Goals for March

Remember these aims for February?:

- "Provide a blog that people actually find useful and isn't just me displaying my knowledge."
This is the biggie, it is an on-going process but I would say I have done quite well with this (well I hope I have, I have no way of telling for sure).

- "Increase traffic to 300 visitors a day if I make one post per day."
I have failed; I have increased traffic to a high point of 256 page views in a day, yet alone unique visitors.

- "Get into the Technorati top 100,000 (at the moment I’m ranked about 170,00)."
I achieved this ages ago, I'm now ranked 23,534.

- "Get Dugg once (achieving this would basically mean I achieve my other aims)" .
I failed, but then to be honest I haven’t really been trying to get Dugg.

- "Get 100 people in my AGLOCO network (at the moment I have 25)".
I failed- I have 40 people now in my AGLOCO network.

- "Get to Level 7 on Bestcashrewards (at the moment I am on Level 3)".
I failed, but only because they have been 'restoring the member pages' for weeks, preventing me from getting any referrals.

So again a mixed month, but in my opinion a lot of those goals showed my naivety and were over-optimistic. I am very happy with the progress this blog has made and I see little point in making goals like this for another month. I am obviously going to try to achieve all of the failed aims from last month, and continue developing this blog. I'm expecting a Google PageRank update in about a month (because they do them every 3 months or so), which will make things really get interesting.

Week 8 Earnings Report + Rankings

Here are the figures for this week. The figures in brackets are the increase since last week, the main figures are cumulative. It is fairly self-explanatory; have a gander!

Mylot: $19.89 (+$0.47)

AdSense: $41.64 (+$10.05)

Text Link Ads: $50 (no change)

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $32. (No change, apart from a bonus $10HMV voucher :D)

Ciao: £6.67/$13.34 (+$1.24)

Cashcrate: $3.25 (no change)

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (no change).

SlashmySearch: $2.57 (+$1.45)

Total: $173.19 (+$23.19)

Technorati Rank: 23,534 (-8,786) (remember a ‘ – ‘ is a good thing with rankings!)
Alexa rank: 511,221 (-49,347)

So, over all, a bit of a mixed week. The main improvement has been AdSense earnings, which last week were not even on an average of over $1 a day. This is actually a double since last week, which happened because of a double in traffic. I will go into this in more detail tomorrow with my second Google Analytics Weekly Overview.

The "bonus $10HMV voucher" from Lightspeed Panel Surveys was not officially a bonus, but more of a surprise. I have been a member of Lightspeed Panel Surveys since before they started their current points system and the HMV voucher was something I 'earned' before they made the switch. It hasn't arrived yet but why would they send me an email reminding me about it if they weren’t going to send it?

Also, don't let the low increase in Mylot earnings fool you, Mylot has been a substantial source of traffic for this blog and a great promotional tool for getting referrals, namely for SlashMySearch, where I got 8 referrals over nigh from a single post on Mylot. Almost all of the SlashmySearch earnings are from my referrals, so I don't consider that a loss either. There is a lot more to say about this, all of which will be said tomorrow, so stay tuned!.

P.S. The AGLOCO Viewbar is scheduled to be out later this month, so those earnings will be kicking in soon!

Alternatives to Wealthtoolbox

You could tell from my Google Analytics Weekly Overview that 'Wealthtoolbox' and 'Wealthtoolbox scam' are my two top keywords people type into Google to find this site. It is a great shame that Wealthtoolbox is not a program that I support or I would have a zillion referrals in just a few days. I have made this brief list of alternatives to Wealthtoolbox for all those of you who found this site via that keyword and were disappointed by My negative review of it.

The sites listed are all money making sites that I trust. They are not HYIP's (high yield investment programs) like Wealthtoolbox is because I simply don’t trust any HYIP's; instead they are other ways of making money online, all of which are FREE .

1. Mylot.
Basic overview
You get paid for posting and taking part on the forum.

Detailed overview
You get paid on Mylot for:

1. Starting discussions (the more replies you get the more you earn, so its in your interests to make them interesting – this makes Mylot a great community to be a part of!)
2. Replying to other peoples discussions (you get more if you do a more in depth post - about 4 lines or more)
3. Uploading relevant images to your replies and/or discussions
4. Uploading images to your interests (you get more if you write about them)
5. Getting referrals (you get to keep 25% of your referrals earnings - they do not lose anything)

Note: you do not get paid for replying to discussions you have started, but you should still do this as it can help to keep the discussion going and will make you a more respected member.
Join Mylot.

2. SlashMySearch
Basic overview
- Get paid to brows the web with the SlashMySearch search engine.
- Earn from 65% of your referrals earnings

For a Detailed overview see my indepth review and proof of payment.

3. AGLOCO.
Basic Overview
- Get paid to browse the web using the 3. AGLOCO custom Toolbar.
- Make lots of money when AGLOCO goes on the stock market at the end of the year.
- Earn from your referrals

For a detailed overview see this post about AGLOCO.

4. Text Link Ads For webmasters/bloggers only
Basic overview
- Get paid to publish Textlinkads on your site.
- Advertise on other people’s sites, there is a free £100 starter coupon.

SlashMySearch - Indepth Review + Proof of Payment

*You can click on all images to enlarge them*
You may remember a few days ago I made a post called SlashMySearch - A Trial Run. I gave a fairly balanced picture of SlashMySearch, if not a slightly negative one. At that point I was very new to the program and I have found out the answers to a lot of the 'I thinks'. I can now cancel out some of the negatives that were on the list, but it is not all sunshine and rich nerds...Much of this post won't make much sense unless you take a quick read of the afore mentioned post, so if you haven’t read it already then why don't you go and read it now.

OK, so:

Remaining Negatives
- The search engine still isn't up to scratch
- My little trick of searching for Google and then using it to search only counts as a single search and so only earns a few cents. The same is with the Mylot trick.
- The minimum payout is $50 and you have to wait two months until they pay you. (The biggest bummer in my opinion).

Surprisingly the positives still remain:
- The earning system does mean you make money for minimal effort.
- You get paid to surf via their search engine
- You get paid to read + post in their forum.
- You get paid a large portion (about 65%) of your referrals earnings.
- The community is growing, the viral 'excitement' seems to be just taking a grip, which means they will have more money from advertising revenues to share with us.

The new positive I have found is this proof of payment that has been circulating the net. You can see this is the Screen shot above. Of course this is not 100% proof, because I’m sure the numbers could be changed if you really wanted to change them, but it's good enough for me for now. I have also tested the referral program and found it to be most effective for two reasons:

1. It is very easy to get referrals, because the market is not saturated by SlashMySearch, unlike with programs like AGLOCO where everyone has already made up their mind about signing up. My proof of this is in the screen shot below, which shows my current SlashMySearch downline, which formed in just two days! I actually made 8 referrals over night from a single post on Mylot which was quite exiting when I woke up lol.



2. The referrals tend to be active. The easiest way to tell this is to go to bed, wake up and find a shiny extra dollar sitting in your account... which I did. The evidence for my referrals activity is shown in the screen shot below:



The SlashMySearch team assure us that they are working on the search engine to fix the bugs and get it sorted out as soon as possible, I do believe them but how soon is 'as soon as possible'? That’s up to you to decide. I also had a read through the TOS and found this:

"If under any circumstance SlashMySearch.com becomes bankrupt, an advertising account does not pay on time or any other accounts receivables problems comes up, payment may be delayed or under extreme circumstances, skipped. If bankruptcy occurs, all outstanding payments will be void and null and this program is automatically terminated."

This is a little worrying, but if you think about it it's pretty expectable, they are a young program and still in beta development. Reading this caused me to trust their intentions more (i.e. I doubt they are out to scam us) but I lost a little faith in their ability. I'm going to give SlashMySearch a chance. After all, it's not very fair if I only support more developed programs like AGLOCO and leave out the 'little guy', if SlashMySearch count as little. Click here to join what I'm now thinking is an exiting new program.

Week 7 Earnings Report + Rankings

A while back I said I would be switching to weekly earnings reports from monthly ones (which just take too long to wait for). You can see my January Earnings Report here.

So here is the first weekly earnings report, which is at week 7. The figures in brackets are the increase since the last earnings report, which in this case was 3 weeks ago. The main figures are cumulative for the 7 weeks.

Mylot: $19.42 (+$0.57).

Adsense: $31.51 (+$17.01).

Text Link Ads: $50 (+$25).

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $32.

Ciao: £6.10/ $12.20 (+$1.20).

Cashcrate: $3.25 (+$0.45).

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (+$0.00).

SlashmySearch: $1.12 (+$1.12).

Total Exactly $150

Technorati Rank: 32,320
Alexa Traffic Rank: 560,568

A word about Mylot. Don't be deceived by the low earnings. I have been using it for getting referrals for other programs, namely SlashmySearch, which I am still experimenting with. And with the Lightspeed Panlel Surveys, that $32 is not all from the 3 weeks, I missed it out by accident before so I don't know how much I had earned at the end of January.

It is quite surprising that Text Link Ads is the largest earner, especially because I was rejected from their publisher program for not having a Google Page Rank. Those earnings are just from their afffiliate program! I received the first $25 from them a few weeks ago and you can view My proof of Payment here.

Also, don't forget about other things like AGLOCO and Bestcashrewards. Bestcashrewards is currently undergoing some maintenance so you will have to wait until its fixed before you sign up :p. Nevertheless, once the AGLOCO Viewbar is released the earnings will start to arrive, although most of the earnings will be from the stock market when AGLOCO floats on it at the end of the year. You can see my post about John Chow getting 1000 ALGOCO signups in 10 days which has info about my predicted earnings from AGLOCO.

Tomorrow there will be the first Google Analytics Weekly Overview, where you will be lucky enough to find out how much traffic this site gets and where it gets it from.

SlashMySearch - A Trial run

CLICK TO ENLARGE
One of the latest referral schemes circulating the net is SlashMySeach. I heard about it a couple of times before I joined and I aim to give to give it a fair review. Fair reviews are important for a blogger because they maintain trust

Allow me to explain. Imagine if I referred you to a program that ended up being a 'scam' of some sort, I would have lost your trust and your readership. I also would have wasted all the time I spent writing the article that referred you. So you can see it's in my interest to tell the truth.

Anyway, I signed up to SlashMySeach yesterday and I have had a little time to experiment with it. (I will give you the full review in a few days when I have spent more time on it). So far there are some good and bad things about it which I will briefly outline.

Positives
- The earning system does means you make money for minimal effort.
- You get paid to surf via their search engine
- You get paid to read + post in their forum.
- You get paid a large portion (about 65%) of your referrals earnings.
- The community is growing, the viral 'excitement' seems to be just taking a grip, which means they will have more money from advertising revenues to share with us.

Negatives
- The Search Engine is terrible. Many searches come up with 0 results. They claim that this is a bug, which is currently being dealt with but only time will tell. I also have a sneaky way to get around this but I am unsure if it earns at the same rate. Basically, if you type in 'Google' in the SlashMySearch bar, you can then use the main Google search while still on the SlashMySearch site, which I think means you are still earning.
- You can do a similar thing with other sites. e.g. If you search for 'Mylot, you can go about your Mylot posting as usual, while still on SlashMySearch, which I think means you are still earning. You can see me doing this in the screen shot.
- Once you have earned the minimum payout ($50) you have to wait 2 months till you can receive it!

So at the moment I think its quite an even battle. I will find out all the answers to the I think's and get back to you with a full review in a few days. In the meantime why not join the 'Mylot forum, which has a payment program 'we' all trust.