Postcards from the Funny Farm

I do a lot of reviews in a year here on my blog. I am a consumer and then a consumer advocate when I have the time. Mostly I share positives of what’s out there and occasionally I will share with you what I think you need to steer clear from. Whether I am writing a sponsored post or not, I am always being truthful and honest on this blog and I must tell you today that SocialSpark is an awesome blog for pay network that you need to join and start earning at today. You spend your mind energy on your computer daily, why not get remuneration for it? I guess if you are independently wealthy, that makes no sense to you. On a teacher’s salary, I need other sources of income and I have found that in the new social network called SocialSpark

Bloggers: if you are looking to make money with your blog, SocialSpark can help you monetize your blog, build community and drive traffic.

If you have heard that SocialSpark is a disreputable enterprise (a lie going around the web) consider these ethics the company holds to:

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

It produces posts by people like us all over the planet expressing opinions on everything. How can that be wrong? Part of my day is always spent at the computer. I have decided that my PayPal card is going to benefit as will my kids, my wife, and my whole family! More toys at the store, more eating out, … it’s a win/win folks. Below is a screenshot showing some of the exciting writing opps. If you join up (which I hope you do now!) Make sure and give me props there and I will do the same for you. My username is rileycentral. See you at SocialSpark.

The expression: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” seems especially appropriate for Google here at the beginning of 2008. I am no seo or blogging mmol genius but I do know a few things about logic and ethics and setting PayPerPost writers’ pagerank to zero is a choice lacking in both.

Under the guise of weeding out vacuous content from searches, they claim all blogs that have PayPerPost articles on them are less helpful than those who don’t and thus set their PageRank to zero. This is an example of a company thinking they will reinvent natural law to suit them because they can, not because they should. It’s going to bite them, the internet did not evolve to this point to be defined by one company.

I recall when I first got into using Google, it seemed like such a cool enterprise. The page was white with no ads and it had applications that were all utility, no fluff (ie; analytics, gmail …). Now, they have decided they know based on one criteria if a blog is helpful to the internet, this is ignorance at its height and I hope Google stops this practice. My how Google’s “feel” has changed for me.

As for me? I will continue to be a postie because it’s something I am good at and it’s something I profit from. That’s why Walt Disney, Rod Serling, Ray Kroc, Richard Carlso... did what they did. Last week I lost my PageRank of 4/10 when it was set to zero. I had a feeling this might happen when I read the news about what Google was doing to posties. But has my readership changed? It has gone up. Has my content changed? It has gotten better. The way I see it is this: Google figured the blogosphere would appreciate it if they targeted posties, and for the most part, they are probably right (check out Duncan Riley’s tone on Tech Crunch). But that doesn’t mean that weeding out all blogs with PayPerPosts on them will increase the value of a search. In fact, in many cases, it will keep good information out of a search. Is the only information we want on the internet that which is written without compensation? You might as well stop watching TV as far back as I Love Lucy.

To quote Michael Stipe: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” Emphasize: I feel fine.

I predict Izea (PayPerPost’s rebranding) and SocialSpark will revolutionize rankings in 3-6 months. You can come and tell me I was wrong if they don’t, but as for now I am making sure I focus 100% on my idea of what a good ranking is:

1. Monthly Traffic Goals
2. Inbound links
3. Comment counts, and
4. Quality content (paid or unpaid)

If I can succeed in these areas (which I can and do already) then I’ll take my PR0 with pride and look to other ranking systems like Izea’s RealRank to determine how I’m doing. To my fans/readers: fear not, I am neither down nor out. I will get better through moving away from Google’s PageRank system, not worse. Whether you like PayPerPost or not, I hope you see how throwing every blog out that uses it is harmful to the blogosphere.

Now, to close, I have a question and I promise not to pigeonhole you or throw YOU out if I don’t like your answer:

What do you think about Google setting blogs to zero for participating in PayPerPost?