I’ve used quite a few different paid to post systems over this year in the hope of earning a good income. Yet, out of all of the systems that I have tried, only two have really fulfilled the promise. Why?

PayPerPost
I have to say that although it has gone quiet for me the last few months (I was earning $600 – $700 per month at peak, now down to $250 – $300) this is one of the two that I still check daily. Easy to use, a good support forum and generally fair prices. Well worth it.

BlogDistributor
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I didn’t like this system when I first tried it, but it grew on me. Well worth having a go, but your blog has to be perfectly written else you won’t be accepted! Write your post and submit it for approval. Once approved you then link to the advertiser. No approval = no free link, which is great and they pay well. The problem is lack of variation in tasks, but that should grow as they build. This is the second site that I still like to use.

SponsoredReviews
This is the first system that I “dumped”. First I got fed up of bidding on tasks that I hardly ever got to do. Then I got fed up of the tasks that came through the marketplace. You see, a 100 word and a 300 word article are paid the same amount, which is crazy, and the amount was next to nothing. No communication from them when they had a problem with a post and when I asked for help, no emails either. I just had to logon and see if there was a support reply.

InPostLinks
I do, sort of, keep running with this one but only because I don’t like to let things go! The problem here is that you have to keep logging and and looking for work. Then, when you find it, to get $2 for a 200 word post is a good payment on a PR3 blog. Maybe if the blog is a lot higher ranking and US based (I’m UK based) then some of those tempting better paying offers become available. But, one for the future, maybe.

SocialSpark
I’ve not really given up here, just I don’t see how to get a good volume of work through and I have no idea what their ‘points’ payment system equates to. A good idea in that you submit the post to them for review, but I’ve been waiting now for my last post to be reviewed for 12 days. Again, maybe shelved for the future for when my blog traffic has increased even more, although the ops I have had from them have not been aimed at my highest traffic blog.

BlogsVertise
I think this could be a good system, but as with BlogDistributor there just isn’t the work. At first there were plenty of jobs coming through, but with a range of PR2 & PR3 blogs there is almost nothing about. Prices vary widely, without any reason. I think if they spelled out what they were looking for in blogs it would help, but I have no idea. I thought at first maybe they were too new, but there is less work now than months ago.

Ebuzzing
This is a site that I want to use a lot, but as with others, there just is not the work available. There are plenty of video campaigns and especially recently I’ve been asked to take part in a lot of these, but given they are paid per view and completely off the topic of my blog, where would be the point? Shame. When there is an article it pays well, there just needs to be more opportunities to write articles for them!

ReviewMe
I have done maybe one or two posts for this site and never heard from them since, although they did pay out. Again, it is not clear what you need to do to get plenty of work. It seems that most of the work goes to the bloggers with the best reviews on their posts. But, as a newbie to the system, how do you get good reviews?

Sponzai
Another that I’ve not given up on, rather it has given up with me! Although there is a balance that I can withdraw. This is all about being paid to include guest posts. However, it is a sister site to PayPerPost and some of the interface is well behind the development there, so it looks like it is not being maintained (also their Twitter account has not been updated for 10 months). Good idea, in a way, but just not the demand maybe?

Disclaimer!
Obviously all of the above are just my opinions, based on my experiences with these systems. My blogging started a year ago and my venture into paid blogging started earlier this year. That means that most of my blogs have ‘low’ PageRanks™ (PR2 / PR3) because Google hasn’t updated the information in 8 months and they are all experiments in blogging so traffic across them can be low.

Maybe if your blog is higher ranking and higher traffic you know the secrets of working these systems. If so, do let me know by leaving a comment!

Out of all of the methods of making a bit of cash through blogging, which are the three that I would keep above all others? Well, it’s an easy answer, but ask me again in a month and I could just have changed my mind!

Indeed, what I favour today for making cash could well be in my pile of wastes of time in a year, month or even a year. However, I still feel these are a good three to stick with.

Google’s Adsense – an easy and simple way to make some cash, if you have plenty of traffic to your blog and better still if your topic is highly profitable. Hobby blogs might not have lots of high paying keywords, whereas finance and a lot of other categories could have keywords that pay very well. If there is a lot of PPC adverts on suitable search terms, then there is probably a lot of value in the adverts.

But it is very simple to use – install the adverts in a block or two and as long as you have high traffic levels, there should be a little income. However, it is not quite as simple as this. If your high traffic is regular readers, then you might not earn that much, the best comes from one off readers!

PayPerPost – probably my favourite paid to post system. Add your blog and wait for advertisers to open opportunities to you. You set your prices and with each paid post that you create your account slowly accrues payments. As with all paid to post systems, you can end up writing a lot of off topic posts as if you turn down to high a percentage of opportunities, you will stop seeing any opportunities being open to you.

What I don’t like is that the advertisers individually set down the rules as to how many words they want and so on. They might have paid for 30 words, but if they insist of 250 then that is what you have to do. They can also unfairly reject posts, however that is very rare.

BlogDistributor – a new system and one that is growing and needs to grow! These are very strict on blog quality – both existing posts and what you write for them – so a lot of non native English speakers will not be approved. Posts are checked by their team, which should mean consistency, but not always!

However, they pay well and because the approvals is by the team, rather than the advertisers, you quickly learn more about what they expect and it is generally a lot fairer approval process.

This is a system that I have grown to enjoy working with. Although, I must admit at first it annoyed me no end and seemed a waste of time. But hang in and it works!

It’s like many other paid to blog systems. Submit blog, wait for jobs, complete the work and then leave it live to await payment.

So, in what ways is it different to other blogs? Well, they control a lot more of what is going on than other systems. There are a lot of quality checks and they have higher quality standards than other sites.

It starts with the review of your website. If it is not written in perfect English with perfect spellings you will be asked to correct the blog and resubmit for consideration.

Then you get going. Prices are set within the system according to your PageRank. You are told there are jobs available and if any interest you, sign on and reserve a slot. This is a good way of working and I like it this way around.

It’s just not clear how long you reserve a job for. The T&C says you have 24 hours, but I’ve had reservations released in a lot less time than that.

That aside, you write a post around the given keywords, including the exact keyword in the title & post. But, you do not know the advertiser’s website. You only need to prepare for 1 keyword and typically you would be writing about 100+ words per post.

Then it is submission time again. Submit the post for review and if there is a slightest spelling or grammar mistake you are told to correct it. You have a maximum of 3 attempts to get it right, or the submission is scrapped.

Once they are happy with it you are then given the advertiser’s site to link to. This means going back and editing the post, which at first I found to be a pain. But, you get used to it quickly.

Payments are issued at the start of each month for all posts completed the previous month, if you have a minimum of $100 accrued.

It is a good system, however at the moment the system is new and the jobs are completely off topic and the same ones keep coming back day after day. I’ve written about metal roofs, Vancouver web design and a few other topics many times.

However, they do pay well and reasonably quickly! Take a look at blogdistributor.com and maybe they will soon get the publicity they need to expand and get more interesting work through!

With so many bloggers monetising their blogs and many new bloggers starting blogs just to create an income, I thought I would take a look at some of the different paid to post schemes and my personal experiences with each.

PayPerPost – probably one of the leaders in the field, PayPerPost accept absolutely any blog and give you a chance to earn some cash. It is a marketplace to bring together advertisers and bloggers, with the emphasis on control being between these two parties. Advertisers make offers to bloggers and then approve, reject or ask for changes. Bloggers set a price for the basic post plus an additional price per word based on their PageRank. So on a PR2 blog, you are recommended to charge $4.50 for a 50 word post and $6 for a 200 word post.

InPostLinks – as with PayPerPost InPostLinks is from the Izea family. Here your blog must have existed for at least 3 months and have a good ratio of content to paid posts. Advertisers create opportunities and segment on location, subject and PageRank, but that is when the fun begins. Advertisers also state the price they want to pay and then it is open to all eligible bloggers to grab a slot. When a decent opp arrives you may have seconds before all of the available slots are gone. So you need to be checking regularly for open offers to get a lot, and when you get them for your 200 word post you can be getting next to nothing. Up to $5.50 is sometimes offered for PR2 blogs, but mostly the offer price is $1.50 / $2 and sometimes the offers are less than a dollar.

SponsoredReviews – this is a system that I have tried to like, but not succeeded. It takes a lot of effort to get a few posts. You need to look through the list of available jobs and bid on those that are interesting. If you are lucky, an advertiser might accept your offer and you then have a week to do the work. Sometimes advertisers will make you a direct offer that you can accept or reject. It sounds good, but I’ve found the system slow. Next to no opportunities and then a few at once. Even with a few blogs registered this happens, with all my offers being to one blog for a few weeks, then rotating to the next one! Also, for a PR2 blog I get $10 offers, which sounds good but you only receive half of that. Given that sometimes the demand is for 400 words, $5 (or less sometimes) isn’t much considering the effort put in to get there in the first place.

BlogsVertise – in theory, quite a good system, but even with some PR2 and a PR3 blogs, the work has dried up. Just one offer of an advert for a bingo site (how’s that related to my sites?) in the last couple of months. Shame, the system worked well with the staff allocating work to bloggers. Typical tasks were 2 – 3 paragraphs of writing for $9 – $10 on a PR2 / PR3 blog. But approvals took an age and I had a few times rejects, usually because 2 weeks later the advertiser wanted the anchor text changing or something. The payment system was manual and paid out once the post was at least 30 days old. But being manual, sometimes they were forgotten for a while.

ReviewMe – I signed up, completed 1 review which I was paid for and that was the end of it. Just 1 of my popular blogs is listed, maybe a couple more might be more relevant?

BlogDistributor – the new kid on the block. At first I have to admit I did not like the way it works, but eventually I got used to it. You are allocated a task which you can accept (or reject) . You write the post, typically around 100 words, but the minimum varies (and is very strange, e.g. minimum 93 words!) and submit it for review. Their team review it, requesting any changes and then when they are happy they tell you what website to link to. I didn’t like this returning business at first (my login security being such a pain), but now that I am used to is and am seeing the annoyance of advertisers falsely rejecting on other systems, I am really getting to like it.

Out of these, PayPerPost and BlogDistributor are my favourites. PayPerPost just about wins as there is more work there, BlogDistributor is a bit too new and the tasks are repeating a lot, which is getting tiresome. Hopefully, with more bloggers on board to attract more advertisers, that system could become my favourite.