1st PayPerPost Review: PayPerPost

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If you’ve read more than just a few blogs in the last six months, you’ve probably already seen the badge: “Hire me! A post on this blog is…”  PayPerPost introduces bloggers looking to get paid for reviewing other websites with websites looking to pay to be reviewed by bloggers.  It’s a good system; bloggers get paid for their time and attention, and sellers receive some attention and (hopefully) useful criticism that will help them improve in the future. 

Some bloggers write fluff pieces that seem as if they came straight from the PR department of the website in question.  Most of the more successful reviewers, however, write honest pieces highlighting both the positives and negatives.  One negative review would not break any but the most fragile businesses, and a healthy dose of criticism from an insightful and well-spoken blogger can be just what any web site needs to go from good to great.

The only real requirements to be approved by PayPerPost are that your blog be written in English, that it be 90 days old (they will manually check the date of your first article during the approval process) and that it fall within the familiar content restrictions (porn, hate, and criminal activities are out).  The approval process takes around a week, after which you will receive an e-mail letting you know that your site has been accepted or denied.  If you are not approved, they will include a reason to let you know why.  I didn’t bother to actually read the terms of service back when I first applied, and was politely informed at that time that my blog not old enough.  Fair enough, and more helpful than most companies would have been when disapproving a potential customer.  Had I not received an informative response, I would not have bothered to create a reminder on my calendar to re-apply on Day 91.

Upon approval, you will want to immediately login and start making hundreds of dollars by reviewing every site on the Internet.  That’s probably not going to happen.  What you might not notice at first is that there are actually VERY few good offers you will be able to take unless your blog is Google PageRank 4 or higher, and your Alexa ranking is in the top 10,000.  If you’re just now joining PayPerPost, chances are your blog wasn’t around when the last PR update happened, and I can tell you from my recent experiences with a traffic spike that reaching Alexa’s top 10,000 is going to take around 1800 to 2000 visitors, on a daily average, for three months.  I’m not even close, so all the high-paying open offers on PPP are closed to me.

Even the $10 offers require a PageRank of 3 or higher, and some still require Alexa rankings that more realistically obtained, top 200k to 400k being pretty common.  Not having a PageRank, I do not and will not qualify for any of these offers until Google’s toolbar is updated.  Which is fine, because what I really want to do it review sites that come to me.  I’m not poor or desperate for money; for $10 I wouldn’t be interested in reviewing most of these sites and products, which are wholly irrelevant to my blog.  I would like to see PayPerPost, perhaps, require advertisers to tie their requirements a little more realistically to the payment they are offering.  If I owned a PR 6 blog that was receiving 1500 visitors a day, $10 to review a barely relevant product would be of absolutely no interest to me. 

What does interest me is the “Hire me…” badge.  As soon as I click Publish on this article, I’m going to add it to my sidebar.  Until I can gauge the interest in RichGilchrest.com reviews I will be offering them for the bare minimum price of $5.  If you want one, now is the time to get one. 

Another item which should be of interest to anyone.  PayPerPost will pay you $20 just to write a review of their service as soon as you have been approved.  I’m not sure I agree with that practice, but I am certainly taking advantage of it.  As you can see from the orange button below, they are paying me for this review.  If I owned PayPerPost, I would rather a new blogger have at least a few paid reviews under his belt before I paid him to review the service.  In all honesty, I can not, at this point, provide a review of the most important part of the service, because I have not yet experienced it. 

The site itself is very well developed and easy to navigate.  I am certain that, once I am up and running within the system, I will have no problem actually using the service.  When I have written a few paid reviews, I’ll revisit the subject and complete this write-up, even tho I won’t get paid for it.  Until then, I’m happy with what I’ve seen, and look forward to taking advantage of the service they provide.