Money Making Weekly Report - Week 27

I'm now at week 27 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

Payments received this week from: PayPerPost via PayPal and Google AdSense paid direct to my bank.

The programs marked with a * are those that have shown an increase this week.

I think the figures below are self explanatory. All sums are cumulative for the twenty-seven weeks.

Money
I have removed Commission Junction from my list, though the money received has been included in my totals. I do not want to give them any more publicity. My CJ post refers.

AdSense $149.67*
Amazon UK £1.84
You Gov £16.00*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am no longer promoting them.
FriendFinderGroup $364.26*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $134.60 (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £33.16
Helium $6.76*
myLot $48.35*
PayPerPost $32.02
Cashlinkr $4.50

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£734.85 or US$1322.71

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
Google at the top as usual. There was also an additional referrals from Google Blog Search and Search.Blogger

Google - 3631 (+327 on week)
Technorati - 173 (+10)
MSN - 63 (+3)
AOL - 75 (+7)
Yahoo - 24 (+2)
Live.com - 8 (+1)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Webcrawler -1 (0)
HotBot - 1 (0)
Dogpile - 1 (+1)
Total 3978 (+351)

Referrals From Blog Directories. Cumulative figures.
Figures below are for 2007. Actually saw some action this week, mainly through My Blog Directory showing me as Blog Of The Day for one day during the week and referrals from Fuel My Blog. To see 2006 figures see Weekly Report 14.

The figures may give an indication of Blog Directories that may be worth joining.

Bloglines - 31 (0)
Blog Show Off - 26 (+2 on week)
King Of The Blogs - 21 (0)
My Blog Directory - 20 (+20)
Top Lists - 14 (+1)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 11 (0)
Finding Blog - 10 (0)
Fuel My Blog - 9 (+9)
Bestest Blog - 5 (0)
World Top Blogs - 3 (0)
Blogdup - 2 (0)
Grokodile - 1 (0)
Other Directories, about 40 more - 0

Other Referrals
We now come to referrals from blogs I have exchanged links with. My friend from Brazil, JCM's RPG Art , was the top referrer for the week.

My thanks to everyone with whom I have exchanged links or have kindly put my link on their blog. Please see some of their blogs listed in the side column under Interesting Blogs.

Blog AboutYour Blog 200 (+12 on week)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 193 (+16)
The Million Dollar Experiment 141 (+10)
The Gospel According To Rhys 109 (+4)
JCM's RPG Art 107 (+18)
Hipsterpad 64 (+5)
Money Money Money47 (+1)

Miscellaneous referrals from all over the place, top ones this week are: Technorati, myLot, Blogger Forum, Klik.Us, MyBlogLog and 1000000 Links.

I think that covers my week. I hope that by publishing this information, over the weeks to come, it may be of a help to other readers. To see any back reports please click here.

Best wishes,
Mike.

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There's A Whole Lot Of Link Loving Going On

Link Love a day early this week as I won’t be around tomorrow (Friday) as it's my wife's birthday outing. Well, I've got to take her out once a year. That was a joke by the way! Back on Saturday for my normal Money Making Weekly Report and Part 3 of Money Making With Free Blogs will be published next week.

How did I pick the Link Love entries this week? Four at random from bloggers who have left comments over the past week plus the latest member to join my community at MyBlogLog.

Irwin.
Irwin has a blog called Earn Money Online and he is from Canada. It's all about money making (surprise, surprise) and this is what Irwin writes about himself: 'I have always been fascinated by reading how people have made hundreds of thousands dollars. Anyway here I am sharing my ideas, experience and strategies with you so you can fine tune them for your situation and make money.'

Ed.
Now Ed has come up with a good idea for a different form of Link Love, in his words: 'On Sunday, this homepage (that's on his blog) will be dedicated to the 10 MyBlogLog members whose avatars are in the side bar when I start blogging. Hurry, hurry. All MyBlogLog Sunday pages are archived, for eternity.' To see a sample of his special MyBlogLog Sunday home page click here.

Michael.
Another on the money making trail and who left a comment on my blog. From his blog: 'Follow my journey as I'm struggling to build my first ever money making blog from day one. I'm a firm believer that making money online CAN be started with zero budget in my pocket, even though it'll require a great deal of more work (aside from the fact that I've never actually done that). So, sit back and watch me generate income from all kinds of free stuff I can lay my hands on.'

Leesha.
A brand new blog, but this is the way it goes when you pick out links at random. Guess what? Leesha wants to make money online! 'I'm 21, from London and on a mission to find out whether it is possible to make money onlin.' There seems to be a lot of people setting out on missions recently!

Bob.
Bob's link is to his post about Getting 400000 Hits In One Month. I thought that might just interest one or two readers. See what you think.

And finally ...

My Charity / Good Cause link this week is Save The Children. Sometimes it's necessary to get a proper perspective on life.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Make Money With Free Blogs - Part 2

Yesterday in Part 1 we talked mainly about Blog Content, retaining visitors plus a few extras thrown in.

Today we move on to the life blood of a blog. To keep the blog alive, and to make money, we need:

VISITORS.
Without visitors, traffic or hits a blog, in the majority of cases, is a waste of time.

Experts give us all sorts of suggestions as to what we should do to get visitors, everything from including our blog URL on our outgoing emails to submitting our blog details to the various directories.

The easy answer, as to how to get traffic, is quite simple: You have to become known.

However, before you become known, you have to measure your audience and track where your referrals are coming from. Two reasons for this:

(i) So that you can tell if your audience is actually growing. If it’s not, then something has to be done to correct this and

(ii) Once you know where your referrals are coming from you can play to your strengths.

For example, as far as referrals go, I have found that most Blog Directories are next to useless. Whereas I have several ‘friends’, I have made in the blogosphere, who send me lots of referrals. So who do I nurture? Obviously the friends who help me.

Okay, to measure and track your visitors there are several programs you can join. Two I recommend, because they are free and give quite a lot of useful info, are Sitemeter and eXTReMe Tracking. I’d suggest perhaps using them both because trackers seem to vary with their findings.

How Do You get Visitors?
Here are a few suggestions that have worked for me.

(1) Socialise.
You can do this by joining websites such as MyBlogLog, myLot and a myriad of others. Find one that suits you and use the facilities they have to get known. Contact other members, leave them worthwhile comments on their blogs, join their communities and generally be nice to people - just as you would at any social gathering in the real world. Within the Internet this can be a lot easier, especially if you are normally reserved.

There are lots of other groups such as the two I have mentioned. You’ll come across them in your Internet travels. Pick what you feel happy with, not necessarily those that others recommend.

Further reading:
Experiencing MyBlogLog
myLot, Money And Referrals

(2) Leave Comments.
Visit blogs of a similar niche to your own and leave comments relative to what has been written in their post. Don’t spam, be polite and most bloggers will do you the courtesy of a return visit.

(3) Exchange Links.
Some bloggers may be willing to exchange links with you. Don’t expect a long established, high traffic blog to necessarily exchange links. They probably won’t. It’ll most probably be like for like at first. But as I often say: If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

(4) Forums.
Get involved with a few forums. I’ve written about this previously in my post Money Making And Promoting Your Blog With Forums so I won’t repeat the same information here. I’ll just say that using a forum properly will attract visitors to your blog.

A couple of good forums, relative to blogging and also money making, are Digital Point and blogger forum. For a directory of over 1900 forums try Big Boards.

(5) Keywords.
It’s important to think about keywords when you are writing your posts. These should be included in the title and the body of the post without overdoing things. It is, in part, keywords that bring referrals to your blog from search engines - providing they are used properly. Again I have written about this previously: Keywords Bring Money Making Referrals.

In my opinion search engines bring some of the best traffic. Getting them to do this is what SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is all about. As far as I am concerned there are two main aspects to this.

(i) Keywords and
(ii) Getting good links to your blog.

Keeping it simple, I have already suggested ways to do this. There is more to it than what I have written but this is sufficient for a new blogger. You will soon come across lots of other advice.

Further reading:
Learn To Do Effective SEO (In less than 350 words)

(6) Blog Directories.
I have previously said that I don’t reckon much to Blog Directories, as far as getting referrals is concerned. However there is another side to these directories. They provide links to your blog and, as I have said in (5) above, links are important to SEO. Maybe it is, therefore, worth submitting your blog to some directories.

In my Money Making Weekly Reports I list directories that are giving me referrals. There are also numerous Blog Directories listed at the bottom of this blog’s side column. These are all ones where I have listed my blog.

(7) Technorati
I’ve given this a separate heading because it does produce visitors in various ways. I suggest that, if you haven’t already done so, you join Technorati and claim your blog(s). It is all self explanatory once you register.

Further reading:
Blog Marketing Tips - Technorati Explained

(8) Blog Carnivals
To quote: 'A Blog Carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that links to other blog articles on the particular topic.'

You can submit your posts, or articles, to Blog Carnivals (which are on other blogs). If accepted there will then be a link to your post (or article), which may then send referrals to your blog.

You can also host Blog Carnivals on your own blog. This generates interest and often an increase in traffic when they are published.

You can find more information, and an index of Blog Carnivals to which you could submit posts, at Blog Carnival.

(9) Link Baiting.
Often mentioned by long standing bloggers. It simply means writing a post, or providing some sort of information, that will make other blogs want to link to this. In other words, other bloggers will mention your post or information on their blogs and will link to it. This will (a) send you visitors and (b) give you another link to your blog. This is important, as explained in (5) above and also for PageRank which I’ll go into later.

(10) Link Love.
This may sound a strange way to attract more visitors. Link Love is about linking, within a post, to other blogs. A couple of examples here and here.

Now you might think that linking to other blogs will only be good for the blogs you are linking to. However, by giving a little Link Love occasionally, you often get traffic in return. Try it!

Much More.
There are many more ways to attract traffic but 10 seems a good number to finish on.

Do the simple things that have been covered in Parts 1 and here in Part 2.

Post content of value > Attract visitors > Keep visitors on your blog > Make them want to return.

If you can do this then you can start to make money - which I’ll cover in Part 3.

Further reading:
How To Get Traffic To Your Blog And Make Money With It
How to Get Free Traffic for Your Web Site
Blog Marketing Tips - Technorati Explained

Good luck,
Mike.


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Make Money With Free Blogs - Part 1

My mission started out on September 23rd 2006 and I had no idea where I was heading or what I was going to do. I barely knew what a blog was let alone how to make any money from it or attract visitors. In my first post I wrote: ‘At the moment I have no idea as to what direction to follow but I hope to learn fast.’

All I really knew was that I wanted to make money using only free blogs and without any capital outlay. That was, if you like, my Mission Statement.

Here are a few things I have learned along the way that may be helpful to newbie bloggers wanting to make money. I don’t claim that everything mentioned is original but it is my slant on things.

This is Part 1 of 3 Posts. They really all need to be read to get the complete picture but, whatever you do, good luck.

(1) CONTENT IS EVERYTHING.
A blog must have good content, otherwise the whole exercise is a complete waste of time. It’s got to be of value for the reader, they won’t bother to return if it isn't. Somehow it's necessary to find a way to give information that will be of use - preferably this should be something original and written by yourself. When I say 'value' I don't necessarily mean this has to be monetary.

When writing try to get over your personality, don’t be afraid to be controversial. Say what you really think and let your readers know who you are. Tell them something about yourself. In my opinion it’s no good being some anonymous hidden person - be upfront and try to be as genuine as possible.

Blog content, of course, builds up over time but it doesn’t have to be forgotten. Two things I feel bloggers should do is:

(i) Refer to previous posts (with links) whenever the opportunity arises. We don’t just want visitors to come to our blogs. We also want them to linger for as long as possible. The longer they stay the more opportunity there is that they will see something that will make you money - an ad, an affiliate program and so on.

I’ll cover making money later. Funnily enough this isn’t the immediate priority when starting a blog, even if your aim is to make money. The important thing when you start out is to develop a good system with your blog, a routine if you like that you follow.

(ii) Make a list of links to what you consider to be your ‘important’ posts in your side column. Do this right from the beginning. Okay a lot of your posts may not be too memorable initially but, hopefully, in time they will be. You can keep this updated and amended when necessary.

Again this is setting a good working practice and, more importantly, it helps to retain your visitors. If someone spots a good title in your side column they must just click on it and stay with you for a few more minutes.

The longer visitors stay the better chance you have of ultimately earning money.

I’ll cover getting more visitors later in this series but four of your main objectives at the beginning must be to:

(i) Write good, informative posts to the best of your ability.
Try to analyse what you write. If you were the reader, and not the writer, would you have gained anything by reading the post? Would, what you have written, make you want to return to the blog to see further posts?

Make sure you have a good title for your post. Give this as much thought as you do to your post. Include ‘keywords’ within your title. Read more about keywords: Keywords Bring Money Making Referrals.

(ii) Attract as many quality visitors as possible.
I’ll cover ways to do this later. Just one thought to emphasise for now: It’s quality visitors you want, not just numbers.

I discovered this for myself when I dabbled with Hit Exchanges last year. These got me lots of visitors but I found they were of little value and were mostly cosmetic. I wrote about this back in December 2006: Is Traffic From Hit Exchanges Worthwhile?.

(iii) Keep visitors on your blog for as long as possible (by providing useful information). Further reading: Make Money By Keeping Visitors On Your Blog.

(iv) Make it easy for visitors to return to your blog.
I would suggest using some form of subscription service. You will see on my posts that, at the end of each one, there are options to subscribe to my blog. At the moment I am using FeedBurner which, like everything else associated with this blog is free to use.

I will leave it there for today, otherwise the post will go on for too long.

One final observation though before I go today. I feel that making money with free blogs. and without expenditure, takes time. It's not a quick buck. When you read of high incomes earned by bloggers most of these haven't happened overnight. They have taken years to develop.

Where some claim to have done so quickly the facts they forget to quote are their outgoings, their advertising costs etc. Nothing wrong with this. Spending money to make money and using good marketing is fine. The truth is, however, that if you don't want to invest money, it'll all take a bit longer.

Go to: Part 2.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Unreal Earnings & Other Stuff

I know I'm a bit of a stuck record on the subject of Wealth Toolbox but I thought I'd show you my supposed earnings with them.

As you can see I joined on the 25th of February and one month later my balance is now shown at $237.56. This just illustrates how utter stupid this program is. What legitimate organisation would want to pay me this sum for simply joining? None!

They are now getting even more into the realms of fantasy as they are presently offering $100 for just signing up.

My post Money Making Test: A Warning About Wealth Toolbox gives my full opinion on this ridiculous scheme.

Moving on to something a little more sensible: Meta Tags.

Now it does seem that for some 'experts' Meta Tags are of less value than in the past. Not all search engines use them, we are told - but the fact is that many still do. I feel, therefore, that it makes sense to use these. They are quite easy to do yourself but you can get them generated for you at Free Web Submission.

The same website also has a Keywords Popularity Checker.

You simply enter, what you consider to be, your keywords and the Checker provides statistics on how often your keywords and phrases are searched in major search engines. It will also suggest other related keywords and phrases that may be of use when creating your posts.

That's all for today.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Money Making Updates

A few money making updates today:

Cashlinkr: As you will have seen in yesterdays Weekly Report I received a small payment from this program. I can confirm that, as promised, this was received within 48 hours of the link being published on my blog.

Snag alert: PayPal charges!
Normally when I receive US dollar payments, say from PayPerPost or myLot, there are no PayPal charges incurred, the money is simply converted into UK pounds. Unfortunately with Cashlinkr I lost slightly over 10% of the US dollar amount. I expect the reason for this is because Cashlinkr are Australian but are paying out in US dollars.

Quite frankly if they only pay a small amount for a link this deduction (in the case of non USA residents) makes the whole thing a hardly worthwhile proposition. I won't pass any judgement as yet though. I'll wait and see the amount I am offered next month for any links. Hopefully the amounts will be more substantial. To see my initial post on Cashlinkr please click here.

PayPerPost: I must say that to date this has gone just fine, with payments made exactly on time. I've only completed four sponsored posts, as I don't want too many on this blog. Yesterday, however, I thought I would do another post and earn a few dollars.

Snag alert:
I couldn't find a suitable offer to take up. There seems to be restrictions on a lot of the offers. Even when I had the right PageRank (i.e. PR5) and Alexa Ranking this blog still wasn't suitable because it was on Blogger, most frustrating. I ended up admitting defeat, so no sponsored blog. I'll keep looking, when I have time, over the next week to see if I can find a suitable offer that (a) fits in with the theme of this blog and (2) this blog is deemed suitable by PayPerPost.

No doubt I'll come back to PayPerPost to do a full (tried and tested) report on them. At the moment I am waiting to see how long it takes for them to pay out on their Review My Post program. I have six pending (worth $7.50 each) at the present time.

Gold Poster: This is a forum that claims to pay you for taking part. I was asked to take a look at it by a non blogger. Personally it doesn't do anything for me.

They offer $0.05 per comment and $0.02 per thread and pay out when/if you reach $10. And how do you receive your money? This is their instruction: 'After you have reached $10, simply donate your money to me '0lgi' and in the memo right (sic) your e-gold number.' Olgi lives in Albania.

I've just come across another note on the site from Olgi which says, 'Because I have some personal problems (school stuff and exams) I will not be able to control all your payments on time so I will process them every Friday , Saturday and Sunday because in those days I have some free time!' Draw your own conclusions. I'd say stick to something similar to myLot which is proven to pay out (so far!) and has good traffic volume.

As it's Sunday, and the sun is actually shining, I'm off now for a walk along the beach, which is about eight to ten minutes from where I live.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 26

I'm now at week 26 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

Payments received this week from: PayPerPost and Cashlinkr via PayPal and Convergence Inc by check/cheque.

The programs marked with a * are those that have shown an increase this week.

I think the figures below are self explanatory. All sums are cumulative for the twenty-six weeks.

Money
I have removed Commission Junction from my list, though the money received has been included in my totals. I do not want to give them any more publicity. My CJ post refers.

AdSense $142.63*
Amazon UK £1.84
You Gov £14.75*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am not currently promoting them.
FriendFinderGroup $364.14*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $134.60 (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £33.16
Helium $6.05*
myLot $47.63*
PayPerPost $32.02*
Cashlinkr $4.50

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£728.82 or US$1311.89

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
Google at the top as usual. There were also an additional referrals from Google Blog Search and Search.Blogger not shown below.

Google - 3304 (+348 on week)
Technorati - 163 (+10)
MSN - 60 (+5)
AOL - 68 (+5)
Yahoo - 22 (+2)
Live.com - 7 (+2)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Webcrawler -1 (0)
HotBot - 1 (0)
Total 3627 (+372)


Referrals From Blog Directories. Cumulative figures.
Figures below for 2007, still not a lot happening in the way of referrals from directories. To see 2006 figures see Weekly Report 14.

The figures below may give an indication of Blog Directories that may be worth joining.

Bloglines - 31 (+6 on week)
Blog Show Off - 24 (0)
King Of The Blogs - 21 (0)
Top Lists - 13 (+2)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 11 (+1)
Finding Blog - 10 (0)
Bestest Blog - 5 (0)
World Top Blogs - 3 (0)
Blogdup - 2 (+1)
Grokodile - 1 (0)

Other Directories, about 40 more - 0

Other Referrals

We now come to referrals from blogs I have exchanged links with. What can I say about Kumiko? She produced an amazing 52 referrals, the best any link exchanger has done, in a week, since I started this blog. That's her photo on the left, she even looks nice as well! Thank you Kumiko.

My thanks, however, go to everyone who has exchanged links with me or has kindly put a link on their blog - it is appreciated very much. Please see some of their links in the side column under Interesting Blogs, why not click on a few, you never know what you might find.

Blog AboutYour Blog 188 (+21 on week)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 177 (+52)
The Million Dollar Experiment 131 (+14)
The Gospel According To Rhys 105 (+6)
JCM's RPG Art 89 (+12)
Hipsterpad 62 (+3)
Money Money Money46 (+1)

Miscellaneous referrals from all over the place, top this week are: myLot, Blogger Forum, Klik.Us, MyBlogLog and 1000000 Links.

I think that covers my week. I hope that by publishing this information, over the weeks to come, it may be of a help to other readers. To see any back reports please click here.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Link Love Time Again

Link Love time again, these weeks are flying past much too quickly!

20 Quick Ways To Increase Your Alexa Rank
I don’t always agree with Maki but there is no denying that there are some excellent posts on Dosh Dosh blog. This one says it all in the title, well perhaps not quite everything, but it does tell you what the post is all about. You can’t beat a good title to entice readers.

Along with PageRank a lot of bloggers pay attention to their Alexa Ranking and here Maki tells us how we can improve ours. A first rate, informative tutorial.

Microexpressions.
So what are micro expressions? Here’s what the author writes:

‘A microexpression is a flash of emotion that tells what you are really feeling. For instance, if you ask someone how they are and they reply they are doing great when let's say they are dying inside, people who can see microexpressions will see a flash of despair no matter what this person is actually saying.’

Now I find this sort of thing, along with the more obvious Body Language, fascinating. I like to ‘read’ people and perhaps paying attention to micro expressions may just help.

It’s not that easy to do. There is a test to see how good you are here: Facial Expressions Test. Have a go and see how you get on.

Finding Your Niche.
I picked this post, from a new blog, for two reasons. (1) She has just joined my community at MyBlogLog and (2) because she writes, ‘I started this blog to record my journey of going from a Stay-at-Home Mom to a Millionaire Mom!’ I’m afraid I only know her as EJ Cooksey but that’s her photo on the right.

A Challenge To Bloggers - A New Kind Of Link Love
So what is this new Link Love? Sue (photo left) suggests that we do an image link to our favourite cause or charity. To encourage us she writes, “I will publish links to the first 20 blogs that contact me (via comments) who show their altruism by creating an image link(s) on their blogs to their favorite cause or causes.”

My link is to the Cornwall Air Ambulance, that’s their new helicopter on the right.

Text Link Ads.
Tom has given me useful blogging and money making tips in the past. This is his latest post. Text Link Ads are now accepting Blogger users and offer a way to monetise blogs. Get the nitty gritty from Tom.

I think that’s enough Link Love today as my wife is getting suspicious as to what it all means! Last weeks Link Love here. Tomorrow is my next Money Making Weekly Report.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Predicting Google PageRank

There has been quite a lot of talk of how we will be seeing the new PageRankings 'soon'. Though I'm not sure how long a 'soon' really is.

With Google PageRank in mind I got to wondering what mine would be for this blog next time. At the moment it's a PR5 and I came to the conclusion that this is probably where it would remain. I haven't made any conscious efforts to try and improve this. The diagram, by the way, supposedly shows how PageRank works!

I thought I'd get a few PageRank Predictions from various websites that offer this service, to see if they were any good.

iwebtool.
This is the tool most people seem to use for PageRank predictions and they forecast my next PR would again be a 5.

Future Rank
Also predicted a PR5

Self Seo
Again another 5. So by now I was thinking that my own forecast was correct - and without the aid of backlink statistics and all sorts of other things.

Page Rank prediction.
They predicted a PR6. So I thought I'd try one more and picked:

RustyBrick
This is what they predicted, in their words:
'Results: Your current Google PageRank is 5. Based on our calculations, we predict your future PageRank after the next Google update will be 10.'

10! This cheered me up no end! Then I thought that perhaps their 'tool' was a little rusty in line with their name.

After this short flurry of excitement my own opinion is still that I'll get another PR5. We can all dream though.

If you simply want to check out your current PageRank try Blog Flux.

Good luck,
Mike.

Further Reading:
The Quest for the Golden Google PageRank
Learn To Do Effective SEO (In Less Than 350 Words)


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How To Make Money With Chain Letters

Chain letters. We've probably all received them either though the mail or by email. You will no doubt have read all about how they cannot work mathematically. The question is though, "If they do not work why do they continue to flourish?"

The answer to this is that, though they do not work for the average person, the real truth is that there are people who do make money out of chain letter style programs.

How do they do this?

The way to make money from chain schemes is either:

(1) Start them yourself or
(2) Get yourself known within the 'chain' business circle. These people are contacted straight away when a new program is launched.

If you are not starting the chain program yourself, and are therefore (2) as above, you have to:

Build a group of contacts who will follow your lead.

If you do this you'll make money. It's a format worked over and over by certain people. If you get in at the beginning, and have people who will follow you into the scheme, you should make money.

If you do work this system, however, you have to be happy with the knowledge that:

(a) The majority of people who join later will lose their money?
(b) You are making money out of other peoples' naivety and vulnerability?

Anything with a list of names, and where money is involved, is best avoided. You may think of it as a bit of fun or a gamble. Fair enough. But remember you are helping spread something that will ultimately make people lose money. Not a very pleasant thought.

Of course there can be a funny side to some chain letters. I'm sure a lot of you will have read this, or something similar. It made my wife smile!

'This chain letter was started in hopes of bringing relief to other tired and frustrated women. Unlike most chain letters, this one does not cost anything. Just send a copy of this letter to five of your friends, who are equally tired and frustrated. Then bundle up your husband or boyfriend and send him to the woman whose name appears at the top of the list, and add your name to the bottom of the list. When your turn comes, you will receive 5,625 men. One of them is bound to be better than the one you already have.

At the writing of this letter, a friend of mine had already received 184 men, 4 of whom were worth keeping. Remember — this chain brings luck. An unmarried woman living with her widowed mother was able to choose between an orthodontist and a successful gynecologist. You can be lucky too, but do not break the chain! One woman broke the chain, and got her own husband back again.'

I must stress that I am not recommending that you start up a chain letter. Or send off your partner!

Further advice about chain letters can be obtained from the United States Postal Inspection Service or the UK Department of Trade & Industry or Department of Consumer and Employment Protection (W. Australia).

Good luck,
Mike.

Further Reading:
The World Of Ponzi Schemes


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Make Money With Monthly Links

I saw a post on Tap Blog about CashLinkr who will pay for you to place links on your blog on a monthly basis. They say they will pay up to $120 per link - but I took this as to be a bit of a come on.

CashLinkr write: 'Your payout figure is calculated based on your PageRank, Alexa score and a number of other factors.'

Anyway, I thought I'd join to see what happens in reality and whether this is a genuine money making opportunity for bloggers.

I got a quick response from them by email. They wrote: 'During the first month at CashLinkr you will be given a special link that will count click-throughs, so we can determine how much to pay you in coming months.'

For this link they offered me $4.50 (payment within 48 hours by PayPal).

The email continued: 'After a month we will email you again with details of a new link and an improved payment amount. Your future payment will be calculated using your PR, Alexa Rank and Click-throughs.'

$4.50 is hardly worth the effort but I accepted the offer. Ever the optimist, the next offer might be more worthwhile.

This is the link I am being paid for: Free Ringtone.

Well at least it isn't going to take up much space!

I'll keep you updated as to what happens.

Good luck,
Mike.


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A Blog About Making Money Makes Money

I came across a post today on the blog, Don't Click This, which posed the question as to whether Mike's Money Making Mission is making money because it is about ... making money.

The writers actual words were, 'The thing is though, his blog is about making money with a blog, which is actually why he is making money.'

For a moment this got me thinking, especially when the post went on to say, 'I’m merely saying that blogs of this nature are easily misinterpreted as a representation of the general market, when in fact most average blogs are not ones with this subject matter.'

I sort of understand the point being made i.e. if this blog wasn't about making money, would it still be making money?

I think the answer to that question is: It depends on what the theme of the blog was instead of being about money making.

My own opinion is that blogging can make money. There are a couple of things, though, that make life easier.

Firstly, if the blog has a well defined theme or subject matter.

If, for an example, a blog is about soccer, and soccer only, then it can make money. All that's necessary is to have adverts, affiliate programs etc relative to soccer. This isn't rocket science. If readers are interested in soccer there's a good chance that they will click on ads etc. that may be of use to them.

It's simply knowing what your market is and filling the needs of those readers.

This may, however, be more difficult if a blog has random subject matter, on whatever flights of fancy (FOF) the blogger has on any particular day. Obviously it is then a little harder to define what the 'market' actually is.

Even with FOF blogs a sector could still be ascertained by such things as age. Perhaps readers are teens or silver surfers and ads could be directed specifically for the majority of visitors. It's really a matter of 'knowing' your 'customers', as in any business.

Of course, the primary need to make money is:

Traffic.

Traffic is the life blood of any blog. Lots of traffic = lots of money, especially if this falls into a certain category i.e. lots of soccer fans, as per our previous example.

A mountain of traffic, though, will produce clicks regardless and, therefore, money for any blog - even if of a general nature.

So, does this blog make money because it is about money? Yes! And this is simply because this interests a large percentage of the blog's visitors. But equally, providing it has sufficient hits, a blog about soccer, dogs, fashion, music etc. would make money if any promotional material was also about soccer, dogs ...

Define your traffic and fill their need.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Money Making And Promoting Your Blog With Forums

You will no doubt have noticed from my Weekly Reports that one of my biggest miscellaneous referral sources, for visitors to this blog, is Blogger Forum.

The fact is that posting on forums for free is one of the fastest ways you can either:

(a) attract visitors to your blog,
(b) advertise affiliate programs or
(c) promote your own products.

Let me say straight away that you have to comply with various etiquette and rules of individual forums. Nevertheless regular posting on forums can produce rewards for money makers. This is, for instance, one of the ways I make money with some of the dating and introduction programs, such as the FriendFinderGroup, where I am an affiliate.

Now I'm not going to advise you on what forums you should use. This is dependent on the theme of your blog or any affiliate programs you may be promoting.

What I can do, however, is to give you a couple of sources for finding forums for your particular niche or product. Try these two forum directories:

Big Boards and
Board 123
Both of the above have categorised lists of forums. Big Boards have something like 1900+ listings and with Board 123 you can also start your own forum for free if you wish.

Though forums can produce referrals and business there is still work to be done plus you must, as I have already indicated, follow the rules.

For example, it's not a good idea to sign up to a forum and immediately start a thread containing your affiliate link. This could get you kicked off or put the backs up of established members.

Once you have decided on the forums, relative to your blog or products, you have to go about gaining a good reputation. This will take at least a couple of weeks of regular input: commenting on threads, starting your own and so on.

After this groundwork it is then time to think about promotion. This is mainly done through your forum signature where you can usually enter links to your blog, affiliate programs etc. The more attractive you can make your signature, the more it will get noticed.

Look out for forums with good traffic themselves - and also read the rules. Some, for instance, will not allow links in signatures or may only allow them after members have completed a certain number of posts. Others may not let you put live links in threads. Make sure you join forums that don't have too many restrictions.

As with all businesses there is always 'work' to be done. Put in the time, with good standard posts, and worthwhile results can be obtained. This really is a way to make money from nothing.
Good luck,
Mike.

Further reading:
Money Making Test - FriendFinderGroup
Making Money With Personal Ads
myLot, Money & Referrals
Money From Signing Up New Affiliates


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