Tag: disability

I got threatened by a company that paid me to blog for them

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog2 Comments

I began writing this blog in 2007 because, well, because I could.  I was putting status updates on my home page, but then decided to create a WordPress blog and use that instead.  My main goal was just to give simple updates of what was going on in my life so that friends and family could see.  I could have used MySpace back then, but I preferred using my blog instead.

I believe it was in November of 2009 when I first signed up with Blogsvertise to get paid to blog.  They would send me an offer and I would write-up a post about a website or the product and/or service available on a website and I would get paid $9-$15 after 30 days if the post was still there.

My main goal was to help me pay for my website hosting every month and my domain every year, it wasn’t meant to give me an income.

When I signed up with Blogsvertise, I also signed up with PayPerPost from IZEA.  A few months down the road I signed up with IZEA’s Social Spark.  I don’t get a lot of offers, but I get enough that I am able to pay for my hosting, domain and even help pay for my groceries when I run out of money at the end of the month since I am on disability.

So in early February 2011, I got an offer from Blogsvertise to write a post for a certain website which I cannot name, but let’s just say they have a few OFFERS available on their website if you catch my meaning.  I don’t normally do a post if it’s less than $9 or $10 because, well why should I?  I can afford to be picky because again, this isn’t an income.  They offered a measly $7.50 for the same amount of work as a $9, $10 or $50 post.  I liked their website product/service so I did it.

When I write-up a post, I don’t delete it after I get paid a month later because I don’t think it’s fair to the company to only get 1 month of advertisements, I like to continue to offer them free advertisement just because that’s how nice of a guy I am.  Ok, it’s really because I just don’t think about it, let’s call it laziness.

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from unsaid website threatening to take legal action against my web host company if I don’t remove the “Unauthorized link.”  I was gobsmacked because they have a thing on their website telling people to share their website with a “LINK.”  Why is it ok for someone to share the link, but I’m not allowed to share the link anymore?  I don’t get it.

So what I did was I immediately removed the post that I had written for them, along with every other paid blog post that I had already gotten paid for from Blogsvertise, you know, just in case.  Their letter also said that I have to write them a letter telling them that I removed their link.  In my letter I told them that not only did I remove the link/ad, but I am also no longer going to use their website and I am not going to recommend their website to friends and family anymore.  Not that I ever did, but now I definitely won’t.

In addition to my letter, I also sent them a printout from Blogsvertise and circled the amount of money I got paid for the ad so they will see it, and I sent them a copy of their original letter too.

I have PTSD from my childhood (yeah I know, I’m 42, those should be gone but their not) so I have panic attacks that I’ve had since childhood, and thanks to their letter I got a major panic attack.  I had to take two Klonopins just to calm myself down.  I think one would have sufficed, but I was walking on sunshine with the two lol.

When I got the letter, I emailed Blogsvertise and of course they never responded.  I also tweeted @Izealove asking about old posts and they haven’t responded either.  I left all the IZEA posts because they don’t have a Google Page Rank requirement like Blogsvertise does, which I think is the reason this happened, because my page rank dropped from 3 to 2.

At any rate, my Ad’s went down and it is a good possibility that I am going to quit using Blogsvertise because of this.  I will stay with IZEA primarily because they have way better opps.  IZEA has Sprint, TGIFridays, Lenovo, Kia, AM/PM among other major companies.  Plus they pay better lol.

I don’t want to speculate on why they made the decision to send me that threatening letter, but I have a feeling it’s a homophobia issue.  I mean, why is it ok for everyone else to link to their website, but not my website?  I mean I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that I’m right.

Well, that is all I have to say about that.  I am done with their company forever.  If I want to get good “offers” on coupons, I will use Gaypon from now on.  At least they like me, they are following my book on Twitter lol.

UPDATE: I finally got 2 emails from Blogsvertise today.  I sent them both the original letter sent to me by the company who wants to take legal action against my web host so they can deal with it now.  I am still going to blog for them because I really do like the opps they send me, not all of them but most of them, but it’s not fair to them to stop working for them when this one company threatens me.  So I think I overreacted a bit when I said that I was going to drop them.  What I like about them is that when the 30 day comes, they don’t make me wait until I have $50 in my account like the other websites do, they will deposit the $10 or even $7.50 right into my PayPal account which gives me that extra few dollars I need when I’m in a pinch at the end of the month.  So I will continue working with them because they really are a good company.

I am still waiting for this company to contact me though.  See, they sent me the letter on the 14th and I got it on the 18th and sent my response letter out on the 19th.  Well, they said I had 7 days from the date of their letter to respond, well, that means on the 19th, I only had 2 days to get that letter to them.  It took their letter 4 days to get to me because of the weekend, will my letter get to them in 2 days?  If not, will they take action on the 7th day despite the fact that I removed the link?  Or if they got my letter, will they read it immediately, or will it sit on someones desk for a couple of days unopened?

If you no longer see my blog, it’s because my web host took it down.  If that happens then I guess it was fun while it lasted…  If it does happen I will just move my domain over to another host.  I have my domain with a different company, so of course I will just get hosting with them.  I hope that doesn’t happen though because I will end up with a blank slate.  I will have to start all over from scratch.  UGH!  Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that though.

So… I guess the only thing left to do now is start copying my entire website using an FTP program, you know, just in case.

Publishing My Book

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

I spent this summer writing my life story into a 289 page e-book.  It took a lot of time to write and it has taken even longer to edit because I am not what most would consider to be a writer.  I barely manage writing a blog, I have a difficult enough time thinking of what to write in a greeting card.

I have already copyrighted (pending) my book (title and unedited contents) so that when I am ready to publish it, I won’t have to worry about waiting for the copyright to kick in.

I have already signed up with Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a self publisher, which was so easy that anyone can do it.  I also wanted to sign up on the Rainbow Ebook website as a self publisher because I want to support them as an e-book store.  It’s nice to give back to my community in any way that I can.

As soon as it is completely edited, I will publish it and start advertising and promoting via here, twitter, Facebook, my space and anywhere else that I can advertise it for free.  I may even pay gay and gay friendly bloggers to advertise it for me.

I am not looking to get rich on this book, in fact I mean to do the opposite.  I can only make so much money per year on top of my disability so I can’t get rich off of it.  I am only going to sell it for $6.99 so that I only profit a few dollars from the sale of each book and 10% of those profits will go to charity.  10% from Amazon, B&N and Rainbow Ebooks combined will be split up to go to the Human Rights Campaign, ChildHelp.org and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors fund.

My book will hopefully raise awareness to so many issues in our society about the way children are being raised to be as abusive, racist and bigoted as the parents who are raising them.  I feel it’s important not just to tell my story about the trauma I went through, but hope that it will help parents to change their hateful ways and views and know what they are doing to their children when they raise them full of so much hatred.

I wanted to be able to publish it before Christmas but then I got to thinking that it’s not the kind of thing you want to read during a happy time of year.  Instead, I will probably publish it after Christmas or maybe after New Years.  Keep in mind that it is still being edited so it is possible that I won’t have it ready to publish until January.

So until then…

Update: I signed up for the free trial of Grammarly and was shocked to see that they raised the price from $20 to $70.  I thought that I would just go ahead and do the trial and get it done as quick as I could but it was catching too many errors that weren’t even errors.  So screw that, if my grammar checker in Open Office doesn’t show me those errors then they aren’t errors in my opinion.  I will read it one more time and fix any errors I think need to be fixed and then publish it when my copyright goes through or January like I said before.