Is it just me, or do most sponsor feeds totally suck?

[Greenguy]

I have to assume that, like the mess of HFS's we've seen in the past year, sponsors are trying to jump on the bandwagon without know what the fuck they are doing.

...and yes, you will be seeing me in here a lot from here on out as I'm getting my personal blog ready & I'll have a ton of newbie questions to annoy people with

[Useless]

There are a couple of reasons why sponsor feeds suck. Firstly, there are so few people in this industry who can produce sensible text content. Writing is hard work. Effective writing is even more difficult. Also, the value of the traffic being produced by hosted blogs/feeds is very possibly not as grand as bloggers may think. If the profit:cost of production ratio is crap, then you can't expect sponsors to produce great feeds.

Now, I'm not saying that blog traffic is crap. Far from it. ALL hosted content produces poorer ratios than other types of marketing. Hosted Free Sites and Hosted Galleries don't convert as well as other internal marketing efforts and affiliate-created free sites/galleries. So, one can only expect that hosted feeds don't convert all that well either. However, the effort required to create QUALITY blog posts is, in my opinion, greater than that of free sites and galleries. So, is it really worth the effort and cost to create wonderful feeds? Maybe. Maybe not. Keep in mind, there are very few blogs that have enough traffic to make sponsors even consider the effort.

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Now, I'm not saying that blog traffic is crap. Far from it. ALL hosted content produces poorer ratios than other types of marketing. Hosted Free Sites and Hosted Galleries don't convert as well as other internal marketing efforts and affiliate-created free sites/galleries. So, one can only expect that hosted feeds don't convert all that well either. However, the effort required to create QUALITY blog posts is, in my opinion, greater than that of free sites and galleries. So, is it really worth the effort and cost to create wonderful feeds? Maybe. Maybe not. Keep in mind, there are very few blogs that have enough traffic to make sponsors even consider the effort.

That sums up my opinions perfectly.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Greenie

I have to assume that, like the mess of HFS's we've seen in the past year, sponsors are trying to jump on the bandwagon without know what the fuck they are doing.

...and yes, you will be seeing me in here a lot from here on out as I'm getting my personal blog ready & I'll have a ton of newbie questions to annoy people with

Aww shit there goes the neighborhood !

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

There are a couple of reasons why sponsor feeds suck. Firstly, there are so few people in this industry who can produce sensible text content. Writing is hard work. Effective writing is even more difficult. Also, the value of the traffic being produced by hosted blogs/feeds is very possibly not as grand as bloggers may think. If the profit:cost of production ratio is crap, then you can't expect sponsors to produce great feeds.

Now, I'm not saying that blog traffic is crap. Far from it. ALL hosted content produces poorer ratios than other types of marketing. Hosted Free Sites and Hosted Galleries don't convert as well as other internal marketing efforts and affiliate-created free sites/galleries. So, one can only expect that hosted feeds don't convert all that well either. However, the effort required to create QUALITY blog posts is, in my opinion, greater than that of free sites and galleries. So, is it really worth the effort and cost to create wonderful feeds? Maybe. Maybe not. Keep in mind, there are very few blogs that have enough traffic to make sponsors even consider the effort.

You make a very good point but when a very high percentage of the porn bloggers produce even a lower quality of sites than the sponsor provided feeds, how could anyone reasonably expect any better.

[Bill]

I wonder how hard it would be to write a little php scriptlet that would take a delimited list of free hosted galleries and convert that to an rss feed?

Heck, there might already be some tool out there that does something similar, I'll have to look around a bit.

Are there editors that one could feed a sponsor rss feed into, so that you could edit the feed, then output it as a new rss file?

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by Bill

I wonder how hard it would be to write a little php scriptlet that would take a delimited list of free hosted galleries and convert that to an rss feed?

Heck, there might already be some tool out there that does something similar, I'll have to look around a bit.

Are there editors that one could feed a sponsor rss feed into, so that you could edit the feed, then output it as a new rss file?

gallery scraper: input the urls with description if you are lucky enough to have a description output to your blog and you have a new rss feed. You can virtually automate it as well as edit descriptions insert text delete unsuitable galleries and it eliminates duplicate urls so you find those 1200 hosted galleries are really 400 also includes thumbnails for you to review for each post from the user interface before export to your wp. I will have to say it is not as useful as some other scripts I have tried though since like in blog feeds the sponsors use the same template over and over and you use only 10 of the 400 galleries and they don't use many words you gotta supply your own and a decent post even a small one will take a little bit of time.
blog organizer: it will take a sponsor feed and or feeds and post to your own blog or blogs where you will have that new rss feed you spoke of. You can not edit it before it reaches your blog however what I do is to schedule the feeds and then go into WP on the remote blog being fed and edit my little heart out. It is far more useful however you don't have a preview option in the interface. Contains the ability to limit the number of posts per rebuild. Can be used on your own blogs thus producing a new feed or used with the templates which are ok nothing special and for me presented a whole new learning curve. Holds any number of feeds and allows you to select and or change the ones you will use for each blog. also has the ability to time your rebuilds and crawls of the sponsor feeds. Again a good thing and a time saver but you won't be able to save time in the end on posts. To make a decent blog post is going to take you time and I guess that is what seperates people like Walrus from the herd.

[Useless]

Originally Posted by Chimera

You can virtually automate it as well as edit descriptions insert text delete unsuitable galleries and it eliminates duplicate urls so you find those 1200 hosted galleries are really 400 also includes thumbnails for you to review for each post from the user interface before export to your wp. I will have to say it is not as useful as some other scripts I have tried though since like in blog feeds the sponsors use the same template over and over and you use only 10 of the 400 galleries and they don't use many words you gotta supply your own and a decent post even a small one will take a little bit of time.

Allow me to introduce you to my friend, the comma: ,

[hony]

Originally Posted by Chimera

To make a decent blog post is going to take you time

Or money. Hiring writers is a valid option, and one I use a lot.

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by hony

Or money. Hiring writers is a valid option, and one I use a lot.

True. However, I am sure you are aware that is not an option for many who read this board.