Pay Per Post: Is it for me?
Posted by
table4five)
The venue for this summer’s Blogher conference has been announced, as well as the three pre-reserved hotel choices. Suffice it to say, I do not have enough money for this.
When I started running Blogher Ads, I really thought I would make some money at it. I haven’t. And our family budget right now is so tight, it would be ludicrous for me to justify squeezing hundreds (and hundreds) of dollars out of it to go spend three days in Chicago.
So when I read this post over at Crazy, but that’s how it goes about how much money she has made writing for Pay Per Post, my first thought was that if I had followed in her footsteps, I would have already made all the money I will need for gas, hotel, conference registration and miscellaneous expenses.
So, let’s say I do sign up with them. Will it drive away my readers if every other post is an obvious ad? If you’ve never read a PPP post, it works like this: you might get paid $5.00 to write a post about an online company. You have to mention the name of the company and link to a specific URL, and talk about the product or service. And it’s not necessarily something that has anything at all to do with parenting, which is what I usually write about.
But then again, what if I could make two or three hundred dollars in a month or two? Then I could stop worrying about it and just reserve the hotel room already. Otherwise, I’m going to have to stay HERE, and that is just really, really scary.
EDITED TO ADD: PayPerPost uses your Google PageRank and your Alexa ranking to determine what writing opportunities you can get. My PageRank is a surprisingly high 4, but my Alexa ranking is 2,217,049. Two MILLION. Yikes.
| 2.5 |
Hello and welcome to Table for Five! I'm Elizabeth, and this blog started in September 2005 as a way for me to participate in the Mommy Blogging community. I'm married with three terrific kids-boys ages 11 and 9 and a 2 year old daughter. Things I love include my family, coffee, Diet Coke, TV, reading, and Target.
Please contact me at table4five AT gmail DOT com if you would like to discuss anything I've posted here, place a text or button ad, send me a product to review, or provide a guest post. Thank you for stopping by!
Eeek.
You’re making SOME money from blogging, right? Can you classify BlogHer as a business expense?
I think you have one or two misconceptions about PPP. First of all, you are generally not required to post 3 links when posting for PayPerPost. That one’s a Blogsvertise requirement, I believe. Some PPP advertisers will request multiple links, but most just want one.
You also don’t only get paid $5 per post. The $5 is a minimum. Depending on what the advertiser wants from you, you can earn more.
I do PPP on some of my blogs, and the trick is to be picky. I don’t do just any opportunity. It has to appeal in some way beyond the payment. This does mean I go days between accepting opportunities at times. Then other days I’ll take multiple.
It also works best if you can keep things natural, as though they belong in your blog. Too many people doing paid posts do them just like a commercial, and a badly done one at that. If you can mix it in naturally you won’t run so much risk of scaring off your readers.
It also helps if much of the time you do more than one post inbetween.
PayPerPost hasn’t always been easy. They just started segmentation recently, which allows advertisers to put more limitations on which bloggers can accept which opportunities, and there have been some bumps in the process that have annoyed a lot of people. But it’s clearing up steadily.
If it’s not against the BlogHer TOS, you could always go sign up and check it out. If you don’t like it, don’t accept any opportunities. Go in, take a look, see if it’s something you are willing to do or not.
I say do what you want/need to. I won’t run away. I can always ignore or skip over something. Oh, and that hostel doesn’t look *too* scary. Scary is the Travelodge by SeaTac next to the airport. *shudders*
Can you start a new blogspot blog and PPP over there?
(If you can, let me know.)
Hey sweetie! I’m in your shoes! I am actually looking for a hotel mate, just to cut the cost down. I just can’t afford my own room and maybe you and I could find two more roommates? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor…in fact, I plan on partying more than sleeping!
i vote for a big fat NO on the pay per post. is it the worst thing in the world if you can’t make it this year? and hello, don’t you remember what happened last year? SOMEONE MIGHT HELP YOU OUT!
i’m no help. per usual. lol
Looking for multiple roommates per Dana’s suggestion sounds like a good idea. Is BlogHer doing any “scholarships” that you can apply for?
Ahem. I’m hereby requesting that you put together a panel idea and/or offer to speak at BlogHer this year. I’m co-chairing one of the tracks.
I’ve always been curious as to how much those ads actually make for bloggers–and you have a large community!
Well, I’ll be rooting for you and helping you all I can. I want a buddy to take the train with!
Hi - I’m back, catching up from a month ago, been busy, just my 2 cents? One of my favorite bloggers now does PPP and it completely turned me off reading. I love her personally but HATE the PPP thing.
I’m with you on the expense of BlogHer. It’s out for me too.
If you guys figure out a way for us broke-ass chicks to make it to BlogHer, let me know? Please? Because … yeah, broke.
The only way I can make it is to room with someone. We’re going away to the Dominican together and Edmonton as a family. So our travel budget won’t include much more than small town Ontario after that!
(I’m like over 3,000,000 on that site. I thought higher numbers were good. I was WRONG!)
Hey, don’t feel bad I am in the same boat. I make nothing off my blog (well should blog more to do that) and can’t really squeeze a BlogHer conference out of our budget but I so want to go. Oh and I’m afraid people would say “Wait, who are you again? Oh I have never heard of that blog? That’s a blog?” and no one would know who I was. And then I would be embarassed.
You know, if we could squeeze it we could always carpool too - to save $ on gas - I know I’m not far from you and I know if we drive just to MI City and then take the train the train is not expensive (this is what we do for our girls’ weekend every year with friends). Anyway, even that wouldn’t cure the no one knows my blog exists problem. LOL!
You do not need an Alexa rank of 100,000. In fact, I would say most bloggers have 5 million or higher. There are opps that require a low alexa rating, but those are the ones paying $50 for each post. Readers should not be turned away from your blog if you are taking the opportunities which interest you. If you blog frequently, it is SIMPLE to make AT LEAST $15 a day. And when I say simple, I’m talking about an hour or less of ‘work’.
PPP isn’t the devil, despite what many people would have you believe. It’s a way for the little people to make money by blogging, just like Scoble and Arrington and Ana Marie Cox and Wil Wheaton and all the other A-listers who do it with sidebar advertising.
You don’t have to have ANY Alexa ranking or PageRank to join PayPerPost. If you have one or both, there will be more opportunities available to you…but right now there is a $50 opportunity out there that requires a 100-word post and nothing further. Most of the opportunities that are available to people without Alexa or PR are in the $5-10 range, but there are often some that have more. (And actually, this site has PR4, so you’re already in the running for a lot of high-paying opportunities.)
I definitely understand your doubt about whether you want to “sell out” - I think for that, it’s a matter of personal decision. It’s your blog, and only you can decide what level of PPP posting is for you. If the answer is zero - you don’t want to at all - that’s up to you. If you want to get paid for every other post you write, that’s up to you too. (You have to have one non-paid post between each PPP post.) I worried a LOT about this when I first heard about PPP, about whether I’d be disappointing my readers, whether I would lose readers, etc. The answer has been that I have not lost readers, and I have made upwards of $600. I could have made a lot more if I kept up my initial high posting rate - I used to post for PPP every day and I made $400 in my first 6-8 weeks, but I’ve been posting far less often now.
My suggestion would be that you do it enough to save up for what you want, and then quit. In fact, that’s pretty much what I did. I saved up enough for a fancy new 80GB video iPod with all the bells and whistles…and then I stopped. I still make the occasional paid post - I even made two today, for a total of $70! - but I got what I wanted and then that was it. Give that a try (assuming it jibes with the Blogher rules) and see how it goes…you’ll make it to the conference after all!
As long as you are still putting content and effort into your blog, it shouldn’t matter. PPP ads are not too bad as long as you are thoughtful and they fit your blog. I have always done reviews of different software now and then, only this is paid instead of me doing it for free.
I had similar concerns before starting PPP but my BFF was doing it and making a lot of money. She recommended it to me and I haven’t looked back. I guess the thing is to ensure you only pick the opps that suit your blog and that you would recommend anyway. There are a lot of good companies that advertise in PPP and I have to say I’ve become a fan of a few of them.
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