Pro Interneter

If you’re in Chicago over the course of the next 10 days, be sure to check out Taste of Chicago 2008. It’s one of the biggest festivals of the year.

I was looking through the newly revamped Google webmaster tools and noticed some information about the enhanced image search and image labeler. I don’t know if this has always been here, but I hadn’t noticed it before. I signed a few of my sites up to use the image search and then went exploring a bit more.

A few clicks later I found myself at the Google Image Labeler, which is actually a rather fun tool to use. It doesn’t help your website in any specific way, but rather you are helping to build Google’s database of searchable images. Since a web spider can’t “look” at an image and decide what it is, Google needs real live humans do their evil bidding for them.

On the opening page, you are given an explanation of how the system works. Basically you assigned a partner that is at home somewhere on the internet, and you are both show the same image at the same time. You start typing words that describe the image, and when you and your partner type the same word, you are given points and then shown a new image. This goes on for two minutes. You are then shown your point totals, the words that your partner entered, daily rankings, etc.

Google has turned this into a pretty fun game to play. Sometimes your partner doesn’t really know what’s going on, or they don’t know how to spell (betteries, battaries, batteries) but I think they have found a great way to work this system.

I don’t know how the image search factors into your page analysis, or if your images have any actual weight for your page search, but it’s fun to play a few rounds.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had been led to Pay Per Post via a possible affiliate trick. I received my official rejection letter from Pay Per Post today, so I now feel compelled to write a review about them.

First, I will say that apparently the only reason I was rejected was because my blog hasn’t been around long enough. I can respect that. They obviously don’t want to let just anyone with a Blogspot account to be able to make money off of them. Here is the rejection letter:

Thank you for your blog submission!

Unfortunately, as per our terms of service, blogs must be live for at least 90 days in order to be eligible for our services. Blog age is counted from the blog’s first post. Please re-submit your blog for review when this requirement has been met. In the meantime, feel free to use PPP Direct and Affiliate tools while you work on meeting the requirements of our Marketplace!

Thank you!

Now I will make this clear - my view of Pay Per Post was not effected by this rejection letter. I wasn’t really expecting to be accepted and after my experience, I wasn’t expecting to use the site anyways.

When I was directed to the Pay Per Post site, it was a normal enough signup. The problems really began once I was logged into the site. I had no idea what was going on. There were banners and lists and a lot of other things going on, and I really didn’t know where to begin. There’s “Featured Opportunities”, “Big Green”, a standard offers area, and a lot more.

I really wasn’t sure how the whole process of getting “Paid Per Post” worked, so I started looking for an answer. Do I get paid just for writing the post? Do I have to send it to them? Am I supposed to just post it up on my site and the money rolls in?

I started clicking some different menu items (”PPP Tools”, “My Blogs”, “My Posts”) but I couldn’t find any answer. The site was proving very hard to navigate and I was getting more frustrated by the moment.

On several pages they displayed menus of buttons with little explanation of where they led. Yes, it had the title of the section, but am I really supposed to know what “Pay Per Post Direct” is? A normal list with an explanation would go a long way here.

Eventually I stumbled across the Affiliates section, and read that over. Here’s what it says:

No worries, it’s not too complicated. Simply tell your friend about PayPerPost by posting one of these badges on your site. The magic all happens when your friend is creating an account. You will get paid $15.00 once the referees first blog posting is reviewed, approved and then finally accepted 30 days later. This means they need to go all the way through the process in order for it to be a legit referral. If they do it right and are accepted we will hook you up. There is no limit to the number of people you can refer so long as we don’t see any fishy business with your account.

Right. No worries, it’s not complicated. Except that I have no idea what “You will get paid $15.00 once the referees first blog posting is reviewed, approved and then finally accepted 30 days later.” means. Does that mean my referee has to get accepted and then write a review of another site? Or does it mean that they have to get accepted and then pay someone to review their site? Does my referee have to officiate a regular season game? I really have no clue.

At this point I had really lost all interest in the process so I closed my window and forgot about it. Until I got that rejection letter, of course.

I was doing some reading when I happened across a blog named All Spiced Up. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there, but the blog name made think that it would be something about the Spice Girls. When the site loaded up, I found what could only be described as random celebrity pictures posted over the course of the last few months. Some of which did include the former Posh Spice.

In the blog’s top post, I found a link for Pay Per Post that said “Get Paid to Review My Post”. I had seen Pay Per Post on different blogs, but never seen a button like that, so I clicked it. Of course, I was taken to the Pay Per Post page and then had to signup before they would allow me to do anything.

Since I had now spent about 3 seconds total on the All Spiced Up blog, I figured I should go back and give it a good look, since I might be getting $7.50 to review the blog. Or the post. I really wasn’t clear.

The first thing I noticed about All Spiced Up was that it is a blogspot blog. Now, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with a blogspot blog, except for the fact that it is a blogspot blog. It simply looks unprofessional. The layout is very sloppy and the overall look of the blog makes it look “thrown together”…

I scrolled down a bit, and I started to notice that the posts were spaced out over time. This obviously isn’t a daily blog. There was a stretch in August where they posted for 3 straight days, but besides that it seems to be about 1 post per day - and those posts generally consist of a celebrity photo and about 50 words of text. Seems like something someone could have put together rather quickly.

Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the entire blog is bogus. Someone slapped up some pictures of Britney Spears and Halle Berry, and then stuck the Pay Per Post link at the top of the blog. Pay Per Post runs an affiliate program that pays you $15/referral - so if they can tempt me with $7.50, and they manage to squeeze the $15 out of the process, they are still making $7.50 out of the deal.

The catch is that they won’t get paid until “the referees first blog posting is reviewed, approved and then finally accepted 30 days later.” - Which I think means that I have to pay someone to review on my posts - Which means that it isn’t going to happen for them.

That’s all I have to say about All Spiced Up. I’ll cover my thoughts about Pay Per Post in another post.