Sweet Catastrophe

Recently, what I consider to be one of the best moves in PayPerPost’s short history occurred with the introduction of PayPerPost University, and Postie Best Practices.

There’ve always been objective, grey areas in the ToS, and of course, there are always people who want specific guidelines, but sometimes you just can’t deliver that! I was beyond thrilled to see Best Practices put into effect.

For those unfamiliar with Best Practices, I’ll try to elaborate. Best Practices are sort of guidelines, on the best possible way to do something. For posties, this is the best possible way to maintain your PayPerPost blog.

Many people were concerned about not meeting Best Practices guidelines and being penalized. This isn’t something to be worried about! You won’t be penalized for not following a particular guideline, but if you’re consistently seeing that your blog doesn’t meet a number of those guidelines, it’s time to take a closer look and make sure you aren’t breaking the ToS. For instance, there are a few Best Practices describing what percentage of your blog should be non-paid content, how much space ads should be occupying in your sidebars, and how often other sponsored posts are placed back to back. Now, if your blog doesn’t meet one or two of those, that’s not an issue, but if your blog consistently has too many ads, more paid than non-paid content, etc, it may be a signal that your blog appears to be in violation of one of those grey area rules in the ToS– Not keeping a blog solely for earning money. See? It’s just there to help you out when you’re questioning the way you blog, or simply to help point out something that may have never occurred to you!

I’m really looking forward to more things eventually being fleshed out in the Best Practices. I’m thrilled to have them there at all, knowing that it really gives us another avenue to consider when it comes to rules and regulations in the PayPerPost world. I can only hope that in the future, the PayPerPost team will come to us before adding new ToS aspects so we can all decided together where it best fits, ToS, or Best Practices? Or perhaps, if the new issue brings up new things to be added to the Best Practices.

PayPerPost, I’m still looking forward to seeing what you can do with this!