TechCrunch has a guest post from Mark Brooks about the new Match free dating site, Down To Earth. Getting a post on TC is a double-edge sword. Mark cut and pasted the press release, hyped his client with extreme bias, then pasted in some generic traffic data and the post gets a ton of comments. I’ve done similar lazy posting often, but never on TC. As often occurs on TC, Mark gets his comeuppance in the comments from all sides.
Some gentle words of wisdom. I’m a veteran of having my a** handed to me many times when I posted about something I obviously knew very little about, or didn’t thoroughly research, or basically soft-pedaled. It’s painful and humiliating and the absolute best way to learn how to become a better blogger.
Mark is a master at doing the least amount possible and getting good results (kudos!), which is key to successful PR. I know I used to do it myself back in the day. But in the blogosphere, this kind of writing is not appreciated and you will hear about it. Ok, enough about that.
Interesting: Even Brian Bowman, the ex- VP of Product Development at Match, thinks the new free site has little chance of succeeding.
Regarding IAC launching a pet-project — I will be floored if it succeeds. Not because of their talent or the concept / implementation but I spoke directly with Thomas at Match about 18 months ago about the that exact topic and received a very lukewarm reception. Match is a cash cow for IAC and they will work hard to protect that EBITDA.
Look at this, Down To Earth is paying bloggers $7.50 to mention RealRatings and give an opinion on it, in order to get linkbacks, which will increase their organic search results. I despise pay per post. Someday it may be the norm but its difficult enough to deal with advertorial content. I’ve done affiliate links in blog posts, just like Mark does, but I stopped the practice. I’d rather see companies advertise here and get their message out proactively as opposed to wasting time dealing with Commission Junction affiliate links, which totally kills the writing process.
