PayPerPost and Google PageRank
Another acceptable title would have been: “Google Really Did Knock My PageRank Because I Did PPP!”
Mari found this post on the Blog Herald that seems to explain what Mari had an inkling of earlier.
Mari now feels entirely justified in having quit PPP. Not only was Mari’s PageRank knocked down to zilch, and the whole dodgy inner battle of blog advertising to game Google that Mari refers to as splogvertising, but Mari was forgetting why she started blogging in the first place. It wasn’t to make money. In fact, Mari is still, after making about $370 with PPP, in the hole as far as paying for her blogging habit.
This is a pretty ridiculously long post, so get a drink before you click that link.
Mari’s Blogging History
You see, go get some popcorn, this will take a while Mari started out on BlogDrive, blogged since February 2004 until February 2005 for free, then had a paid account with them for six months at $10 a month. Mari then got her first domain (ohayou-morning.net) for $130 bucks for a year in July 2005, then got Mt for $35 for the first year in June 2006. Since May 2007, Mari has been paying $10 a month to keep Mt. Mari also registered four domains for herself, and three for hostees who won a contest. Adding that all up: 60+130+35+80+70= $375 Oh, we’re counting 8 months for the $10 per month hosting for Mt because Mari already paid the $10 for December.
See, kids? Splogvertising doesn’t pay. Enough.
Breaking All Ties: The Relationship Went Sour
Just like a messy breakup, you may find you have forgotten to remove all your ex’s stuff from your apartment. Mari just remembered to remove that stupid spammy javascript bit PPP makes you insert in your blog footer. Mari also just remembered to go back through the Sponsored Posts she archived and remove the links and images. Oh, and Mari is inserting this disclosure at the bottom of each post: “This was a godawful Sponsored Post.”
Heh. Mari is the bitter girlfriend, and PPP was Mari’s pimp.
Not Trying To Start Trouble, Just Stating Opinion
Now, Mari knows a lot of the things Mari will say in the coming months about her ex PPP may be rather bitter, but Mari is not saying “OMGz everyone who does PPP sucks.” The bloggers who do PPP do not suck. In fact, Mari has never physically met anyone else who does PPP, so Mari can’t judge the bloggers themselves. However, Mari can judge the blogs and the posts within.
Semi-unintentionally Avoiding PPP Blogs
Mari generally has an instant aversion to a blog that does PPP. Mari surmises it is because most PPP posts don’t fit in well with a blog’s normal content. Face it, posties. Unless your URL is http://iloveplasticsurgery.com/, your blog content most likely doesn’t lend itself to advertising that plastic surgery center in LA.
Doesn’t it make you feel like you’re lying to your audience? Trying to push this crap that you’d otherwise never link to in a million years?
Why It’s Splogvertising
Sure, sometimes sponsored posts fit in perfectly with the blog, but those times are very rare. Mari doubts Stephen King could fit 60 PPP posts per month into a blog seamlessly. There just aren’t enough things that are relevant to your blog are looking to advertise in this manner, posties. The bands you like and the products you buy realize that PPP is not a respectable or financially advisable manner of advertising. Putting the past moral conflicts regarding PPP aside, most people have no clue what a blog is. Though there are millions of bloggers, and millions of readers, Mari would guesstimate that 90% of the Earth has no clue what a blog is. Try asking people on the street in front of a grocery store what a blog is. Most of them have no clue. Blogs are a very limited advertising market, and thus, blog advertising is for the most part, not very marketable. Sure, big-name blogs and newspaper websites can get respectable advertisers, but those blogs are a very, extremely small portion of the blogging world. In fact, sometimes when a respectable advertiser begins a PPP campaign, they realize what idiots they’ve been and immediately pull the “opp”.
Face it, all you’re going to get are a bunch of questionable sites hoping that spamming Google will increase their “business”. They are spamming your blog without any concern for anything but advertising, on one of the most well-known search engines. Really, these companies don’t give a hoot about what you write.
Spinning Out Of Control
Paid posting can easily get out of control. Some bloggers need to be reminded to keep paid posts at a low, low ratio, far less than 1:1, in order to preserve blog quality. There are some bloggers out there that just post the required non-sponsored interim posts in equal amounts with the paid posts, and no matter how well your other posts are written, it seems dodgy. Mari understands that sometimes you just can’t get hired, even at McDonald’s, and that PPP is your only way to keep the lights on. Okay, yeah, that’s a possible situation. In fact, Mari was IN that situation, but Mari made a choice. Mari decided to get a real job rather than further ruin her tiny, crappy, no-name blog.
Really! No Offense Meant
As holier-than-thou as that sounds, that’s not how Mari means it. Mari’s blog was extremely incompatible with advertising (read: sucked/sucks/will always suck), and Mari was not skilled at all at writing paid posts. Mari does not feel more morally sound or more righteous than, say, Joana of Nanashi-Inc, who does sponsored posts. No, in fact, Joana’s posts (and sites in general) are much better than Mari’s. The posts on Joana’s blog are more frequent, and stay on the blog’s message.
“Homie, I’m Finding Myself Less Attracted To You Physically”
It makes Mari a little sad to realize that she’s losing interest in that blog just because sometimes there’s a “Buzz” post on the front page, or that Mari realizes the link she just looked clicked was sponsored. It’s not that Joana is not skilled at writing paid posts. No, in fact, Mari used to read Joana’s blog for an example on how to write paid posts, because it took a while for Mari to realize what was sponsored and what was not.
It’s Not You, You Just Work For The Evil Corporation
Mari’s problem with paid blogging is that the advertisers themselves (the people paying for the link) are underhanded. These people want to spam Google in a desperate attempt to raise business. Mari can’t throw all the blame on the bloggers, because who doesn’t want some extra money? With all the splogvertising companies popping up left and right, it’s pretty easy to get at, too.
When Quality Control Gets Thrown Out The Window
Mari can blame the bloggers when they let the quality of their paid posts drop to something that Mari could see herself writing (read: blatant advertising, see: this post), and when they let their regular posting get infrequent. That’s how paid posting ruins your blog. It turns a hobby into work.
Blogging Is Your Hobby, Not Your Job
People look to hobbies for leisure time. Trying to make money off of your hobbies is a nice idea, and some people can do it well, even turn it into a job, but those people are an almost insignificant percentage of the blogging world. It’s not so easy for those of us with less-popular blogs and less time to blog to make it work. Not everyone can be a star. No, the problem is when these little bloggers stop caring about the hobby and only care about the money. Then they’ve lost their way.
Situations like that make Mari sad, because that’s what happened to her, and it’s all too common. PPP recently enacted some rules to try to cut down on that loss of content quality, but there’s only so much they can do. It’s up to the bloggers, and not everybody knows how to write a blog with paid posts well, and not everybody has time to.
People Just Don’t Like Advertising
Anyone reading this have a Tivo? Did anyone reading this watch The Simpsons Sunday? People will skip over advertising when they can. People don’t like being told what to do, and that’s what advertising does. It tells you what to do with your money. Unfortunately, for those PPP bloggers that get a little too excited with their paid posting, people will begin to skip over their blogs simply because of the advertising. It’s just like Tivo. People will skip the advertisements when at all possible.
It Gets Confusing
The difference between that episode of House sitting on Mari’s Tivo and a PPP blog is that on TV, you can tell without a percent of doubt what is and is not the main show. Some PPP advertisers request that a paid post not be noted as a paid post within the post, rather, the blogger is required to have a Disclosure policy. On blogs, most readers are not as familiar with the regular content as they are with the characters on a TV show, when it’s hard to tell things apart, some readers just stop reading. People don’t like to be confused.
It Matters Not
With all these reasons, it’s no surprise as to why there is a general bias against PPP in the blogging world. People will generally just be asses (the sort with four legs and a tail) and look down their nose at PPP bloggers. Unless you live under a rock, you know that.
Despite that, more and more people are doing paid posts. The lure of getting paid for your hobby is extremely strong. For some, the siren-song of a few George Washingtons is too strong to ignore to maintain the complete integrity of something so trivial as a blog. Nothing that anti-PPP bloggers will write can change that.
Mari realizes that even though her intent is not to offend, some people will not read and will just be offended. If you are offended by this, please keep a cool head in any comments you send to Mari. Remember, behaving like an ass makes you look like an ass.
CHECK THIS OUT! Swaymyway.com: The Google Smackdown: An alternate view. This article is an excellent take on this issue.
Blogging, Opinion, PayPerPost, Tips 
28 November 2007, 00:24
blogdrive, google pagerank, mari's blogging roots, ppp kills your pagerank, ppp sucks, splogvertisingYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Well, I took your advice and grabbed a drink, settled in with some popcorn(aka food) and read the post. I ended up finishing the food halfway through it and the drink at the very first part. I’m terrible at preserving lol.
Anywho, back to desired topic. I totally agree with you. There are some people out there that just go blog-sponsoring crazy. It sucks but that is really all I have to say. Its perfectly fine if you want to make money off your hobby, just don’t make it your everything. If you get what I’m saying lol. I’ve never used PPP - mostly because I don’t need it nor do I want to be ruled by a corporation as greedy as PPP appears to be.
Very controversial issue…one of my favourites lol. I love a good argument!
Kudos! xx
Aw. That wasn’t that bad.
I thought it’d be longer. XD
Well, the lasting thing is: SPAMADS ARE EBIL. :3
Fortunately, I had already made a cup of tea before reading this post… and wow, it was incredibly long but good. I totally agree with everything you said. I considered all those points when I decided not to engage in “paid to post” schemes.
The length of this post rivals my stuff! Bwahaha.
Coincidentally, I just wrote a post announcing that I’m going to try to write shorter, less cryptic posts to retain first-time visitors who seem to flee and never return. I briefly mentioned that I refuse to do PPP. I’ve added godawful fugly Google AdSense. Sigh, I have to pay for all my domain names and web hosting.
As for Joana’s site… I frequent it, despite her PPP stuff. She writes regularly enough that there’s a good ratio. But yeah, I do know what you mean… I hate advertising on sites (including mine). The other day, my sister expressed her dissatisfaction at the load time because of ads on my site and requested that I remove them. I replied, “Will you gimme the money?” Hehe.
Ouch, PR of 0? I’ll probably get in trouble too as I have a few Text Link Ads on my site… but I did that AFTER the Google PR updates. I’ll remove them in a few months… before the next Google PR update, bwahaha.
I feel like doing a FAKE PPP post, just for the fun of it.. where I pretend to be plugging non-existent products… then I’ll link the product names to my fave bloggers.
You’ll be in there. “Beef Jerky” or “Rhynoplasty in Philadelpia”… pick. Bwahaha.
L8tr days. (Jeez, this comment is longer than your post. Ooops.)
I hate spam too. Love the pink layout~
I’ve never really seen the point in using PPP. Blogging to me is a hobbie, and I don’t really need paying for it as yet.
Nice arguement you put forward though
I must say that I agree with most of what you say, even though I’m a PPPer (sorry, I can’t say postie..it’s silly!).
I’ve been a member of PPP for a while - months in fact and I’ve only ever done 10 posts for them because I won’t write about something that I don’t already use, know about, want to rely information about.. etc.
You (should) never find posts on my blog about loans or plastic surgery or garage storage solutions because they’re not things that I’d write about normally. I’m just blogging to vent and pass on funny, informative random stuff that I find online - I just happen to get paid for 3% of what I post. It’s been that way (minus the money part) since I started blogging when I was 13 - that’s 8 years!
Uh, this might not make sense - I’m running on Red Bull here!
That wasnt really a long post, I expected more
lol
I agree that PPP is stupid, I did a post about gambling the other day - consdering the fact that I’m 16, it made me LOL
But to get some extra money, and if someone is willing to lose some of their PR its a good thing for them. I hate it when people post loads of sponsored posts though, kind of ruins the blog.
I didn’t read all of the entry because I don’t have time right now, but I am going to come back and read it because this PPP/Page Rank thing is interesting to me at the moment. You already read my recent blog entry on the matter I believe.
But I just wanted to say real quick, did you know that you can submit to google for a reconsideration now that you have removed all the ‘offending’ material? So far there’s not been any issue with people getting their page rank back as long as they admit wrongdoing.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843
It wasn’t too long. The titles make it easier to read.
I’ve always thought of doing PPP, but part of me thinks its selling out. But.. it’s easy money. I’ve never used it because Wordpress forbids it as well, even though some users risk that, and I wouldn’t want to risk my account being taken away.
Good arguement. I hope people will read it and learn from it!
@April
Yeah, Mari totally agrees. When bloggers make money the sole and all-consuming focus of their blog, it devalues it. Only a handful of people succeed at not devaluing their blog when they start PPP or a similar program.
PPP seems greedy to you? …never thought of it that way, but yeah, they kinda are.
PPP just recently approved me for their website, yet I find myself not really all that interested as I first was when I signed up. The fact of the matter is, you’re right, sometimes the sponsored entries that people post are irrelevent to their complete entry. I have done some blog advertising and I never choose anything that doesn’t have any revelance to anything that concerns me or is on my mind. I wrote a few posts starting out and realized how very stupid it was of me and how stumped I was trying to put it together. Besides all of those obvious flaws, people just don’t read advertising posts because most the time they can’t relate to any degree. I suppose things would be a lot easier if people could at LEAST get paid to post entries that contain subjects having to do with society or certain universal matters in the world. That would be quite interesting.
@Fruity
Yeah. Mari was imitating Fruity. Sortof. Mari let her mind wander, but could never match the almighty crypticness that Fruity can write with!
That’s so hilariously clever! Now, Mari wants to do that for her first April Fools blog disguise and post. But Mari should think of something else…
Lmao, Mari would take Beef Jerky. Just because it would be unendingly funny. XD
Good thing I have a cup of hot choco right now as this blog is really long but juicy still!
I joined BlogToProfit once and I never regretted it. I never let it get into the way I ran my blog. I just looked at it as a treat for myself. I never renewed it though. I only did a round and I said it was enough.
As of for Joanna’s site, I don’t really go there that much but I do read her posts sometimes. She is a good writer and her PPP posts are incomparable!
@Becky
It took Mari a long time to write, so Mari figured it would take a really long time to read!
GASP! A 16 year old doing PPP posts?! Tsk tsk.
Eh, can’t blame you. Mari would have done PPP whether or not she was legally able.
Just like everything, it needs to be in moderation.
@Starlet
Yes! Your entry was really good! I should have linked to it, but didn’t think to. I think I will now.
Yeah, Mari already did. Mari just said flat out that she did PPP and TLA and they restored Mari’s PR. Mari’s back up to a 3.
[...] shocked and angry when she received this message while editing an email address out of a URL field (BECKY!, lol) about 20 minutes [...]
@Cari
Really? Good, that’s what Mari was hoping for.
Just to clarify, in case you’re confused (you kinda almost nearly sounded like you were), WordPress.com forbids it, not WordPress.org. Mari got a comment from Matt, the face of WordPress, (caused by a trackback Mari didn’t realize she left on his site) once while Mari did PPP. It’s not like everyone at WordPress and Automattic immediately shuns all hosted WordPress users who do PPP. They don’t like it, but it’s not like they’ll forgo all common courtesy. Matt was still nice enough to leave a stupid little kid like Mari with a stupid little post (which was, at the time, surrounded by PPP posts on the main page) like that a comment.
Then again, he’s
probablydefinitely a busy guy, so he probably didn’t click around. (WHEW! Mari wouldn’t want any big name bloggers to see her site in such a state of disrepair as it has been since forever.)@Shannon
Mari tried to choose topics that were relevant to her blog, but honestly, Mari’s blog is so…unfocused that there is really no way to advertise on it.
Oh, that would be the dream. Writing about things that mattered and getting paid. Philosophical Post Pals rather than Pay Per Post. XD
HOLY SHEET! Mari should start that *dead serious*. But…Mari would never be able to pay anyone. XDDDD
If some company ever did that, they’d still have some spammy gambling link in it or something. *sigh*
@Enzo
Mari looked at Blog to Profit, but decided against it. By the time Mari had heard of that, Mari was starting to hate paid posting.
Her site is awesome. Mari goes there to lurk and read whenever she’s bored on her laptop.
@Lisa Marie
…I bet you’re a busy person, but come on now, Mari wouldn’t leave a comment like that on your post.
*sigh*
Wow, I haven’t had a chance to get to anyone’s blogs lately, I’ve been so busy with school and stressing out over graduation it isn’t funny. But I made it (at last) despite the close call with one class. *ahem* You’ll have to read about that…or wait, I think you did…?
Anyway, yeah, I’ve become rather disappointed with them myself. I feel as though I worked hard for them and got kicked in the teeth for it. The point was to blog about things you love, but more and more I see less things that I love and more than looks like inbox spam. It’s really pathetic. My monthly income from them dropped like a son of a gun and I pretty much stopped working with them. I like keeping up with another company, but that’s because I can actually receive the product I review and blog about it. Before I tried to blog honest opinions about products or services, but when the advertisers themselves start saying things like “mention how fast our delivery was and what products you ordered” when I clearly did not buy anything then it’s time to go.
It’s a shame, it was great working with them in the beginning, and occasionally when they send me a product to try and to review I’ll do it, but for the most part we’re estranged.
Now my frequent blog posting is 99.9% non-sponsored. O.O How did that happen? I’m still dishing out the frequent posts somehow! lol
(I hope you don’t mind me going through older entries - my boss isn’t in today ;))
I have always taken a very public stand against PPP posts. I have openly and willingly criticised people who take part in PPP. I feel it devalues blogging on the whole, not just the blogs of individual “posties”. I find myself having to question every recommendation and every link - “is this a PPP?” - because of the underhanded behaviour of some. So, to find well written entries like this one (and Starlet’s) from the other side of the fence on the negative impact, and Google’s right to do what they like.. well, it makes my heart smile
[...] Jem’s comment on Mari’s last PPP rant got Mari thinking. Then typing. After about 5 minutes (plus 20 minutes needed to dismiss the fire department from the false alarm the smoke coming out of Mari’s head caused), Mari had post material. Voici un post. [...]
@Jem
Mari loves when people comment on posts that actually interest them. It’s the highlight of Mari’s day!
…Mari had a really long rest of a response to this comment, but turned it into a post.