Author: Sean McGoldrick

Earning Money on the Wild Wild Web

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 @ 6:37 am

This week I earned $152.83 bringing my total online earnings to $426.95. This is the fifth week in a row that I have increased my earnings. This weeks earnings represent 38.21% of my target of $400 per week that I set myself when I quit my job to earn money blogging.

The biggest earner this week was PayU2Blog from which I earned $72.50.

When I first applied to PayU2Blog I heard nothing for about a week. Then I got an e-mail saying I had been accepted and explaining their conditions. These are that you must agree to complete every assignment that they give you. In return they agree that they will not ask you to do an assignment for anything that is pornographic or unethical.

There aren’t many other requirements, other than that the post is a minimum of 60 words long and contains a link. In fact you can usually write about almost anything you like in the post as long as you include the link that they give you.

After I accepted the conditions I received another e-mail with my login and password. When I logged in first there were no assignments to complete and I kind of forgot about them for a few days.

The next time I logged last week there were 20 assignments for me to complete valued at $5 each. There was a time limit on these assignments with the longest one being ten days. Anyway I’ve been blogging furiously this week to keep up with all of these posts and I’ve got 14 of them done so far. (One was worth $7.50.) I don’t know if PayU2Blog is like this every week but this week has certainly been well-paid.

The next biggest earner was PayPerPost with whom I earned $64.50 this week. This is my second week with PayPerPost. In my first week I earned $63.50. Again I’m not with them long enough to know if this is a pattern or a fluke but for the second week in a row I have done well with PayPerPost.

I have, however, paid a price for my association with PayPerPost. Google have targeted sites which have references to PayPerPost and reduced their PageRank to zero. My PageRank for this blog has been wiped out. If you choose to get involved with PayPerPost, or sponsored posts in general you might want to bear that in mind. On the other hand I got $152.83 this week and it was only PR2 anyway! Overall I think I’m happier with the $152.83.

PayPerPost have launched their own ranking system to counter the way that Google messes around with PageRank. The new RealRank system is based on a combination of how many visitors, pageviews and back links you have to your blog.

The Rank is calculated by installing a script on your blog which allows PayPerPost to analyse the visitor statistics. I have found PayPerPost to be lucrative enough to go ahead and install the script onto the blog I have registered with them. As my other blogs get older I intend to add them as well.

Incidentally Smorty are now advising bloggers to remove ‘Sponsored Post’ tags from their posts to stop the Googlebot from catching them and killing their PageRank. It’s true that by not disclosing your sponsored posts or mentioning sites such as PayPerPost on your site then you should be able to keep your PageRank, but isn’t it terrible that this Google purge is going to drive sponsored posts underground?

PayU2Blog and PayPerPost were my two big earners this week. The rest of the cash came from:
ReviewMe $7.50
Smorty $6.00
Irish Opinions $1.48
Adsense 73c
Helium 12c

Earn Money Blogging


 


6 Responses to “Earning Money on the Wild Wild Web”

  1. Thomas Sinfield (2 comments) Says:

    congratulations on quitting your job. I finish up mine next week! Seems like you are doing great!

  2. Sean McGoldrick (24 comments) Says:

    Thanks, Thomas,
    I’m definitely happy with the progress. I’ve demonstrated to myself that it is possible to make money blogging.

    I think over the next couple of weeks I might spend more time on actually blogging and building up the visitors to my blogs. In the long-term that’s vital to a successful blog.

    I see you’re already well ahead of me there so I’m sure you’ll do fine without your job. If nothing else it’s a great time of year to take an extended career break!

  3. Living Off Dividends (1 comments) Says:

    how many posts do you have on helium?

  4. Sean McGoldrick (24 comments) Says:

    I have 15 posts on helium at the moment. From what I see you would need to have thousands to be making money from it. I think helium is a good site for other reasons apart from the money. Just as well really!

  5. Jeff (1 comments) Says:

    Good job on the bogging for money! I too have recently started with PPP and others but I am trying to be careful not to loose PR.

    I really like your blogs theme, did you do it yourself?

    Jeff Houdyschell
    WordPress Guides

  6. Sean McGoldrick (24 comments) Says:

    @ Jeff.
    The general advice for people who haven’t already lost their PageRank is not to mention keywords such as PayPerPost or PayU2Blog etc on their blogs. The Googlebot is looking for keywords like this.

    This blog here is a good example. I have only done two sponsored posts on this blog - the bulk of them are on another blog which hasn’t been affected by all of this - but this is the blog which has been targetted. The reason is that I do most of my shouting about sponsored posts here. I really think they’re a great way to make money and I still do. Just be careful what keywords you use on your blog and how you word your disclosure policy and you’ll be fine.

    Thanks for the compliments about the theme. I didn’t write it though. It’s called Aesthetic Azure 1.01, with only slight modifications by me.

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