Make Money Online

Would you like to earn an extra US$5000? – Check out these great companies that help bloggers earn!

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New Year is safely out of the way now… In fact, it’s quite likely that your New Year’s Resolution has already fallen by the wayside. Well, if your resolution was to find ways to make more money, then it’s a safe bet you haven’t even started yet! In fact, the days after New Year have been pretty quiet with several countries taking both 1st and 2nd off. It’s more than likely that most people won’t go back to work until Monday!

So what can you do to earn money now? Answer: not much. But you can begin the preparation work to find out which ways you might be interested to try. In this article, I will outline 5 websites that I have experienced that have helped me to make some money along with some of the pitfalls of each. This review is not comprehensive, but aims to highlight what is possible if you persevere.

Adsense: Does it make cents?

Adsense of course is the grandfather of the ways to monetize your website. In principle, it’s quite easy to set up once you have set up your account. Simply define the way you want the advertisements to appear, then paste the resulting code IN your HTML or Blog pages. It works well, but the challenge is attracting traffic, and placing the ads in such a way so that they get noticed. If you can get a decent Click-Through Rate, then you’ll do okay.

adsense

On my websites, this has attracted a steady, but small stream of income. I usually manage to cash one check a year at the moment. Payments are only made once you reach $100. I’ve earned about $410 over the last five years so it’s not chump change! Nowadays, though, I don’t really use Adsense on this site, but on some of my other sites only.

Payperpost: It really pays, or it used to.

Payperpost requires that you have an established blog, preferably with a PR of some score or an audience. You get offers to write posts that comply with their guidelines, and the post rate can go from $5 to over $100. I really enjoyed the boards at Izea very much and some of the things that PayPerPost do really help bloggers: the insistence on quality posts, regular blogging schedule, some traffic requirements, minimum age, etc..

payperpost first

There are some restrictions on the posts that you will be come aware of, and Google has taken something of a disliking to selling PR that’s had a knock-on effect. But Payperpost has paid me over $1,835 in the two years I’ve been doing it. And I’ve not been particularly aggressive, and I have suffered in the PR Rank Spank. But Payperpost has to some extent been its own worst enemy by focusing on continuing to sell PR to advertisers, they’ve made it difficult to have continued success, once Google finds your blog.

Links for Texts: It works but beware!

Text Links Ads has been on my website for months, now. Initially, I was very timid on using Text Links, but now I’ve found them to be a consistent seller on my website. Of course, it helps to have an active readership and/or a PR ranking. But I’ve been making about $100 for a few months now. It works well. It particularly works effectively on a WordPress blog, because there is a plugin that you can download and install. Simple to set up, simple to administer, but the trick is getting your first customers. You will need a PayPal address to get payment.

tla link for dollar

Overall, Text Link Ads has been the least active of all the five on this boards, and with sites of some reputation, selling has become easier. But getting those first link sales is the real problem. You need to be patient and promote your blog, then you will eventually draw advertisers. Once you do get advertisers, you will find that money starts to trickle in. In fact, for me it trickled for months. Now it’s beginning to pick up a little. Over 2 years, that’s $1680.

Hoi! OioPublisher muscles in

For those interested in selling advertisements the direct way,OIOPublisher is a plugin that I only recently started using and promoting but in the short time I have used it, it has generated $280 on its own. It provides a number of ad based services for your advertisers including text link ads, banners, downloads, and whatever else you can conceive. You get to set your own rates, manage the entire process and it includes a payment gateway connected to your PayPal account which facilitates payment via Paypal, credit card or subscriptions.

oiopublisher program

However, it can be a little tricky to set up properly the first time, and it is not free. You have to pay good dosh to download the program. Still with OIO I’ve been able sell quite a lot of stuff lately, and it’s set up to sell any manner of advertising or products. So it’s by far the most flexible and most mature of the advertising plugins. Well worth the money, in my opinion. At $47 for a lifetime membership, it’s certainly not expensive. If you are not selling much advertising, you can still run your own ads as fillers, until permanent clients come along, too! So you can start earning straightaway.

Will you pay me to blog?

PayU2Blog has also been a surprising money spinner for one of my sites. Unlike Payperpost, when you are selected for the program, you do not have any choice over what opportunities you can take. However, you are given considerable freedom in how you treat the opportunities, what you write, and you include. So it’s much more of a paid link rather than a paid post format.

payu2blog

The pay is fairly uniform for each opportunity, though the flexibility makes each one more fun and challenging to write. Overall, I’ve earned $535 for my work with them. The work is fairly steady, too, though you may baulk at the occasionally odd or weird assignments you have to write about. This really suits a general blog or a blog with a wider remit than many of the niche blogs. And that’s why I haven’t really used PayU2Blog on InvestorBlogger Dot Com.

And the Grand Total: $4,740

And the grand total is $4740. That’s not a small amount of money at all. But to achieve even this kind of success requires experimentation – you won’t get the same results I do (perhaps you’ll do much better, perhaps not!) – dedication to keeping going and focus on blogging. After that, anything’s possible. I’m still trying!

Previously published on InvestorBlogger Dot Com.

PR vs PPP: who is winning the war?

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I started writing this story just before the recent updates began on August 24th or thereabouts… Some facts have since changed (eg. my PR is now ZERO again!) This is a bit of a ramble because I’m tired. But then this issue has been around for months, and never seems to subside:

PPP vs. PR – Why PPP won’t drop PR any time soon or ever?

“…I did get my own PR back, though only a 2 compared with the three or four I used to have. I’m not exactly sure why I lost my PR in the first place, I think I had partially destroyed my PR in 2006 when I refounded my blog… My other blog is slowly regaining PR too, so even with PPP posts and not kowtowing to Godgle, it’s possible to have a PR. But certainly doing PPP can and usually does lead to PR0 so it’s no wonder that PPP constantly needs a new influx of PR rated blogs.

The thing is: PPP has been promising since LAST summer (2007) to remove PR from the rankings … I think all PPP’s bloggers know now that that isn’t going to happen any time soon. In fact, it is UNLIKELY it will happen IMHO, despite claims otherwise.

The reality is: PPP provides a lot of income while SS is still starting up. So it’s difficult for PPP to cut out one revenue stream while the other isn’t fully developed yet. PPP is slowly encouraging uptake of RR and alternatives to PR but without removing it from the options in the Advertisers section completely, the advertisers will still likely use it as a means to filter blogs.

If you blog because you like blogging, then do what’s best for your blog… accept or refuse PPP posts/links as you think fit. If you just blog for money, then you can keep feeding the demon by starting new blogs and repeating the process. In either case, don’t hold your breath waiting for PPP to remove PR requirements. They won’t do it to suit you, or me. They’ll do it to suit their own needs.”

Google’s Rank Spank: Part Deux

Well, it seems Google is doing that big dance again with its pagerank. Has it really affected me? In some ways, the answer is a resounding ‘yes/no’. Since November 2007, my blog income has become more stable since then, my traffic is up leaps and bounds, and my blog is improving in many ways! While income from companies like Payperpost is definitely on the wane, other sources are picking up to replace them. Hence, this justifies my belief: diversifying your income sources is VERY important both online and offline.

Have I given into Google’s demands on ‘nofollow’ links? Well, truthfully, I’ve been tempted to do so, but only mildly so. I’m too busy running the blog, developing my audience, and so on. I have considered giving in, but it’s just too complicated now to do so. I’d have to backtrack on promises I made to my advertisers, my own pride helps that to stick in my throat. So it’s a road I don’t want to travel.

Yes, I sell links

And yes, I’m still selling links. No, really, I do. I have done for ages, through text link ads, through my own sales, through PayPerPost, through paid posts, etc. I sell them simply and I choose NOT to add the rel=nofollow tag that Google virtually demanded everyone use because their search engine formulae weren’t upto snuff.

In reality, I don’t sell text links for PR. I sell them for traffic, for advertising, for people to check out on this blog and on others. I sell them so that advertisers pay me to cover my server costs, I sell them to earn a little extra money. If I had to rely on Adsense I’d be running ALL my blogs on Geocities instead simply because Adsense clicks have been very poor performers for me, across ALL my sites.

Links vs. Adsense

Also, I BELIEVE selling links is a far better model for most advertising purposes: it’s easier to track, easier to set up, virtually fraud proof, and very reliable. Using Google’s alternative method is (AdSense) is fraught with issues, including fraudulent clicks, banned accounts, optimizing the positions, quality scores, … the list goes on and on. Many bloggers have been burned by AdSense for fraudulent clicks or impressions, and many bloggers have lost all the monies in their account. For advertisers, click fraud is equally a huge problem: I’m not allowed to divulge how many clicks I don’t get credited for as an Adsense advertiser, but the number is significant. AdSense also takes up space, and typically when users don’t click, the website DOESN’T get much or any credit.

For Advertisers, clicks make sense

I also sell links for advertisers to garner traffic, and I believe selling text links is a lot less hassle than AdWords for advertisers. Why? Simply, you buy them once, and you forget about them until the subscription expires or renews. Users can click on them as many times as you like, you won’t experience click fraud. Really, text links are a much simpler form of advertising, and quite effective. You don’t have to play with your keywords, positioning, or watch your budget eaten up. Prices also don’t vary that much in a short time, on AdWords the prices of keywords seems to vary as the wind.

So, with a PR0, am I going to kowtow to Google this time? Unlikely, i think there will be a time when Google search engine is implicitly able to determine which links are paid and which are not, without any nofollow. I see little or no reason to change, esp. as Google sells links that transfer pagerank. Worse, if everyone nofollowed every link on their blog, as some bloggers and sites have done, it will make pagerank virtually useless. So, I’m not changing my ways; Google, if it wants to remain relevant simply has to figure out this issue for themselves.

Buzz: NetDebt’s New Affiliate Program

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With increasing interest in debt programs, and many new vendors entering the market, it seems that the American consumer now has many avenues to go up in seeking relief from their consumer debt.

With the NetDebt Affiliate program, you can reach clients in the entire U.S., and there will be plenty of opportunities to advertise to new clients, reach new markets, and even more… The promises are pretty decent (Promote our Site and get paid $28 for lead and $250 per sale) through this affiliate program, so if you are running a personal finance or debt site or blog, this could be an interesting way to make a new revenue stream.

I must confess to being a little confused by the website, but I’m guessing that it is aimed directly at clients rather than affiliates, so it’s pretty difficult until my approval comes through to assess whether they are really the Best Affiliate Program that they claim.

Supported by Best Affiliate Programs, themselves.