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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

How much would you pay to have Steve Rubel wear your logo?

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I have to admit, I’ve never heard of Joel Cheesman. Evidently, though, he’s well-known among Human Resources types. Cheesman blogs as Cheezhead and is CEO of a couple recruiting companies. His blog bio pegs him as “one of the Internet’s most famous and widely-read blogger on emerging recruitment issues in the world.”

While Cheesman could use an editor (how many of you immediately rewrote that awful sentence?), he’s enough of a celebrity to command $7,000 to promote a company at the upcoming gathering of the Society of Human Resources Management.  Cheesman listed himself on eBay, offering a variety of benefits to the highest bid to sponsor his presence at the conference. The winning bid—$7,101—was ponied up by JobCentral. In return, the employment network gets Cheesman wearing a t-shirt bearing their logo, a mention on all of Cheesman’s podcasts from the conference, a banner ad on Cheesman’s blog, and a variety of other benefits.

In pitching the sponsorship on eBay, Cheesman included screen shots of his blog’s stats from Alexa. Cheesman’s stats are about three times better than mine, but nowhere near as good as Steve Rubel’s. Which leads me to the inevitable question: What would a company like Bacons bid in an eBay auction to win the chance to sponsor Steve at a PRSA conference?

Not that anyone could pay Steve enough to parade around PRSA in a t-shirt bearing the winner’s name, or put their banner on his blog, or write a post about the sponsorship, or do any of the other things Cheesman has done. It just raises the question about whether being an A-lister—or a “blogebrity”—has testimonial or spokesperson value. Among all the lists covering the ways bloggers can make money, one I haven’t seen is, “Sell your blogebrity status to the highest bidder.”

From Rubel’s ranking we can move up the scale and speculate about Jeff Jarvis appearing on a TV commercial for one of Dell Computers’ competitors or Om Malik in a magazine ad touting a NetGear or Linksys wireless router. Again, such sellout opportunities could well be far beneath Jarvis and Malik; but it’s intriguing to ponder whether some (like those who get homepage attention on Technorati) have ascended to the level where their mere blogginess has monetary value.

As for me, there’s no way I’d become a pitchman for a company at the IABC conference for $7,101. Make it $25,000 and we’ll talk.

ClickZ has the Cheesman story.