Mar 04
By Ryan McFarland in zieak.com
Over the past few months a lot of bloggers have been given the smackdown by Google. Google’s Pagerank is a measure of the incoming links to a site. The more links in the better the Pagerank. Advertisers know this. So they want websites (especially those with good Pageranks) to link to them. They are willing to pay more for a link from a site with a higher Pagerank.
In October, zieak.com went from a PR4 to a PR5 site. Looks like today it went from a PR5 to a PR3. How will this effect me? The only negative that i see is that i will have lower paying link opportunities. I have been aggressive about using PayPerPost lately (in case you have not noticed some of the odd links). I have taken 33 opportunities and have been paid or are due to receive within the next month just over $985. I have averaged $29.86 per post using their service. An extra $950 in income over a few months has been great. Should i kiss it goodbye?
Not quite yet. Look at this quote from the Izea blog from the 3rd of March.
We are now in the process of removing Google PR from PPP entirely, this has been fast tracked. PR is going to be replaced with backlink count. It is not a small change, it will take a few weeks given developer resource constraints.
So soon (”a few weeks”) the defining measure of a blog’s worth to advertisers using PPP will be inbound links. Here’s my current backlink count:
Out of curiosity i compared those numbers to another blog — one featured as the blog of the day on PayPerPost. She has 109 incoming links on Google, 6,489 on Yahoo site explorer, and 41 on Technorati. So it looks like other bloggers are linking to me plenty (relatively high Technorati count) but my Google (70 vs. 109) and Yahoo (4,330 vs. 6,489) counts are lower. Yet she appears to have one fifth the number of blog posts that i have. The secret? Commenting on other blogs. Especially blogspot blogs that are using blogger’s comment system. Looks like me encouraging Cena and Karna to use Haloscan must have bit me in the butt.
Feb 26
By Ryan McFarland in zieak.com
One of the things that has helped me write much more frequently lately has been the almighty dollar. I can sit down for an hour or so after work and make 30 or so extra bucks sometimes. Because of this site’s relatively high page rank (5) it qualifies for some decent opportunities. Sadly, every now and then i miss some good ones. The three posts listed below are from PayPerPost.
I missed out on $215 worth of posts. The gray background indicates that all the open opportunities to take the paid post were taken. You can only write three paid posts per day so i always log in, show qualified opportunities and then sort by payout. I don’t often bother with posts that pay less than $10. I also don’t take opportunities to write about something that i don’t think i can actually fit into the dialog of my site. I might be persuaded to talk about Swiss history or watching videos online for the right price though!
Feb 21
By Ryan McFarland in zieak.com
As you’re probably fully aware i do my best to never capitalize “i” unless it falls at the beginning of a sentence. I do follow the rule at work most of the time though — but on a personal level it just doesn’t feel right to indicate i am as important as a true proper noun. If we are self important why don’t we capitalize Me and We and Myself? My decision to defy the grammar rules has finally cost me some money.
I applied for a service that connects bloggers like myself to advertisers. BlogDistributor.com rejected my application and “found that it contains the following problem which must be resolved:
In order to have your Blog Certified with Blog Distributor, it must not contain misspellings. The following is a list of the misspellings that we found in your Blog: cant (2), im (4), i (54).”
Now, i take issue with considering the misuse of apostrophes and lack of capitalization “misspellings.” I am right there with them about the need to tidy up online writing. So yes, i am willing to write blog posts around specific paid topics as long as the content is mine. But no, i will not change who i am. Sorry BlogDistributor. I guess we can’t come to common ground on this one.
Jan 30
By Ryan McFarland in zieak.com
Wow. I know it is just a tally of the top earner for the day — but look at this graphic…
Yes, that Ryan is me. One of the greatest things about Wordpress is the way that i can schedule posts to take place in the future or the past. So last night i rattled off a few posts but one stipulation with this outfit is that you can’t have sponsored posts back to back. You also can not have picture posts or very short blog posts before or after. So this has actually helped me improve my post frequency and what i have to say. I just hope that the posts i am paid for still have enough of my own thoughts in them to not turn off my few dedicated readers. I don’t take the opportunities that are too restrictive. I also refuse to write for less than $10. My work on DIY Life will average more than that. I need to get a better feel for the types of things that they would like to see on the site so i can be a little more prolific on there.
Jan 25
By Ryan McFarland in zieak.com
Since September I have written 10 blog posts that were paid using PayPerPost or ReviewMe. The ReviewMe posts were from “campaigns” that are open to all members and the PayPerPost entries were ones that this site qualified for, i did, and then were accepted for payment. I do not apply for all posts that i am qualified for on PPP and the very low paying campaigns i ignore. Regardless, the graph below shows that there is a slow downward trend in the amount paid for posts. Even averaging out the purple line shows a slow decrease. I honestly had expected an increase in the amount paid over time as advertisers woke up to the possibilities of generating traffic with blogs.
Perhaps the market is saturating with blogs written specifically to cater to this bit of income.
patrick on 
Tiffany on 
Cece on 
