PayPerPost may still not be liked by many, but I will stick to my guns when I say that Ted Murphy, the CEO of PPP is a marketing genius. I got an email from Ted earlier today asking me to check out a new thing called PayPerPost Direct.

Full disclosure. I am not being paid to write this post, however, I am speaking at the Postiecon event in the fall.

PayPerPost Direct is really smart. Why? Because it makes it even easier to conduct transactions on your blog. Watch the video for a better, more detailed explanation.

We’ve had a number of people ask whether it’s possible for advertisers to directly approach Posties to get them to write special blog posts. PPP Direct makes that happen. In a nutshell, you simply specify the minimum amount you want to be paid for these Direct opportunities and stick a widget on your blog. When an advertiser finds your blog and decides they’d like you to write something they just click on the badge attached to the widget and make you an offer.

We’ve built a full negotiation and transaction auditing system into the PPP Direct engine as well so that Posties and advertisers can really hash out all the details of a post together, without any involvement from PayPerPost.

In other words, they’re saving time. I like it. If I’m an advertiser, why should I have to create an account, login, search for the blogger in the network, etc… When I could simply say “Hey, this blog is taking opportunities, I can quickly and easily just buy a spot right now, fast.”.

If I’m a blogger, I’m loving it as well. Especially because the payout is much better and more competitive than other systems.

If you are using ReviewMe or any competitors services you know that they charge between 50-100% markup on your post, while we charge 35% for our self service model. While I still think 100% markup by our competitors is absolutely ridiculous, there is justification in a markup for making the facilitating the review, match making, customer service processes, tax report and financial processing, those things have real costs.

What I take issue with is the badges these guys have bloggers put on their blogs. They take as much as half of your money for doing very little. If an advertiser is clicking on your badge on your blog you should be keeping the majority of the money, no giving it to someone else.

PPP Direct cuts out the middleman (including ourselves) in transactions that are driven by your blog. You can still participate in ours and others marketplace programs if you want to, but it doesn’t make any sense to pay so much when you are generating the advertiser lead. PPP Direct only charges a 10% service fee, and nearly 5% of that is PayPal and Credit Card Fees.

Let’s keep the debate on whether or not you like the PPP model in another place. The point I’m trying to make today is that PPP is on the ball. You may or may not like them as a business model, but from a marketing and biz-dev/strategy perspective, they are innovating and problem-solving… everything a good, smart technology company should be doing today.

More at Techcrunch, Techmeme and Centernetworks.

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