. thanks!
thank you so much..
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