BlogSire

I can safely say that my blog What A Load Of Bullshit is finally paying it’s way. Well actually it has been doing that for awhile because of a few benevolent advertisers, but to day I actually did my first paid post. Yep, and that is after everyone told me that no-one would pay for a post on a blog that had “Bullshit” as part of its title.

It just goes to show you how some people can actually look past the superficial coating of a blog that a name represents, and see the truly beautiful content that resides within.

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3.2

When you have more than one blog it is always a good idea to occasionally link to another of your posts as this does a couple very important things. The first thing is that it provides a link to that post, which is always good PR, and the second is that you may actually send some traffic that way as well. Naturally you do not want to overdo it and it is always best to link to what you think is your best posts.

Today I want to link to a post I did on what people thought was better, the stick shift or automatic gearboxes. Naturally I inserted a Poll so that I could keep track of the responses. I also included a funny little video to fill the ‘entertainment’ factor. If you have a few seconds, please take the time to complete the Poll

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3.2

I’ve been a member of SocialSpark for a little while and I have found two particular points that I am not happy with. The first is to do with the selection of opportunities. I picked one because it offered $16.50 for a 250 word post and I thought that was fair compensation, only to find out after completing it that I was only awarded $8. This is because,

When an Advertiser creates an Opp. in SocialSpark, they are now able to set a maximum and minimum price that they are willing to pay for each Sponsored Post. Please note that this price range will not be visible to the public, only the current offer price. Once an Opportunity goes live, the fun begins!

Fun my arse, more like a ripoff.

The problem lies in the fact that a lot of the time when taking an opportunity you are placed in a queue and although you may take the opportunity when it was advertised at say $30, by the time you get that opportunity the price might be only $10 and you have no idea until after the post is completed and you see the amount presented. I feel it would be a lot fairer if they told you the price on acceptance to see if you still wanted the task.

The other problem lies in the sponsorship sector of the site. Some of the popups and tags are bloody ugly and the same rule applies to that as the sponsored posts. I’ve read a lot of negative feedback within SocialSpark itself as well as it’s blog so I will just wait and see if they listen to the general public.

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2.9

This post is to thank all the people over at Aussie Bloggers Forum for helping me out with some Wordpress Theme adjustments at my Scenic Adelaide blog. The damn thing just wouldn’t work properly in Forefox and I was almost ready to change the theme when I decided to ask for help at Aussie Bloggers Forum!

A special thanks to Meg, Lani and Sephyroth for making the theme all that it should be. I will now proudly display the following forum button on all my blogs.

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2.9

As much as I love Wordpress I used to hate it every time they came up with a new upgrade. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the upgrades were necessary as they were either for security issues or they were for the betterment of one of the best blogging platforms every.

All the same it was a chore I dreaded until I found The Wordpress Automatic Upgrade Plugin. This plugin is unreal as it automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org and it does it using the 5 steps provided in the Wordpress upgrade instructions.

I was dubious at first and I tested it on a blog I rarely use, but to my surprise it works and I am so happy that I found it.

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2.9

When thinking about how much money I can make from different affiliates that I have joined I am reminded of an old proverb… you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. In my situation, by use of the right keywords and other SEO tricks I can lead a visitor to my website or blog but no matter what, I can’t make him click and if I am lucky enough to get a click out of him he may never purchase the product or service and unless it is a PPC I will not get paid.

Take for example just one of my affiliates which has, in total, received close to 4,000 impressions, from which I managed to get 41 clicks and 2 leads. Pretty damn dismal isn’t it?

This is the main reason that I am hoping that Pay Per Play will really take off, because once they go live in February 08 I will earn every time someone views one of my blogs or websites, which is as it should be. After all when an advertiser pays for his ads to appear on TV or Radio the owner of those places get paid before the ads appear so why shouldn’t we get paid in some small way for displaying ads on our sites?

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2.9

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I did a search on platform bedstoday and came across BedinaBox.com who have something called memory foam mattresses which is supposed to help to ease muscle and joint pain as well as providing the comfort needed for deep sleep and good health. Deep sleep, that is something that I can do with as I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately. I wonder why they call it memory foam mattress though?

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3.2

This is not a film review because I haven’t had the opportunity to see the film yet. Rather it is my reaction to an article in the paper titled, “Has Nicole, our golden girl of movies, become poison at the box office?’ This is because it hasn’t earned what everybody expected it would. It’s not a ‘box office hit’. What a lot of bullshit! They obviously used Nicole as the draw card, but just because takings are not what was expected I can’t see that you can blame it all on Nicole.

There could be a hell of a lot of other things that are at fault, like the script, publicity, the story line, shit the whole idea might have been crap. I don’t know and until I see the movie I can’t say, but what I can say is hands off Nicole, she’s our baby.

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2.9

As bloggers and webmasters we have always believed that achieving a good PageRank was a necessary factor for ranking well in Google search engines. This would be the main reason there was such a furor when Google down-listed so many blogs and websites including my own blogs.

This has hurt many a paid blogger for once they were downgraded they lost many paid opportunities which by and large meant the earning capacity of their blogs were greatly diminished. What are they to do though as for many being paid bloggers was a way of life and for many WAHM the main source of income.

I reckon that in time advertisers will realize that PageRank isn’t all that it is cracked up to be and that they may well hold something like the Alexa rank as being more important. Let’s face it, even though someone has a good PR does not necessarily mean that their site has a huge page view scenario and someone with a lower PR may well bring more exposure to their links.

I have noticed that even though my PR has been reduced to zero I am still hitting the front page on many Google searches. A few examples:

• four year old rides whale
• deal or no deal virtual game online a sponsored post
• bettercaring.com “wordpress” another sponsored post
• covermyboat a yep, another sponsored post great
• tradeshow booths sponsored post

These are just a few but all appeared in the top ten results of Google’s front page! Now I ask you, isn’t that what advertisers should be really interested, that the posts they paid for appear in this prime position? If that is so what make PageRank so damned important?

In case you are interested, I owe the high placements to choosing the right keywords and the way I structure titles and content.

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2.9

That’s right my good blogging buddies, Google has given you a choice, you can either be good little bloggers by not buying or selling links and hopefully get a good Page Rank or you can accept money for posts and get your arse kicked by way of losing your PR! It’s all in their “Google Webmaster Central Blog”

It tells you how to stay within their guidelines and everything, but unfortunately from reading their post you will learn that you can’t keep Google happy and be paid for your posts. So you see you have a choice to make, on the one hand you can make a fair bit of cash, and on the other you lose your PR.

Now I understand that Google wants to keep their search results ‘pure’ but with today’s technology there should be a way of factoring in paid posts. I think that responsible bloggers should not be penalized for taking paid assignments. I myself include all paid posts in a ’sponsored’ category so that my readers know I have been paid for my opinion and can act accordingly.

In regards to doing paid posts, I would suggest that if yours is a serious blog and your PR is important to you perhaps you would want to bow down and grovel to the Google gods, as for myself I will not be groveling to them and I will continue to do whatever paid posts that come my way. I believe that doing paid posts is a great profession and that it is only a matter of time before there is another system that rates bloggers that in not dependent on Goggles’ PR.

Oh, and just as an afterthought, I would like to add that I think is hypocritical of Google to penalize bloggers when they are quite prepared to run sponsored ads themselves.

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2.9