Why You Can't Get Paid For Blogging: The "Pay-Per-Post" System Explained

After disappointing results with the pay-per-click system, I started searching for a more surefire way to make a few cents blogging. That's when I came across PayPerPost, the site that claims to pay its army of bloggers to make posts on behalf of advertisers.
Now, this might sound like the first paragraph to one of my posts that would recommend a site, software or item to you. However, it's quite the contrary. It's just a euphemistic introduction to a post that will delve into the flawed paid-to-blog system.
Pay-Per-Post claims to have fooled 265,000 innocent bloggers into joining their forces. Let's hope that you don't become one of the disappointed people crawling out of their ranks. On the other hand, I am not going to apply the label of "total scam" on this site because Izea, the parent company seems like a bunch of good people have apparently made ads for a few big companies. Still, I will apply the label of "unsatisfying waste of time" and this is why.
To begin with, considering blogging your job takes the joy out of it; and as I've said before you can't create a successful blog without liking it. If you blog for pay, you make it a duty and therefore enforce pressure on yourself to keep doing it. Plus, the topics you'll start writing on will become forced and who likes raving about a brand of chocolate cake that tastes like cement?
And trust me, readers can tell when you're being forced to make a post; first of all, because of the fact that you have to announce that it is a sponsored post and second because you'll lose all your personality in any paid-for post. You may be thinking, "Well, they'll still like to read my blog." But the truth is, that nobody likes to read something that is a blatant attempt to sell something, which the writer is getting cash out of no matter how useful or charming. Thus, you might be seeing your readership tumbling rapidly after you start writing fake posts.
Also, there are strict guidelines that regulate your sponsored posts once you join and if you don't follow, you don't get paid. These include mandatory photos, average tacks, Google ranks, Technorati ranks, Alexa ranks, regions, blog hosts and more.
But even when you do loyally abide by these rules, you'll probably never get paid more than a few dimes for each post, that is if you get paid at all.
And if you were to take a look at PayPerPost's website, you'll quickly realize that it follows virtually all the rule of a spam site. The cheesy graphics, the made-up testimonials, the brilliant colours, the fake photos of users etc. etc. etc.
But not only does this apply to PayPerPost, this applies to pretty much all paid-to-blog sites. And for that matter, it applies to pretty much all work-at-home sites.

How Amazon is Cheating Millions, and Making Big Bucks Doing It

Believe it or not Amazon the huge internet retailer, comparable to Wal-Mart in the physical world has joined in the massive internet scam marketplace. Okay, they're not pulling off pyramid schemes or engaging in boiler room operations but they are doing something almost as bad. It's name, Mechanical Turk, its innovative way to make money online. Already, you should be suspicious. Apparently, it's name is derived from a wooden chess player that was believed to be run on artificial intelligence but actually had a Turkish chess player inside. And it seems innocent enough with its cute slogan, "Artificial Artificial Intelligence", but trust me, it isn't.
To summarize Mechanical Turk, it is a place where companies distribute small internet jobs such as data entry and labeling and hand a amounts of money for these jobs instead of paying individual workers to specialize in these things. The rewards can range from a penny to $20, requiring from 15 minutes to 2 months of your time. It lets workers complete "HITs" to make money, which will be channeled to you via mail.
Of course, that isn't all. There's a lot more that can be said.
To begin with, most tasks are long and gruelling, and can take days, for a few pennies. This is a distraction from what you should be doing, your job or finding a new job.
Also, this undermines users as ignorant idiots who can't do anything decent, giving them jobs like finding images and RSS URLs for websites. Of course, there is little to no reward for your effort and they set strict time limits on your work. If it isn't done by then, you'll be penalized in approval rating (which you need to "qualify" for other HITs). Can you see a relationship here? I sure can. Slavery.
And other than seeing all these people suffer for nothing, they have other benefits as well. Each time someone publishes a HIT, they get a part of the money that is supposed to go to the worker who completed it. Let's say they get 1% for each payout. For the 4,000 individual workers multiplied by the 100,000 HITs published every day, that turns into a lot of money at the loss of their users. Even Amazon has perpetrated the laws of internet ethics, even Amazon.