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1. My blog is in the realm of personal finance.
2. Personal finance is about money in all forms, getting it, saving it, and keeping it.
3. One of my goals with the site is to teach people good ways to get, save, and keep it.
4. Blogging is a form many of my readers use to get, save, and keep money.
5. Helping readers to improve their blogs by things I’ve learned help them improve their personal finance.

I stumbled across this article on Wired.com this morning that caught my eye. Mathew Honan gives some good insight in how PayPerPost (now called Izea) works.

“Advertisers dole out writing assignments based primarily on a blogger’s Google PageRank, a score that measures a site’s influence. I’ve burned through all the legit opportunities available to someone of my middling ranking. I’ve urged my readers to donate to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. I recorded a folk-rock paean to the Hamilton Beach Eclectrics Stand Mixer (”40 watts to make four 1-pound loaves of bread / Hands-free mixing with a two-way rotating head”). I’ve made $146.88.”

So if you Google Page Rank isn’t stunning, you get the stories like the 4th anchor on the news team who gets the “Grannies Tomato Contest” or the “Man Tasered in Genitals.” Which probably aren’t that entertaining. How do you post on something like that? I personally feel like it is selling out to the man. Similar to the way the Kontera Ads made me feel a couple months back. Yes, turning a profit of some sort on the blog is beneficial; but that isn’t the PRIMARY reason you should blog. If it isn’t fun for you, or providing a service then who are you benefiting? Yes, you’re helping yourself to some $$$, but can’t you find something else to do that is paying bills better? I’ve made more than $146.88 on this blog so far and I’m writing about things I enjoy. Why not try that?

Mathew goes on to say:

“I wake up to find my Google PageRank sitting on zero. In an attempt to protect the integrity of its search results, Google has launched a search-and-destroy on paid links, demolishing the PageRanks of Posties everywhere. Murphy, who recently changed his company’s name to Izea, says he’ll press on. But I’m getting out.”

So Google is now on to the tricks of the falsifying of a blog written just to be written. It is just like handing out your business card at the deli to get a free sandwich during the weekly drawing. Blogging broke on to the scene as an objective way to look at the world, so that you didn’t have to see it through the eyes of advertisers and reporters, and those same advertisers are trying to dig their way into the moral blogging realm knowing that $$$ will make people do about anything.

Mathew comes around at the end though, and realizes that it may not be the best passive income stream anymore:

And thank God. The past month has been a downward spiral of moral compromise. I pretended to be enthralled by a service that sends letters from Santa to your kids. I wrote 53 meaningless words to provide a paid link to a Colorado real estate site. I even feigned a knee injury so I could plug Freeze It Gel.”

And so the story has a happy ending at least. I understand the reasoning for diving into it, I even considered it at one point, but I’m sure on the same not as Mathew, it’d get hard to look myself in the mirror after that; furthermore, I’d feel empty as I know I have some valuable information to write and let people know about. I’m not saying I’ve not made bad decisions, because you all know I have, and I’m all for passive income (of which I failed a time or two there also), but there comes a point in every investing plan that just doesn’t make sense (cents). You’ve got to try new things to get ahead, and even just to pay the bills sometimes, but this would be down at the bottom of the list for me as I’m in to making more money, but not necessarily into selling out to “The Man”.

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