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In the complete polar opposite to my post titled PayPerPost Love earlier on in the year, I’ve decided to post about my hangups with PayPerPost, namely a recent saga involving one of my sponsored posts; GoLive Mobile Marketing.

The policy for sponsored posts as set out in the PayPerPost Terms of Service is long and jargon-filled, so I’ll leave those out. If you’re in dire need of some reading material, then be my guest: PayPerPost TOS. The main point I want to bring your attention to is the following:

Paid posts must not be consecutive. Each sponsored post must be separated by at least one non-PayPerPost post.

So how does all this relate to the sponsored post on GoLive Mobile Marketing? This is where the story begins. Grab a coffee, you may be reading for a while.

Obviously after posting, you must submit the post for review by a member of the PayPerPost team for acceptance or rejection which all seems fair. I was a little surprised when an email from PayPerPost with the subject line ‘Your post has been rejected.’ found it’s way into my inbox. Not one post that I have ever submitted has been rejected. I opened the email to find a reason why my post was rejected and it read a little something like this:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work! Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post as it does not meet our Terms of Service regarding Disclosure.
According to the Terms, you must disclose, either within the sponsored post or on your Blog that certain posts have been sponsored.
You may wish to visit DisclosurePolicy.org for more information.
Once you have made disclosure for this post, please resubmit it to us.

Also, your post after this one titled, “Undo For Browsers” is not original content. It is just copied and pasted from another blog. According to the Terms, each PayPerPost Opportunity post must be separated by at least one non-sponsored, original content, post. Interim posts must also be of a reasonable length, at least one paragraph, 3-5 sentences.
As the post previous to this post is just copied and pasted, I apologize, but it does not meet these Terms. Please add at least 3-5 sentences of original content to this post and resubmit.

Thanks
Crystal

Now, the rule on disclosure was known to me as you can see in almost every one of my paid posts. The thing I don’t quite understand is why I was penalised for following the rules set out in the opportunity description. It clearly stated there was to be no in-post disclosure and that the blog must have sitewide disclosure. So being the law-abiding citizen I am, I followed the rules and placed a small note in the post saying that the post was indeed a sponsored one. I do have a disclosure policy in place, and it can be viewed here for those interested.

I will also refute one of the other points that Crystal had made in her reasoning: ‘Also, your post after this one titled, “Undo For Browsers” is not original content. It is just copied and pasted from another blog.’ I believe you will find that it is an original article and simply has been cross-posted to help at a friend’s blog to help his site out; Attackr.com. I was asked to add 3-5 lines of original content so that my post could be accepted. But hang on a minute, don’t the rules say that two sponsored posts must be seperated by one non-sponsored post? If you look at the front page of this blog, you will find no sponsored posts have been published since the post on GoLive Mobile Marketing. If you care to scroll down a little further, you will find that all paid posts are separated by non-sponsored posts. So it all makes sense? To Crystal of PayPerPost, apparently not.

The same day after resubmitting the amended post, I receive yet another email advising me that my post has been rejected. Once more, Crystal had stated her reasons and they read as follows:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work. Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post because it does not met the requirements of the advertiser.

The advertiser has asked for no in-post disclosure. Please remove your in-post disclosure and create site-wide disclosure.
You may wish to visit DisclosurePolicy.org for more information.
Once you have made disclosure for this post, please resubmit it to us.
Thanks, again!
Crystal

Excuse me, didn’t you just ask me to add disclosure to the post? So why the hell are you asking me to take it out now?! Once again, I followed her instructions and resubmitted the post. Even after placing a link to the disclosure policy in the sidebar; Surprise, surprise - It was once more rejected for nearly the same reason:

Jarred,

Thanks so much for submitting your post to this Opp. We appreciate your hard work. Unfortunately, we cannot accept this post because your previous post “Undo For Browsers” is exactly copied and pasted from another blog post titled “Undo For Browsers” from the URL www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/.

Please add some original content to this post and resubmit!
Thanks
Crystal

If she bothered to check the dates, she would find that the post on my blog was posted before I submitted it to Attackr. I somehow think that she should also appreciate the hard work that bloggers like myself put into writing quality articles, rather than jumping to conclusions that everyone’s a plagiarist these days. I think if she bothered to look and back up her claims, that I did add some more content to the post on this site just so the damn post could make it past her scrutiny.

So that brings me to the reason I’m posting this: I really believe that PayPerPost should employ people who actually bother to do their job properly and back up their claims before accusing other people of plagiarism and rejecting their posts for contradictory reasons. Maybe even Crystal will read this post on her next check to make sure I haven’t ‘plagiarised’ more content when I get around to resubmitting this post.

Got any other PayPerPost hangups? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: payperpost, rage

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