The worst part about eBay is that at auctions, everyone bids on the last minute, hoping the rest will be sleeping and this way any item can be stolen under anyone’s nose. Even bigger problem starts, is when quite a few millions of online shoppers come to realize this problem and all stay to guard the auctions they are interested in and all bid on the last minutes if not seconds. This is exactly how I lost at one of the auctions yesterday, when an old Russian binoculars I really wanted slipped through my fingers and landed in some collectors hands.

How do I know he was a collector? Luckily, eBays purchases history is public, which means you can see who bought what, when and for how much. when on the last second I got outbid and naturally was very frustrated and sad, I went to see who actually got the nerve to almost doubly the price 1 second (!!!) before the end of the auction. The guy has already purchased over 200 binoculars at eBay alone and God knows hoe many he has in stock. Means wither he is reselling them or just collects, in bother cases it means he will come with a bigger budget and be much more determined.

Collectors are really dangerous competition. They are unstoppable, they are sneaky, they are experienced shoppers and they.. steal from under your very nose, so heads up — either buy new stuff that no one else beside you need, or be really at guard and ready to pay any sum if you are shopping in the “memorabilia” and “collectors” category. Arrrg!!

A several days ago, Matt Cutts himself said on Digital point that Page Rank is unlikely to be updated in the next 2 weeks. This means toolbar won’t export this week for sure and all those of us who are impatiently waiting for it, would have to wait some more. And yes, it’s REAL Matt, even Shawn, owner of Digital point, confirmed his identity. So… I guess we can say — good things come to those who wait. Damn.

Sometimes I notice that bloggers advertise miscellaneous programs that are obvious scam (like, “pay only 500$ to start earning 5,000$ every month”… we all know this popular now-a-days new network). I sometimes see one blogger after another blogging about such programs without any affiliate links and then I notice that some of the pay-to-blog networks have these sites as campaigns, for a terribly low price, like 5$. The question is, do all the bloggers who take this opportunity don’t realize it’s an obvious scam, they don’t care what to write about, as long as they get paid, or — they need the 5$ so much they wouldn’t mind someone to lose their fairly earnt 500$ for it. How and why bloggers don’t realize that once you post a positive review about ‘product X’, saying how great it worked for you when in reality you never even signed up for it, and, when the post is not disclosed as sponsored — someone can easily get scr*wed up! I can understand the desire to squeeze maximum revenue off your blog, but at least make it obvious for the readers that you got paid for it, so vast majority of readers won’t get hooked on a cheap trick to sign up.

Today I had seen on one of the blogs I read daily, a post that advertises some “cash making” program. It’s perfect, it really is, if we count out the small 99$ sign up fee. But, it doesn’t matter as you will be making heaps of dollars right after it… Reading this, made me really angry, especially since I know the blogger got paid exactly 5$ to post it, and if I’d not have known it was sponsored since I saw it in campaigns panel, I could have believe it, and I wonder how many people did already… That’s sad.

Did you notice how the market went down in anticipation for Google PageRank update which STILL was not finalized? No PR5+ domains are offered for sale, no one wants to purchase links because PageRank of any site could drop any minute and no one wants to pay double for something unwanted. I noticed that everyone experiences losses, except Google itself and I wonder if there is no higher power that could someone speed up the process, get the damn ranks updated and allow us to live 3 more months in peace… Arg!

After I decided to join PayPerPost from the other side, and become an advertiser, just to see how will it help my other blog’s promotion, I must say it turned to be not quite what I was anticipating.

First of all, once you have created an opportunity, you can’t edit it. The approval is very fast (which is maybe a plus), however, once the opportunity you posted has been approved, you can’t do anything about it anymore. My opp was rather low paying (slightly below 7$, as you can see above) and despite being rated 5 tacks (highest) by 16 bloggers, I got criticized in their support forum for giving high rating to bloggers who reviewed my site on a PR4+ blog. Actually, every advertiser who makes a low paying adverts request gets unofficially “condemned” by the bloggers and I must say - I have no idea why. I am a blogger myself and I know that no-one obliges you to take a certain opp from any advertiser. If you feel you don’t like to blog about a particular site, and feel that the payout does not worth it, no one forces you to write about it, and if you really need the few dollars one’s opportunity offers, then why to take it and then cry out loud about how cheap it was? Thankfully, none of the bloggers who reviewed my site so far complained, but a few friends of mine who joined together with me and opened an advertising campaign, got slammed for not paying higher.

What bloggers maybe do not realize, is that PayPerPost takes quite a good cut. For example, if I want to pay 7$ to the blogger, and willing to take only ONE blog post at this occasion, this is how much it would cost me (without adding images, extra exposure or bubble ad):

The sum you are willing to pay to the blogger + 5$ service fee + 35% off the opportunity’s cost. Their fees won’t hurt the pocket only if you order many 5$ reviews at once, but if you are willing to created several high paying opportunities, the service fees can come down to a lot of money.

Okay, advertiser pays service fees, so what do they guarantee? — That you can automatically bench bloggers with certain PageRank and Alexa, and that is good, isn’t it? Not really.

One of the reviews I got, was on a site with Alexa Rank bellow 199,999. I could assume it’s a high traffic site and if I was to go with PPP’s suggest pricing, for this criteria alone I had to pay $45.00 extra. However, I know the trick behind Alexa ranking, and just as a proof to my post 2 weeks ago, I got a review exactly on such site. The main domain hosts over 5 blogs, each of them is individually promoted, and therefore, the Alexa traffic shows aggregate rank for the domain’ traffic. The blog itself, on which I got the review (say, site.com/blog3) in fact has very little visitors, and despite the review been flawlessly written and very good — it is unlikely to deliver me any traffic. So, filtering the Alexa rank, let alone paying for it - is mindless.

Next. The categories section is not very detailed, and even though I took one of my good friend’s advices and unchecked all the general categories, I still had to compromise on a rather general classification of “Computers and Internet”.

Amongst other downsides is the inability to fuel your account using PayPal, only credit card, as well as no control over your opportunity once you have submitted the details. Even if I see the blog post and don’t think it met the criteria, yet PPP team approved it, I pay anyway and can only but learn my lesson and be more specific next time.

Bottom line is, I liked the reviews I got and am grateful to the bloggers who talked about my website so far, however, it was definitely not what I was expecting. If you consider generating buzz about your site by paying bloggers who will spread the word, I’d strongly recommend to use PPP direct, where you can see the blog itself before ordering, the amount of posts made daily, the ratio between sponsored and non-sponsored posts, Alexa, readers count, PR and whatever else has weight for you. This way, you will know exactly what value you get for your money, prior to payment.

Very slowly but more and more people are confirming their sites have some movement on a few data centers, I did not notice anything on any of my websites yet but seems like the very first sparkle happened on the 18th earlier this month. Still a long way to go until the update will start it’s full attack, but you can start checking, praying and hoping now already. Start checking your site’s ranking using the “72.14.20x  ip” data centers (DC nr. 1) at digpagerank.com, where as you can see, we still have no evidence of the update. Oh.

So many people are bothered with AGLOCO lately, making sites dedicated to their affiliate network and trying to trick you into signing up with their affiliate link, so they would enjoy a kingly share of 10% from the overall revenue.

Kumiko Suzuki wrote her roughly estimated overview of how much a proud AGLOGO member earns. According to her calculation, it comes down to an impressive average monthly payout of $0.63! Envious of AGLOCO members? Just imagine how much energy and time they put into promoting AGLOCO and posting everywhere about it, all this for the sake or earning 2 cents a day.

I have no personal experience with AGLOCO, But I get to see a lot of reviews from webmasters who did believe you just surf the net and get paid. One of them is Babak, on who’s blog I found an interesting overview of AGLOCO.

No one says this is scam, but this is definitely an justly over-advertised network with poor scheme and even poorer payouts. Everyone agrees that they are not worth the time and hassle, after all, even the most unvisited, outdated site manages to earn more than 2 cents a day, and you need not bother surfing or referring members.

I am crawling in my skin when I hear the word iPhone. All the blogs I visit post something about iPhones in this way or another. Be it reviews, complains, praises… For Christ’s sake, it’s getting unbearable! I just refused a sponsored review of iPhone because I can’t imagine posting about this subject on my blog. Oh my, did I just do it..?