I got bling!

Today I scoured the PayPerPost website, and found an offer that didn't look too bad. They made no mention of any required PageRank, so I took the offer. I wrote a 50 word advertisement for the site, and banked $6.01! w00t!!!

I mean, I know, $6.01 for a 50 word piece of advertising, that's only 12.02 cents per word (actually a little less because I ended up with like 60 words, but I'll let it slide). I don't know if 12 cents a word is good or not, but it only took me about 15 minutes to check out the clients website and slap some words down saying what a great place it looked like. And, seriously, they have some cool stuff there (like thermal and heat seeker scopes).

You can read the advert here.

If you look at the advert, I would really appreciate any feedback you might have regarding my stunningly brillian copy.

As always, thanks for visiting!

PageRanks in a nutshell

Now that my oldest blog has been accepted by PayPerPost, I start looking through the offers available. I see quite a few with a restriction for "PR 4+" or "PR 3+" etc. I'm thinking to myself "what the heck is a PR and how do you get one?"

I start looking at the PayPerPost site and can find nothing. I check the help and everywhere else I can think of, but nothing on what PR is or how to get it. Then I run across another offer that wants blogs with a "Google Page Ranking of 1 or better." Okay, Page Ranking, PR that makes sense. Then it hits me, "what the hell is a page ranking and how do you get it?" That's when I look at the Google Toolbar in my FireFox browser and notice a little white and green rectangle under the words "PageRank". AHA! That is what they mean, of course, as I mouse over the white box while my page is displayed, it says 0/10. Well that stinks.

A quick Google search of "Google Page Rank" brings me several pages describing how page ranking works and the formulae that goes into it (like I would understand all that math stuff...I get confused just watching commercials for Numb3rs).

The best definition of how PageRank works I found at Wikipedia. This gives some good history, an layman's explanation as well as all those formulae and sigmas about how the rank is acheived. In simpleton's terms, your page is ranked based on how many pages link to it, in addition, the rank of the pages that link to yours is taken into account. So if a page ranked 10/10 has a link to your page, it carries more weight than a page ranked 1/10 that has a link to your page. You get a couple of extra points for big pages being linked to your site than for lesser-known pages being linked to your site.

In trying to find how to increase your page ranking, I came across some of those that are peddling ways to improve your page rank. These programs seem to run about $150. No way am I going to do that (the whole idea here is for extra income, not extra outflow). I don't know how well these work, and I'm not going to fork over the money to find out.

There are a couple of sites I did find that appear to have some steps to help improve one's PageRank.

Web Rank Info - they also have some other areas about Search Engine Optomization (SEO) that I haven't dug into yet.

WebDesign & Review - I think they guy also has an SEO site.

Long story short, the only valid way to get a higher PageRank, is to somehow get other people to link to your site. Preferably people with high page rankings. I don't know if blog rolls can help with this, but they certainly can't hurt. So try to get on as many blogrolls as you can would be my guess.

PayPerPost update

w00t! I just got an email that says my website (http://www.bigsbiling.com) has been approved. It seems like the archive work-around worked (just don't tell them PayPerPost folks, ok?).

As for Blogsvertise, I'm still waiting for any assignments. Although the Prince of Thrift tells me it can take a while for Blogsvertise to get in touch. We'll wait and see what happens (what else am I gonna do right?)

And thanks for visiting!

Things to come

Some things I want to post about in the near future (I have to write these down or else I'll forget).

• Technorati
• Blogitive
• Feedburner
• Blogrolling

And I think there are a few more which will get added to this list as I remember them.

Thanks for visiting!

Blogs of Topeka

I've started a "Topeka Blogs" blogroll at Blogrolling. If you would like to display this on your site, enter the following javascript into your blog template:

JAVASCRIPT:





RSS:





OPML:





PHP:





If you'd like to have your site added to the Topeka Blogs blogroll, just drop me a line at bigsibing2k5 at gmail dot com and we'll get you listed!

Blogsvertise experience

Another pay to post site is called Blogsvertise. This site on the surface appears fairly easy and straightforward. You sign up, submit your website, and they will give you assignments. However, it has been close to a month since I signed up and still not one assignment. I check most every day but haven't heard a peep from them. Unlike PayPerPost where you can browse the active assignments and pick and choose the ones you want, with Blogsvertise, it appears you have to wait for them to assign something to you specifically.

A lot of these trails I picked up from 'supermom_in_ny' at squidoo.com - but I think she might be exaggerating her experience just a little. Nothing wrong with that per se, but while she talks about places to make money, and calls them tutorials (at least they show up when I google something like 'blogsvertise tutorial') - however there is actually very little information there on how to get things going.

PayPerPost archive work-a-round?

In researching more about PayPerPost, I ran across this entry at The Daily Hook. Which lead me to this page which discusses how to 're-activate' an old disused blog. I do have an older blog on which I put a couple of posts way back when I started it in May of 2006, and about maybe 10 between then and November. I had aready submitted this blog to PayPerPost and was rejected because it said there had to be 20 entries in the last 90 days, so I started on the entries and through the month of November and the first couple of days in December I was able to get the 20 posts required. Then I re-read their rules and discovered that the 20 posts could not primarily be in one month, and there could not be a 30 day period in the past 90 days where no posts were made.

So, in reading the above mentioned article I went back and moved some posts from July up to September, and posts from September up to October (I hand't posted anything in the whole month of October). Now I have a sprinkling of posts over the past 90 days and have resubmitted the site for acceptance. We'll see what happens, and I'll let everyone know!