An advertiser accepted my bid for the first time yesterday on SponsoredReviews.com. I registered two of my blogs with them last week and so far I have applied for nine opportunities. Of the other eight, one has been rejected and the other six are still pending. A second one was accepted today.
When I decided to try writing sponsored posts I first thought of PayPerPost. In fact I have applied and failed to join PayPerPost twice already. My application is in for the third time now and this time I think I have fulfilled all the criteria.
(BTW The reason I have been rejected twice so far is that I failed to read the qualifying criteria correctly. To have your blog accepted for PayPerPost your blog must be at least three months old. In addition to that you must also have 20 written posts within the past 90 days. My blog was more than three months old and had more than 20 posts so when it was rejected the first time I thought it was a mistake so I changed the settings to display 25 posts on the first page and submitted it again. When it was rejected the second time I actually read the reasons for it; I had only 17 posts in the last 90 days. Everything should be ok this time.)
Compared to PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews is easy to join. The criteria for joining Sponsored Reviews are that:
“1. Your blog must be at least 3 months old, and it must also contain at least 10 published posts in order to be approved.
“2. Your blog must have, and maintain, at least a 2:1 ratio of non-paid to paid content. The ratio is calculated on a monthly average.”
When you register your blog it is automatically graded, based on its Yahoo link count and Technorati and Alexa rankings. Your blogs grade with Sponsored Review is an average of the three. PageRank isn’t counted in the grading although advertisers often do specify it as a requirement in the opportunities.
Anyway, while I am still awaiting an acceptance into PayPerPost I got my first job from Sponsored Reviews last night . Writing the review was pretty simple. There were few requirements from the advertiser apart from a 300 word minimum and the inclusion of three links in the text.
It took me an hour to write and check the post. The review came pretty easily to me. It’s not exactly poetry but somebody is giving me actual money for writing it, which is a first as far as me and blogging are concerned.
When I was finished writing the post I put it on my blog and then I went back to the Sponsored Review web-site to post the url. As soon as I submitted the url the fun and games started! The automated checker on the web-site brought back a message that there was a problem with the links in the post and that I needed to fix these. It also said that if there was a problem that I should submit a ticket to the support staff.
The links that I placed in the post were exactly as I was asked to do in the post. The only possible problem I could see was that there was a redirect in the link. There was a setting in my blog which redirected every external link from my url via “go.php”. I created a ticket to the support staff and told them my problem and asked them if this might be the problem.
I have to congratulate the support staff because it took literally minutes for a reply to come back to my e-mail. They confirmed that the problem was the redirect in the links. They also suggested that I change the format of my links. I had them with no decoration (ie no underline) which made them less conspicuous. Support suggested that I should make them more conspicuous, otherwise the advertiser might miss them and mark it as a bad review. (This goes to show the importance of links and the real value of your sponsored review to advertisers.)
I sent back a message to the support staff asking them if they had any advice on how to solve the problem. Again the reply from them took only minutes. Unfortunately they didn’t have any specific advice to give as they weren’t familiar with my particular host. They did try to give some general advice but it didn’t help my particular problem.
Part of the problem with my personal blog is that it is on a free blog host. I don’t have complete access to the files. I can customize certain features through the dashboard. For anything else I have to delve into the mysterious world of editing the code in the theme.
I am far from expert at editing code. After more than half an hour of it I start to see double. Three hours later, after scouring the theme manually and using the ‘find and replace’ function, I couldn’t find any reference to ‘go.php’. It was like a phantom that jumped from the shadows when I least expected it with the sole intention of ruining my paid posting career. After three hours of this I became goggle-eyed and went to bed.
During the night I woke up around 3am with this problem on my mind. I got up and googled something like “wordpress, go.php”. The second link I clicked on gave me my answer. One of the plugins, called ‘click counter’ was responsible. I deactivated it and the redirect disappeared from my links.
This all goes to prove that nothing is ever easy! Not even earning a living from blogging! On the lighter side. I wrote and published my second sponsored review within 30 minutes today.
