Nathan CrauseMusings of a Software Developer

I must admit, I'm a little disappointed today. Last week I decided to investigate how to expose this blog more, and perhaps get higher readership. One site I came across recommended PayPerPost, which would also provide a means of earning a small amount on the side. I took the advise to heart, and went and signed up.

Well, after nearly a week, I had still not heard back as to whether my blog was accepted or not. I decided to open a support ticket. To their credit, PayPerPost got back to me within hours ... but they notified me that my blog was not accepted. Their reason? Here is the actual e-mail I received:

Thank you for your blog submission!
Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your entry
because your blog is not being indexed by search 
engines. There may be a setting somewhere that you 
need to change with your host. If not, below are 
two web sites our users have used to help them in 
the process. 
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
http://www.google.com/addurl/
After trying this, periodically go to Google and type 
"site:" Once your site appears in the search results, 
please re-submit your blog for review.

Thank you!
[censored] @ PPP 

Okay, so here's the problem - I submitted my site to Google immediately after I created this it. Following their last instruction and performing a "site:" Google search, my site is on the very first page. Even if we ignore the direct search engine submission, my site is indexed in Google anyway via Ohloh.net(which is already Google indexed) because of my very active account there.

Now I have to ask how exactly are they even testing my site? Did they follow their own advise? Needless to say, this is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth. I'm certainly not expecting anything from these folks any more, sorry.

To compound this feeling of ineptitude, they also require adding a certain block of JavaScript code into your HTML source. As the good little netizen that I am, I inserted the code as requested. Upon opening my site, I can clearly see the HTTP traffic, and it loads and executed their script. However, their site still informs me that I must add their script to my site before I can perform any other tasks.

No, this is certainly not looking very good. For the time being, I can certainly not recommend this service to anyone, and have already stripped out the banners and buttons I had on my site.

Sorry, PayPerPost, but you need to sort yourself out.