Links or sponsored posts are part of the monetization of a blog. In any case, now that Adsense barely brings in anything and Google doesn’t seem to care, we have to find other alternatives. And contrary to popular belief, Google does not prohibit sponsored posts, just that you have to mark them as such. The problem is that today, 100% of sponsored posts require a Do Follow link, which is not recommended by Google, because customers want link juice and not visibility.
For visibility, they prefer siliconized Instagrammers/Tiktokers who will give them 0% visibility, but it’s their money after all. If they want to throw it out the window… Which means you still have an entire sector on sponsored posts and you have two methods. Either, you are contacted directly and generally, or it’s scammers, spammers or guys living in India who will ask you 5 dollars for an article on a site with a DA of 40… or you go through platforms like Get Influence or others.
And over the years, there are dozens of sponsored post platforms that come and go. You have some in France, but you also have a shitload of them in Spain and Eastern Europe. The Indians are also starting to create platforms, but as I said, the prices suck.
The Sad Truth About Sponsored Post Pricing
When we ask for the best sponsored post platforms, we will mention RocketLinks, Get Influence, Semjuice, etc. but in fact, it is no longer the Top 1 at all. I am registered on Rockets Links and I had 2 orders in the last two years! And that’s the problem, because there are plenty of sponsored post platforms, but they are empty like an Instagrammer’s head. They do not have a pool of customers or they prefer social networks rather than blogs. So, your sites have been registered for years and even if you lower your prices, you will no longer have orders, because there is no longer anyone in this sector on the customer side.
And on the prices, we must say things as they are. If you think you can earn 150 dollars for an article, even on a site with a high DA (above 40 for example), then you have missed the last 4 years of price developments. My most expensive site, listed in Google News, offers sponsored posts for 40 dollars and customers don’t rush! Forget the delusions and fantasies of earning hundreds of dollars for sponsos on blogs. Because on the one hand, customers no longer buy visibility, because they think they have it on social networks and above all, there is a dilution of budgets between all the available channels.
This means that when you work in advertising, you must divide your budget between Facebook, Linkedin, Tik Tok and YouTube. And so, there will be nothing left for blogs. The only customers you will have are those who want links to boost their site. But Google doesn’t really like that, so think carefully before you go there.
The average price for sponsored post in 2023 and beyond is between 10 and 20 dollars, an amount to be calibrated according to your sites. Obviously, if your name is CNN, CNET, Mashable, then you can hope for hundreds of dollars for a sponsored post, but if you have small sites and blogs, don’t expect to go above 25 at best cases. Some have argued that it is the platforms that have cut prices and that direct contact should be favored, but in fact no, this is the reality of prices.
And direct contact, I have already mentioned fucking indians who offer 5 bucks for a sponsorship in a DA of 40… Now that we have make it straight about the prices and the platforms which are good, but which bring you no clients, we are going to talk about PRNEWS and Ereferer which are the ones I use regularly, because they are the only ones which still bring me orders.
PRNEWS
I don’t even know how I landed on PRNEWS anymore. I think it was one of their “Outreach Specialists” (oh! yes, you know them, those fucking crooks with a title like this) who contacted me and I registered my site with expecting too much. It must be 2 or 3 years now and when I registered them, I put the prices of the time, therefore, quite high. Around 60 to 100 dollars depending on the sites.
And honestly, I sometimes received orders. It wasn’t clearly a panacea, but at least there were orders dropping from time to time. Even if it was occasional, the fact that my prices were high allowed me to get by. It broke after February 2022… because a large part of PRNEWS is Ukrainian! Suffice to say that it is difficult to prosper in sponsored posts when you receive Kinjals in the mouth!
Today, the company is based in Estonia, but the war caused them to lose a large part of their market and therefore, potential customers. However, PRNEWS is a very efficient platform, especially on payment terms. It’s almost instantly and they don’t have a payout threshold like other platforms. This means that even if you have 10 dollars in your account, you can trigger a payment by sending an invoice and they will pay you almost the same day. In my case, I am paid by bank transfer, but I do not know if other methods are accepted.
It happened to me to receive an order, process it in the morning, it was validated in 2 or 3 hours and when I trigger my payment for example at noon, I am paid in the evening. Honestly, PRNEWS is absolutely perfect on payments and processing times. They deserve to be better known. Obviously, their clientele is more from Eastern Europe and if you have English-speaking sites, this can be a good deal to make money.
They were also the ones who taught me the reality of the prices of sponsored posts in 2023. At the beginning of the year, they rechecked my prices for validation and I asked them if my prices corresponded to market standards. Even in the reply email, I felt a sneer of spite in mode: “This guy has lived in a cave for the last 5 years to dare to ask 60 dollars for a sponsored post!“.
Because everyone else in the industry, which never does research and continues to pump out the same stunted content for years, is going to tell you that it’s only natural to charge a client 500 bucks for a blog post with a DA of 20… So, if you are a beginner, go and visit PRNEWS, it’s worth it. The process to register your site is a bit boring, because they use a Typeform-based interface, but otherwise, it does the job.
Ereferer
So obviously, if you are in France, Ereferer will immediately come to mind. In fact, again, I don’t know if I signed up voluntarily or it was someone who contacted me. In fact, I think I was signed up and it was back when I believed in high sponso prices.
Because Ereferer, when you register your site, will automatically offer you a price range and when I saw them, I was hallucinated by very, but very low prices. So, I signed up, but I had put prices that were way too high for the platform. Because Ereferer has chosen to offer the lowest prices in the sector. And so, once you accept the reality of pricing, you will have customers on a fairly regular basis.
In fact, there are two tips to follow to do well on Ereferer. Because the platform has thousands of sites in its database. And I was talking about CNN or CNET, it was no joke, because if you have the budget, you can have sponsored posts on these sites (it’s around 3000 bucks for CNET). So, the first advice is that your price should be slightly lower than what is offered by the platform. Anyway, for sites with a DA of less than 25, the maximum price will be 10 bucks for a sponsored post. Yes, it’s almost begging 2.0, but that’s how it is. Blame the Instagrammers!
So for this price of 10 dollars max, put 8 or 9 dollars, because don’t forget, you are dealing with customers just as broke as you, who want to boost small sites. You are not dealing with big web giants.
And the second tip is to install their WordPress plugin. It was when I installed it that I started getting a lot more orders. This plugin will analyze your site and suggest links in your existing articles. For customers, this is a boon, because they benefit from articles already indexed and positioned and you, it gives you a little extra income. Please note, links in existing content are even cheaper than sponsored posts and this is normal. So, for my sites, I offer links for 5 to 8 dollars knowing that Ereferer takes a 10% commission.
Yes, it’s pennies gleaned here and there, but Ereferer is quite well known to link builders, so you will get a lot more orders. And over time, you will be able to earn some money. Of course, you can vegetate on Get Influence and other platforms and hope that a miracle client offers you the 150 dollars you ask for a sponsored post, but you risk waiting a long time!
Ereferer requires a payment threshold of 100 dollars to trigger payment. And you can get paid by Paypal, bank transfer or convert your funds for credits for Getexpi which is a subsidiary platform of Ereferer to buy expired domain names, but which are well positioned and with a certain DA. If you choose the bank transfer, Ereferer takes 15% commission which is quite annoying for me, who cannot use Paypal. And the transfer will take 3 to 5 days.
This payment threshold of 100 dollars can be found on most sponsored post platforms. And it is no longer relevant. Because it was playable at a time when sponsors brought in between 60 and 100 bucks and therefore, in one or two orders, you could touch the money. There, with sponsored posts at 10 or 20 dollars, you have to work quite hard to reach the payment threshold. And Ereferer only allows one payment per month (date sensitive). This means that if you triggered a payment on the 20th of the current month, you will have to wait until the 21st of the following month to trigger a new payment even if you have already reached the threshold in the meantime.
Ereferer runs like clockwork when properly configured. Especially its plugin, because in addition to links in existing content, it also allows customers to publish directly on your site and therefore saves you from doing it manually. From time to time, you still have to do it because of a bug, but it can be useful when you’re away. When we receive an order, we have 14 days to finalize it.
However, there are sometimes hiccups. One of my payments was rejected and I was not notified. I had to accidentally go into the payment history to see the rejection. One of the orders had a problem causing the invoice amount to be incorrect. This has been resolved, because you can quickly contact the platform and we will usually respond to you within the day.
What I appreciate with these two platforms is the speed of processing, especially the almost instantaneous payment of PRNEWS which is unique in its kind. Ereferer which offers a flexible approach and which has succeeded in aggregating a huge number of sites and customers of various profiles. Payment is fast, but the payment threshold is much too high in my opinion compared to the reality of the prices of sponsored posts on blogs.
What about other platforms like Get Influence, Semjuice, etc.? I think they didn’t see the turn that came at full speed. In addition, their payment and validation procedures are very long, archaic and specific to large companies. While this sector must be flexible and adapt to a global market.
For example, NextLevel is also appreciated by some, but publishers must be domiciled in France to issue invoices. This limits their reach and even then, not a month goes by without me being contacted by sponsored post platforms in Eastern Europe or Spain. But there a lot of platforms, but very few clients.
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