The results of the survey and the experiment

I wrote a blogpost on the research I conducted on sponsored blogging on my personal website, www.tommichiels.eu . There you can also download the full research document in PDF. Check it out!

More info on the uMarket.it experiment

Cheers to all the bloggers out there for their honest reactions. It is clear that many people have a lot of questions on my research. So, I have written a short FAQ. I hope this answers all your questions and clears your doubts. And indeed, Smetty, working with bloggers is a real treat

Why are you doing this?

I am an MBA student at the Flanders Business School. I am currently writing my Master Thesis that is due by the end of December. The subject is a business plan on an online marketing platform called uMarket.it.

Who is QueroMedia?

My employer QueroMedia is a Belgian search marketing company based in Kontich. QueroMedia’s managing partners Tom & Geert Bogaert offered me the chance to take an MBA at the Flanders Business School, and the online marketing activities of the firm inspired me for the subject of my Master Thesis.

What is the relation QueroMedia-uMarket.it?

Next to the inspiration, the knowledge and insights to build the business case and the MBA an sich, none. To avoid allegations of conflict of interest, I decided to keep my Master Thesis completely separated from my professional activities. I guarantee complete discretion on the private results to EVERYONE. My relation with QueroMedia was also communicated immediately to the participating blogs to prove that my intentions were honest.

What is uMarket.it?

uMarket.it is the working title for a fictitious platform that offers advertisers the possibility to ask influential bloggers for a review of their product, service or event. Bloggers are free to give their honest opinion on the subject; there is no pressure to write a positive review. In return for their effort, they receive a fair compensation.

Will uMarket.it ever become reality?

Perhaps, that depends on the results of the research, the sustainability of the financial plan and the current situation at that time. It is not the main goal of this project; the main goal is graduating. Either way, I will never use the personal data of the bloggers I collected in the survey to launch the project. Next to that, I will share all the results with the blogging community.

What is that survey all about?

I launched a survey to find out if bloggers would be interested in the pay-per-post principle. The results were staggering, but I cannot give away too many details right now. The results were analyzed with some statistical software to investigate the relationships between the parameters, and that report will be made publicly available in due time.

What is that experiment all about?

In the survey, the bloggers were asked if they would be interested in participating in an experiment. The positive responses were recontacted with a real assignment: to write a blog post on a specific subject.

There were two subjects: a commercial and a non-commercial. The blogs were randomly (!) assigned to a group.

Commercial assignment: write a review on the Quick ‘n Toast or the Suprême Pepper, two new burgers of Quick Restaurants. Quick agreed to reimburse each blogger with 25 EUR + 7 EUR in return for the ticket (the cost of a burger menu).

Non-commercial assignment: write about the Endallah project. The Endallah project was started by one of my colleagues and his wife in loving memory of their 6 months old son Mats they lost to cancer (more on this: www.mierenhoop.be) . Bloggers that agreed to write on this did NOT receive any financial compensation for their effort.

Why these two subjects?

Good question. In short: to build an honest and solid business case based on correct conclusions.

Will you share your findings with the blogging community?

Yes.

Why do the blog posts have a big logo and a link at the bottom?

• - For tracking purposes. To build my business case, I need some tangible information on pageviews , clicks etc. The logo has some kind of (harmless) tracking functionality built in.

• - To clearly indicate to the readers of the blog that the post is part of an experiment. I wouldn’t want to scare readers away with a dubious “sponsored post”. Therefore I created the website www.umarketit.be to inform readers on the details of my MBA project/experiment.

• - According to the results of the survey, many bloggers stated that a clear indication of “sponsored content” was a conditio sine qua non to even consider participating in product placement.

What about “link love”?

Because I work at a search marketing firm, a lot of bloggers had questions on my intentions of placing links to the websites of Quick, Endallah and uMarket.it. But quite frankly, I really don’t give a damn about link juice and PageRank and so on. As stated in the assignment, every link in the post can be ‘no follow’. I would actually recommend it to bloggers: I wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing their credibility.

Ok, there is no link love involved, but what about the branding effect of putting your logo on blogs?

uMarket.it is merely a working title. If you launched such a project, would you give it a cheesy name like “uMarket.it”, yes “you market it”? I think not…

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me on my email tomDOTmichielsATqueromediaDOTcom (it is just the email I check most frequently, no conflict of interest involved)

Thanks to you all!