A Warning for My Fellow Bloggers

Like many of my fellow bloggers, I decided a while ago to try to make a buck or two with my blogging.  I don't expect to get rich or quit my day job with it, but if I can get a little extra cash coming in to help with the bills.  If I could generate enough consistent income to get rid of the pizza delivery job, then that would be great.

So, as I was checking out other blogs either through Entrecard or Adgitize, I would occasionally see the ads on the different blogs to make money blogging.  I signed up with SocialSpark, PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, and PayingPost.  I was accepted into all of them except for PayingPost.  At the time, they were not accepting blogs that were hosted on blogger.

Since I decided to get my own domain name, I went back to the PayingPost website a few days ago to resubmit my blog under the new URL.  PayingPost had become Blogadvertisingstore.  My blog was accepted, and I installed their required code into my blog template.  I now had another source of potential income for my blog, or so I thought.

Last night, I was out delivering pizzas when I got the following email message from SocialSpark telling me they could not approve one of my sponsored posts through them:

This URL leads to a Virus error (from www.blogadvertisingstore.com, possibly an ad on the blog). Please remove any malicious code from the blog as containing such may cause the blog to be removed. Once this is done, please resubmit. If you have any questions, please contact us. Thank you!

Needless to say, I came home last night and removed the code from my template and resubmitted the post for approval.  Problem solved?  Not quite.

This afternoon, I fired up the laptop to do a post and visit some blogs.  I typed in my URL and my browser redirected me to my Verizon Internet Security Suite site saying the site was blocked as being a fraudulent website.  I spent the last two hours on the phone with tech support who did verify that there was no longer any malicious code on the website.  Since I did send in a report that it was a "false positive" they should have it cleared in a few days.

Apparently, I am not the only blogger who has had issues with code from PayingPost/Blogadvertisingstore.  Here are a couple posts from other bloggers: Walking Newspaper, Mariuca's Perfume, Nischa's World, and i-TONG.  So fellow bloggers, if you want to make a little extra money through sponsored blog posts, I would stay away from blogadvertisingstore.  I hope that I have gotten the code off quickly enough that I won't be blocked by too many folks.

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