PayPerPost gets $7 million today

Today PayPerPost (the company that I am hooked up with to do paid blogging) announced that they acquired $7,000,000 of investment money. That’s a lot of zeros!

One of their questions they asked those of us who work with them is “What should we do with this money?” Well, I hope they already have a plan and are just looking for some extra cool idea to pop up.

My suggestion would be to try and market themselves as not being evil. Since I started looking into paid blogging, I have heard extremes on the subject. You can imagine that there are plenty of people who think that it is dangerous for a blogger to take advertising on their site. That somehow, getting $5 to say something about a company will cause you to not give your honest opinion about the company. For me, you would have to pay me a whole lot more than $5 to sway my opinions.

So, I suggest that they try to somehow educate the blogosphere on what paid posting is and is not. However they seem to do a pretty good job internally of promoting good blog ethics.

Now, I understand that for journalistic integrity, paid posting is a “no no,” but the majority of bloggers are just writing down their thoughts and opinions for the world to read.

Neither of my two readers have complained about me taking money to advertise, so I guess, for me, it is a safe deal.

Here is the press release they put out today concerning the investment boost.

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.