Making Money From Your Personal Blog: PayPerPost Vs. LoudLaunch

For several months now, I've been pulling in a fair amount of extra income through my personal blog, mainly by participating in advertising campaigns via PayPerPost. If you don't know what that is, it's pretty simple: advertisers sign up and post "opportunities," offering a fixed dollar amount to entice members to write posts in their blogs featuring links to the advertisers' products or web sites.

Before anybody gets too worked up about blogger bias or deception, understand that PayPerPost requires full disclosure regarding sponsored posts, and that most advertisers prefer honesty and allow for neutral reviews of their products. As for those who don't, in my experience, I simply don't take any offers requiring positive feedback if I can't provide it in all honesty. From what I've seen of my fellow PayPerPost bloggers, most of them have the integrity to follow this unwritten rule, and the community tends to be self-policing on the matter.

This has been quite a successful business model for PayPerPost. In just under a year since the site launched, PayPerPost has grown from a rocky little startup to a web giant, able to offer posting opportunities from major corporate advertisers offering as much as $1,000 per blog post. They've built a large and devoted community of "Posties" who are preparing to converge on Vegas in November for the first annual "PostieCon." They've also given birth to spin-offs such as the reality web TV series Rock Startup and the launch of the increasingly popular Blogger's Choice Awards web site.

Enter the competition. With the success of PayPerPost, it was inevitable that others would take their business model and run with it. One of the most notable of these is LoudLaunch, which officially launched last month and is currently reminiscent of PayPerPost's early days. This is not a bad thing. In their push to roll out improvements that would attract bigger and better advertisers, some of the changes made by PayPerPost have resulted in quite a few drawbacks for the little guy who just wants to bring in some extra cash. LoudLaunch is in a position to draw in those who are left feeling frustrated and a little disaffected by an increased difficulty in snagging quality opportunities from PayPerPost's ever more selective advertising base.

To get there, though, it has some catching up to do. The frequency of new opportunities available at LoudLaunch pales in comparison to PayPerPost, even when the latter is having a slow day. What I like about LoudLaunch, however, is the predictability: they set a fixed payment amount determined by a blog's Google Page Rank. A page rank of 3, for example, brings in a steady $7.50 per post. The higher the rank, the more each opportunity pays out.

PayPerPost, by contrast, allows advertisers to set the amount of pay and determine which blogs are eligible for their opportunities based on a number of factors. It can seem a little arbitrary, especially when some advertisers set no restrictions at all, and others set so many restrictions that one wonders how they attract any bloggers at all. Page rank, in addition to a blog's Technorati ranking and Alexa score, as well as whether a blog rests on its own domain or lies with a free host such as Blogger or Wordpress, all play a part in determining both the number and quality of posts a blogger is able to nab.

It sounds a little confusing, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't. The Postie Forums have had pages and pages of posts from members expressing their frustration with this system. Most find it all worth it, though, since a popular blog can potentially bring in hundreds of dollars a week, and even be eligible for the occasional thousand dollar opportunity. Even an unpopular, low-ranked blog run by a blogger with a quick mouse-trigger finger can usually count on making at least fifteen dollars a day. That number might not sound too impressive, but it adds up pretty quickly.

Pay-out frequency is the other factor that sets these two blog-vertisers apart. Both pay their bloggers via Paypal, with no exceptions. PayPerPost approves sponsored posts for payment once they've appeared on your blog for thirty days, which means that if you blog PayPerPost opportunities on a regular basis, thirty days after your first post you'll begin receiving a steady stream of Paypal payments. They have been known occasionally to get backed up and be late with final approvals and payments, but only by a couple of days, and pretty rarely at that.

According to LoudLaunch's FAQ, their payment schedule is "within five days of the first of each month for all approved posts placed between the first and twentieth of the prior month." Personally, I find that a little confusing, and wonder when they plan to pay for posts placed after the twentieth; but I can at least work out that it means they only pay out once a month, which is a long time to go between paychecks. At any rate, my first LoudLaunch payment isn't due for a few more weeks, so I can't yet speak as to their reliability.

Even with its few drawbacks, PayPerPost still comes out on top as the superior paid blogging agent. They've proven themselves to be a reliable source of extra income, and they've also proven that they care about their bloggers' success. Thankfully, though, neither company requires exclusion of the other, so it's not an either/or proposition. LoudLaunch currently makes an excellent supplement to PayPerPost, providing another pool of opportunities to choose from, and helping to turn blogging into a lucrative hobby.