RealRank is still fairly new, so to build up some buzz they're holding a contest. The owner of the top RealRank-ranked blog for each week of February will receive $1000. It could be you!

All you do is sign up with Izea and put a little piece of javascript on your blog template. Once that code can be seen by the RealRank Robots on every page of your blog, they'll begin collecting data, and you'll be automatically entered in the contest. If you don't mind having spies analyze information regarding your blog and the habits of your visitors, this could be for you. And the best part? You've got four chances to win.

Here's a chunk of the rules:

"The eligible blogger with the highest RealRank for the … weekly entry periods will receive a prize. There will be one (1) winner for each weekly period; a total of four (4) winners throughout the Contest. The winner in any previous week is ineligible for the following week(s). Odds of winning depend on number of bloggers signed up for RealRank, and, as stated above, the weekly winner will be the blogger with the highest RealRank. The RealRank algorithm weights blogs as follows: seventy percent (70%) on daily unique visitors, twenty percent (20%) on daily active inbound links and ten percent (10%) on daily page views as reported by IZEA Toolkit.

All winners will be notified by email on or about seven (7) days after the applicable weekly entry period ends."

So, there are two definite pluses here. First, there likely wouldn't be a $4000 giveaway (split 4 ways) unless Izea thought the appeal of the contest would suck in a whole new group of bloggers. That means new blogs being added to the system every day, with the RealRank code being added to those blogs for mega-tracking purposes. So since odds of winning are dependent on how many competitors there are, and Izea is obviously saying "We need more blogs," a decent blog with a good amount of traffic probably has a fair shot at snagging a thousand bucks.

The second plus is that even if you join in the middle of February, you still qualify for the remaining entry periods.

And if you're the kind of blogger who values privacy of information, and yet still thinks you've got a shot at winning, you could always:

1. sign up,
2. install the tracking code,
3. win in one of the 4 periods,
4. collect the cash,
5. and then remove the code.

But that's only for those bloggers John Chow might call… evil!

To make money from their blogs, many bloggers have turned to sites like PayPerPost and accepted opportunities that paid them to post information and links about other websites. Google doesn't like this, as the links could be considered paid links. Google feels that paid links are less relevant and worthy for passing PageRank value than organic links, or links that are created due to non-financial reasons. Although Google didn't like it, many people were making a lot of money selling links through programs like PayPerPost and TextLinkAds. The higher your PageRank, the more valuable a link from your site became, so the more money you could make. Google suggested that you shouldn't sell links, but most people weren't persuaded. A couple of months ago, Google took action in an effort to reduce the paid link industry. It erased the PageRank of many blogs and sites known to get paid for links or posts.

So, imagine if you're a blogger with a PageRank of 5, and you are a member of PayPerPost. You get a lot of good-paying opportunities, because your PR of 5 is a lot better than the average blog. Then Google figures out you are selling paid posts, and erases you PR. Now you have a PR of 0, and the advertisers no longer value a paid post from you nearly as much as they did before. So you make less money.

PayPerPost had a system in the works to provide a similar metric as PageRank before Google got busy erasing PR, and it recently went active. It's called Izea RealRank.

Unlike PageRank, RealRank focuses on more than just links. It is like Alexa, in that it's really more a measure of traffic. Also unlike PageRank, RealRank is primarily for bloggers, and requires some javascript code to be placed on your blog.

Izea then calculates your RealRank based on things like unique visitors, page views per day, and visitors coming through links to your site (vs. type-in traffic). RR is to be used as an alternative to PR in the paid post marketplace. An advertiser can now say, "Oh, you've got a PR of 0, eh? Well, let's see what your RealRank is."

Some advertisers couldn't care less about RealRank, as it doesn't represent the link power that is evidenced by PageRank. However, others are more willing to consider a new system, as Google's actions with PageRank have made some people less eager to just accept PR at face value. It seems things are changing on the PageRank front, and although RealRank is considered flawed by some, it's a start in a new direction.

To get your own RealRank, you need some tracking code on your site, which you can get by creating an account at izearanks.com.