Scarform’s Blog

Oct 25, 20074
Wolf (in sheep’s clothing)

“You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost™ advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.”

“Your last non Opportunity-related post must have been within the 7 days immediately preceding your Opportunity-related post. After any break in blog activity of 7+ days, interim posts, that is, posts between Opportunity-related posts, submitted on the same day as your paid Opportunity-related posts will not count towards this requirement.”

  • It can take up to a month for you blog to be approved, up to a month for a post to be approved, and then 30 days after the post has been approved for you to receive payment for the post.
  • Your post can be rejected if a previous post is “too short”, or the post that you submitted “can not be easily found”, or was not written within a certain amount of time from another non-paid post on your blog.
  • If your blog has more than one author to it, it will not be accepted.

“How insane is that! I have been with them since May and loving every bit of it. How great is that they have acknowledged my efforts and like my blog! I feel so special!”

They list the Top Earners, but do not link their blogs. They have a “Blog of the Day” that seems to generate blogs randomly and without prejudice or concern for the over-all content of the blog itself. (Many of these so called “Blogs of the Day” do not state that the post they are writing was, in fact, sponsored as per their “code of ethics” on blogger/advertiser transparency in the Blogosphere.) It has also been stated that if a site implements a “site wide” disclosure policy, then they are exempt from the Transparency issue (and do not have to disclose on a post-by-post basis whether or not it was sponsored.)

In a way, this destroys that entire blogs credibility. Yes, I see that you disclose that you are paid for blog entries but how do I know which ones are paid and which ones are not?

“By participating in the PayPerPost Marketplace and accepting payment for the content you create you grant PayPerPost and the specific Advertiser purchasing the content a perpetual license to use, republish and distribute the content in all forms of media…Any use, publishing or distribution of a Blogger’s content by PayPerPost or any Advertiser must be accompanied by credit to the author of that content.”

Any copyrights you may think you have within a sponsored post do not exist as the advertisers paying for the post itself hold the right through the PPP TOS to redistribute the material in question without your permission (but with your name intact).

“…but they offered me a LOT of money, and you know me - anything for a buck!”

We’re going to focus on the current “top earner” of all time: Simple Kind of Life (Colleen 692). Disclaimer:none of the following information was obtained through illegal ways - it is all publicly available information.

The website itself is ranked 59,245 at Alexa.com with the bulk of its traffic coming from the United States.

It has a current Google Page Rank of 4/10.

It was created in 2003, and expires in 2008. Both Godaddy and DomainsbyProxy.com are listed within the Registrant information. Domainsbyproxy.com is a group that keeps registrant information (name, address, etc.) of the individual registering the domain private.

“When Jim woke me up this morning, I wanted into the bathroom to pee. Jim was standing (naked) at the sink, about 8 feet away from me. I noticed his rear had a red ring on it, and teased him about sitting on the can before he came in to brush his teeth and shower. Then the unthinkable happened.

I noticed a brown mark on my husbands ass.”

Link:simplekindoflife.com returns 522 Results. Taking into account that she runs 6 other blogs (and we need to filter the results for duplicates from the same domain). It would also seem that a lot of the backlinks are generated from within the PayPerPost community itself (or internet marketing type websites) as seen in small quantity here.

We can also look at a more filtered “who’s linking this site” view through Alexa’s own system: list.

We also see a spike in rank in the latter quarter of 2006 (around the time she joined PayPerPost.) Her first Paid post was on July 5th, 2006. Paying for my Hosting One Post at a Time.

(Before and after shots: Before. After.)

So one of the questions that has been on my mind: how does a blog that has relatively no visability in the blogosphere go from zilch to over $10,000 in just over a year and a half? (these figures, while not totaling the actual value she has been placed at, are publicly available through her regular posts on her blog at Simplekindoflife.com.) Especially with a PR 4 blog and and a post limit of 3 paid posts per day with interim posts required between each.

Let’s do the math: At 3 posts a day for 30 days out of the month in the 15 months leading to the present, we’re looking at 1350 posts total. 3 posts a day + 1 interim post for each paid post would = 4050. That’s a total of 578 entries (if the total amount of her income is divided between her 7 sites and if those 7 sites are registered sponsored blogs.) Her main site lists 3290 entries (link).

38 paid posts per month between 7 blogs. Each blog is discerned into a different category (obviously her shopping blog can’t be put into mens topics) so we’ll assume that she has each different blog tailored for different posts. 5 posts per blog.

Now let’s be generous and say that the top post earns 20 dollars while the basic one earn 5. We’ll average it to 15 a post. 570 per month. We get 8,850. With a PR 4 blog, she is excluded from a lot of the higher paying post opportunities, and it’s hard to imagine that she’d make 2k+ in extra PayPerPost income.

Now without the hard copy facts in front of me, these are merely speculations, but they are speculations that make you wonder. Where are these numbers coming from? Especially considering that it takes nearly a month for a post approval (at the most) and another month for payout.

7 of the entries in her media-mom pre-date the first paid post, leaving only 6 that were made after. How many more entries predate the initial paid as well? How many of those 4050 (or 578 necessary) predate the initial paid post?

What also screws with the numbers is the fact that she posts within multiple categories - just because the category itself reads x amount doesn’t mean there are x amount of individual posts within that category - it could very well be 5 posts in 3 categories, thereby padding the numbers by 1 per category.

On a side note, she’s not listed as today’s highest earner, or even this month’s highest earner.

So what is the point of this, you may be asking? There really is no point other than to get you to start questioning the very sources of your income. “Why are the same people getting xxx amount of dollars without any clear reason as to why other than a sponsored blog?” “How do people with seemingly no visibility within the blogosphere suddenly sky-rocket to mass amount of income and back links seemingly overnight?”

But most of all:

“Why continue to pollute the internet with links to things that nobody in their right minds would want in the first place.”

There is a reason that these companies pay people to hawk wares - and it’s no different from the Carpet Baggers and Tonic Vendors of the days long gone.

If people knew any better, they wouldn’t buy them in the first place. Knowledge is your key. Use it on the doors that matter.

Feb 1, 20070
Snow

It’s snowing…
The first snow has fallen upon our Arkansas city in a light-turned-heavy-turned-light flurry of white. Last night, we got about a few hours of it, and then it completely disappeared only to return today for another hour or so. And then it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. We’re supposed to be getting it off and on for the next couple of days I think, but I don’t see it as becoming a nuisance. Our last really big ice storm was in 2002, which wasn’t really accompanied by too much snow (there was some, but not as much as there was just plain ol’ ice.)

Memories of snow
I’m not a very sentimental kind of person. I’m sentimental in some ways, but not really in ways that matter. But seeing the snow today brought back memories from over a decade ago. The first really good snow I had seen in my life (the Christmas we got our first Daschund Diesel, and how she would nearly disappear into the few feet of snow and then re-appear as she bounded upward into the air, only to almost disappear again as she landed.)

Strange smells
Recently, we had a very strange odor appear in our apartment (almost smells like ammonia). We also have had puddles of water appearing from beneath the carpet. We alerted our apartment managers about it, but I don’t think they really did anything. The smell is still there, and now both Erin and I are getting light headed and feeling sick. I’m thinking of evac’ing us until this whole thing blows over, but due to the recent weather this might not be an option. It really all depends on how the roads are.

I’m pretty sure that somebody is cooking meth in the apartment complex or doing something they’re not supposed to, thus, the strange chemical smell. I hate these apartments. We just happened to be living in the trashiest one because the people upstairs let their kids run around and throw trash all over the sidewalk and tear up the place. Plus, somebody keeps stuffing huge pieces of furniture into the dumpster. (I’m talking couches and chairs and mattresses. It’s fucking unbelievable how these people live.) Which is another good reason to move as quickly as possible.

I don’t think I have ever, in my entire life, lived around people who were so trashy and it not be a trailer park. If these people disappeared tomorrow, I have a feeling they wouldn’t be missed.

Jan 21, 20070
What’s your limit?

Drinking Age: Too young to drink but old enough to die
By 2004, the Government issued a Federal Drinking Age Limit of 21; the states most affected by this were the states of Texas ((which allowed young persons to drink if their parents were present)) and Louisiana ((which had a drinking age of 18.)). This has also been the source for many debates and discussions surrounding the topic of a person being old enough to fight and die for their country, but still too young to buy a six-pack.

18 vs 21
When we’re 17, turning 18, we think “This is it. I will finally be an adult.” But what you may (or may not) realize is that the only real benefits you get with being 18 are:

  • You can now be tried as an adult if you screw up; no more slaps on the wrist.
  • You can buy cigarettes, you can vote in an election and you can be drafted into a war that you could possibly die in, yet you can not buy a case of beer.

The only difference when you turn 21? You can now legally purchase alcohol.

European laws
In Europe, the legal drinking age is 16 years old. In Mexico, from what I hear, you can drink as soon as you’re able to see over the bar. America? 21.

Lowering the drinking age to 16 (or at least 18) would reduce the amount of alcohol related deaths. Here’s a question: Why do you think kids drink? Because you tell them they can’t. I’m not saying that reverse-psychology is the new way to go, but if you really think about it, it makes a little sense that introducing alcohol to a child and educating them properly on its consumption is a little better than saying “If I find out you’ve been drinking, I’m going to kill you.”

As humans, we learn from experience. Take drinking and driving. We’ve all seen the slides of the people who have been thrown through a windshield and landed face first into the oak tree on the side of the road. We’ve all seen the gruesome pictures of what can happen. So why haven’t alcohol related accidents stopped altogether? If showing what can happen (basically threatening, but we’ll call it “informing” to be productive) isn’t working, then what do you think will?

I’m not saying drink and drive. But theoretically, a person would be able to learn not to drink and drive by having a near fatal alcohol related accident than they would by seeing the images of an alcohol related accident as a bystander. “That’s not me.” “That would never happen to me.” “They shouldn’t have been drinking and driving.” All popular responses.

Education
You need to know how to handle alcohol before you jump into it. Who do you think would be able to handle their alcohol better: a newly turned 21 year old who has been told his whole life not to drink, or a newly turned 21 year old who has drank a few times? Take that same 21 year old and add years of steady introduction to alcohol counterbalanced with the appropriate knowledge of alcoholism, what it does to the human body, and so-on.

We as an American society make alcohol out to be such a horrible thing, but back pedal when it’s for our own good. Example? “A glass of red wine is good for you.” I’m not arguing that it isn’t good for you, I’m just pointing out the general hypocrisy of the message we’re sending. Or how about “Alcohol is good only in moderation”? Define moderation in regards to a case of beer, or shots at the bar.

Or how about the keg? That invention surely wasn’t intended for moderate drinking, which you can deduce by simply looking at the sheer volume of alcohol that can be put into it.

Moderation, tolerance, and the time before this
Moderation is key, based on your tolerance level, which builds over time. So why not start building a tolerance level early in life so you can hold your alcohol when it hypocritically becomes “acceptable” for you to drink in public.

My plan

  • Lower the drinking age to at least 18. (If they are old enough to die, they are old enough to drink.)
  • Gain an open mind to your child’s development; don’t have a can not attitude; have a can do!
  • Monkey see, monkey do. If monkey gets burned, monkey won’t put his hand in the flame again.
  • Proper education on alcohol (including how to handle yourself responsibly when drinking, knowing your own limits, and appointing a few non-drinkers to keep the keys so nobody drives or to drive somebody to a destination if they have been drinking) as well as an “Open Door Policy” to those who need to seek council with regards to alcohol.
  • Common sense.

Until we can get our minds completely wrapped around the fact that our kids are going to drink and get stupid (as well as the fact that it’s our fault they are going to get stupid) then we can never truly hope to win the so-called War on Alcoholism.

Anything else?
If you’re old enough to obtain a Visa, and you’re old enough to drive, you’re old enough to see your way to Mexico and get drunk. (This would also lower the amount of tax dollars put forth to pay the law enforcement agencies to continue to uphold laws that are both hypocritical and nonsensical. I would rather you be out there fighting real crime than have you wasting 5 hours of your paid patrol to bust a couple of teenagers drinking a few beers.)

The what-ifs don’t matter - it’s all about the what-weres.

Jan 8, 20070
log those pedophiles!


The above image may not be work safe.

A keystroke logger is a way for a person to create a file of the keystrokes that a person logged into a computer with the program running presses. What used to be the easiest way to an admin password on your bosses computer has now become the easiest way for your boss to see what naughty websites you’ve been visiting on company time.

At Netbus.org, the Spectre Pro Keylogger will:

…record email, chat and instant messages, web sites visited, keystrokes typed, P2P activity, programs launched, online searches, myspace.com activity and visual snapshot recording. PLUS a detailed overview summary of everything they do the most!

As a parent, you would be able to keep track of what your children are doing on the internet. As a boss, you will be able to keep track of what your employees are doing on company time. As an unauthorized user to another machine, you would be able to log passwords and other important details.

If you’re a parent, you would have to assume your children know less than you do about computers for this to be effective. As a boss, you would have to have more knowledge of computers than your employees.

M. Gellis of Fulton, MD writes:

“This is an amazing product! Due to my teenage daughter communicating with strangers on the internet, I had been forced to move her computer into the dining room so that I could keep an eye on her keystroke logging.”

Lisa Knoppe of St. Louis, MO writes:

“I’ve not only saved my teens from making bad choices, but have also been able to alert our school privately of happenings that they wouldn’t have otherwise know of. One child was searching online for drugs. Due to knowledge gained through Spector they were expelled immediately and are now receiving much needed counseling.”

Sal Velasco of Torrance, CA writes:

“We were worried our 13 year old son was being exposed to pedophiles on the internet so we loaded Spector Pro and within two days of “evidence gathering” we sent a note to all participating parties and received these responses: ‘I did’nt know he was 13. I won’t speak to him anymore.’, ‘Sorry. I deeply regret ever talking to your son.’, ‘Thank you for notifying me of his correct age. I was not aware of this. All contact will stop immediately. I apologize for this as I was not aware of his age.’”

If you’re a parent, keystroke loggers will help you:

  • Keep track of who your children are talking to.
  • Keep track of what your children’s friend are doing.
  • Keep pedophiles away from your children.

You can also:

  • Trust your children even less!
  • Interfere with other kid’s lives - not just your own children’s!
  • Hear what you want to hear from people who don’t want to go to prison!

Did I mention that they are great for bridging the gap between you and your children? By “great”, I mean horrible.

This post was Not sponsored. I do not agree with the terms to accept this as a sponsored post.

Dec 29, 20060
Non-essential Pop-ups

Marketing Terms.com defines the word Spam as “Inappropriate commercial message of extremely low value.” They also say that the definition is vague because everybody has their own definition for it. But I believe we can all agree that spam is an unsolicited form of advertisement.

Unsolicited, meaning you didn’t ask for it.

There are filters in your e-mail to catch such things, but they don’t always catch them. Spammers are finding new ways to beat the old system, and the same goes for pop-up advertisements.

My question is, would you invest in a system to flag websites that support pop-up/pop-under advertisements? A system that would update your computer with a listing of these websites so that you can either choose to block advertisements or block the website all together?

Before you start thinking it’s unfair to do so, take a minute to think about how it’s no different than the spam e-mail you delete from your inbox and Spam folder everyday. Pop-up advertising may be their source of revenue, but did you stop to think that maybe spam e-mail may be that person’s source of revenue as well?

Pop-up blockers only do so much. The advertisements I am talking about can potentially harm, freeze, even crash your computer. To visit the sites that incorporate such measures so that they can earn an extra few cents per visitor is to say to that webmaster, I support your unsolicited advertisements and I support your delivery method. And by saying that you support their spam advertisements, you are also saying you support spam overall. Simply by doing nothing.

There are plenty of ways to advertise non-intrusively. Advertisements that blend right into the html of the page itself without interrupting the site content. And yet, companies still offer pop-up and pop-under advertising as a means to convey a message.

Only when somebody does something about this will they finally realize pop-up and pop-under advertising is wrong.

It would only take one website to introduce a list, compiled and kept up to date by the people who visit it, to black list websites and companies that incorporate such means. But not just one person would be able to get the attention of millions; millions of people would have to get the attention of one person.

Can you imagine an internet without pop-up advertisements? Surfing the web without having to wonder if your software is up to date to catch the next pop-up ad? Browsing the internet without fear that the next pop-up ad will crash your session?

I can. The word that comes to mind?

Spectacular.