Sorry I am late on putting up Comment Friday yet again. By the time I was going to post it everyone was asleep. Apparently I type loud. Anyways, this week I am back on a diet and have already lost 8 pounds. The first two days I lost 7!

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.

Google pagerank is on my mind. It’s depressing losing PR regardless if it ‘doesn’t matter’ or not. Fact is on ranking lists of top blogs we will lose a lot of ground. This week I want to know about how your blog has done with PR. Did you lose any? Did you get it back? Have you done nothing?

Ever since we lost our Pagerank 4 to 3 it has bothered me. Especially because we deserve a 4, 5, or 6. In December I filed my first reinclusion request after spending hours deleting sponsored posts, changing text and adding “nofollow” to some links. All that work didn’t help and our Pagerank remained the same.

Two weeks ago I double checked my blog for sponsored posts and links and filed again for reinclusion. I began to worry two days ago seeing a pr0 on my toolbar, but the data centers still reported a three. Today I checked and it was 0 still and the centers told me it was a big fat 0.

Where Did I Go Wrong?

I tried to follow Courtney Tuttle’s advice with reinclusion. However, my reinclusion requests were short and didn’t really say what needed to be said. I can only imagine that be one piece of the puzzle.

Now that I am sitting at a PR0 I decided to file one more time for reinclusion this time with a longer explanation. I can’t go any lower than 0. If it remains the same PR I will just have to wait and try again.

Filing for Reinclusion

Before you file for re inclusion to get back lost Pagerank make sure you first remove sponsored posts and links from your site (obviously). No wonder I received a pagerank slap in the first place, I had a category dedicated to “sponsored posts”. That obviously is a bad idea.

Thats what I think has been the problem for us at Blog about your Blog. Sponsored posts from places like PayPerPost. I don’t plan on using them again with their current system, on this blog. Hopefully that will count for something.

Courtney Tuttle outlines three things when filing for reconsideration with Google.

1. What you did wrong. For us it has been sponsored posts, I told them that we have removed and no followed posts we have been compensated for.

2. That you have corrected the errors. See above

3. That you won’t do it again. This is the one I failed to mention and may not get our pagerank restored because of it.

Have you suffered a PR slap and filed for reinclusion?

With the sponsored post era ended or at least put on hold, I’ve had to make money different ways. A lot of my earnings have been through affiliate marketing, hired posting, google adsense, and guest posting (in that order).

How Can You Make Money Guest Posting?

Blogging is a weird industry when it comes to making money online. Often times people want to keep blogging, because it is a good passive income, but just can’t find the time. It’s good enough to have for extra money, but not good enough for a full time job. On several blogs, that’s where I’ve come in.

Blogs about blogging and making money online are easy to write for. There is always a new affiliate program, “fad”, or something interesting. Most of the time you can relate one thing to another and throw in an affiliate link.

Pepperjam is a good example of this. Pepperjam has hit the blogosphere hard, but people still haven’t heard of it. Pepperjam pays $5 per referral. So one guest post about Pepperjam can get you a few extra bucks. One of my guest posts about Pepperjam ran me $15 and it’s still the top story, so it could be even more.

Tips and Rules of Guest Posting for Money

I allow our bloggers to promote their own affiliates if they want, but many ask anyways. That is good practice. I would strongly encourage you to ask the person you are guest blogging for if you could plug in an affiliate link or two.

You want the blogger to ask you back, right? Go above just writing the post. Promote it, link to it, tell people about it. This way they will have to have you back and get even more traffic the next post. This not only helps you and your affiliate link, but the blogger as well.

Don’t just do it for the money. Make sure the post adds value to the blog. If it doesn’t it’s… well… spam?

Being a good ‘guest’ you have to treat it like it was your own. Would you post this on your blog?

Final Words

Earning money guest posting is not a new idea. Just by putting your name on a guest post and a link to your site, you have the potential to earn more money. That one (or more) extra visitor could go to your site and sign up for everything you write about. Or not.

Guest posting is very important to brand your own name and blog. Earning money from it is a nice perk.

Have you earned money from your guest posts?

Yesterday I wrote about how you can Earn Money for your Social Media Votes. People are willing to pay you to vote for your votes. I thought it would be a great article for getting a little stumble traffic. However, a thumbs down killed it.

The topic of selling your votes is a controversial one, especially to social media users. In the article I never stated I was for or against it (I did plug my referral link), but I was mostly interested in if the readers here would buy or sell.

I completely understand why it could of gotten a thumbs down and they left their reason.

“You know, I’m probably one of the most capitalistic women I know, but this is just wrong. Are you really that desperate for $10 to put your integrity on the shelf?”

However, they either didn’t fully read the article, or I was misunderstood. As I said before I never said I was for or against it. Maybe it was the title?

The Thumbs Down Effect

I’ve gotten a thumbs down before by crazy, angry, stumble trolls. The posts were old, but received a trickle of hits every now and then. Ever since the thumbs down, traffic has ceased.

The case is the same on yesterdays article, thumbs down killed off all traffic. It had 15 stumbles including my own. Instead of receiving the usual couple of hundred stumble hits, I registered 26. It is still getting thumbs up, but no impact.

I thought it would be interesting to contact the stumbler, nicely of course. I asked them why they gave the thumbs down and their opinion. I haven’t received a response yet, but definitely hope that I can change their mind. It will be interesting to also see if traffic picks up again.

What do you do when your articles on stumbleupon get thumbs down? Have you tried to contact the stumbler?

Social media traffic is a nice boost for any website or blog. However, sometimes it’s hard to come by. This will lead for people to even pay for it. If you can ‘buy’ 50 votes on digg, you are bound to get some front page action, depending on your topic.

‘Sell Your Votes’

Subvert and Profit has come up with a system where you can buy and sell social votes. They currently have stumbles and diggs on the market.

You can buy votes for $2 each, or sell votes for $1 each. It’s usually a bundle of URLS, maybe 5. So it looks like they are making quite a profit. Maybe subvert and we profit?

Each time votes are available you receive and email with the URL’s to either be stumbled or dugg. Since this method violates the rules on digg (I think stumble too) they give you ways to make it look like you aren’t cheating.

To be paid you must earn $10. They just removed paypal as their method of payment and have gone with google checkout. I’ve never used it, but if I wanted to use and get paid by this website, that would be another account I would need to get. In my opinion, a paypal option is vital in this case.

Referrals

You can refer people to their website and make 10% of their earnings. This wouldn’t be that much of a boost, but if you registered several people it could make payout a lot easier. I threw my referral link in this post to see if there was any money to be made with referrals.

I know there are websites where you can trade votes, which I never liked much. Selling them puts even more value on the worth of these precious votes.

At risk of getting your account banned would you participate in selling your votes? A few stumbles for a quick buck is easy, but worth it?

Ever since I started using scratchback I have liked the results. It’s a simple widget that is a great idea. Sell no-follow links!

On January 15th, I received a payment of $35.62 and wrote a short post about Getting Tipped by Scratchback. A lot of people were interested in how scratchback was performing and continued to perform.

February 18th (1 month later) I received another payment, this time of $30.52. I am still pretty impressed with it. How did I do it?

Scratchback Tips

If you want to earn more money with scratchback, add it to more blogs. I have scratchback on two.

The thing I have suggested the most is to definitely register your site for the scratchback directory. I’ve managed to get my sites under the “popular listings” section. So everyone who goes to the directory can see them.

Get a plug on the scratchback blog. Jim Kukral is a pretty cool guy. I simply contacted him and mentioned I had been promoting Scratchback and that I was wondering if he’d do a post on us. The post has sent us several visitors, some of which have purchased spots. Even though he made an error and said we were charging $5 per tip and never corrected it, it helped regardless (It’s okay Jim!). Maybe you can get featured?

Another thing that has worked for people is offering incentive for people who ‘tips’. I haven’t used this tactic yet, but we may soon.

Fun fact our last post a month ago I stated that our scratchback widget has been viewed over 30,000 times. As of today its been viewed 62255 times. thats 30,000+ times in a month! Make sure to click on over and buy a spot on our widget.

I haven’t done many of these posts, but there are a few things around the blogosphere I wanted to mention.

I’m a T-Shirt Winner!

I won a SilentPillow.com t-shirt from Derek Semmler. He must like me, because this is the second t-shirt I’ve won on his blog. The contest was easy, I just had to comment. His money contest ends tomorrow, but I don’t think I can win that one too.

40+ Top Blogs That Will Teach You To Blog Like A Pro

At ProBloggersMatrix they put together a great list of 40+ top blogs. The list isn’t in order, but we are at #14 if it matters. There are some great big blogs, but also blogs I’ve never seen. Get your feed reader ready for this list.

Top 52 Online Money Making Blog – Ranked by Value

Putting any list in order is better than just randomly listing them in my opinion. The TalkGold blog put together a list of the Top 52 Making Money Blogs. We came in at #41, which isn’t bad, but I’d always like higher. There is some great blogs there, but CashQuests is definitely over valued and maybe a few others.

A List Of 40 Free Blog Directories

I was asked recently how much traffic you can expect from directories. My answer was little to none. However, directories are more for SEO purposes and I definitely recommend them. Mike has put together a list of 40 Free Blog Directories. Take a minute and get your blogs listed.