Advertlets.com : An Asian Review Me! and Payperpost?

I have been blogging furiously for the last 3 weeks and have been exploring the various ways of monetising my blogs partly as an experiment to see how far I can take this activity that I already enjoy doing! I am still experimenting with Review Me! which pays bloggers for reviews on certain products or services by advertisers and also Payperpost where you are bid for opportunities to write posts on your blogs for a fee typically ranging from USD 5.00 to USD 25 and up to USD 250 or more.

As part of my experiment, I came across a blog of a Singaporean blogger through myweblogs and saw that that lady blogger has an Advertlet advertisement and I followed the link to get to www.Advertlets.com. This is when I saw that Advertlets.com has a business model that is quite close to Review Me! and Payperpost except that it was localised to the Malaysian and Singapore blogosphere.

Why I signed up with Advertlets
I took the plunge and signed up with Advertlets because I thought the business model could work since it had already been tried out in the US. While globalisation has broadened the definition of one's market from local to the whole world, not everything can be transplanted across borders without some content localisation. Think about it, not all advertising campaigns that work are universal in their appeal. Even Visa advertisements use the China 110m hurdle champion to help sell their cards and to tie in with the Beijing Olympics 2008. I believe that it is now an exciting time to be involved in a relatively new business paradigm of delivering advertising content using the viral marketing effects of blogs as blogs are the closest thing to a one-to-one word of mouth advertising but yet having the potential for its messages to reach from one blogger to many -- think of the reach that Mr. Brown's podcasts has on Singapore! Simply amazing!

What I Hope to Get From Advertlets
Globalisation also means global competition and my experience with Review Me! and Payperpost shows that it is very difficult to monetise blogs without a lot of effort. Even with lots of effort, it is not that straightforward. For example, my blogs were deemed unworthy of Review Me! due to my relative lack of page rank value by Google nor any mention by Alexa. Hence, I can only participate as an affiliate instead of being a blogger that could be tied up with an advertiser to deliver content about their product or service. While I realise that Advertlet has to also take into consideration reach of blogs and a blog with an audience of 1 would not bring much value to their advertisers, there should be room for the smaller blogs who write with an intensity, quality and passion that will give them the potential to reach out to a much wider audience with sufficient time for them to grow through social networking and connections with other bloggers in the local blogosphere.

Suggestions On How Advertlets Can Improve Further
The concept of a blog advertising network is still new in the region and the value-add that Advertlets can bring to this business model is content localisation. To some extent, it is a numbers game, i.e. the more high quality bloggers who are influential, have reach and are able to articulate views and opinions that resonate with the target demographics, the better Advertlets can sell advertisements to potential clients. The term "Think global but execute local" is perhaps helpful in allowing us to remember that the success (or failure) of any venture depends on executing it. Advertlets can leverage on its first-mover advantage by providing delivering multi-lingual ads and also segmenting its blogger publisher community into niches that will appeal to the advertisers. For more bloggers to come on board, the real test would be, "Show me the money". ;-)



Try Advertlets out now
The true test of any pudding is in the eating. Do try out advertlet if you are already an avid blogger and just love to write. Who knows, you may be the next Mr.brown or Xiaxue. ;-)