Do PayPerPost Posts Make You Feel Dirty?
Posted by Stephen on
February 25, 2007
PayPerPost (aff) has been getting a lot of flack as being the “Dirty” paid posting service. Despite their recent ruling towards full disclosure of all paid posts, many bloggers, including myself, have a difficult time finding opportunities that align with our own moral compasses. When I saw Michael Kwan blogging about UK Credit Cards I asked him if that was a PayPerPost, and he seemed a little embarrassed about it. In fact, it looks like he took his blog down to repent as of this writing. The last post I did was definitely borderline for me.
Despite PayPerPosts most recent efforts to clean up, some bloggers still need to shower regularly after posting. Though some people can just place the little “Sponsored by PayPerPost” button that you see at the bottom of this post and forget about it. Unlike posts that I’ve done for their competitor, the conditions placed on some of the higher paying opportunities makes it very difficult at times to manipulate the information into something that doesn’t make you look like you’re straining to make it work. Thus the review I did for Jay Profeit’s Blog came off really well and I actually put more effort into it than I would a regular PayPerPost review because I was not restricted.
The value of PayPerPost lies in the fact that it is accesible by many more bloggers due to less stringent requirements and the fact that you can select your own opportunities rather than having to be selected by the advertiser. However, just recently, PayPerPost came up with an interesting program that removes the need to question your morality and help you build blog traffic by reviewing posts done by other PayPerPost bloggers and is called ReviewMyPost.
The program is a hybrid between a referral program and a paid posting program because you get paid everytime someone signs up and reviews one of your posts and the reviewer gets paid too. PayPerPost gains too because they get another potential blogger that might want to take advantage of some of the other paid posting opportunities.
This technique to build traffic has been proven by John Chow in his Review My Blog Program, where he gives you a free backlink on his blog as payment for your review, which should hopefully drive some traffic to your blog. To enable PayPerPosts’ program, all you have to do is insert a button at the bottom of your post that asks people to review your blog. It looks like the one I have at the bottom of this post.
After checking the affiliate page out, it looks like when the blogger signs up using your button, a special opportunity shows up for them in their PayPerPost account for your blog. After they get qualified and paid for their review of your blog, you get paid. Current payout is $7.50 each for both the blogger and the blogged. The best part about this is that you not only build those backlinks to yourself, but you never have to do another one of those sometimes awkward paid post opportunities, unless you want to. This is a great way to bridge the gap between droughts of suitable opportunities and it’ll also save on the water bill because you’ll be taking less showers.
Make your first $7.50 US by clicking on my review link and submitting a review for this blog post today 
You even said you…
How did I know that my UK credit card post was going to show up on this blog?
And no, I didn’t take my blog down out of shame. I was surprised this morning when I woke up and found out that my entire site is down, not just the blog, but the main freelance writing site as well. I think it might have something to do with me changing registars or something.
I don’t think that I feel particularly dirty after writing a PPP post, especially since I always include a “this post was sponsored by” or “brought to you by” type tag at the bottom. According to the PPP site (at least as I remember it), they encourage you to say it was sponsored by the company you’re linking to and not sponsored by PPP. I guess that’s changed.
When and if my blog ever gets itself up and kicking again, you’ll notice that I’ve included the review my post button now as well. I should put that disclosure badge at the bottom too.
On a side note, when you do the “review my post”, you get $7.50 for referring them another blogger and the poster gets $7.50 for writing the review post. HOWEVER, if you put the “sign up” or whatever button and a person clicks, signs up, and writes their first PPP post, you get $15 (but no backlink). Pros and cons, I guess.
Sorry for the long-winded comment, but without my blog working, I have nowhere else to say this (I’ll probably repost this comment there when it’s running again).
I was wondering what happened to you this morning
I also noticed that the other US based credit card opportunities started to specify “US ONLY”. I guess that advertiser wasn’t too worried about quality. If they were, they would have requested UK ONLY.
I think this referral method is clearly a better way to get people to sign up. If both parties stand to get something out of the relationship, that’s always a good thing. Also, if you do a review of a post, chances are, there will be some trackback traffic, and probably a visit by the blog owner as well to see what’s up.
I think that advertiser was just interested in getting backlinks with references to credit card comparisons and so forth in general rather than for the UK specifically.
On a side note, the blog is back up and running, and the main freelance writing site is *working*, but the formatting is a little messed up for some reason. I must be in the middle of a transfer so everything *should* be back to normal by the end of the day.
As promised, I have reposted the first comment in my blog:
http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2007/02/25/more-than-just-a-google-whore.aspx
Strangely, I can’t get the post view count plug-in to work. People have told me that they’ve gone into individual posts, but it still shows up as a zero for some reason.
I’ve done a few posts for PPP. 2 were accepted and 1 was declined.
Though as I look over their site, the only ones that seem interesting enough to me to blog about are set to a PR of at least 3. Mine’s only 1
Oh well.
I’m lucky enough to have PR4, so it opens up a few more possibilities. One upside to PPP is that it’s a decent cure for writer’s block.
Did you check out the reason why they declined you? They normally give you a good reason why and an opportunity to fix and resubmit as long as there are still opportunities available.
im not even sure if i have a PR of 1 yet, i dont think my site has been around long enough.
Yea I forget the reason but something to do with the fact that I posted my PPP posts to close together in date and then by the time I got around to it I think the time expired.
I’ll have to look for the email and read it again I guess.
I’ve made $18US on it though! Go me!
As an advertiser, I can completely understand why they might decline or be unhappy with a paid post that is in a block with one or more other paid posts.
As of this morning I am still waiting for approval so hopefully that will come soon.
Funny timing of this post as I just signed up over at PPP to give it a try myself. After not getting any nibbles through ReviewMe since I signed up, I thought I would try out an alternative.
My site is PR3 so I might be able to have some decent opportunities but it seems PPP is taking forever to “approve” my account. How long does it typically take PPP to process your account where you can begin reviewing opportunities?
Should be pretty quick. I think it takes less than a day. At least that was in my experience. They might be backed up though because of the new rush of people coming into the program due to the ReviewMyPost program.
For anyone that wants to make this into a viable money maker, it might not happen. It appears that PayPerPost is getting some heat for having low quality posts and dirty blogs…
http://blog.payperpost.com/2007/02/important-post-to-read-for-posties.html
If I was advertising with PayPerPost and my ad ended up on some site that was a sequence of real blog, PPP, real blog, PPP, all the way through and the posts sucked, I’d be upset too. I’m sure that PPP will respond with tougher quality controls in light of this.
That was a good read. Thanks for the link.
I wasn’t sure if there was a delay since I signed up over the weekend or not, I had been hoping to get approval already. Thanks for the feedback and the link to that post. That post kind of expresses some of the concerns I have had with using PPP and why I hadn’t signed up until now.
While it is nice to make some money, I don’t want to whore out my site just for a few bucks. It does seem the ReviewMe posts are of better quality overall but for newer blogs, it seems harder to get someone to buy a review from you as opposed to signing up for the opps with PPP.
Personally, I would put in the same level of quality/effort whether the sponsored post is coming from PPP or ReviewMe but it does seem like more people are able to game PPP for some quick money.
There are two or three key differences between ReviewMe and PPP. The former is harder to get into (approved), the former tends to pay more per post (by quite a bit), but the latter puts the power in the poster’s hands because he/she gets to pick and choose which opportunities to take, whereas with ReviewMe, you kind of have to sit there and wait (which is also the case with Blogsvertise).
That’s the right way to go at it — focusing on quality and your audience is the win-win for you, PPP and the sponsors. As in all systems with large populations there will be abusers and there will be model citizens. The fact that PPP actually has opps for people and put the power of choice in blogger hands means they encounter both ends of the spectrum.
Stay true to your style and your readers, and you should do quite well with PPP. I look forward to following your efforts…
You are a dirty whore! You sold your soul to PayPerPost!
now that’s funny, coming from John — he’s just trying to keep all the good PPP opps to himself
I don’t have any opps. I’m not a ppp publisher. I’ve been a ppp advertiser however.
John sold his soul to ReviewMe instead.
I reviewed Stephen’s blog site yesterday and I’m still waiting for my money! I better get my Money! I know some people . . . .
Did you go back in and accept the opportunity? It still says pending on my side.
Accept? Oh. Okay. Um . . . be right back!
Okay, I guess soemthing went wrong when we set it up the other day because it’s not registering my blog at all. When you get a moment give me a call as we might need to then change all the code crap that was installed in the blog.
Is it just that your account is still pending? I just applied for a PPP account myself and it took a few days until I received word that my blog had been accepted and my account was activated.
It’s all fixed now, both Stephen and I thought we had registered the blog but we overlooked that little matter, lol.