(The following is a paid post.) PayPerPost v4.0 is advertising itself as a “new and improved” version of the PayPerPost platform. As someone who gets paid to blog from time-to-time, I’m going to offer my opinion on their new look. Their old site can be found here.

For those of you unfamiliar with PayPerPost, it’s  a company that pays bloggers (like me!) to talk about things relevant to our target audience. PayPerPost is one of a handful of companies owned and/or operated by Izea, who focus on social marketing in a variety of forms. The idea behind PayPerPost is that they connect advertisers directly with bloggers who review and discuss the advertiser’s products, website or services.

At first glance, it’s obvious that PayPerPost changed the graphic design of their portal. It looks much nicer than before, and I appreciate how much crap was taken off the site. In the previous version, the PayPerPost interface was littered with icons and links; it had so many things to look at that I often had a hard time finding open opportunities that my blog was even qualified for.

In the new version, the interface is much cleaner. However in version 3, I could browse a list of open opportunities; in this version, there’s nothing currently listed and no explanation as to why. After reading around on the FAQs, apparently PayPerPost has changed how this all works – advertisers now control who they invite to blog about them. I guess that’s fair and probably a smart idea, but that should be mentioned when there’s nothing in my list of opportunities.

Speaking of FAQs. . . they have a list of about 50 in no particular order. They really ought to break that up into sections because it’s hard to read.

I’ve also noticed that PayPerPost will now only release my money when I’ve accumulated $50 or more. In the previous version, funds in any amount were released thirty days after the post was written.

One bit of web development nitpicking: the Terms of Service page was never checked by a human. The background color is so dark that no one can read the terms. . . perhaps it’s a clever way of discouraging you from reading them, but my money says that their developers were just lazy and forgot to change the CSS.

I think overall the previous site needed a facelift, and the one it has received is fine indeed. I’ll be curious to see how the new system affects me, since I now have to wait for advertisers to contact me. I’d love to hear what anyone else has to say about this!