PayPerPost Direct

If by any chance you're reading this by visiting my blog instead of through your favorite feedreader, you might have noticed the new "PPP Direct" badge I've got in the sidebar. Wassit all about? It's PayPerPost's answer to competitors like ReviewMe, Blogitive, etc. Now advertisers can offer opportunities for sponsored posts to individual bloggers, with PayPerPost acting as the middleman. Sound familiar? That's because it is. But the cool part is, PPP's commission is a helluva lot smaller than their competitors. They collect a 10% fee, which I think is reasonable. I mean, compared to their usual "marketplace" commission, which is 35%, that's sweet, and compared to some of the other services like ReviewMe, which charge anywhere from 50% to a 100% commission, that's awesome.

All a PPP blogger has to do is login to their PPP account, click on "ppp tools", set their price, then cut and paste the code into their blog template and they're ready to go. Then advertisers can click on your badge (and I think there's also going to be a directory of PPP Direct bloggers that advertisers can use to find the blogs and bloggers they're looking for) and negotiate a deal with you. The advertiser gets the blog post they wanted, you make money blogging, and PayPerPost gets a cut for providing a sort of escrow service that ensures that neither party screws the other one.

Sounds easy enough, and I can't wait to find out if it really is as easy as it sounds.




Technorati Tags: PayPerPost, ReviewMe, Blogitive, problogging, paid content, sponsored blogging

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Payments for April 2007

eBay	$78.32
ReviewMe	$20.00
Blogitive	$5.00
PayPerPost	$20.00
ePoll	$30.00
Esearch surveys	$1.00
Lightspeed Panel surveys	$10.00
KRI Panel surveys	$15.00
Total:	$239.32
Year-to-Date:	$749.52

When I sat down to start this post, I was thinking it wasn't going to be a very good month. I knew the profits from eBay sales was going to be a lot lower than last month, and lower our average. But total income for the month turned out to be right about average, and came from a higher number of sources, which I'm happy about. After all, part of what I'm trying to do with this blog is show that there are lots of different ways to make money online. So I'm happy not to have all my eggs in one basket.

One reason for lower ebay profits this month is because we've just increased our prices, which was necessary due to increased import/shipping costs. Another is because we've launched some new advertising campaigns, which has resulted in quite a few new customers trying out our products. New customers usually make smaller purchases, especially the "trial pack" we offer, which only costs them a few dollars, and from which we make almost no profit. But we know that those low-cost trial packs are great for us in the longer term, so hopefully sales will pick up in the coming months. In any case, I'm definitely not complaining. Over $75 profit on around $275 in sales, and all I do is put up a few auction listings each week, answer a few inquiries, and a few trips a week to the Post Office or the nearest mailbox.

I'm also happy with the money I made from sponsored posts last month. $45 in total, with $20 from PayPerPost, $20 from ReviewMe, and $5 from Blogitive. I think that's probably about as much as I'll ever make in a month, unless I add sponsored posts to some other blogs. I really don't want to just start throwing up a bunch of sponsored posts that have nothing to do with the topics I normally blog about here at FCS, but I've been thinking that it might be a good idea to start a new blog, or re-purpose an old one, that's better suited to sponsored posts, affiliate sales, etc.

And the third way I made money in April was from online survey companies. $56 in total, with most of it paid in the form of Amazon gift certificates, which is just as good as cash in my particular case. I loooooove shopping at Amazon! That's more than I've earned from paid survey companies in a long time. What's changed? For one thing, I think many of the companies are sending out more surveys, so that helps. The only change I've made is that I've got all my survey invitations going to a single email address, and I'm trying to check that email account several times a day, and do the surveys ASAP. Some days I do the "screeners" and don't qualify for the full surveys, other days I do one or two surveys, so it probably averages out to be about 20 minutes of "work" a day.

So as it turns out, I'm quite happy with my earnings this month. Not only did I make over $200 that I wouldn't have otherwise made, but I did it doing stuff I enjoy anyway. Blogging, selling stuff on eBay, and sharing my opinions. Sweet!

Technorati Tags: make money online, PayPerPost, Blogitive, ReviewMe, eBay, paid surveys, ePoll, KRI Panel, LightSpeed Panel

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V7N Contextual Links -- No Disclosure Allowed

A couple of days I read about V7N Contextual Links (sorry, I can't remember where I read about them) and signed up to see what it was all about. Essentially, you submit your blogs, and advertisers pay you for links. The links don't have to be in posts about the site you're linking to, although there should be a broad connection. For example, if a car dealership was paying you for a link, you could put it in any post (even an old post) about cars, car sales, etc.



So today I got my first "Link Placement Request." Interestingly, they run the whole thing through the V7N Forum, so the "placement request" came in the form of an email notification that I'd received a private message at the forum. The message told me which blog the link was to be placed in, the URL for the link, and a few instructions. All I had to do was write the post (if I didn't have an old post that would do the trick), then reply to the PM with the URL of the post, and I'd have $10 in my Paypal account within 24 hours. Sweet!



Except for one problem. The last sentence in the instructions was "Publishers MAY NOT disclose the fact that the link is paid." No disclosure. It's not an option. In fact, it's forbidden. Which means I won't be doing it.



Apparently for a lot of people, this is old news. Darren at ProBlogger talked about V7N Contextual a couple of months ago. I must've missed it. Too bad, because if I'd read his review, I wouldn't have signed up for it in the first place. The no-disclosure thing makes it something I don't really want to get involved with.



And it got me thinking more about the "paid content" companies I am involved with, like PayPerPost, Blogitive and ReviewMe. With those posts, I always disclose that they're sponsored posts. And I try to make sure the sponsored posts fit reasonably well into the general themes and subjects of the blog I'm posting them on (although I'll admit that sometimes it's a bit of a streeeeeeeetch). And I don't accept offers where I'm not free to say what I want -- positive, negative, or neutral.



And I can see the "product placement" comparison. V7N doesn't require a review, or a testimonial or anything. No opinion or commentary required. Just a link. Then they pay you for the link, on the condition that you don't tell anybody you've been paid for including it.



It also got me thinking about the Amazon Context Links. I don't disclose that each of those links is an affiliate link. I don't even create the links myself. I let Amazon do it. So why does that feel OK, while the thing with V7N doesn't? I guess it's because I figure anybody seeing one of those links knows that it's an affiliate link. There's nothing sneaky about it (is there?), but with V7N, I feel like there is something sneaky going on. And sneaky doesn't really fit in with what this blog is all about -- making money online without having to get involved in a bunch of sneaky or shady stuff.

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The Value of Precious Metals

Disclaimer: This is a Blogitive sponsored post.

I haven't accepted any offers for sponsored posts at Blogitive before, and almost skipped this one too. But then I read the "web release" associated with this site, and the story it told hooked me enough to want to click the link and find out more about it. So I thought I'd share:

Remember when gas was only 25-cents a gallon? You could take a dollar down to the gas station and buy four gallons for a buck! At that time our dollar was backed by REAL money, real silver. Guess what? That same amount of silver still buys four gallons of gas! That just shows that real money like gold and silver holds its value and it is the green paper money that is now worth a lot less. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, you realize that gas, food, and almost everything else has NOT gotten more expensive. It only seems that way because the value of the green paper money is worth less and less and so it takes more and more of it to buy the same goods and services. Most people think prices have gone up, but in reality: it is the value of the US dollar that has actually gone down.

Now personally, I'm not old enough to remember when gas was 25 cents a gallon, but I did a bit of research, and back that was the price back in the mid-1950's. Then I did a bit more research, and found out that if you bought that gas with a silver dollar coin, or a $1 silver certificate (redeemable for a silver dollar coin), those 4 gallons of gas would cost you 0.7734 troy ounces of silver (I'm talking about real silver dollars, not the ones from the 1970's with Pres. Eisenhower on them that were made of a copper-nickel alloy). And it turns out that today 0.7734 troy ounces of silver is worth about $10 -- enough to buy 4 gallons of gas and even get back a little change!

With the price of gold at record highs, I don't know that it's the ideal time to buy a bunch of coins or gold bars or something, and I can't afford to buy the kinds of quantities they sell at Monex, but the idea of investing some of my online earnings in precious metals (even if it's in the form of old silver coins) is definitely intriguing.

Tags: gold, gold standard, gold coins, silver coins