PPP Press Release

As you all know, I get paid to blog by a great company called PayPerPost. Companies pay bloggers to advertise on blogs on a pay per post basis (hence, the company's name). They just started their business in June 2006, and already it has grown by leaps and bounds. The following news was just released:

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company's Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

This new 7 million dollar investment is great news for PayPerPost and will allow them to keep growing and to deal easier with quick growth. We had a few bumps in the road, which seemed to be due to quicker growth than expected. The additional operating capital would be well used on more targeting to advertisers. There is no shortage of bloggers willing to post content, but sometimes the amount of opportunities available is a bit low and I've gone a few days with nothing available to take. If more advertisers used the service, us "Posties" would have more steady blogging income.

PayPerPost is asking bloggers (aka Posties) our opinion on what they should spend the 7 million on. So far, they have decided to share a bunch of it with the Posties by offering their own advertising opportunities with big payouts of $70 and $700. Of course, I think this is great and it keeps the bloggers engaged, but it would be a good idea to keep most of the new investment money in the bank for the future of the company. Based on how much it has grown in just one year, PayPerPost shows great potential and they would be wise to be prepared for anything. Extra cash retains the stability of a company and keeps stress levels down for the board members.