In conjunction with MindCommerce.com, Consultiq partner David Howard has published a market intelligence report on paid blogging.

Paid blogging has been flying “under the radar,” lost among all of the other word-of-mouth marketing techniques. There is, of course, a lot of chatter about paid blogging on blogs themselves, but this report pulls together from various sources the most pressing issues and considerations into one concise report and provides key insights and specific recommendations that bloggers, advertisers and ad networks can put to use immediately.

Key Findings

· Sponsored blogging is a nascent, but growing, advertising vehicle with the potential to represent a substantial share of Internet advertising spending. It has the potential to be a $2 billion market 5% of online ad spending by 2011.
· Sponsored blog posts are a unique online advertising vehicle in that they provide for more text and context than pay-per-click ads or banner ads.
· Typical payments for sponsored blog posts are less than $10. But there are many things that bloggers and paid-blogging ad networks could do to increase that figure.
· As bloggers invest more time and emotion in their blogs, they start to look ways to make money from blogging.
· Bloggers walk a fine line between adhering to truth in advertising laws and maintaining a strong, trusting, readership base.

“Bloggers who reported spending 20 or more hours per week on blogging tend to be making money from their blog (75%) and tend to be getting paid for blog posts (75%).”

Target Audience

· Advertising agencies: sponsored blogging is a creative new medium are you fully briefed so that you can brief your clients?
· Advertisers: gain an understanding of the mechanics and considerations behind sponsored blogging, and what to look for when you are ready to spend.
· Paid Bloggers: learn what steps you can take to increase the value of your blog and the amount you get paid for each post.
· Sponsored blog ad networks: there are specific steps you can take to increase the average payment per blog post and provide better value to advertisers.
· Online advertising networks: sponsored blogging threatens to encroach on pay-per-click and banner advertising spending. Are you positioned to defend or capture territory?
· Traditional print publishers: understand the threat that sponsored blogging represents to your advertising revenue. Do you have a counter-strategy?
· Readership, circulation and traffic auditors: what new products could you introduce that tap this growing advertising segment?