UPDATE Please read this more recent post: Is Today Blog a Scam
Getting paid to blog seems to be every writer’s dream and the dream of many who just want to make, what they think is a little passive income online.
To be honest making anything more than a few cents with most programs is as likely as just losing a few kilos in your sleep or just getting fit my meditation – it ain’t gonna happen people!
So sorry if you are looking to make $100/day blogging with no experience and not much effort – that money tree doesn’t exist!
That said I do directly get paid to blog over at today.com both my blogs: Australia News and Travel Over 30s are still paid – the huge sum of $1/post (usually I’ll get to that) plus $2/1000 views. I’ve stopped directly promoting their ad on this blog though because they tightened up the criteria for payment so I figured most people wouldn’t actually get paid to blog there – let me explain.
When I joined in Nov 2008 I got paid $1 from day one and I could have 2 blogs from day one: so by the end of the first month I could earn $60 and get paid out – their minimum payout is $50.
Then they restricted the second blog to people who had a track record of 30 days with their first blog.
Then the changed the program so you didn’t get the $1/post for the first 30 days but you might be reviewed and promoted to the ppp program after 30 days, you did however get the traffic payments.
Then come early January they denied for payment my posts which were obviously self-promotional i.e. linked to my own hubpages, other sites I wrote for etc. Again I still get the traffic bonus for them but I didn’t actually get paid for backlinks anymore!
At the same time they dropped a lot of people from the $1/day program – there was lots of angst about this in the forum – but this had always been a possiblity if you read their Terms of Service.
So today.com will probably not pay the average newbie blogger anything but pennies – and they probably won’t make the $50 payout. Why do I say that – the answer is in the traffic stats and the “hot list” which tells you for each blog at today you have where you sit in relation to the top 10. This makes for some interesting reading.
My australia blog has done quite well getting traffic from those downunder worried about when/if they will get the cash the Federal government is handing out. At one point I was averaging 300 views/day – that put me at #34 out of all today blogs. Good ?
Not really the figures for the top 10 at the same time was
#10 position 602 views – ie double what position 34 was getting
#3 position 1390 views – double again
#1 position 4534 views – double again
To be honest I don’t think a blog about Australia would ever make those figures – the top 10 positions are usually dominated by entertainment, celebs and fandom type blogs.
On the other side I appear to have readers and fans for my travel blog – but I haven’t done any good getting it ranked for the search engine traffic, except for the photos – they bring me more searchers than the words 🙁 I bounce around 50-70 uniques a day and at the high end of the range sit at position 200 or so out of all today blogs. I suspect I am only just hanging onto the payment for this one!
The point is that I am in the top 200 which means thousands and thousands of blogs don’t even have 50 visitors a day – at 50 visitors you are earning 10cents/day for the traffic. Sorry but I don’t know anywhere in the world where you are likely to have reliable Internet that will make that profitable.
Which is not to say that today.com is not worth it for me – because Google love’s the site and my blogs get indexed within hours,sometimes less. I have PR all over the place too! (Trick if you want to know what sort of authority a site has: put a google alert on some unique text in the post – I normally use my name – and note how long it takes to show up as an alert!). So yes I don’t get paid for my obvious backlinks anyone more – but they are nice backlinks 🙂
DISCLAIMER: the links to today.com in this post are affiliate links and I will get paid $5 if you sign up and post 10 approved posts within 3 months. If you want to deny me my beer money – that’s cool -strip the affiliate code from the link – am I going to tell you how to this – no 🙂
26 replies on “Get Paid to Blog: Is it a Scam?”
Interesting synopsis! I’ve been wondering about how you and Griz are doing over there at today.com since he started his Adsense blog over there. Like you said, probably not the best place to get rich but a good place to build more backlinks. Hooray for backlinks! 🙂
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Backlinks rule! Thanks for visiting Amanda
Good morning or afternoon or evening Lis depending on what time it is on the other side of the world.
I was completely shocked by this post. It sounds like you are saying I won’t get rich sitting in my undies watching TV and writing some drivel on my blog that nobody reads. This can’t be true because I have spent hundreds of dollars buying ebooks from the Gods, I mean guru’s (with a little g) who tell me otherwise. I think you must have it wrong, All I have to do is join the $495 program (with the $97 a month continuity) and I will be filthy rich.
Why are you bursting my bubble with this thing called “reality.” That is no fun. 🙂
Anyway, I have seem your name in a few other blogs and so I thought I would visit. I don’t want to make you nervous but I will be adding this blog to my reader. 🙂
Good luck in all your adventures.
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🙂 – that is very,very scary – no carb snacks – where does that leave my potato chips???? Yeah sorry about the reality check – you can tell I am not very good at selling e-books! I like the $97 monthly – that’s worth considering – will have another sugar laden snack and think on that one – it is evening so its OK you know! Thanks for visiting agrande!
Hmm.. sure sounds like a lot of work to be earning $1 for a post. I think I would rather go and start a few Blogger blogs and do paid postings. Same amount of work but paid at least 3 to 5 bucks per post of less than 200 words. It creates a major burnout in the long run though. That’s why I stopped. Now I only do the occasional $30 post offered to me from Linksworth.
The backlinks are cool, but you can still get those from your blogger blogs that you use for those paid posts. However making money this way defeats the very purpose of our chase, which is passive income. So instead of doing these things I would rather be building sites that will be contributing to that in the long run.
We work our ass out for the initial few months or the initial year, then we can slow down and enjoy the fruits of our labor, working at our own leisurely pace.
Cheers Lissie. Don’t work too hard and burn yourself out. 🙂
Costa Likes PLR Products’s last blog post..Contents For Your Niche Blogs
You are right Costa – I guess I just keep on getting distracted 🙁
Hi Lis,
I might just have to start a today.com blog or two … but it won’t be for the purpose of making money. btw, I did finally go ahead and pay for market samurai.
Todd
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Grizz – seems happy with his …. the only problem is that you have to stay vaguely on topic with today blogs
i get paid to blog too but not that much. any ideas how i can boost my earnings to lets say $3000 per month?
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Read the links in my sidebar – pay per post is far from passive income – especially when google takes your PR away – which they will when they catch you selling links – unless you no-follow the paid links – but the programs don’t let you do that do they
Weren’t some of the Today.com bloggers getting $5 per post, plus residuals, in the beginning? Even at $5 a post, let alone $1 a post or even less, I think writers would be better off posting content on revenue-sharing sites such as eHow.
Maria @ Residual Income Web’s last blog post..How to Make Money with a Website: Niche Topics
I would think they would have had to pay more at the start – that’s how you start a content creation website! Everyone mentions eHow – but they don’t pay non-US resident writers! And they also don’t allow contextural backlinks – which was my whole motivation with today!
Very interesting… I thought maybe I could earn just a few extra bucks here and there.. I been doing it for months and have not even reached the payout for google ad’s it’s pitiful…
I was blogging my butt off at today.com but noticed they didn’t pay me for my all my posts so I quit blogging there… I don’t even know if they now own my content.
Celeb blogs, and blogging about making money blogging are the ones that seem to make the money…And there are tons of them…
I do get the satisfaction of about 40 or 50 visitors a day. So SOMEBODY is reading my crap…Which is what it is… LOL
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The $100/minimum for Google Adsense is NOT easy to get to – this is the biggest misconception out there – you cant just slap Adsense on a general blog and make money – its not going to happen. Read my mate’s griz’s blog on Adsense if you are serious about it.
Today does own the content – its in the contract that you should have read when you signed up. If they didn’t pay for a post they tell you why and you have the option to correct sometimes.
Hi Lis, just dropping by. I found your blog via a post on Griz’ site, with a recommendation to read up on your Today.com post. I’d already signed up by the time I read about your promo offer though, which is a shame. If I get a spot there, I would have appreciated some hassling.
I’m a fellow Aussie too (Tasmanian originally) but have lived in Asia most of my grown years. Have two daughters back there though, so they keep me up on all the news. All the best, Lis and I’ll be sure to drop by again now that I’ve found your blog.
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Hi Robyn – nice to meet you! Thanks for visiting!
[…] really noticed lately that there are more and more people who are shedding the light on scams. The Passive Income Online blog has had several posts about programs that claim more than they deliver. The post Get Paid To […]
Thats a lot of work for 50 bucks I am sure with your writing skill you could make more money. But as you say its not easy making money as a blogger. Have ever thought about the finance business, lots of money to be made from selling second charge loans and mortgages. Maybe you could blog about finance?
Jayne P:
I would surely appreciate knowing more about selling 2nd charge loans and mortgages and blogging about finance. Please contact me here, Lissie can give you the email address I entered. Possibly my prior experience at 2 Big 8 Accounting/Management Consulting firm’s and banking and Governmental Accounting firm will pay off finally.
I don’t know! Find myself understandably apprehensive even a little paranoid after having a few bad experiences with those so-called paid survey sites. The thought of writing blogs and being paid to write them, would appeal to just about anyone.
However, realistically speaking every endeavor no matter what form it may take requires superb connections, something I obviously lack. As for me, a Professor schooled in the field of electromechanical engineering and astrophysics there’s not a whole lot I could write, that hasn’t already been written in some textbook.
Naturally, I have an unbridled scientific imagination that requires a little study to examine the obvious down to its finite subatomic particles. Add or subtract the quantum value of a single neutron in compliance with mathematical physics and someone has already discovered the answer.
Nobody, would bother reading or wasting any green capital on something that can be found in a college-level textbook.
If they’re looking for some fresh new ideas, then I am obviously out of them…
Have you ever tried those paid to blog services that you use on your own blogs? like payperpost.com and blogsvertise.com? They pay you for publishing product reviews on your own blog. I do know that they pay much more than $1 per post
Yes I did at the start – the blog lost all its PR and never got it back -its just a fancy way to sell links and Google will slap your site for doing it. At least they used to pay $10 LOL
I think this is devastating because it is too hard to raise PR and for only $10 your PR *poof* is gone. Thanks for the post lis, this is a bit old but I still find it helpful. Thanks for the commentluv too. I’m one of Griz readers and I always saw you there.
The moral is that free platforms and platforms you don’t control always have an element of risk
Hi Liz,
Thank you for this great article. I too, have tried just about everything under the sun to make money online. Sometimes, i feel like I’m chasing breadcrumbs only to catch dust. I will say, that one of the things I noticed is that it takes a lot of hard work, determiantion, great content and pure luck to make anything online. Still, we keep trying LOL.
Hope to find you on Hubpages although we might already be follwoing each other. If not, you can find me here.
http://hubpages.com/profile/W.+K.+Hayes
Have a great day and try not tow ork too hard 🙂
W. K.
Diligence / Determination / mixed with a degree of serious ‘Creative Thinking’ and ‘Street Hustler’ determination may be the key to sourcing something? I don’t know for certain either. But that’s my approach that I will be taking……got to figure out something.