Sponsored Articles Written, Disclosed and Placed Direct

Buy this for the readership, not for the ranking signal. Every placement I run carries a visible disclosure and a rel value of sponsored, because that is what the publisher's standards and Google's own policy require, and a link that announces it was paid for is not a ranking asset. Rate cards across the Nordic and international games and sport press sit between 1,500 and 12,000 euro per article. That money buys attention from a readership somebody else spent a decade assembling. What my fee covers, and what it does not: My work only. Publisher invoices go to you directly at the publisher's own price, and you see the rate card and the negotiation thread. Reselling media at a markup is where most of this category makes its money, and it quietly corrupts every recommendation that follows it. Negotiating the placement: The number on a rate card is for the article. What decides whether the placement was worth buying is everything around it, and none of that is printed on the card: how many days the piece holds a homepage slot, whether it enters the newsletter and which send, whether it stays live permanently or is removed after twelve months, whether the publisher's own accounts carry it, and whether the commercial team allows a working call to action above the fold. I negotiate those terms and hold the publisher to them in writing. A permanent URL and a newsletter slot are worth more than twenty per cent off the fee. The writing standard: The article is written to the publication's house style and it is reported. I interview someone, use real figures, and name products including competitors where the comparison is honest. Sponsored pieces written as brochure copy lose the reader before the second subhead and the on-page data shows it. If your marketing team needs three rounds of legal softening, I will say before the buy that the piece will underperform, not after. What I will not do: Place anything undisclosed, or accept a publisher's offer to run a paid piece as though it were editorial. Push a commercial team for a followed link. If one is offered without being asked, that tells you something about the publication and I will pass the information on rather than the link. Write for a betting or real-money gaming brand. Buy through a network that cannot name the publication before payment clears. Measurement: Everything is tagged. The report covers referral sessions, time on page and scroll depth where the publisher shares it, assisted conversions from your analytics, and branded search in that market in Search Console for the eight weeks after publication against the eight weeks before. Where a publisher refuses to share on-site data, the report says so instead of filling the cell with an estimate. Not included: Programmatic display, native ad networks, creator and influencer deals, podcast reads, and event sponsorship. Those are different buys with different economics, and I do not run them or take a cut of them. Who this is not for: Anyone buying sponsored articles as link building. If the budget line exists because someone wants domain authority to move, this is the wrong purchase and I would rather lose the engagement than take the money and let the report imply otherwise. Also not for a brand with no real overlap with the title's audience. A logistics product placed in a games publication because the traffic figure looked good is a decision that reads badly to the readers who matter.