PayPerpost (Izea) is one of the most shady companies onthe internet beside Text-Link-Ads. They claim……

I love your blog btw :)

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

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.

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…

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 !!!

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

PPP = Scum of the Earth

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!!