Is there hope for iHype after all?  At one time I would have said no, but it seems that iHype’s owner Ben Behrouzi isn’t giving up on this venture though measurable gains are still not all that apparent.

The last time I visited iHype there was no visible way to test the system.  In fact, I only managed to find my way to the beta sign up form because iHype was running advertising through Google’s AdSense network that made it appear that iHype was already a fully functional marketplace for paid advertising. At the time it was not.  As far as I can tell, it is not now.

iHype is finally allowing people to sign up for the public beta, though last I checked there isn’t much in the way of opportunities to test whether the system is working. I’m not sure if this is true of all blog rankings and types and as a test I just signed up my PR5 cooking blog to see if iHype has opportunities available for a mid-ranked blog.  As far as the PR3 health related blog I signed up there in July, there were no opportunities at all the last time I checked.  I will update here if it turns out that there are opportunities for the higher ranked blog.

But the hype rolls on

The thing is, Both Mr. Behrouzi and the about page at iHype have much to say about the service that the service itself isn’t living up to.  For starters, the iHype About page has a lot to say about the way the company would like to see itself, beginning it’s introduction with the following:

Welcome to the web’s largest socialsphere marketing platform. iHype delivers a powerful socialsphere marketing platform that empowers online marketers with the ability to market their products & services in a deep, organic, grass-roots online social approach through an exponentialy growing web of individual and institutional web publishers. This innovatively fluid exchange of advertisers and publishers allows marketers to leverage the online socialsphere, while providing all publishers with an avenue to generate substantial new revenue.

This is an impressive statement and I for one wish it were true.  Unfortunately it just reads as so much more spin, considering the lack of any tangible evidence, at least from my perspective, that iHype has managed to garner any significant numbers of advertisers offering opportunities on this platform.

This lack of tangible motion at iHype doesn’t seem to deter Mr. Behrouzi from having a wonderful outlook, or starting more new ventures, however.  His personal blog, Ben Behrouzi’s MaxStartup recently posted a very happy second birthday notice in regards to his company DotNext, inc.  This notice only very briefly mentions iHype, but does speak pretty highly of DotNext’s latest venture, LeapFish, an aggregate search provider which is something along the lines of DogPile on steroids. Mr. Behrouzi also goes on to thank his team for a great year, which is a very nice touch.

In defense of the team at DotNext.  Unlike iHype, which still feels unfinished and the yet-to-be unveiled Ziddler, LeapFish not only works, but it works well.  In a brief test of seaches I performed using LeapFish and DogPile, leapFish gave far more relevant results every single time in a much broader spectrum.  I’ll probably use it in the future.

Not all buzz is good buzz

Unfortunately, most of the buzz surrounding Mr. Behrouzi and his ventures is negative. Much of the news concentrates on Mr. Behrouzi himself, but quite a bit of it focuses on the tactics of his sales staff.  If any of this is true it may very well be a factor in iHype’s lack of blog posting opportunities.  Since I am not a business analyst or trade reporter, nor have I worked with either Mr. Behrouzi or had conversation with anyone in his employ, I cannot offer an opinion on this subject.

If you are interested in reading what others have to say on the subject, simply Google Ben Behrouzi and form your own opinion.  I am not interested in turning this blog into a forum for discussing the man or his tactics. It is my wish to stick to his internet properties as they relate to monetization.

Why I want iHype to suceed

So why am I revisiting iHype if it seems that very little has happened since the last time I reported on it?  Becaue I want it to suceed.  While the concept behind iHype isn’t very different from established networks like PayPerPost, SocialSpark, LoudLaunch and Smorty, the payment structure is revolutionary in the world of Paid Posting companies.

While most paid posting companies rely on a Net 30 or Net 14 payout schedule, iHype promises a 24 hour turnaround on payments.  For bloggers just starting out or for those days when what you really need to do is boost your short-term income, this payment model is ideal.  Not only does it serve to get you paid quickly, it gives bloggers a heavy motivation to post more, because the results are nearly instantaneous.  it’s the kind of payment that the Internet has long promised, but seldom realized. To put it in short form, it’s what a lot of us have been waiting for.

iHype needs to get the ball rolling and get advertisers in the marketplace.

The determining factor as to whether iHype will thrive or fail is advertisers.  Even with a million bloggers signed up, not having opportunities for them will very quickly garner them a reputation they may not be able to recover from.  Hopefully with the new year and the economic crunch they will be able to attract some advertisers who have traditionally shied away from Internet ads with the promise of a lower advertising cost and more exposure.

Unfortunately, they will have to look outside the Silicone Valley for these companies, as nearly the entire internet industry sprung out of the area and it’s unlikely that most have not been involved in online advertising for quite some time.

For the moment, iHype is a tantalizing promise, but one with very little time to start delivering.  The company needs to get a working model in place and attract a lot of bloggers so that they can convince advertisers that their marketplace isworth the expense of advertising with.  On the other hand, to attract bloggers, they will have to offer something for us to do.

At the very least, iHype needs to offer a series of house-paid ads for bloggers to accept.  If they are interested in attracting bloggers with higher PageRank, they’ll have to offer a few higher-paying opportunities as well.  I know that I for one rarely accept any offer that pays less than $15.00 and I prefer to take those that pay considerably more.  I already have the potential for income, so to get me to accept an opportunity I have to feel it’s worth the time it will take to write it, otherwise I will go elsewhere. I’m sure that other bloggers who are already making a decent income from paid posts will feel the same, regardless of how fast the payment turnaround is.

Time will tell

iHype is a good concept.  It’s based on a business model that works, but it’s one that only works if the pieces are all in place and your sales staff is nothing short of a group of miracle workers.  It also requires a customer support staff that rarely, if ever, drops the ball.  The reason that PayPerPost and Izea work as well as they do is due in large part to Customer Love and Founder Ted Murphy‘s vision and tenacity in business and his absolute genious in promotion.

If nothing else, iHype should be looking to Ted as a role model for this type of business. Ted has not only made it work, he’s excelled at it.  If you’re going to play in the paid post market, he’s the man to model your business after.

If all the pieces get put in place before iHype manages to fall under it’s own weight, I’ll be first in line to add each and every blog I own to their roster.  I’m a capitalist, as I’m sure you are, or you wouldn’t be reading this.  For now however, iHype is still bordering on vaporware and until there’s some work for me to do there, I’ll stick with what works for me now.

There’s been a lot of talk floating around the blogging community about ePerks and company founder Ben Behrouzi’s newest venture iHype.  Mr. Behrouzi has managed to bring himself a lot of negative attention over the past few months, first with an apparent use of questionable if not downright shady marketing tactics for ePerks that included adding company generated comments to paid posts that were bought by the company. This was then followed by a series of all-out attacks and threats of legal action against bloggers who wrote negatively about the company once it became obvious that the firm was not delivering on what it promised.

Strangely enough, the ePerks website is still up and running, even after the firestorm has begun.  I wonder if the company founder realizes the kind of impact that having such prominent bloggers as Andy Beard and Trace Richardson taking the time to identify such negative practices can have on his company’s performance. When A-List bloggers start to say negative things about your business, you had better be a marketing genius and a master of debate if you want to pull out of a slump, and Mr. Behrouzi does not seem to have that capability.  He instead has gone taken the route of hiding behind attorneys and making threats, rather than engaging in a direct debate with his naysayers, something which could have shown him in a positive light if done correctly.

So what does this have to do with iHype?

iHype is the Ben Behrouzi’s latest venture.  With it he is hoping to enter the extremely profitable world of paid post blog advertising. The iHype concept should be familiar to anyone who has looked into paid blog advertising.  Advertisers pay the company to advertise opportunities to bloggers, who in turn write a short post about that company for pay.  It’s simple, elegant and effective if all parties handle it correctly.

Companies like PayPerPost and their parent company Izea have proven that this model can generate huge revenues and massive amounts of venture capital if managed properly, and Mr. Behrouzi seems to want to get in on the game. Unfortunately, iHype is falling into the All-Hype category after having missed its announced launch date by over one month.  In fact, the startup now has no published launch date at all, nor have I been able to find a public statement from the company anywhere that has addressed their failure to launch on time. (As a matter of fact, searches for iHype lead me to a lot of Apple news…)

In spite of obvious issues, the company is still investing in paid advertising that leads people to believe that iHype is already a working company.  As a matter of fact, it happened to me. I ran a quick search the other day for paid blogging opportunities and found an advertisement for iHype.  At that time I had not been keeping up with the goings on in the bloggosphere, so I clicked the ad and was taken to what appeared to be a fully functional site with the option to sign up for an account.

I’m never one to turn down a revenue opportunity, so I went through the sign up process, right to the point where it asked for my TAX ID number. The page was not secure, so I didn’t give it, but even without it, I was prompted to complete the sign up, which I did.  It was only then that it became obvious that I was not working on an active site.

Now that’s what I call shady.

Let’s look over the implications of this.  The first would be that I should have paid more attention.  I’m no novice on the Internet and the fact that I missed the “beta” in the address is my own fault. I will not, in my own case, blame this on the company. I paid no attention to the “beta” marking on the site’s title graphic simply because several of the services I frequent state that they are in beta, even though the sites are fully functional. But what about the case of a less experienced Internet user?

In that case, it is very possible that they would have seen the ad, gone to the beta site and signed up, giving away all of their personal financial information over an unsecured connection.  Would they notice that the very few opportunities available were not legitimate, or would they begin writing posts for these opportunities at a promised $10.00 each?  How will Mr. Behrouzi’s company handle that issue?  Will he pay these people for their effort?  It is my opinion that he should, since the signup process is already being advertised “in the wild” so to speak, and we all know that there are a lot of people on the Internet today that will do nearly anything to make a buck or two, sometimes without bothering to consider the implications.

Having determined that I had wasted precious minutes of my time, I filled out their support form with a request to be immediately removed from the system.  I checked to make sure that i had not been abrupt, and I clicked submit.  Then I let out a string of explatives that I cannot repeat here, because the contact form is apparently one of the “beta” features of the site.  It doesn’t do anything.

Some might say that the contact form is not a priority for a site of this nature.  I have a radically different opinion.  I base this opinion on over 20 years of computer experience and 16 years of professional Internet design experience when I say emphatically that the contact form is the single most important item on any business website.

With this one omission, the site owners have already told me where they stand on matters of customer service.  To them, it’s an afterthought and that attitude is something that I cannot tolerate.  I have moved my business elsewhere in the past because I did not feel that customer service was a priority to the a company I was doing business with.  I have refused to work with companies that had poor service for the same reasons.  I will not be associated with them.

In the end I leave the decision of iHype’s future to you.  It is ultimately your choice as to whether you choose to use this service or to leave this one out of your monetary toolkit. I cannot say whether this will be a boom or a bust at this point, or whether Mr. Behrouzi will listen to the comments floating around the bloggosphere and alter his business practices in a positive manner.  If so, iHype could stand poised to go up against PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews in the paid posting arena.  If this is the case, I will have lost out on a lucrative income stream, but my mind is already made up.

I would suggest doing your research before joining any company.  In this case I failed to do so and it has left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

As a final note.  I may or may not be following up on this topic.  For the moment, I have no intentions of doing so.  I have stated my opinion.  I have backed that opinion with both reference links and my own experience.  I have given this subject all the time that I feel it needs.  Unfortunately, the more I look over the topic, the more I see that I may be putting myself under fire by the owner of ePerks.com and iHype.  If so, I will post a rebuttal when necessary.  if not, hey, this post can simply live its merry and short Internet lifetime in the archives.

Mr. Behrouzi, I am not a minion.  I am a disgruntled prospective subscriber to your service.  That is all.