I’m super free. Finished all my X’mas shopping and I’m so free I even do up all those annoying pop-up online surveys. Non-paying ones, mind you.

The other day I did one for BizRate and I was promised I would be ‘compensated’ with great offers. After going through a few pages, I was thrilled when they told me I get 4 free annual magazine subscription of of my choice. Woot, those foreign magazines cost a bomb over here. So, I was super happy.

At the end, I was asked to enter my country in the survey and only then I realized the offer only apply to US citizens. Look, I think it would make better sense these surveys ask the country of origin at the very beginning to dispel any misunderstanding or high hopes. I don’t mind doing it for free but when when I’m told I get something out of it and in the end I don’t, it is really anti-climax to the max. You know what I mean?

Another few ones I did recently asked me about what food I buy. I was given 5 brand names and asked to rate each one. Other than one brand I can find in my local Tesco, I’ve not even heard of the other 4. I assume they’re local US brand that does no foreign marketing. Again, the survey should have asked for the country of the participant at the very beginning.

So for non-US residents, don’t get your hopes high about getting freebies doing online surveys. Do it only if you’ve nothing better to do like me. Or if you’re seriously into ‘helping others’ improve their product quality and make the world a better place.

What about the Terms and Conditions they put in the beginning?

Seriously, does anyone read them? I don’t. You do? Then I can claim I have more life than you..

My postman never rings twice and to be fair, he’s no Jack Nicholson either. But then it is just frustrating when the mailman finds it that hard to just press the doorbell. It’s not like it’s going to ruin his super glossy Maybelline nailpolish, right?

I’ve been waiting patiently like a good little girl for my Debit card to arrive. I’ve waited for more than 30 days and when I received a letter from the bank, I can only presume the best - the card is ready. I wish…
No.

It’s not good news. It seems the card was sent via priority mail and got bounced back to the bank when the mailman failed to deliver to my address.

Huh?

Usually if I am not home, (which I doubt very much because I’m home most of the time. I am afterall the winner of the prestigous Miss-No-Social-Life award) the procedure would be for the postman to leave me an official note requesting me to retrieve my mail from the post office within 7 days. Only then if I don’t show up they would bounce the mail back to sender. Obviously my postman is one who does not believe in the conventional or procedure.

Honestly, if not for the fact the debit card helps facilitate my Paypal withdrawal, I won’t even bother. OK, I am now on a constant watchout for the postman. Dang, I ‘ve no high hopes he’ll look like Jack Nicholson. Tell you what, I’ll just settle for Daniel Craig.

Just had the most wonderful weekend doing nothing but eat. Yeah, I know there’ll be repercussions. Like?

The new jeans I bought over the net is a tad too tight. I always order the same size and this time it’s somehow tighter. Either the jeans QC is not stringent and consistent or I’m getting fat.

What am I talking about? I am NOT getting fat….. I am fat.

Let’s face it. The downside about fulltime blogging is how out of touch I am from real people. I socialize nowadays over the net. The up side about net socialization is, nobody can see you. The down side? The motivation to keep one in tip top shape is pretty non-evident. Back in my working days, we always had this healthy competition among fellow colleagues (lady colleagues) to look our best.

Now?

Without friendly competition, I’m just not motivated anymore. I have no qualms about walloping half the damn butter cake without the remotest sense of guilt. It’s starting to freak me out how I am not bothered. Dang, I’m more concerned about how my blog looks more than how I look.

Honestly, this has got to stop. Today I want a change. I swear I am going to cut down a few dress sizes. Thanks to the HBO movie “The Devil Wears Prada” I watched over the weekend.

Quote from the movie..

“…..size 2 is the new 0 and the size 2 is a new 4, ….. size 6 is size 14….”

OK I get it. I swear I’m going to lay off reading 100% technology/internet/SEO blogs. I’m going to devote 50% to fashion blogs from now on. Blek.

My right template column that is. Hope nobody is expecting something else…. I’ve been looking at my right side column and it looks wrong. I guess the right column is too short and is making my template a little weird with a funny green thing hanging in mid air.

I’ve been thinking what I can do to the thing. I wanted some pictures but I try not to put ads there. I know many blogs look tasteful with ads, but since I’m already doing a little PP here, I don’t want to look like a money face.

Talking about ads on blogs, I have nothing against them provided they are tastefully done. Really, I don’t have much issue if it’s not exactly in my face. I can always ignore them and not click. The kind of ads that irritates the hell out of me are those that are pushed right into your face. I don’t know what those ads are called. Sometimes when you go into a blog, those ads will pop up in another window right in front of you. I hate that.

Some of the blogs I visit uses them. If you are one of them, I hope you can reconsider if you care zit about your readers. It’s just plain rude to have the thing pop up in another window and even more rude to have your readers close the damn thing everytime they visit your blog. In all honesty, unless it’s one great blog, I won’t even want to go again.

People who are writing for PayPerPost will be no stranger to this new thing called Argus. It’s not really unveiled yet, though obviously judging by the comments in those forum, there are some posties who know more than others. Basically from what I gather from their announcement board, it is some kind of real live stats tracking device you insert into your HTML page. Not unlike those stats counter we insert in our blogs, but perhaps a tad more sophisticated.

Now, I’m not going to go into the technicality aspect, I’m merely putting down my thoughts. Firstly, becareful what you wish for, it might come true. People had been bitching about Google PR ranking. Of course Alexa is worse. While PR ranking indicates page relevance as a guideline in determining the importance of a page to the search engine, it does not really reflect real traffic. With the implementation of Argus, PayPerPost now can bypass Google and put their very own stats analyser in place. PPP no longer needs to rely on Google PR as an indicator.

Now, how does it affect posties in general? Having real live stats of your site meant it is not just good enough you have a blog/site. You now had to have real traffic to show. Real visitors coming in. On the other hand, it will definitely be good news to those newbies who had just started a blog with decent traffic/visitors. No longer these newcomers are at the mercy of Google pagerank. Guess the next Google PR update will not bring as much excitement. And jitters.

From an advertiser’s perspective, this is good news. I do not know if PPP will be charging advertisers who chose to utilize their Argus more, but definitely advertisers will have more control than ever over who does their ads. If advertisers like this so much, it will ultimately give PPP a competitive edge over their competitors.

My thought is, will PPP competitors resort to similar means to give advertisers real live stats and information to level their playing field? PPP changed the landscape of paid post a little more than a year ago. Dang, are they going to do it again with Argus? Only time will tell.

I’m not exactly rolling out the red carpet though…

Look around the blogosphere and you’ll probably hear alot of discontentment from posties writing for a big paid post company which boasts more than 50k posties. You know whom I’m talking about right?

Their recent Term of Services dictates there should be an interim post placed between ALL sponsored posts. Not only their sponsored posts, all sponsored post from their competition as well. Nevermind the competition allows back-to-back paid posts.

I was initially saddened by their decision. Frankly, it does not affect me in anyway. I’m only writing for them and occasionally for Bloggerwave which does not present plenty of opportunities in the first place. The rationale behind their new TOS is because they want quality blogs. Quality blogs that constitute at least 50% paid and non-paid posts to balance the credibility of the blog itself.

From a neutral standpoint, I can understand what they’re driving at. I’m going to be dead honest, I’ve seen plenty of blogs which is totally made up of paid posts with no original content. Ok, maybe a few lines or two to break the ice, but definitely a blog you would not bookmark and come back for read. I do ask myself, “gee, do people actually read these blogs?” Obviously the blogger cannot care less. Readers do not pay… the paid posts do.

Now, I am not to judge what a blogger can or cannot do to their blogs. It’s their life, it’s their choice. From my own standpoint as a blog reader, I can say I won’t read such blogs. This is my choice and this is my thought. I am not saying everyone should prescribe to my view, but then I’m merely presenting my view. According to that big paid post company, these are the blogs they are trying to weed out. I’m with them.

Honestly, I can understand from an advertiser’s standpoint, it is just no good paying these blogs to write about my products when these blog owners care zit about readership.

Having said that, I’ve seen quality good blogs which can carry a good balance. But then when it comes to good blogs, this is always subjective. Paid post companies cannot afford to view each individual blog for assessment and therefore the only way to weed out non-quality blogs is to assume a conservative 50-50 ratio between paid and non-paid posts for a reasonably ‘quality’ blog. I know, there are grey areas in this assumption. I do not dispute that.

A lot of bloggers who solely keep their blogs for monetary purposes without regards to quality or contents, should understand there is a world of difference between what works for you and what works for the advertisers. An understanding should be reached. You can of course disregard what the advertisers want and dwell on ‘what works for me, period’ but at the end of the day, it is the advertisers that pay. At least the advertisers at PPP.

Am I happy PPP is finally taking some quality control? Definitely.

Am I happy they’re changing their TOS? No, I am not. I know it does not affect me, but then I do feel the blog is mine and I should have my say on what I want to post.

Am I leaving them because of this? No. It is just sad innocent bystanders are caught in the cross-fire as casualties of war.

A war PPP should have fought earlier on with a simple more stringent acceptance policy to only allow quality blogs.

Remember those Robert Ludlum novels about spies and conspiracy theories? You don’t? You must be young. Before the curtain came down, there were plenty of suspicions floating around. Spies and undercover agents infiltrating the government. Everybody is on alert and you don’t want to be sleeping with the enemy. Everything and everyone is viewed with caution.

It’s happening here in the blogosphere today. Back in my early blogging days, things were much simpler. The most damage a meme can do would probably be your time spent conjuring up good answers. Perhaps you feel obligated to come up with something funny or profound so people take notice. By the way, it’s OK to play the hypocrital moaner who bitch how you hate being tagged though in honesty you’re half gloating the fact somebody actually think you’re important enough to be tagged. It comes with the territory. It’s uncool to be happy getting tagged…..

Well, those days are gone. Come today, you’ll be overwhelmed with suspicions should somebody tagged you. The whole meme thing today is revolutionized by 2 words. Link bait. If you did not monetize your blog, you’re oblivious to the underlying motive. For people who monetized their blogs, we know PR is an asset. Advertisers care zit whom you are. You’re a nice person? Who cares? It’s your blog PR that does the talk. It takes time to build PR and you can lose your blog ranking if you go all out and drain every ounce of its worth with links. Personally I do find it hard to justify cheap sleazy momentary link scheme in the form of memes. You know something is amiss when you’re asked to list and link the whole list of participants. I’m not talking about 5, more like 50 at one go.

Well, if you’re a willing partner hoping to fish some links yourself I have no objection. As long as it’s not under any fake pretence and spoken outright ‘you link me and I’ll link you. Let’s help each other out’. I have no problem with that, it’s your blog, it’s your choice….. While at it, social nicety dictates one should not go all personal when someone is not an interested participant. Other people have choices too.

I spoke about memes, but in honesty, is the blogosphere really full of such dubious stuff where ulterior motives lurk at every nook and corner? Heard about the one regarding the West eradicating the East in PPP? Not with secret lasers or scentless gas. It gets better. Eliminate the East in the guise of a writing contest. Codename bad English and lousy grammar….

Personally I call it 100% unfounded paranoia. You believe? Well, you’re free to arrive at your conclusion as much as I did at mine. I guess everyone has the right to make the call himself. Live and Let Live.

There’s going to be something new from PPP. Apart from the 1K Tuesday I wrote previously, they’re now throwing in a Wednesday special. How special? Special ops targetting non-US posties only. Now, it’s all too easy to arrive at the conclusion when the word non-US posties crop up and automatically think good news for the Malaysian posties. The fact is, it is basically US vs the rest of the world. Apart from the US posties, you have the European, Australian, Canadian and whatever country in between vying for the extra Wednesday ops.

Now, the amount thrown out is not exactly drawing oohs and gasps… I think it’s an extra USD250 from PPP in the form of 2 USD50 ops and one USD150 op. That’s beside my point. The post written by Ted (PPP boss) announcing the Wednesday deal did gave the impression the extras were thrown in, in view of the recent segmentation decision. Segmentation of posties meant advertisers now have the choice of targeting their audience by allowing or disallowing posties from certain countries to write for them.

Personally I have no problem with the segmentation thing. It’s the advertisers’ money so it’s their call. Nothing I can bitch about.

Now, I don’t want to sound I’m too easy, but then in all honesty, tell me if you’re one of the non-US postie you don’t feel good being appreciated? Don’t bitch to me about the amount. Yeah, it’s not big. But then how many bosses you’ve worked with in real life actually give a damn when you complain? It’s the thought that counts.

The past 2 days had been total madness for PPP posties. The company was throwing out 1K worth of ops to the masses. Without segmentation or regards to PR ranking. That could only mean one thing. Plenty of restless caffeine junkie and lethargic folks wondering around.

I would know. I am one of them. I was not feeling well but well enough in spirit to stay up until ridiculous hours just to see the ops rolled out and immediately turned grey. (reserved)

For the life of me, I honestly fail to see the point. Was PPP trying to jam their own server enticing these posties to circle like vulture waiting for its prey? What higher purpose does it serve? Beats the hell out of me.

Now, I’m not invincible. So, there are no names and no links. Just got to take my word for it…. these stuffs are actually said in the forum. Did I hear the word coward? Yep, that’s me. Being a newbie in PPP I don’t want to start stepping on toes offending people, but then I have the dilemma of being a blogger by instincts. So, I’m bound to do stupid things… like writing out my 2 cents here. Please understand this is going to be one of those ambiguous post. Frustrating to read but then a necessity in my interest to save my own ass and at the same time savour the satisfaction of bitching it a bit.

Here goes

There’s some Tom Cruises of Bloggywood out there who think they’re paid peanuts for the ops. Hey, they’re the Tom Cruises, meaning they’re the A-list. Those damn directors are paying A-list people way too low. Afterall, they’re in the A-list, that has to count for something right? The solution among the Tom Cruises it seemed, was to decline all the low offers. Everyone in the A-list applauded. Wow, what an ingenious idea. End of story? You wish….

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