Making Money From Your Personal Blog: PayPerPost Vs. LoudLaunch

For several months now, I've been pulling in a fair amount of extra income through my personal blog, mainly by participating in advertising campaigns via PayPerPost. If you don't know what that is, it's pretty simple: advertisers sign up and post "opportunities," offering a fixed dollar amount to entice members to write posts in their blogs featuring links to the advertisers' products or web sites.

Before anybody gets too worked up about blogger bias or deception, understand that PayPerPost requires full disclosure regarding sponsored posts, and that most advertisers prefer honesty and allow for neutral reviews of their products. As for those who don't, in my experience, I simply don't take any offers requiring positive feedback if I can't provide it in all honesty. From what I've seen of my fellow PayPerPost bloggers, most of them have the integrity to follow this unwritten rule, and the community tends to be self-policing on the matter.

This has been quite a successful business model for PayPerPost. In just under a year since the site launched, PayPerPost has grown from a rocky little startup to a web giant, able to offer posting opportunities from major corporate advertisers offering as much as $1,000 per blog post. They've built a large and devoted community of "Posties" who are preparing to converge on Vegas in November for the first annual "PostieCon." They've also given birth to spin-offs such as the reality web TV series Rock Startup and the launch of the increasingly popular Blogger's Choice Awards web site.