PPP Press Release

As you all know, I get paid to blog by a great company called PayPerPost. Companies pay bloggers to advertise on blogs on a pay per post basis (hence, the company's name). They just started their business in June 2006, and already it has grown by leaps and bounds. The following news was just released:

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company's Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

This new 7 million dollar investment is great news for PayPerPost and will allow them to keep growing and to deal easier with quick growth. We had a few bumps in the road, which seemed to be due to quicker growth than expected. The additional operating capital would be well used on more targeting to advertisers. There is no shortage of bloggers willing to post content, but sometimes the amount of opportunities available is a bit low and I've gone a few days with nothing available to take. If more advertisers used the service, us "Posties" would have more steady blogging income.

PayPerPost is asking bloggers (aka Posties) our opinion on what they should spend the 7 million on. So far, they have decided to share a bunch of it with the Posties by offering their own advertising opportunities with big payouts of $70 and $700. Of course, I think this is great and it keeps the bloggers engaged, but it would be a good idea to keep most of the new investment money in the bank for the future of the company. Based on how much it has grown in just one year, PayPerPost shows great potential and they would be wise to be prepared for anything. Extra cash retains the stability of a company and keeps stress levels down for the board members.

My 400th post!!!

Wow, I can't believe this is my 400th post on this blog, which I just started last September. I know that high number is directly related to the fact that I do sponsored posts for two (soon to be three) paid blogging sites. I want to thank all of you that have stayed with me and continue reading my posts.

I only write paid posts that are consistent with my beliefs and I try to keep them from sounding overtly like advertisements. My pagerank has increased and that is all because of my readers!

Thanks again and keep on reading and blogging!

Save time while still keeping up with the news

If you are short on time (and hey, who isn't?) you can combine reading blogs and getting news information. The News Blog at Congoo lets you create a news circle where you can build and share your own focused portal and includes over 480 topics to choose from.

Just pick your favorite categories from the list to get only the news within those categories. Get all the news you want, but none of what you don't! That will save you even more time.

Blog review: Mortgage Lowdown

Upon arriving at Mortgage Lowdown, I am struck by the site's simplicity and its lack of advertisements. This is a refreshing change in the world of finance-related websites and blogs. There are great tips and articles, all regarding mortgage banking and home ownership. Some of the articles have images to break up the text, and the site could probably use more graphics in general to keep readers' interest.

My only concern is that since the topic of the blog is so specific, they may exhaust the topic of mortgages and find there is not enough to write about in the future. Overall, this is a well thought out blog with some very informative posts and I plan to subscribe to their feed via Bloglines.

Do spelling and grammar still count?

suggested by Spelling Search

"How important are spelling and grammar in the world of blogging? Is it the thought that really counts, or does lack of formality destroy the message?"

I believe that spelling and grammar are important no matter what you are writing. Unfortunately, I seem to be one of the few bloggers who believe this is true. Ever since the start of email, people have become increasingly lax in their grammar in messages. I think text messaging on cellular phones increased the problem, since people try to get their message across with the fewest amount of characters. This is when everyone started using 4 (for) and U (you) and all kinds of acronyms like BTW (by the way), LOL (laugh out loud), and SAHM (stay-at-home-mom).

These have carried over into the email world for sure and it's just a matter of time before blogs start looking like encrypted messages since everyone is too busy to sit down and write a proper post.

Get your blog posts voted on

If you have trouble making your way through the monstrous beast that is the "blogosphere", you can use the genius organization of a site like HighFivez.com and view a sampling of the most popular blog posts for the day, week, or month. You can store your favorite blogs in a central location to read them all at once, or view based on categories and tags.

When reading through the blogs, you can either give them a "High Five" if you like the post, or a "Pound" if you don't. All the votes are based on viewer opinions, not technological robots looking at statistics. It is refreshing to see some human element in the area of page ranking for a change. Google's page rank system is based on how old the blog is and how many relevant incoming links your blog has.

You can submit your own blog for review, or you can submit a post or blog that you like and want to share with others. The site is new, so there are not a whole lot of members signed up yet, but since they are advertising through PayPerPost bloggers, I'm sure their popularity will increase by leaps and bounds very quickly.

Not Worthy to Blog??

OK, so I feel like a big loser who doesn't know her way around her own blog page. I just realized I had comments from people that I needed to "moderate" and post. I guess I thought I would get an email when I got comments, but apparently not.

So anyway, sorry it took me so long, but your comments are there now and I promise to check my "Moderate Comments" tab regularly now!!

Just starting out...

I'm fairly new to blogging, so please bear with me. I started this mostly to talk about the wonderful town (Eureka Springs) we moved to this summer, and also about my trials and tribulations as a mother of two young children. Sometimes, you just feel like getting things out of your brain an onto [virtual] paper.

Anyway, that's all I'll post to start out. More tomorrow...