PayPerPost Review

While researching how much the average blogger earns and how they earn it, I ran into PayPerPost.com . The name pretty much says it all – when your website is selected by advertisers, you get paid to post the information they request on your blog.

It sounded interesting, so I signed up. Here is what I found:

Opinions – Although you are supposed to be allowed to express your own honest opinion on your blog, some advertisers specifically request a positive review. This is understandable. – Why would somebody pay you to dis their company?

Linking – Google has been known to penalize websites that sell links. I have been told that if you want to follow Google’s rules, any paid for links to other websites should use the “nofollow” tag. This tag allows visitors to follow the links but tells Search engines not to. Several PPP (PayPerPost) advertisers specifically request “followed” links. … I personally am not comfortable with this kind of rule-breaking.

Results – After a few weeks with PayPerPost I see myself receiving an average of 3 or 4 “opportunity matches” per week. Each one pays between $1 and $4 per fairly short post. But an “opportunity match” isn’t the same as being hired to write a post. And although I have clicked the “I’m interested” button a few times in hopes of being paid to do an actual post – my best performing blog (which gets thousands of views per month) has never been selected.

Validity of topics – I often feel that the offers I am getting would go better with an “in general” blog than with my blogs of highly targeted subjects. This may be partially because I have chosen to work in under-saturated markets.

Watch out for penalties – After a few weeks of being a PayPerPost member, I noticed that some of my best performing keywords (one of which which rank #2 out of 27 million results) dropped to to #7 or so. … True, I was still listed on the first page for most of my high performing keywords. But being #7 gets a lot less clicks than being #1 or #2.

The drop mentioned above could have been a coincidence. But I suggest anybody who values their search engine position proceed with caution. About 24 hours after I canceled my membership with PayPerPost, I checked my keywords again and saw that I was back to #2.

Closing Thoughts

I assume that bloggers get more opportunities once their first few posts are approved. And I have heard some PayPerPost success stories. (meaning some people say that they are happy with their earnings, but they did not tell me a dollar amount)

A few years ago (before I had a full time job and before my kid was in school), I probably would have lept at the opportunity to be part of a site like PayPerPost.  But as of now – it just isn’t for me.