Tomorrow the EcomXpo begins. It is a virtual trade show that takes place online every 6 months. This year in addition to focussing on online marketing and sales, they will also mix in a virtual job fair. The show attracts hundreds of exhibitors and almost ten thousand attendees. You do not have to leave the comfort of your home or office and get a lot of up close and personal attention from the companies at their booths.
I highly recommend the show as both an educational and a networking opportunity. You an learn a great deal from the University Sessions, keynote speakers and from talking to the exhibitors about their latest product and service offerings.
Don’t let the silly banner fool you, it is free to attend! The $49.95 comes into play if you want access to recorded versions of the keynote addresses and sessions.
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One of the issues that has publicly surfaced as a result of the PayPerPost Alexa scandal/tiff is the fact that once you put a blog in the PayPerPost system, its pretty much there forever.
PayPerPost claims to have about 38-40,000 blogs in their network, which is amazing. The thing is some of those blogs are inactive(not posting for PPP), some are dead(no website anymore), some have moved (ergo from blogspot to a hosted domain) and some belong to bloggers that have quit or retired from PayPerPost.
PayPerPost tracks metrics on blogs from the ads that go on those blogs. From PPP’s perspective it would be apparent that they would always want to monitor those metrics to show their advertisers how well the ads work.
Similarly, the older a blog becomes, the higher it tends to rank, so leaving a blog in the network, could raise the overall average rankings.
But if you are a blogger that wants to have your blogs de-listed from the network, there is not a way to do this in the system. You can put in a request to PayPerPost, but you may not necessarily have the right or expectation to have your blog removed.
One recent blogger wanted to have her blogs removed as PPP was too restrictive for her. It did not let her experiment with code and in part set off the Alexa controversy. The blogger wanted to keep the experiment going to test Alexa, but did not want to harm PayPerPost. However, she had no way to remove her blog and as such comply with the change in PayPerPost policy which prevented the gaming of Alexa.
So for new bloggers, they should consider that much like the Hotel California, you can check out of PayPerPost anytime you like, but for now Your Blog can Never Leave.
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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.
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