What we can do to help Persona Paper
I have seen a few posts recently commenting on how quiet it has been around here recently. I have also seen a few suggestions as to why this is, most of them saying that its the combination of low earnings and a high payment threshold that's causing the problem. Before I go on, lets deal with that last part first.
Earnings here are not actually low - its the views that are. The amount we are paid per 1000 views is actually higher than every other site I currently know about. The payment threshold is the lowest of any site I have ever written on in over 10 years, the lowest I have ever come across is $25 before now. Low earnings in themselves are not the problem, because earnings aren't actually low - if we can get the views up.
MaeLou and elitecodex are working very hard behind the scenes doing everything they can to make this site the best around, but a site like this is only as good as its members and readers. So what can we do to help to make sure we get more active members and readers?
Be active ourselves
I have not been as active here as I usually am recently either, we all have other things going on in our lives but if we want this site to succeed we need to try and be as active as we can. I am committed to trying to post more and try to spend more time reading and commenting on other people's posts, interaction is key here after all. I am also going to try and figure out what is going on with the FOPP challenge as that was a great incentive for people to be more active here (If you don't know about the FOPP challenge you can find the info here: http://www.personapaper.com/article/25456-stepping-down-as-fopp-clerk-of-the-month )
Promotion
Promotion seems to be one of those things that many online writers shy away from these days. Lucky for me I started writing online when it was made very clear that viewers were not going to just appear out of thin air, you had to do the promotion work. I was very lucky to be given loads of help and support when I first started out about things like twitter and stumbleupon which are great tools. I am happy to offer my help to anyone that needs/wants it. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know a little about it.
I don't have a permanent solution for exactly how I plan on offering this help, maybe people can just post questions in the comments for now until I figure something out. I might set up a separate email address and ask MaeLou and elitecodex for permission to share it here for the purposes of helping other writers. Or maybe we will get an internal messaging system at some point which would be great.
You need to think about how big the internet is, and how many articles are likely to be written on the subject you have written on. What is going to make people choose to read yours over all the rest? Sure things like Google page rank and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) make a huge difference, but the difference you can make to your views by sending out a couple of well timed tweets is even bigger, if you have the right audience.
If you don't have a twitter account, preferably a separate one for your writing, you really need to get one and learn how to use it. I also use twitter to promote my referral link (you need to be really careful with this by the way or you can get kicked off for spam) and I have reviewed persona paper on stumbleupon and any site I know of that reviews paid to write sites.
Promoting the site is just as important to me as promoting my own posts because the site needs to succeed in order for me to succeed. I also promote some posts of other writers although I admit I need to do more of this.
If we all spend a bit of time promoting our own posts, as well as the site and we bring in more views then that means more money from the ad companies and therefore more money for us. This in turn encourages more members to join here which is what we really need at the moment. The better the site looks to the ad companies, the more revenue it can potentially generate and therefore more revenue for us as writers.
Blogs
There are literally thousands of blogs devoted to writing online and making money doing it. Some of them have already reviewed Persona Paper, but most of them haven't. It may be worthwhile commenting on these blogs mentioning the site as the readers of these blogs are exactly the type of people likely to join the site - people who are actively searching for ways to make money writing online.
If you have a blog of your own it might be worth mentioning that you also write here. Even if your blog is totally unrelated to writing or what you write about here, if someone likes your blog then they like your writing and may be encouraged to read more of it.
Use your referral link
Do you know other people who write online? most of us have writer friends from other sites we have been on over the years, invite them here. If they sign up using your referral link you will get coins for it too! Do you have the email addresses of these people? or even just send a lot of emails? you can put a link to your profile here as your email signature which might get you more views, or you could put your referral link there also to encourage people you know to sign up.
Comments
Colibry21 wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:13 PM
I've noticed the same sort of thing. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of activity. But we all have to do our share to try and help Persona Paper. Writing as often as we can is a good start.
Dawnwriter wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:47 PM
melody23 . This is an excellent post but the problem is we are now paid only for outside views which come from US, UK and Canada which makes promoting for many other members rather superfluous. But I have written a post about Persona Paper on my blog with links.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:49 PM
That's exactly why I always tell people to have a separate twitter/facebook account for promotional purposes. My real world friends would be so mad at all the tweets I send out promoting articles.
You are right that we all need to put in the effort if we want the site to succeed, but I genuinely believe that it will succeed.
Dawnwriter wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:51 PM
What we actually need is a team of 40-50 committed members who read each others posts because members views are still being counted. I get about 8-10 views per post so that's 2-3 cents per post. I consider myself extremely active here but just imagine how long it would take to reach $20 at this rate.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:54 PM
That's not true, just because you are not in one of those countries doesn't mean you cannot create a twitter following of people who are. Most of my twitter followers are from the US but I'm not. If anything, it may be more important for those members outwith those countries to promote their stuff because they need to try and attract viewers from a whole different country.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:58 PM
The problem with that is that the ad companies would see that we had a much higher internal vs external views ratio and would think that this site was only of interest to its members. That's the model that Bubblews went for and look how that turned out, it only really works if your site is facebook sized (and has all the personal info that facebook does), other sites rely a lot on external views to keep the ad agencies happy.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 1:58 PM
It's a very good start
LindaCPearson wrote on April 30, 2015, 2:09 PM
I like this site and wish it could succeed as well. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that people who need to earn some extra income can't afford to put in the great amount of time needed to make any money here. Most of the writers I know enjoy writing but also need the incentive for earning. For the fun of writing and making friends, this site is great. For reaching $20 in a year seems almost impossible, for me anyway.
wolfgirl569 wrote on April 30, 2015, 3:39 PM
I need to check out twitter, never got into it much. I have posted my link a few times on facebook. But the ones that say they want to make money actually dont want to do anything to earn it.
AliCanary wrote on April 30, 2015, 3:51 PM
You are right on every count. I try to be here every single day and post several times a day, but I should be promoting my and other people's articles more. As for FOPP, I noticed that people weren't tagging their posts any more (I eventually stopped, as well), but I think that so many posts were already tagged that some people were complaining that when they clicked on the tag, the page was too big too load. If you would like to resurrect the challenge, it might be best to use a new tag. I only wrote one post as Mayor of Fopptown, so I think it should definitely go back to someone who will do more with it. I did get us three or four new members, anyway.
inertia4 wrote on April 30, 2015, 3:55 PM
melody23 This is a great post. I totally agree with you. Interaction is always the key with any site like this. People complain about sites like this but think they can come here and start making money hand over fist. That is just not true. Persona Paper does have a low payout. The only other one that I think had a lower payment was MyLot, but they are no longer a paying site. But they are now a great tool to promote Persona Paper. Anything in this life that requires earning, you have to put forth effort in order to earn. Even a job.
Dawnwriter wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:03 PM
That makes sense. i had not considered this aspect. Don't get me wrong. I want PP to succeed. I share my articles and interesting posts by other PP members regularly on Twitter, Tsu, G+, Pinterest and now my blog but I have not seen much difference as yet. I have lots of Helium friends and some also share my posts but as I said, more needs to be done.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:15 PM
There is also a problem with the tags/searches, they don't seem to bring up the most recent articles posted under that tag/search either which is a problem for anyone wanting to see the latest posts. We also had a huge problem with having a massive list of participants, over half of whom were no longer participating. It did work really well when it worked though and I would definitely be up for starting something similar, but I agree a new tag would be needed. Not just from the point of view of the tagging here but there are music shops here in the UK called Fopp which made tagging on twitter a bit weird
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:21 PM
I sometimes wish I had been a better record keeper back when I started writing online, if I could show someone how poor my earnings were back then they would realise that we do really, really well here comparatively (and that was me writing factual articles that required at least 500 words and often a whole load of research!). I do think that people expect to come to sites like this and start earning instantly, its just not the way it works and people don't realise that. My own blog with adsense which I started in January earns less than I do here because its still a work in progress, I am not freaking out about it because I know that's the way it works but people seem to come to sites like this one and expect to earn loads of money straight away. I just don't understand how and why they feel this way.
inertia4 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:28 PM
melody23 We all have to learn to crawl before we can walk. That is true even online. I had an Adsense account but Google banned me from it. Saying something like I was clicking all my links. Strange since I never did that. So that is not an option for me if I create a blog now.
AliCanary wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:31 PM
Maybe PPP , for Persona Paper Peeps. Easier to type
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:35 PM
That could work, I will do a search on twitter and see if anyone else has it
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:38 PM
What I hate about google the most is that there is no way to get a decision reversed. I worry that I am going to get banned because when I write a post, I need to view it to get the link for it to add to my auto-tweet programme. this means I view my own blog a whole lot, but I do have the 'do not track my own page views' feature enabled which I hope helps. You could apply under a different email address for a totally new blog, I have heard some people getting away with doing that.
AliCanary wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:39 PM
One word: Bubblews. I earned over $800 in about a year and a half, but it could have been several thousand, if I had really worked at it (it was SUPPOSED to be over a thousand, but they ripped me off for the last $200.) Yahoo paid out whatever we earned once a month, so technically that was a lower payout, since sometimes I made less than $10. But Yahoo gave up on us
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:49 PM
I wrote for associated content before it was bought by Yahoo, but when they bought it they decided they were not going to pay outwith the US so I took my articles elsewhere. There are some sites that will pay whatever is in your bank every month (clickworker comes to mind) but they are very few and far between these days and they are completely different types of site to this one (clickworker is anyway)
I think Bubblews is a huge part of the problem, people were earning far too much there but what bugs the life out of me is that these same people admit that the money was a big part of the reason why bubblews got into difficulty, yet the expect other sites to pay that much. They don't complain that the earnings there are now much lower than here (and there is not guarantee that you will get the money you earn) or the fact that you don't know how many views you are getting there anymore meaning that you could be getting paid a millionth of a cent for every 100 views for all you know.
melody23 wrote on April 30, 2015, 4:55 PM
PPP wont work, it appears to have something to do with middle eastern politics.
MelissaE wrote on April 30, 2015, 7:04 PM
This is a fantastic and well written post. You have put quite a bit of thought into it.
morilla wrote on April 30, 2015, 9:39 PM
In some respects, it's a conundrum. There was a time when you COULD make more than what's currently out there and it wasn't all that unusual and it wasn't about spammers or people working the system overall. However, there is a 'new-ish' paradigm which has been out there as being followed for the last couple of years that websites should not have to pay for content; i.e., that there are sufficient numbers of people who will create it for free to sustain a site. The problem has never been that. The issue has been the quality of the material provided and the readers it can/will attract. Then there's the Catch-22 that if you promote your work, you are potentially interpreted as an 'abuser' in Google's eyes; but, if you don't promote it and traffic remains low, you are of little or no interest in Google's eyes. (Like them or not, Google handles roughly 80% of the search traffic out there, making them the one to answer to.) In the end, there are no GOOD answers, only 'tactics.' The problem is that amateurs talk 'tactics' and professionals speak to 'logistics' and, unfortunately, we rarely have enough information to understand the necessary logistics or, at least, put them into an usable context. So, we are left with trying to 'maximize' our tactics.
iwrite28 wrote on April 30, 2015, 11:02 PM
There are very few active members on PP which makes earnings slow. This in turn makes people disengage...so it is a vicious circle.
peachpurple wrote on May 1, 2015, 3:36 AM
great ideas, today, I had just started to share my PP links to share medias. Hope that helps to bring in traffic
melody23 wrote on May 1, 2015, 7:55 AM
The problem with Google is that they change the goalposts often and never fully explain where they are. Their first Panda update killed content sites and revenue share sites have never been the same since (although there are way more of these sites post-panda than there ever were before).
Promotion is a fickle thing for sure. Mostly because the goalposts keep moving. That's why a lot of writers now concentrate on direct promotion (on twitter/facebook/stumbleupon etc) rather than trying to please google which is near impossible. Lets be honest, the type of posts most people (myself included) write here are not of interest to google anyway. I wrote a post last night about going to the supermarket at midnight, Google doesn't care where I do my shopping or at what time. If the review section gets started soon, that will be where pleasing google becomes important because google loves reviews.
The majority of clicks on my stuff (here, other sites and my own blog) come from twitter, although my blog does get some google traffic
LeaPea2417 wrote on May 7, 2015, 11:37 PM
I will continue to write posts and comment.