Money Making Reality Check

As most of us know a good source of income can arrive from introducing other bloggers and webmasters to the various affiliate and money making programs that we join. There is usually a percentage bonus based on what these people earn.

This is great because it is virtually unearned income but, at the same time, it's where a lot of people also get disheartened.

There is a truth that not many affiliate programs want you to know. This is the fact that most of the people you introduce will do either no business at all or very little.

This doesn't reflect on the affiliate program. It's simply how things work out in any selling niche.

This may sound negative but it shouldn't. There's not a lot you can do about human nature.

What you have to do is to try and introduce as many people as possible and make this as important as selling, or getting clicks, for whatever the products or service is.

Once more this is a numbers game. The more people you introduce the more likely you are to hit on the one or two who will actually produce an income for you.

Before I was self employed and published magazines I was a manager for a finance and credit company and had a team of around twenty sales men and women.

Out of these twenty there would normally be one real go getter who would smash sales targets, win prizes and do a mountain of business.

After this there would be four or five who did okay and then things deteriorated with the moaners at the bottom of the pile - who would have many excuses as to why they hadn't done well.

And this is how it was, no matter how you swapped personnel.

It was the same when I was involved with multi-level marketing. Sign up dozens of new distributors and only a couple would do any worthwhile sales.

Saying this shouldn't put anyone off from trying to get new affiliates, agents or whatever you want to call them. It's simply meant as a reality check.

If you keep going what you will eventually get are one, two or three really productive people who will earn you a good income. They are out there but you have to wade through a lot bodies to reach them. Once you do the cash tills will start to ker-ching.

Always play to your strengths not your weaknesses. If you get someone good and there is a way to help them then do so. Forget the strugglers as it's doubtful that, however much effort you put in, they will make you anything worthwhile.

It's a sad fact but, in all walks of life, there are winners and losers. Sign up a few winners and the world is your oyster - and other such cliches.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Making Money With Free Stores

Further to my post Money Making But Not For Everyone here's their check, on the right, that I was expecting from them. Again paid on time.

The question always being asked is: How do you promote such money making programs which offer free stores?

By this I mean programs that give you a free website: Things like: DIY Dating, Amazon aStores, Convergence (over 18's only) and Zlio.

The answer is: Pretty much as you would any blog.

Here is a quick list, but there are hundreds of others once you give the subject some proper thought. Some may work, some won't - that's life.

The thing to remember with stores/shops is that you have to do something to create traffic to your free website. It won't just arrive by itself. You can't simply join, create your site and sit back.

Anyway, here's that quick 'brainstorm' list. I'm sure you'll be able to add many more ideas.

1. Join forums and discussion groups and have a link within your signature.
2. Write press releases and submit them to press PR websites.
3. Write and submit articles to the many article directories.
4. Submit your website to any directories with similar niches.
5. Promote them on your blogs - both with banners and small text ads at the end of posts.
6. Get links from other blogs.
7. Write a freebie ebook or report with links to your store/shop.
8. Obtain referrals from similar but non competing sites.
9. Try free traffic exchanges such as Blog Soldiers, Blog Explosion, Traffic Swarm, Blog Mad
10. Leave comments on other blogs with a backlink.
11. Advertise on free advertising sites such as Craigs List.
12. Include your URL on all emails sent out.
13. Exchange links with related sites.
14. Join myLot and leave URL when you write comments and join discussions. You'll also get a small commission for your participation.
15. Start your own newsletter or eZine to build a database of names and email addresses.
16. Start a new blog relative to your store/shop website and submit this to all of the blog directories - there are 100's of them.
17. Make sure you submit your store/shop to Google and Yahoo.
18. Join a link or banner exchange program.
19. Use free ads on non Internet publications.
20. Join things such as Squidoo and create pages about your store/shop.
21. Leave your link on every profile page of social network sites.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Money Making Shelves

I was chatting to a bloke yesterday about supermarkets. He was something to do with the planning of where everything goes on their store shelves to maximise profits.

It seems to be quite an art: those essential items at the back of the store, so that everyone has to pass through all of the other goods to get to them, the small tempting, low cost items by the checkout - sweets, batteries, chewing gum - and so on.

I wonder how many of us plan our blogs with such detail? Do we just plonk ads anywhere? Is our subscriber info in a prominent position? Are all of the links we carry really necessary etc. etc?

I think sometimes we have to step back and look at our blogs as if we had never seen them before. Are we playing to our strengths, for example?

Often we get so carried away with writing our posts and doing the routine things that we forget the real purpose of our blogs. If it's for making money then that is the priority.

Our side columns, header and footers are our shelves. Pack them with the right goods, in the right positions, to maximise earnings. It really can make a difference.

Good luck,
Mike.

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Smorty's Advice - Is It The Right Advice?

I recently joined Smorty as an alternative to PayPerPost. This was recommended to me by Rob at Make Money Fa$t.

What interested me today was the the advice they had entered on their website. To quote:

"There have been some recent changes that Google have made with regard to sponsored postings.

Smorty would like to offer you some advice on this issue. Google has primarily targeted PayPerPost member blogs and reduced their PageRanks across the board.

To prevent any future loss of PageRank due to this issue you can take the following steps:

1. Remove all sponsored post tags on each of your posts. Google can follow these tags to determine if you are being paid for posts.

2. Remove any PayPerPost tags on your posts for 'hire me' and 'review me'. Any general affiliate banners are fine to keep."

From what I can see it isn't necessary to mention that posts are sponsored with Smorty, but is this really right. Shouldn't our readers know when we are paid for a review?

As an alternative it's possible to have a Disclosure Policy on your blog - you can get help with this at disclosurepolicy.org - saying words to the effect that you are sometimes paid for posts and therefore may be biased in your opinions. And also that these posts will not necessrily be marked as such.

This is okay but not many readers will ever bother to read Disclosure Policies - there's enough small print in our lives. If we all do this no one will know what is genuine and what isn't and an element of trust will be lost.

The Sponsored Post problem won't go away and it's a bit of a Catch 22 situation. If you do such posts, and declare that is what they are, you'll have your PR cut. If this happens your income will also be cut as lower PRs mean lower amounts earned for such posts.

It's Google dictating what we can and can't do. Is a sponsored post so very different from an advert, for instance?

It's not if it's used to promote a product or service.

It is, however, if it is used purely for the value of the link - and this is really what Google wants to stop. And, dare I say this, it does make some sense.

I have always been against artificial means of inflating any figures. I've never joined viral chains/trains and the like to push up various rankings (though I have still been included on a few).

It's a bit like cosmetic surgery it makes blogs out to be something they aren't.

As regards Smorty I'll write more about them after I have received payment and find that everything works as it should.

I can confirm so far that my blog was approved by them within 24 hours and I have been offered posts to write for payment.

Good luck,
Mike.

More Domain Parking And More WidgetBucks

Yesterday I wrote about making money by parking a domain. The idea being to look for misspelled domain names, similar to high traffic websites, and then filling these with ads or promotional material.

Now there are also other variations on this theme and some people claim to be making decent money from this. Take, for example, Brian at DomainMoneyParking.

Brian says he made over $5000 in September.

He has an interesting website that gives ideas, information and help about Domain Parking.

I shan't enlarge on this subject, at the present time, because I haven't any personal experience -but see what you make of Brian's website and his videos.

Changing Track Completely

Regarding WidgetBucks again. I see my earnings have actually gone down. Never had this with a money making program before!

It's gone down because the Rate Per Click has been altered and backdated (none of these figures were in red). Mmmmm!

Also many WidgetBucks accounts have been suspended. In their own words:

"We continue to suspend many violating accounts, and naturally, many of those suspended publishers feel wronged, angered and frustrated. Along with our automated click fraud alert system, our account review team is dedicating significant time and energy to hand-reviewing these sites where WidgetBucks widgets are placed -- and taking swift action in removing these accounts from the network."

They go on to explain:

"WidgetBucks will become a "gated" ad network that will require approval to join. For current publishers, this does not change much for you. You are "grandfathered" into the network; however, we will continue to review sites for Terms violations."

Regarding non USA members they write:

"... we do pay publishers outside US and Canada, provided terms of use are met.

Anyone else feeling a bit uneasy? The underlining in quotes is mine.

Good luck,
Mike

Park A Domain And Count The Dollars, Pounds And Euros

In a way this post sort of follows on from the one I wrote titled Dead Blogs and Experimenting.

What do you think of Parking Domains? By this I mean purchasing domain names but 'special ones' that might just bring a reasonable amount of traffic without any effort.

I know of someone who does this and reckons he does okay. He concentrates on popular websites where their name might just be misspelled.

An example might be: www.maazon.com which people often accidentally enter when trying for www.amazon.com.

The idea is then to load up your misspelled domain with adverts, or some sort of promotional material. This then produces an income, well that's the theory, and all without having to do anything else. Park it and count the dollars!

You are too late, by the way, for www.maazon.com as Amazon have already bought this themselves. If you type in the URL you will end up at Amazon.

You've got to look for very high traffic possibilities. If a website is getting hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of hits a day it's highly likely that many people will misspell the name, either by accident or because they aren't sure of the correct spelling.

I haven't as yet dabbled in this idea myself but, time permitting, I'm going to try and find a few possible domains worth a gamble. A domain name only usually costs a few dollars so it should be possible, at the very minimum, to get a return on the investment.

What do you reckon?

Obviously other people are also doing this so it'll take a bit of hunting to track down juicy names.

Good luck,
Mike

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Traffic Control For Continued Money Making

Perhaps, like a lot of bloggers, I rely heavily on search engines to bring me traffic. On my celebrity bog, for example, around 63% of my hits arrive this way and 87% of these are via Google.

I've been thinking recently that this is a dangerous practice if I wish to continue making money - especially regarding the celebrity niche.

Supposing Google altered things dramatically and my standard practice for getting good positions on search pages stopped working. I'd end up only getting 37% of the traffic I now get.

The question I'm asking is: Should we start thinking slightly differently and maybe start heading more towards social networking, in it's various forms?

There's no doubt that if we can build a community centered on our blogs this should, in theory, bring regular traffic. As everything, though, it does have drawbacks.

Regular visitors, by whatever means they arrive, are less likely to click on adverts or things that you are promoting unless it is definitely to their advantage. They also spend less time on a blog - usually just reading the latest post. This means income generated could go decrease.

We actually need fresh blood coming to our blogs to make money, therefore we need a social networking program that will do this.

It's a difficult scenario but maybe we have to start concentrating on some form of building communities, that also introduce new people to our blogs.

Things are changing with Google. We've seen a lot of bloggers PageRanks being reduced with the inference being that this is because they might have been involved with either selling links or doing clearly indicated sponsored blogs.

These PR reductions are in fact a little hypocritical of Google.

Earlier this year Google purchased Double Click who also own Performics. And who are Performics? They are a search engine marketing company - that gets websites higher rankings on Google and other search engines.

Google appear to have no plans to dispose of Performics even though they write:

"While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations, we do have a few tips that may help you distinguish between an SEO that will improve your site and one that will only improve your chances of being dropped from search engine results altogether."

They also say: "The only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."

Getting back to the point I started with. What I'm suggesting is that the status quo might change and we should, therefore, be researching various different ways to attract traffic without relying too heavily on search engines.

Food for thought.

Good luck,
Mike.

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