I just recently read an article on WebProNews where reservation scalping is the latest and greatest in online businesses. Oh yes, it takes all kinds to make this lovely world go around!
These websites target residents of big cities (New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles). The “going rate”, according to Jason Lee Miller’s article, is $10 - $25 for your reservation.
One such site, Tablexchange.com, buys and sells reservations at trendy, chic restaurants. According to this article on The Social, this site has already become controversial.
Tablexchange.com currently only has around 1,000 registered users, but the site is taking off and word is getting around.
Yesterday on the Dr. Phil show, the subject was Internet mistakes that people make. Women were guests on the show who publish provocative photos of themselves on Facebook and MySpace. They are also posting pictures of themselves drinking, drunk, passed out, and hugging the toilet.
A substitute teacher was also on the show, saying he was fired from his teaching job because of a music video he had on MySpace that had nudity and foul language.
None of these guests seemed to think that there is anything wrong with what they are doing. As Dr. Phil tried to point out, your personal life is your personal life. But if you are in a position of authority or power, like a teacher, it does not set a good example for children.
A job recruiter was on the show saying that many of the large companies are searching online at Facebook and MySpace to see if pictures and questionable material is posted by the job applicant. If there is, these people do not even get called in for a job interview.
Watch what you put online today because tomorrow it can come back to bite you in the butt.
Google accounts for approximately 65% of searches on the Internet. According to an article I read on webpronews.com, Google is apparently changing their algorithm to affect how things are ranked. It seems that Google is ranking newer posts of information higher than informative or factual articles. For example, Google is ranking current items added to Digg higher than search terms on Wikipedia.
Webpronews.com says to “throw away everything you know and have been taught about Google’s way of archiving and recognizing things. The incoming authority links are basically useless”.
Of course, Google has not commented on whether or not they have indeed changed their algorithm methods to promote new pages.
Paid blogging work has come to a screeching halt for many of us who blog for IZEA. I spoke to one blogger (that wishes to remain anonymous) who was previously making between $600 - $800 a month before the Google smackdown hit. In the past two to three weeks since this blogger’s page ranks were updated in the IZEA system, the pay hasn’t even reached $200.
A lot of bloggers have taken a huge hit and some are looking for other blogging opportunities, writing work and even jobs outside the home to make up for their lost income.
The anonymous IZEA blogger had this to say:
“I have depended on the money I was making from Payperpost or IZEA to pay for the bills my spouse’s paychecks don’t cover. This income loss has affected our family greatly, especially with the holidays here. I have been forced to look for a job locally even though I wanted to be able to work from home. Many of the die hard IZEA bloggers are determined to stick it out until this new Real Rank system takes hold with advertisers but I don’t have that luxury to wait around. We need the money now.”
I wonder now if paid posting is quickly going to start dying off. This Google hit is scaring many people away from blogging for money.
Google has continued to show that they don’t care about bloggers in the blogosphere. First, they take page rank away from all of the hard working paid bloggers, now I read an article where they are smacking down on Blogger as well.
I just read a post on Lifecruiser where Blogger (which is owned by Google) is no longer allowing the external linking feature when posting comments. If you do not have a Google/Blogger account, forget being able to put your link in. This is what Lifecruiser had to say:
“Instead of earlier when you could click the “other” option, you can now only give in a nickname option - no link to your blog. Even if you write http://www.lifecruiser.com it won’t turn it into a link, not even if you place the a href code there.
This also means that YOU as a blogger.com blog owner can’t easily follow up your commentors either - as long as we don’t leave you a link in the comment body or is on your blogroll already. I’m only waiting for the day when they try to stop you from linking to us at all…”
Bloggers all over utilize commenting and linking to their blogs via other blogs in order to help improve their page rank and other social networks on the net. It appears as though Google is getting very greedy in what they will and will not allow and in the long run it is only going to hurt them.
Unfortunately, I do have a blog set up on Blogger as a cancer blog for my BIL. It is mainly only read by family and friends and I’m not trying to really advertise it a lot. I feel like moving it now though because of all of this Google/Blogger mess.
There has been a lot of talk on the Internet over the past week about many unhappy bloggers threatening to boycot Google and all of their services. Google has started penalizing certain bloggers who utililze IZEA (formerly known as Payperpost) on their sites. IZEA is a company who has given over 60,000 bloggers the opportunity to earn money through blogging by writing sponsored posts.
Obviously Google is not happy with this and most IZEA bloggers have seen their page ranks drop to a big fat zero. That’s right - people who formerly had blogs with a page rank of 4 or better may now have nothing but a big fat goose egg.
No one knows for sure the real reason Google is penalizing paid-to-post bloggers but it is the general consensus among posties that Google is losing out on revenue since IZEA/Payperpost became so popular.
Many posties have decided to take Adsense off their sites and to quit using all other Google services. IZEA is introducing a new ranking system tomorrow for posties since Google took away page ranks from them. Real Rank will determine a blog’s standings based real information - traffic, links, etc.
I read an online article that was talking about Facebook, the popular social networking site, expanding their system. They are apparently going to allow businesses to sign up and create their own page and then reach out to potential customers based on the interests they have described in their profiles.
A Facebook representative said:
"If those interests include not seeing advertising, that is too bad. "There is no opting out of advertising," Zuckerberg said….""The ads are going to feel like content to a lot of people."
So I hope this does not mean that people with Facebook accounts will be spammed with unwanted invites and such. If so, I am sure Facebook will lose a lot of people.
I found this video on ABC News about two people making money with their Google Ads on their websites.
What struck me as neat with this video is I was expecting to see people in their 20s or 30s talking about how they make money through Google, but the people interviewed were 59 years old and 74 years old!
You need to watch this video - just click the link below!
Google has many people questioning whether they should continue blogging or not. One day your page rank is up, the next it is down. To many page rank may not seem like a big deal, but for those who blog as a career, the up and down rollercoaster ride that Google has been playing lately is cutting into some of their earnings.
Is Google purposely penalizing bloggers who do paid posting? And why should this be held against them?