Owner: PayPerPost Blog URL:http://blog.payperpost.com Join Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:16:48 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The PayPerPost Blog documents the daily goings-on of PayPerPost, the Internet's next monster company. Employees interact not only with folks who use the site and the rest of the world! Site statistics:Click here
System update at midnight Eastern Standard Time 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Hi all, Well, you may have noticed that the development team has been pretty quiet for the past few years. The reason is that we've been beavering away around the clock on Beta 3 of PayPerPost.com. I'm please to announce that at midnight
tonight we'll be taking the site down for at most one hour to deploy this new version, and it's a biggie. I can't say at this point what's in it. Expect a full post from me tomorrow though detailing each and every nuance of this absolutely massive release. I think you'll like it. Pete Read more:System
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Scheduled Outage 1970-01-01 00:59:59 There will be a site wide outage of the marketplace tonight around midnight. The system will be down for a few hours as we role out BETA 3. More information on the features to follow in another post, Pete will have a nice juicy update after the system is live.Hold on to your computers peeps.... this is a big one.
We Have A Winner! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 PayPerPost Concert Contest Winner that is!What a blast we had with our friends from Real Rock 101 radio station here in Florida. They wanted to hear about the most exciting, outrageous or embarrassing concert experience you have ever had!Thank you for all your responses. The 3 highest viewed video's from youtube.com were posted on the Buckethead section of the wjrr.com website. Listeners were encouraged to log on to the Buckethead section starting on January 29th and asked to vote for their favorite submission. The entry with the highest amount of votes would determine the grand prize winner.Check out the winner! http://www.wjrr.com/pages/payperpost.htmlCongratulations Miss Colleen you got yourself 500 big ones!http://www.simplekindoflife.com/http://www.3daymom.com/
This week's release 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Updated and Clarified by TedWell, we made a fairly hefty release yesterday, a release that has taken over a year of person-effort to bring to fruition. There's a lot in it, so let's go through the key features here.REVIEW MY POSTPosties, you will notice a new "Affiliate Tools" button on the top at the top of page. The "review my post" link takes you to a brand new shiny button. Just copy/paste the code for the button in any of your blog posts, and anybody that signs up through it will have an extra special, high priority, opp to review your post! As soon as the new blogger's first post is paid, you each get the princely sum of $7.50. What a great way to bring new traffic to your blog!The other link in "Affiliate Tools" is the referral program. As before, put this anywhere on your blog to receive $15 when a new postie that signed up through you gets his/her first post paid.PPP FIREFOX PLUGINIf you aren't already using Firefox, you're missing out on its greatest feature, plugins! Pl
RockStartup - Episode 10 is LIVE! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Check out Episode
10! The PPP development team is under pressure to deliver updates to PayPerPost.com in time for Ted's board meeting.Episode 10 Out of Site
No SuperBowl For Me 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Unfortunately I won't be catching the SuperBowl. To be honest I don't care much about the game, but I always like to see the commercials and it's always good to see friends. I am spending this Super Bowl Sunday in various airports.From the looks of the comment stream here and on the forums there continues to be a lot of questions about PostieCon and the upcoming release. I am jumping on another plane on my way to San Francisco (where I will be for about 20 hours before I take a red eye to Ft. Lauderdale... so no Postie Patrol), but I will try to alleviate some of the confusion and answer some questions before I take off from Dallas.Breilly-I sent an email to Arrington, I don't think he's up for the controversy : ) I would love to have him at the event for the same reasons I list below.Lisa Reneee-I have been talking about segmentation for months, it should come as no surprise. Segmentation is very important for Advertisers and is a top request. This has also been in the news all w
Robert Scoble to Keynote PostieCon 07 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I am pleased to announce that RobertScoble
will be the keynote speaker at PostieCon
07. The event will be held June 1&2 in downtown Orlando on Church Street at the newly renovated Ballroom. The cost to bloggers will be $200 and is an absolute bargain for all that will be included. The whole team has been working extremely hard to put this event together and we are delighted to have Robert on board.The theme of this event is "You're a Rockstar" and Scoble is certainly that. Scoble was recently voted #9 on Forbes top 25 Internet Celebrities list. Much like PayPerPost, Scoble has had his share of controversy and much like me he stands up for what he believes in. He has taken some shots at PayPerPost in the past, but has an open mind to our concept and has helped shape our direction in the past. It took incredible guts for him to agree to do this keynote and I applaud him for doing so.Bloggers are making a lot of assumptions about PostieCon so let's get some things straight. PostieC Read more:Keynote
, Robert Scoble
Larry Dignan from ZDNet 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I had the pleasure of meeting Larry
Dignan from ZDNet
this week while attending the AO Media conference (where we received an award for being on of their top 100 companies). It was refreshing to speak with such a fair and balanced journalist. He asked the tough questions, but was not overly combative and didn't enter into our conversation with a preconceived notion of what he was going to write. If you haven't seen the post you can check it out here:http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4389
10th [and final] HP Camera Winner! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, it's been a long, strange, exciting, fun, and awesome trip. The final winner is here and I just want to say that I've had a lot of fun doing these announcements- especially the ones with fellow PPP Staffers, Mike and Luke.Our last winner, Bob, submitted a haiku via video- and I loved it. I have written my own haiku to you, Bob, and you can read it below.Bloggers submit posts.Yours, like cream, rises to top.I like to read them.For me it's heaven.Videos are watched all dayGood and Bad, I love.Big thanks to HP;and to you, 4clubbs, you win!My heart is happy.Haikus a lost art!We will send camera now-send us your pics, too.Time to say farewell,goodbye and arigato.Headphone, five dollar.Serene, huh? Read more:Camera
From the Advertising Sales front 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I am delighted to announce that Jody Salamarid formally of MySpace will join my sales team as Director of Sales
for the Western Region on Monday February 12th. Jody brings with her strong relationships with the movie studios, television networks, auto imports, Sony, Apple and Boost Mobile just to name a few. Jody will be based in Los Angeles.Joining my team on Monday is Joe "Sales" Vaughn. Joe is eager to get advertisers that have signed up for PayPerPost but never deposited on board. Joe will also be looking at competitive sites for potential advertisers that have interesting products and services for you to blog and film about.Stay tuned as I will have exciting announcements soon for the East Coast and Midwest positions.As some of you may have read in the blogosphere PayPerPost is introducing some new advertising opportunities that will attract higher profile advertisers and provide you with some new and exciting tools to talk and film about products and services you love. Read more:Advertising
Disclosure Badges and BubbleAds 1970-01-01 00:59:59 With the Beta 3 release we have introduced Disclosure
Badge and BubbleAds. I want to take a moment to discuss the distinction between the two features. A Disclosure Badge is a small image that advertisers can request bloggers append to their blog post. This badge is designed to provide transparency for the blog reader. The advertiser has the ability to specify the text and image within the disclosure badge itself.The badge is displayed at the end of a post made by a Postie. The Postie has the ability to select the color of the badge to coordinate with the design of their own blog. Disclosure Badges
provide blog readers with the ultimate in transparency and are exclusive to PPP.In addition to a Disclosure Badge advertisers can select an add-on called a BubbleAd. This is a small advertisement that displays when a blog reader rolls over a Disclosure Badge. The advertiser has the ability to select the image and text that is displayed in the BubbleAd. This allows advertisers to have their m
Segmentation is Here! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We are pleased to announce that segmentation is here! Advertisers can now select which bloggers qualify for their opportunity based on a number of criteria. Below is a sample of the interface in the system. Read more:Segmentation
MMMM...Blood Pudding 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So after Ted and I checked into our hotel here in sunny London we were starving. What better a way to kick off our London trip than a traditional English breakfast. We got eggs, sausage, baked beans, chips, etc. In our breakfast buffet meanderings we stumbled upon this interesting sausage looking thing and grabbed a few pieces, not thinking twice about it. We return to our table and begin chowing down. After maneuvering around the unknown food product we both decide to eat a piece, it had a very, lets say, unusual taste to it but at that same time not really having a taste at all...very weird. So the waitress comes over and I decide to ask what it is, which was a bad idea, I should have just let it go. Anyways after working our way through the language barrier with the waitress, yes she did speak English but it's not the same, we hear the words "BloodPudding
" and well that was all we needed to hear, we didn't finish our breakfast after that.SO...Blood Pudding is a sausage made
ATTN Advertisers... use your Tacks! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The "Tack" rating system has been part of PayPerPost for quite some time. Bloggers can rate Advertisers and vice versa. With the release of Beta 3 Tacks
have become extremely important, especially for Bloggers. Tacks provide us with an indication of the quality of each blog posting. We aggregate the scores and use them to determine an overall Tack rating for the blogger. In order to maintain the quality of the system we urge all advertisers to take the time to rate each post made for your opportunities.This score effects which opportunities bloggers are eligible for and ultimately help us provide a higher quality network for our users.
More posts per day, less bugs! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We just rolled out an interim fix for a number of issues. Specifically1. Alexa ranks are now correctly updated. They are correct. We are certain they are correct. We get them direct from Alexa.2. Advertisers - you can once again change the maximum number of postings in an opportunity. 3. Advertisers that have had problems editing rejected opportunities can now edit away without fear. In addition, we've increased the number of posts
that bloggers can make, per blog, back up to 3. Have fun!Pete
Britt's Vacation 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Top ten things to do or not to do in LA10. In Hollywood it's not how hot your are but who you know! Nice moves Nat!9. Do eat at the Ivy but don't use the men's room just because Taylor Hicks came out of it.8. Do expect to wait over 1hr for a table even if you have a reservation.7. Don't take pictures in your hotel lobby because you will get yelled at.6. Do follow Cisco Adler and his band into a store to watch them try on women's clothing while filming a reality show.5. Do dance right near the VIP area at 'Area' to get free champagne from the crew with Rick Fox.4. Do stay at an overpriced hot Hotel and live like a Rock Star for 24hrs.3. Don't piss off the security at Koi by dancing in the middle of the restaurant with your napkin as your prop.2. Do grab Bruce Willis because it's BRUCE WILLIS... but don't expect him to take a picture with you even if you had a dream about him the night before.1. Do find yourself on a Hollywood star! Read more:Britt
, Vacation
Town Hall Meeting 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I will be holding a Town Hall
Meeting on Wednesday, February 21 from 12:00-1:00 PM EST. Questions will be limited to the first 75 people who login (software limitation). I will do my best to answer as many questions as I can in that time and post the transcript on the blog following the meeting. I know many of you have questions and concerns, I am here to listen, respond and make changes where appropriate.Side note: If anyone knows of software (preferably free) better than Adobe Breeze for this type of application I would love to know about it. Read more:Town Hall Meeting
Blog ranking updates. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We have been working with URLTrends through the weekend to get the ranking issue sorted out. We are aware of the issue that many blogs are reporting zeros for PR and Alexa. Some of you should now have the proper ranking and the rest will be updated by the end of the day. I apologize for the problems here, part of the system relies on third party feeds that have proved to be less reliable than we originally thought. Read more:updates
Alexa Score Questions 1970-01-01 00:59:59 There have been many questions regarding the utilization of Alexa
score in the PayPerPost system. People have varied opinions about the accuracy and relevance of these scores and PayPerPost is making no claim as to either of those.What I can tell you as an experienced Internet marketer is that Alexa does provide a high level indicator of a sites overall traffic in comparison to other sites. While I don't believe Alexa is perfect, I also don't believe any of the other third party providers of this type of data is perfect either. Alexa scores allow advertisers to segment their offer based on a general assumption of blog's traffic, but I don't think any advertiser should think of an Alexa score as a finite measurement of visits or pageviews.Alexa Score
s and Google PR are quantitative references that allow our Advertisers to make targeting decisions based on numbers they understand. Generally speaking blogs with higher scores (which is actually a lower score in Alexa) in these two area
Podcast 911! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 OK, so this is in no way an emergency but I wanted to get your attention! Hope it worked!Posties and blog visitors,I know you are probably more interested in all the changes going on with the PPP platform but if you have a few moments take some time to look this over.I am looking for your help -- again (your help was instrumental in getting us 2nd place on Spicypage.com)! So I am trying to get as many people to subscribe to our RockStartUp feed as possible! The more folks who know about RockStartUp the greater awareness for PayPerPost. The greater awareness for PayPerPost the better off we all are! You get where I am going, right?Anyway, among the many, many sites I have listed RockStartUp on the DigitalPodcast
.com site (not the prettiest but they actually have some pretty good content), and in order for us to get the greatest exposure in their listings--which would be one of their features on the homepage--I need folks to go to our page and VOTE! Now, I know all of you are alrea
This week and where are we at now? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, we had some issues this week. There are two ways to look at it, as there always are. On the one hand given the volume and percentage of code that changed, the fact that the problems were confined to one part of PayPerPost.com (taking opportunities) is fantastic. On the other hand, of course, that's probably one of the most visible and hihgly used parts of the application. We can only apologize for the problems here. We have thousands of users, with thousands of ways of doing things in the system, some correct, some incorrect. We simply didn't count on some of the ways many of you get things done. That's an oversight on our part. For example, there are still problems today with segmentation on opportunities with some bloggers who are ineligable able to opportunities that they should not have access to, and others who should have access finding themselves locked out. I'll tackle the latter case first. We use URL Trends to gather information about the blogs in the system and ass
OMG Travis Snores! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Greetings from England! Travis
and I are over here for Search Engine Strategies London. We got in this morning and our internal clocks are all messed up. It is 7:26 here and 2:26 in Orlando. Travis is passed out and I am wired. I thought I could sleep but I just can't.At PPP we don't get separate hotel rooms, we share rooms whenever possible to save money. Travis and I are bunked up in a little hotel room about 5 minutes from the convention center. The beds are comfortable but they are only 11 inches apart, which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that Travis is snoring! I don't know why but it seems that all of the guys I ever travel with snore...loudly.It is so bad that I actually bought noise cancelling headphones just so I can sleep. I made that decision after I went on a snowboarding trip with Doug White. He was snoring so loud that I went into the bathroom and slept in the bathtub.Normally I am trying to sleep and the snoring drives me nuts, but because I am awake it is ju
Half-Wall of Posties 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Marty, Yvonne and I spent some time Friday afternoon hanging up the Postie photos we've received so far and they look great!Here are some pictures of the pictures (and notice how well the fire alarm blends with them):The pictures that are hanging up right now are close to Ted's desk. That way they are closer to his heart! (How's that for cheese?) Seriously though, the wall is looking great but we need LOTS more photos! So if you haven't sent in yours already what are you waiting for?We will be sitting on the edge of our seats, eager that every time our front door opens it is the mail man delivering us Postie pics.Yeah, me and Veronique goofing off (we can't help it we're really good at it)! Read more:Posties
Update on the blog ranking issues 1970-01-01 00:59:59 As many of you have pointed out, it has taken us 10 days so far to move forward only tiny steps on the page rank issues. The reasons for this are many fold.First up, we use URL Trends, as you know, to grab your page ranks. We hit Alexa directly to get your Alexa scores. With many thousands of blogs in the system we are limited on when we can hit both those services to update the scores. This obviously reduces the times that we can live test anything.With URL Trends we had a number of issues where we were passing 'edge cases' to the service. Some of you suffix your blog URLs with slashes, some dont. Some of you choose to add www. on the front, some dont. Some of you have http:// for a fully qualified URL in the system, some of you don't. Each step of the way, each test we have done, each time we have tried to go live we have found yet more exceptions that we need to account for and that URL Trends need to account for. Joel at URL Trends has been working very closely with us and we ar Read more:Update
Site goes down at 3pm eastern 1970-01-01 00:59:59 We are taking the site down at 3pm Eastern Standard Time (GMT - 5 hours) to deploy a fix for the rankings. The rankings will still be out of date for about an hour after the site comes back up while the code runs through all the blogs and gets the correct values. Pete
Here comes PostieCon 07! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Britt, Marty and I have all been hard at work finalizing the major details for PostieCon
07. We're going to get with Ted early next week since he's back from London, and hammer out the topline logistics! Plan is to launch a site devoted to the event sometime next week, and then you'll find out everything you've been itching to know! And of course any pertinent updates will be available here as well as on our MySpace page. (There are going to be some exciting things leading up to the event so keep a close watch!)Are you excited? I hope so! It's going to be an amazing two days of learning, sharing, networking and most of all having fun!Start spreadin' the word 'cause we wanna blow this thing outta the water! Ashley E Read more:comes
RockStartup - Episode 11 1970-01-01 00:59:59 In this episode...It's Biggest Loser time, PayPerPost style! The team starts a weight loss plan and Britt and Veronique take it one step further.Check it out! Read more:Episode
Happy to be home 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I am happy to return from a 3 week whirlwind tour that has resulting in some very big things in PayPerPost land. I can't talk about them quite yet, but the trips were well worth the beating my body has taken this month. I have still managed to hit the gym 3 times a week through it all and yesterday I ran a half marathon in 1hour 59minutes. Eric and I have a friendly bet going on right now. The first person to reach 100 miles wins $100. With this latest run I am feeling pretty good about my chances.It's wonderful to be back in the office and be able to see everyone face to face again. We have a lot going on and plenty of exciting things in store for advertisers and Posties alike. I look forward to the Town Hall meeting this week.... see you all there. Read more:Happy
Alexa Toolbar 1970-01-01 00:59:59 There have been a lot of Posties and Advertisers asking about how Alexa
scores work. I would like to provide a little bit of information from Alexa's own website:--How Does it Work?Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar
users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service.What is Traffic Rank?The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change i
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