This is my PostJoint Review. PostJoint is a new platform that brings bloggers and promoters together through content marketing. I like the idea of the site – there are plenty of blogs that are looking for high quality content and plenty of bloggers/internet marketers/SEO consultants and other marketers looking to promote a business through guest blogging. PostJoint tries to bring these two parties together.
I can see the utility of such a tool. The site is still in beta, and it would be very interesting to follow the site through its evolution, which it seems to be doing fast. I don’t want to be too harsh with my PostJoint review at this point of time, because I want to give them the benefit of doubt when I find any feature lacking. That being said, it is all about providing value to both the parties – bloggers should be able to find great content and marketers should be able to find great blogs.
How PostJoint Works
Before delving into the full review, just a quick introduction about how PostJoint works. If you know it already, feel free to skip this section.
The way PostJoint works is that a marketer or anyone who wants to promote her website or even her brand creates a piece of content. She then posts it on PostJoint and waits for offers. Several bloggers who are ready to post this content, make an offer to publish the piece of content on their website. The site currently allows up to 5 offers. Once you get 5 offers, you can now choose which one to accept. Some are free and for some the marketer pays a fee to get the content published.
If the marketer doesn’t like the 5 offers she receives, she can go back to the drawing board and resubmit the article for new offers and also make any modifications she might like. The process repeats.
As of now, in beta, PostJoint is free to join for both bloggers and marketers. This might change in the near future though as the site gains more traction. If I had to give them one advice, it would be not to rush through the process of asking people for money to sign up and instead first make a good following of bloggers and marketers and then start charging for some premium service.
PostJoint Review: The Good
- Ease and Convenience: Traditionally, finding guest posting opportunities is a lot of work. You need to do a lot of research and dig deep into several blogs to find an active blog that accepts guest posts. For the bloggers, they don’t have a very good way to get paid for guest posts on their blogs unless some advertiser contacts them directly. PostJoint solves both these problems through their platform. Granted, you still need to do your homework because not all blogs are on PostJoint, but it is a great place to start and I find it promising. Also, I am not aware of any other site with the same idea (if you do, please let me know in the comments).
- Ability to Reach out to Multiple Blogs: PostJoint allows you to discover a number of blogs and create content for them. If you are willing to pay for your post to be published on another blog, as SEO marketers might be, then you have an ever wider array of options. In fact, you can create a lasting and working relationship with a blog in your niche through PostJoint. As a content marketer, you don’t need to worry about spending all your time on finding where to post and instead concentrate more on the content itself. That’s a big advantage.
- Text and Signature Links: PostJoint allows for two links per article and they are not restricted in the signature. In fact, some of the posts that I have personally submitted don’t have a link in my signature but instead have both the links in the body of the article because that’s where I thought there would be maximum benefit for me. Obviously you want the links to be relevant but I like the fact that you have the ability to include links in the body of the post. Compare this to something like article marketing at EzineArticles where you are only allowed links in the signature (they sometimes allow no-follow links in the body).
- Bloggers can Make Money: I think it is a very good avenue for bloggers to make money from their blogs and can help diversify online income streams. Don’t overlook this fact – so far, PostJoint has attracted blogs that aren’t “there yet” and don’t have tens of thousands of visitors a day. Through posting good content, they might be able to make some money off posting good content that they need for their blog anyway. Of course your blog should be good enough that the marketer would want to pay to be featured there, but you can always start off small. In addition, if you don’t mind guest posts, you can rinse and repeat and accept multiple guest posts for your blog and thus make a steady income stream (this will be the case if there are more marketers than bloggers).
- Quick, Easy and Diverse Backlinks: What really attracts me to PostJoint is that it is really quick. You don’t have to craft weird search queries in Google to find blogs that accept guest posts (although the site is small now and doesn’t have too many bloggers in all different niches but I am hoping that will change in the future). Niches of internet marketing, blogging and SEO have a good number of blogs already. For marketers, they can get as diverse a set of backlinks as they like by publishing content relevant to any industry they like. They are also getting real backlinks from different sites which is always helpful for search engines.
PostJoint Review: The Bad
Let me start this section by saying that PostJoint has posted on their blog about improvements in the future and so some of these might be improved or fixed then. I don’t want to concentrate on minor details but on the bigger picture.
- Quality of Participating Blogs: This is a serious problem, and I understand the site is relatively new and hopefully in the future the quality of participating blogs might improve. However, it is a serious impediment to real growth. I have had offers from publishers who want to publish my post for $50 and their website is, in all aspects of traffic and quality, far inferior to this blog. That doesn’t add up. I can provide really high quality content to the participating blogs (I’ve even published on ProBlogger, so I know my content). However, I don’t want to provide my best quality content to inferior blogs, even if for free. There are options, even though it could be harder work. Also, I found that blogs are very concentrated in the making money online category and not so many in other categories.
- Lack of Control Over Offers: I don’t like the lack of control as to who I want to get offers from. For example, I might not be willing to pay more than $30 for publishing my post on a blog, or someone else might want it only for free because she believes her content is of very high quality. Also, they might want to limit the niches of blogs – I have gotten publishing offers from a cooking blog when I wrote about SEO!
- Limited Scope: I don’t think PostJoint is still an open and fair marketplace for guest bloggers. This is because of several reasons. For instance, I, as a content provider, am not able to charge blogs for publishing my content. I think this sounded “wrong” to them, but as a writer, I can definitely provide something very unique to the participating blogs and if they are not popular enough or cannot benefit my blog enough, I want to be able to charge them. Also, content provides are not able to register as bloggers/publishers right now, which seems too restrictive because I would like to be able to both write for other blogs and get backlinks and also be able to feature some others’ work on my own blog.
I think it will be an interesting journey for PostJoint from here on. It is still new and there are issues to iron out and they are aware of it. However, if they can do it right, I believe they can be pretty successful. Post Google penguin (to some extent even panda), the importance and appeal of guest blogging is only going to increase. It is a nice void to fill. The only question is, can PostJoint do it right.
Have you joined PostJoint? What has your experience been with them so far?
Photo Credit: Tetra Pak
Hey Sid,
I’m the founder of PostJoint. Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful write up. We really appreciate it!
We opened the doors just a few months ago and are working hard to release lots of updates over the next few weeks and months addressing many of the points you raise in your review. We’re in this for the long run and have great faith in the concept which many have rated highly (including you). There is nothing else like this in the market and we’re taking all forms of feedback on board to improve, refine and innovate. We’re currently in beta and it will stay that way until we are confident that its a service worth paying for.
Some of the planned updates include:
– far more control over the types of opps you receive and more options for the offers you elect to make
– more info about advertisers /writers, their content quality, and a better feedback system
– much closer relevance (a keyword system is in the pipeline as opposed to the current categories system)
Most of the updates are listed on the blog post you linked to, so I won’t go into too much detail on that front.
We’re working to attract more quality blogs to the platform. Admittedly at the start we could not afford to be as choosy as we’d like (we moderate every blog manually). But as the database grows we can afford to be more strict.
About the points you raise in the ‘limited scope’ section, could you clarify what you mean? Are you saying that ‘writers’ should be able to participate as a separate entity by writing content for the advertisers? Or that the bloggers should be able to act as writers for the advertisers? We have thought about creating a ‘Writers Marketplace’ for advertisers who don’t want to or can’t write themselves. Bloggers would be able to register here and list their services. This would be a members only feature for approved and logged in advertisers to use as a resource that helps with their campaigns.
Cheers
Saleem,
I appreciate your thoughts and input, and thanks for dropping by! Also, great updates. I especially like the feedback system which I forgot to mention! If you can actually have some kind of a feedback system that actually shows the quality of posts being written, that will greatly improve the system and really attract both quality bloggers and writers.
In my limited scope, what I mean is this: It needs to be a completely free marketplace for starters. For instance, you’re assuming the ‘advertiser’ would want to pay the blogger to publish on their blog, which is understandable. However, I don’t have an incentive to provide my best content yet (if my best content can be published on ProBlogger, why would I want to publish the same on some random blog and probably pay for the same!) On the other hand, if I can sell my best quality content to a blog, then I would reconsider. If you’re a blogger who isn’t famous yet and probably who doesn’t have too much time to be regular, isn’t it a great thing for him to get high quality content and pay the writer? I mean that the bidding should be able to go both ways, in my opinion. As a writer, I can provide blogs with something special – it is not just for me. I just want you to look at the need from both sides.
Writers marketplace also sounds like a good idea, although I am afraid it will degenerate very quickly (they usually do) but no harm trying. Again, it would really help if you can have a good feedback system somehow. Really helps.
Sid
Thanks Sid. So if I have understood correctly you’r saying that bloggers should be able to offer to write the content for the advertiser and then publish it on their own blog as well.
In other words advertisers would be able to create ‘opportunities’ without actually supplying any content.
The feedback system is currently being overhauled to give all parties lots more insight into quality.
Something like that, but may be not publish that post on their own blog. Think of it this way – what would you be willing to pay for content that is CopyBlogger quality to be published on your blog? If you are a new blog, there is little chance of that happening just for a backlink. However, if you pay the writer something, then it’s something to think about.
Interesting, definitely something we will think about. Your suggestion would be like a ready made library of content that can be purchased. A great resource for advertisers to tap into, and for bloggers to make money with through writing. Advertisers could also make requests for content around specific topics and so on.
Yes thats what I mean. I am glad you like the idea. Would be a good value addition on my opinion
Hi Sid,
I’m intrigued with your overview of PostJoint and also the comments. I never heard of it before now. As with any beta state, things grow and kinks get worked out. Actually it is a very interesting concept.
I don’t have any trouble in guest posting, I get emails all the time. But I have to choose wisely and have accepted a few that I know and trust. Also I did have people guest post on my blog. I get so many people emailing me to do that, but I only accept those I have a relationship with.
But this takes things to a new level and I’m always willing to learn new levels of business.
I thank you for the overview and the pro and con explanation.
Donna
Donna, I am really glad you like the overview. I am glad Saleem, the owner actually commented and shared his thoughts. I get quite a few guest post offers too, but I am hesitant like you. However, this is also the other way round – you write a post and someone offers to post it on their blog. That way, you can get some traffic from their blog and hopefully readers and probably also some SEO help on the way through your signature. But yeah, still being in beta, the site does have things to iron out, but still isn’t too bad at all as of now, in my opinion. You should check it out, may be you’ll like something! (or if you’re having a guest blog on your site, you might just get paid for it, which isn’t too bad either I guess).
Glad to see you on my blog, btw 🙂
Hi, Saleem. Thank you for creating PostJoint. It is something that I have been looking for. I receive lots of offers from guest writers to guest post in my blog through joining other guest posting websites. I also put effort and time to review, edit and publish these guest posts in my blog and so I think it is just reasonable for me to charge the guest writers even for a small amount. I am glad PostJoint allows publishers to charge. I have just signed up to PostJoint and I hope my rapidly growing blog, Money Soldiers gets accepted.
Nice to know about your blog. It definitely looks good, and I am sure will be accepted into the PostJoint community. I would really like to know more about your experience on the site and whether you were able to get fair amounts as a publisher posting guest posts. Cheers
Thank you. I surely will let you know my experience with PostJoint when I become an active member of it. I like your review of PostJoint, it is helpful.
I couldn’t agree more. Things like this shouldn’t be taken for granted. Thanks again for a useful post!
Hey, thanks for letting us know about PostJoint. I too considered it until I found a mobile blogging platform that is flexible and easy to use (especially for super busy people). I reviewed it on my website, its called Blog Beast: Check out my Blog Beast review
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