Getting angrier by the minute

Posted by stuart as pay per post

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking this morning about my last post, about payperpost and disclosure, and have been getting angrier and angrier.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I fought pretty hard over my right to use paid posts anywhere I like. I battled over the disclosure issue, and lost readers over the issue.

Now payperpost has shat on those who battled for them from a great height. I wrote in my previous post about payperpost re-writing history, suggesting that they had always encouraged disclosure, now I’ve managed to find my post on the issue when payperpost first started up. In part, it said this:

” Posts must not include any statements or titles indicating that the Posts are being made by a PayPerPost Blogger”

Now there was a lot of discussion about disclosure, and the credibility of bloggers writing for the money when payperpost was launched, and it seems that these fears have been borne out.

If I accept the payperpost terms of use, I can write a post about a product, be paid for it, but not disclose the fact that I am being paid.

I’m not sure this is a good thing. Do you?

Now we get payperpost telling us that they’ve always encouraged disclosure? Gimme a furking break!

Payperpost now requires disclosure

Posted by stuart as pay per post

I received an email today from payperpost, notifying me that they now require disclosure on blogs which accept paid postings.

Interesting…

One thing which caught my eye in the press release was the following:

Since creating the concept of sponsored posting, PayPerPost has allowed and encouraged transparency, enabling marketers and bloggers to disclose word-of-mouth (WOM) or buzz marketing relationships.

This is clearly bullshit, as payperpost did nothing of the sort when they first opened up, going as far to say on their website that users were not allowed to disclose that posts were paid for.

Interesting though, that ppp have come to the party, addressing the single biggest issue of concern to users, but we could do without the historical revisionism.

Five things you might not know about me

Posted by stuart as Five things....

There’s a pretty cool thing doing the rounds at the moment, called “Five things you might not know about me”

Thanks Empress for the tag:

1. I have two gorgeous sons: Jack (nearly four) and Ryan (18 months). They provide me with countless hours of enjoyment and frustration. I had no idea of the capacity of the human being to love, care, and worry so much about something until these boys came into my life.
2. I’ve had an organ transplant - a kidney, from my mother, in 1996. It failed after five and a half years, and I’m now on dialysis four days a week for four hours, whilst waiting for another kidney.
3. I’m uneducated - I failed my final year of high school - badly! I discovered alcohol that year, and it all went downhill from there.
4. I’m a qualified Graphic Reproducer - that’s someone who prepares graphic files for printing on a printing press.
5. I’m a tennis nut - I played a lot when I was young, and enjoy following it on TV now that my health precludes me from playing.

Unfortunately, pretty much everyone I know online has done this now, so there’s no-one left to tag.

Bloggers - jack of all trades

Posted by stuart as blogging, blog

Whilst working on a coding job for a client over the last couple of weeks, I had pause for thought on what it takes to be a successful blogger.

To be a succesful blogger, we need to be a jack of all trades:

• Market research
• Web Hosting
• PHP
• HTML
• CSS
• Content creation
• Search Engine Optimization
• Page Layout
• Ad placement optimization
• Ad copy writing

……and so on.

I just wonder what would happen if we outsourced all of the above, except for the content creation, and concentrated solely on the provision of content.

I know I could create a whole lot more content if I didn’t spend hours wrestling with Wordpress themes, plugins, CSS layouts etc.

Anybody ever considered going this route? On the flip side, anybody considered providing these services to potential clients?

November roundup

Posted by stuart as online marketing, make money online

Time for a quick roundup of events in November.

AdSense over all sites was up by about 75% from October - a pleasing result given I’ve been quite ill for most of the month, and the time I have had has been spent on a development job for a client. Time invested in AdSense sites has been so close to zero as not to count this month.

Advertising - I’ve managed to sell some advertising space through both performancing partners and text link ads this month, which will earn me a total of  around $50 a month. This is nice, although I’m a little surprised I managed to sell the text link ad here in the middle of a couple of week period where I had made virtually no posts.

Affiliate sales - Up by an infinite amount (from zero in October to $5.27 in November)

Overall income was up by about 100% over October, which makes me a happy camper considering the amount of effort put in for November.