Using Forums to form a judgement of an a 'Make Money Online' program

You have my apologies for not posting yesterday, I was at my old schools rock show and some friends of mine where performing; it was GREAT by they way :D

Anyway...

Forums. Where would we be without them? They have numerous uses, be it making 'friends'/business partners, having a rant about anything, or even getting paid to post like on Mylot.

Remember a few days ago I wrote about getting free traffic from free online advertising forums; well there is yet another use for forums and that is using them to form a judgement on a make money online program.

What is he on about?
The fact is that everyone uses forums. A very think and juicy slice of societies nerds, affiliate marketers, gamers and bloggers all use them. The point I am vainly attempting to make is that forum threads often give a fair view. I have seen numerous occasions when someone promoting an affiliate program has started a new thread containing a load of over promotional exaggerated pap. The 'people of the forum' often respond to these asking things about the site. Many of them reply saying they already know about that program and can prove it's a scam.

The number of replies can also tell you a lot about the 'make money online' program that is being promoted. If there are no replies, it either indicates:

a) That everyone already knows about it and has made their judgement
or
b) That the promoter has phrased what they are saying badly and no-one really cares because they are bad at making promotional posts.

a) Tells us that you don't want to join up because it has reached its full potential already
b) Tells you that you don't want to join up because you are still not convinced it's any good. It also tells you how not to post.


If there are numerous replies to a post about a make money online scheme, then you can read those replies and make your judgement accordingly.

And that’s forums… they are infinite in their uses.

Week 10 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: $20.55 (+$0.39)

Adsense: $61.22 (+$6.19)

Text Link Ads: $50 (no change)

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $42. (No change)

Ciao: £7.96/$15.92 (+$0.58)

Cashcrate: $5.96 and $4.50 pending (+$5.92. From now on I will not include pending payments in the main total.

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (no change).

SlashmySearch: $2.70 (+$0.01)

Amazon Associates: $16.50 (+$16.50)

Kontera: $1.04 (+$1.04)

Total: $216.39 (+$12.85)

Technorati Rank: 19,851 (-1,289) (remember a ‘ – ‘ is a good thing with rankings!)
Alexa rank: 326,609 (-21,613)

To be frank it was a very 'bad' week, especially given last weeks earnings were $29.35. However, I am not surprised or disappointed. This reflects the time I have spent working on my new site Affiliate Programs, which caused a noticeable drop on traffic for this one. Once everything has calmed down and especially after the impending Google Page Rank update it will all return to the steady progress that was happening in previous weeks.

If you were wondering how progress is going with Affiliate Programs the answer is it is going great. After just 2 posts I have already received a request for me to research a site and give my 'scam or not' conclusion on it. Its gona be big!

SEO Video Tutorial Series - Keywords

Today I started doing some preliminary SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work for my new site Affiliate Programs. I came across a great SEO video series over at Tailored Consulting. When setting up this blog I know I didn't conduct proper keyword research, I 'sort of did some' but not enough. I am determined to get my new site off to the best start possible and that involves doing SEO correctly from the start. The things Brendon says are fairly easy to implement and I will be taking full advantage of his advice. He recommends SEO Book's free keyword research Tool. I used this and managed to come up with a couple of great keyword phrases for my new site. Another great little tool is Overture's Keyword selection tool, which can be used in conjunction with SEO book’s tool.

The rest of the videos in the series will be posted over the next few days and I will be carrying out their advice on my new site, so stay tuned!.

Make Money Online - Affiliate scam Guide

Yesterday I unveiled my new site in all its nakedness. I found myself having so much fun setting it all up today that I got a bit carried away and didn't get round to making a 'proper' post on this blog.

I will be trying my hardest not to let this happen very often, because I know you need something to read :p and I do enjoy writing this blog. So why not have a look at AffiliateScamGuide now. It has been updated with tis very first post, a shiney new layout and an About page.

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!

Google Analytics - Week 9 Overview

CLICK ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE
As you can see, traffic this week has been a little disappointing with out any spikes or major events. Everyone has the occasional 'off week', but the question is:

What can be learnt from this uneventful week?
As usual there are a combination of factors that caused the events/'unevents'. The answer can be found in more wonderful graphs below.



All of the minuses and drops in referrals may look disheartening, but it is important to figure out why traffic has dropped, or at least not grown.

You can see that the greatest drop is from fewer people finding this site via Google using the keyword 'Wealthtoolbox'. A quick Google search of that keyword still reveals that this blog occupies the number 2 and 3 spots; so the cause is not SEO failure. The only possibility is that people have finally caught on to Wealthtoolbox being untrustworthy and so it is less popular, resulting in fewer people searching for it.

The decrease in the number of referral traffic also has a simple explanation. Last week I received a link from JohnChow.com for winning his 'Guess my february blog income' contest which gave me more referral traffic than usual. This week I have simply lost that advantage, sending referral traffic back to usual which gives a negative percentage on the charts.

I have not made any new posts about Wealthtoolbox,, Mylot
or SlashMySeach, which always send a decent amount of traffic. This is because there is simply not much more to say about any of those programs and I would rather focus on more interesting blog topics. Unfortunately it is harder to rank well for more general keywords and so this causes a further decrease in traffic; at least for a while until this blog ranks more highly for more competitive terms.

That’s all for this weeks overview. As I wrote in the Week 9 earnings reportAdSence earnings increased despite the decrease in traffic, so arguably the quality of traffic has been higher.

Week 9 Earnings Report + Rankings

Here are the figures for this week, and yes, this post is normally made on a Friday... but I got a little sidetracked... The figures in brackets are the increase since last week; the main figures are cumulative. It is fairly self-explanatory; have a gander!

Mylot: $20.28 (+$0.39)

Adsense: $55.03 (+$11.93)

Text Link Ads: $50 (no change)

Lightspeed Panel Surveys: 1825 points = approximately $42. (No change)

Ciao: £7.73/$15.46 (+$2.12)

Cashcrate: $3.25 pending, $0.08 earned (+$0.08).

Treasure Trooper: $0.50 (no change).

SlashmySearch: $2.69 (+$0.12)

Amazon Associates: $16.50 (+$16.50)

Total: $202.54 (+$29.35)

Technorati Rank: 21,140 (-2,394) (remember a ‘ – ‘ is a good thing with rankings!)
Alexa rank: 348,222 (-162,999)

As usual it was a bit of a mixed week but it is nice to cross the $200 mark. Surprisingly traffic has been down this week (which you will find out later today with the google Analytics Weekly Overview), but AdSense earnings have still increased more than they did last week. I still consider that a loss though, because at this stage it is more important to grow the blogs readership than initial AdSense earnings.

The SlashmySearch earnings are low because they have temporarily lowered the pay rate, but they assured us all via their forum that the normal rates will be returning "really soon".

Now that I'm reaching the top end of the Technorati rankings; moving up them has become harder but the Alexa rank is still increasing substantially.

As usual I must remind you about the impending release of the AGLOCO Viewbar so those earnings will be kicking in soon!

5 Ways to lose blog readers

Write too many sponsored posts in too shorter space of time. Sponsored posts are great; bloggers earn a little, the company your writing about gets some attention, the sponsor gets some money (from the company) and the reader has something to read, so why is it dangerous?

It’s simple. Sponsored posts often do not reflect the bloggers real views. This is especially common in new bloggers who do not understand this. They just want the cash regardless of whether they loose some readers because they are overly-flattering in their post. It is especially dangerous if you have not properly researched and spent time using what ever you are reviewing. You should all know by now that you must be careful about what you endorse. Just imagine... your reputation would be left in tatters if an affiliate program you recommended suddenly closed it's doors for no reason and you and your referrals lost all their earnings. Some sites do allow you to write negative reviews, but this is only useful if you are actually going to use the site and find out it's bad points; which you are less likely to do if you are writing a sponsored post every day.
Note - I am including posts about affiliate/referral programs here, because in the long run they are sponsored posts.



Not replying to your blog comments.. Not only will this piss of your readers and make them feel little and insignificant but it’s just plain stupid. There are numerous benefits of replying to your comments.
Benefits
• A comment may be suggesting an improvement you could make to your blog. Even if you carry out their advice, replying makes it more obvious you are open to criticism and makes them feel happy because they have said something useful. This means they are more likely to return to your blog to get more of that feeling!
• First time visitors to your blog often judge it by the number of comments they see (which is a sort of very rough traffic/popularity guide). If you reply to your comments that number will be higher, especially if you spark of a debate. If they see a high number of comments they may request a link exchange, or just become regular readers. It may seem like a small point but it all adds up.
• Some comments are questions. You wouldn’t want your reader (who thinks you know the answer!) to lose faith in you, so answer their questions!
• Some comments are compliments, which we all love. Saying a quick 'thank you' is polite and encourages more compliments to come your way.
• Some comments are spam. Don't reply, delete them.
• Your more knowledgeable readers may disagree with what you have said and spark off a debate. If you don't reply it looks like you are hiding from them. It also shows your expertise if you can come up with arguments to counter what they have said.




By hiding things from them. This is a very broad category and has several possible interpretations.
a) If you are a successful blogger throw a rope down the mountain and help your readers to the top with you. After all, that’s probably how you got to the top.
b) Lying about affiliate programs - this is covered in part 1.
c) Your earnings. This is especially relevant to blogs in this niche. Why pretend to have earned more/less than you really have? I know some people out there are apparently 'offended' by revealing their blogging earnings, but if you are then this probably isn't the niche for you.

I try to be as open as possible about this blogs progress, which I why I make a Weekly earnings report and a Google Analytics Weekly overview.



By making your archives difficult to access. In my opinion this is the single biggest limitation of blogger blogs, (the lack of categories). I have tried to get around this by referring to past articles as a write but there are some that hardly ever get linked to. This is most important for the regular readers of your blog. Most of my 'new visitors' don't arrive to the homepage of this blog, but emerge somewhere in the archives so Google has done a good job of indexing them all.




By cluttering up your site with ads. This is an obvious one, multiple big banner ads are a no-no, and too much AdSense will send your readers in the other direction. There are ways of integrating ads so they don't stand out so much (which also gets you more clicks). For an example of this see my post on Kontera. Banner ads have been 'scientifically' proven to get less click through than Text Link Ads and too many banners on a single pages results in one long loading time for people with slower connections. This is true for all images so don't include too many.

Those are the 5 ways to lose blog readers. There are others of course but hopefully the basics are covered there. Many of them are pure common sense but you would be surprised how many people fall fowl of them. Number 1 is the most prevalent in my opinion, because the authors see it as a sort of 'happy medium' between a site full of ads and a site that provides a service so make sure you spread sponsored posts out.

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.

10 Reasons why Digg.com is Digging it's own Grave

1. No matter how many times you blog it, Digg is not a fair democracy. Bigger sites, that already have more visitors and who post a 'Digg' icon after a post will get far more votes than a site of lesser traffic. Their story also carries more weight and people are more likely to vote it up like sheep anyway. It is a popularity contest.

2. People are being banned left right and centre for pedantic little reasons, e.g.DotmySpot.

3. You get next to no benefit of submitting someone else’s article.

4. Traffic is good, but Digg traffic often crashes the site or sends the bandwidth bill through the roof (not on blogger blog as they are free). I am not offering possible solutions, just highlighting the problems.

5. You cannot prevent an article of yours being submitted by someone else. This wouldn’t usually matter, but if you wrote an article a year ago which is now out of date, and someone just submitted it, you would look like a damn fool.

6. There are arguably better sites for the same job - I wont mention examples because I don't want to start a war between them…

7. Digg traffic rarely clicks on ads, and so does not equal advertising dollars.

8. Many of the posts are totally off topic of Digg. This wouldn’t be so bad but some actually make it to the front page!

9. You can't Digg an article without logging in.

10. "Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all." For no reasons at all!? What’s all that about!

Textlink Ads - Proof of Payment

CLICK TO ENGLARGE ( I have covered up the addresses)
You may remember that one month ago today I received my first Text link ads payment. I took a photo of the check and stuck it up on here for you all to see. It was for $25 for a 'client' (advertiser) I successfully referred. This morning I received my second check from Text Link Ads, but this time it was $25 for a publisher I referred. So I thought, what they hey, showing you another check won’t hurt and maybe some unbelievers out there will see the light that not everything is 'a scam'.

This blog was rejected by Text Link Ads due to its lack of Google Page Rank, which is just one of the reasons I can't wait for the update (which I'm estimating will be in about 1 month – I’m estimating I will get a PR4/5).

It is pretty obvious that it was worth me signing up despite being rejected for the publisher program. I made $50 by referring just 2 members with their affiliate program and I have developed a very high opinion of Text Link Ads due to their snappy on time payments.

You can do just the same, anyone can join the affiliate program and make money like I did. Of course you won't make as much as you would if you are also accepted by their publisher program (and I wont get anything for referring you if you just become an affiliate! But I would still highly recommend it).

If you are looking at this from the other angle, the advertiser angle then Text Link Ads is defiantly a great choice. You are given a $100 starter coupon, which you can spend on buying TextLinks on the site of your choice! I would do this myself, but I am only using free methods to promote this site and so the advertiser program is not for me. If you are wondering who it is run by, Darren Rowse, the Problogger is a co-founder, (I first heard about it from his blog). So go a head and Join Text Link Ads! (aff link).

The AGLOCO List

By now most of my regular readers know I actively support and promote AGLOCO. I have decided to start a Viral marketing campaign to help the average and below average AGLOCO member to get AGLOCO referrals. It does this by giving their blog some linking love and a little extra traffic. You may think, 'why would I want to link to someone else’s AGLOCO blog?, they will just steal my referrals!'. The reason is that this list will help grow the AGLOCO community as a whole. The people who actually look down the list and visit these sites are not going to be potential referrals, but the authors of the blogs, back tracking to find out who linked to them. This will generate an awareness among of other AGLOCO blogs, creating a learning fest as people learn from each others sites about ways to promote AGLOCO. Not to mention that the linking love will help us all in the Search engines.

Rules
- To Continue the AGLOCO list, you must have less than 50 direct referrals. You can have as many indirect referrals as you want have because you have no control over that.
- If you are AGLOCO listed and wish to continue the list, you must find other blogs about AGLOCO (you may already be a reader of them) and add them to the list. (They may only post the list themselves if they have less than 50 direct referrals, if you know they have more than 50, don't add them, this way there will be as few high flyers on the list as possible).
- The blogs you add do not have to be only about AGLOCO. They can include posts on other topics, much like this blog. As long as they have made a few positive posts about AGLOCO feel free to list them, (check that they are not already on the list).
- If you continue The AGLOCO List, you must add the site that listed you to your list.
- You may not add other blogs you author to the list. If you have two blogs on AGLOCO and someone listed the 'lesser one' you may add the better one if you wish and remove the lesser one from your blog post.
- You can still partisipate in The AGLOCO List, even if you are not listed by anyone, you simply add your site providing it fits with the other rules

To continue The AGLOCO list:
1. Copy and past the list of sites below into your blog post.
2. Add any AGLOCO blogs you want to the list, including the blog that listed you (this blog). Remember, the more you add the faster it will spread.
3. That’s it! Sit back and feel the networking love.

AGLOCO Little Guy
The ClubFreedom Blog
BobBuskirk.com
Blog-Op
Blog About Money Online
Making money on the web
How to Earn Money Blogging
The Ultimate Make Money Onling Blog
ADESBLOG.com
My life! - boring but I love it
Dominate AGLOCO
Successful Online Money Making ! (I am adding myself because there is no one to add me first!).

Here is the Text version you can copy and paste straight into your blog post:

<a href="http://aglocolittleguy.blogspot.com/">AGLOCO Little Guy</a>

<a href="http://club-freedom.blogspot.com/">The ClubFreedom Blog</a>

<a href="http://www.bobbuskirk.com">BobBuskirk.com</a>

<a href="http://blog-op.com/">Blog-Op</a>

<a href="http://blogaboutmoneyonline.blogspot.com">Blog
About Money Online</a>

<a href="http://makemoneyonblog.blogspot.com/">Making
money on the web</a>

<a href="http://how2make.blogspot.com">How to Earn Money
Blogging</a>

<a
href="http://the-ultimate-make-money-online-blog.blogspot.com">The
Ultimate Make Money Onling Blog</a>

<a
href="http://www.adesblog.com/">ADESBLOG.com</a>

<a href="http://ladylike4.com/">My life! - boring but I
love it</a>

<a href="http://www.dominateagloco.com/">Dominate
AGLOCO</a>

<a href="http://matt608.blogspot.com">Successful Online
Money Making !</a>

CashCrate - A Scam?

Update: Since writing this I have now made over $400 with CashCrate! Come and see proof of my cashcrate earnings at my new blog here: CashCrate proof of payment.

I have been a member of CashCrate for a while now, but I have had little success with them because they have far fewer offers for non-USA/Canada residents. I had actually half given up on them, but they recently made these interesting updates:

The more referrals you get, the higher % they payout.

Bronze - 0 Active Referrals - 20% First Level, 10% Second Level
Silver - 50 Active Referrals - 25% First Level, 10% Second Level
Gold - 150 Active Referrals - 25% First Level, 15% Second Level
Platinum - 300 Active Referrals - 30% First Level, 15% Second Level
Elite - 500 Active Referrals - 30% First Level, 20% Second Level

These are locked-in levels, once you reach them there's no way back
down.

Point System
For each $1 you earn in completed offers, you will earn a point. You
also get points for doing "Point Offers". These are then exchangeable for
awesome prizes at the prize shop!

Offer "Rating" System
The way offers are rated has changed from 1-5. The offers are now rated
using a complicated mathematical formula which will bring the greatest
approving offers to the top. This will also help weed out poorly
approving offers.

As well, you can now sort by "Free Offers" and "Trial Offers". Free
Offers are those that do not require a credit card whereas Trial Offers
are the higher paying ones that do.

Daily Surveys
For a few minutes each day you can complete a $0.80 Daily Survey. These
will not confirm instantly as they approve all offers once per day for
the ones done before that.

Along with those they have added a few other smaller features, such as
making it easier to submit and remove offers and overall improving the
CashCrate experience.

As well as that, this contest was announced by the CashCrate Admins a couple of days ago:

- Win a 30GB iPod Video! The user who gains the most active referrals
(users who complete atleast one offer) during the month of March will be
awarded with a shiny, brand new 30GB iPod Video. This can hold up to
7,500 songs!

- The user who refers the second most active users will win $50, third
will win $25 and the next 10 users will each win $10.

- As well, whoever completes the most $ worth of offers will receive a
$50 bonus!

It looks like CashCrate is finally getting it's act together. They have a shiny new layout which makes them look much more trustworthy than before. So if you have been thinking about joining, now is the time to join CashCrate, and get referring to win that ipod!

Google Analytics - Week 8 Overview

One week ago today I made the first Google Analytics Weekly Overview. During that week, the point of interested was SlashMySearch. This week has been busy as well, so keep reading to find out about this blog’s growth.
CLICK ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE



Here is my traffic for the week. You can see it has increased nicely as the week went on, despite a little 'blip' in the middle. Buy what is the explanation for this relatively steady increase?



Well, this chart offers part of the explanation. The noticeable difference between this chart of referring sources and the usual one is the appearance of JohnChow.com. It has leapt onto the listings snatching third place provided 64 visits over just a couple of days. The reason for this was my winning of his 'Guess my income' contest, which got me a link from one of his blog posts.

SlashMySearch.com has provided me with 34 visits, which I acquired by posting in their forum and having this sites address in my signature. This was doubly good because I was earning real money while reading and posting in those forums. The same thing can happen for your site so join SlashMySearch here.

Just a quick word about Earners blog who are running a John Chow style 'review my blog and get a free linkback'. I though it would be worth a shot, and it was just about, with my review of Earners blog getting me 12 referrals.

I am also very thankful towards Million Dollar Journey and Making Money on the Web, which sent some traffic my way.



This chart reveals the other reason for my steady increase in traffic. It shows more impressive figures about SlashMySearch and how my two posts about it, SlashMySearch a trial run and SlayMySearch - In depth review and proof of payment have brought me significant amounts of traffic, (91 visitors). It is interesting to see that a lot of these top 10 posts are newer ones, so perhaps that indicates an increase in quality for readers and SEO of my posts.

That’s all for this week overview,

Coming up
- Brand new Cashcrate info.

so Stay tuned.

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!

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!

Google Alerts - A Cure for 'Blogger's block'

It was over a month ago that I last wrote about Google Alerts, but don't let this fool you, using Google alerts is a great backup for finding content and cure for 'bloggers block'. If you are unsure of what Google Alerts are then have a quick read of that post before you continue with this one.

What is bloggers block?
Bloggers block is just like a writers block, where you just cannot come up with something creative to blog about. Many people tend to get bloggers block when they just start their first blog and simply don't know where to begin. I have had a few questions from readers of this blog asking things like 'how do you find something to write about?', which I shall now endeavour to answer.

1. By reading blogs that are in the same niche.

Positives
- A potentially infinite (well not infinite but you get the idea) number of blogs can be read, so lots of information can be gathered + 'meditated upon'.
- Visiting the blog yourself presents the opportunity of commenting and 'networking' and possibly building the foundations of a relationship with that blogger. - Kills two birds with one stone.
- Gives practice surfing the blogosphere. By using the search engines we can gain an idea as to what sort of sites have done well with SEO (search engine optimisation), which we can learn from. This is a bit of a loose point but you can't have a hope of implementing successful SEO with out being an experienced search engine user yourself! (most of us already are anyway...)

Negatives
- Time consuming.
- Can yield few poor results if you don't know where to look.

2. By using Google Alerts!

Positives
- Quick, easy and free.
- You can choose how often you want to be sent an alert, so potentially can provide infinite ideas.

Negatives
- Makes networking a bit less appealing, because you didn't find the site yourself and have not had a rummage around on it to find what you are looking for. I.e. you don't have an idea of the blogs popularity and so cannot judge how to word your comments accordingly. (Does that make sense?)
- Some alerts are a 'mismatch' and are completely off topic.
- No experienced gained for searching the blogosphere.
- Posts made using Google Alerts can seem unconnected; despite being on the same niche you will have fewer opportunities to refer to a previous post.
- Can clog up your inbox if you find yourself not using them after signing up

Conclusion
Google Alerts are a great backup, but should not be relied upon. I personally have only fallen back on them a couple of times for content, and both times I have ended up writing about Google Alerts, rather than any of the actual alerts! lol... Put into a single sentence, only use them if you don't have time to browse other blogs yourself., which should be a rare event if you are going to be a successful blogger.

Vizu Poll Madness!

You may have noticed the poll I have added to this blog. Polls are a great way to make your site 'sticky', or interactive with the readers. Some of the voters may be interested in finding out the result of the poll and so may come back later, or they may just have a vague recollection of the site being more interesting, increasing the chances of their return. The poll I have made however is not a Vizu answerspoll, but a free poll I made over at Pollverise.com, which by the way are really easy to create.

So What is Vizu answers and what does it have to do with anything??
- Vizu answers provide your site with polls
- You earn per 1000 page impressions (CPM)
- You can customise the poll's colours and layout to suit your site
- The Polls are 'targeted' to your sites topic - but are not contextual so they can be used with AdSense
- You don't have to meet any 'entry requirements'.

So why am I not using a Visu poll right now?
The simple answer is that I want to, but can't... and I wasn't 'rejected' either. I signed up about a week ago, but today they replied with this email:

"Due to the rapid growth of our distribution network, we have arrived at the point where supply has started to exceeded demand. Since the current research is being spread across a larger number of sites, your Poll Zone fill rates may be temporarily lower than average. As a remedy to this problem, we have implemented a wait list (approval process) for all new incoming publishers to ensure that we increase the network size at a rate commensurate with the growth in Client revenue."

So I guess I am on that waiting list. Be careful not to take this email the wrong way, they are not 'scamming' me or anything, I really do trust this company because a couple of other bloggers I 'network with' and read e.g. DotmySpot and DoshDosh have had some success with Vizu.

The email also had a 'feedback' section, which also took the form of a poll!! LOL! They are poll mad!

I will be making a brief weekly post (every Wednesday) about the results of the poll; that is until the Visu polls arrive and I have no way of knowing if a post about them will be appropriate. So Stay tuned!.