Same happened to me… I went from a nice PR4 to a PR0 on one of my websites, which has been online for over 5 years!! Go figure.. Frankly, I never made money with it. In part my fault, but the past year the low PR has not helped.

No, I’m not a social bloggers. Bloggers need to eat as well, and pay for an internet connection!

Regarding commenting. It also has a lot to do whether you write about the “Flavor-of-the-Month” topic.

I’ve seen some posts that say almost nothing of any substance, but they’ll get 50-60 comments because a “Cool Kid” said it.

While other people might write excellent heart-felt original posts and they might not even get a dozen. Annoys the hell out of me. Such is Life in the Blogosphere.

I’m a social blogger. I do it for fun….I’m under no expectations that I’ll make any money off this. I really don’t think blogging will match my existing salary (or if it does, I’d certainly have to work more than 37.5 hours a week I currently put in….)

I do have a few ideas I’m working on. I think they’ll make some money. Mabye. But not serious money.

Maybe a bit extra to top up my vacation fund, or pay for some car repairs. But I’m going to be doing my artwork and writing anyway, regardless if I get paid. So like I said…any money I make is purely bonus.

I have to laugh about Google PR numbers. (I didnt’ even know what that meant a few months ago).

I was told I have a PR Number of 4. I guess that’s supposed to be a good. Though I did ASOLUTELY NOTHING to try to achieve that.

Re: Monetizing Your Blog
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it. When I first started Ribeezie, it was nothing like what it is today. I didn’t promote any services through the site. I offered web designs off-site and got a few clients via good ol’ fashioned word-of-mouth but the site was just a place of reflection and sharing for me.

Fast forward a few months later though and I’m promoting what I do: consulting and web design. I have a few affiliate products on there but their products that I’ve purchased/used and from people I can account for.

Here’s the thing though, every time I did something to monetize my site, whether it was adding my services page or adding advertisements, I let my readers know of the change so that they weren’t caught off guard about it. I was being as transparent as possible in doing so and in the end, I think everyone appreciated me for that (or so I hope they did).

Anyway, hope some of that was helpful… Have a great week!

I think you might be right with the 301. Even though Google says to use them (opposed to 302s, it might have dropped me off the map when I swapped things around.)

So I guess I’m getting a little more relaxed about it right now and just wait and see what happens at the next update. I have enough incoming links to think I should go back to a PR3 at least, but maybe it is too late to account for them all as updates have probably already been calculated. If that happens and I’m still a 0 I might to the request after all.

I don’t want to wit another 3 months to attract good paying advertisers.

As for SE traffic, yes I still do get it, but my main keyword “freelance writing” has dropped into nowhere and that bugs me more than anything. However, I’m confident it’ll come back at some stage.

Thanks for peeking in, I’m glad to have discovered your blog (thanks to Cath Lawson), even though it was over unfortunate circumstances for us both. But hey, life goes on right!

@ Sire: I understand that you are not giving a rats … about Google anymore. I however do because it is Google that will ultimately pay my bills for ranking well and getting SE traffic.

Like you, I blog how I want to as well but I do try to stick to the guidelines they put down. I suppose we choose whatever is best for us, don’t we?

Anyway, I really appreciate you stopped by and shared your own PR experience with us.

So then, whilst keeping those other blogs, I decided to start some new ones, only this time by doing everything right. After getting it to PR3 one was slapped to PR0 and the only thing I could put it to was that Google didn’t like the name of the Blog which was loadofbullshit.co? The thing is why give me the PR in the first place? I know longer bother about Google. I blog the way I want and Google can go get stuffed.

I didn’t leave a comment on Matt Cutt’s blog. The best thing to do is submit a Reconsideration Request. I’ve read that if you submit one and don’t hear anything for a couple of weeks to resubmit. You have to have a Webmaster’s Tools account to do this http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843

I haven’t submitted one yet and I don’t know if I’m going to.

I don’t think your new theme is the cause. The 301 redirect is the more likely culprit. It will take google some time to reindex. I’ve read it can take 3 weeks to 3 months. But it probably won’t show anything until the next page rank update. I just moved a site to a new domain and it currently has no page rank – but I expected that to happen.

Are you still getting search engine traffic and have decent placement? I would be more concerned about that than the PR. I have not lost that.

I’m hoping the google is just shuffling things around and things get sorted soon.

@ Cath: Yep, I’m with you. I feel exactly the same way. I didn’t know that Kim had the same issues and just come back from her blog. Interesting to say the least.

Nofollow to ads is a must if you don’t want to fall into the bad books of G. Smart lady you.

I wonder what the hell is going on with your PR. This also happened to kimwoodbridge.com and she doesn’t have a clue what she’s done either.

Maybe it’s worth looking at her source code and comparing it with yours, incase you’re both making some stupid error? I think she also left a comment on Matt Cutts blog. It seems so unfair that they would penalize you like that.

I’m also working really hard to get more search traffic, so I can understand how you must be feeling. I only have PR3 right now – but I’ve deleted all my links to John Chow and I’m going to add “no follow” to my ads and see how that goes.