The Reviews Are Coming In
written by John Chow
This is an update to my PayPerPost advertising experience. Originally, I ordered up 15 reviews but set the requirements a bit too high so I reset the first opportunity and submitted a new one. PayPerPost doesn’t allow you to cancel an opportunity, it will only allow you to lower the opportunity to 1 review. By submitting a new opportunity, I had to pay another $5 opportunity creation fee.
The new opportunity required only a PR2 and no restrictions on outgoing links. Five blogs immediately took up the offer and posted reviews. Another blog took up the original opportunity and posted a review as well. That brings to total reviews so far to six. I thought I would post a link to each review so you can check them out.
- VOIP: Writing about a Dot Com Mogul
- Everybody Go To: Dot Com Mogul - ish
- Dreams to come True: Earn Money with John dot com
- Link.Tip.Idea: John Chow dot Com
- Last Blogger: John Chow
- Damox’s Technology Blog: Review of John Chow dot Com - Home of the Dot Com Mogul
I’ll post more reviews as they come in. If you meet the opportunity requirements, then why not post a review as well? You’ll make some money and you will get a linkback when I feature your blog post. Advertisers pay $100 to get featured on this blog. This is a way to not only get it for free, but make money at it! Better hurry however. There’s only 8 opportunities left.
Feel free to comment on the quality of the reviews. I have my opinion on them but I’ll keep them to myself for now. Maybe I’ll hand out an additional prize for best review based on reader comments.
*Udpate - Here’s seven more reviews!
- Smart Money Online: John Chow: Blog of the Year?
- CramItWithWalnuts: John Chow dot Com
- Home Business Review: Business Website
- Justin Chelf: My Favorite Business Blogger
- Random Bytes: John Chow dot Come - What’s Good /What’s Not
- Mr. Cheap Stuff: JohnChow.com Site Review
- INCRESEO: John Chow, you leave me no choice
There are is only one opportunity left. If your blog meets the requirements then you might want to take advantage of it. Otherwise, consider entering my Review My Blog & Get A Free Linkback contest.
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I got rejected by PPP
because my blog is not live 90 days.. only like 55
damn.. i really hate this..
i am a very active blogger with at least 1 post a day
Nomar - You should have read the TOS first, it would have saved you a whole lot of time. . .my blog is also pretty young…am waiting!. . .
Hey John, I liked the review by Link.Tip.Idea the best. . .
One thing I noticed from a recent PPP campaign was that none of the 25 blog posts I paid for actually gave any traffic at all. Some gave 1 click through which I assume was the writer testing the link.
My conclusion was that none of them can have any readers.
Some $100 blogs on reviewme gave less than 5 clicks as well.
What was your traffic like?
John, from reading those 1 paragraph reviews on your site, I’m almost sure you ain’t going to be using ReviewMe as an advertiser again! They are a load of rubbish.
There really isn’t much to review on those reviews.
I think what this does show you is the quality of the reviews you are going to get with the requirements set pretty low. I’m also guessing $5 doesn’t get you much in terms of a detailed review anyway.
I’m Interested to find out how much traffic will come from those sites, so maybe that’s something to watch out for.
what i think is that john stands to gain in the next GPR allocation…nice timing john!
Presumably some people are requesting these paid blog posts not only for the extra exposure/visits, but also the linkjuice to help boost search engine rankings and what not. Though with the low traffic/reader blogs mad4 was mentioning that linkjuice benefit would likely be minimal in that case as well.
Personally, while I think it’s an interesting (and controversial) concept, it’s not something which I am likely to take part in.
I wish my blog were over 90 days as well. I would have jumped on that in a heartbeat.
I tried to sign up with PayPerPost up but as of this morning have been rejected because my site is “not a blog.”
I have written back to appeal, pointing out that:
(a) my site pre-dates blogs, I know how to use DreamWeaver and am not going to move my 700+ pages to blogging software at this point - but I do have all the attributes of a blog including frequent posting and comments;
(b) the fact that it’s not a “real” blog doesn’t seem to bother the fine people at BlogHer, who have not had to change their code to work with me, or Technorati, who are perfectly happy to list me as a blog;
(c) PPP by rejecting me is losing out on some very high-quality content with pretty good traffic (better than the blog you mentioned earlier that’s making lots of money from PPP reviews).
Story of my life: I just don’t fit anybody’s schema, often because I’m ahead of my time. And I get penalized for it.
Hey John,
You should signup for PPP’s affiliate program ASAP: https://payperpost.com/affiliates
You get $15 for every new signup you prompt. You’d probably create a profit off this little experiment even beyond the marketing ROI.
Actually, that’s a pretty cool use of PPP’s affiliate program for anyone to spread the word and get feedback/linklove about their blog at little/no cost — just call it the ChowPerPost Program.
mad4: Your data doesn’t make any sense. I’ve tracked hundreds of PPP campaigns and never seen that result — unless you choose to do the tracking yourself (PPP pageview/click tracking will show zeros).
darn, i signed up with PPP awhile ago but I never went back to register my website. i wonder how long it takes to get approved?
I think it’s funny you are paying people to post about you, then linking to them. Certainly helps them more than you. The buzz from this probably brings you traffic though.
I have to say the reviews are rather disappointing. I’d write one, but my blog is still too young. If I write a free post reviewing JohnChow.com would you consider linking to it?
Hi John,
I should give you back the money I got writing about you (don’t worry, I am just kidding) because since my blog is in YOUR blog I have so many visits, almost as many as when I post about SEX (which in absolute is the catching subject…)
That means that YOUR blog is on the top of the ladder…(as pr I mean)
How does it feel to be there?
That is my dream…to be someday among the pr10…
may be it can happen for some Google’s mistake, who knows, computers can do crazy things once in a while…
Patrizia
I would love to write about your site as I just found out about it through another avenue and am researching the very topic you discuss. I am getting ready to get my own domain and set up my own journal. I post for PPP and have made over $100 so far. I cannot take your opportunity because I am not a tech blog. Thanks for great information on promoting my journal when I get my other one up and going.
This is my first time reading Pay Per Post reviews. I’m shocked on how short and vague some the review articles are. It does seem like an easy way to make some money for the reviewers. I really thought the reviews would be more in-depth. It seems like these reviews are something that you or I could type up in a minute and get paid $5 for.
Sorry John, I was excited to see the new opportunity but I didn’t meet your requirements since I am by nature a political blogger rather than a marketing blogger. Yet, you did get some free link love.
As far as the reviews you have so far, Everybody Go To, Link Tip Idea and Damox’s Technology Blog, seemed to be good posts.
I posted a review of your site but PPP kept kicking it back, saying I didn’t include the proper link…
I absolutely agree with Kenric. Its not worth the 5$ that you are paying John. . .
John Wesley - If you, or anyone else post a review, I’ll link it.
Ya, some of those reviews are pretty sad
. I would say the one I just wrote is the best I put my heart into it lol.
Since PPP keeps complaining that I did not include the “link” in my review I’m pulling the PPP disclaimer and leaving it up as a regular (non-paid) review.
As far as writing is concerend, what length can you expect when you pay $5 for 200 words+? Not meant to bash your payment John - its completely fair for PPP rates, but is anyone really suprised that $5 gets a short article. Its not going to be as indepth as one someone for the New York Times writes and gets paid $.50 a word for.
The quality imo was quite good for an article that only required 3-5 minutes to right, especially when they are no quality restictions, I would expect many PPP members don’t care about the quality, I wouldn’t either. Just write something as fast as possible and post would be my game plan.
Just my $.02
Hi John,
One of your reviewers here. Thanks for linking back - I’ve updated my post a little bit more. I hope you take the time to read.
[...] To follow up on my previous post about John Chow’s website, it seems the whole thing is causing a bit of a stir over at John’s website. If you check out the comments on his post about reviews coming in, you’ll find that the one prevailing thought is that the reviews weren’t worth $5. [...]
Hi John,
Keep going with this blog, you really have nice ideas and give support and courage to all of us who are beginners in this blog things.
I signed up for PPP and just did a review for your site. The thought of having a back link for a prestigious site like your was too good to pass up. I think as a publisher I might try buying site reviews for the link value. John you should become an affiliate of PPP I would have made you $15 when I signed up last night.
I just found this BLOG today. Wow, great stuff.
I tried PPP last month. They said I didn’t get enough traffic.
Love the BLOG, I added your feed to my reader.
Michael
[...] When reading the comments in The Reviews Are Coming In post, I noticed quite a few blogs were not able to review my blog because they didn’t meet the PayPerPost requirements of being at least 90 days old. However, I also noticed a few blogs posted a review anyway - even though they won’t get paid for it. That got me thinking about a review for linkback exchange. [...]
As for the quality of reviews. Compare the PPP reviews with what John writes when he reviews a site like PPP, Agloco or any thing he likes. Even his posts about food or cars require more thought than the reviews.
Seriously, maybe I’ll just join PPP and write a review blog to make money. I bet I could churn out 20 a day if they let me.
For example, here is my post about Pet Insurance. It’s a based on my dogs. I know it’s not worthy of a white paper, but come one. Look at the difference in writing and data.
http://www.livelearninvest.com/2006/12/10/is-pet-insurance-worth-it/
HMTKSteve- I had this problem, ended up having to change the title. I ended up so frustrated I kept rewriting the blog trying to make it fit into the criteria.
PPP appears to have definitively rejected me, for reasons I don’t understand:
“I have taken a look at your site. Although it
appears to be a great site, the format is not that of a blog. In order for our review team to be able to review your posts, they would need an archive of all of your posts. Also, you have many different tabs. We require that all posts are under one column, or the review team would be unable to determine if your posts meet the requirements. If all of your posts were condensed to once section, and you also had a chronological archive, your entry would be fine. ”
Their review team would actually read all of the hundreds of pages on my site within 48 hours? I don’t think this is humanly possible, no matter how the site is formatted. Maybe they’re using some automated software to comb the site for objectionable content, and that software can’t handle a non-blog format. Boh.
[...] I must say, the quality of these “free” reviews are much higher than the PayPerPost reviews that cost me $5.00 each. I can tell many of you put a lot thought into your review. [...]
Sure would like to know what sort of traffic these are driving to your site and what the long-term affects will be.
Thanks for posting mine
[...] Once your blog has a high enough ranking then consider joining ReviewMe. You won’t get as many review opportunities, but the reviews you do get will pay a lot more. There is also less of a rush to do a review because you’re not competing with other bloggers for the opportunity. A reader of this blog has commented that one of the reasons the review for linkback reviews of my blog were better than the PayPerPost reviews was due to the pressure of getting a review in before the 14 opportunities were taken up. [...]
[...] 1 The Reviews Are Coming In [...]