PayPerPost gets $7 million today

Today PayPerPost (the company that I am hooked up with to do paid blogging) announced that they acquired $7,000,000 of investment money. That’s a lot of zeros!

One of their questions they asked those of us who work with them is “What should we do with this money?” Well, I hope they already have a plan and are just looking for some extra cool idea to pop up.

My suggestion would be to try and market themselves as not being evil. Since I started looking into paid blogging, I have heard extremes on the subject. You can imagine that there are plenty of people who think that it is dangerous for a blogger to take advertising on their site. That somehow, getting $5 to say something about a company will cause you to not give your honest opinion about the company. For me, you would have to pay me a whole lot more than $5 to sway my opinions.

So, I suggest that they try to somehow educate the blogosphere on what paid posting is and is not. However they seem to do a pretty good job internally of promoting good blog ethics.

Now, I understand that for journalistic integrity, paid posting is a “no no,” but the majority of bloggers are just writing down their thoughts and opinions for the world to read.

Neither of my two readers have complained about me taking money to advertise, so I guess, for me, it is a safe deal.

Here is the press release they put out today concerning the investment boost.

The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.

Yo-Yos

Split the Atom animated gifDid you get into the yo-yo craze of the 70s? What about the 90s? I was part of both. Though I don’t remember much about the craze in the 70s other than I had one and played with it all the time. The craze of the 90s I remember well. I actually got quite good with some neat tricks. I never did do multiple yo-yo tricks, but I had fun and could entertain a small crowd. Even if just for a few minutes.

I still have my Yomega Fireball that I bought back then. It was a time when money was tight and buying a $10 yo-yo was about the most I could afford. I did dream about some of the $40 yo-yos, but knew that was out of my price range and would stress the goodness of my wife too much.

Today I stumbled onto a yo-yo website (while doing a Google image search for dripping paint?) and was just curious as to what they are selling for these days. It was good to see that there are still a good handful of toys selling in the sub $15 category. But then I looked at the high end too. Yikes! The most expensive unit they have is the $450 Freehand MG Anodized. And who makes it? Duncan. Yup, the same people who make your basic $3 unit.

So you can go to both extremes with the company who started it all.

Keep a blogging log

I read this article over at the ProBlogger website. Daren talks about a new binder system he is using. He takes a three ring binder and sections it out to help him keep track of blogging ideas.

It is a good thing I don’t use this. I already have too many things to post. His advantage is that blogging is his full time job and, I believe I saw him say one time, that he has more than 20 blogs. I can definitely see the need for more organization to his blogging than what I have to mine.

I just thought it was an interesting concept. If you are a blogger, you might find it helpful. Check out the comments too, there are some good suggestions in there.

That milk expires when?

Milk expiration dateHere is a picture off the top of the milk my wife bought today. If you can’t do the math quickly, today is June 11, 2007. The expiration date is November 4, 2007. That is 5 months from now!

I was trying to tell my sister-in-law about the box milk here. She said, “oh we got box milk when I was a kid. It did not taste that bad.” I never tried to convince her that this stuff in the box is not at all like the stuff we got in the boxes as kids. This stuff does not taste like milk. Not that I have ever been a milk fan.

Did I fail to mention that you don’t need to refrigerate this stuff? Only after you open it do you need to put it in the fridge.

The yucky thing is that our daughter loves the stuff. It is the only milk she will drink. When she took a trip back to the USA last summer she did not drink milk the whole time.

Missionary Talks hits 10,000!

Missionary Talks hits 10,000!Tonight I was able to catch the stats counter as it read 10,000 and grab the screen shot you see.

That is 44 downloads a day since Missionary Talks started. Including the episodes, promotional audios and the listener feedback episode, that averages out to 333 downloads/listens per audio file.

This week I will be doing another listener feedback episode. Don’t skip it though, I am putting on a story that I heard from another podcast. It takes about 8 minutes and is incredible. After I play it there, I may pull just that audio out and stick it up here at My Thought Spot.

When I go to California, I will have an opportunity to grab some great interviews. Since the conference is for the Deaf, there will be many Deaf missionaries there from around the world. Unfortunately, I don’t have a video camera or I could do a video Missionary Talks that is in sign language. Maybe someday.

I probably won’t get a show out just before I leave on my trip, but when I come back, I will have several.

I am also getting a new microphone in 2 weeks. I am very excited about that. I will be able to take that on the trip to California with me. Good times are a-comin’.