The Lady Programmer

I’ve done a series of posts about paid blogging sites. I hope you did not miss any of these past posts:

• Earn by Doing Paid Reviews with PayPerPost
• Make Money Doing Paid Reviews with SponsoredReviews
• SocialSpark: A Paid Review Site with a Social Networking Twist 
• Other Sites That Lets You Earn Money From Blogging 

All of these cover how a blogger can earn from simply doing paid posts. Of course, these are not the only ways to earn from blogs. There are also other means like affiliate marketing, ad networks like Google Adsense and selling links. The last post on other sites that lets you earn money from blogging simply covers other paid review sites.

Disadvantage of Page Rank Loss

One downside to accepting paid reviews is that these blogs are prone to Google pagerank loss. To be accurate, Google is NOT against all paid reviews; Google penalizes links that have no “rel=nofollow” code. So far, SocialSpark is the only place where I can fully retain pagerank while doing sponsored posts, because their posts always require the use of “rel=nofollow” code.

I had been a firsthand witness of this. I was doing paid posts with SocialSpark then I suddenly hit PR3. Now I’m back to zero because I had accepted “dofollow” paid posts.

Matt Cutts, a high ranked employee of Google, had approved the way things are SocialSpark. Don’t believe me? You can read all about it in this IZEA post.

Unfortunately, props was not given to PPP. I guess everyone knows the issue about PPP bloggers getting spanked by Google. I strongly believe that PPP bloggers are not the only ones that get affected but any blogger that does sponsored posts with no “rel=nofollow” code on links.

If you are writing for site like SocialSpark, PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews.com, bloggers often run into problems when these bloggers performed an upgrade to using a custom domain.

I could still use the old URL and statistics with PayPerPost and Sponsored Reviews.com. SocialSpark is an entirely different story: I could not submit my posts even if I used the old URL that I had registered with them.

photo credit: stevekrh19 (SXC)

The Problem with SocialSpark

I had taken a SocialSpark opportunity recently but I could not submit my recent post because of the URL change. To most bloggers, this situation can be frustrating and some bloggers may blog about their frustrations that accompany new domain changes. SocialSpark is still on BETA, so their automated review system is not perfected yet and it relies on community feedback to build their system.

Immediately, I had gone to IZEA Help section to find any write ups and FAQs about domain URL changes with SocialSpark. I have not found any so I decided to write a short love note to Customer Love, requesting for two things:

• change the URL registered with them from http://theladyprogrammer.blogspot.com to http://www.theladyprogrammer.com
• approve a recently opportunity that was rejected outright at auto approval

I did not get an immediate response with them because I submitted a help ticket during the weekend. The recently opportunity that I had with them had even expired. What I did was to reopen the resolved tickets to Customer Love just to have those requests approved. I was so happy when they had fulfilled all my requests above. Customer Love seemed to love me!

photo credit: weirdvis (SXC)

There is only one more problem that I had encountered with SocialSpark, so I had to reopen the resolved ticket again. My blog has lost its statistics so I ended up not qualified for the opportunities that I was once qualified for. It seemed to me that the right statistics for the daily visitors and Alexa rankings are not properly reflected in my new account, so I needed those clarifications.

Change URL Requests with PayPerPost

Since PayPerPost still remains as the huge paid review site, I had encountered so many bloggers blog about their domain changes and their successful arrangement with PayPerPost. I had tried my hands too, when I had to request for a URL change on one of my older blogs. The system with PPP is simple: simply write to Customer Love to request for a change in URL. Their technical support will make all the corresponding URL changes in their database. All the blog statistics with the new domain will be reflected in one’s PPP account.

Change URL Request with Sponsored Reviews

URL change policy is different in SponsoredReviews.com because it has a different policy on URL change requests. One has to delete the old blog that uses the old URL first, then resubmit the blog that uses the new URL. This will still require manual review by the SponsoredReviews.com. I don’t like this arrangement, because I had gotten some good feedback ratings from some advertisers.

I have noticed that the old URL still works with SponsoredReviews.com, so I still get opportunities using the old URL instead.

Have you encountered headaches with other paid review services?

Don’t mistake this post for the very first “I signed up for PayPerPost” $20-worth of opportunity that PPP gives to its new members. I’m not getting paid by IZEA to promote their site in this post. I am grateful to them because they had already given me huge earnings from simply doing paid reviews. I hope PayPerPost would NOT eliminate my blogs from doing paid reviews: there is ongoing blog audit happening at PPP.

That was the total amount that I had already earned from PayPerPost since I’ve signed up with them. It is not really much. Top earners in PPP get more than $1000 each month. Most of the paid reviews I’ve earned here was from another blog.

All of these earnings go out to my Paypal account. Paypal is the only way to take out earnings from doing paid reviews, so anyone living in a country that supports Paypal well can sign up with the site and begin to take opportunities from the site. I did not even need a premium or business account to simply receive all the earnings; all I had is a personal Paypal account. For those in the Philippines, if you are interested to know more about it then visit this page and look under the category Paypal.

Click this logo to sign up with a FREE Paypal account:

How to Earn from Paid Reviews

In the beginning PayPerPost began an alternative concept to earn income from blogs: it is simply out to be an alternative for bloggers to earn instead of earning little from advertisements provided by Google Adsense, Chitika, Adbrite and other similar ad networks. I had to admit that even with a good traffic for several months on this blog, I have not earned much with Google Adsense.

PayPerPost allows bloggers to get paid to do reviews on a product or service. Each paid review can run to as little as 50 words to a full 300-word review. The lowest amount that can be earned from doing reviews is at $5.

A blogger simply submits his or her blog to get approved. The approval is done manually; usually a blog gets reviewed within a few days. Not all blogs qualify for doing paid reviews with them. Some of the requirements are: that the blog should not contain offensive content such as nudity, violence, political issues, and that it should be written in English. The blog eligibility written under the PPP’s terms of service contains a full list of blogs that are qualified for doing paid reviews.

Once that a blog is approved, the blogger can start taking opportunities that his or her blogs are qualified for.

Which opportunities are available for blogging?

There could be more than a hundred of available opportunities that bloggers get to see in a day, but my blog qualifies for a fraction of the opportunities that are available. The main factors that affect my qualification is my blog’s Google page rank, Alexa ranking and Realrank. The Realrank is an new internal ranking system used by PPP that is entirely dependent on the traffic and influence of blogs throughout the blogosphere.

Of all the metrics that PPP had placed, I still find Google page rank as the most important metric. A better Google page rank means more opportunities are available. Blogs sitting at higher Google page ranks are qualified for higher paying opportunities that cost even more than a $100. A Google page rank of 7 on a blog is very high; advertisers are willing to pay big bucks to bloggers with blogs sitting at higher page ranks.

My humble blog only sits on a page rank 3. Indeed, what I had posted previously about a $100 review is NOT something that I see on my account everyday!

You can join with me in PPP if you get to review this post.

UPDATE: Some people saw this opportunity appear on their accounts and missed it. Visit IZEA Boards.

What would you feel if you have missed out a big opportunity?

I got into my PayPerPost account a few hours ago. I got only one opportunity, but that lone opportunity is worth one big $100 for a few 50-word review.

In PayPerPost or PPP, a grayed-out opportunity below the Opportunity Title means that some other blogger had the chance to write a review or buzz about the given topic on his blog and get paid for the given offer from the advertiser. A blogger gets to write about a topic when the opportunity is in white or green.

The opportunity requirements are not too demanding. The advertiser simply wanted to take advantage of that blogger’s blog traffic. I’ve know a lot of blogs that has reached good Alexa rankings without having any page rank at all. A $100 payout that is up for grabs in any blog that do not have any Google page rank is VERY UNUSUAL.

Would you believe me that this blog had fallen from PR3 to PR0?

At least this is what is going on over at PayPerPost. A few bloggers had noticed this particular problem that had been going on for a few days.

If you had been wondering why there are less opportunities at PPP, then perhaps your blog is listed as having Google PR0, which has an impact on taking available opportunities. However, the IZEA and Alexa ranks remain unchanged.

If you notice a drop in qualified opportunities when you have a good PR4 blog then you may be suffering from this bug. The problem seemed not to be confined on a few members.

UPDATE: As of this time this blog is now back at PR3 level. Now I’m ready to take opportunities available at that level.