Archive for 'Money'
Advertising With Project Wonderful
Posted on 29. Feb, 2008 by admin.
As a marketer I am always looking for new opportunities to advertise and promote my websites. I use Adwords regularly, but it does tend to get expensive and it isn’t worth it for smaller sites. So I was hot on the lookout for a cheap yet effective form of advertising - and Project Wonderful fills that niche perfectly.
Project Wonderful is a simple advertising system - where you bid to place your ad on a site. And obvisouly the highest bidder wins. The price you bid is per day. For example on this blog - the top advertiser is paying just $0.06 per day. This is extremely cheap and provides an awesome CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions).
As an advertiser, I have bid on over 200 blogs using the campaign feature, which does all the bidding automatically. You just set a budget, the blogs/sites you want to advertise on, and a daily limit and it does the rest. I spent around $100 on the campaign and received a great deal of exposure and traffic.
Like any advertising system, PW will take some practice to maximise your returns and I plan on using it more extensively in the future.
Continue Reading
7 Funky Ways to Monetize a Blog
Posted on 17. Feb, 2008 by admin.
I know what you’re thinking - another post about how to monetize a blog. Whats New! Well i got together with co-contributer John Davis to come up with some creative ways to monetize a blog without selling your soul to PayPerPost or filling your blog full of ads. In fact - where going against the trend and reccommending a completely different approach.
How many blogs a chocked full of advertising, affiliate banners, text ads, sponsored posts and adsense! Aren’t there any better and more attractive ways to monetize a blog? Here are some different (funky) ways to monetize a blog:
Background Advertising
Turn your entire background into an advertisement! CollegeHumor and Perez Hilton use this method all the time and it works really well. Funnily enough it isn’ that “in your face” and is often done extremely tastefully. And yes there is an ad network dedicated to just this type of advertising - AdCamo.
404 Goldmine
Whats wrong with chucking up a few affiliate links on a 404 page. Usually a 404 page, just tells users they are looking for something that isn’t there - so why not tell them that as well as telling them about a great new affiliate product! This is unobtrusive and making good use of otherwise wasted pageviews and space.
IndieKarma
Ok so this hasn’t taken off - but if it does you can thank me. With IndieKarma you install a little widget on your website and other IK users can choose to donate, say, $0.01 everytime the visit your blog. Doesn’t sound like much but imagine if just 50% of your readers paid you everytime they visited your blog. IndieKarma is still young so they giving away $1 to the first 5000 users who register. IK = a great way to say thanks for good content and earn $$$
Spin Off Products
Don’t just promote someone elses products through affiliate links, make your own! Lots of bloggers have created there own ebooks, software, reports, membership sites etc. Loyal readers equal customers more often then not. Take a look at the not yet complete 10DollarScripts being built by my business partner John Davis that will one day be an extension of the blog.
Rent Out Your Blog
Don’t want to sell you beloved blog that you have spent the last 12 months building up? Well rent it out. Sure its a daunting thought - letting someone else have control of your blog. But don’t worry, like any good landlord you should set some clear terms. ie. number of posts, don’t mess with the links, design etc. This is perfect for holidays! If you’re going on a break, instead of finding guest posters just find a tenant.
Build a Jobs Board
This one is for the bigger blogs. Adding a jobs board is a real simple way to monetize a blog. And thanks to Job-a-matic, a point and click board creator used by many big blogging brands, you can create one in minutes.
Give Your Content A Voice
Odiogo will turn your blog posts into high quality audio files with ads! Therefore you earn $$$ every time someone listens to your blog. Not only will you expand your blogs reach you will be profiting from the move as well.
Remember this weeks contest - best comment wins $10 cash via PayPal. Just make a comment on this post or any future or past posts before the 22nd of February to be in the running. Find out more here.
Continue Reading
Helium Spat on Me!
Posted on 09. Feb, 2008 by admin.
I was asked to review Helium along time ago when I was working for Tap Media. Helium claims to be a community of publishers that pays its writers.
When I originally did the review, I registered at Helium and wrote 4 relatively short articles. They were nothing special but they were written for mass appeal (the more people who view your articles the more you get paid). And then I forgot about Helium.
Only today did I stumble across the site again, and I was tempted to login and see if the promise of real $$’s were there. I didn’t have any high expectations but….$0.40! Come on!
It feels as though Helium has stolen my content and tossed some loose change at my feet.
So my advice to all you budding freelance writers, stay away from the lure of Helium and its false promises. There are plenty of better places to put your content (even sell it) and make a lot more then a mere $0.40 in 6+ months.
Continue Reading
ScratchBack Could be the Solution
Posted on 08. Feb, 2008 by admin.
Who was hit by the Google Bomb? I’m talking about the bomb Google dropped a while ago that dropped the PR of many blogs and sites, that were sellings text links. Basically this was Google punishing the internet for trying to game their system.
I thought I would leave it a month or two and see how things panned out. I predicted that services like Text Link Ads would try and change to focus more on traffic rather than PR, but everything still looks as per.
So many bloggers, fearing another inevitable Google bomb, have stopped selling links through TLA. In fact, I have heard a lot less press about TLA and am only receiving more and more emails basically begging me to continue advertising (well maybe not begging).
Enter ScratchBack. This horribly designed site offers a more traffic orientated model for text links, which seems to be a hit among bloggers. And yes ScratchBack needs to hire a fricken designer, how a website gets away with such a disgusting design is a mystery.
But can ScratchBack actually compete or replace the revenue a blogger will lose if they stop using TLA all together - maybe, maybe not. Once again, I think this concept will work really well with the top 1% of blogs and fail on most of the others. I might be wrong, let me know.
I lost PR on two of my previous blogs (I managed to sell them just in time) and I certainly won’t be using TLA as a publisher again - further more, I doubt I will risk advertising with them either.
Continue Reading
Blogitive is Dead!
Posted on 01. Jan, 2008 by admin.
Blogitive, a service similar to PayPerPost which offers you the opportunity to get paid for writing sponsored posts looks dead!
The concept of Blogitive was heavily geared towards SEO and the majority of opportunities available seemed both spammy and of low quality. It was impossible to match an opportunity with your blogs theme (that is unless you wrote about Gold Bullion investment!). However they made payouts on a regular basis and it was a super simple way to monetize a blog that noboddy read.
However, it now looks as though the service is dying and I expect it won’t be too long until it fades into nothing. The sites blogs hasn’t been updated since may and the internal news system hasn’t been updated since November. Furthermore, it seems like they have stopped approving new blogs. I submitted a test blog to the site and it has remained “pending” for weeks now. And it also looks like the offers have dried up with only one available.
Continue Reading
Agloco Was Always Doomed
Posted on 22. Dec, 2007 by admin.
I never understood why a number of prominent bloggers and marketers got behind Agloco and preached about how it would make you rich! I was always an scam and any decent marketer new that it would never work. So are these bloggers just plain stupid or did they choose to lie and mislead?
The entire concept of Agloco is flawed and remember, it isn’t possible to make money by doing nothing. Even the incentives were flawed.
I am glad to see Agloco finally closing its doors but im disappointed how the bloggers who so heavily supported and mislead people are trying to downplay the entire saga.