Get Banned by Gaming Digg

Yesterday I wrote about gaming digg for cash. The concept intrigued me. I was also curious how Digg would be able police this and prevent abuse.

Thus, I decided to try it. I registered an alternate Digg account. Then I registered at User/Submitter. I dugg two articles last night.

When I logged on this morning, there was another article to digg on User/Submitter. I went to digg it, but I got an error message saying "Sorry - bad IP address." Digg caught me!

I figured I could out-smart the system. I setup Tor to I could login to Digg using a different IP address. Yep, I had the solution....

I was able to login using my regular Digg account (I never cheated the system with this account). But when I tried to login using my "gaming" account, I was greeted with this friendly message:

What's the lesson here? Don't cheat Digg. You'll get caught. Your account will be disabled. Your IP will be banned. You'll be stuck using Tor when you want to login and do anything with a valid account. It's a bad plan. Or maybe I'm just not stealthy enough to do it.

Nevertheless, my experiment was fascinating.

Game Digg for Cash

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating this, just making you aware of it.

I've heard about Digg "gaming" before, but I didn't really understand the situation fully until I saw news of this Wired article. Apparently there's a service called User/Submitter which allows a "submitter" to submit a link and pay money for diggs. "Users" then digg that link, earning money for doing so. Talk about a scheme!

To be clear, this blatantly violates Digg's terms of use:

[Y]ou agree not to use the Services: ... with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the 'digg count', blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg's services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg's services.

They go on to say that you can be completely banned from Digg if they discover you're a participant in gaming the system.

But is this much different from rounding up your posse of friends to digg a story for you? We all know that money can virtually buy friends. User/Submitter just takes out the middle man and goes straight from cash to diggs.

I'm not sure how much you can make from this type of "work," but if you're desperate for cash, you don't have much to lose. I personally don't see a huge value to Digg in the first place, so being banned wouldn't be something to cry about. Although it might be kind-of depressing if you only made $1 in the process.

Great Ways to Make Money Online

There's a great post over at Web Worker Daily that covers 10 ways to make money online. This is great for us bloggers who want to make money on the web. The post is pretty basic, but it might remind you of an idea that you haven't pursued yet. Give it a read!

Check Out PayPerPost's Updates

If you're trying to be a paid blogger, you definitely should know about PayPerPost. They provide a system where bloggers earn money for writing paid posts. The subject of this post, however, is the update that PayPerPost just rolled out.

One new thing that intrigues me is the "review my post" program for affiliates. Bloggers can put a badge on every post that lets a reader sign up for PayPerPost and review the current post. When a reader does this, he earns $7.50. The cool part is that the referring blogger also earns $7.50.

Interestingly, PayPerPost also has upped the ante with their advertisers. A couple recent opportunities have offered as much as $150 for a post. Granted, this required a high Google PageRank (6+, I believe), but that is still neat.

All in all, PayPerPost seems to be shedding the stigma that they're just for two-bit bloggers. It will be interesting to see if they can gain some respect from top bloggers by taking these moves.

A Great Tool for Tracking Your Pursuits

If you're serious about blogging for money, you should get serious about keeping track of things.

One great way to do this is with an online service like Side Job Track. This is an online job tracking application that keeps up with your clients, estimates, projects, services, materials, etc. You can run reports, create invoices, and manage your time. It does all this from within a nice-looking interface.

For a great write-up of the application, check out this post. It explains some of the features, as well as how the program can be used.

Personally, I think this is a great tool for any freelancer or contract worker. Paid bloggers can easily use it to track earnings from advertising programs, paid post companies, and consulting jobs. It's flexible enough to handle all your needs.

However, be sure to keep track of your bank accounts in a reliable accounting program. Side Job Track is merely used for your client data and actual job details. Don't rely on something like this to keep from writing a hot check.

The Basics of Making Money Blogging

I just ran across a great post that covers a few of the ins-and-outs of trying to earn money with a blog. Corey did a wonderful job summing up some of the main points that we've talked about here before, and that every paid blogger must know. You definitely should head on over and check it out!

Passive Blogging Income

Darren has a great post over at ProBlogger about being able to earn a passive income by blogging. Basically, he confronts the question about whether you can build a blog, then sit back and let the money roll in.

The answer? NO

Well, Darren goes to a bit greater length to explain the answer. There are a couple ways blogging income can be "passive," in a sense. As you build up archives, those pages are earning money without further work. Also, some programs like Adsense can be "set it and forget it."

However, the key is that you will have to continue working on your blog, or your page ranking, search engine ranking, and overall traffic will fall. It won't plummet overnight, but you can't just walk away and expect the earnings to keep rolling in.

Be sure to check out Darren's full post for the details and his explanation.