Celebs Embracing Social Networking For Making Money

More and more celebrities, musicians and the like are embracing the power of social networking for increased exposure and profits.

The latest is the rapper 50 Cent who has over one million 'friends' on MySpace but has now started his very own social networking site Thisis50.com.

So why bother if you already have a million friends elsewhere?

It makes money!

As Chris Broadway Romero who handles Thisis50 explains, "The thing that separates Thisis50 from MySpace is we control the e-mail database. We can e-mail members if we want to."

Celebs and musician networks aren't meant to replace Facebook, MySpace etc. but to supplement them and, as Gina Bianchini of Ning says, "(Artists) think about MySpace and Facebook as funnels for their own social networks."

Setting up your own network, whether a celeb or just a blogger, is relatively cheap. For example Ning charges just $34 per month for a site and hosting.

One of the important facts is that visitors buy from social neworking sites. A good example on the celebrity circle is Kylie Minogue's network KylieKonnect. This was launched in Autumn of 2007 and nearly 25% of users have either made a ringtone download or made a merchandise purchase.

Get a like minded group of any sort together and it is a captured market. You know their interests and can therefore tailor the right products to match. Sales are bound to be a higher percentage than with a mixture of visitors with varying interests.

Years ago Newsletters were used to link people with similar interests. I used to do one myself in the 90's, which was very effective. Now we have to think Social Networking on the Internet.

The possibilities are enormous and it's not just for the likes of celebrities and musicians. It can be for absolutely any subject or niche.

How much money would you make, if you knew exactly what your readers interests were?

Good luck,
Mike

Secret Of Making Money With Images

I've mentioned this before but images, within a post, can bring referrals once they get onto the search engines - especially Google.

On one of my blogs I've now had the best part of a quarter of a million referrals from Google Images and this is a serious contribution to making money i.e. visitors via the images may click on ads etc.

Also I realised, a while back, that images, photos and the like can actually earn you money if you use these as links.

When I was going through some blog stats I noticed that quite a few readers click on images. You can see this on stats such as those provided free by MyBlogLog.

I guess many click on the images to see it a larger size or maybe just out of curiosity. Whatever the reason the thing is that a few will click.

Following this realisation I started using some of my images as links, preferably so that they go to something relative to the picture but also to something that might make me money.

I don't do this with every image as I think this would be overdoing it. If there's a good reason why someone might want to see the picture perhaps a bigger size I leave things how they are. I wouldn't make thumbnails links, for example, because readers would expect to see a larger image when they click.

I think, however, making an image a link is acceptable in circumstances I have stated. It's a matter of balance and not overdoing it - as are a lot of things in life - unfortunately!

For those, who may not know, with Blogger, it's simply a matter of replacing their link with your own choice.

I've used an image of Leona Lewis, as she's in the news today, as an example. I simply removed the blue circled area in the HTML and then replaced it with my own link to my celeb blog.


As you will see below I also used target="_blank" in the link to make the link open in a new window and also used alt to say 'Leona Lewis USA no. 1'.


To sum up, for some blog niches, images and photos can:

(1) Bring you referrals and
(2) Make you money.

... a picture paints a thousand words!

Good luck,
Mike.

Some Say Timing Is Everything

I was wondering if you ever give any thought as to the time of day you publish your posts?

I was looking at some stats and, with one of my celeb blogs, there is a definite pattern as to when I get the most visitors, as can be seen from the chart below.


They are UK times shown and I get fewest hits between 5a.m. and 12a.m. UK time. No doubt this ties in with the fact that 57% of the traffic comes from the USA.

Because of this I try to post any USA celebrity stories at about 3 to 4p.m. which is about 9 to 10 a.m. in California, for example. (You can get other city times by entering 'time in xxxxxxx' in Google)

The time difference might be an advantage if there is a hot story and you can beat America to it while they are still sleeping. Or there again, perhaps it doesn't make an iota of difference! And, of course, Australia and New Zealand can beat the UK to it. Time is strange stuff.

As for days of the week my celeb traffic is pretty consistent other than a slight drop on Sundays.


As I've said before I think it's possible to get too bogged down with stats, theories and figures but there could be an advantage to posting at certain times for some niche blogs. It's perhaps worth giving some thought to.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Discovering And Slaying Blogging Myths

Blogging is a strange old world in that it is often very repetitive within some niches. By this I mean that the same, or very similar, story or idea is repeated over and over.

A situation then arises which, even if something isn't exactly true, it starts to become virtually true in many readers eyes. In this way certain myths and beliefs come about.

Of course this repetition can work to our advantage if we are the source of the initial story or idea. Lots of inward links can follow. It's the way link bait works.

However this copying of the same something or other can also cause a lot of mistruths to circulate. You only have to look at the celebrity world to see this and also, dare I say, within the money making niche.

I was reminded of all of this when reading something attributed to Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com whereby she crushed a few SEO myths that are often generally circulated. A few examples:

You need to submit URL's to search engines. Not true, as long as you have an inward link to your site it will be found and indexed.

You need to make your keywords bold or maybe italic. Not true.

You need a Google Sitemap. This won't change or alter your site ranking and is not needed for the average website.

Duplicate content will get your site penalised. Not true, though search engines will filter out the duplicates in favour of the original copy (or what they believe to be the original).

Reciprocal links do not have any value. Not true, they are very helpful especially if from the right site.

Frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true, so those tools of how often your blog is spidered aren't really of value.

There are lots more besides these but the message is, as with reading the tabloids, take everything with a pinch of salt. What someone writes on a blog isn't necessarily true, no matter what their reputation.

There is nothing like personal experience in life to discover what is myth and what is actually true.

Good luck,
Mike.

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A Video Widget To Make Money - Perhaps!

I know I seem to be mentioning Voxant a lot but, as it is earning me decent money, I thought I'd keep you updated with a new style widget that they now have. They call it a Headline Player.

I've put an example, titled Business News Feeds, in the right hand column of this blog. As you'll see it's designed to fit where there might not be the space for a full size video (it's 180x400).

I'm not 100% convinced that it will get many clicks because it is merely a list of 20 video titles - so may not mean much to visitors.

One of the problems I also see is that if someone clicks on a title the video is seen via a pop-up. Now most likely, like me, you'll have a pop-up blocker - so you can see the snag.

It's necessary for the reader to temporarily allow pop-ups to view the video. Okay, this doesn't take much effort but, unless I was really interested in something, I personally wouldn't bother to do this. I'd just get irritated and move on. Mind you, my wife says that a lot of things irritate me!

So will this new Voxant widget earn me extra money? To be honest I don't think so. I'll therefore stick to their more standard sized videos, but it's another tool that is available.

I think that with blogging, and anything else for that matter, we have to continually try and make changes that will improve what we are doing. Sometimes they will be beneficial and sometimes they won't. The point is that it's very easy to get complacent with what we are doing and, as that corny old cliche tells us: If we do what we always do we'll get what we have always gotten.

It probably depends on what we are now getting ...

Good luck,
Mike.

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Making Money With Zlio In USA, UK and France

I wrote a post Making Money With Zlio way back in March 2007. I said at the time that Zlio was only a possible money maker if 'you have visitors to your blog from the USA.'

Times have now changed.

You can now set up your own UK Zlio store in additon to the USA option.

The only real difference is that you can now stock your store with UK goods with prices in UK £'s.

Oh yes, and also you can have a French Zlio store as well! This time with prices in euros.

Just in case you aren't aware of Zlio this is how they describe what they offer:

"With Zlio you can open your own store even if you have nothing of your own to sell. You pick from products offered by our name brand merchants to populate your store, and sell anything you're interested in online."

In other words they offer a free website and you choose the sort of goods you want to sell from all of those on offer.

I always try to be truthful so I have to admit that I haven't done over well with the USA store I set up. But there again I haven't really tried to promote it properly. As with any business you only get out relative to the effort that you put in.

However, with three areas to cover - USA, UK and France - there must be potential.

It all boils down to the same old thing: Can you get sufficient traffic to your Zlio online store?

If you can, you'll make money. If you can't you won't make money.

The opportunity is there to try and it doesn't cost anything to have a go. It's up to us as individuals as to whether we can actually make any decent money with Zlio.

Good luck,
Mike.

P.S. Zlio ads say that it takes only 5 minutes to set up a store - it took me much, much longer!

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Money Making With Voxant

As I told you in my last post I won an iPod shuffle from Voxant and it arrived this morning.

There's no getting away from it that these sort of incentives work. Okay it's not a massive valued prize but it's certainly turned me on to Voxant even more positively. Mind you I was pretty keen already as the check I received from them this month was for over $400 - which was very acceptable!

One bit of news about Voxant is that their new method of payment to affiliates will be by PayPal. From my own point of view, living outside of the USA, this is a big advantage and should appeal to more people worldwide.

I'm always looking for snags but to date I haven't found any at all with Voxant and can happily recommend them to other bloggers.

They have a vast range of videos for blogs from news to politics, health, sports and so on. Should be something for most niches. Here's a selection from their 'This Stupid Planet' category.



Oh and if you want to know more about the iPod shuffle click here for UK and click here for USA.

Never miss an opportunity to try and sell on a money making blog!

Good luck,
Mike.

Making Money While On Holiday

It's good to be back in England - storm warnings, high winds and more to come! To think there I was in the Spanish sunshine just a few hours ago - and have a suntan to prove it.

It was a great break. No computers, no phones, no television, no newspapers. Now it's back to reality.

I was a little concerned about leaving my blogs 'unattended' but they seem to have ticked over okay without my help. In fact on my Celebrity Insider blog I had over 11,000 visitors on one day I was away - haven't checked yet to see what everyone was looking at - but glad they did!

Waiting for me were payments from Google, Voxant, WidgetBucks, Sexy Ads and a couple of other programs, which was a nice 'welcome home'. I also see that I have won an iPod shuffle from Voxant for Celebrity Insider for 'extraordinary use of Voxant content' see here. Think I'll have to go away more often!

I'm still catching up on things generally. I did see, however, that the FriendFinder Group, which I promote on other blogs, has now included Penthouse on their list of websites that can be promoted. Penthouse recently bought the FriendFinder Group.

Okay Penthouse isn't the sort of thing that is suitable for all blogs but it does offer some decent commission: $35 per order, for example, if the 'Pay Per Order' option is chosen. One sign up with the FriendFinder Group allows you to promote over 20 different websites, including Penthouse. And they pay out on time.

I'd better have a look at what else is happening in the blogging world.

Good luck,
Mike.