I Like Big Blogs ... and I Cannot Lie!

All you other bloggers can't deny that you are not going to re-visit a blog that has less than 10 posts. You probably still wouldn't bother even if contained a few more than that. The point is that the bigger the blog the bigger the traffic. It's commonly written that past blog posts continue to get search engine traffic even after the blogger has long since met his/her grizzly end, (or at least stopped blogging); but how true is this?

Case Study - Of Myself
You may remember several weeks back when I was busy setting up and writing the content for my other site I failed to post every day on this blog, and for about two weeks it became an 'every other day' affair. Believe it or not that affected this site's traffic in a massive way.

Just before I started this brief period of posting every other day, I received a link from JohnChow.com for winning his Guess my February income contest. This boosted this sites traffic up to its all-time high, of 310 page views for that day, which went down to 256 page views the next day and gradually decreased down to a fairly constant 200 page views each day. Constant, that is, until I failed to post each day.

The reduction in traffic was overwhelming. Within a week of posting every other day traffic slumped from 200 to 40-100 pageviews per day.

But what could be the cause?
At the moment 32% of this blogs readers are returning visitors. From my experience this is a pretty high percentage and can help explain the traffic drop. If a sizeable percentage of my readers don't find this site via e.g. Google, then that means that when they/you see I haven’t posted they/you don't bother coming back for a couple of days. This is just my theory; your ideas are greatly welcomed!

If you wanted to know about the current state of traffic, my response would be that it is 'sort of middelish'. Meaning, my search engine traffic has dropped, due to loosing my page 1 in the Google SERPS for phrases like 'AGLOCO scam', which used to rake in a lot of traffic. I am not actually disappointed with this. To maintain a page 1 in Google for that phrase I would have to post about AGLOCO every few days, which I know is not what most of my readers want.

What does it all mean?
You could call it a failure of SEO planning, or a success of focused content writing. Call it what you like, the two lessons to be learnt are:

1. Posting daily has its benefits. It’s a fairly well known phrase, to 'post only when you have something to say'. I agree with this wholeheartedly, but I have found that if I have the time to do more surfing the net, or finding another source of mental substrate I end up having something to say.

2. Find keywords and stick with them. This is a pretty obvious one, which I have implemented on my new site. However, with this being my first ever site; when I started it in on December 30th 2006 I had never even heard of keywords! Now if that isn't learning while earning I don't know what is!

Guest Bloggers Wanted!

 

 

 

 

Before anyone asks I am not looking for guest bloggers for any of the following reasons:

1. I'm diying
2. I'm going to Jail
3. I'm finally moving to the moon

The real reason is that the cursed exams are upon me! To make up for all the blogging I have done during the year (and lack of 'real' work) these A Level exams mean a ton of revision. At the moment I maintain two blogs, this one and 'Affiliate Programs and Internet Scams'.

I am aiming to have guest bloggers posting on both sites, so I that am writing just one post per day instead of two, ideally alternating between the two sites. This will only last for a month or so until my exams have all blown over and then I will be free to blog my heart out in my gap year.

I have already asked a few of my blogger friends but at the moment they are all blogged down in their own online ventures (which I totally understand).

As you can probably guess if you want to guest blog on this site, you will be writing about blogging and making money online. My other site focuses more specifically on affiliate programs and internet scams, which is what your post(s) will need to be about.

You may include in your post:
- Links to your site in the post! Providing they are relevant and don't disrupt the flow of the article.
- 5 lines in italics at the top of the post where you can introduce yourself and include a total of 2 links!

What else will you get?
- Free links to your site. This blog is predicted a Google Page Rank of 5 at the impending update and so those links will be quite valuable. The other normal SEO benefits also come with the inbound links to your site, not to mention the bonus on ranking systems like Technorati

- You can start to create a name for yourself in this niche. You may already have a 'online money making' blog and are looking for some extra traffic and a boost; or perhaps you have a blog in a totally different niche and want to launch your site with a bang.

- Social bookmarking benefits. At, for example Digg.com, posts tend to get Dugg more often if their author didn't submit them. You could submit your post too all of the social bookmarking sites (using the Socialiser button which appears at the bottom of every post) and use your account on each site to submit them. The voters will see that the URL is different from that of the author who submitted them and so are more likely to vote for it!

- My gratitude and friendship! This may sound useless, but if you guest blog here there is no question that I will visit your blog regularly, comment on it and probably mention it in future posts. I don’t mean this will be a ‘forced affair, I have found that I naturally visit the blogs of people I regularly ‘network’ with.

- If you are just launching a new section to your blog that is relevant; your post can be about it! (This does not mean you can write an entire post about a new blogger freebie blog you are starting, hopefully you get the idea).


These are a the things I would like my guest blogger(s) to posses:
1. Good blogging and writing technique. We can't have the place falling apart when I'm busy!
2. Bloggers who have some experience the aforementioned niches. I'm not asking for experts, but theres no point in you posting about something I have already covered or that backtracks on this blogs development.
3. Enthusiastic bloggers whose passion will show through in their posts.

There is no precise 'word limit' for your posts, but 200 words is an absolute minimum, going all the way up to about 1000 if you want. If you would like to guest blog, just leave a comment to say hi, and/or e-mail me at mattjones@affiliatescamguide.com

PS. Don’t forget to take part in The Ultimate Alexa Redirect Experiment!. I will post the results of the Experiemt as soon as Alexa updates its records.

No More Kontera!

I hinted in my last post that I would be making some changes to this site. I have just removed the Kontera code from this sites template. Kontera provided the 'in-text-content links', which were the words in actual posts that were underlined in orange. This may seem like a fairly minor change, but I assure you it is a tiny one in comparison to the things to come!

Why did I remove them?
1. They hardly made any money. I made a grand total of about $7 with them and they were here for over a month.

2. They make the page slow to load! This page may have loaded super speedy for you, but for me it loaded far to slowly, even with my high-speed broadband!

3. They looked bad. No matter how you disguise them, Ads look bad.

4. They are bad for the readers’ experience. I hadn't bothered to filter out unrelated or scammy sites, so who knows what I was promoting and where I was sending people.

5. I was getting sick of the over-monetisation. I think this is something you can only understand if you have spent a certain amount of time blogging. I have reached the stage where I read a lot of blogs and I am ashamed to say that this site was (and still is) grossly over monetised compared to almost all the blogs I read. I have formed a sense of pride in what I blog and my standards are being raised all the time. No more sneaky tacky ads. Thanks Maki for giving me the nudge I needed.

Will the Adsense go too? Wait and see.

I'm not expecting the removal of Kontera advertising to have a major effect on this blog, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s funny actually, people spend a lot of time waiting with eager anticipation of the day their blog 'comes of age' for acceptance into an advertising group; but losing Kontera is a relief. I have finally dropped a heavy burden.

What the Ancient Egyptians Taught me about Blogging

Blogging down the ages

You may think there can be no way in the afterlife that there is a link between one of the oldest civilisations on earth and one of the most modern pastimes, but you would be wrong. The Ancient Egyptians blogged in Stone.

Mans desire to communicate and make a statement to the world is as old as when we evolved from homo-erectus. Bloggers, much like Pharaohs want to leave a Legacy. To do this their blog or 'Stella' must be eye catching. The Pharaohs did this by having no ads and focused on quality content. They gave the populous what they wanted and needed, which was a belief system (a mental routine). As an added bonus the Pharaoh would become deified in the process (linked with the god, AmunRe) and gain a form of immortality.

Cartouche's, (see image below/left, are the engraved pharaohs name encircled in a loop) I like to think of as the hyperlinks of the ancient world. King lists were engraved on walls of temples and much like the Technorati Favourites Train which had a viral effect. There are now 100s of copies of them recorded by numerous past civilisations not to mention the 1000s of modern copies. They wanted to be remembered and those that had their names engraved deep enough, backed up with quality content succeeded. When a new dynasty came along they would (try to) destroy the records of the past one, re-branding it by rubbing away the past cartouches and writing their own one over them. Over time the names were engraved deeper and deeper to make it harder to write over. The beautiful thing about the Internet is that you can re-brand yourself whenever you like!

Bloggers know that controversy can be a path to traffic and a reputation. Akhenaten, the heretic king is a perfect example of this. In the New Kingdom (1567-1085BC) he set up is very own city (using Wordpress ;) at El Amarna and made everyone worship the sun disk, which was known as 'the Aten', hence his name, Akhenaten. If he hadn't done this, he would have been 'just another pharaoh' and I probably wouldn't have even studied him. In being controversial, he set him self apart from the competition and even changed the nature of art itself. Blogging is an art and top bloggers have the power to change it.

There were competitions between different cult centres, e.g. the cult of Osiris at Abydos and that of Amun at Thebes. This caused the peoples 'mental routine/belief system' to change and the pharaohs (who are the bloggers in this analogy) had to account for that.

If my archaeology classes have taught me anything, it is that certain rules apply to everything. They key points here are:

1. Have a mental routine, but it needs to be adaptable so it can change when the need arrives.
2. Engrave your writing deeply by writing strong unique content.
3. Be eye catching and not plastered with tacky banner ads (as well as other ads).
4. Use the power of viral marketing, it’s for the greater good, of the clever minority....
5. If you don't like your blog, re-brand it! This may happen very soon with this site...
6. Be controversial, but not to often. Note that Akhenaten’s new city and religion were destroyed after his death and El Amarna has never been re-discovered!

Blogroll re-shuffle

It's hard to surf the net without me thinking about the impending Google Page Rank update. Perhaps I'm getting a little obsessed with it but it never hurt to be prepared. The update will be like a flood where there is destruction but everything re-grows and flourishes more than before. I always say that necessity causes change and it is causing me to re-shuffle my blogroll and the 'my favourite sites' list.

As a I pointed out on Friday, this site has far to many out going links in its sidebar. It's time pick a select few and start over.

Why do I need less links there?

- There are too many links for readers to manage; it has become the custom to 'randomly click' on the list somewhere.
- It looks bad. Big lists like that are not pretty for readers or the Google spiders.
- Each outbound link 'leaks' a little Page Rank. Many of those sites are no longer updated and I don't want to be giving them better Page Rank (or traffic) when they are dead sites.
- It was a mistake to link out to some of them in the first place. Some are not at all relevant to readers of this blog. I didn't understand that concept months back when I offered/accepted a link exchange.
- Some have changed topic/drifted away from being about blogging and making money online.
- Too many links makes this page slow to load.
- The long list causes the sidebar to extend beyond the bottom of my blog posts! This could be solved by me increasing the number of posts per page but this means less AdSence earnings and doesn't help with the page loading time.
- Each outgoing link decreases the value of other outgoing links because it fragments traffic. On one level this means I am diverting traffic away from sites I want readers to visit. On the money level having more outgoing sidebar links decreases the price I can sell Text link ads for.
- Google likes sites with less outgoing sidebar links. The Sitening SEO tool ranks my site lower because of all the outgoing links.

If your site has been removed from my lists it is for one or more of those reasons. It is not because I don't like your site but because I feel you site won't benefit the readers of this blog as much as the others.

Below are all the sites I am removing. All of the sites below no longer have any obligation to link to me in their sidebar. (You can keep me there if you wish!) but there is no pressure or strings attached. I have stated the specific reason for removal next to some of the sites. Hopefully by linking out in this post they will be alerted to my actions and they can unlink to me.

bestest blog of all time

Techchee


online money tips

make money online

Current world news has moved to a new address, I haven’t been getting traffic from there for over 2 months and is off topic to this blog.

All blog submit gives an error 404

Jerrykobylt

internetbazaar hasn't posted for nearly 2 months

world of a mysterious life Isn't relevant enough to this site

free online games isn't relevant to this site

Money Making Machine hasn't posted since February

boys from the past isn't relevant enough to this site

WritingUP will not load

Canimakebigmoneyonline I had linked out to here twice in the same blogroll! whoops! I have kept the other link.

quick register

Highly recommended business oppourtinities drifted away from being relevant to this blog.

web money blog

earn online money

cool photos not relevant to this blog

Disenchanted

resourcelinks.net

the composed gentlemen not very relevant to this blog

Free ads for bloggers has not posted for 10 days

Quest to make money on the internet had not posted for over 2 months

My Quest to earn had not posted for over 10 days

Our blog review.

I have now removed those sites. The 'My Favourite sites' list is still too long but this will do for now.

Bloggers Choice Awards

There has been some buzz over the new site called bloggers Choice Awards. The name is pretty self-explanatory, they give out blog awards.

This is what Bloggers Choice Awards have to say about themselves:

"Votes will be shown on the site in real-time, so you can see who's leading within each category! Winners in each respective category will be recognized at a one-of-a-kind awards ceremony on June 2nd, at Postiecon in Orlando, FL. After the ceremony, the results will be posted on this page.
There are no restrictions to nominations, votes, or comments. You can nominate as many blog sites as you want. In fact, the more the better! You can also comment as often as you'd like. You may also vote for as many blogs as you like, but you can only vote once per blog, per category."

I can see bloggers choice awards become a popular site. It has a 'Web 2.0' feel to it and they have done well to separate themselves out from other voting sites.

What I like about bloggers choice awards is that you vote for a blog as a whole rather than individual posts like with Digg. This is a fairer system, because it incorporates the difficult aspect of blogging consistently which is totally ignored by Digg.

This blog has been nominated for a couple of the awards (e.g. best blog about blogging). I definitely don't expect to win, but a few friendly votes wouldn't go amiss. You can vote for me through the 'brag badge' at the top of this post. Don't forget you can nominate your own blog if you want just to get the ball rolling.

Happy voting.

Blogs I actually read

As you can see this blog links out to way too many blogs in its sidebar. The blogroll and the 'my favourite sites' link lists are killing me softly. I guess I myself am too much of a softie and just can't say no to a little blogger who asks for a link exchange. It’s time to toughen up.

Believe it or not I don't read every single one of those blogs in my sidebar every day. In fact I tend to stick to a pretty select group. The blogs below are the blogs that I long-ago memorised the URL for and visit daily.

They are all about making money online and most of them specialise in blogging. I think that everyone in the list reads each others blogs and most of us are at fairly similar stages in the 'blogging journey'.

1. DotMySpot.
Is written by the Malaysian moneymaking master Michael. He may be working with me on a new project I have started in the near future....

2. Mikesmoneymakingmission. Mike has been on a mission to make money with free blogs and he seems to be doing well having made over UK£758.25 or US$1364.85. His blog is full of useful articles for 'all the family'.

3. How to Earn Money Blogging is written by Daryl. He has been blogging for 4 months and has progressed in leaps and bounds. His site has a snazzy new layout and it already has some juicy content.

4. DoshDosh is written by Maki. It is becoming well known for the high quality posts and the unique look of the site; because each post has a pretty anime picture at the top of every post. I can see DoshDosh going 'all the way'.

5. Kumiko's Cash Quest. Kumiko has made her name in the blogosphere by her controversial AGLOCO posts and snappy blogging style; which contrasts her seemingly happy pink site layout.

6. Garryconn.com. If this were a 'spot the difference' post then GarryConn.com is the odd one out. This is because his blogging circle seems to be slightly different to mine and the bloggers mentioned above. His site has a totally unique design and is bursting to the brim with useful information to all of us 'make money online' bloggers. His site is specify about, "Successful Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Making Money Online and Everything Else". It would be great to see some you become regular readers of Garryconn.com.


I also read JohnChow.com and Problogger on a daily basis but they are too big for a link exchange to get on my blogroll. Of course I do read some of the other blogs on my list from time to time but its impossible to read them all.

How many blogs do you actually read every day? Is my blog one of them? or maybe my other blog? ;)

Why Bloggers Need a Personality

By know most people have heard the phrase 'content is king' and all that jargon about the importance of creating original and unique content. The 'business' reason for this is that content forms the basis of SEO. In short it does this by providing material for the search engines spiders to crawl and a way to categorise and rank a site. Secondly good content creates linkbacks; this sort of content has become known as 'linkbait' and is a productive and honest to make your site popular. My example of this is Maki from DoshDosh who has been cranking out post after quality post, which has created numerous linkbacks and brought popularity to DoshDosh.

So what does having a personality have to do with it?
In this day and age it is very hard to find a totally unique original topic that has a demand for it. This means bloggers have to develop new ways to make their site stand out from the competition. One of the easiest way to do this is to be honest and speak your mind. You don't have to follow down this line of thought very far to see why it works. Whatever your beliefs about life, the universe and blogging, everyone has experienced something different in their lives which makes their views unique.

Everyone has clicked on different pages on the internet and read different articles about blogging (well at least all bloggers have). This means all our views are going to be slightly different! My example of this is Kumiko from Kumiko's Cash Quest. She is gradually becoming known for writing quirky posts that are never quite what people expect. It is important to remember at this stage that repeatedly writing controversial posts isn't going to get you anywhere. Providing you have read enough about any given subject you will have formed a view of your own and there will be no reason to exaggerate your views.

A wise blogger (I can't remember who) once said that there are two paths to becoming a successful blogger. Either, by becoming an expert in your niche, or by becoming a well-known personality. My example of this is John Chow. The chances are that if you read this blog you also read JohnChow.com. This is because he has become both and expert in his niche (making money online - ish) and he is a bit of a celebrity. He shows what happens in the rare occasion someone manages both.

There are other added bonuses of 'having a personality'. These include the worship and fan mail of readers as well as hate mail and devastating spam attacks. Hate mail is a bonus simply because it ads some excitement to what at times can be a (dare it say it) boring profession of blogging. Perhaps I am being naive having never experienced hate mail, buy you know what they say, don't knock it till you've tried it.

BlueHost Web hosting for $6.95 per month with a free domain name

As I mentioned in my last post I have been busy starting up my first ever 'real' site. I can now unveil my new sites address which is http://affiliatescamguide.com and yes, you guessed it; it is going to be a guide to the affiliate program scams that are out there, with a few personal recommendations from me of sites that are not scams.

If you are reading this on the day I wrote this post then the site isn't even up on the net yet, if you are reading this a couple of days after my posting there are probably a few posts on the new site. I am aiming to have it well developed by the end of the month. It would be amazing if I can get Affiliate Scam Guide up to a Google Page of 4 by the next update (which is probably in about 1 months time) but I am doubtful that I can achieve this.

I will start the site by writing a single post for each affiliate program I already support, e.g. CashCrate; and then a post about the programs I know to be scams, or have serious doubts about e.g. Wealthtoolbox.

After that I will be opening the gates to you all who want to know if a site is a scam or not. If you ask me a question about whether a site is a scam, I will conduct some research about that site. If it is free, I will join up myself and have a look around. I will then write a post about the site with my conclusion about where it is a scam or not.

but where did I go for web hosting and what about buying a domain name?
The answer to both those questions is BlueHost. Jennifer from My Life recommended them to me and I am very glad she did! Bluehost provide web hosting and a free domain name for just $6.95 per month providing you sign up for 2 years; which is what I recommend because Google favours sites that have a domain name registered for 2 years or more. (this is because it shows Google you are serious about your site and are going to stick at it for 2 years, which moves you up the rankings bringing you more traffic from Google searches).

You can visit BlueHost and find out about the intricate details of the service rather than me explaining every little thing to you, but before you do I must mention their amazing customer support. I know this sounds like I am just sucking up, but they really were very impressive; allow me to tell the story:

When registering my free domain name with them, I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake. I made a typo without realising it (I did check... but somehow I still missed it). This meant my domain name for a couple of annoying hours was 'affilatescamguide.com' instead of 'affiliatescamguide.com'. When I realised my mistake you can imagine I was kicking myself, because I thought I would have to buy a domain. (you get the first one free, you can get up to 6 on the same account for $20 each for 2 years). I was about to do this when I thought it was worth asking if I could change it for free, after all I hadn’t done anything with it yet. On BlueHost's homepage there is a great big 'LiveChat' button. I clicked on that and it opened a chat window. I asked my embarrassing question and a friendly admin called Tom replied in seconds, solving all my problems. He reset my account for me, and I got the domain name I wanted after all!

Now if that isn't great customer service I don't know what is. A word of advice, don't deliberately misspell your domain name just to see if they really are that nice.

Another important point to make about BlueHost is that the installation of Wordpress is dead easy with them. It takes a few mouse clicks. Once you have an account, log in and at look for 'fantastico auto-installs' beneath the heading 'Addons/plugins'. You then select Wordpress from the list on the left and you are away. I was worried about this, I didn't really understand how domain name + web hosting + Wordpress all fitted together but believe me, one you try it you will be wishing you had done it earlier.

I have one final positive thing to say about BlueHost and that is that they do have an affiliate program. I can assure you though that this has not made my review biased, in fact you will love their affiliate program too. They pay a flat rate of $65 for each person who signs up through your referral link so it's almost worth signing up just to be able to make such lucrative referrals!


So that was my experience with setting up my first ever web hosting, I hope you found it useful. It does look like quite a one sided review, but I honestly cannot find a single thing bad about them. I am interested in what site you used for paid web hosting, so let me know!

If you want to use BlueHost then sign up here.

Successful Online Money Making ! - Blog Updates

I have been very busy working on my first 'real' site so forgive me for the lack of major posts. All will return to normal very soon. By the end of the week I hope to have lots to tell you about my new site, which will also help you make money online. You may have noticed a few little changes to this blog, namely that picture of me, which took me far to long to take and add to this site. If you have not got a picture of yourself stuck on your blog then I highly recommend getting one as soon as possible!

That picture has actually opened a lot of doors for me. I have now been able to become an active member of the MyBlogLog Community, which is already producing some traffic and has allowed me to contact bloggers in this niche who were previously unknown to me.


These clever people have already joined my community:

XtremgenX , from
Your blogging guide
ebook4u


Alex, from
Blog About Money Online

and
Rugjeff, from
Rufjeff's Blog About Blogging

You can jump into the community love fest to by Joining my community

Another little addition to this blog is the star rating in the top right. Anyone can rate this blog, you don't need to join any communities or website; just click on how many stars you think Successful Online Money Making ! deserves. You can get your own star 'Star it' here at the click of a button.

The last little addition is the 'bookmark' icon at the bottom of each post. This allows you to bookmark a post in all the major sites in a matter of seconds.

Those are all the updates for now; it won't be long before this blog returns to its traditional 'make money online' topic, so why not bookmark it and come back soon!

Make Money Online Blogs - Links

Here are some quick links for you to sink your teeth into. They are from the best and the brightest make money online blogs.

- Internets Adventures series.
This series by Natnit explores exactly what you need to do to get your own domain name and paid web hosting, which is something I am very interested in right now. The posts are actually a couple of weeks old, but they are so useful I just have to link to them.

- 30 Blog Traffic Tips;
Uses the list fromDaniel's Daily blog Tips and add a comment of his own to each one. Again it is an old post but I just discovered it and it's a goldmine of great ideas.

7 Reasons to Quit your Job.
That title speeks for itself!

Your Blog's Got No Friends???.
Shirlene explores the importance of community in the blogosphere.

They are all great posts and full of useful stuff so give them a read!

Kontera - In-Text Advertising at a Glance

About 1 week ago I signed up to Kontera (they don't have a referral program don't worry). They provide another method of site monetisation in the form of in-text advertising. They used to only accept high flying sites but recently they opened their gates to us ‘little-uns’. As I write this only a few in-text ad have appeared, but hopefully that will change soon.

I have just glanced back at the Kontera Publisher FAQ and one of the requirements is to "Generate more than 500,000 page impressions per month". This site doesn't get anywhere near that amount of traffic and was still accepted. They can't have just changed the rules because they say they will notify me by email if there are any changes and I have not received an email, so it's probably OK for you to give it a go but don't take my word for it (sorry!).

What is a ContentLink™?
A ContentLink™ is a contextually relevant keyword. ContentLinks™ appear as distinctive links with a unique underline that open a little window containing relevant advertising information. (They are the orange double underlined words).

Details
- Minimum payout is $100 buy check.
- Kontera is currently working in the following countries: USA, Canada and UK. Within the next few months they are planning to launch ContentLink™ in France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
- Don't forget to log on to your account and add the rest of the code (I didn't realise I had to do this and so the first few days I just sat here wondering why it wasn't working).
- You can check out their Kontera Demo here.

So that’s Kontera for you. Hopefully by the end of next week you will be able to see Kontera’s contribution to my weekly earnings.

ReviewMe Launches an affiliate program

Just a quick post to inform you that ReviewMe! has launched an affiliate program.

"Get $25.00 for every new advertiser you refer to ReviewMe who purchases a review that makes it to completion!"

Its a little disappointing that you don't get paid for referring publishers, like you do with Text Link Ads, but hey, that’s life. You can get a get a custom affiliate badge to use on your site if you want. So get referring!

Advertisers
- Get your Web site's products or services reviewed by related Web sites, and benefit from valuable exposure, feedback, and viral buzz.
- ReviewMe recently had a 50% off deal, chances are they will have one again!
- The ReviewMe! database only contains sites that are at least page rank 4 and that get a certain amount of traffic (you pick the site!).

Sign up to ReviewMe!

Hit Tail - A disheartening Reminder

CLICK TO ENLARGE

As you can see from Hittail, my top two keyword phrases by a long way are, 'AGLOCO scam' and 'Wealthtoolbox'. If you look closer you will notice that the top 10 keywords are all to do with my referral programs (all of which I promote on this site, apart from Wealthtoolbox which I have doubts about). In a simple, boring sort of a way this is a good thing for me, it means that I am going to get referrals for these programs because lots of people view my posts on them and so they must be well ranked in the search engines. Although from another perspective this is quite disheartening….

When I started this blog at the very end of 2006 my aims were simple, to get referrals for various programs. This however, is no longer the case as I have learned that referral/affiliate programs 'should' be just one aspect of making money online. I have tried (and I still am trying) to make this blog something people actually find useful. My previous articles such as 8 Simple Rules for... Successful Blogging are testament to this. Hittail would suggest that I have failed in a sense, because far fewer people are actually reading them. It is not just Hittail that supports this, but it is obvious, I receive more comments on posts about e.g. AGLOCO or Bestcashrewards and its a fact, I get referrals for them, so why am I complaining??? (I actually don't know)

Anyway, looking at with a more sensible perspective, there is a reason for this and that is because there is far more competition for advice about making money online so it is harder to rank well in the search engines. All in all, the point of this post (other than for me to clear my head) was to give you an idea about the aims of this blog, where it came from, and where it’s going.

Coming up:
- In 1 week today there will be the first in the series of Google Analytics overviews for this site, where you will be lucky enough for to find out where this site gets its traffic from and how much it gets.
- I will be shifting to making weekly earnings reports instead of monthly ones which just take too long to wait for.
- Insider info about my new sites and partnership with Garry Conn.

John Chow and Darren Rose Sitting in a Tree...

.... looking down on us and throwing us bones to keep us happy as we bark up at them.

Blinggest* def:
- Combination of biggest, most bling and blog e.g. 'I am the bliggest!'

Two of the blinggest* bloggers in the 'blogosphere', John Chow and Darren Rowse were seen passing AdWords messages. Darren (arguably the MOST blinggest of the two on the blogosphere) has hardly mentioned the subject. Perhaps he feels he doesn't need the feisty Canadian, after all he is currently ranked number 43 in Technorati, as opposed to John Chow has a 'mere' rank of 561. John seems adamant to keep the relationship open and proudly proclaimed it to be a "love fest". Google are apparently thrilled with the news and so am I. I am hoping Google with send them both a token gift, perhaps an 'extra-large' domain name where they can consummate their relationship.



I am a regular reader of both their blogs and feel they have taken on the role of 'idols' and are greatly admired by many 'wannabees'. In my humble opinion, bloggers who become idols should be made understand the power that is in their dextrous hands. If all they write about is how to be successful, we will end up with an entire generation of bloggers thinking that is the only important thing in life. Both John Chow and Darren Rose should have to satisfy the other needs of bloggers. I.E. they should learn to sing and dance (don't worry John your already halfway there!) and tell us stories about the 'olden days' of the Internet and teach us about the founding fathers of the blogosphere. After all, is that not what we demmand from 'offline' celebrities?

I just hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree.

8 Simple Rules for...Successful Blogging!

They are in order of importance, 1 being the most important.

1. - - --Create good content to act as what everyone has been calling 'linkbait'. This can be done a number of ways:

a) By saying something controversial. This can only be 'used' a few times as it gets old after a while. This is a way of grabbing the attention you deserve and is especially effective if it is the Title of the post. Of course the main content must stand up to the expectations that the controversial title brings.

b) Say something Useful. Your readers are human beings and they want to experience pleasure, be it through reading an entertaining/controversial article, or by learning a valuable lesson. You can think of learning is an investment in future pleasure. I.E. preparation. If your content is so useful that they cannot stop themselves using it then you have succeeded. They may reciprocate with an encouraging comment, a digg/vote or maybe even a link back if they refer to your article.

c) Say something inspiring and LEAD BY EXAMPLE. People don't want to hear that they are 'never going to make it'. People like to hear success stores and they need role models. I have mentioned John Chow as mine and Darren Rowse. This does not mean lie to people about your earnings, but you need to be genuinely ambitious and believe in yourself.

As a rule of thumb, be specific, original, get the grit and use keywords in your articles to make Google smile on you.

I often find it useful to think about content this way:

Thousands of people are going to read what your write (over time). Imagine reading out your article aloud to all of them (if you are shy then use the old trick of imagining them being naked). Would you be proud of what you said? Would they applaud you? Of course you would write in a slightly different style if reading aloud, but otherwise that analogy is sound.

What good content achieves:
- A sense of pride in your blog.
- Keeps readers coming back
- Acts as 'linkbait' to generate inbound links
- Is good for SEO (from the keywords and the linkbacks
- Trust from your readers.

I.E. Good content creates traffic.

2. Submit your site to the major Search engines, such as Google, MSN, DMOZ. They are free but can take some time to list your site so submit it early on. (Especially DMOZ which can take FOR EVER!). The benefits of this are obvious, Google organic searches provides over half of this blogs traffic. Organic Google is also more likely to click on ads unlike Digg traffic which is ‘trained’ not to.

3. Exchange links with sites relevant to your niche and that have more inbound links than your own. This is especially important in the early stages, just to get your blog of the ground. It helps SEO, traffic and all that, because each inbound link is viewed as a 'vote of confidence' in the eyes of the search engines.

4. Submit your blog to ranking systems such as Technorati and Spicypage.

Benefits:
- Useful for your own knowledge about the number of inbound links your blog has.
- Useful for advertising your blog, I.e. gives you the ability to state your blogs rank.
- Great for networking. I used the Technorati searches to find blogs in my own niche which were also slightly more popular. Then I had a look at those blogs, learnt from them myself and requested a link exchange. Spicypage is a great place to do much the same thing, only it is much smaller. Note: Social Networking sites like Mylot can be used in a similar way to make contacts online and promote your blog.

5. Monetise your blog with Ads. These could be with Google AdSense ads orText Link Ads among others. People often make the mistake of doing this first in the desperate hope of getting a couple of clicks. This is pointless. Unless you have a decent amount of quality content your blog will appear to be a sleazy MFA site (made for AdSense) which will have a negative effect on traffic.

6. Join a few trustworthy affiliate programs such as AGLOCO and Bestcashrewards. These will earn you extra income and they give you something else to blog about, although you shouldn’t write about your affiliate programs too often.

7. Submit your better posts to article directories like Digg, and Go Articles and isnare. Don't forget to leave information about yourself and a link to your blog where allowed. Digg is a little different; it is focuses on news about technology, politics, business and gaming so there is not point in going through your old posts and submitting a news post that you write a year ago to digg.

8. Submit your site to niche/smaller directories. This brings traffic directly from the directory as well as giving a helping hand in SEO for the major search engines.

That was an abnormally long post for me. If you made it this far I succeeded!

Blog Review: Business Ideas for the Real World

Brilliant - business ideas for the real world contains some very useful snippets of information. The posts there are summarised on the main page, with a link that takes you through to the whole thing on the main website.
Some useful pages are:

Internet Business Ideas Directory
Make Your Website Spider Friendly - Search Engine Optimization for Beginners

Once you get reading these posts they can get quite involving, so I suggest you pick a few of the best looking ones and get really stuck into them. There is a monthly eZine which you can sign up for free. It contains "internet business tips, money making tips and unbiased reviews".


So get reading!
Coming up: AGLOCO summary

How to Drive Traffic to your Blog

I have previously explained about ways of profiting from your blog and about affiliate programmes like bestcashrewards and AGLOCO. It is all well and good to be a member of such programmes, but how are you going to promote them without have a constant stream of traffic to your site?

Well, a major contributing factor is Search engine Optimisation (SEO). Traditionally this has been done by link exchanges, because each link is viewed as a 'vote' in the all-seeing eyes of the search engines. However this is all changing. The search engines are using more and more complex algorithms to help separate out the wheat from the chaff.

This does NOT mean link exchanges dead. You simply have to more picky when making them. There is little/NO value in having a link from a unknown, unrelated site. It will bring you no traffic because it doesn’t get any itself, and it is worthless in the eyes of the search engine because it is unrelated and is considered almost a sort of spam. This is BAD news for your site.

The solution is to attain links from RELEVANT AUTHORITY SITES. This means sites that are popular, get large amounts of traffic (you can find this out by using and Technorati, the biggest blog ranking site on the net). And as you know by know, they must have RELEVANT CONTENT.

This need for relevant content is why in some lines of Internet business, link exchanges are dead. If you think it through, if you are trying to sell a product, you are just putting links to your competitor’s sites right there for your customers to run off to. So DON'T use link exchanges if you are selling something!

For those of you who are not selling something, you can get link exchanges from authority sites by e.g. offering to write a review of their site containing links to their site and putting it on yours. For an example of this see my review of JohnChow.com

For more advice on making money online STAY TUNED!

Successful Blogging For Money

Whether you are getting 100s, 1000s or 10,000s hits on your blog per day, you are GARENTEED to make more money if you DIVERSIFY.

What is Diversification?

It is when you generated MULTIPLE sources of income. This does not have to mean e.g. selling a physical product AND having adverts, it simply means don't put all your 'eggs in one basket'. This means you must not ONLY rely on adsense as your source of imcome. There ARE other ways to get ads on your blog out there. On of them is:

Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads have a far more stable level of income and can be displayed on the same page as adsence. The only 'down side' is your site needs fairly high levels of traffic, and good site content. In the wider schemes of things this is actually a good thing, because it motivates bloggers to fill their blog will original content and actually make them worth reading.


I have given you an alternate source of income from ads, now for another source of income altogether.

To generate income from this method you do NOT need any product to sell.

This method is known as AFFILAITE MARKETING. As everyone knows, there are scams out there so you must judge carefully. There are some affiliate programmes that have become so popular, OTHER people have taken the risk for you. One of these programmes is AGLOCO. You only have to read a few of my previous posts to understand the potential of this programme.

However this is only one affiliate programme and seeing as the lesson of the day is to DIVERSIFY, I will let you know about 1 more. This one is called bestcashrewards. I have a post about this in my archives. You can either go take a look at that, or click here to take a look.

And there it is. People ask me; 'why do you do all that stuff online?'. I used to have no choice that to say 'because I can' in a dramatic manner, now I can say, 'because I make lots of money'. And YOU can too!

Instant Money Online

As you all know from my previous posts, there are many different possible ways to make money online. Perhaps by surveys, paid-to-read emails and a whole range of affiliate programs. Although some of these do have potential, they are riddled with the danger of being scams, or simply paying small amounts. The advantage of these methods is that they are free, providing you choose wisely, and so the worst thing that the company could take from you is time and effort, but not your money.

Another possible route is by blogging, the 'blogosphere' has now amassed over many thousands of blogs, where little people from all over the world are all looking to make money online the modern way. They are all at different stages along the learning curve of blogging for money, but some of them have been stuck in the same place for sometime. They may have run out of ideas or given up, but this is just separating the wheat from the chaff, (although I do encourage you all not to give up). I believe blogging is a more long-term method than allot of people realise. Many people think if they just quickly throw together a page and shove a load of ads on it the money will just start rolling in. However, the more experienced of us know that is not the case. To be successful a blog must be ALIVE. It must be regularly updated with original content, to keep people coming back for more, which will gradually build up its reader base.

It may seem like I am denouncing every method available, including blogging, but I assure you I am not. I like the fact that blogging takes involvement, and can provide a useful service to people.

The important thing is, DONT put all your eggs in one basket. I myself am a member of AGLOCO, Bestcashrewards and Mylot as well as being a blogger. After all, as Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work".