I’m always on the lookout for new ways monetize my blogs and websites but I’ve never been a big fan of “paid blogging” programs such as PayPerPost (Izea), ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, etc. The fundamental concept of these program has been extremely controversial in the blogging community with many debates over ethical issues, search engine ranking manipulation and generation of junk content. However, as the old saying goes, “You can’t knock something until you’ve tried it”, so I decided to put a “review blog” on one of my unused domains and give these systems a shot to see if they really had any merit.
I joined the most popular “paid blogging” program, PayPerPost (Izea) and my first impression of their program was jaded by the fact they are very slow to approve any new blogs entered into their system and their support is horrible. I was completely turned off by the fact that when I finally received a response to my queries about their approval process, I was told I would have to change my blog’s format and add monthly categories to my sidebar in order for their staff to review my posts. OK, I guess the URL of a post isn’t sufficient for their technically challenged staff to follow, so for my experiment, I obliged their request and my blog was approved after over a month of waiting.
Please note what I just stated in the last paragraph… I had contact with their staff and my blog was approved after I met their criteria.
I checked some of the available PayPerPost opportunities and noticed that the vast majority were nothing but crap with only a scant few I could actually write a sincere, honest review about. In my first month of this experiment, I took three opportunities and wrote honest reviews that I felt did not compromise any ethical concerns while offering a genuine review of the advertisers sites. All three of my initial posts were approved after several weeks of waiting and I was eventually paid a mere $35 for all three posts. When all was said and done, I felt the time and effort dealing with PayPerPost wasn’t worth the money considering I can’t even buy half a tank of gas for what I was paid.
A few months passed and one weekend when I was bored, I decided to check for any decent opportunities from PayPerPost and found a $25 deal that was available to me, so I jumped on it. The first opportunity was easily completed and I submitted it for approval. Following the paid post, I wrote a few articles reviewing products available at Amazon and an article comparing the various webhosting companies. After that, I found another PayPerPost opportunity for $35 that was for a company I wanted to write about because I believed in their service. I completed the second paid post and submitted it for approval but was shocked when I received the following email from PayPerPost staff…
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Hi, Thanks so much for your post. We are glad to see that you were excited about the Opp. Unfortunately, we are not able to approve this post because it does not meet the requirements of our Terms of Service regarding Interim Posts. According to our Terms of Service, PayPerPost Opportunity-related posts may not appear consecutively on your Blog. Each PayPerPost Opportunity post must be separated by at least one non-sponsored, original content, post. ‘Sponsored’ posts apply to both PayPerPost Direct and Marketplace Opportunities, as well as other sponsored posts from competitive services. As the post next to this post titled “ Amazon Kindle Electronic Reader ” is also a sponsored post, this post does not meet our Terms of Service and may not be resubmitted. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this matter, or our Terms of Service, please feel free to contact us at any time. |
Apparently PayPerPost must be hiring crack smoking monkeys to review posts because any idiot could clearly see the Amazon Kindle review was not an opportunity offered through PayPerPost or any other paid posting system, furthermore, there were three additional articles in between the two PayPerPost opportunities. This situation left me in a serious bind because I felt I’d been hired to write the reviews and now due to PayPerPost staff’s obvious inadequacies, I was not going to be paid for the second opportunity which I took my time on because I really like the company I was reviewing.
Well, to make matters worse, PayPerPost removed the opportunity and the record of it from my account so I contacted PayPerPost support once again stating they could clearly see that the two posts were not consecutive as they had stated. After a few days of waiting for a response, I received the following email from PayPerPost support…
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Hi David, Thank you for getting back to me. I have reviewed your post, however I was unable to find your Disclosure Policy. Please make sure your blog has one and then resubmit your post. If you have a site-wide policy please make sure it is available from every page of your blog. You can check out www.disclosurepolicy.org to get your policy. Please let me know what questions you may have. Kind Regards, |
At this point I was a little more than peeved that what had started as a “consecutive posts” issue was turned into yet another unrelated issue. The clincher was the fact that my blog had been approved and I was paid for three posts regardless of the Disclosure Policy. Again, I contacted support and stated the fact that if my blog were to have a Disclosure Policy, this should have been addressed at the time of my blog’s approval. This is the response I received from Gordon King, who is the manager of PayPerPost’s support system…
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As you are aware, it is certainly your option as to whether you want to add a disclosure policy, or not. However, your posts will continue to not be approved due to this violation of the TOS.
In reference to your previous posts that were approved, you are correct in the fact that you should have been notified this at that time, and, in fact, these posts should not have been approved. I will be addressing this with my staff. I apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused. Thank you for your patience. Best Regards, |
Consequently, the staff at PayPerPost declined both of my posts and cheated me of $60 for two opportunities I had completed due to their own lack of professionalism. Granted, the loss of $60 is not the issue, the issue is that PayPerPost was not responsible for ther own mistakes and did not make ammends and tried to continuously turn the situation around on me to avoid making a payment.
I contacted both advertisers regarding the articles I had written and informed them of the situation with PayPerPost and both advertisers offered to send me payment via Paypal to keep the articles on my blog because the posts were ranking on the first page of the search engines and the articles were well written. The second advertiser even contracted me to write a press release for them which was an added bonus that would not ave surfaced had PayPerPost not acted in such an unprofessional manner.
Since my bad experience with PayPerPost, I’ve read numerous articles regarding their lack of professionalism such as this article about PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy abusing job candidates. Additionally, I have compiled a series of links exposing PayPerPost for the frauds and scammers that they are.
PayPerPost Changes Name to IZEA. Don’t You Forget It.
Remember This Name: PayPerPost to be Called Izea
PayPerPost/Scam train wreck coming off the rails…
Why PayPerPost, their investors, and their advertisers should be ashamed of themselves.
My PayPerPost Experience
Blogger Beware - The PayPerPost/CIA Connection
Another PayPerPost Virus
PayPerPost.com offers to sell your soul
Tags: PayPerPost, Izea, Ted Murphy, Gordon King, blog, scam
<strong>Url Posted at C4G Forum…</strong>
PayPerpost (Izea) is one of the most shady companies onthe internet beside Text-Link-Ads. They claim……
Thank you for saying what I have been thinking all along. Expose these people and stop the scammers. nothing annoys me more than being ripped off.
I love your blog btw :)
Hi David,
I wanted to address this post regarding “scamming” you.
Upon registering with PayPerPost, all bloggers, agree to our Terms of Service. In the TOS, it states that all posts must include some form of disclosure (i.e. in post, or site-wide). In fact, the following is my entire response, dated 03/25/2008, that you referenced in you post:
Dear David,
According to our Terms of Service, section 3.1 (Transparency and Disclosure), which you agreed to, in order to participate in the PPP marketplace, you must provide disclosure.
3.1. TRANSPARENCY & DISCLOSURE.
Bloggers participating in the PayPerPost Marketplace must clearly disclose on their blogs the relationship between themselves and the Advertisers in connection with Opportunity-related posts. The appropriate manner in which to make such disclosure (e.g., site wide disclosure policy or disclosure on a per post basis) may vary with the circumstances and is to be determined by the Blogger. PayPerPost requires, however, that disclosure be made in a meaningful way that makes clear to an ordinary consumer that there is a relationship between the Blogger and the Advertiser. PayPerPost reserves the right to review and monitor the disclosure practices of all Bloggers who participate in the Marketplace and PayPerPost Direct and to either require greater levels of disclosure (in the event that PayPerPost determines in its sole discretion that current disclosure practices are inadequate) or remove the Blogger from the Marketplace (in the event of inadequate disclosures). Blogger agrees to comply with Our Blogger Code of Ethics, the Federal Trade Commission’s Staff Opinion Letter dated December 7, 2006, WOMMA’s Ethical Blogger Contract Guidelines, and all applicable laws and regulations, including but not limited to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guidelines.
As you are aware, it is certainly your option as to whether you want to add a disclosure policy, or not. However, your posts will continue to not be approved due to this violation of the TOS.
In reference to your previous posts that were approved, you are correct in the fact that you should have been notified this at that time, and, in fact, these posts should not have been approved. I will be addressing this with my staff.
I apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused.
Thank you for your patience.
Best Regards,
Gordon
This was in response to your comments, from 03/24/2008:
Here’s the deal - I don’t like Google telling me what to do with my site (ie: sell reviews or links) and a damn sure don’t Izea telling me to stick a disclosure policy on my blog. My blog is “MY PROPERTY”, not yours. If it needed the disclosure policy then the representative from your company who told me I had to put my “dated categories” back on my sidebar should have told me that as well before I was paid for three previous posts. FYI, both of the paid posts you’re trying to cheat me out of SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED that there was to be “no disclosure” in the opp.
I WILL NOT put a disclosure policy on my blog. Tell CNN or Fox to put disclosure policies on their news that talks about companies who advertise with them. You owe me $35 for two posts YOU SCREWED UP. If I walk away cheated, both YOU and your advertisers who cheated me will reap 1000x the negative press than the $35 you screwed me for. I am also in the Orlando area, and I have friends at WESH and the Daytona News Journal and I have been in the magazine/newspaper business for over 20 years and this disclosure business is bull. If I write a positive article for the News Journal about a local buainess, chances are that business will take and advertisment with the paper, it has always worked that way. Your company is trying to sell “pagerank” and you know it, so please don’t insult me with your laughable policies and pay me for what you owe me. I do know that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and I do know how to contact the BBB and state representatives regarding fraud and deceptive business practices.
From your comments above, you are telling us that you are refusing to comply with the Terms of Service. The TOS is our policy for anyone who wishes to participate in our marketplace. Therefore, if an individual no longer agrees to the TOS, then they have chosen to not participate in our marketplace.
You state that we scammed and defrauded you, and that we have deceptive business practices. How is this the case when everything that your were denied for is clearly stated in our Terms of Service; which you agreed to?
I apologize that our Terms do not meet your expectations.
Sincerely,
Gordon
Well, I can not quite agree with you mate. I’ve had pleasant experience with them in the past and made some cash, but I’ve experienced the cases you did too (about declined posts due to non-following the TOS), however I was really making the mistakes of not following the rules and I agreed with the fact that I do not get paid for those unapproved posts.
It is too bad for your case that PPP tought a general post as a sponsored one and your best action would be to just remove the new sponsored post you written (the one from PPP, that you don’t get paid for no matter what you change), and have it as a lesson for the future.
Very well Gordon, the initial issue *WAS NOT* the disclosure policy, it was back-to-back posts. Once your staff was proven wrong, then you covered your tracks by bringing up the disclosure policy which should have been addressed at the time of my blog registration, not after I had already been paid for three posts.
That was *YOUR* mistake, not mine and you should honour the fact that your company screwed up instead of taking it out on me.
Additionally, as I mentiond in the message you quoted above, both of the advertisers SPECIFICALLY requested that there was *NO* disclosure policy as I’m sure many PPP bloggers will know that the majority of your advertisers request. I specifically chose those opps because I do not feel I have the obligation to disclose what I write a review about on my blog.
Should I disclose the PepperJam or Adsense articles I’ve written here have my affiliate links and that pay for each new affiliate signup ?? You’re crazy, you people at Izea are NOT offering legitimate reviews for bloggers to write, you are truly working to game the SERPS just as Marshall Kirkpatrick and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch have stated repeatedly. I gave your company a shot to see if you were legit, but you are not and the TC guys were right.
You are in the wrong no matter how you try to slice it and responding to me in any other manner other than paying me what is owed is indicative of the fact that you are nothing more than a scammer. For a company that is publicly funded, maybe you should pay affiliate such as myself instead of taking Club Med parties and getting drunk at us bloggers’ expense.
Scammers hide behind TOS and BS like that. The cold, hard fact is the articles I wrote were high quality, not back to back and I should have been paid.
’nuff said…
@Gordon
What is the Disclosure Policy supposed to prove? That you’re using bloggers to sell text links to manipulate search engine rankings ?
You’re painting a bullseye for Google on every blog you require such a badge but what do you care as long as you Izea people can make a living from cheating.
For the record, I was in PPP from the beginning and when my PR5 blog got zapped to PR0 because of PPP, suddenly there was no real opps available for me.
So tell us Gordon, please, what is the difference between a PR5 and a PR0 blog and why do most of your so called advertisers require a minimum PR3 to accept an opp?
Tounge tied ? I’ll bet you have some snappy comeback to justify what you are doing is legit but Dave is right about you and Izea and at least he has the balls to confront you.
Dave, you have a new RSS subscriber for life !!! Keep up the good work !!!
Dave,
Don’t waste your valuable blog space arguing with these lowlifes. It will only detract you from the informative articles you’ve been publishing.
I was wondering why you hadn’t been posting in over a month but I guess with the Google sabotage and the issues you’ve been dealing with PPP and Linkworth you probably needed a break from this affiliate rat race.
At least you are honest and tell it like it is but please help us focus on the real paying honest affiliate programs like CJ, PepperJam, TNX, and ClickBank. I’ve learned a lot from you and your blog and appreciate the personal help you’ve given me getting my sites up but this Gordon guy is in the wrong and anyone can see that he is covering up a mess he made by not dealing with the issues as an adult but as a corporate lackey.
Chris
My blog went from PR4 to PR0 overnight after I did a few PPP opps. Now they are treating me like I have leprosy and no opps are available.
PPP = Scum of the Earth
wow, sorry about that man, thats one of the reasons why i don’t partake in those… it usually ends up bad
[…] Scammed By PayPerPost aka Izea By Dave I’m always on the lookout for new ways monetize my blogs and websites but I’ve never been a big fan of “paid blogging” programs such as PayPerPost (Izea), ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, etc. The fundamental concept of these program has … Affiliate Best Programs - http://www.affiliatebestprograms.com Sphere: Related Content […]
I just drop by to say I find this article when this company have scam my sister of money she make by blogging for them. This is no good company to do business with for anybody outside the US bcoz you can not have any action against them for cheating you.
daytona news journal onlineBy PayPerPost aka Izea
The bottom line is they took money and refused to honour the agreement, and then reverted to the hide behind the TOS tactic.
I believe they should at least refund you Dave.
Hey Dave,
I just had the same experience as you! I was bounced back and forth with different reasons to reject my $5 post. That is after the post had been on my blog for at least a week. Free advertising huh?? The first two times, I was still nodding to their requests to change this and that, but now being rejected for the third time for some silly TOS reasons, I have had enough!!
Hi David,
I am really thankful to you .Because you did a great job by exposing such people.Though I haven’t any experience with them but I am agree on your post.
Overall I think you have some valid points. I have been working hard trying researching some of these same thoughts…