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!

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).

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.

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.

101 ways to make money online

Over at Experienced People there is a mega 5 page article listing 101 ways to make money online.

"50. Design and offer logos and icons downloadable for free

51. Award them to websites you like ... provided they pay you an "admin" fee every year to continue using the logo."

I found those two to be the most interesting. I might just implement them...although people would not only want a logo that is eye-catching, but it also needs to be from a reputable site. I may do that on the new site that I am planning (I have a few online 'ventures' going on right now so it will take a while for me to get round to physically building it, but stay tuned!). Many of the other 101 ideas are not really related to money from blogging and are more business oriented but if that’s what you want to get into then it's worth a read. There is a lot of stuff about eBay which, quite frankly is pushing the limits of making money online. Anyway, most of us know the basics, its just a case of letting time take its course and finding specific sites that can boost our progress along the way. The basic cycle is

Site design -->Make Content --> Attain Traffic --> Monetise traffic --> Make More content

Of course it's a little more complicated than that but those are the basic ideas behind making money from blogging. Site design has a far more important role to play in 'real' sites where there is much more flexibility and opportunities to make an original looking site.

COMING UP: A review of Earnersblog