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You are here: Home / Archives for Web and Technology / Affiliates

Re-invent and Improve your blog

July 25, 2007 by Tricia

There was a bit of heated discussion last week on the blog of one of the companies with whom I do some pa1d bl0gging work. They used to allow people to do three pa1d p0sts per day, but they’ve dropped down to two per day late last week.

They did that in the past for a few months and it actually allowed more people to get opportunities. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’ve done. True they could have notified us in advance, but it’s there prerogative to do this.

Use this time to re-invent your blogs.

Stand back and take a good look at your site with fresh eyes. Believe me, you might not like what you see.

I’m not saying that I haven’t made a few mistakes with my sites. I have. But every once in a while I sit back and take stalk of what I’m doing and I keep trying to improve how I do things.

I’m stuck at home with a chronic illness. The money I make in various ways via the internet is the ONLY money I have coming in. I must pay the bills.

If the opportunities were truly there in the first place moving from three ops a day to two would hurt all of us financially, but the ops aren’t there. Hopefully now some of us that haven’t been getting any decent ops that FIT our sites will get some.

I do have several blogs on that particular companies system but as of the end of last week I’d only done 12 ops this month. TWELVE. That ain’t much. I do believe that most of the ops that I chose to take for my sites did fit their topic/niche.

Those that have been getting their 3 a day quota per blog … were all those ops really on topic for your site? Really?

Think about it this way. If every second post on your site, or in some cases large chunks of posts in a row are pa1d p0sts (some companies allow this!) do you really think your readers are going to stick around?

Are advertisers going to seek your blog out if it’s full of ads?

Is your sites PR going to go up? – Maybe maybe not. It depends on the quality of your posts, if you’ve been taking opportunities that fit your blogs topics, and most importantly if your readers are sticking around and occasionally linking to your site or your posts.

Now that we can only take two ops per day on this one site that many of us do work for try to find posting opportunities that truly fit your site.

If you write about things that suite your blogs topics it will only enhance your blog. Don’t kill your site by taking everything and anything just for the sake of money – no matter how much you need it.

I must be doing ok with my choices.

My readership has gone up each week. Many of my visitors interact with me via the comment section of my posts. I must be doing well in selecting things to write about that interest not only me but my readers as well.

Not only has my readership gone up, but so has advertiser interest. I’m getting offers for all kinds of things from free samples to sidebar links to posting and affiliate opportunities on a daily basis. See my post about Monetizing our Sites to learn what’s been happening here lately.

Vedis gave me a very nice compliment regarding my passion for blogging and how it shows in my posts – both pa1d and unpa1d.

I’m very thankful for that comment because it gives me some feedback as to what I’ve been doing, how I’m doing and what other bloggers are thinking.

All I can really say is that I try.

I try to write about things that interest me and hopefully my readers. Whatever I’m writing about I try to make it personal by adding my own experiences and thoughts into the post. I think that’s the key factor in any post. It’s the key factor in my posts.
These are mostly personal blogs that we are working on – make it personal. Write something that touches your readers.

You can’t do that if you are writing about things that you have no experience with or that you haven’t taken the time to research well.

I want everyone to have success which is why I take a moment to share what I’m doing every once in a while.

I know people are upset about the paid blogging company that has reduced the amount of jobs that one can do on a blog per day, but really use this time wisely.

Use this time to make your blog better. If you do you’ll probably end up raising your sites page rank and then you’ll also end up increasing the amount that you can earn through your blog in a variety of ways.





Filed Under: Affiliates, Blogging, Finance, Home and Lifestyle, Internet, Make Money, Money, Sales and Marketing, The Blogisphere, Web and Technology, Writing Tagged With: 2 opportunities, affiliate, blog, blogger, blogs, comment, company, feedback, ill, illness, improve your blog, improve your writing, Internet, make it personal, making money, Money, my sites, offer, on topic, op, opportunity, page rank, personal posts, post, posting, posts, quality, quality posts, re invent your site, visit, visitors, work, write, Writing

New ExoClick advertising and affiliate program

July 24, 2007 by Tricia

I just joined a new Adsense like affiliate program. It’s called ExoClick.

Have you been using Adsense? Have you had much success with the Google Adsense program? If the answer is no then you might do better with ExoClick. Like Adsense the ads are in the Pay-Per-Click format although the ads are not contextual. The ads that are displayed in your chosen ad blocks are based on the keywords that you’ve entered when setting up the code and the category that you’ve chosen for your site.

There are a number of different horizontal, vertical, box and skyscraper ad blocks to choose from. You have to choose your own colors and there’s no drop down color list to choose from so have your image editing program open in order to play with different colors (and to know the codes for such colors). Otherwise setting up an ad block is easy. Pick your colors, border width, size of ad block, a category for the ad, keywords if you want a specific type of product to be advertised in your ad block, and they decide whether adult ads can show or not.

I created this 300 X 250 px ad block in the category Blogging. I didn’t chose any keywords:

Obviously I could have used slightly darker lettering for this ad. I’ll fix it shortly.

Along with the basic ad blocks you can choose from categorized web portals, search boxes or monetized domain parking. I’m not 100% what that last choice is just yet.

What I also like about ExoClick is that it has a great affiliate referral program. The links that I’ve added to this post are affiliate links. I’d really appreciate it, if you are considering signing up with Exolinks, if you’d sign up through my link. I’ll get a 5% bonus on lifetime earnings of those who signup under me.

While most programs pay monthly or even every sixty days Exoclick will pay weekly if you meet the minimum quota which is $10. You can receive payments by PayPal or check.

If this sounds worth trying you can If this sounds good to you, you can sign up with ExoClick directly. Just register and you’ll immediately be able to begin creating your first advertising blocks.

Filed Under: Affiliates, Blogging, Internet, Make Money, Sales and Marketing, Web and Technology Tagged With: ad block, advertizing, affiliate, affiliate program, Blogging, Exoclick, Make Money, monetize your blog, publisher program, referal

Monetizing our sites – trying out new affiliate programs

July 19, 2007 by Tricia

Some of you have probably noticed that I’ve been working on new ways to monetize my sites over the last few weeks.

I was lucky enough to have been invited into the Blogads program recently by a blogging friend. I’d been hankering to get into that program for some time so I’m quite pleased to have been included.

I’ve actually had quite a bit of luck with advertising companies lately. They’ve been seeking me out rather than the other way around. Perhaps they know something about my sites that I don’t know?

Emily from Kontera got in touch with me about a month ago inviting me to join the Kontera program. They worked with me to develop special codes for four of my domains. I’ve only just started adding them to some of my sites so I’ve yet to see how the program fairs against others like Adsense, but I can tell you that I’ve already made a bit of money and I’ve put the code only on the smaller less visited sites so far.

Lets see, what other companies contacted me directly?

Around the same time that Emily was writing to me from Kontera so was Jeff from Tumri. I finally got around to setting up my first Apod the other day. See the nice white box with various fashion products in it in the right sidebar? That’s a Tumri Apod. No one has clicked on an ad yet though. I’ll have to wait and see how Tumri does on my sites. I’ve only put the one Apod on this site. I’ll create new Apods that totally suit my other blogs topics and try them out on those blogs soon.

I was also invited to join the COPEAC program as well. Nina got me set up, but I still haven’t used any of their ads. COPEAC has ads from a variety of advertisers. You can pick and choose exactly which ads will go on your site. You can actually chose from a number of different advertisers or ads and then use the banner or optimized rotator code to show different ads when a page refreshes. It’s quite versatile. The link that I’ve added is an affiliate link. I’d appreciate it if you’d sign up through me if you are thinking of getting into COPEAC too.

NBCsearch also happened to contact me. I’ve signed up with their program, but have yet to try it out as well. I actually haven’t quite figured out what this is. I believe it allows you to add an xml feed to your site of the search results of your choosing. If anyone else is using this program maybe you can teach me something.

I signed up with BlogKits or OfferForge as it’s now called on my own. The ads from that site are in the middle of each sidebar to the left and right of this post. I’ve had a few clicks on those ads. No income yet. This is another one I’ll have to keep an eye on to see how it does.

There’s another site that invited me to partner with them using three of my blogs. I was introduced to them from my contact at The Glam Network. (Glam is another affiliation that’s been working out beautifully for me BTW). I’ll tell you more about that new partnership once we’re ready to set it up and introduce it on my sites. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about that deal within a week or so.

There’s also been some private advertisers that have contacted me as well. I’ve had requests from private advertisers for some time – for links but I don’t always take them up on their offers. Two recent offers caught my interest and I’m currently working with these two new advertisers with whom I’ve set up 6 month partnerships. I’ll tell you about each of them individually in future posts.

I’m pretty sure that I’ll be removing the Adbrite ads from all my sites. I only make a few cents each week with them. The only time I’ve made a significant amount of money was when one kind advertiser purchased an ad for a month. I think I’ve only made about $74 dollars in the year that I’ve worked with adbrite and I’ve yet to get an actual payment. I feel that I can do better with the other forms of advertising that I’ve already been using and the programs that I’ve just added.

I’ll keep you updated as to how these new programs are working out. Hopefully one or two if not all of them make me a little bit of extra money.

Filed Under: Affiliates, Blogging, Internet, Make Money, Sales and Marketing, The Blogisphere, Web and Technology Tagged With: affiliate, apod, banner, banner rotation, blog, blogads, Blogging, Blogkits, blogs, bubble ads, COPEAC, deals, Fashion, Glam network, Join, kontera, links, Make Money, monetize, my sites, NBCsearch, network, offer, OfferForge, partnerships, post, posts, private advertisers, Product, Products, program, Tumri

Discover a Hobby – a resource site for hobbyists

July 11, 2007 by Tricia

Do you have a hobby? Sure you do. I think almost everyone has a hobby of one kind or another. Anyone who reads this site regularly knows that I have several interests and hobbies ranging from music, gardening, photography to keeping exotic pets.

What are your hobbies?

If you are interested in starting a hobby – a great thing to do if you have just quit smoking or if your trying to lose weight as a hobby will occupy you – or if you have a hobby that you want to learn more about you should visit Discover A Hobby. This site is a free online guide with information on 100 + hobbies.

The creator of the site, Duncan Davis, started this site a year ago and he spent a lot of time collecting links, articles, videos, highly recommended hobby related books and product information and put it all together on the Discover a Hobby site so that those interested in hobbies would be able to find useful information quickly and easily.

The site has information on hobbies ranging from collecting, sports, arts, music, extreme sports, games and one of my personal favs photography.

I’ve already bookmarked the photography section of this site. As you might already know I just purchased a digital SLR camera and while I’ve managed to figure out a lot of things on my own it sure would be nice to visit some sites that explained all the special features and techniques that I’ll now be able to do with my camera. I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot of time at Discover a Hobby.

Check out the site for yourself. I’m pretty sure you’ll find some useful information. You can even submit articles or links to helpful sites if you want to help build the site.

Filed Under: Affiliates, Entertainment, Finance, Graphics, Great Reading, Movies, Photography, Sports Tagged With: 100 hobbies, articles, camera, Digital, digital camera, Discover a Hobby, forums, Gardening, guide, Hobbies, hobby, information, links, Music, online, photo, Photography, resources, Video

EPAY offers universal payment system for merchants and clients

June 17, 2007 by Tricia

If you have an ecommerce website it might be worth your while to visit EPAY. With EPAY your online clients can pay for goods or services with virtual credit cards. It’s very much like the service offered by Paypal, however EPAY allows instant transfers from both EPAY and non EPAY members in over 196 countries. It truly is a universal online payment system.

Is it a secure and reliable service? Yes it is. They have two independent security companies that scan their system every day. They also state that they will never block or freeze accounts. EPAY also offers 128 bit protection, password and digital signatures, IP protection and many other forms of secure service.

If you registered with EPAY as a merchant you’ll be able to accept payments from EPAY members in both EUR and USD funds. If by chance your clients are not members of EPAY that’s not a problem. Your clients could pay into your account with a bank transfer, pecunix or e-gold.

It’s also possible for both businesses and clients to use Virtual credit cards, Virtual debit cards, send SMS and make SMS payments, as well as send invoices by email or to any mobile phone worldwide.

Obviously I’m not a merchant, but I think that I will sign up for an EPAY account to try it out. I mean if I find an online store that I’d like to purchase an item from the more ways that I’m able to pay the better. Plus, as an EPAY member I could easily apply for one of their new premium debit cards. EPAY debit cards are MasterCards and they work online like a credit card, plus they all work in POS and ATM.

I wouldn’t even need to provide a credit history if I applied because anyone in over 200 countries can apply for an EPAY premium debit card without a credit check. I’d also be able to do my cash withdrawals using the premium debit card.

I like the versatility of EPAY. It sounds like it would be a valuable online payment system for merchants and their clients. EPAY offers SMS service, email payments, various options for funding, withdrawal and transfer, merchant tools, and cards. I could be wrong but I don’t think any of the other online payment services offer so many different options to their members.

Think all of that sounds great? Well, there’s one more thing I have to tell you. EPAY also has an affiliate program. EPAY members can refer friends or merchants and earn a 10% commission from all transaction fees of new members that they’ve referred. Sounds good to me!

Filed Under: Affiliates, Cool stuff, Finance, Home and Lifestyle, Money, Sales and Marketing, Services, The Blogisphere, Web and Technology, Website Promotion Tagged With: account, affiliate, bank, business, credit, credit cards, ecommerce, email, email invoice, email payment, EPAY, merchant, merchants, offer, online, online store, payment system, program, secure, SMS invoice, SMS payment, universal payment system, virtual credit card, virtual debit card, website, withdrawal

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