Some of you may have noticed that I have written some sponsored posts lately. I just joined the social spark site and there have been some really good opportunities. There are a lot of $5 opportunities that are available; I pass those up as they are not worth my time. However, when a $15 or $20 opportunity presents itself and it is related to making money or the Internet, it is hard to pass up. After all, it is my intention to make money blogging. I must admit that I am a bit concerned that Google will punish me for my actions, but I will not live (or blog) in fear of anyone or anything. I know I am being a bit dramatic, but in all seriousness, I am willing to risk losing page rank to make an additional couple hundred dollars per month. My purpose in writing this post is that I am very curious to see if you guys would be willing to do the same. I am very interested in checking out the poll results and hearing your comments on this matter.
For those bloggers who are majorly concerned with page rank and would not do anything to jeopardize it, I have a suggestion for you. Take a look at Smorty.com. They do not make you disclose that you are writing a sponsored piece. In fact, they openly tell you not to, as they rank the blogs and you are selected by your page rank. The higher your page rank, the more opportunities you will be eligible for. On the other hand, social spark has their own rating formula that is based primarily on daily visits and page views.
So, what do you think is more important…money? Or page rank?
**Update- I have heard directly from a representative of Social Spark and they claim because the links back to them are no follow there is no reason to fear a Google penalty. I am happy to hear that because Social Spark seems to have the best opportunities right now.
I do think that PR is more important than writing paid post, I don’t mean sponsored review that advertisers look for us themselves, I’m talking about paid post in smorty, social spark or pay per post. They pay little and you take the risk of losing PR anytime.
If you have higher PR and good traffics, I believe that direct advertisers will buy a sponsored review from you and publish in your blog with nofollow attribute. With that said, I don’t have to worry about penalized by Google. Also, direct advertiser is willing to pay up to $50 per post, it’s worth your time.
So, I prefer pass this and wait advertisers to look for me instead of serving paid post company.
Regards,
Lee
Make Money Online’s last blog post..Make Money Online With Affiliate Program Network
It’s always about the Traffic, Traffic equals dollars.
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added to Delicious and RT
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@Lee-I see your point..Smorty might be the best option because G will have no idea that it is sponsored…The problem is they do not have that many opps
@John- Thanks a lot for the delicious and RT love..it is appreciated! And I agree, traffic is key.
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Take the money, page rank doesn’t mean much. I used to own a site, before I sold it, and it’s page rank is only three and it’s worth over a quarter million right now…..so trust me when I say Pr doesn’t not matter. You gotta eat.
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I think social spark has nofollow links to advertiser’s sites and i read somewhere that ppl from payperpost asked google what should they do so that google doesn’t decrease the PR and their answer was to add nofollow to the links.
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Smorty? You’re not required to insert dofollow link in the paid post? If yes, then I think it’s safe to play. I have no idea about that because they’re paying very low price, not worth my time. Also, most of their topics don’t related to my blog, it doesn’t benefit my readers too.
Regards,
Lee
Make Money Online’s last blog post..Make Money Online With Affiliate Program Network
Um, its a difficult position and in someways a shame google has such a high dominance of the market and is able to control our pay packets so much! I think I would take a small number of sponsered posts that were relevant to my content/blog and cross my fingers!
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To your question at the end. It really depends on the person. A lot of people care about page rank and others like myself care about the money. I recently changed one of my blogs to poker and now get paid $35 per post with the advertiser providing the unique content and $50 per post if I have to write the content. Of course with a maximum of 3 links in the post. Last month I made $180 doing those posts. My page rank went from a PR1 to a PR2 in the update. (Again I can careless about pagerank)
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Thanks so much for the mention of SocialSpark! All the required links in the SocialSpark Marketplace contain a no-follow attribute so these are Google compliant and should not cause any trouble with your PR.
All the Best,
Carri Bright
Communications Lead
IZEA
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I believe one should focus on building a blog and a large blog archive. After that traffic will follow automatically. And once your blog gets noticed globally, money has to follow thereafter. Remember haste is waste. One shouldn’t get greedy in the process. Patience is the key.
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Thank you all for your comments so far, It seems like the opinions are 50/50..in fact I think a little more on the “take the money” side.
@Carri from Izea (parent company of SocialSpark) Thank you so much for visiting my blog and for your information, this will help my readers tremendously.
Tycoon Blogger’s last blog post..What’s more important, money? or page rank?
I would think that people not blogging for money would rather worry about PR while others that want the money would go for paid posts.
I guess it solely depends on the blogger themselves and what they want from their site in the long run.
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It’s really up to you. Because the links are nofollow-ed you probably don’t need to worry about PR being affected, but you should worry about readers viewing paid posts as distasteful. Maybe keep the paid posts to a minimum until you have enough traffic and advertising revenue to do without them.
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I think if you only took on a few paid for posts it wouldnt make much difference. Google wouldnt think you were selling posts if it was only done a few times and there are people who believe that Google looks at outwards links as much as inward links.
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C’mon lets all be honest. Money! Pagerank is just a side dish…
I agree with the above comment bu Iwrite. I was also sitting here thinking that this is an excellent question. I was fascinated with Google and now see how little they regard bloggers and all that I don’t have much use for them anymore.
peace thanks for the RT’s and support.
As far as being PAID to write a post/I will pass on that because I don’t feel it’s something I want to do personally. I can barely write what’s on my mind I’m not going to write a bunch of fake stuff for any amount of money.
As time goes on the offers and the skills you have to get paid increase so if you don’t quit you will get PAID
stumbled I was looking over how sweet a job you’ve done on this blog
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In my point of view PR is very important.
It’s true that Google has frowned upon websites selling links and sponsored blog posts that pass PageRank but I believe there is nothing to worry about if the sponsored blog post along with your link is on a nofollow blog. Your PageRank won’t be penalized and you will get extra traffic and income for content creation.
I think we don’t to fear about being penalty if using service like social spark. because so many people using this middle-man. If Google want to penalty, They should penalty all of them. That’s means it will reduce the quality of their search result.
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I will go for the money but currently I can’t be writing any articles since my pagerank is still null. A relatively new blog.
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Traffic and sales comes first. There are a lot of myths around Google penalties, and not all of them are true.
Page rank is better for me. if you are on the top 10, then money will pour in. Traffic is indeed very important, aside from commerciality.
I don’t care too much about PR, but the problem is paid review make my article feels unnatural. I prefer to write base on my interest, not because of someone pay me to write.
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