(ed. This posting has been extended, tweaked and edited for content since first posting.)

PPP has been a blessing for me in many ways, as it has helped me save nearly $1,000 over the last six months. But there are times when I feel that logging in is perhaps the most frustrating thing that I have to deal with online. Why?

Personal Segmentation
If you don’t know about PPP and segmentation, you may wish to read this posting. Legal Andrew’s website hosts a nice plugin that I have been using for the last few days to help me weed out inappropriate offers. These fall in five categories I find:

1. ineligible opps – I can’t take them for categories, rankings, etc.,
2. undesirable opps – I don’t want to take them because they are inappropriate topics for this blog, eg. lingerie, cooking, to name a few,
3. low-ball opps – I don’t want to spend ages posting for a $5.00 or similar ‘cheapskate’ (sorry, advertisers with small budgets – includes me, actually!) opp with difficult requirements (like requiring high pr and 200 words for a segmented blog),
4. already completed – I already covered that opp before, can’t take it again or don’t want to redo as I have nothing to add to my original comments (rare but true!), and
5. unavailable opps – they sit there and say ‘click me’ but when you do, you find that they are all gone, yet they still entice you to click (again! and again! in the vain hope) – PPP is working on a fix for this.

Once I segmented my opps this way!
Now with that plugin called payperpostopps, I can nuke them all, and focus on what IS available. So here is what is available on page 1 for me today after I nuked them all! That’s right, not much for me today, though plenty of other bloggers will be able to find juicy opps. Page 2 isn’t much better, either. Page 3 and 4 are all red (meaning I can’t take them). Old Mother Hubbard… Well, this cupboard is bare, ain’t it?

This ability to focus on what is available can shave a lot of valuable time and unnecessary effort on my part because I’m able to write better quality posts (see some of my short ‘reviews’) and more information than the advertiser was requesting. Recently, I have only been doing one or so opp per day for that reason. So overall, it’s a good thing to have this plugin: it saves a lot of time checking out opps that you won’t do. Actually this tool helps us to focus on what is good for our blogs, not to be distracted too much by the $$$ signs that confront you when you login.

Risk Factors
It might be too easy to ‘nuke’ opps that you could do or by mistake or change your mind about. I can’t see any way at the moment to make such opps visible again. Also, its usage may lull you into logging off the system without refreshing the pages for a few minutes. I have been able to ‘catch’ a few opps that way.

Ok, now I can go and focus on some of the other posts I have to write. Ever feel you’re outgrowing Payperpost? Comment here, please if you are postie! I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

This is your Monday Blues’ Posting: Don’t give up on your blogging!

It’s Monday morning, you’re feeling shaky. Your fingers are quivering at the keyboard as you struggle with yourself about your next topic… the phone rings, the wife calls, the computer connection cuts out! You say, “oh, forget about it” or more colorful words!

But stop, look, think! If you give up now, you might lose that moment… your self control to blog might weaken just a little. Then you’ll end up skipping one day, two days, then a week! If you don’t believe me, then take a look at my other blog! It’s forlorn now, but once not so long ago, it was the diamond in my crown! oh, well…

John Chow puts it very well on his website:

This all comes back to my follow up and follow through. It’s all well and good to say, “I’m giong to do it! I’m going to succeed!” However, if you don’t follow up and follow through with your words, then your words are nothing more than a big lie.

So, take his advice, press your fingers to the keyboard and keep on blogging… 😀

By now many readers must be familiar with the Adsense by Google Program. I’ve been with the program for over 3 years. During those 3 years, I have only received 2 checks from them.

I enjoyed the ease with which it is possible to set up Adsense and actually use it. I particularly benefitted because it allowed me to pay for my hosting costs with a little left over. My websites aren’t particularly highly trafficked, but the traffic I do get tends to be highly focused, so I achieve decent click through rates on advertisements. But it took me a long time to build up the traffic, so it was nearly 13 months before I qualified for a minimum payment! The second payment came in less than a year. Currently things are getting better still, as I learn how to tweak the placement, generate traffic, and build content. In fact, I just qualified for another payment! Cool. Don’t know when the check will get here, but it should be within 2 months.

I’m quite concerned over bloggers losing their Adsense Accounts to click fraud. In fact over the last week, I’ve seen two bloggers (Kumiko’s Make Money Online Blog and LegalAndrew’s Blog) lose their Adsense accounts, and neither of the blogs seems particularly the kind of fraudulent website that seems to persist. For more information on regaining your account, Stason.org has a great article, called How to Bring Google Adsense Down.

And so I wonder, as they must, why Google seems to take action against these websites, but leaves the splog around. In fact, quite a few of the sploggers delight in joining forums and blogs like this to leave their trash. Naturally, they don’t last long enough to do much here. But still, how is it that Google seems to take these actions when thousands of splogs openly flout the rules? Or is that just an impression, since those who are splogs don’t openly complain? Does Google now need more legal oversight, or are Adsense lawsuits just around the corner, too? At the moment, I’m weighing my options on Adsense on whether I should include them on this blog or not. I’m still undecided.

Comments, stories or tips?