Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘Making money’ Category

As of yesterday DoubleClick Performics is officially no more. It’s now the Google Affiliate Network. Also as of yesterday, DoubleClick Performics’ Search is being sold to a third party and is now running as its own business unit. The Google press release promises “exciting changes” to the affiliate user interface. Also promised in the press release for the future are “new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing”. I just blogged the other day that I haven’t made any money at affiliate marketing. I also never made one cent from Adsense. I wonder what impact the Google Affiliate Network will have on policies and the other affiliate programs.

• Affiliate program question
• Are you making money with affiliate programs?
• 10/10/07 News bytes

SocialSpark is a form of blog marketing that combines social networking with the opportunity to make money from blogging. I signed a couple of months ago. I am convinced that this is the perfect opportunity for Mommy bloggers to make some extra cash from the comfort of their home. It’s actually perfect for anyone that’s home during the day.

After bloggers sign up for Socialspark they’ll have the chance to make new friends within the social media environment. Opportunities to monetize your blog are presented in a marketplace. Socialspark offers nofollow opportunities, so there’s no fear of punishment from Google for writing a sponsored post. While browsing the available opportunities bloggers can select open opportunities or be placed into a queue to take other opportunities that aren’t open at that moment.

The queue is what makes Socialspark ideal for Mommy bloggers. Once you’ve queued yourself for an opportunity you’ll be notified by an email when a slot becomes available. That email will be sent at midnight and you have twelve hours from then to submit your entry. While it doesn’t work terribly well for me since I start working at 6am, it does seem to be working well for stay at home Moms.

Moms have a lot to say. They use a lot of products and have a lot of opinions. They know what it’s like to try and make ends meet. Moms value the opportunity to make some money to contribute to the household while staying at home and raising their children. And what better way to to that than while blogging? It doesn’t make a difference if you’re a Mom and you a new blogger or an experienced one. Once you’ve joined Socialspark you’ll be surprised at home many blogging friends you make that are more than happy to help out if you have a question or if you need help with something.

If you’re a stay at home parent, go check out Socialspark and sign up. You’ll be making money in no time right from the comfort of your home and get to continue doing the best job there is, raising your family.

• Journyx, free time and expense management software
• Entrecard Credits News
• Paid blogging - Smorty

I found myself wondering something about internet affiliate programs recently. I applied for the Disney Movie affiliate program, thinking I’d place it on my entertainment blog. My application was declined. Now here’s my question. If it’s free to join an affiliate program, and if both the advertiser and the publisher make money if someone clicks on an ad, why would they decline an ad? If nothing else it would be getting their brand noticed, even if noone did click on it. So does anyone know the logic behind this? I really would like to know.

• Are you making money with affiliate programs?
• DoubleClick Performics now the Google Affiliate Network
• Why Socialspark is great for Mommy bloggers

Fuelmyblog and Tsheets.com want to know what people do in the first five minutes of their working day. One lucky person who answers this question on their blog will win an 80Gb iPod Classic or an 8Gb Nano.

You probably know Fuelmyblog as one of the most popular online blogger communities. TSheets is an affordable monthly service that offers a web-based timesheet system created to track hourly time from any computer or mobile device. The Tsheets website is well laid out and easy to understand. To use their language, it’s Triffic.

So, they want to know what I do in the first five minutes of my working day. I get up on a work day at 4am. I usually begin work at my day job at 6am. When I get to work the first thing I do is clock in. Then I go into the office and turn on my computer. Then I put the radio up on top of bookshelf on top of my desk (the only place I get reception) and turn it on. I open Outlook first and then the different apps and folders that I use all day. Then I go into the kitchen and make a pot of coffee. Then I go back to my desk and check my voicemail and email. By then almost ten minutes has gone by and I need that coffee. So, there you have it. That’s what I do in the first five minutes of my working day.

What do you do in the beginning of your work day?

• New fangled gizmo contest
• And the winner of the Computer Chit Chat Christmas Contest is…
• May Entrecard giveaway winner

If you have a blog and you sell ads of any type, you should check out OIO Publisher if you haven’t already. I wrote a review of this Wordpress plugin about a month ago. I recommend it highly, it’s an invaluable tool for managing ad sales directly right from within your Wordpress dashboard.

Recently the OIO Publisher plugin was upgraded to version 1.6.0 and added some great new features including the addition of an ad queue so people can buy ads in advance, an upgrade alert system, the ability to use html, integration with the ViralBlogAds network, and the capability to place ads on any website by using a javascript code.

This plugin is regularly $37 but for a limited time, I’ve been given two coupon codes to lower your price of the OIO Publisher plugin.

This coupon is HOT! Use code QWERTY-17 to get $17 off of the OIO Publisher regular price of $37, bringing the price down to $20. This coupon expires in the next two days (@ 05/05/08) so take advantage now. At $20 this plugin could pay for itself within one or two sales, so if you’ve even thought about buying it now’s the perfect time to do so.

If you can’t buy within the next day or so you can still save some money off of the regular price. Use code QWERTY-5 to get $5 off of the OIO Publisher regular price of $37, bringing the price down to $32. This coupon expireson 05/20/08.

If you’re serious about selling your own ads this plugin is a must have, so hurry and take advantage of the coupon codes before they expire.

• Affiliate program question
• Surpass Holiday Magic Sale
• How to manage the ads on your blog

I have most of my domains registered with Godaddy. I’m very happy with their prices. I like their interface for domain registration and management. I log in, do what I need to do, and log out. I don’t have anything on auto-pay, I don’t like that. I get reminder emails when things are due and I take care of them. About four to six times a year I get a telephone call from Godaddy. I can always tell because when I get home and check the caller id it shows a call from the 480 area code, and I don’t know anyone else there. Sure enough, I check my voicemail and find a message from some happy, young sounding account rep (always a male, so far) that’s just checking in. Well Godaddy, here’s my answer to your voicemail. And I doubt I’m the only one that thinks this way. If you really want me to call you back, get a toll free number. If you really want to help me, don’t ask me to spend my hard earned money calling you. Because as long as you want me to pay to call you at that 480 number, I won’t be calling. So. Do any of you call Godaddy back?

• How to change nameservers for Godaddy domains
• How to push a Godaddy domain
• How to transfer a domain from Yahoo to Godaddy

If you’ve seen a widget in the sidebar that says “Are you in my top spots?” then you’ve seen the Scratchback widget. I added Scratchback to this site recently. For those unfamiliar, Scratchback is a way of combining advertising and tipping. A person can leave a tip for a blogger accompanied by a no follow text link which can also include a mouse over message with it. In case you are one of those people who’s never sure what to tip that isn’t a factor because the blogger sets the amount of the tip. Computer Chit Chat’s currently set to receive $2 tips. After the tip has been left, the blogger logs in and approves the link and message. Bloggers can choose to auto approve but I’m not big on auto approving things because I like to check out what’s what. Ads can be configured to be auto bumped, which means newer ads bump older ads off of the list, or set to wipe itself clean and start a new list every 24 hours, 1 week or 30 days. In my opinion the ads are definitely worthwhile because they have great visibility. They’re also a nice way to thank someone for something like a useful tip or good story. Have you checked out Scratchback?

• Entrecard
• Add This - How to add social bookmarking options to your post
• How to show the top commentators on your blog

I have been getting numerous different offers lately to place text links on several of my blogs in the form of a post. The content of the proposed ads would not be completely mine. The advertiser would write the ads. In this instance I would have been allowed to change text in the ads but not the keywords or do follow links. I am not interested in having someone else’s words on my blog, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the money.

When I got the first offer I was excited. When I considered the offer I realized accepting it didn’t make sense financially . I turned that offer, and numerous others, down. I now have a blurb in my advertising that states I am not interested in permanent ads or anything anyone else has written. Are you wondering why? I’ll tell you.

Let’s use an offer of $70 for 8 links as my example. Immediately my mind divides and understands I am being offered $8.75 for each link. Then I look at the length of time the advertiser wants the ad to run. In this case it is not for a finite period of time but forever. If it were a year it would come out to $0.17 per week. For forever I’d be giving it away, which I have no interest in doing. I don’t need short term money that badly. I do free posts for myself already, I wouldn’t do them for someone I didn’t know.

It doesn’t make good business sense to accept offers to place these permanent text links in my opinion. Do you agree or disagree? I’d love to hear some constructive feedback and thoughts on this subject from other bloggers.

• Paid blogging - Smorty
• How to create an Adsense video player
• Paid blogging - Blogsvertise

Ever wonder which blog gets the most traffic and is the most influential? You wouldn’t be alone, lots of people do. Now that IZEA will be paying $1,000 to the blogger in the number one spot for each week in February, more bloggers will be trying to write their best articles and bring in as much traffic as possible to give their blogs a boost. That’s $4,000 they’re shelling out! Wondering how will they calculate who’s number one? Listen up.

Here’s a little background for those that don’t know. Late last year Big G started punishing bloggers that monetize their blogs in certain ways, particularly the buying and selling of paid posts and links. All of a sudden the all important page rank became Page Spank for those of us little fish in the big blogging sea, and just like that we had page rank of 0. This severely limited some of the marketing opportunities available to us, also impacting income. IZEA knew that blogs do have worth and value without Page rank and had previously set out to create a remedy for a situation such as this.

IZEA came up with Real Rank, a method of calculating the traffic and influence of blogs on the web. The long term goal is that Real Rank will become an accepted replacement for page rank and Alexa data that will be used when purchasing blog marketing. You’re wondering how it works. I’ll tell you how. A piece of javascript installed on a blog collects and reports data based on the traffic the blog actually receives. The result is the blogs Real Rank, where it stands among other blogs. Factors that effect Real Rank include unique visitors, active inbound links and page views. The neat part is, you (the blogger) choose what you want displayed. Wondering where it’s displayed?

One of the places you can see a blog’s Real Rank is on IZEARanks.com. There’s no big catch to being listed there and there’s no troublesome installation involved. If you put that one piece of javascript code into your blog then your blog and Real Rank will be visible to advertisers and other bloggers. In case you’re wondering, this is a completely different code than a Pay Per Post code, so you won’t get spanked for having it on your blog.

Wondering what’s displayed? The above picture is a screenshot. You can select to view Real Rank, page visitors or unique visitors, within time periods of one week to one year. The cute little lightbulb slider allows you to adjust the time period you’re looking at to see how the blog is trending. On the bottom is an option to allow the viewer to compare up to ten blogs at once. It’s pretty neat. One thing I wish was shown on the screen is the categories a blog falls into. The site is certainly interesting to surf. If you want to be entered into the drawings for any of the four $1,000 prizes hurry over there and sign up. Good luck to those who enter!

• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank
• Feedjit
• Alexa, Ilikea!

 I tried Adsense for almost two years and didn’t make anything. I have since taken it off of all of my sites but one. I’ve been trying to learn how to be a better affiliate so I’ve been doing a lot of reading and hitting a lot of websites. Today I came across a site called Affiliate Lounge
, a site that is specifically targeting readers who want to learn how to make money with affiliate programs. He’s got some very interesting articles on there, and seems to offer frequent contests. Right now he’s got a contest going on where two people will win any available .com domain for one year, and hosting with 1 TB of monthly bandwidth. Holy mackerel! Go check him out.

• Affiliate program question
• DoubleClick Performics now the Google Affiliate Network
• Computer Chit Chat Christmas Contest