Is orble.com legit?

March 14, 2007 9:31 PM

Is orble.com legit?

An email from a friend of mine:

http://www.orble.com/earn-money/
Hi Stephen,
What is this about - as in, safe, a con, get people's details etc?
Thanks in anticipation,
Regards, Juliet

posted by flabdablet to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I'd never heard of it, but a Google revealed a few articles about it. Short answer: it's a blogging site, where they pay authors to write if they can bring in a certain amount of pageviews or clicks.

Here's an article: Orble.com Pays Bloggers $40 Per Week..

"If you are able to write consistently over a 2 week period and your posts attract some comments and votes we would then be happy to place your blog on a separate domain name and pay you a commission on any revenue your blog generates. At that time you would also be automatically considered for the weekly blogging "scholarship" which offers $40 pw for the first 8 weeks as your new blog is establishing itself."

It's not entirely clear on what the criteria are in order to get your own domain and a cut of the (assumedly advertising) revenue, so I don't know how high a bar it is.

Personally, I'm skeptical; if you really think you can bring in an audience, why not cut out the middleman and just run your own blog, either on a webhost or via a blog provider, and put ads up on it and get 100% of the profits? It's not like these guys are really guaranteeing you any financial security; they're just managing things for you, which unless you're a total technophobe really aren't that big a deal.

But I guess if you want to write a blog, and you think you could draw eyeballs and mouseclicks, and it's the logistical stuff that's been keeping you from doing it in the past, they might be worth a look.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:42 PM on March 14, 2007

Seems like if you're a talented writer, you might be better off trying to find a friend who could take care of the "technical" stuff you'd need to start a blog business. (or just do blogger, and have google handle everything.) I don't know if orble.com is a scam, but it looks like they might try to handle some search engine optimization and sell ads for you -- which might be why someone might join them. I'd think freelancers might want to try elance or something similar..
posted by mhh5 at 11:53 PM on March 14, 2007

I read several very popular and multi-author blogs hosted on places like typepad and blogger.com. A drop-in site template and skin with Google Ads are certainly at least as effective unless they're gonna commit to promoting you.

And besides, if this is completely above-board it's the first time in history that it's happened with the phrase "earn-money" in the URL.
posted by rhizome at 12:22 AM on March 15, 2007

If you have to ask....
posted by Mr. Gunn at 2:59 PM on March 15, 2007