Money Making Weekly Report - Week 25

I'm now at week 25 of my Money Making Mission. The aim being to try and earn money, using only free blogs and without any capital outlay.

Total boosted this week by the $105.01 payment I received from Sexy Ads and mentioned in Tuesdays post.

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-five 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 $130.67*
Amazon UK £1.84*
You Gov £14.00*
I have removed Adbrite from the list as I am not promoting them at the present time.
FriendFinderGroup $364.02*
Advertising Revenue £36.40
Convergence Inc = $91.40 (over 18's only)
Sexy Ads $287.76* (over 18's only)
DIY Dating £33.16
Helium $5.13*
myLot $47.11*
PayPerPost $22.52

As there are two currencies (USA and UK) involved the totals amount to the equivalent of:
UK£688.78 or US$1239.82

Moving on now to the blog's visitors.

Search Engine Referrals
Slightly down on search engine referrals this week with 4o9 - 374 of these were from Google . Google Blog Search also brought in referrals taking their total to 169 and there have been a total of 146 referrals to date from Search.Blogger which I haven't mentioned previously.

Google - 2956 (+374 on week)
Technorati - 153 (+14)
MSN - 55 (+6)
AOL - 63 (+11)
Yahoo - 20 (+2)
Live.com - 5 (+1)
Metacrawler - 1 (0)
Webcrawler -1 (0)
HotBot - 1 (+1)
Total 3255 (+409)

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)
Bloglines - 25 (+4)
King Of The Blogs - 21 (0)
Top Lists - 11 (+2)
Blog Hub - 11 (0)
Brit Blog - 10 (0)
Finding Blog - 10 (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. Most referrals this week from The Million Dollar Experiment with 21 - thanks Rob.

I have removed Martin's Quest blog from my list this week as his blog hasn't had a post for about five weeks. I will, of course, reinstate this if he starts posting again.

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 167 (+12)
Kumiko's Cash Quest 125 (+16)
The Million Dollar Experiment 117 (+21)
The Gospel According To Rhys 99 (+4)
JCM's RPG Art 77 (+7)
Hipsterpad 59 (+10)
Money Money Money45 (+1)

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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Mike's Money Making Mission Thanks ...

This week I thought I’d look at blog people as opposed to any particular posts. These are a few of the great people who have helped me in different ways since I started my blog. There are many more besides but this time I picked only those with photos.

Firstly I’ll mention Rhys, photo on right, who has sent me many referrals from his Top Lists blog directory - which was very effective when I first started out. It’s slowed a little this year but now, instead, I’m getting visitors via his blog The Gospel According To Rhys. All in all, I’ve probably had over 270 referrals from Rhys.

Staying on a referral theme Rob, proud dad on the left, from New Zealand has sent me loads of referrals from his excellent blog The Million Dollar Experiment .

Another I must mention is Matt from Blog AboutYour Blog . His photo? Well actually that’s his girlfriend on the right. He used this when we had a bit of a race to see who would get on the front page of Klik.Us first. Now I think he cheated a little by using his girlfriend’s photo. It’s obvious that people would prefer to click on her photo than mine. I’m pleased to say, though, that we are now both on the Klik.Us front page. I should think Rob and Matt have sent me over 570 referrals between them.

Julio and Kumiko from Brazil and Japan have also sent me lots of visitors from their blogs. No doubt you have realised that Julio is on the right and Kumiko is on the left!

Julio, as well as having a money blog, is also a talented artist and runs JCM's RPG Art. He also undertakes commissions.

Kumiko is a relative newcomer but her blog, Kumiko's Cash Quest, as I have said previously, is one to watch. She has sent me over 100 referrals in a very short time.

Cultivating good links certainly helps to build a blog.

My final thanks, for this week, is to Tisha (photo left) and it’s simply for her being such a lovely, caring person. Her blog, Serenity Quest, has nothing really to do with money but she knows how to interact with her readers. A lesson to us all.

Tisha does have my link on her blog, and I have had nearly 30 referrals from her, but my thanks are for her being my friend.

It’s interesting that the bloggers I have picked this week are from all parts of the world: England, Wales, New Zealand, Belgium, Brazil, Japan. This illustrates the massive power of the Internet and, from a monetary angle, the huge potential if we think worldwide.

I do find it annoying, however, that they all look so good - and young! Well compared with me. Anyway, despite this, my thanks to them all - and many more besides.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Money Making With Zlio

In my search for some decent money making ideas I've come across Zlio and I've spent the last hour messing about with it - or perhaps it was even longer.

Okay, so what is it?
I'll give you the official description from Zlio:

'With Zlio, you can open your own oline shop in 5 minutes. You don't even need to have your own products.

Zlio lets you choose from an extensive catalogue of thousands of products and allows you to design your ZlioShop quickly and easily!

Your ZlioShop can provide:

Your favorite products.
Items from your wishlist.
Products within the theme of your choice.
Products aimed towards a specific group of people (new moms, video games fans, rap music lovers, etc)

You can then offer your ZlioShop's services to your friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, on your blog, via messenger, on online forums, just like a professional vendor!

Shortly after you've set up shop, your site will automatically be referenced among the main search engines and will attract visitors with no efforts on your part!

Thanks to Zlio, anyone can run their own store without ever having to worry about deliveries or customer service!

Join the Zlio revolution!'

My initial thoughts:
Firstly it'll take a lot longer than 5 minutes to set up your store properly.

In five minutes all you do is the basic store - but without any products. Puting on the products takes an age and quite frankly I made a right pig's ear of it. It was my own fault as I didn't really know what I wanted to sell. There are many categories and lots of products to choose from.

It's best to decide on a theme, relative to your blog, and stick with this. I didn't, unfortunately, so I'll have to start all over again when I've got some spare time. You can see my feeble attempt here: Mission Shop.

Yes, I know it's not too impressive but there are other formats to choose and I reckon it's possible to make up a decent looking website - if you have the time.

All products have a different commission rate, as they are from various suppliers. Commissions are paid to members via PayPal. There is also commission payable (10% and 5% over a further 2 levels) for referring other people into the program.

At the present time products are aimed at the USA market, though UK and Canada will be following soon.

All I can really say is that from first apprearances it looks promising providing:

(a) You make a decent job of your Zlio store regarding products, layout etc. To me it looks better than the Amazon aStore.
(b) You can get vistors to the store - same old problem to overcome.
(c) You can refer others to Zlio.
(d) You have visitors to your blog from the USA.

I'll leave it there for the present time. Hopefully, I'll be able to add something more substantial in the future.

If anyone has experience with Zlio your opinion is welcome.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Competitions And Other Things

For those of you that like competitions here are a couple that are doing the blog rounds. No big prizes but you could get some publicity and a small gift.

Firstly Blog About Your Blog want bloggers to review their blog. For more info click here, this will give links to the competition itself and also to the first review they have received - so you'll know the sort of thing they are looking for. I'm one of the judges and all bribes are welcome! That's a joke... obviously... mind you...

The second one is from Kumiko's Cash Quest. Kumiko wants you to guess what her Page Rank will be when Google next updates. There's a $30 cash money prize plus other benefits.

Moving on I see there is a new search engine, Quintura, that is trying to do something a little different. They describe it thus: 'Quintura is a visual Find Engine that brings you search results through a cloud of related keywords.' For a tour click here.

Only one snag with Quintura: This blog doesn't come as high in their search findings as on Google. I read somewhere recently, sorry can't remember where, that it is impossible to be at the top of all of the main search engines as they work on different systems. Now, if only we could find a way round this, we'd get a lot more referrals. Anyone got any ideas?

I'd like to acknowledge the comments I had following yesterday's post. My thanks to:

• Tom at adSense 4 Dummies


• Alex at Blog About Money Online


• Maki at Dosh Dosh


• Irwin at Online Money Reviews And Tips


• Eric at Discounted Tickets


• Rihard at Everybody's Science


• Kumiko at Kumiko's Cash Quest


• Julio at 15000-dollar Mission

That's all for today.

Good luck,
Mike.


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Money Making Proof

As I received a cheque (check) today - copy on right - I thought I'd dwell on money today and not go off on a tangent as I did with yesterday's post. This is, after all, a blog about money making.

Anyway, the cheque I received was for $105.01 and was from Sexy Ads for whom I am an affiliate. As I've said before they aren't for everyone but they are very efficient and so far I've made nearly $300 with them - which is worthwhile money. I won't go into details about this affiliate program again as I have covered it before with my post Money Making With Personal Ads. You can read the full info there.

Someone asked me about the statistics for my AdSense earnings. As I'm quite happy to give others info below are the full details. As you will see to earn the $126 total has taken me over (censored!) page impressions and (censored!) clicks. To my mind these stats aren't too impressive but I'll stick with Google. I want to find a way to get better results.

Kindly Note: On advice received I have removed the AdSense Stats Page Screen Shot and also the info - it appears that it is against Google terms to show such info. Wouldn't want to fall foul of them - Mike.

While I'm in earnings mode, this week I've also received small payments from PayPerPost and myLot. Again I have previously written reports on these: Build Blog Traffic By Other Bloggers Reviewing Your Posts! and myLot, Money And Referrals. Below are details of the payments, which were both paid via PayPal.



Now on to something I was hoping not to mention again but I feel I must, and this is Wealth Toolbox.

When I look around the blogosphere there now seem to be quite a few blogs that are similar to this one. Some have copied my format and a couple have even copied my posts as well! The point is, however, that I have noticed a few who, in their list of earnings, have included the dreaded Wealth Toolbox. One of them states how he/she has made over $200 from them. Now this is absolute nonsense - they haven't made a thing and, more to the point, they won't. This, so called, program just isn't viable. Please see my post Money Making Test: A Warning About Wealth Toolbox for my full opinion.

The following will show you how ridiculous it all is. For test purposes only I joined, with a specially set up email address, and for doing this I was 'paid' $50.

I have now been a member for 18 days and my $50 has risen to $82.80 - for doing absolutely nothing! That's 65% interest in just over half a month. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! As you probably know Wealth Toolbox aren't going to payout for two years. Well of course they aren't - they can't and won't. And, please, they should never be shown as earnings on money making blogs. It is leading people astray.

Okay rant over! I'll say no more ....

Good luck,
Mike.


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Seven Steps To Get Anyone To Do What You Want

A bit off subject today, but there is a real world outside of the Internet - honest. Here are seven steps to help you to get other people to do what you want. It's really about selling but as you will read we are all selling all of the time. Here goes:

“No I don’t think so,” replies your prospective customer.

“Oh! Alright. Sorry to have troubled you,” you mutter as politely as you can.

“Cheerio,” and off you got to your next prospect.

Well no - that’s not what you should do, whether it’s a face to face sales situation or on the phone. I suppose that’s not exactly true. You can if you want, but in doing so you are unlikely to achieve as many sales as you possibly could. This means less earnings, less money.

No doesn’t always mean no.

You may not consider yourself to be a salesperson but, if you think about it, isn’t selling what we are all doing every day? Whether it’s persuading the kids to do something that they don’t want to do or even suggesting to your partner that it might be a good idea to have an early night. It’s all a form of selling.

If the kids or your partner says no, do you meekly accept this? Most probably not, you’ll present a counter argument building up the benefits of them doing what you want. And this is exactly the same procedure you should adopt with business. If a customer, or whoever, says no it doesn’t necessarily mean no sale - unless that is, you walk away or put the phone down.

Look at children, most of them know how to sell. They keep on and on until they get what they want. It’s the same in the business world.

Research has shown that most sales are not achieved until the fifth or sixth attempt. The message is: Keep trying. I don’t know who does all this research but it is also said that most objections are raised due to a lack of information or understanding. In other words you have failed to get your message across properly.

Going back to everyday life, the kids haven’t understood why you needed them to do what you wanted or your partner hasn’t realised the benefits of an early night.

The word no frightens a lot of people. It shouldn’t because, if we believe in what we are ‘selling’, and can see how it would benefit the ‘customer’, it’s the prospect who will be missing out if we just turn our back. So do him or her a favour, as well as yourself, and don’t take the first no as a final answer.

There are several techniques for handling a no, or objections as they are called in sales speak.

I personally feel that a lot of so called sales techniques simply churn out a series of robots who all talk and sound the same. It’s like they have all had their individual personalities removed. But, in saying this, knowing a little about ways to overcome objections can be useful. See what you think of the following. I am presuming that you have enthusiastically presented your sales pitch to your customer, prospect, children or partner.

Your 'customer' will either:

(a) say ‘yes’ and you have made a sale or got what you want.
(b) will ask a question or make a statement or
(c) will simply say ‘no’,

If it’s (a) don’t mess about complete the sale. Don’t try and sell it all over again. Just shut up and take the money, get the customer’s signature, go upstairs or whatever else is needed.

If it’s (b) or (c) don’t panic! Remember the research mentioned. It may be just a lack of information that is making them hesitate. So, here we go with seven steps to overcoming objections.

Step 1. Pause.
Follow your prospect’s no or objections with a pause. This will give you time to think about the objection and how to handle it. If you jump in straight away you may well say the first thing that comes into your head, and this is unlikely to be the best response.

Step2. Ask questions.
Get the customer talking again. Typical questions are: “What do you mean?”, “What are the reasons for that?”, “Why do you say that?”. Instead of a question you could say something like: “Please tell me more.” Use whatever you feel comfortable with. You can’t overcome an objection unless you know exactly what it is.

If someone says, “I don’t like it,” it does doesn’t tell you much, so ask them, “Why don’t you like it?” Depending on what you are selling, the problem could be such things as colour, the shape, the price and so on. Once you know exactly what the objection is you may be able to offer another colour, a different shape or a cheaper product etc.

Step 3. Empty the customer.
You need to know that there aren’t other objections. There is often a tendency to deal with one objection only to find another one - and sometimes a further one.

So before trying to overcome the objection make sure there aren’t any more by saying something like, “Is there anything else you are not happy about?”

If they originally said they didn’t like the colour because they prefer red, they may now say that they don’t like the shape and only a round one will do.

“Is there anything else?” you ask. “No” says the customer. Great! You now know the customers only objections are the colour and shape. Time to get excited, as you have other colours and shapes. You’ve nearly made a sale!

Step 3. Lock the customer.
Having emptied the customer, of his or her reasons for saying no, you should be able to obtain a commitment that, once you have overcome the objections, you can go ahead with the sale. You can do this by using the magic word if. “If we can overcome this (the colour and shape in our example) I take it we can go ahead.” Your customer now has to commit him or herself.

Step 5. Present your counter argument.
Now you have all the facts and a commitment you are ready to overcome the objections. How can you fail!

Your counter argument must really overcome the problem and bung in a few benefits as well. “I have a round red one in stock that is also a time saving model and is on special offer this week.” Okay, this may not sound perfect but you get the general idea.

Step 6. Gain acceptance to your counter argument.
You should be able to see your commission and money now! This bit should be easy if you have done steps 4 and 5 correctly. You do this by using a ‘closed’ question. This is one where the answer has to be ‘yes' or ‘no’.

Try, “Now that is acceptable isn’t it?” or perhaps, “That answers your point doesn’t it?” How can they possibly say no. Well this is make believe! Sometimes we know that reality can be a little more difficult - but only if you believe it is.

Step 7. Close.
Close the sale, you’ve heard a ‘yes’ so get another one.

“So I take it we can go ahead?", you say in your most positive voice.

“Yes,” answers your customer. The band starts to play, everyone is cheering, you are one hell of a salesperson ...

"Yes, but …," No, you don’t have ‘buts’ if you are positive. But … what, horror of horrors, if the customer still says no.

Hey, but you’re cool. No problem. You don’t have to panic or rant and rave. You have another objection, so smile and go back to Step 1. Pause and try again.

If you feel this time that the objection the customer has raised is the only one he/she has, and that you can handle it easily, you can modify the technique and use Steps 1,2,5 and 7. Otherwise go through the Seven Steps again.

The example I have used is very simplistic but it is the principles that are important. Find out all of the objections, confirm if overcoming these will solve the problem, present the counter argument, gain acceptance of the counter argument and then close the sale.

When you give it some thought it’s quite easy really and much better than just giving in. It doesn’t have to be high pressure, or anything like that. It should be a conversation, but one where you are in control.

And listen to what customers say. Most of us are so busy thinking about what we are going to say next that we don’t always hear the signals that the other person is giving.

There may well be instances where it is obvious you are wasting your time. If someone tells you to get lost (or four letter words to that effect) it may not be a good idea to pause (Step 1) and ask them what they mean by that exactly (Step 2)!

Selling isn’t scary, it’s fun, a challenge.

Now about that early night …

Pause … (Step 1).

“What don’t you like about the idea?” (Step 2)

“I want to watch the film at 10 o’clock.”

“Is there any other reason?” (Step 3)

“No, but I don’t want to miss the film.”

“If you didn’t have to miss the film I take it we could have an early night?” (Step 4)

“Well I suppose so.”

“What if I set the DVD recorder so that you didn’t have to miss it. We could watch the film tomorrow night with a take-away and a bottle of wine.” (Step 5)

“How does that sound?” (Step 6)

“Okay, but it has to be Chinese.”

“Shall we go upstairs?” (step 7)

Look at that Body Language, she’s leaning towards me, she’s nodding her head, she’s … “Hang on a minute, I haven’t set the DVD recorder yet.”

Well in theory it’s easy!

Body Language? Perhaps I’ll cover that another time

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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