I downloaded and listened to the TechCrunch podcast titled PayPerPost Raises 3 Million: with Ted Murphy from PayPerPost. First off I had not heard of TechCrunch before learning about PayPerPost. The blogger associated with it was pretty uppity. Mike Arrington, who are you and why should I care? That is the thing I can’t stand about ‘A’ List bloggers, who put them there and why should they be ‘A’ list? The guys were slamming Ted and PayPerPost because they found it unethical to have people write about something and get paid and not disclose that information. If you are getting paid to write a review then yes you should disclose it. Should PayPerPost regulate that you need to disclose that information, I’m not sure about that. I write about things for PayPerPost and I don’t think anyone who reads my PayPerPost blog updates is under some illusion that I do not get paid to write about these things. I make my PayPerPost posts a different color so that my readers can choose whether or not they want to read my PayPerPost posts.

This post was supposed to be for the opportunity to tell people about that podcast but that opportunity was gone this morning. Had I stayed up past 12:00am I could have posted about this last night and gotten $10.00 for the post. However I missed the opportunity, but felt strongly enough about the subject that I am writing about the podcast anyway.

I’ve been shouting it to the rafters that I am getting paid for posting blog messages. Heck it has been about two weeks and I have posted enough to make almost $200.00. I’m not making that kind of money from the Google Ads, nor am I making any real money when someone clicks through and buys a book from Amazon. And I read those books or own that merchandise and write about it and give free advertising to those items. I like getting paid to blog. I like having control over my own blog and choosing what I blog about. I choose my own opportunities from PayPerPost and I discard the ones that are crap. And there are ones that are crap. When an advertiser deliberately says not to mention that I am getting paid for the post or not to mention the site that the link goes to then I don’t take that opportunity, it is shady. I as a blogger can rate opportunities and I always rate those ones with a low score so maybe others will not take those opportunities either and the advertisers will be more honest with the consumers.

I have always tried to be open and honest with the things that I post on this blog. I am now blogging for money as well as for the fun of it. And why not, I am doing work on behalf of and advertiser and they should pay me. I am letting my readers know that I am getting paid and giving them choices to read or not read my posts. I check out every website and opportunity that comes along and try to write from an informed perspective abut the advertisers.

I think that Ted Murphy and PayPerPost is a genius thing. It lets the little guy or gal blogger, like me, make a little money from something that we already love doing and giving us control over how we make that money. Will I stop posting Photo-A-Day because of PayPerPost? Nope, I am committed to Photo-A-Day and have no desire to stop. I want that to reach as many people as possible and over the past week I have driven more traffic to this site than ever before. I want people to read this blog, enjoy the photos I put up, read my opinions on things, read my airport rants, and maybe buy a thing or two from my Kodak gallery and if you are going to buy from Amazon anyway why not start here to make your purchase.

I don’t feel that I’m being at all unethical about what I do on this blog. I appreciate all of my readers and friends who humor me and come here. Thank you all.

What am I going to do with the money? First off I hope to raise enough to pay off my new camera and buy additional equipment. From there I hope to get a couple extra bucks in my pocket for toys, comic books and other things that I will use and write about on this blog. So basically the money is to reinvest in making this blog better overall. If you are interested in signing up for PayPerPost please use me as a referral and my e-mail address of abennett96 @ gmail.com.