As I mentioned repeatedly before, this weblog is attempting a few experiments with outside funding sources. One such source is PayPerPost. As with a wide variety of other webpages out there, this particular company specializes in blog marketing, in that it connects advertisers interested in having posts on weblogs to weblog writers who are interested in writing posts for money. There may be a fair number of other companies like this one out there, but this particular iteration has one of the most polished interfaces I have seen, and definitely has one of the widest selections of writing opportunities.

The opening dashboard that greets you when you first login provides you all of your pertinent information at a glance - how many posts you have written, how many were accepted, how much you have been paid; as well as ways to access your personal settings, take new opportunities, and see how much your fellow PayPerPosters have made in the past month/day/all time. For the month of July, the record appears to be $557.39, and for the existence of the system, the record is a whopping $13,000+. Bear in mind, this place has not been online all that long. Me, I am not hoping for numbers quite that good, but I could live with a small slice of the pie.

As for the opportunities themselves, you can sort them by all of them, all of the ones you are qualified for (there are certain restrictions, such as your rating, your weblog type, and other details), or all of the ones that people are trying to contact you directly about. Yup, you heard that right. You can set up a link on your webpage (like the one to the right on mine) that allows people interested in advertising on your weblog to contact you directly, and set up your own terms straight with them, as opposed to going through a clearinghouse available to everyone. For those weblogs with massive amounts of traffic, this would be absolutely perfect for arranging advertisers for your webpage - for mine, it is just a nifty feature. To boot, you can get a Firefox plugin that makes managing your account that much easier, you can refer people and make money off that, and you can make additional money in allowing people to review the posts you write. In the latter instance, they make money as well, so everyone wins - so long as you do not mind a little criticism now and then.

All said, this is a remarkably powerful tool, and one that stands a good chance of making weblogers a good bit of spare change on the side. I would not go so far as to say it can be your primary source of income (unless you are one hardcore weblogger), but being paid for what you do already is a situation I can certainly live with.