Tag Archives: paid posts
iHype & ePerks – How To Kill A Startup
iHype.com was due to launch today and it is my strong personal opinion that they will head straight to the Techcrunch deadpool, and if they get a mention on Techcrunch, it will purely be for the satisfaction of sending them there.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Ben Behrouzi, deadpool, eperks, ihype, paid reviews, real estate, techcrunch Comments closed
Google Reconsideration or Reinclusion Request
Now Google have changed their wording for reconsideration requests (formerly reinclusion requests), I have filed one for this domain.
I am not going to call this a perfect example of a reconsideration request, but I decided that it was better to be 100% honest about my thought process for both now and in the future, because whilst I am now blocking paid reviews with robots.txt, there are so many things still not specified within the webmaster guidelines that it is a potential minefield, especially for someone who has previously been the target of a manual penalty.
Here is exactly what I sent to the Google webmaster team.
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blogging tips Also tagged Google, nofollow, paid links, paid reviews, reconsideration request, reinclusion request, robots.txt Comments closed
Lowering The Google Red Flag – Sidestep The Cash Hungry Bull
With all the previous discussion of paid reviews and my unwillingness to raise the white flag or bend over, this post is going to come as a bit of a shock.
I am lowering the red flag
Carry on reading to find out why this isn't the same as raising a white flag, and is far from surrendering to Google on paid reviews.
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization Also tagged backlinks, goog, Google, linking, pagerank, paid links, paid_review, payperpost, SEO Blog, spam, syndication Comments closed
Techcrunch Now Nofollow Sponsor Links
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
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization Also tagged izea, nofollow, paid links, payperpost, sponsored reviews, sponsored_posts, sponsor_links, techcrunch Comments closed
Before I deal the FUD “I’m going to ask you to put on your regular user hat”
I have had a chance to deal with the odd email over the last 2 weeks whilst moving house, but I knew I should respond to this paid links post by Matt Cutts as soon as I was able to do so with some level of detail.
So far the best estimate for having a landline for internet access provided by the Polish national carrier is 10 months, so I am using a GSM solution which in my remote part of Poland seems to clock in slightly faster than what I would expect from UMTS so might be giving me
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization Also tagged goog, Google, matt cutts, paid links, paid reviews, payperpost Comments closed
Penalty Confirmed – But I Don’t Sell PageRank
Danny Sullivan has managed to get some feedback from someone at Google confirming there are visible PageRank penalties being applied, as much as a -2 on what is displayed on the Google Toolbar.
This is my follow on from my post yesterday:- Dancing With The Gevil - Defamed By Google?
Fair enough, for those people who have been caught selling links primarily for boosting search engine results.
The funny thing is I have seen so many blogs today that are selling Text Links who have not received a penalty, yet lots of sites that write high quality paid reviews penalized. I am
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization Also tagged goog, Google, paid links, paid reviews, payperpost, reviewme, sponsored reviews Comments closed
Dancing With The Gevil – Defamed By Google?
A number of my readers have noticed that Google have been making some minor adjustments to the displayed PageRank on a few sites, and Josh quite rightly pointed out that the displayed PageRank on this domain has for some reason been reduced.
Whatever change Google have made in the data held about my site, it doesn't seem to have prevented any of my content ranking, and unfortunately it is impossible to say what data they are working on to begin with. They could well be using a dataset from 1 year ago in their experimentation with some new algorithms, or just
Posted in Google, blog monetization, blogging tips, marketing Also tagged gevil, goog, Google, paid links, paid reviews, payperpost, reviewme, sponsored reviews Comments closed
Targeted Audiences Like Being Sold To
An article on Business Week highlights research carried out by Tivo to determine which adverts people watch and which adverts they skip.
IF THERE'S ONE LESSON from TiVo Stop||Watch, it's that relevancy outweighs creativity in TV commercials–by a lot. The ads on the "least-fast-forwarded" list aren't funny, they aren't touching, and they aren't clever. And they don't have big budgets. The top three overall in June (the latest month for which data are available) were CORT Furniture, Dominican Republic Tourism, and Hooters Restaurant. Several throw 800-numbers at you at the end.
But all of these ads are well-tailored to their audiences
Posted in marketing Also tagged paid reviews, payperpost, review_me, sponsored reviews Comments closed
Keyword & Link Tools (& How To Confuse The Google Bot)
This could have been a paid review through ReviewMe, it was ordered a few days ago and I just haven't had time to write something that warrants being paid for it, but I decided to write something for free. If any of the Google Spam Team are reading this article, it was not paid for in any way and your bots can't tell the difference because keyword analysis would pick up the specific words suggesting that there is some kind of disclosure for paid links.
My paid reviews are not cheap, but they are often worth it - people are paying me
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization, blogging tips, web 2.0 Also tagged goog, Google, paid links, paid reviews, paid_linking, paid_review, search engine optimization, SEO Blog Comments closed
Paid Links & Reviews Are Necessary For Relevant Results
I have written about this a few times in the past, first of all questioning Google's definition of paid links and more recently with my post on linking payola. OK I have probably mentioned this a few more times than that, but those articles cover the core points quite nicely.
There Needs To Be A Level Playing Field
When Ebay purchase a site like StumbleUpon and eventually includes a footer link, and possibly some contextual links to product pages that are search engine followable, are they paid links also?
They only paid… what… $75M for 1.5M blogs (and growing) located on subdomains
Posted in Google, SEO Blog, blog monetization Also tagged link_equity, paid links, paid reviews, relevant_search_results, serps Comments closed
OIOPublisher – Paid Reviews & Paid Links
There would be a gaping hole in my content coverage if I didn't mention the release of OIOPublisher, who are trying to find a way to totally cut out the middleman in both paid reviews and paid links.
They won't be taking a cut from sales in any way, and all deals are done directly between advertiser and site owner.
So How Do They Make Money?
The plan is to charge for premium listings in their directories on a monthly basis, and the fees so far proposed are reasonable if they can get traction, though that might
Posted in blog monetization Also tagged paid links, paid reviews, payperpost, reviewme, sponsored reviews, text_links, wpbankroll, wptextads Comments closed
ReviewMe & Sponsored Reviews Updated
Just a quickie…
I noticed that both Review Me and Sponsored Reviews have fixed their subscriber counts, and for those people using SEO For Firefox, you can see that that is now also reporting Bloglines subscribers correctly.
PayPerPost Receives $7M Additional Funding & Launches Direct Marketplace
Just 2 weeks ago PayPerPost launched their PayPerPost Direct service and I wrote one of my typical in-depth reviews about why I believe that this new offering really changes the paid review landscape.
Read more on PayPerPost Receives $7M Additional Funding & Launches Direct Marketplace…
Posted in SEO Blog, blog monetization, blogging tips, web 2.0 Also tagged dan_rua, DFJ, dfj_gotham, Draper_Fisher_Jurvetson, Google, Inflexion_Partners, Josh_Stein, Michael_Arrington, Microsoft, paid reviews, pay per post, payperpost, payperpost_direct, techcrunch, ted_murphy, village_ventures, yahoo Comments closed
Results: Top Wordpress Plugins (April 2007)
It is hard work giving money away, and it seems it is hard work voting for which Wordpress plugin author should receive $100.
Whilst it might appear that there was an increase of votes this time around, with 29 votes instead of 24, that doesn’t allow for the fact that 8 votes were added as a bonus. Thus there were only 21 fresh votes.
Posted in blogging tips, plugins, wordpress Also tagged bad_behaviour, Best WordPress Plugins, dofollow, donations, image_manager, paid reviews, payperpost, plugin_authors, plugin_developers, spam_karma, Top WordPress Plugins, wordpress, wordpress plugins Comments closed
Google Paid Links – Google Sliding Down The Slippery Slope of Evildom
Matt Cutts has again been writing about paid links and has also jumped into the sponsored themes discussion, invoking the power of the Google Webspam team from behind the protection of a carefully worded disclaimer.
As Matt says:-
Read more on Google Paid Links – Google Sliding Down The Slippery Slope of Evildom…
Posted in blog monetization Also tagged Google, matt cutts, paid links, payperpost, ppp, reviewme, sponsored reviews, webspam Comments closed
Sponsored Reviews Pays Up
It is great theorising that you can monetize your blogging activities with various forms of advertising, and possibly some affiliate reviews, but blog visitors often don’t click contextual advertising, and affiliate marketing is most effective when you have a large amount of traffic to a small number of sites, or a small amount of traffic to a huge number of sites. Your relationship with your audience is also extremely important, as Scott Jangro was recently discussing in relation to Google’s new CPA offerings.
Posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, plugins Also tagged blogging, monetization, pay per post, ppp, reviewme, sponsored reviews Comments closed
A List Bloggers in Crystal Palaces Shouldn’t Throw Stones
There are a number of fatal, hypocritical or naive flaws in almost every attack on paid posts by A list bloggers and it is time to show them their Achilles heel(s).
Read more on A List Bloggers in Crystal Palaces Shouldn’t Throw Stones…
Posted in blogging tips, wordpress Also tagged disclosure, disclosure policy, Matt_Mullenweg, paid reviews, pay per post, selling_links, wordpress Comments closed
Sponsored Reviews Now Live – In Depth Review
Yep this is a sponsored review, though it was something I was intending to write about anyway, to announced that Sponsored Reviews is now live and available for both advertisers and bloggers.
Posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, marketing, reviews Also tagged affiliate marketing, affiliate_program, backlinks, buzz_marketing, disclosure, links, make_money, monetization, paid reviews, payperpost, review_me, SEO Blog, sponsored reviews, website_promotion Comments closed
Brain Solis and Techcrunch Blatantly Wrong About The Consequences Of Sponsored Reviews With Google