Do Your Best And Persist For The Next 60,000,000 Miles

I'm sure we all have a few problems with our blogsand our lives from time to time. It's not surprising really when travelling at 66,000 miles per hour. I mean, at this speed, how can anyone expect to stay on track all of the time. There are bound to be a few bumps occasionally.

Problems or difficulties in general don't often affect me too much. I have quite a laid back approach to life. All hell can break out around me and I'll be wondering what all the commotion is about.

I care deeply about certain things but, let's face it, we sometimes make a big fuss over minor issues and worry about things that may never happen.

If the majority of our worries don't actually materialise, why get stressed out and lose sleep when it isn't necessary? If I do get irritated with life, or get puffed up with self importance, I tend to think about where I am.

Along with everyone else I'm on this huge globe, with a thin rocky crust containing fire, which is rotating on a tilted axis at around 1000 m.p.h. The globe is also travelling in orbit around an enormous ball of burning hydrogen at a speed of 19 miles per second. We'll all travel nearly 60,000,000 miles this year.

The earth has been around for millions of years and will carry on for millions more. By comparison our life span is less than a blink of an eyelid. So does it really matter if someone leaves a spam comment or if our blog visits are slightly down?

Our situation is almost laughable, someone is having a huge joke at our expense. All we can do is our best and persist. If we do this good things can happen - and our blogs can become successful.

Yes, it's all about doing our best and doing it persistently - and hanging on when the journey gets a bit bumpy.

Good luck,
Mike.

Seven Steps To Get Anyone To Do What You Want

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Keywords The Key To Search Engine Referrals

I've done okay with getting referrals from search engines, especially with my celeb blog, and because of this I've had a few emails asking how I've managed this.

There's a heap of experts out there all telling the supposed secrets of SEO (search engine optimisation) but really it's quite simple. It must be because I haven't done anything special to get my referrals. This is how I see it. No doubt some will say it's all blatantly obvious, but life doesn't have to be 'difficult, 'clever' or that awful word 'evil' to be successful.

I feel there are really two main sets of keywords for a blog.

Set 1: There's one lot for the blog itself, relative to the overall subject matter or niche of the blog and

Set 2: Another set of keywords for each individual post.

With Set 1 it's all about the main theme of your blog e.g. with this blog words like, 'money' and 'money making' probably come to mind. It's these words though that are the hardest to get onto the front page of searches. The simple reason is that there is a lot of competition from the big boys and professional websites for a lot of the top blog niches.

With Set 2 it's a whole lot easier. Simply because you can pick on a subject to write about that is a little more obscure and with a reduced number of people after the same top spot.

I have spoken before about trends. To me though, as I've previously written, you don't want the established trends, the big names, things that are always in the news. You want subjects on the way up, that will become established in the future. Get in first or at the beginning and anticipate what will become news. In other words you don't want Paris Hilton you want another slapper just starting out.

Still with Set 2 in my opinion the keyword(s) should be:

(a) in the title of the post.
(b) in the first or second sentence. I suggest you also make the text bold for the first use of the keyword(s)
(c) again in the sixth or seventh sentence.
(d) in the 'alt' code of a photo or image whenever possible.

If it's a long post it's usually possible to throw the keywords in a couple more times but don't overdo it. It mustn't appear spammy and remember that posts should ultimately be for the reader and not the search engine.

Long tail keywords are also good because they get better quality visitors - and that's what we all want, isn't it? These are phrases of 3 or 4 words that someone might use in their search. Say your keyword is 'money', then 'how to make money' or 'money from blogs' would be something that could well be searched.

Actually I wouldn't use something like 'money' as a keyword as there is too much competition -and it's not something new or on the way up!

If we now go back to Set 1 of the keywords these are used exactly in the same way. There will be times when posts hone in on the main essence of the blog. I would also suggest that these are included in the meta tags within the blogs HTML.

And really that's it.

I guess to help things along I'd also recommend:

(i) including a few links within posts so they are seen by the search engines as being more informative and
(ii) doing the best you can to get good links into your blog.

It's possible to go much deeper into keywords and SEO but sometimes, as I've already indicated, it's best to keep things simple - KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.

And that's definitely it!

Good luck,
Mike.

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Special Limited Offer: Links for one month only $7.50! PageRank 5 blog - see top of right hand column.

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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 42

I'm now at week 42 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

Not a very special week income wise, just over $60 - but every little helps, as someone or other said to someone. Also it's really best to look at money making results on a monthly basis.

Here are some of the money making programs I'm involved with, in alphabetical order.

AdSense $478.29
It keeps on bringing in some money - a bread and butter moneymaker. I'm down on the 'highs' of $60-$70 per week that I've had in the past but I'm reasonably happy overall with AdSense.

Amazon UK £3.98 ($7.96)
Another 18p (36c) this week - quite dizzy at the thought! My Amazon aStore is: Blogging Good Blogs.

AuctionAds $22.17
I've had to leave this as the same amount as last week as I can't get on their website at the moment. They've had a few problems because of the volume of business they have done - by problems I mean with their site, not with payments etc.

Autograph Dealer Nil
Haven't managed to get anywhere with this program. I'll leave it here though as there are a few ads still running on older posts and you never know in life.

Convergence Inc $142.60 (over 18's only)
Same as with last week, I haven't done any promotion with this. It's 'adult' products. They offer a free website/shop to affiliates.

DIY Dating £53.07 ($95.52)
Yet another I haven't promoted properly. See How To Make Money Dating for info on this program - they offer a free website.

FriendFinderGroup $619.27
My best money maker to date. More info in my post Money Making Test: FriendFinder Group.

Helium $12.17
I've only written two articles for Helium so can't really expect an influx of commission.

IcePoster Nil
Have just joined this affiliate program as I'm hoping it'll go with my celebrity blog. Early days as I've only had 75 clicks to the site so far. They have well over 200,000 images for photos or posters - mostly celebrities, movie stars, sports people etc. but also cars.

myLot $59.07
A good program for newbies who want a little commission and also, if used properly, can get traffic to blogs.

PayPerPost $40.02
I'm waiting approval of an $18.50 post, seems to take about 10 days.

Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
Excellent friends and contact program for affiliates. Lots of sites to promote and good promotional materials.

You Gov £44.75 ($89.50)
A genuine survey and polls company. YouGov want more members from UK, USA and Middle East. UK residents get £1 for joining. For more info this post. Not a get-rich-quick scheme but it's possible to make a few extra pounds/dollars.

I've also made money from Commission Junction, Adbrite, Cashlinkr, Daytipper, but I no longer promote these.

Additional blog income of $380.16 made from advertising and misc. revenue.

All in all I've made around $2730.

Think that's all for this week, thanks for reading this post.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Up to date news and photos on worldwide celebrities.

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AuctionAds: Increase the bid on your site's income!

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Scrap The Money Making Banners

So you sign up for some affiliate marketing programs, to make yourself some money, find the approved banners and position them on your blog. And then what happens? Often nothing.

I don't know what your thoughts are, but I reckon most banner ads are a waste of space. Especially those that flash!

It doesn't seem to matter what the affiliate program is, but the standard banner, flashing or not, doesn't bring in much money.

This doesn't mean that the program isn't any good, or hasn't potential. It's just that banners, unless they are a bit special, are ignored by most Internet users. What they want is the nitty gritty of your blog so their eyes have become almost trained not to see those banners. It's simply guff to wade through to get to the real purpose and substance of the blog or website.

My experience is that a few words with a link, within a post or at the end of a post, is more likely to earn money.

I've tried all sorts of positions for banners: at the top, skyscrapers in the side column, footers, positioning them after a post and so on. But every time a small nondescript text ad will pull in more clicks.

If you can, justifiably, position the links within the main body of the post then so much the better. These are the most successful of all for making money.

As for standard banner ads - I guess they help to fill in empty spaces.

What's your experience?

Good luck,
Mike.

Typical Banner - Good Program - Poor ResponseAnd Why Must It Flash!
A small text ad like this ...
FriendFinder Affiliate Program. I have made over $600, you could do the same.
... is more effective.

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How To get A New House For Free!

Now this isn't a new story, you've most likely heard it before. It came to my attention again recently because my son bought me a book about it.

He knows I love success stories and people who think differently.

First though, I'll ask you a question: Would you swap/exchange the red paper clip on the left for the house on the right? Yes?

The story, as you may have by now guessed, is about Kyle MacDonald who did just that. He set out to trade a red paperclip for a house.

Kyle started his dream by writing: 'This red paperclip is currently sitting next to my computer. I want to trade this with you for something bigger or better, maybe a pen, a spoon, or perhaps a boot. If you promise to make the trade I will come and see you, wherever you are, to trade. So if you have something bigger or better than a red paperclip, email me.

P.S. I'm going to make a continuous chain of 'up trades' until I get a house.'

To cut a long story short he exchanged the paperclip for a fish pen and then, after a total of 14 trades, he finally achieved his goal - a house at 503 Main Street, Kipling, Saskatchewan.

The journey, or adventure as he likes to call it, took him from July 12 2005 until July 12, 2006.

This sort of story always makes me enthusiastic about the power of the Internet and the possibilities it holds to accomplish all sorts of dreams and ambitions.

Kyle MacDonald recorded his story, as he traded, on a blog. Just a normal Blogger blog like this one. In the book he even admits, "My website design skills are pretty hack."

His blog was initially only getting about 30 hits a day, even after he had done a few trades. But then the website Boing Boing, which calls itself a directory of wonderful things, picked up on the story. By 8 a.m. in the morning his counter shot up over 30,000 hits! Suddenly he was getting two people a second visiting his blog.

But that wasn't all. Also at 8 a.m. CBC, the Canadian broadcaster phoned him wanting an interview. And from then on, all that day, all hell broke loose. He had calls from newspaper reporters, radio DJ's, agents, publishers, website developers and so on.

Again this shows what can happen if you dare to think differently and actually follow a dream.

Kyle writes a little on this theme, cliches included:

'Why complain when you can do something about it? If you think you can't do something about it, then you can't. Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but if you are certain that it is impossible, then it is. If you change your mind and have confidence in your idea, just remember that it might not be as easy as you expect. You might lose some sleep and have to make tough decisions. It might not even pan out as you expect. But it is possible. But most of all, please think of the positives to your situation. Complainers are bad enough but earplugs aren't that comfortable, either.'

A red paperclip turned into an adventure which resulted in a new house within one year.

It's good to dream and then try to make the dream come true, especially on the Internet. It is, of course, a lot easier though to roll over in bed, and carry on complaining about life in general.

The last time I looked at Kyle's website he'd had 7,587,951 visitors

The book: One Red Paperclip

Had any good dreams recently?

Good luck,
Mike.

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Money Making Competitions

Fancy a laptop briefcase valued at $180? If so pop along to the excellent Blog About Your Blog and enter their competition. The briefcase is eco-friendly and is made out of recycled materials by eco-handbags.

Competitions generally can be profitable and money making! When I published my magazines a lady called Lynne Suzanne used to write the odd article for me now and again.

Lynne made a business out of competitions. She won them but also later developed this into a business giving hints to others about how they could also be successful. She now runs her own company as a consultant, author and freelance writer.

On the prize front her wins included two cars, worldwide holidays to South Africa, Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls, Miami, Monaco, Amsterdam, Cyprus, Bahamas, Margarita, Venezuela's Angel Falls etc. etc.

Lynne has gone on to write several books, which just emphasises the scope there is on the Internet to make money from all sorts of things.

An idea or niche can develop and expand to a very profitable business. In Lynne's case it all started out from winning a small prize from a local newspaper. Many others have no doubt also done this but few have then gone on and turned it into a business. It's why some people are successful and others aren't.

There are literally thousands of competitions on the Internet. Websites such as MyOffers and choose a prize give all sorts of info on current competitions.

Wonder what niche or theme you could develop? You'll never know if you don't try.

Good luck,
Mike.

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IcePoster. Over 200,000 images. Search for your favourite celebrity, movie star, sports person etc.

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To Clarify Mike's Money Making Mission

I wanted to clarify Mike's Money Making Mission in view of a few emails I have received recently.

My Money Making Weekly Reports show the money I have made, but this is not purely from this blog. I don't actually believe, though there are always a few exceptions, that a ton of money can be made from such a blog.

Since I started blogging I have, however, set up various other blogs - all free blogs, on Blogger. I haven't paid out any money whatsoever in the way of advertising, Google AdWords and so on. Everything I have done has been with freebies - this was my initial aim and I have stuck with this.

My only expenditure is for my broadband connection, but I would have this whether I blogged or not. I don't therefore consider this as outgoings.

The other blogs I have used to generate money have in a way been experiments. I've worked on the theory that it's always possible to make a little money with a blog - even if it's only, say, $5 a week. Everyone should be able to do this! On this assumption therefore 10 such blogs would bring in $50 per week - agreed? Of course if you could greatly increase the earnings per blog (or the number of blogs) the weekly money could increase to all sorts of worthwhile amounts. It's easy enough to do the sums.

On this basis I have set up a variety of free blogs.

Some only have one post but the strange thing is that even these, which are now established, have a reasonable PageRank of 4. They don't get massive traffic but again, 10 times a small amount of hits equals a much larger number.

I like to try different things. My latest experimental blog, which hasn't been a great success so far, mainly consists of feeds - free content in other words for doing very little.

If this turns out to be a waste of time, at least I've had a go at something new and now know that this doesn't actually work. Even if it goes on to get only a couple of hits a day I won't delete the blog. It might still earn a few dollars now and again. With the Internet you never really know what might happen - but if it's gone then definitely nothing will happen.

Here are blogs that help make my money.

Money Blogs
Mike's Money Making Mission
Mike's Business Articles
Successful & Profitable Blogging
How To Become Wealthy Part 1
How To Become Wealthy Part 2
How To Accumulate Money
Celebrity Blogs
Celebrity Insider - Photos & News
Insider Hot News
Celebrity News Feeds
In Praise Of Konnie Huq
Madonna Photos
Hopefully this will have cleared up any misunderstandings that some readers may have.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Money Making Ferrari

As it's my birthday it'll be a quick post today and, no, someone hasn't bought me a Ferrari!

As I've mentioned I've been looking for something compatible money making program to promote on my celebrity blog.

Once you start looking there are hundreds of affiliate schemes. It's at times like this I wish I was still with Commission Junction.

Anyway, the affiliate program I'm going to try is IcePoster. As the name suggests they promote photos and posters of celebrities and also cars - thus the Ferrari photo.

I picked IcePoster mainly because they seem to have a vast array of posters and photos. At today's date they have 232940 images to choose from.

The commission ranges between 25% and 30% depending on volume of sales.

The minimum payout is $20 and this can be paid by various means: PayPal, E-gold, Check, Wire Transfer and Western Union. I've chosen the PayPal option.

What I don't really know, however, is what the market is like for photos and posters. I'll have to wait and find this out for myself.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Recent posts on Shilpa Shetty, Mindy McCready's arrest, Thaila Zucchi etc.

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Celebrity News Feeds. Up to date entertainment news feeds.

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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 41

I'm now at week 41 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

After a slow start the week picked up okay in the end. Not quite the mountain of hits to my celebrity blog as the previous week but it finished okay. I received checks / cheques for $90.39 through the post yesterday and also had £85 ($166) transferred into my bank account from Paypal for blog earnings.

Here are some of the money making programs I'm involved with, in alphabetical order.

AdSense $460.89
Down from the previous weeks $60 to $27 for the last seven days. I'm disappointed in that - but I'd probably think it wasn't sufficient no matter what"

Amazon UK £3.80 ($7.22)
Satus Quo. My Amazon aStore is: Blogging Good Blogs.

AuctionAds $22.17
A little more into the coffers this week and as, the total is over $10 I should receive this at the beginning of August via PayPal.

Autograph Dealer Nil
I can't get anywhere with this. I'll keep it on various blogs until I find a replacement.

Convergence Inc $142.60 (over 18's only)
Again this week I haven't done any promotion with this. It's 'adult' products. They offer a free website/shop to affiliates.

DIY Dating £53.07 ($95.52)
Another one I haven't been promoting properly. See How To Make Money Dating for info on this program - they offer a free website.

FriendFinderGroup $603.38
Through the $600 barrier for earnings this week. By far my best money maker to date. More info in my post Money Making Test: FriendFinder Group.

Helium $11.88
I've only written two articles for Helium so can't really expect an influx of commission.

myLot $58.95
A good program for newbies who want a little commisson but also, if used properly, can get traffic to blogs.

PayPerPost $40.02
I did a sponsored post for them this week, but haven't included the amount as yet. You can earn $7.50, if you are not a PPP member, by reviewing this post. Click on button on right for info.

Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
Excellent friends and contact program for affiliates. Lots of sites to promote and good promotional materials.

You Gov £44.25 ($86.28)
Another couple of pounds this week - a genuine survey and polls company. They want more members from UK, USA and Middle East. UK residents get £1 for joining. For more info this post. Not a get-rich-quick scheme but it's possible to make a few pounds/dollars.

I've also made money from Commission Junction, Adbrite, Cashlinkr, Daytipper, but I no longer promote these.

Additional blog income of $360.16 made from advertising and misc. revenue.

All in all I've made around $2675.

Moving on to Search Engine Referrals.
An improvement this week with 944 referrals from the various search engines to this blog.

As for my new blog, Celebrity Insider - Photos & News, there were 2763 search engine referrals for the week. This takes the total for 47 days to 16545.

My stats for the celeb blog show that I've already had 33669 uniques and with reloads the total zooms up to 74239 - again this is for 47 days.

Top Referrals From Blogs can be seen in the side column.

As regards miscellaneous referrals the top ones for the week were Klik, MyBlogLog and 1000000 Links.

Think that's all, thanks for reading this post.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Up to date news and photos on worldwide celebrities.

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Celebrity News Feeds. Keeping you updated on the latest entertainment news.

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Thank You Links

This week my Thank You Links are to readers who have kindly left comments. I picked out a few at random. Thanks though to everyone who visits this blog - lurkers are welcome!

Seth Godin Sinks the Squidoo Spammers
I wrote a little about Squidoo and the old vic, who describes himself as a hermit philosopher, left an interesting comment. It seems he has had correspondence with Seth Godin, Squidoo founder. The link above is to the relevant post so you can read what Seth has to say.

The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under
Rob left a positive comment to my post It's all About Money Making Cycles. But that's what you'd expect from Rob, he's a positive person and he's on his way to a million. The link is to his blog.

Rachel-ish
Straight after Rob's comment came Rachel's. I nearly didn't give her a link, though, as she mentioned the dreaded word Christmas - I'm still waiting for a decent summer! But she sounds a nice person so I forgave her. She's set herself some good goals - and yes, Rachel, I did hone in on number 3 - sorry! Success follows people who list their goals.

Rupert's World of Blog
Roo wrote a comment about Amazon following my last Money Making Weekly report. He gave a tip about getting more Amazon sales. In his words he 'posted a list of the items that had sold through my amazon associate links on my blog making the list actual links to amazon using my affiliate ID. I was very pleased to see these actually produced traffic to my blog.'

Blogging Fingers.
Matt Jones has an excellent blog with 'blogging ideas, tips, creativity and money making strategies for blogs.' Well worth a visit.

The Gospel According To Rhys
And finally Rhys's blog - just because I enjoy reading it! I particularly liked his recent post The James Bond Tactic For Dealing With Paid Comments.

Friday again tomorrow, where do the weeks go!

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Recent mentions of: Paula Abdul's new man, Charley Uchea's sex show, Gisele Bundchen's massive earnings etc.

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Making Money With Fat Fingers On eBay

Not strictly making money with free blogs today but making money with eBay instead. Though it probably could be adapted for bloggers.

I've talked previously about using the eBay advance search to find out the value that items have been sold for.

I've used this, for example, to find the prices that may be possible for old book titles. Obtain a list of books for sale, from somewhere like a charity shop, and check the advanced eBay search to see if any of them are worth buying and selling on eBay.

Anyway, today a couple more ideas for making some money with eBay.

Firstly items that are listed but with spelling mistakes. These are likely to be sold for less money and attract fewer bidders - and thus could be re-sold for a profit.

A good way to find these is with the website fat fingers. It's easy to use. Simply enter an item, define what country eBay you want to search, and click.

In the example above I searched for Sylvac - a type of pottery - on UK eBay. The result was 27 misspellings of the word. Some were other manufacturers with similar names but there were enough items wrongly spelt to pick up bargains.


Perhaps goods found this way could actually be sold via free blogs. Haven't tried this myself but all things are possible.

The second suggestion, to make money with eBay, is by buying goods in quantity from auction houses or from the eBay's Wholesale and Job Lots site. These could then be split up and sold for profit. I know someone who even does this with multi-buys from a supermarket.

There are all sorts or money making ideas out there if we take the time to look. There are also over 30 more ideas on my post Lots Of Ways On How To Make Money.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Recent posts on Nicole Merry, Keeley Hazell and Hilary Rhoda.

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Don't Scatter The Money Making Seeds Too Wide

I've been looking at some of the money making programs and things that I've joined this year and then never really done anything more about them. Things like Zlio and Squidoo and quite a few more besides.

With blogging it's so easy to keep joining various websites but unless you - or in my case I - do something positive about promoting them it's all a wasted effort. It must be much better to hone in on just a few favourites and really go to town with them - and forget the rest. It's no good doing things by half measures.

The last one I looked at, of the stagnating things I have joined, was Squidoo. I'd actually made some money from it - 25cents!

Squidoo is all about creating various lenses. A lens is really just a page about anything you want and you can have hundreds of these if you wish. When I joined I quickly set up one lens to see how it all worked.

The pages are a little basic but I guess, time permitting, it would be possible to make them look okay.

Squidoo pay royalties to it's members, thus my 25 cents, and this is why some people run dozens and dozens of lenses/pages on different subjects. This is how the website describes their commission payments:

'You recommend great stuff (on your lens). Sometimes you'll recommend a product from Amazon or eBay or CafePress or one of our hundreds of other commerce partners.

Since Squidoo is free to use, we have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep our doors open. So you'll see a few Google ads and SquidOffers on your lens.

Now, since you're the brain behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That's right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties.'

How much could you make? It's the same old story - it depends on how much traffic you can generate and then how many readers click on the ads.

This is what Squidoo reckon:

'If you are an entrepreneur, your lens on a popular topic could generate two or five or twenty dollars a day in clickthrough and affiliate income. Which doesn't sound like much, until you start thinking like an eBay PowerSeller and build twenty or even fifty lenses on a variety of topics. Did you know that 750,000 people make a full or part-time living on eBay now? The same effect will probably happen with lenses.'

It's also possible to make cash from introducing others to Squidoo. As soon as your friend earns $15 you and your friend get $5.

To make money it would be necessary to get into involved within the Squidoo community, the various groups and to publicise your lenses. There is potential providing you have a supply of that special, magic ingredient - time!

While I was checking out the 'things' I had joined I thought I'd have a laugh so I also looked at Wealth Toolbox. My initial $50 (which was given free!) is now 'worth' $317.08 ( payable in 2009). Oh and any new members are now given $100 just for joining. Ha ha ha!

My final thoughts are that money making is all about doing something properly. Concentrate on a few things and forget the rest. This doesn't mean we should miss out on any new, genuine opportunities, it just means being selective.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Yesterday's posts include Hilary Rhoda, fashion model; Charley Uchea, Big Brother housemate; Nicole Merry and her split from Theirry Henry and Jessica Simpson

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It's All About Money Making Cycles

I'm sitting here scratching my head!

It's always easy to write about money making things when everything is going well, many blogs do this. But today I'm going to be different and say, for the last couple of days, things have taken an almighty dive.

Ever since I did my Money Making Weekly Report on Saturday, when I was on a high, things are suddenly not looking quite so rosy.

As a couple of examples, for the week ending Saturday I was averaging 1587 hits per day on my Celebrity blog. Since then, for Saturday and Sunday, this has crashed to only 368 per day.

For the two weeks ending Saturday I was averaging just under $10 a day on Google AdSense. For the last two days this has slumped to only $3.90 per day - relative to the decrease in hits.

Also nothing has much happened over the last couple days on any of the other things I'm involved with. It's been a complete washout - a bit like the weather in the UK. Most odd!

It's why I did a sponsored post yesterday. I thought I'd better at least make some money and an easy $18.50 would help.

So I've got a bit of a challenge to get things back on track. I'm wondering if I'm trying to do too much in too little time. Maybe it's better to concentrate my time and efforts on say two important targets. I'll be giving this some thought.

I like to be honest and say what is really happening with my money making and not hype everything up. I think it's necessary to stress that blogging with free blogs, and without using any capital, can be a bumpy ride.

It's like life. I've always believed in cycles where at times everything goes right and your luck's in. It's the time when gamblers cash in and sales simply drop in your lap - but there are also times when it's the complete opposite.

It's how we manage the lows that's important. It's the time to build, plan and to do something positive. And then the highs will be even higher.

It's also true that the harder you work the luckier you get.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Los Angeles Criminal Law Blog

Here is a blog with a difference in that it is about criminal law & criminal proceedings within the Los Angeles, California area.

The gentleman on the left is Dmitry Gorin, a partner in Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin LLP who are the people behind the blog. They are a Southern California law firm serving the Los Angeles metropolitan area and they focus their practice exclusively on criminal defense. The partners have over 50 years combined courtroom experience.

To see more about this blog, please use the following link: Criminal Attorneys in Los Angeles: Frequently Asked Questions - Law Blog

This is a sponsored post.

Money Making Weekly Report - Week 40

I'm now at week 40 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

Most of the action seems to have been on my Celebrity Insider - Photos & News blog where, for the week, there were 11114 visits. This is a total of 30197 in 40 days since the blog started.

Here are some of the money making programs I'm involved with.

AdSense $434.96
Ticks along nicely without any problems, made about $60 this week from AdSense. Would have liked it to have been more, based on the number of visits I've had. Must try shifting things about a bit and maybe testing to see if Google Search would improve income.

Amazon UK £3.80 ($7.22)
Nothing to add from last week. My Amazon aStore is: Blogging Good Blogs.

AuctionAds $21.47
That's better, actually made some cash from AuctionAds over the last seven days. It's still tough going though as this has come from over 70,000 impressions, giving 590 clicks. This problem is giving their ads a good position. Would they perform better that Google in the same positions? I guess it means doing a few tests to find out.

Autograph Dealer Nil
Been in this for 10 days, had 12307 impressions which only gave 55 clicks - that's only 0.44%. Doesn't look too promising plus some of their affiliate functions don't seem to work properly - or perhaps I'm doing something wrong. Either way I'll be looking for an alternative.

Convergence Inc $142.60 (over 18's only)
Haven't given this much attention recently - it's all about 'adult' products. They offer a free website/shop to affiliates.

DIY Dating £53.07 ($95.52)
Another one I haven't been promoting properly. See How To Make Money Dating for info on this program - they offer a free website.

FriendFinderGroup $599.32
Must be the weather as this has also slowed recently. There is a heap of promotional material so I need to change a few things. I did a report on this program in January Money Making Test: FriendFinder Group.

Helium $11.68
I've only written two articles for Helium.

myLot $58.78
Once more I haven't had the time to go on the site over the past week but, like Helium, it ticks by (very) slowly on it's own.

PayPerPost $40.02
I saw a couple of offers that may be okay for this blog so might just give them a go next week, time permitting.

Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
Excellent friends and contact program for affiliates. Lots of sites to promote and good promotional materials.

You Gov £42.50 ($82.87)
This is a genuine survey and polls company. They want more members from UK, USA and Middle East. UK residents get £1 for joining. For more info this post. It won't make you rich but it's possible to make a little extra cash.

I've also made money from Commission Junction, Adbrite, Cashlinkr, Daytipper, but I no longer promote these.

Additional blog income of $310.16 made from advertising and misc. revenue.

All in all I've made around $2500.

Moving on to Search Engine Referrals.
Only 571 referrals this week from the various search engines to this blog which is the lowest for ages. Must pay more attention to my keywords etc.

As for my new blog, Celebrity Insider - Photos & News, there were 5711 search engine referrals for the week! This takes the total for 40 days to 13782 which is 356 more than on Mike's Money Making Mission for 40 weeks.

My stats for the celeb blog show that I've already had 30197 uniques and with reloads the total zooms up to 67066 - again this is for 40 days.

Top Referrals From Blogs can be seen in the side column.

As regards miscellaneous referrals the top ones for the week were Klik, MyBlogLog and 1000000 Links.

Think that's all, thanks for reading this post.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Up to date news and photos on worldwide celebrities.

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Brand Names, Social Networking & Worst Internet Words

Top UK Brand Names
YouGov have been in the news following one of their many surveys. This time it was on Brand Names within the UK. 3265 of their panel members accessed 1450 brands to come up with the top ones for the UK.

Microsoft came in as number one, knocking Coca-Cola off top spot, with Google at three but surprisingly no eBay on the list.

UK's Top Ten Brand Names
1. Microsoft
2. Coca-Cola
3. Google
4. BBC
5. BP
6. British Airways
7. Lego
8. Guinness
9. Mercedes-Benz
10. Cadbury
It's interesting that when the Superbrands Council marketing experts did a similar survey Google were in first place, followed by Apple and eBay.

YouGov require further Panel Members to complete surveys and polls for payment in USA, UK and the Middle East. They are a genuine company - I have made £42 ($84) with them to date.

Social Networking
Though the likes of Google and Yahoo dominate the Internet the big growth area is Social Networking. MySpace is by far the largest with 189 million users followed by Bebo with 35 million and Facebook with 30 million.

It is, however, Facebook and Bebo that are growing the fastest. So much so that, if they can continue increasing at their present exponential rate, they could be up with MySpace as early as next September. It's unlikely, however, that they could actually do this.

The UK Friends Reunited has now 19.6 million members and it is estimated that 53% of adults in Britain have joined. The website was started in a small semi-detached house before being purchased by the television company ITN for £175 ($350) million.

Worst Internet Words
Going back to YouGov they also did a survey on disliked new words associated with the Internet. The one considered worst by 2000 panel members was 'folksonomy', which started as an amalgamation of the words 'folks' and ' taxonomy'.

The survey was conducted to mark the 10th anniversary of the word 'weblog' - which is now, of course, shortened to 'blog'.

Other disliked words included netiquette (online etiquette), blook (book based on a blog) and webinar (online seminar).

The one I don't like is 'blogosphere.'

That's all for today.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. We have 'those' Amy Polumbo photos plus Liz Hernandez and K-Fed get together and Becks and Posh are off to the USA.

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To Make Money Define The Niche And Visitor Profile

I had one of those 'odd' days yesterday with my celebrity blog - I had 3144 hits. Don't worry, this isn't going one of those 'how clever was that' type of posts.

I got the visits because of posts I wrote back on the 28th of June, and followed up on the 1st of July. All of a sudden this subject became very hot yesterday - but has already fallen away today.

Yesterday though the Google search engine sent around 2000 referrals my way but - guess what? All of those extra hits didn't do me any good at all financially. It was great for my stats but, as a lot of the visitors were Spanish speaking, they weren't interested in my various adverts and affiliate programs.

The moral of this story is that it's the right sort of visitors that we want, if we hope to make money - quality not necessarily quantity. In other words we have to attract a profile of customer to match our niche advertising.

It's sometimes difficult, in lots of cases, to define exactly what our niche is. Often there are various aspects to our subject matter. In the example I've been using the word celebrity covers a multitude of sins.

What is sort of celebrity? Movie or stage star, soap or Shakespeare actor, pop or opera singer, reality show contestant or one of those girls famous for doing nothing etc. etc. They all have a different 'audience'. It's necessary, therefore, to to be very specific when deciding on a niche. There are often niches within a niche.

It's also possible to try to cover too wide a range and endeavour to cater for too many types of people. For instance I tried to start a news blog recently, because the celebrity blog has gone quite well. I've 'given in' already, after giving some more thought to the idea. It's too vast a subject and there is too much competition even if looking for quirky stories.

Following on in a way from yesterday it's so important to define exactly what niche to go for and to also be aware of what profile of visitors will be reading our blogs.

To make money, there's a lot more to blogging than deciding on a vague niche and then plonking a few ads on the page.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. The hot topic, which got all of those hits yesterday, was Ana Paula Oliveira a soccer referee (a real professional one) in Brazil who has decided to pose for Playboy magazine. She's a bit different to the referees I've seen in England!

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Money Making Blogs - The Apprenticeship

I suppose it's natural to want to earn money quickly. It's how life is nowadays. We want everything now, straight away. There's nothing wrong with this. Life is short so it's only right to make the most of every minute.

To build a money making blog on a proper foundation, however, does take time - unfortunately.

Yes, it can be done quickly for short term benefits - build and sell, for example. But a blog that will last long term takes an apprenticeship. This is what the big earners have done. There are exceptions but this is often done with investment and borderline marketing.

It was interesting what Darren Rowse wrote recently:

"... part of me is very glad that I didn’t 'Go Pro' or start commercializing my blogging too early. That first 12-18 months of blogging on a personal blog was very formative. I learned so much about communicating online, building community, writing and the way that blogs operate - to the point that when I began to blog on a commercial level I had a lot of skills that helped me grow those new blogs faster.

The other great thing about that first year or so was that it gave me a love for blogging. I blogged because I enjoyed it and not with dollars in my eyes. As a result I wrote about things that interested me and not what would make money.

In a sense, that first blogging experience was an apprenticeship or training ground for what came later."

In other words he didn't become problogger from the start. He learnt the trade and it was this experience that made him the success he is today.

Though there is a host of information, about how to make money with blogs, it's only when you put everything into practice that you actually appreciate what is necessary to build a blog as a money making business.

There are shortcuts but the greatest ingredient is time - if it's a long term business that you are after.

Again quoting from Darren Rowse:

'I see a lot of bloggers rushing into commercial type blogs that I think could learn a thing or two from starting a personal blog for a few months (or longer). These blogs quite often are on topics that they think will make money (rather than things they know about and love), they quite often have ads slapped all over them (instead of presenting their content as the prime thing on the blog) and they quite often have content that is regurgitated from elsewhere, uninspiring and uninteresting.

These blogs rarely survive longer than a few months because the blogger gets frustrated by the lack of initial earnings (remember it takes a year or so for a blog to 'hit its straps') and has no real interest in the topic to keep them blogging.'

Learn the trade! And, as Darren says: remember it takes a year or so for a blog to 'hit its straps'.

Good luck,
Mike.

Darren Rowse is publisher of problogger the place to go for genuine advice on earning money with blogs.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Over 4000 people read this blog today and yesterday.

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MyBlogLog, Pings And Selling Links

Three things today on: MyBlogLog, Pings and Selling Links.

MyBlogLog Referrals
I was wondering if anyone else has noticed an increase in referrals from MyBlogLog recently? Since they started showing the lastest feeds of posts I have noticed a lot more visitors from their website.

I looked at my stats for yesterday for my celeb blog and saw that I had 55 referrals from MyBlogLog.


I'm not sure if this is through the feeds now showing up on search engines but, whatever the reason, I'd suggest that if you haven't joined MyBlogLog then perhaps it might prove worthwhile.

Also, though I have a couple of trackers, I've found Feedburner stats are quite useful now. Again think about burning your feeds if you aren't already doing so.


Selling Links
Since I wrote the post Money Making With Links I've had a couple of emails asking what a decent price is to charge for a link. This, of course, varies from blog to blog and from PageRank to PageRank. You can, however, get an idea of current link prices on the Digital Point Forums. They have a section for Link Sales where there are links on offer.

Pings - Do They Always get Through On Time?
I know I'm a bit obsessive about pinging, some say it's not necessary or, in the case of blogger, that it's done for you.

I have noticed though that sometimes, if I use say Ping-o-Matic or pingoat, the posts do not show up in various places where I look for ages. I've found that if I do individual pings on say IceRocket and Technorati, on their own sites, the posts show up much quicker.

I can't say that this is defintely the case but it's what I've observed myself over the last seven or eight day.

If there are any newer bloggers who don't know about pings this is pingoat's description of their service.

'Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog contents, thus increasing your blog's popularity.'

And on that note I'll finish for today.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. 1500 visitors read about Syvette Wimberly who 'stole' someone's name, Amy Polumbo - Miss New Jersey and Brian Urlacher's texts to Tyna Robertson.

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Money Making With Links

I like getting paid for links as it's easy money and so much less time and effort than say writing sponsored posts. There's nothing wrong with making money the lazy way - it still has the same value.

I mention this because someone recommended Reverse Links to me as a way of getting paid for links.

On taking a look, however, I decided that it wasn't for me. The reason being was because I felt that, what they were offering, wasn't enough in a monetary sense.

All that I could see on offer were offers for permanent links - i.e. they have to remain on the blog or website for life.

The payments offered were relative to the PageRank. In the examples I saw these were $3 for PR2, $5 for PR3, $10 for PR4, $20 for PR5, $50 for PR6 and so on.

Now most blogs range from PR0 to PR5, few are above this (Mikes Money Making Mission is a PR5), so to my way of thinking these amounts aren't sufficient for permanent links. If this was a monthly rate it would be more realistic.

I don't believe that bloggers should sell themselves short. In fact, never sell yourself short. I learnt this many years ago. I published a mail order newsletter that didn't do that well. Someone with vast experience of M.O. told me to put the price up. I did and the subscriptions increased. Same newsletter but more value was associated with the content.

Back to those permanent links. In the Reverse Links terms it states 'If for any reason you want to remove these links, you must let us know by email, and refund the full price of the link.' Another reason as to why the offers don't appeal to me.

What I suggest, as I have done previously, is that bloggers have their own prices for links and cut out the middle man. The same even for reviews. This way you keep the lot and decide the price - much better!

Good luck,
Mike.


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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Recent news on Bill Maas arrest, Rebecca Loos on Supervivientes, JK Rowling's new image and Amy Polumbo.

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triRESOURCE the triathlon resource for triathletes of all abilities and experience levels. It is designed to be a comprehensive website of relevant triathlon information, links, news and special offers on books and kit.

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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 39

I'm now at week 39 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

This week I've again been concentrating on my new blog Celebrity Insider - Photos & News and it seems to have paid off, at least in the number of hits sense. Yesterday I had 2264 visits!

Here are some of the money making programs I'm involved with.

AdSense $376.01
Slightly better this week made $70. I changed my ads about a little and the colours of the headings. However, the main reason for the improvement was probably the extra hits I had on my celebrity blog.

Amazon UK £3.80 ($7.22)
I tried a few ads last week on the celeb blog but nothing came from it (as yet). My Amazon aStore is: Blogging Good Blogs.

AuctionAds $4.58
Well I've actually made something this week. I joined on the 11th of June. There have been 50471 page impressions, which gave me 488 clicks i.e. less than 1%. Not convinced, as yet, that this is worth while.

Autograph Dealer Nil
I only joined this as an affiliate on Thursday as I thought it may compliment the celebrity blog. Time will tell.

Convergence Inc $142.60 (over 18's only)
It's the same as with the next couple of programs. It's that thing about juggling and keeping all of the balls up in the air. Because of my new blog I haven't had the time to do what I used to do to promote these three properly. I'm hoping though that the celeb blog will pay off over the next few months. I really need to do blogging full time!

DIY Dating £53.07 ($95.52)
Same as I said above. I did a recent post on DIY Dating, How To Make Money Dating. Briefly: They provide a free website and you choose format and sector of people you wish to include on your site from their database. Payout exactly as they say. Worldwide opportunity.

FriendFinderGroup $596.70
This one works! Affiliates can promote over twenty websites with one sign up. There is also a choice of ways to earn - either per click, by order or by percentage. They have always paid me regularly and as expected. I did a report on this program in January Money Making Test: FriendFinder Group.

Helium $11.26
This just keeps ticking along. I've only written two articles. Now if I'd written 20 I'd have probably made over $100. As I keep saying, I like Helium.

myLot $58.53
Again I haven't had the time to go on the site over the past week but, like Helium, it ticks by slowly on it's own.

PayPerPost $40.02
I still can't find any suitable offers to write about for this blog. With the right subject matter and niche some bloggers have made decent money.

Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
Excellent friends and contact program for affiliates. Lots of sites to promote and good promotional materials. I only bother to check my stats on a monthly basis.

You Gov £41.50 ($78.85)
Another few more pounds this week. This is a genuine survey and polls company. They want more members from UK, USA and Middle East. UK residents get £1 for joining. For more info this post. It won't make you rich but it's possible to make a little extra cash.

I've also made money from Commission Junction, Adbrite, Cashlinkr, Daytipper, but I no longer promote these.

Additional blog income of $260.16 made from advertising and misc. revenue.

Moving on to Search Engine Referrals.
896 referrals this week from the various search engines to this blog. This takes the total received from this source to 12910.

As for my new blog, Celebrity Insider - Photos & News, This all went a bit mad last week. Yesterday, for example I had 2264 hits! I had an unbelievable (well at least for me) of 4209 referrals from search engines for the week.

My stats for this blog show that I've already had 19083 uniques and with reloads the total zooms up to 46049. For the last seven days there have been 7980 visits i.e. 1140 per day average. I just hope I can capitalise on this.

My Top Referrals From Blogs were published in a post yesterday.

As regards miscellaneous referrals the top ones for the week were Klik, MyBlogLog and 1000000 Links.

Think that's all, thanks for reading this post.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Up to date news and photos on worldwide celebrities.

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Search For Autographs here of celebrities and sports stars. Also autographed posters, books and Lord of the Rings

Thank You Links

Thank you links this week to the top seven blogs that referred visitors to MMMM for the month of June.

Webtrh
It's a strange world this blogging business. I got most referrals for June from this blog but I'm not really sure what the language is. I presume cz is czechoslovakia. The bit where my blog is listed says 'Jak vydělat peníze na internetu' - no idea what that means, though I was a little worried about the word 'peníze' - but, whatever, thanks!

The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under
Thanks Rob and pleased to see that you hope to make $600 this month. Give him a visit if you haven't done so recently - a genuine bloke.

Web-Dosh
Web-Dosh has a part 1 titled 'The Beginners Guide To Making Money On The Internet' so you can guess the theme of this blog.

Active Duty Military Money and Matters
This is an advice blog for Uniformed Services Members by a Uniformed Service Member obessed with money matters. Lots of good financial advice and suggestions.

doshdosh
Some first class posts on this blog, always well written and detailed by Maki. It's all about making money online. You'll get some useful info here.

Blog About Your Blog
One of my favourites because I've watched this blog grow and develop to a very high standard. It's a place where you can blog about your own blog and read about other blogs.

JCM's RPG Art
Julio from Brazil is another of my favourite bloggers. This one isn't about money but it does show off his artistic talent. You will, however, also find a link to his money making blog.

Thanks also to everyone who has sent traffic my way. It's appreciated very much.

A few days ago I did a post on making money with MySpace. As a further illustration here's the number of friends that Madonna and Paris Hilton have on MySpace: 192346 and 164967. Emphasises what a good marketing tool MySpace can be.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & NewsOver 1500 visitors to this blog yesterday. All about celebrities from around the world. Today's hot news on Amy Polumbo, Miss New Jersey.

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40 Places To Syndicate And Submit Your Articles

Below are a list of 40 Article Directories where you can either:

(a) Syndicate / Submit Your Articles or
(b) Obtain free articles for your blog or website

Why Should I Submit Articles?
There are a three main reasons for submitting articles to the various directories.

(1) For each article published there will be at least one link to your own blog or website. Often you will also be able to write a footnote saying something about yourself or your own website. Depending on how popular your words are, this could send referrals to your website. In other words a good article could well produce traffic. More Traffic=More Money

(2) Other blogs and websites will also be able to reproduce your articles - together with your link and usually the footnote as well. Again this will (or could) bring you more traffic.

(3) The extra links from (1) and (2) above will help with your PageRank. It is therefore advisable to get articles published on a higher ranking PR site to your own.

Why Should I Reproduce Articles From The Directories?
This is something purely optional. The only real benefit is that you get articles for free. This may be of use if you get stuck for something to write or are too busy to put together a post yourself. Personally I feel that your own material should always be used in posts.

The Article Directories below are shown in PageRank order - the benefits to this being as in (3) above

PageRank 6
GoArticles
Article Dashboard
Ezine articles
PostArticles

PageRank 5
ArticleAlley
Article Wheel
EasyArticles
ArticleGarden
I ArticleBeach
iwantcontent
A1 Articles
The Healthy Village

PageRank 4
ArticleHangout
ArticleAddict
Article Bliss
ArticleCat
ArticleCrazy
ArticleDevil
ArticleGo
Article Karma
Article Map
Article Motron
ArticleStreet
Article Way
Content for Reprint
InfoPool
Reprint-Content
WebmasterTips

PageRank 3
Article-Free
Article Attic
Article Blizzard
Article Blotter
Article Codex
Article Connection
Article MS
ArticlesNet
Free Articles Directory
The Content Corner
Top Work At Home List Articles
There are many other article directories as well. Note that these are different from the likes of Helium where you write articles for payment. Where payments are received you rarely get links as well.

With many of the listed directories you can submit the same article without it being exclusive. Check the individual rules about this.

I think that's it for today.

Good luck,
Mike

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Celebrity Insider - Photos & News. Yesterday readers found out why Jennifer Lyn Jackson, Playboy centerfold was arrested, news of Mandie Brady divorcing Wayne plus snippits on Simon Cowell, Lindsay Lohan, Paula Abdul, Charley Uchea etc.

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