Boring Your Readers With Sponsored Posts
Jul 2, 2008 Blogging, Tips & Tricks
I’m going to be honest and blunt about this. Sponsored posts are BORING. Unless you have an amazing knack to turn even the most dry topics (like fake plants) into something that will fascinate the people asides from your gardner, people will usually choose to not comment, or even read your sponsored posts. Admit it, writing it is boring, so how can you expect the people reading it to be entertained? If it wasn’t for the money behind it to motivate you, would you still write about the alpine industry? Probably not.
The thing with writing sponsored posts is that the more you write, the more it decreases the overall quality of your blog. From what I’ve read of other people’s (and my own) sponsored posts, they all sound boring and dead. To me it’s like watching the commercials on TV minus all the excitement. It repels readers, or at least, I get repelled away when I see that the first couple posts are sponsored posts. I go to a blog expecting to find some interesting content or at least to hear about your day. Not to listen to you talk about police gear, unless you happened to be a police or the owner of the store.
I know I sound like a hypocrite right now, because that is what I’ve been doing for the past couple months. It didn’t occur to me at first because obviously I don’t view my site the same way a regular visitor would, but after seeing the trend on other sites, I began to realize how ANNOYING it was. So I propose a simple solution:
Pair your sponsored posts with a quality, non-sponsored post. What does this mean? Basically, if you’re going to write a sponsored post, go for it. But right after you write it, write another decent, non-sponsored post, so your quality post will be the first one your readers see, not the one about anxiety medicine. As far as I’m concerned, no rules are being broken by doing this, because usually as long as the sponsored post is on the main page of your blog, the post order is irrelevant. So why not have your readers come to your site and read something decent, so they won’t think that your blog is a wolf under sheep skin? For example, this post will be the first you see and hopefully read when you arrive at my blog, not any other sponsored post. In short, always make sure the first post on your blog is a quality post.
Yes, you’re still writing humdrum sponsored posts and in a sense you are deceiving your readers, but at the same time, you’re making it easier for them. Now they don’t have to filter and skim through posts just to find that something good and real you wrote. :P
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I do sponsored posts myself and also find that if I create a story of my life around it then the sponsored post goes over better
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I totally agree with you!!! I signed up for PPP but have only written 2 posts because I’m more concerned about the quality of my blog rather than money. Some blogs use to be really good but now they have wayy too many sponsored posts so I don’t even bother visiting them anymore.
My criteria for choosing sponsored posts is that if I think I can turn the topic into something interesting and funny, THEN I will go ahead otherwise it’s a HELL NO! =P
July 4th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I got all my make up at CoastalScents.com !
July 5th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Yea, thats why I’m scared to start doing those things. I don’t want my readers to be bored and stop coming. Good tip though, I see a few people who do that.
July 8th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
To Catherine: That works too, but sometimes the sponsored post topics are so random (wtf, police gear?) that I can’t even force a life story on it. :(
To Katy: I try the funny approach too, but I guess I’m just too greedy that in the end, I just end up writing for posts that pay well. However, I’m in the process of weeding out my older sponsored posts and making sure new ones don’t appear in places like feeds and such. Lots of work, but you do what you gotta do :P
To Amber: It’s definitely a dilemma for bloggers, but I’m sure that there are lots of creative (and talented) people out there who can work around this
July 18th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
[...] is the third installment of my Boring Your Readers With Sponsored Posts series. As the title suggests, by excluding your sponsored posts from your main page, what your [...]
August 18th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
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September 25th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
[...] while ago I wrote about boring your readers with sponsored posts, what a bad idea it was, and how to prevent it. Well, here is something else you can do to save [...]