I signed up one of my blogs to Pay Per Post eons ago, but after an uproar from my readers about writing paid reviews, I decided to stop writing them on that particular blog. So what else could I do? I still wanted to use Pay Per Post, but couldn’t find a way to add another blog. So I set up another two accounts with different email addresses.

Both of the new accounts were approved and I wrote a post on each of the blogs, which also got approved. Technically, I could have got away with it. It then dawned on me that I would be paid for both accounts to the same Paypal address. So I contacted Pay Per Post and told them I was in a bit of a pickle, effectively coming clean. I said that I really didn’t know what else to do because they have no option to remove a blog from an account.

In the end, the lady who deals with “bad bloggers”, as she put it, mailed me back and said that she would ban two of my accounts but leave one open. Frustratingly, one of the accounts she banned was the one I use for referring other people, so I lost about 45 pending referrals in the process. I did ask to carry on using that account and just remove the blog, but for some reason that’s not possible.

So there you have it. You can open multiple accounts on Pay Per Post, but when it comes to payment, they’re likely to spot that you’re up to no good unless you have multiple Paypal accounts.

They should definitely look into getting rid of the 10-post rule and allowing users to add and remove their blogs.

Even with the $20 offered new members of Pay Per Post for their first sponsored post, the way to really earn money with paid posting is to build up a blog that has Page Rank. While you could write hundreds of $5 reviews every month, wouldn’t it be better to write five $100 reviews? Just look at the offers available on Sponsored Reviews. The difference between the top and the bottom offers is hundreds of dollars.

I think I had my priorities confused with some of the blogs I was setting up. I’ve established a reasonable sized blog network, but more than half of those blogs are yet to receive any Page Rank, and it’s clear that getting Page Rank needs to be a focus to make serious money from paid reviews and various other services.

It’s frustrating that Google only updates its toolbar every three months or so, and what with Google possibly under attack right now, it’s anybody’s guess when the next update will be. What this means, however, is that I should be spending time building quality back links for my infant blogs.

Making money blogging is a slow process that requires time and patience. If I’ve learned anything since I started this, it’s that the real money only comes after perseverance. Sure, the quick money I’ve made writing paid reviews is a bonus, but it’s nothing to write home about.

Anybody can make a couple of grand on the Internet, but the people who don’t give up after six months are the people who make a couple of grand every month, or even every week.

I should be one of those people.

Most paid-posting services require your blog to be at least three months old, and while some, like Review Me, have certain requirements with regards to traffic and rank, the smaller services aren’t so strict and you can start making money right away.

If you haven’t yet, then check out Sponsored Reviews. Getting a blog accepted is easy, as all you need is at least 10 posts of 200 words or more. Once accepted, you can browse through pages of opportunities and bid on them. Not all your bids will be accepted, but there are so many opportunities that you will find something. Bid on everything you come across that requires only 50 or 100 words. Many reviews have no blog requirements. I have blogs with no traffic or rank, and I can still get reviews accepted and make money.

Providing you’re hosting your own blog, you can sign up with Blogsvertise. What’s more, your blog only needs to be 30 days old. You write reviews of at least 75 words containing three links, and they pay you generally between $5 and $10 for each post. There are very few requirements to be met, and you can submit all your blogs. Once the tasks start rolling in, so does the money!

I’ve written about Bloggerwave before. They are still receiving mixed reviews in the blogosphere and I’m not overly keen on them yet. At the moment, I have a number of blogs with Bloggerwave, but there are still just two opportunities available, and I’m only eligible for one. You can accept the same opportunity on multiple blogs, and the payout is a flat $10. I did get paid for one previous opportunity after emailing Bloggerwave and I am waiting on another payment.

Don’t forget about Blogging Ads too. Though they take up to six weeks to approve a blog, once they do there are heaps of opportunities to take. The only thing is that the ones I’ve seen only pay $5 each. Blogs must be three-months old and cached by Google.

A new paid-posting service I came across is Smorty. Blogs should be cached in Google and Yahoo, three-months old and have at least two posts per week. You can add as many blogs as you like, and each post earns you at least $6. It’s a good introduction to making money blogging and writing sponsored reviews.

There are other services out there for paid review, but these are the ones I’ve been using on low-traffic blogs. If you want to make money online, this is as good a place to start as any.

He did say that I can take the job again and get paid for it again, so we’ll see if that works. My original gripes remain: there aren’t enough jobs and the website clearly lies about its top earners. But still, I got 10 bucks out of it so it’s all good; I made money online again.

Speaking of making money online, until somebody posted a comment about it today, I’d actually forgotten I was running a blog contest to win $100. If you want to enter, you only have 10 days left to do so. Details are here, and it’s really simple to get a ticket. At the moment I have about $400 in my Paypal account, so there is 100 bucks with somebody’s name on it. There haven’t been many entries yet, so there’s a good chance of picking up the loot. This contest is just about the easiest way to make money online.

It’s like 2 am here and I’m exhausted. What with the plane crash on Sunday and trying to expand my blog network (I have six blogs running on their own domains now), I think I’ve been pushing my limits a bit. I could do with a holiday.

Let’s take a look at Bloggerwave

I registered for Bloggerwave a while ago and scoped the place out. I added a few of my blogs and tried to take some of the opportunities open to me. There were only three available: Master Seek, Coze Zero and Bloggerwave. I was only able to take the Bloggerwave one and only with one blog for some reason.

The payout was supposed to be $10 and I did everything by the book and eventually the post was approved. I logged back in today to see where my payment was at and my approved post has somehow disappeared. Not only that, but all of the blogs I added have also vanished.

Pissed off, I tried to find a way to contact Bloggerwave, but alas, clicking on “Contact us” took me to a blank page. I rendered my display in IE and the contact form appeared, but it was a strange form asking me for my address, company and a “description” where I wrote my message.

You could say I’m jumping the gun here, but Bloggerwave is infamous for being unreliable. Don’t take my word for it though:

• Earn Money Blogging didn’t get paid.
• Vegan Momma had problems.
• Skeet’s Stuff didn’t get a bean.
• The Sassy Southerner suggests that Bloggerwave is an elaborate scam.

Whatever the truth, Bloggerwave is hitting all the wrong notes and I have no faith in the company at all. For starters, there haven’t been any new opportunities for weeks. Then there’s the very dated look of the website.

On the website it lists people who have made over $100 with Bloggerwave. I found the blog of one of those people (Ashish Ghildiyal), and yes, he has been using Bloggerwave, but he had this to say in his paid post:

At present, they have two opportunities of $10 each. But very soon, the opportunities will increase.

This is a guy who has apparently made $130 with Bloggerwave. That was written at the end of April. I’ve searched and searched, and I can’t find any more opportunities ever offered by Bloggerwave than the ones I have listed. It looks like a scam straight up. The top 10 earners list also hasn’t changed for some time. Somehow, someone made $312 out of three possible $10 opportunities.

If I’m wrong then tell me, but has anybody made money from Bloggerwave?

• I don’t foresee reviews on Cash Quests staying at $70 forever, particularly once the next Page Rank update is complete.
• There are almost 700 RSS subscribers to Cash Quests, and although the site generates less traffic than somewhere like John Cow.com, it’s as good a place to get some exposure as any.
• Kumiko (if she is a real person or not) is knowledgeable enough and honest enough to write real reviews.

The primary reason I wanted a review on Cash Quests was to find out where I’ve been going wrong. I wasn’t expecting a sudden spike in traffic or RSS subscribers because my blog is still fairly new, but I’ve been going this long on my merry way and haven’t come across nearly enough negative criticism.

All friends together

One of the problems with starting a new blog is that a lot of the time you draw traffic from other people starting new blogs, and as such, everyone is very nice to each other. Nobody will step up and tell you you’re doing one thing wrong and another thing you’re doing totally sucks. If I were to carry on like this then I’d never get anywhere.

The review on Cash Quests was enough to kick my ass into gear and simplify my header, making it much smaller and less distracting. I added Adsense blocks in again, although was a bit reluctant to do so at this early stage. But, if this blog is about making money, then I need to be showing that I am taking steps to actually make some.

While my coding skills are limited, I was able, through a process of logically working things out (and a bit of trial and error) to make my two sidebars into one and widen the width of my post content. By doing so I eliminated some of the white space Kumiko said was unnecessary. My sidebars were a bit pathetic, so I got rid of everything in them I didn’t think was necessary and added a few affiliate ad blocks.

I also took off the Advertlets ad I had at the bottom of this blog. To be honest, I’d forgotten that it was there, but as Advertlets is not a big money spinner, it was wasting space.

Kumiko said that I don’t use Feedburner, which isn’t true. I was using a redirect, but I changed my links to show the Feedburner URL in case my own URL might put people off.

I am certainly not a dot com mogul, as Kumiko said, but if the option of making money online and making money with a blog is open to everybody, I’m going to go for my share.

Overall, the review was worth the money because without it my outlook and approach to this blog wouldn’t have changed. There’s no way in hell I will be splashing out on a review from John Chow or anyone on that level next, but if I am going to learn then I need to make some sacrifice. It was $70 well spent because it inspired me in the right way. I’d advise anybody to do the same.

But does my name really make you think you are coming to a porn site?

From personal experience, when I read a blog, the ads that I notice most are those that are actually in a blog post. If they are aligned to the left they disturb my reading, but aligned to right, at the top of a post, and they are noticeable without overstepping the mark. I am more drawn to click on them than any other ad placement I have seen.

There was a useful post on Board Shorts about how to wrap the text your blog posts around adsense. It’s actually really simple. All you do is place your Adsense *code in a div, like so.

<div style=”display:block;float:right; margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;”>
*Code
</div>

You can then setup your margin to space things out right and choose whether you want to float your ads left or right. You don’t even need a plugin for this one. Thanks to Board shorts for this great tip.

Desi says that the two big paid review sites are www.payperpost.com and www.loudlaunch.com. One little snag that Desi points out is that your blog must be three months old. That blows this one to smithereens. By three months I’d hope to at least have some traffic, but when the time comes, I will put Desi’s theory to the test and see if I can in fact make $840 a month by writing paid reviews.

I’m hesitant to go all out on the paid reviews because in some ways I think you can lose sight of your blog by just writing review after review. Occasional paid reviews can’t be a bad thing if they still inform your readers. I don’t want to go to someone’s travel blog and read a paid review about toasters. Therefore, I will be selective about what paid reviews I choose to make money with as and when the time comes.

To write effective paid reviews you need a real blog, with real daily content, and a real, single author. Some might be tempted to just set up a fake blog and added fake content, but this won’t get you very far. If you’re smart enough to come up with such an idea, then so are the paid review sites. Genuine bloggers make genuine money.

I’m signed up with Loud Launch and will sign up to Pay Per Post soon (they aren’t accepting applications right now). I am ready to go just as soon as they let me. I’ve no idea how much real income I will be able to generate using those two sites, but after Desi’s post I’m hopeful for a few hundred bucks a month.