From PR0 to PR3 Overnight

Wow, I did not even now about the owner of disclosure. Now the mystery solved how on earth G. can find me :).
Yes, I am thinking of ditched them as well. With 3mths of hard work, I got to PR3 and just writing for them for less than 1 1/2 months, I was slammed to 0.

I still don’t know how to take out my blog from them.
If you don’t mind, can you write me a private email ?

Thank you, greatly appreciated.
Js

BTW, Kate, a lot of my ecafers love your blog and I have asked them to read you daily and subscribed to you. They are mostly home school moms.

I changed my dislosure to sitewide policy and am using an image instead.

Lori’s last blog post..Tips on How to Buy a Domain Name

I agree with you to some degree, but I wanted to point-out a few things:

I did not opt-in for this company’s new ranking system literally until yesterday (after they changed the URL thing, which I did not know about or anything; it had no effect on me) and I am still setting at PR0.

Further, [url=http://manodogs.blogspot.com/2007/11/drawing-line.html]I said the very same things about Company P[/url] sometime ago and you are absolutely right: they asked me to change a lot of things and haven’t done a whole lot to compensate me for them, so I quit compromising. When there’s an opportunity and I’m lucky enough to get to it (which has been, [i]literally[/i] one time in 50 the last 2 months), I’ll take it; otherwise, you know, whatever.

But I have to call you out on talking out of both sides of your mouth here:

You’re complaining that Company P asked you to bend over backward and told you what you could and couldn’t do in order to make money with them… [i]then[/i] you correctly note that Google is doing the same thing. Except that [i]Google is not compensating you for it[/i] - unless, of course, you count the fact that they [i]might, maybe[/i] give you back some of your PR, which you need in order to make money! Remember the commercial where the guy walked in a circle, talking about how he needed to work more to make more money so he could buy more cocaine so he could work more? Same principle, basically.

The bottom-line is that, regardless of which programs or advertisers you choose to include on your blog/website, it’s [i]your[/i] choice! Google has no right to tell us with whom we can do business!

And they did not just single-out those of us who do business with Company P; they also hit people who employed ads through Company TLA, Company LW, and many others. Face it: Google is trying to muscle-out the competition in order to safeguard their AdSense network, which pays [i]literally[/i] pennies on the hundreds of dollars!

The only reason we are so dependent on Google is because we have allowed ourselves to be! There are so many other engines out there - Ask, Yahoo, Cluster, Sphere, BloggingZoom, IceRocket - that the very, only reason Google is still able to do this is because we aren’t standing up to them!

ManoDogs’s last blog post..Eddie Murphy - Does He or Doesn’t He?

Jamy, many thanks! Private email is on the way. (Meanwhile if you don’t mind I’m going to strip that email link of yours so you don’t get spammed, ok?)

Lori, that’s a great idea BUT, seriously, who didn’t have a “sitewide disclosure policy” before?

If you’ve got any of the language from Company P’s recommended disclosure — and I DO mean even four words in a row that are identical to theirs — then chances are you’ll turn up on sites affiliated with theirs.

IMVO, if you’re still doing assignments for them and get discovered using their disclosure policy, well, you get what you signed up for.

I don’t have their scrips in my footer. I’ve got no plans to do future work with them. I consider myself twice burned and too smart to try for a third time.

As for me, I kind of like knowing I can bank on a regular, reliable source of income like private ads. You can’t get those if you don’t have PR. You won’t get PR if you’re with Company P.

You have very valid pints here. Today, I sat down and mapped out why my 2 year old blog has a lower rank than one that is less than 3 months old.

It’s difficult to walk away when you feel a certain amount of loyalty but I agree that earning an income and giving quality to my readers is first. That said, I haven’t done a sponsored post for Company P since October.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I think I’ll be reevaluating the idea of using the new ranking system.

Katy’s last blog post..4 Points for Better Networking

Thanks kate, that would be very kind of you.

To be fair, PPP’s business structure is markedly different from TLA and Linkworth. Unlike PPP, these two companies provide a recurring income stream with a subscription based payment system, and thus have a greater degree of control over the level of income their publishers receive. it also means you’re dealing with the same group of advertisers, and if they like you, they tend to stay on board regardless of your rankings. But, while your CURRENT income stream has been left untouched, your potential for income growth may very well have been negatively impacted. Potential new advertisers will see your decreased rankings and may decide to pass you over as a result.

It’s a whole different ballgame with PPP. It’s structure doesn’t make a recurrent stream of income viable, and almost entirely on your ability to go “opp sniping,” where you basically camp out on their advertising opportuniess page and try to grab the best paying opps before someone else does. Theoretically, an advertiser that took a liking to your post might opt to use PPP Direct to use you exclusively in the future, but my observations tell me that’s been very uncommon. Their marketplace is just not conducive to establishing long term relationships with advertisers, so I don’t think it’s fair to compare them in that regard with companies like Linkworth and TLA.

That said, two things led to PPP’s downfall: the fact that they were the biggest sponsored posting marketplace, and the fact that they made it far too easy for Google to find their publishers and bitch slap them six ways from Sunday, setting an example for the rest of the industry. In all fairness, TLA also made it easy as well, but they’ve since wised up and closed off their marketplace, though whether it was too little, too late remains to be seen.

This however was the problem with PPP. As soon as a good sized section of their publishers had just seen their PR go white, they should have immediately dropped the PR option so advertisers could no longer require a certain amount of PR for their opps, and institute a new policy that would require all links to be nofollowed. They were probably afraid they’d lose too many advertisers (and revenue) if they made a change like this overnight, and while I do understand how this might make good business sense at the time, they had a responsibility to undo the damage Google inflicted on their publishers. Revising their policy so it no longer conflicts with Google’s TOS and then formally asking Google to restore PR for ALL of their publishers would have gone a long way to improve the company’s image, even if it might have resulted in a temporary decrease in revenues.

Instead they’ve opted to keep everyone spinning their wheels until the release of SocialSpark. Shame.

Regardless, I’m willing to give SocialSpark a chance, partly because it may give me an opportunity to form relationships with advertisers that can go far beyond SocialSpark. In that vein I view it in the same light as Facebook. While I can’t STAND that social media crap, I do recognize that I can meet people within that network and form new friendships that go above and beyond it, which never would have happened otherwise.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

And here I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to figure out how to get PPP’s script INTO my blogs! Thanks for keeping me out of that swamp.

Very, very informative post. Wish I had a better understanding of how all TLA and LinkWorth work. It’s hard to understand what’s a good choice when you don’t understand all the implications. The thing I’ve enjoyed about PPP is that it is easy to do. But I might be backing off of that.

Since you’ve dumped them, you might not have noticed that some of their opportunities REQUIRE that you do not disclose while others ask that you don’t, which seems odd when PPP has required a disclosure policy.

And they’ve got some option for no-follow links now, but I don’t know how to do that.

Anne’s last blog post..S. C. Not Last (for once) in Something Education-Related

They’ve had advertisers requesting no in-post disclosure for a while. Are there some actually now requesting no “site wide” disclosure? That should be a good hint that people are figuring out that mandatory disclosure language was one of the sources of the problem.

Adding the script into your site requires the ability to edit your footer.php file. Is that possible with TypePad? I’ve never used it so wouldn’t know.

To make a link “nofollow” you add rel=”nofollow” between the < a part of your link and the href= part.

Ok—I was so good! I followed all of your instructions–as you are my Blogging Guru! However…I find myself approved by both LinkWorth and TLA and I am clueless as to what I’m doing with either one!! Linkworth wants to do some rotating ad but only if my blog can handle PHP, ASP and other technical items that I’m clueless about. My head is a-spin, and I don’t have the flu. So–I just thought I would admit that I am but a sheep following the herd–and now I’m lost! I will read up on the other sites—I just thought I would humor you with how wise you are and how techno-dumb I really am! I hope you feel better soon!

Thanks for the well wishes and ego-stroking, Robyn. I’m finally up and about today for the first time since Tuesday. Man, the flu sucks!

I’m working on an entry about LinkWorth and hope it will address some of your questions. (I’ve got another one to write before that, though.)

Are you on a self-hosted site? If so, you can find out whether your host handles PHP, ASP, etc. by looking at your cPanel under “General Server Information”.