On Writing, Blogging & PPP

I’ve always known I could write. Maybe not Pulitzer Prize-winning, but I was good enough to be in school editorial boards in my student years. I was good enough to qualify for the National Secondary Schools Press Conference (NSSPC) Editorial Writing and Feature Writing competitions and even though I didn’t win, at least, I got to go to Pampanga where the NSSPC was held, join a quick tour to Baguio, and even stop over Manila to take my specially-scheduled Ateneo College Entrance Test (ACET).

I was, however, good enough to win a few inter-school essay-writing and slogan-writing contests in the city where I grew up in. With cash prizes, mind you! They were small amounts but they meant a lot to me and my family. One time, I entered a national essay-writing contest because Lola asked me to, in return for her buying me this blouse that I had my eye on at the local mall. I won third prize, got free tickets for Lola and me to Manila for the prize-giving ceremony, and went home with 2 huge hampers of the sponsors’ products.

When I was in Ateneo, the only writing I did was for English and Filipino class and the occasional love-lorn poem. After that, I haven’t been doing any writing at all, other than the compulsory case studies and feasibility studies, which don’t really count as ‘writing’ for me ;)

Then suddenly, I felt the urge to start writing again. And a self-hosted blog seemed the most logical thing.

I started off on the 1st of February feeling a wee bit rusty. After all, I haven’t written in years. But, like cycling, I suppose it’s something that, once you learn it, you never really forget it. It didn’t take long for the words and ideas to just flow out naturally. And I’m so thankful I can touch-type, otherwise, my fingers would never be able to catch up with my brain now if I were to search-and-peck-type ;) At any given time, I have 20 or so drafts that I can choose to publish during those days when I’m not feeling particularly inspired and can’t come up with any ideas on what to write on.

Then recently, Lola started bugging me to try to find out if I can get paid to blog. She even did the research for me and got me connected with Munchkin Mommy, who introduced me to PayPerPost. I thought to myself, if I can do something that I love and earn money while doing it, why not? So I signed up.

Here’s how it works:

1) You sign up and create an account. It’s free, of course. You provide your full name, address, PayPal account details (because they pay you through PayPal), and, if you’re an American citizen, you need to give your Social Security Number.
2) They verify your blog.
3) You browse through opportunities, which are just a list of topics that you can write on, and choose one.
4) You write your post and keep that post for at least 30 days on your blog.
5) You get your payment through your PayPal account 30 days later.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Of course, there are some rules along the way. Like, your blog must be at least 30 days old. Your last blog post must be 7 days old max. And that you must have a non-paid post before and after a paid post. Furthermore, you can only have a maximum of 3 paid posts per day. And each paid post must be original, as in, if you have several blogs and one PPP account, you can’t publish the same post in different blogs. And, of course, you must write in English in an English blog.

So now I guess I might just get one of those timers that will count down to the day when I get my first paycheck from PPP! ;)

Tags: blogging, PayPerPost, PPP