Shawn is the main bread winner for this family. He goes to work five days out of the week, tries not to strangle people through the phone and comes home five days out of the week tired, hungry, and with some awesome stories about his day. I putter about online all day, living the glorious internet star life. I get to respond to e-mails and comments, clean up cat poop, wash socks, cook supper, make the bed or completely vegetate and become fatter should I like.
Occasionally, that tickles the wee corners of my brain. I know that I could and that I should be doing something to help the household earn a little extra—because frankly, like several few millions of Americans, we’re in debt up to our asses.
The idea to earn money for doing something that you love; blogging or writing or simply reviewing as well as expressing an opinion isn’t a new idea for us in the great wide internets. But I have a small problem with most blogs centered on making money. Things such as Google’s ad sense tearing through the middle of interesting posts, blog block ads to the right of favorite tutorials and advertisements for subscribing to RSS everywhere you turn—it can be a real mess and a turn off for some, and it is for me. The idea of littering a self hosted blog with too much stuff (I mean, c’mon guys, look at my side bar already!) makes my eyelid twitchier than usual.
And that’s when I found, quite by accident payperpost.com and their blog network.
Payperpost.com connects bloggers like me with individual internet companies, advertisers and sites looking for product and website reviews from your own blog. It’s like word of mouth advertising on the internet, except bloggers can be paid for a job well done. I can’t think of a better way to go about it than that. I can pick and choose companies I am familiar with that sell products I’ve heard of and write about them—practice my horrid skills, and perhaps turn a little profit not only for myself but for the company. So last week I signed up with them and have been awaiting for them to approve my blog. Why not take the plunge, right?
Today, I opened my mail to see that 2phatgeeks.com has been approved. Yippie!
Yet, I can hear you thinking: But Mel! Does that mean your blog is going to turn into another one of those ad ridden blogs filled with link dropping posts and entries about make up and shoes that no one ever wears? Does that mean you’ll stop blogging about cat-poop and toilet humor?!
Let me be the first to give you an emphatic: NO!
Payperpost.com doesn’t drive its members to post, post, post, post—in fact, there’s no set limit. The only one that drives you to post is you-you-you. You pick what you want to write about, write about it in the time you need to, follow their instructions and then you post it. If you’ve got your mojo together and the advertisers like what you’ve written, you get paid. This, my friends, is very good for me. Because I like to blog what I want, when I want, how I want. And I certainly do not like filling my personal blog up with a bunch of sunshine and roses blown up butts about a product or website I’ve never visited, know about, or understand—just because there’s ten bucks into it for me.
So if you expect this blog to turn into another nightmare of pushing products you’ve never heard of by some fat-chick with geek glasses, who probably have never used them in her entire life—let me be the first to tell you that I will disappoint you greatly. This blog will always be about the sane insanity of my life with Shawn, now with the added rare bonus of me getting paid to blog about something I use.
As for the long term relationship with payperpost, we’ll see! I hear that it’s also a great chance to meet fellow bloggers and meet with those with similar tastes. This is the first time I’ve ever tried something like this, so I’ve got the usual bit of silly excitement and a million different questions.
For those of you who don’t advertise on your blog or website: would you if the opportunity came along?
Have any of you tried to earn a little extra with a blog of website that you own? How are you doing it and do you like it? What are your experiences with other companies and advertisers?
For those of you who aren’t new to payperpost.com, what have your experiences been like with them?
You may also like:
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 am
Kudos to you for stepping into this!
I don’t advertise — yet. But I’ve thought about it. Will be watching to see how it works out for you!