The Unloading Zone: Smorty: A Study in Advertising and Blogging for Money

I blog because I enjoy having the outlet to express my opinions. Getting paid to blog, that was a unique concept to me. Don't get me wrong, Lots of people place ads on blogs, myself included. Google, which hosts The Unloading Zone for free, doesn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They want me to add their advertisements to my blog, so that if you click on one of my "Ads by Google", they make money and I'm effectively being paid to blog.

A more recent phenomenon is for advertisers to to commission bloggers to write articles about the advertiser's company, product or service. What started as a small niche has grown to where getting paid to blog is being recognized as a legitimate way for bloggers to earn enough to keep the broadband on and for the advertiser to gain recognition and better page placement on search engines.

Some people just blog for money. I was just personally fascinated by the whole concept. So I started researching the companies that hook up the advertiser with the blogger. I began searching out blogs that provide information on how to blog for money. I quickly learned it was "blogger beware" out there and working with an honest and reputable company was critical. And everywhere I looked, a company with the unlikely name of Smorty was always mentioned positively. So I went to Smorty's web site and did some snooping around.

Smorty was indeed a service that connected advertisers and bloggers. Advertisers would then pay the bloggers to write original opinion articles which would link back to the advertisers web site: blog advertising.

But I was looking for more than just a hook-up with an advertiser. I'm a novice at this and I wanted some hand-holding along the way. Smorty provides the blogger with tools that, even if the blogger never blogs for money or in the event Smorty turns down your blog (they are looking for class acts!) will increase your readership in a big way and they're easy for novices like me to use!

Smorty walked me step by step through optimizing my blog. I would just click a link, and Smorty would look under the hood of my blog and tell me what I was doing right and what I could do better. What separates Smorty from its peers is that after it told me what I could do better, it did it for me! Keywords and these odd things called Meta Tags, for example. Smorty would have me fill in information about my blog in plain English, I'd press a button and Bang: Smorty would actually write the code for my blog and tell me where to insert it! No programming, no hacking; just cut and paste!

Smorty directed me to free services which were easy to sign up for and would ultimately greatly expand the reach of my blog. After all, the world NEEDS my opinions on Swedish Snus, wireless phones, GPS units....and of course politics. This was GREAT!

Once my blog was approved, (The Unloading Zone is, after all, a classic!), I was given a list of projects to choose from. I was actually going to get paid to blog!

My advice to both advertisers and bloggers alike who are interested in blog advertising is to do your due diligence, but you MUST take a hard look at Smorty! They make the process quick, easy, valuable and a real asset to the advertiser and the blogger! I wonder if they give out T-Shirts...........or Rolex Watches?

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