Bohemia Bunny

More Money, No Problem

June 17th, 2007 by lynnylchan under Paid Post

*Paid Post*

PayPerPost just keeps on growing, proving that there is a market for what they call consumer-created content. Their success in linking advertisers and content creators such as bloggers has attracted $7 million in funding from venture capitalists. The press release below:

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

Okay, in case all that is a bit too much to digest, I shall put my precis-writing skills to use and summarise it. PayPerPost is only one year old - it was founded June 2006 - and it’s already accumulated $10 million in total funding. This $7 million injection is the second round of investment, and this time, the MD of the venture capital company has joined PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost, believes that PPP’s business model is greatly advantageous to both blogger and advertiser, and states that the company plans to use the allotted capital to expand PPP’s reach to more potential content creators and advertisers.

In addition to playing the middleman, PayPerPost has also launched what they call a ‘disruptive new service’, although I’m sure they don’t mean that word negatively. PayPerPost Direct allows advertisers to contact and negotiate opportunities with bloggers through a widget on the blog. Innovations like these keep PPP at the front of the burgeoning business of paid content creation.

PPP takes care of its Posties as well. The company understands our reservations about blog ethics, which is why we must make it clear when a post is sponsored in order to avoid a conflict of interest. The atmosphere of transparency and general sense of community is probably what gives PPP its edge in the business. Content creators want to be treated like people, not just advertising space for hire.