By AliCanary in Persona Paper June 10, 2015, 11:27 AM 10-06-15

It's Been a Year! A Review of My First Year at Persona Paper

Happy Anniversary to me, and to a lot of other people here on Persona Paper! I joined PP on June 10,2014, along with quite a few other folks. As a matter of fact, there was such a stampede at that time that the admins actually closed admissions for a time to make sure they could handle everyone properly, because they didn't want everything to just go completely out of control like it did at That Other Site that Messed Up. I celebrated my good fortune at getting in under the wire in this post: http://www.personapaper.com/article/3715-whew-i-just-made-it

Membership was closed for a while, and during that time, they were upgrading their servers to handle the additional input, as well as devising a screening process for new members so that people who joined had to demonstrate the ability to write, and this is why we don't have problems with article spinners and spammers, here. However, I had recruited friends to sign up and some had not gotten in yet, so I wrote this article asking when things would open back up: http://www.personapaper.com/article/6213-when-will-new-membership-open-back-up . The funny thing about that article is that I was whining about only getting four or five page views on my posts since membership was limited...but that post has 29 views!

Once the floodgates reopened, things got busier, and some of my posts garnered views in the 60s, 70s, and one even made it well over 100! That was this one: http://www.personapaper.com/article/8376-with-better-page-views-at-persona-paper-than-at-bubblews-will-the-herd-come-stampeding-back It referenced the problem we had with people who had joined here turning around and leaving (not deleting their accounts, but just not posting any more) because Bubblews (yeah, that's the Site that Messed Up) had paid better (WHEN they paid, which by that point, was already a big problem that would soon become worse). But Bubblews changed their site in July of that year, and page views were way down. Also, they claimed that they "lost" probably about half a million dollars' worth of redemptions that they promised to pay, if only we had screen shots, which most people didn't, since they were never required. But don't feel bad; I did have a screen shot, and I still never got paid, even though they specifically said that I would (yep, still have the email).

But this article ain't about That Other Site that Messed Up, so let's move on! After a few changes, the new payment system was established that awarded two coins per view and one coin per comment. In an effort to increase regular participation among the members, SuffolkJason , a writer we have not seen for a long time but whom we remember fondly for his enthusiasm and support, created FOPP , or "Friends of Persona Paper", which was kind of a club (because you could join), but also more like a movement, and it was based on making a pledge to do your best at participating in PP by logging in every day for at least 15 minutes, posting at least once a day, and promoting posts on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other venues (does anybody still do Tsu?). I joined FOPP, which is still around, and in March of this year, I assumed the mantle of Secretary, which theoretically changed from month to month, although melody23 ended up having it for a very long time. Here is my inaugural post, which contains the most recent list of members (and please look in the comments section, as well, to see the new members that joined): http://personapaper.com/article/25533-im-the-new-mayor-of-fopptown

I also started my own project to encourage interaction and to add content to the site while making money on commenting, and that was called the Persona Paper Membership Comment Project, or PPMCP . In it, I announced that I would make my way through the entire members' list and leave comments on at least one of their posts, usually the most recent one, and I invited others to join me. Several other people have participated, and I have currently made it through the first 125 members on the list (yes, I know there are over 1400 members. That's why there's no deadline to do this!) If you would like to join this ongoing challenge, you can read more information about it here: http://personapaper.com/article/12644-the-persona-paper-membership-comment-project---even-bigger-than-fopp

Okay, now to the part everybody's been waiting for: How did I do in my first year? Meaning, financially? Page-view-wise? Productivity? All of the above? Well, I kept track of everything so that you would know. As I slowly built a library of posts (because of Persona Paper's rule about having exclusive content, I couldn't share what I had currently on Yahoo or Bubblews, so I was writing original posts at the rate of about one every two or three days), my coins started to mount up. When I reached the first 1,000 coins, I was deliriously happy, and I wrote a post about it. As a matter of fact, I wrote a post about every thousand coins, up to 10,000 (this is the 10K post, which has links to the other posts, in case you are interested in learning the details of my journey: http://personapaper.com/article/25856-i-did-it-10000-coins-today )

Yahoo closed down at the end of July of last year, leaving me with over 350 posts that I could now re-publish on Persona Paper without having issues with duplicate content, so it became a little easier for me to post more often. Then Bubblews celebrated the New Year by telling us that they would not pay us any of the unpaid redemptions that we were owed, so I celebrated by starting to delete my posts and re-home them here. For those of you who had to read them at two separate sites, sorry about that. Or, hey, maybe three sites, as some were also published on Yahoo. Hey, I have repeatedly told y'all how lazy I am. Although this morning, I am apparently writing an original book here on Persona Paper. I bet this is my longest post ever, and if it disappears out of the text box, I am sooooo screwed.

Okay, I just copied everything to a Word document, and feel better. Ahem! Continuing...so, thanks to being able to reprint some articles, I increased the pace of publishing, and now, looking back, I am happy to see that after a year, I have published more than one article a day (this will be number 372). Oh yes, yes; you wanted to know about the money part, right? Well, I did indeed cash out, and it did not take me a year. As a matter of fact, I could have cashed out a long, long, time ago, because the payout amount used to be $5. And I did reach $5 in a few months. However, the admins at Persona Paper had decided to raise the rate back up a bit; it had plunged to .001 (that means a dollar per thousand coins--not views, which pay two coins each, remember). They raised it to .0015, which may not seem like much, except that it gave us an extra 50%, so in other words, if you had earned $10 by then, you suddenly had $15. Yay! Now in order to avoid a huge gold rush from people who had easily passed the lower cashout threshold, they would have to raise the payout to $20. The consensus was that that was acceptable. After all, Bubblews was at $50, and had STARTED at $25. I was given the option to cash out for five dollars at he lower rate, or to hang on, take the higher rate, and cash out at $20. I did that, and I was very pleased with how it went. See this post for details: http://personapaper.com/article/30636-got-my-payment-from-persona-paper

So, there you have it folks. What I did and how I did it, and what happened along the way. I am already back up to over 1600 coins, and I have more than 1,000 more members to visit on my PPMCP odyssey, so I plan on sticking around for a bit. Bless your heart if you have made it to the end of this post, and I thank you for a year of support and friendship. Here's hoping the next year will be even better for all of us!