To start on a positive note, I’ve had a uptick lately of Australian PR pitches. Some are half reasonable, although like all the stuff that comes in, we can’t run it all, even if we wanted to. The Inquisitr doesn’t do a huge amount of Australian related content, although as our Australian traffic increases it does get a little tempting to do more Australian posts…within moderation of the broader mix.
But I digress. Got pitched last month to promote a new Australian banking product. They wanted to give me a $10 account in return for a post.
Now besides the paid for post argument which can be left for another day, apparently $10 in the eyes of that PR firm at least is fair game for a blog with 1.5-2.5 million page views a month.
It’s hard to compare one site to another, but I know from some of the media I’ve received previously that WAToday, the Fairfax WA portal did 341,000 uniques in July 2008 (I don’t have later figures). No idea what their page view figure is, but today we’re in a similar range on Alexa at least (not the best source I know) to what that site is doing, and we have more uniques.
Question is: would the same PR agency offer $10 for a post/ article on a Fairfax property?
Obviously the answer is no, and one would presume that they’d be buying display advertising for the product instead of trying to buy a post….well, you’d hope so.
So why treat all blogs and bloggers as if they were backyard operations with small traffic?
Besides, according to News.com.au, I personally account for 5-6% of all online contracting for the entire country 😉
American PR reps are a lot smarter these days, although I do remember the time years ago when they weren’t. Not all the Australian PR industry is clueless, but I get this feeling that some have only just woken up to blogs as an outlet for news, and are treating bloggers as a cheap way to get exposure without showing the least bit of respect.
