So you want to make money as a blogger?: Disclosure
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Ah, Disclosure.
Advertisers hate disclosure. Disclosure is a place on your blog where you tell the world that you’re being paid for some of your posts.
Most paid post brokers require some kind of disclosure somewhere on your blog. Not necessarily in-post, but someplace where it can be found.
Unfortunately, it’s a big red flag to Google’s algorithm as well as any review-hating blogger that wants to report you for posting paid links.
Here’s what you need to know:
- It is generally accepted that the FTC expects to see disclosure when you’re receiving value in exchange for writing a post.
- I’ve never seen anyone get hit for it, but I’m sure someone will leave a comment letting us know who got busted.
When I wrote paid posts regularly, I had disclosure statements. Better safe than sorry. When I stopped writing paid posts, I took down the archived posts, or no-followed the links, and removed my disclosure statements.
Popularity: 35% [?]
So you want to make money as a blogger?: Getting Started
Some of the single Moms at work have been asking how I make money with my little side business, so I figured it was time to take a step 
back from the rants about Google’s monopoly on search and their hypocrisy on the subject of paid links, and go back to a series of posts covering the fundamentals.
An early series of posts on this blog covered the subject more from the perspective of building a semi-authority blog in a niche and pulling in some advertisers:
How to become a profitable blogger - Part 1
How to become a profitable blogger - Part 2
How to become a profitable blogger - Part 3
These posts represent is a longer-term strategy, and frankly unless you hit a home run right out of the box you’re going to be a year or more getting to the point where advertisers are contacting you directly.
If your intention is more along the lines of making a little side income to take the kids out to dinner or pay the light bill this month, and your ambition is not to become the next Darren Rowse (although I highly recommend every post on his site because there is always something useful for A-listers down to Z-listers), it is just fine to set the targets a little closer.
Getting Started
Let’s assume you understand that a) Google doesn’t like paid reviews, and b) you don’t care about it. But, you want to make a little money after the kids are in bed for the night, and $10 or $20 a night works fine for your goals. You are going to need two things:
1. A blogging platform
2. A broker to find advertisers willing to pay for you to review their product or service.
First, a word about the ethics of paid reviews: Paid reviews have been written by bloggers since Google revealed the concept of a public page rank. The links you will be inserting in your reviews help advertisers rank for certain keyowrds in the search engines. So, take those reviews where you’re comfortable with the advertiser receiving this promotional benefit. Bloggers at every level of the food chain have written them or still write them, even some that rail against them. It is up to you how you “spin” a review. You might see yourself as a critic, writing a review (good or bad) based on your experience with the advertiser’s product/service/website. Or, you might see yourself as a copywriter, writing an advertorial. But know that there will always be some that say your review can’t be honest because it was paid for, and a big group that is writing them right alongside of you.
With that, I can say from my own experience that Blogger is a super-easy platform to start with. Some advertisers don’t like blogspot.com web addresses, but right now you just want a low-cost, easy way to get started, and your goals are modest. Save the domain names and paid hosting for your long-term blog, perhaps an authority blog in some niche if you are so inclined.
At this point, here is what I advise: Start multiple blogs. Make a list of subjects you think can write about, areas where you have some knowledge you are comfortable sharing or just something to say. Pick three, and start three blogs. Then, head over to some brokers and check their requirements for submitting blogs into their marketplaces. Here’s the companies that I’ve made money with:
Linkworth
PayPerPost (and be sure to check out their search-engine-friendly SocialSpark)
ReviewMe
Sponsored Reviews
These sites will require anywhere from 30 days and 10 posts to several months of consistent posting. Read carefully and understand what you will need to do to qualify. They don’t owe you the “right” to make money from their advertisers.
Some of these sites will feel like a better fit than others - each blogger is different and you should only work with the companies you feel comfortable. When my wife started, I advised her to start with Payperpost and Sponsored Reviews. They both have a decent number and variety of advertisers, and you’ll make “small-ball” money earlier than you will with Linkworth and ReviewMe.
With regard to the multiple sites - submit one at a time to start. Because the site is new, you’re only going to qualify for those $5-$10 posts. And, unless you’re completely under the radar, Google will penalize you. In the meantime, the other two sites you’ve kept free from paid links will probably have some nominal pagerank. When the first blog gets penalized you will be able to replace it with a “better” blog; because this blog has some pagerank, you can move up the foodchain a little, maybe start qualifying for the $10-$15 posts.
If this doesn’t sound like much, consider that most sites allow you to write multiple posts per day. Keep in mind that you usually have to separate each paid post with at least one unpaid post of your own, but that’s the cost of doing business. So, that $5-$10 just went to $15-$25 per night, starting out.
Finally, let me say that this isn’t always easy. The hourly rate is decent if you’re a good writer and can crank out a couple hundred words with ease (this unpaid post is over 900 words and took me about 60 minutes; a typical “paid post” is around 200 words). Certainly better than moonlighting at McDonald’s. Plus, if you get “hooked” on blogging, you’ll start approaching it more like a profession, educating yourself like many of us already have and taking up even more of your valuable time. So, consider your goals, and approach blogging for money in the proper frame of mind.
Popularity: 40% [?]
Pagerank (PR) update coming, and old penalties expiring
Per Matt Cutts:
“Hey folks, I wanted to let you know that new toolbar PageRank values should become visible over the next few days. I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites. “
It will be interesting to see how that works out. When my job changed and prevented me from banging away at the paid posts, I applied for reinclusion for this site, and a couple others. It seems Google immediately gives a site some PR back - all of the sites I submitted went to PR 2 within a week. Likely, Google has an automated rubber-stamp that gets a site back that far, with a human coming back sometime afterward to make sure you’re minding your Ps & Qs (& Gs).
Shoot, I can’t even find time to post AT ALL, much less write paid posts. But, that hasn’t stopped my ability to make money blogging. Gotta love passive revenue streams.
Anyway, my wife decided to clean up her favorite blog so I submitted it for reinclusion, then poked around Webmaster Central a bit and found a pleasant surprise:
According to their stats, this site is in Position 12 in the SERPs for the phrase “paid posts”. I signed out of my google account and checked the results on a couple different PCs and found this site at #4. For the singular phrase “paid post” (no “s”), it was somewhere around 37 or so. With personalized search at Google, it can be difficult to know where you stand for sure so if anyone wants to try the search and let me know where it stands when you look for it, please drop a comment below.
Of course, everyone should take time to notice that SponsoredReviews.com has an Adsense ad in the sidebar of the search result for that phrase. So, Google’s hypocrisy is alive and well.
‘Course, with my schedule these days, big G could remove the penalties and pop this site to a PR 5 and I’d still have a tough time leveraging and monetizing this site just because of a lack of time. I probably ought to explore selling, but I have no idea how to appraise a site that is no longer monetized. Anyone? Anyone?
Popularity: 42% [?]
My top 5 ways of finding blog post ideas
Bloggers occasionally go through periods where we don’t know what to write about. I’ve been in this place for a couple weeks now, since starting a new job. The more “newsy” blogs I maintain are affected the most, since I can’t keep up with the world during the work day anymore.
So, what do I write about? Where do I go for ideas? Here’s my top 5 ways of finding blog post ideas:
1. My logs. I check my analytics logs to see what people are searching for when they hit my blog. From here, I have three options: Give them more of the same, give them what they were looking for but didn’t find, or give them something related.
2. My RSS feeds. The blogosphere is an incestuous place. Lots of people ripping off lots of other people. Scrapers and thieves abound. Rather than go that approach, I look for posts that inspire me in some way to provide my own thoughts. I might react to a post and continue the discussion. I might think I can do a better job providing better information. Or, I might just want to give some link-love and tell everyone to go read something interesting.
3. Google Trends. There are a lot of sites that do nothing but monitor Google Trends and throw up a couple quick posts each day just restating something said on another site simply to get hits from Google searchers. It works, to a certain extent. But, that’s more of a tactical use rather than a strategic use. I use it to brainstorm ideas. Of course, I want to post what people want to read on a lot of my sites, so this is a great tool. But, I probably only use it 5 or 6 times a month. It just helps me generate ideas and it would work better for traffic if I did it in a more timely manner, but I really try to use it for more of my quality ideas rather than quick-crap.
4. Paid-post marketplaces. You don’t have to get paid to write about something in a marketplace if it inspires you. You also have the freedom to reference any site with any anchor text. An added benefit is these are frequently profitable subjects on which to write, as evidenced by the fact that someone is paying for bloggers to do so.
5. People-watching. I’m an introvert. But, I like being around other people, so I’m always watching them, eavesdropping, responding to questions, and imagining what their lives are like. I’ve often seen or heard something funny, cool, or outrageous and thought, “I HAVE to blog THAT!”
Where do you get your ideas?
Popularity: 50% [?]
Making blogging adjustments for lifestyle changes
Yes, things have been pretty light around here lately. I started a new job and moved to a new state, and this has limited all things web-related for me. But, the job is definitely worth spending a little less time online, and has changed my approach to reviews.
Oh, I’m still doing them and still believe in the model. I just don’t have time (or the appropriate firewall settings at work) to be monitoring opportunities across multiple marketplaces, so I’ve moved into a less proactive mindset where I’m only writing reviews on request, on a limited number of blogs where it makes sense (read: makes the most money). This has moved me more towards sites like ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews and Linkworth. I never had many inquiries from PPP-Direct, but with SocialSpark kicking in I need to get involved in the community again and get back to networking because everything I’ve seen shows me that the platform will outperform the old PPP-Direct for advertiser-initiated reviews.
Popularity: 57% [?]
Stumble is not Digg
I have a new domain up and running that is in the middle of a Stumble explosion, to the extent that it is currently my highest-trafficked site just one week into a concerted effort to promote. I posted a silly video, a funny commercial from Europe, and a bunch of people liked it and a couple didn’t. Here’s something I’ve noticed from having been through a couple of these big Stumbles:
All thumbs up sucks for traffic. Well, really, it’s ok for traffic, but if you want to really see some numbers then Stumble is just like anything else - a little controversy seems to go a long way.
Case in point: the video I posted is from metacafe, using Embed code provided by Metacafe and modified only to add “nofollow” tags because it’s a commercial and this is a Google world we live in…
Ahem…
So, some guy who has Stumbled something like 17,000 pages accuses me of stealing the video. First off, real discerning guy, stumbling 17,000 pages… Second, I used code provided by Metacafe, which gets the uploader of the video more plays and provided attribution to the uploader and to Metacafe.
It’s called “Viral Marketing”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. The company that produced the video WANTS me to embed it in my blog. That’s the whole reason for uploading it to a site like Metacafe or YouTube. They want eyeballs.
As for someone not liking it and giving it a thumbs-down… good! It sure seems to help! I understand that the algorithm is theorized to take take into account the velocity of the reviews, and apparently it either doesn’t distinguish between thumbs-up and thumbs-down, or the algorithm may measure a diversity of opinion to drive traffic. Either way works.
Some people seem to think by giving a site a thumbs-down they are burying it, a la Digg. Stumble uses the thumbs up to learn what YOU like and present YOU with more like it, and a thumbs-down to learn what YOU don’t like and present YOU with less like it. Giving a thumbs-down is your decision. Just understand that you’re not killing the post.
Indifference kills the post.
Popularity: 53% [?]
Focus group video
Colleen posted the video of our focus group with then-PPP, now IZEA, from something like 6 months ago. I’m the male blogger with hair. I didn’t hear any of my insightful comments, but trust me, I was brilliant. In the video, all I do is nod my head thoughtfully and giggle like a schoolgirl.
The only “thing” of mine that really made it in the video was a shot of me at 3:10 wearing a sombrero taking a picture with Ted, who is wearing a viking hat with blond braids.
No, we weren’t drinking. That’s just how I roll.
Also, be sure to stick around for the outtake in the closing credit.
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Oh yeah, be sure to check out a great piece of linkbait and diggbait from Colleen: New from Old Navy - crusty, vaginal discharge pants!
Popularity: 55% [?]
Town Hall Chat With Ted Murphy, IZEA CEO
Ted Murphy, IZEA CEO, held a town hall chat with bloggers this evening. I clipped a few key points that were of interest to me (I think you can tell from the chat where I am focused), along with some Q&A from a few other bloggers:**
Bob: when will social spark beta testing begin?
Ted Murphy: I have a meeting about that friday morning. I hope to know more then.Tim @ Bloggerista: What is the advertisers’ feedback to nofollow in socialspark?
Ted Murphy: Some good, some bad. the seo’s don’t like ti much, but the regular advertiser have no problem with it. my guess is that 98%+ of all online ads have no-follow, most advertisers aren’t looking for seo, they are looking for clicks and sales.brettbum: Has any progress been made with Google or Matt Cutts or did everyone agree to not quite agree?
Ted Murphy: There is still some potential there, but there are definately some issues we don’t agree on. I want to do right by Google but they need to have a uniform application of policies.Tim @ Bloggerista: If advertisers are looking for clicks and sales, is socialspark (and us) going to be competing with affiliate programs? Are they responsive to the buzz marketing sales proposition?
Ted Murphy: it is a blended value proposition. for someone like a car manufacturer I can sell on the creation of the post alone. Would you pay $15 to have someone explore and research your vehicle and write 250 words. That is as good as it gets whithout having you go to the dealership. For other advertisers it is more about the clicks and direct sales. each advertiser has their own metricsryan: Are there plans to release ROI rank on a seperate site, like Real Rank?
Ted Murphy: ROIRank will be part of IZEAranks and will have an API like RealRank.Tim @ Bloggerista: You don’t have to answer it this if you don’t to, but are you holding back any big-brand advertisers so socialspark makes a splash (instant credibility)?
Ted Murphy: there are a few big advertisers that are lined up for SS. we have been getting some really great feedback.mistipurple: getting advertisers from asia? you have a huge market waiting to be tapped.
Ted Murphy: not a ton from asia, but 10% of business coming from the UK.
Key takeaways:
- “most advertisers aren’t looking for seo, they are looking for clicks and sales”
- “it is a blended value proposition. for someone like a car manufacturer I can sell on the creation of the post alone. Would you pay $15 to have someone explore and research your vehicle and write 250 words. That is as good as it gets whithout having you go to the dealership.”
- “there are a few big advertisers that are lined up for SS”
This makes sense when you consider the largest brand-name advertisers that IZEA wants to reach. For instance, Ford doesn’t necessarily require SEO, but they wanted to get buzz going for the Ford Scholars program and bloggers stepped up. Same goes for many of the movie studios - it’s more about buzz. From my experience, these advertisers are spending in big chunks with IZEA. While everyone has their individual preferences, these are the advertisers I enjoy writing about and embrace their opportunities.
**All clipped chat is unedited, typos and grammatical errors included
Popularity: 69% [?]
An easy way to get custom-printed mailing labels
I first found Vistaprint in 2003 when I needed business cards in the wake of a job loss.
I appreciate the ease with which Vistaprint allows me to order my print needs. There are always plentiful stylish templates, and I’ve also ordered cards using my own design. But, I’m a sucker for the free products, where you’re only paying for shipping.
I’ve also received mailing labels / address labels as part of past promotions. My wife loves there, because she handles paying our bills.
I admit it. We still pay bills by snail-mail. No electronic bill paying when we’re given the option. We had a bad experience with a mortgage payment that disappeared between banks. Nothing like having your home inching closer to foreclosure to shake your faith in technology.
There are three ways to design an address label at Vistaprint:
- Browse or search for a design template by industry or style
- Upload your own design
- Use the Vistaprint design wizard to create a custom label
You can play around with the various options before ordering, so go on over and try it out. There are also always great special, so be sure to check those out as well. As I said, I’m a customer multiple times over, and I can recommend the products and service firsthand.
Popularity: 56% [?]
Pulling together the Google penalty threads
Let’s tie the various posts I’ve written over the past few months together into some coherent form, shall we?
In October, I pointed out that using human reviewers to penalize websites for selling links was unfair, given that this is a highly subjective process that can’t possibly address all, or even a majority of link-sellers. One especially egregious loophole certain A-list bloggers were attempting to slide though were the monthly “Thank you” posts, complete with DoFollow links. This has recently been addressed by several of these A-listers in an attempt to come into compliance before losing their livelihoods, although the market has now been deprived of competition for advertising dollars.
This last point is critical to understanding Google’s motivation and the insidious nature of the company’s monopolistic business practice. Because Google sells the top search results in key searches, websites that sell links that allow other websites to rank for those key searches are deemed a competitive threat. When link-ad sales were done directly between the advertiser and publisher, the threat was not seen as significant; as soon as the market began to organize into marketplaces like PayPerPost, Google could see the potential for siphoning significant advertising dollars from Adwords.
Google’s argument is that search results must be kept relevant for searchers. But a company can pay for one of the top 3 spots in key searches on Google, thus skirting the “inbound-links-as-a-measure-of-relevancy” requirement (Seriously, Ditech and Lending Tree are more relevant than Bank of America? Who knew?). In so doing, Google destroys its own argument. It also speaks volumes about Google’s true motivations when it is revealed that Google did not get its own house in order with regard to paid links, before penalizing their competitors.
In the past month, whispers have grown louder about the supposedly penalized sites continuing to pass PageRank, causing me to wonder if advertisers are receiving great deals from publishers that have reduced their prices in the belief that a lower toolbar PageRank passes less link juice. Later in the month, Andy Beard accused Google of manipulating public and advertiser opinion by showing that the Google Directory displays what appears to be the internal PageRank, which is different from Toolbar PageRank, and I demonstrated that search engine traffic on my websites has grown despite a significant penalty.
In summarizing these various posts, I hope I succeed in painting a picture of a company that does not “walk the walk” with regard to their “Do No Evil”. Top search engine results are available to the highest bidder, and anyone with the chutzpa to compete with Google must be stifled.
Popularity: 100% [?]