Tag Archives: izea

Rackspace Cloud (Mosso) Link To Us Payola

By Andy Beard | Published: June 10, 2009
I am actually a fan of your new Cloud Servers service. There are some huge benefits in using your service that as both a marketing geek and affiliate I can highlight and potentially drive you a lot of business. However today you have just introduced a payola scheme that will make every one of my clean affiliate links look like a paid link, thus I am going to have to nofollow every single link I give you, forever. You want me to use badges like this, and in exchange will give me "Goodies" of an unspecified nature. Powered by Rackspace Cloud Hosting - Formerly Mosso Powered by Rackspace Cloud Hosting The links are visible, nothing is hidden, but all the same it is effectively a paid linking scheme. Here is what they said in an email sent to customers
Our New "Link-To-Us" Program We're also launching a new "Link-To-Us" program today. In essence, customers who post new links or change their old Mosso links on their websites to our new http://www.rackspacecloud.com site will receive special goodies. The more sites you post a link on, the more great stuff you will get. How cool is that? Please check out all the links here: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/links Thanks so much for being a part of the Rackspace family, and please keep the feedback coming so that we can continue to build the most complete and easy-to-use cloud platform on the web.
The sad thing is this would all be unnecessary if you just made some minor changes to your affiliate program.
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IzeaRanks & RealRank – How Many Lies Can You Tell Your Advertisers?

By Andy Beard | Published: January 10, 2008

Lets face it, bloggers love stats and rankings, even if they are based upon meaningless data. For some it is an ego thing, or just a measure of their own worth or progress to achieve whatever goals they have set for themselves, and for others it is monetary. If you want to sell advertising on your blog other than PPC or CPM based, you need to have some kind of carrot to wave at advertisers to encourage them to part with their advertising dollars.

Adage Power 150

Over the last few days for instance I noticed that Advertising Age have rejigged their

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Techcrunch Now Nofollow Sponsor Links

By Andy Beard | Published: December 29, 2007

I would like to congratulate the Techcrunch team for finally coming to the realization that linking to sponsors within posts, without using nofollow on the links might be in violation of Google's Webmaster guidelines.

This was previously written about by Ted Murphy of Izea, and vehemently defended by Techcrunch, so it is surprising that they have made a significant change in their stance without also making a public statement about it.

I also wrote about this situation in a previous article on paid links and the PageRank update (round 5).

Here is their previous links to sponsors post from

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Google Dictating Nofollow For ALL Links From Compensated Content

By Andy Beard | Published: December 28, 2007

As I had hoped, ( http://community.izea.com/blog/2007/12/an-invitation-t.html ) Ted Murphy had a chance to chat with Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon

It seems Google want all links within content that "wouldn't exist without payment" to use nofollow, but seems to be focusing on services like PayPerPost, and not other forms of links which wouldn't exist without compensation.

  • Matt Cutts frequently links to Google from his personal blog - if he wasn't employed by Google, those links would likely not appear as frequently.
  • Google employees link to outside sites all the time, and they are frequently sites that are "flying the Google flag" in some
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Wrong Reaction From Techcrunch On Paid Links?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 17, 2007

I think this is one possibly for the water cooler on Sphinn, because I find it comical in a sad kind of way.

Ted Murphy rightly questions Google quite openly to explain why PPP bloggers are being punished for not using nofollow on links, yet many prominent bloggers post quite blatant pagerank passing links to their advertisers every chance they get.

Not only do they mention their advertisers in "Thanks To Our Advertisers" posts, but they also name drop them every chance they get as a form of disclosure.

As an example, almost every time PayPerPost was discussed, either Text Link Ads

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ZeroRank – More PageRank Carnage (Round 5)

By Andy Beard | Published: November 15, 2007

I have been receiving emails and comments today about yet another PageRank downturn for multiple sites.

Andrew Ooi has compiled a short list of Malaysian sites, many were previously as much as a PR5 previously, and currently show a PageRank of zero (a white bar)

Examples include:-

Colleen's Simple Kind of Life and 5xmom

The numbers seem to be stable across multiple data centers

There doesn't seen to be any change in prominent Search Marketing sites such as Search Engine Round Table and Search Engine Journal, and other popular bloggers such as Emom and Yaro still seem to

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Will Google Offer Amnesty To SocialSpark & PayPerPost Bloggers?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 12, 2007

Since the first real information came out about Izea's (PayPerPost) new SocialSpark service, that is in testing but will formerly launch in January my excitement has been a little tempered.

As I wrote in my initial preview of SocialSpark, there will be new metrics for gauging the authority and influence of a blog, to help determine advertising spend, not only based upon traffic and demographics, but also on past performance with CPM and CPC data also being made available.

With SocialSpark, any required links will be nofollow, though there is an option for editorial links without a nofollow.

All the negotiation about

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SocialSpark.com Preview – PayPerPost Goes Googley?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 11, 2007
I have been listening to PostieCon via Ustream and chatting in the Meebo chatroom, and at the same time exchanging a few emails with Ted Murphey about Izea's (new parent company of PayPerPost) new Advertising marketplace, SocialSpark.com Social Spark

What Is Social Spark?

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PostieCon Live

By Andy Beard | Published: November 10, 2007

I decided to put together a mashup so I can see the chatroom for PostieCon as well as the Live Ustream feed for my own use, but thought I would post it here on the blog for anyone to watch what is happening.

There are some great speakers scheduled, and some announcements coming later in the day.

A great feature is the ability to ask the speakers questions from the chatroom.

I wasn't able to go to Vegas for Blogworld or Postiecon, but fortunately Postiecon are on the ball and are providing a way for anyone to learn something from the expert line

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Plausible Deniability Just Doesn’t Cut It Mr Arrington

By Andy Beard | Published: November 10, 2007

I actually don't care about the facts in the current drama over Michael Arrington not attending 2 sessions where he was scheduled to speak, possibly because he didn't agree in person to speak.

Plausible deniability is the term given to the creation of loose and informal chains of command in governments and other large organizations. In the case that assassinations, false flag or black ops or any other illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any connection to or awareness of such act, or the agents used to carry

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The Pied Piper Of PayPerPost?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 6, 2007
Pied Piper of PayPerPostOver the last year I have given a fair amount of coverage to PayPerPost, who now house the service along with other endeavours under the name Izea. There are multiple reasons why I have supported PayPerPost and similar programs so strongly, and yet at the same time have never reviewed a link buying / selling service. I have mentioned link buying and selling in passing, and also a couple of Wordpress plugins, but those plugins generally allow you to sell links which have a nofollow. My emphasis both in editorial about services and in the few reviews I have myself written is to encourage the writing of quality content with editorial links. Compensation in whatever form should be based upon the time involved, expertise, and possibly the size and influence of the audience, and not based upon any SEO benefit to a site or service being reviewed.
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Controversial Izea While I Slept

By Andy Beard | Published: November 1, 2007
IzeaSometimes I really hate timezones, especially when a company I closely follow (and even take a couple of punches for) makes an announcement. PayPerPost and now Izea Fittingly I think Colleen should have the first link, she has been a postie for a long time, is a top earner, and has been taking an equal amount of punches being on the firing line. Colleen highlights the fact that PayPerPost have been planning to have a new domain for their Argus platform for some time, and it is only logical that Argus is not housed under the PayPerPost moniker, because PayPerPost will only be one of many services provided. People who actually monitor the PayPerPost blog of course knew this was coming a month ago. Dan, and investor in PayPerPost... well now the parent company Izea, seems happy about how money is being spent. That is important, I am sure the Izea.com domain name cost a lot more than $9 from GoDaddy. Here is a link to the official Izea Press release on the new corporate entity.

Mixed Reactions To Izea & PayPerPost

As always with anything related to PayPerPost, there is a lot of controversy, and mixed reaction. I have covered the more positive stuff so far, so what follows is the more neutral or negative opinion.
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