Money Making Weekly Report - Week 28

I'm now at week 28 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and make money using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

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

I think the figures below are self explanatory.

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 $158.86*
Amazon UK £1.84
You Gov £16.50*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am no longer promoting them.
FriendFinderGroup $373.35*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $142.60* (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $287.76 (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £40.63*
Helium $7.18*
myLot $49.43*
PayPerPost $32.02
Cashlinkr $4.50

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£758.25 or US$1364.85

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
Have now topped a cumulative of 4000+ referrals from search engines. Google at the top as per usual. There were also additional referrals from Google Blog Search and Search.Blogger not listed below.

Google - 3987 (+356 on week)
Technorati - 183 (+10)
AOL - 79 (+4)
MSN - 67 (+4)
Yahoo - 27 (+3)
Live.com - 9 (+1)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Webcrawler -1 (0)
HotBot - 1 (0)
Dogpile - 1 (0)
Total 4356 (+378)

Referrals From Blog Directories.
A new entry this week. I joined World Blog Collection and had 9 referrals in the first week. Thefigures are 2007 totals, to see 2006 figures see Weekly Report 14.

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

Bloglines - 36 (+5 on week)
Blog Show Off - 29 (+3)
King Of The Blogs - 21 (0)
My Blog Directory 23 (+3)
Top Lists - 14 (0)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 11 (0)
Finding Blog - 10 (0)
Fuel My Blog 10 (+1)
World Blog Collection 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
I've added a new entry into my Link Exchange Top List, this being the blog How To Make It. Matt and Kumiko still at the top. 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 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 218 (+18 on week)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 212 (+19)
The Million Dollar Experiment 145 (+3)
The Gospel According To Rhys 113 (+4)
JCM's RPG Art 112 (+5)
Hipsterpad 66 (+2)
Money Money Money 50 (+3)
How To Make It 42 (+5)

Miscellaneous referrals from all over the place, top ones 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.

Best wishes,
Mike.

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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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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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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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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 24

I'm now at week 24 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

I am able to include PayPerPost this week as I have had posts approved plus have also received a payment from them via PayPal. It all seems to be working okay to date.

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-four 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 $124.32*
Amazon UK £1.51*
You Gov £13.50*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am no longer promoting them.
FriendFinderGroup $363.90*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $91.40 (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $182.75 (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £33.16*
Helium $4.66*
myLot $44.24*
PayPerPost $22.52*

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£624.17 or US$1123.51

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
For the sixth week running there has been an increase in referrals from search engines, 443 this week, with 417 of these arriving from Google. There were also referrals from Google Blog Search taking their total to 160.

Google - 2582 (+417 on week)
Technorati - 139 (+7)
AOL - 52 (+12)
MSN - 49 (+5)
Yahoo - 18 (0)
Live.com - 4 (+1)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Webcrawler -1 (+1)
Total 2846 (+443)


Referrals From Blog Directories. Cumulative figures.
Figures below for 2007. To see 2006 figures see Weekly Report 14.

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

Blog Show Off - 24 (0)
King Of The Blogs - 21 (+2)
Bloglines - 21 (+2)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 10 (0)
Finding Blog - 10 (+1)
Top Lists - 9 (+2)
Bestest Blog - 5 (0)
World Top Blogs - 3 (0)
Blogdup - 1 (0)
Grokodile - 1 (0)

Other Directories, about 40 more - 0

Other Referrals
These are my Top Link Exchangers for this week - figures are for 2007 only. The weekly figures are for a 5 day period only. I was late doing the Weekly Report last week as I had a long weekend break. Top two for the 5 days were as per last week: Kumiko's Cash Quest and Blog AboutYour Blog . My thanks, as usual, 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 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 155 (+10)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 109 (+15)
My Quest To Make Money On The Internet 108 (0)
The Gospel According To Rhys 95 (+7)
The Million Dollar Experiment 96 (+8)
JCM's RPG Art 70 (+4)
Hipsterpad 49 (+6)
Money Money Money44 (+4)

Miscellaneous referrals from all over the place but as usual the top ones are: 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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Money Making Weekly Report - Week 23

I'm now at week 23 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

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-three 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 $114.92*
Amazon UK £1.01
You Gov £13.00*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am no loner promoting them.
FriendFinderGroup $353.87*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $91.40* (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $182.75 (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £29.20
Helium $4.34*
myLot $44.71*

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£595.45 or US$1071.81

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
Again more referrals arriving from the search engines, 367 this week, with 341 from Google. Google's Blog Search also brought in 20 referrals taking their total to 146.

Google - 2165 (+341 on week)
Technorati - 132 (+3)
MSN - 44 (+3)
AOL - 40 (+17)
Yahoo - 18 (+3)
Live.com - 3 (0)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Total 2403 (+367)


Referrals From Blog Directories. Cumulative figures.
Figures below for 2007 and this week - as I was away for the weekend - are for a nine day period. To see last years figures see Weekly Report 14.

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

Blog Show Off - 24 (0)
King Of The Blogs - 19 (+2 for week)
Bloglines - 19 (+8)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 10 (+1)
Finding Blog - 9 (+2)
Top Lists - 7 (0)
Bestest Blog - 5 (0)
World Top Blogs - 3 (0)
Blogdup - 1 (0)
Grokodile - 1 (0)

Other Directories, about 40 more - 0

Other Referrals
These are my Top Link Exchangers for this week - figures are for 2007 only - again these are for a nine day period. Blog AboutYour Blog is in top spot for the nine days with 30 referrals and Kumiko's Cash Quest second with 26. 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 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 145 (+30 for week)
My Quest To Make Money On The Internet 108 (0)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 94 (+26)
The Gospel According To Rhys 88 (+9)
The Million Dollar Experiment 88 (+14)
JCM's RPG Art 66 (+8)
Hipsterpad 43 (+7)
Money Money Money41 (+3)

Miscellaneous referrals from all over the place but as usual the top ones are: 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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