Thursday, September 21, 2006

Entrepreneurs

My mate Pete has himself a new job as Director of Software Development for PayPerPost.com.

I worry about Pete: he's living several thousand miles away and can't buy me beer anymore.

So I checked out the PayPerPost website at http://payperpost.com/ and they seem to be a very interesting company, just the sort of thing that will help Pete keep his mojo going.

It seems a very sensible way for people to do business, you sign up and get paid by companies who want to advertise on blogs by writing posts about the subject they ask of you.

As Pete says in his blog:
"...despite what some would have you think, blogs are not journalism. Blogs are personal, and PayPerPost's model is a very real financial enabler for a huge portion of the Blogosphere; the single-mom trying to raise a small family, the student trying to make ends meet, the video game junkie looking for a means to fund his ever growing game collection. In fact, if you're human and have a blog, PayPerPost probably has something you can write about for cold, hard cash."

So good luck Pete, and good luck PayPerPost. More power to you...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

and so say all of us....

Anonymous said...

Actually, I hope that this fails - and soon. This is precisely the kind of activity that gets sales and marketing a bad name.

Check the Conditions. All copy must be approved.

Right, so on my independent, unbiased blog I express the view that 'Wacko Jello' sucks, and say so in no uncertain terms. What are the chances of that being approved, and Wacko Jello paying me my $2 - $5?

It is clear that only psychophants with no moral fibre can make money from this - and not very much either!

By definition therefore, you will never read unbiased reviews when they are written by financially desperate bloggers. And how are we to know who's strapped for cash, and whoring their blog space to make a few bob?

Perhaps Wacko Jello is a very good product. PayPerPost is a very bad website which will bring disrepute on what is, for now, a fantastic medium.

Pete Wright said...

Thanks Russ.

I have to answer the 'ethical marketing professional' (not quite sure of the ethics of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about another company's products, but what do I know).

Anyway, if you actually go to the PayPerPost site you'll notice that there are hundreds of opportunities there that have a +/- sign next to them. These are 'neutral' opportunities. If the opportunity said they would pay 2 dollars for 3 words on that opportunity then yes you could indeed post up "Wacko Jello Sucks" and get paid for it.

The approval process is a manual one; we have a bunch of people working very hard here that read each and every blog post and approve based on some very simple criteria. For example, we'll reject pornography. We'll reject obscene blog posts. Even if we reject though you still get the chance to change your post so that it does comply, and once again yes you can post negative comments.

We don't tell our Bloggers what to post, and it's really up to the blogger whether or not they stick to neutral posts (which there are a lot of) or go the psychophantic route as you put it. Most often though, the bloggers that post positive comment do so because it's on a topic that genuinely interests them. If you're blogging about all things tech for example and some company releases a cool memory stick that you like, why not pick up some cash for blogging it?

As for the amount of money you can make - well sign up for an account. When you sign up you'll see a ranking of our top bloggers and how much they've earned. Some have earned over a thousand dollars in just one month. That's quite an achievement since you'll notice when you sign up that you need to choose a limited number of categories of things you actually blog about and we do manually check that your blog is a real and valid blog, not a splog put up yesterday just for the purpose of making some money.

In fact, here's an interesting thought for you. Had you posted your comment on your own blog this past week, you could have made some cash for it - we regularly pay for both positive and negative comment about our own service.

VC Dan said...

try it, but only for ad opps that fit your focus/style...you just might like it...

Tim Worstall said...

I'm one of those bloggers that Pete talks about: I've made over $1,500 out of PPP so far.
BTW, no, neither he nor PPP have asked me to post here either.
Us freelancers need every job we can find so I'm perfectly happy to provide googlejuice (which is what most advertisers are buying) in return for a fee.