Making Money

Weather Report: Another Dry Spell!

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Seems like the last few days I’ve been going through a dry spell! I just noticed I posted two quotations back to back, something that I never do. But yesterday I found that I had! As you can see in the jpeg, I have a lot of ideas for posts that I never get around to writing! I write the stub, and then a few words, and that’s it! See for yourself what I mean! It’s not writer’s block is it? I don’t know what to call it, perhaps writer’s stub!

dry spell

So I’ve been counselling myself like this to solve the problem, and I’d like to share these thoughts with my readers, and fellow bloggers.

  1. Since I’ve been posting basically seven days a week for the past few weeks, I’m going to have to start taking more time off to bring my ideas back to the boil! Sometimes working less achieves more.
  2. The second strategy I’m going to try is to limit the amount of time I spend on the Internet, because I find with open ended hours, I tend to be less focused and more easily distracted by Google News or Reader or Boards or whatever.
  3. The third strategy I’m trying is to write one complete post each time I sit down, no matter how short or long it is. That way I’ll leave the chair with positive feelings, not negative frustrations that so many posts are undone!
  4. Of course, the last strategy is to copy the office tidy desk strategy: write it, file it or delete it. If you write it, fine, it’s done. If you file it, file it where you can come back one day but not where it can be seen easily because it’s filed. Of course, if you delete it, then problem solved as you can’t usually retrieve it on a system like this!

So these are my four strategies for right now. How do you other bloggers deal with dry spells? Do you ever lose focus because you feel you’re trying to do too much? How do you deal that?

Love to hear your thoughts!

DonationWare: Three plugins that allow Paypal Donations

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Many bloggers are solely reliant on Adsense for their blogging incomes to cover their hosting costs, additional costs, etc.. This isn’t a great practice as it puts all your income eggs in one basket.

There are a variety of other income streams that you could tap for additional, supplementary, or even replacing your Adsense revenue. Donations are one of them.

There are a variety of donationware plugins from simple buttons that you can conjure up in your Paypal account, to actual plugins that you can install and activate. This posts highlights three such plugins:

1. Here’s an interesting and thematic way to get donations, it’s called Buy Me a Beer – PayPal Donation WordPress Plugin;

2. Paypal Donate: another plugin;

and 3. perhaps the easiest to install, a Paypal donate widget.

Let me know your thoughts on DonationWare. Would you give money?

Payperpost Direct: Good for Bloggers, Will be Great for Advertisers!

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Payperpost just recently introduced PPP Direct to help bloggers with their blog ads. PPP Direct is quite a departure from their ‘classic’ version of the PPP marketplace.

How it works

badge default blueSimply put: Bloggers can install a simple badge in their sidebar which is available in the PPP account >>> ppp tools section. It has the words “Hire Me” printed on the front. Other versions include the pricing. In fact, bloggers can set the pricing in the blogs section, though I had problems getting a pricing set properly last night when I tried.

Advantages

For bloggers there are some considerable advantages to this approach: pricing is transparent. If you are hired are for $5, then that’s what you get! Additional transaction costs are covered by the advertiser. It’s difficult to tell how much PPP actually makes, but it is only about 5% of the total amount gross, its net margins must be quite small! Probably because they are only acting as the intermediary regarding billing, payment and quality control. The other 5% seems to go to Paypal for transaction costs!

ReviewME vs. PPP Direct

ReviewME charges upto 50% of the total, but then their system is different: they operate a kind of marketplace or store front where advertisers can choose and compare which blogs they want to have feature their products. With PPP Direct, it’s the bloggers who are doing this themselves.

Does it work for the advertisers?

To be frank, PPP Direct doesn’t in the short term make much sense for PPP. It will only allow advertisers, esp. the smaller ones, to choose specific bloggers, if they can find them. But larger advertisers with dozens, or even hundreds of opps may still prefer to go to the marketplace. It is likely more efficient for them. But for smaller advertisers, the ability to choose which blogs you can go on and who gets to write about you is significant. You can target your writers much more carefully.

And the new bloggers?

For bloggers, especially those who ‘grew up’ with the classic PPP, it will allow them to be hired for specific jobs. Many older bloggers are already familiar with finding projects outside of PPP or indeed any other paid for blogging system, and know how to find more rewarding work that way. It also offers security for newer bloggers by working with an established company, one that they already know and trust. In fact, the escrow type functions that PPP provides will really work to bloggers’ advantage.

Overall, this is likely going to help cement PPP’s reputation with its bloggers. In the short term, though, without the marketplace for advertisers to pick and choose conveniently, it won’t really be as convenient for advertisers. But I’m told that the Direct marketplace is coming once enough bloggers sign up for the service.

For more information, visit the video about the service on PPP’s blog.

For those of you interested in Payperpost articles, I’ve been writing them for quite some time. In fact, you can read more articles about Payperpost on this blog.