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PayPerPost Accuses Some of their Oldest Members of Gaming Alexa and PayPerPost

August 21st, 2007 by admin

We mentioned that PayPerPost had recently finally gotten around to responding to requests from their bloggers, who wanted to know if it was OK to game Alexa.

It only took about 6-8 months for the PPP response on the specific topic.  In the time void many bloggers seemed to have taken PayPerPost’s lack of response and acceptance of the process (as it was designed, executed, tested and run from within the PayPerPost forum) as a default green light to proceed.

However, a tipping point in Alexa gaming was apparently reached and PPP stepped in with a heavy hand to quash the gaming of Alexa activity.  This has resulted in their accusation that some old ‘Posties’ were involved in the gaming of Alexa. 

A Postie is slang for a blogger that is in PayPerPost network and earns money from writing sponsored articles for PayPerPost.  An old Postie is typically considered someone that has been in the PayPerPost network since the PayPerPost forum was created in September of 2006.  Sometimes old posties are measured by the number of posts they have in the forums as well, although those posts sometimes get deleted.

For the record, I am an old Postie myself, having signed up with the PayPerPost network about 8 days after the went live.

Some of those old Posties helped to make PPP what it is today and in fact have a public presence and association with PPP that is almost as famous as PPP itself.  So their accusations are very similar to exposing an internal employee as a problem almost.  The big problem here is that PayPerPost has essentially changed the rules of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable after the fact and cried foul for something that was at best fair and at worst a ball going right down the line.

Issue is With PayPerPost Usage of Weak Metrics

Regardless, the real issue here is one presented to advertisers.  Advertisers that are not experience in the web enough to understand that Alexa rankings and numbers are almost useless are the ones that are being pitched by PayPerPost a bill of goods.  You can sell a farce and that is wrong, but when your outsourced contractor games your farce and you step on them for it, it gets a bit murky as to who is really to blame.

I’d posit that PayPerPost should clean up their rankings and drop Alexa numbers.  The fact that it is far far too easy for even a non-technically savvy person to fix an Alexa number is just another reason why it is a poor metric to track advertising results.

What Happens to the Bloggers?

It remains to be seen what the impact of this small scandal will be on the actual bloggers.  Time will tell.