The Question of Ethics

It is difficult to decide whether you write about a post - or not. While you can make $1000 a month, easily, especially with 10 blogs at PR3 or higher, it is important to remember to read the fine print.

Blogitive and blogvertise expect bloggers to post every post. Now, you can let the posts laps, but over time, this will have a dramatic effect on the number of offers in the dash board. But then, accepting every one requires balance.

It is okay to talk 'on topic' for most posts, while still including the link. You'll notice that I do it. What is not allowed is including the word sponsored, or indicating that the post is paid for. I get around this by writing a lot of my own content, and leaving tags off the paid posts. This way, they just disappear into the background.

Still, it is a good way to get paid to write. It took me 3 years to start making money from Google. This year I received 3 checks in 10 months, with less time between each check. I have a friend who makes more, but she works hard to please Google.

This also raises a question. The only way to make Google money is to build a site that people will leave. Most bloggers want to keep their blog readers. So, optimizing for Google is not an option.

What Do You Write About?

When you are paid to blog, the tasks come into a dashboard at the paid to blog site. These can vary from diet pills and top us online casinos, to valuable tools that will benefit your readers such as online shopping and health care.

I am not a fan of the online gambling sites. However, my son does visit one and plays poker with his grandfather. They started this last summer when my son visited for two weeks. At first I was alarmed. Then I found that there was no money involved. After a while my son learned a few truths about gambling and I've seen the site for the valuable resource it is.

However, I do visit review sites and use their tools to evaluate whether my son should visit one of the sites reviewed, or I should keep him off it. I will admit that this is the very first time I have ever written about a gambling site. For the most part, they are nothing more than money grabs. But, being able to compare gambling sites and pick the 'safe' ones is a bonus.

Google Page Rank Calculator

A friend of mine was expressing her confusion over page rank. She didn't really understand it. So, I thought I would write a post to try and explain what Page Rank really is.

First, it is nothing more than a grade, like you received in school. Google grades your blog. It uses this grade to rank you in searches, drive traffic to your site, and determine how much google money you will earn from them. At PR2 and PR3, I rarely receive more than 5% of what Google promises for a certain keyword. That is okay, it still works out to $15 - $25 a month. A friend of mine who optimizes for Google earns about $100 + a month.

So, if you would like to see what grade Google gives your blog, then visit this page rank calculator and enter your url. Remember that you must try it with and without the www.

I Started This Blog to Prove a Point

I started this blog to prove to my students at www.writersonlinecourses.com in the 'make $1000 a month blogging' that it is possible to make good money writing blogs, in less than five months.

I reached the mark this month. This blog has a few dozen posts. I have not purchased any directory submissions - yet. But, it is active. I checked the ranking yesterday, and had a PR3. So, I submitted it to a couple of directory ad sites.

The first one to bite is smorty. Smorty is a service that connects advertisers with bloggers. the advertisers pay bloggers to write opinion posts, much like this one. The purpose is not to promote the service, but to build links back to the advertisers site.

This is how bloggers get paid to blog. They are paid for their blog advertising, from about $5 - $100 per ad. The ad does not need to endorse the product although I find that smorty pays my above norm to advertise on blogs.

This is all there is to the program. You will notice over the next few posts that some are reviews of products, some are just links. I use my discretion whether I feel a product is worth promoting. If not, I will just skim over the advertiser's blog and write 'on topic' and include the link, but not actually promote.

If your blog has PR2, and you want to get started in blog advertising then visit smorty.

Increasing Page Rank

Not only does your blog need a Page Rank, but it also needs to be cached on Google before advertisers like bloggingads will pay you to post their ads and reviews on your site. My one blog http://www.communati.com/main/blog/gracepub has a PR three, with some posts receiving more than 2500 views, but it is still not chached.

Several things can cuase this. The blog may be cuaght in the Google Supplimental Index that I've talked about in other areas of this blog.

I've 'digg' some of the post, stumbled posts until I reached the 15 blog limit, and submitted posts to delicious, facebook, technorati, as well as created links. By all logic, Google should have cached the sites by now.

Have you submitted your url? www.google.com/addurl.html Using Google's own tool can help.

To determine whether your site is currently included in Google's index, just perform a search for your site's URL. For example, a search for [ site:www.google.com ] returns the following results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.google.com+

You should also link from as many other places on the web to your site. This will help, especially if there are coding issues on the page.

What I Love About Work At Home

I Love work at home because . . .
When I have a birthday, I have cake for breakfast for two or three days becuase I can :)
I can turn the television on and listen to my fav movies while working.
I have a good excuse to stay up until 4 am.
I can read a novel while my computer is booting up.
I am home when my kids get home from school.
None of my relatives think I have a job, so they don't ask me to do things for them.
I can read my favorite magazines and call it research.
I can play on the computer for 10 hours and call it promotion.
I need to work hard, but I do not need to put up with office gossip.
I can dress up in comfe old clothes to work.
I can get to work with other writers.
I can turn down work that I don't feel good doing.

Google's Duplicate Content Filter - Urban Legend?

If you are on a blog like writingup, then yes, use original content, and ping after every post.

I have posted at five major blog sites for three years. I am not big here - yet, but I make more money from this blog because of the traffic.
However, your personal website is different.

The Duplicate Content Penalty

Let’s look at the “Duplicate Content Penalty.” It has been around for years, and haunts society like an urban legend.

It is feared despite the near total lack of reasonable proof that it exists in the form that most web owners understand.

The Penalty suggests that if my site has the same content as yours, one will be penalized.

Then, you do a Google search and what comes up as #1 on the search? An article directory, and an article that has 15000 downloads.

As usual, Google's duplicate content penalty has nothing to do with duplicate content. And it’s not a 'real penalty. It’s just a by-product of how the search engines work.

What happens is 'authority' sites get ranked. So, your little site with 100 articles on how to make the world's best short bread has the same article on mixing batter as a massive, 10 000 page website that focuses on cooking cookies - they get ranked - you don't. This is not a penalty, it is the 'natural consequences of living in the net environment.'

But, let's say that you've dutifully posted your article on 50 000 other websites, with an inbound link to a single article (never your index page) - then wham - you've just knocked the poor cooking cookies website off the charts.
What to do --- What to do?

You can do two things.

1. Put new content on your site weekly. Syndicate actively. And build links.
2. Toss the whole thing and become a Social Networking expert like Sharon Hurley Hall - and laugh at the search engine crawlers all the way to the bank.





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