PayPerPost - Are You Serious??

I hadn’t heard about this. OK, I’m a little out of touch. I’ve only just started blogging and even more recently taken up social bookmarking. Maybe it’s just me that didn’t know about these folks paying bloggers to write about them. Then again, maybe you are just as out of the loop as I am. I mean, I’m not the only stay-at-home mom/home educator in the world…..

So, I came upon a PayPerPost button on the blog of “Milehimama”. I’d been looking for more Golden Compass activities and her entry about the movie came up - presumably because she also blogs about activities. As I often do, I casually looked around to see what else she might offer that was of interest. The button caught my eye. It’s big (125 x 125) and bright, and it says: “PayPerPost Direct - Hire Me! Have Me Blog About You On This Site.”

I clicked the button to see what would happen, curious to see exactly how it works. Unfortunately it didn’t do anything. Maybe it’s my browser. When you don’t use Microsoft, that can happen. Oh well, I Googled PayPerPost. That worked. I found the commercial site, and a blog that led me on my little exploration of the phenomenon. Their entry was entitled “PayPerPost offers to buy your soul”. Quite ironic, since Milehimama is a lady who seems concerned with her salvation.

So what’s the deal? PayPerPost says you can make up to $500/month writing reviews. It works like this:

1. Sign up with their service;
2. Submit your blog for approval;
3. Complete an Opportunity (this is what they call it when you write a review for an advertiser);
4. Receive payment via your PayPal account.

PayPerPost (PPP) will also pay you $20 for your first review - just look for their Opportunity once you’re registered and approved. If you write a review about the service they’ll pay you themselves.

So much for the sales pitch. Read a little deeper, and you’ll discover it’s not as simple as that. Nor is payment instantaneous. Or even prompt.

When you accept an Opportunity you have 6 hours to write and submit a blog. Sounds speedy, doesn’t it? Once you submit that blog, there are no guarantees on how soon you’ll get what was promised to you. For example, in their FAQ PayPerPost states: “Our goal is to review posts within 48-72 hours. During high traffic times, the review process may take longer.” They then explain that once the advertiser accepts your post it will be another 30 days before the Review team visits your blog to be sure the post is still live (and unchanged.) If it is, then you’ll be paid. Keep in mind, advertisers can reject your reviews & even when accepted, Opportunities may pay as little as $5.

At this point you might be asking, Why couldn’t I just write a whole bunch of reviews? Presumably the payments would add up, and roughly a month later you could collect my earnings. True, if you got enough reviews accepted. If you could find enough Opportunities to accept, in the first place. There is a maximum of two Opportunities per day, per blog that is approved. So roughly 60 posts per month on a single blog - and these must each be separated by at least one non-advertising entry. If you plan to make any money from PPP you’ll have to be serious about your blogging.

This whole system put me in mind of Epinions, for which I wrote about 7 years ago. That was my first exposure to marketing via reviews written by “ordinary folks.” I wrote tons of epinions. The main problem I experienced with that system was that the products they wanted reviewed were frequently things I didn’t use, whereas things I used regularly were not open for reviews. I never managed to save enough royalties on them to get paid, and by the time I was getting close there was a major shift in the structure of the program that meant it wasn’t worth my while anymore.

PPP differs from Epinions, in the sense that each Opportunity carries its own price tag & each one is paid directly to you by the individual advertiser. So it goes beyond the Epinions paradigm, and will avoid issues relating to the advertiser-reviewer ratio (i.e. too many folks willing to share their opinions on really popular items & not enough advertisers willing to pay for the service.) There still may be the issue of not having enough Opportunities, though. Or at least enough Opportunities that you feel you can write for. It would seem that users have to choose a set of categories to write in, and can only change those once every 30 days. What happens when no Opportunities are available in the chosen categories?? As with Epinions, it will be those who make use of the popular products & services (technology, recently released music & film, best sellers, etc.) who will have the most opportunity to benefit financially (pardon the pun!)

Perhaps PayPerPost will have sufficient Opportunities for all comers. At present I can’t speak to that, because Opportunities are not posted for the public to see. From the samplings in the wiki there did seem to be a good range of topics, though.

So, maybe PayPerPost can be profitable for all parties, reviewers included. It would certainly be nice. One reviewer I located had written just thirteen reviews in a month, and earned $97 for the efforts. Does PPP continue to pay off? That is certainly worth watching.

OK, if you are a little more in touch with these things than I am, you’re probably screaming that there’s something I haven’t discussed. And it’s as big as the proverbial elephant in the room. You’re right. But I’m getting to that.

There is a controversy around PayPerPost. Some people feel it is “killing blogging“but this seems to be in large part due to issues over transparency. Articles from roughly a year ago blast PPP for blurring the boundaries between advertising and just plain sharing one’s opinions. Apparently Google stripped PPP writers of their page rankings as a result.

However, PPP now has an code of ethics in place. It says that PPP bloggers must disclose that they are writing paid reviews for a sponsor. If bloggers choose to use a text declaration or disclosure badge on each paid post, things are pretty clearly spelled out for the reader. A site-wide disclosure policy is accepted as well, though it occurs to me that this contributes more to the aforementioned blurring of boundaries than to aiding a reader in evaluating the reliability of any given entry within that blog.

I must admit that I began this entry with a rather negative view of the PayPerPost concept. Having done some searching and reflecting, though, I find I am more hopefully neutral about it now. If one can be hopefully neutral about anything. The writer of Deep Jive Interests aptly points out that many of the people who take advantage of services like PayPerPost are blue collar folks, just looking to make a few extra dollars to help the family out or pay for school. Sure beats subscribing to a pay-per-click ad server, doesn’t it? I mean, at least these folks are working for their earnings. As Heinlein would say, TANSTAAFL….

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