My PPC Advertising dot Info

Free website hosting with a twist - 110mb.com

2008-05-15T21:38:00.008+03:00

Well, I usually don't review each and every free hosting company that I see or use on the Internet. Some of you might ask me why not? The answer is simple: there are too many companies that are offering free hosting and it would be way too much time invested in researching, testing or rating such services. And to be honest with you, I don't have the time to do it, no matter how much I'd try it. Plus, this blog isn't about reviewing and rating webhosting companies. So, you can say that this is not my niche.

Yeah, it's true that I wrote a review about a cheap hosting company and about GoDaddy.com few months ago and that I currently promoting one free service like those mentioned above ( see the second 125x125 banner located in the "Sponsors" section of this blog, on the sidebar ), but this doesn't mean I'm trying to do a "Top 10 best free hosting companies" top or something like that..I've reviewed/I'm promoting this services because I found/find them to be useful for my readers and visitors..and that's all.

"So, if you're not looking to make that top 10 you've told me about, why did you wrote this post, anyway?" Because I'd like to present you one free hosting company which I currently use for my niche website and which I find it to be a good and quite reliable place for you to host a site or blog ( if you're planning to start one and don't have much cash to spend them on monthly hosting fees ). So, with no further ado, let me tell you a few things about 110mb.com ( this is the name of the service I'll be talking about today )..

You might wanna now why this is different from the rest of the companies that are offering similar services? Here's why: when you sign up for a certain free hosting company and you're building your site/blog, they won't going to ask you money for this ( obviously ). But the thing is that the respective company still has to generate some revenue, so it can continue to survive in the market ( how else can it pay for its electricity bills, servers maintenance and so on? ). So, one way to make some cash for them is to place ads on your site or blog ( usually, Google Adsense ads ). Now, every time one of your visitors will click those ads, will bring the hosting company some dollars. The more sites are hosted on their servers and the more visitors those sites manage to attract, the more money they'll make.

The problem is that free hosted sites are not trusted by many people ( they are on a subdomain, such as mysite.subdomain.com, they look unprofessional most of the time and are filled with ads..the webhosting company's ads and probably yours, too ). So, you might not be getting to much traffic to them. But what if there was a company which offers you free hosting, the possibility to host your own domain name ( like mysite.com ), wouldn't place forced ads on your site and also give you the opportunity to get even more features, by paying some small one-time fees for them? Wouldn't this be nice? Yep it would be..and this company is 110mb.com.

I've been talking about features..but which are they, more exactly? What has this company to offer you, a webmaster/blogger-to-be? Let's take a look at the list below:

1. Disk space: 5 GB

2. Monthly bandwidth: 300 GB

3. Max file size upload limit: 8 MB

4. 99.8% uptime guaranteed

5. Own domain ( 1 ) allowed

6. PHP 4 & 5

7. FTP with Chmod

8. 600+ file types supported

9. Online file manager

10. Site builder/Visual editor

..and lots more ( you can see the complete list of features here, including those you'll get if you choose to upgrade your hosting plan ).

I must say that not many ads-free hosting companies are offering you so many features. Some might include more of them, while others might have limited access to their full set of features. What else you should know about 110mb.com? Well, registration is fast, easy and free, the control panel is easy to browse and navigate through and if you have some knowledge of working with HTML codes and uploading files on servers, you can actually build quite a good site. Should you decide to continue hosting it at 110mb, it's your choice. I can't come and tell you "You know what, host it here because this is the best hosting service in the world!!" I mean, everybody has his own preferences.

But from my own experience, I can tell you that you can give it a try. At least, until you manage to learn your way around building and maintaining websites/blogs, after which you can move them to a paid host. So, what do you say? Wanna give it a shot? If yes, then just click here and sign up for free! Good luck! PS: Once you've managed to build your first site or blog, let me know about it and I'll come and visit it :)

Free text ads and multiple advertising options at CrocAds.com

2008-05-09T15:41:00.002+03:00

You probably know that I'm one blogger who likes to talk about driving traffic to a site or blog and promoting it through various methods, especially free ones. You're now asking yourself "Why?". The answer is pretty simple: when I've first started blogging, almost an year ago ( geesh, time flies so fast! ), I had absolutely no advertising budget. Yeah, believe it or not, I'm not one of those guys who had hundreds or even thousands of dollars to splash'em on blog promotion, right from the very beginning ( and I'm talking about guys like Darren, from ProBlogger, for example, who's one of the most successful blog owners I know ). So, because of this, I had to direct my attention to other advertising options ( or platforms, or websites, you name them however you like..it's the same thing ), which were either low-cost or free.

And that's how I've first discovered LinkReferral, to give just one example. If you don't know what this is, let me tell you in a couple of words: it's an advertising directory, where you sign up for free, add your site and start receiving traffic and reviews from the other members of LR ( LinkReferral ). The more visited your site/blog is and the more feedback it gets from others, the more it can climb to better position ( you can even get to the first one of the category where you've listed your website or blog, therefore receiving more free traffic ).

Because I found this directory to be the best place to start with, I too have signed up, long time ago. No to mention that a few months ago, I've decided to upgrade my membership, so I can benefit from more features ( which weren't available to free members ). As the time went by, I managed to find even more low-cost or free advertising services, which have been more or less useful. I've tested most of them, but I only continued to use those which brought in some satisfactory results ( like the above mentioned LinkReferral..or more recently, EntreCard and Croc-Ads ).

"Hold one a second there..I know about EntreCard, but what in the world is Croc-Ads?! Never heard of this site before.." Probably you haven't heard about CA, so this is why I wrote this post, to tell you more about it. I know it sounds a bit funny, but it is in fact a serious advertising platform..and it is free to join, too! So, what does it offers to its members?

If you want a simple answer, a lot. On the other hand, a more detailed answer would be: free AdWords-like text ads, e-mail signature ads, ezine ads, top sponsors ads, solo ads, banner image ads and a few more interesting features and options you can take advantage of, if you choose to sign up. And why wouldn't you want to do so? It's free anyway, and you have nothing to loose.

I was talking about those text ads..What are they exactly? They are ads just like those you ( or anyone else ) would normally pay big bucks for, if you/they were to advertise your/their sites or blogs via Google. They only difference is that by advertising via CrocAds.com ads, you won't going to pay a dime. Just like the site itself, these are free to use, too ( and so are most of the services offered by CA ). And because there are no real money involved here, to pay for your ads, you use credits. The more you have, the more exposure your own ads will get. How to obtain this credits:

1. Refer other bloggers/webmasters to CrocAds;
2. Use the surf function, to visit other sites and receive a bunch of credits ( and "bunch" here really means "a bunch", not a mere 0.000001/visit );
Or 3. Buy them ( you can pay for credits via credit card, AlertPay or EGold..I didn't saw PayPal listed as a payment method there, though...).

Once you think you have enough credits to start an advertising campaign, just go to the "Promo Tools" tab, located in the upper horizontal menu of your CA account and select the "Manage text ads" option. After you select that option and get to the wanted page, create an ad first and then set a number of credits for it, so it can become active. The activation is made instantly, after credits are added ( so, your ad will be shown on other websites in just a couple of seconds ).

The good thing about this ads is that you don't have to own a site and place other's ads on it, so you can earn credits ( it's not a mandatory thing ). If you have enough advertising credits from surfing other sites, for example and you set them for that ad, it will still run on other websites. But if do have a site or blog and want to place some of those ads on it, just go to the same "Promo tools" tab, then select the "Website code" option, customize the ad box to match your sites' or blog's template, get the HTML code and paste somewhere where you want the ads to appear. Pretty simple, huh?

Conclusion: Yeah, I know, this is a long post ( again ), but at least I hope you found it to be informative and useful. Well, beside that, I think CrocAds it is a nice way to drive some extra ( and free ) traffic to your site/blog, without having to work too hard. And since it is free ( yes, there's also the option to buy credits or upgrade your account, but only IF you want to do so ), you shouldn't have nothing to loose, don't you think? Just give it a try and see what results you get. Should it are good, continue using this service. If not, move on to something else. Either way, I wish you good luck!

The best and most complete "Make Money Online" e-book I've ever seen!

2008-05-05T19:23:00.005+03:00

First off, I'd like to ask you why are you visiting this blog now? Yeah, I'm asking you, the one you're reading this post..Oh, I get it: you've probably seen the title of the article somewhere on the internet ( on a site like PostOnFire or BlogEngage, possibly ) and you're so curious to know more about this "magical" e-book, that you've clicked the link and you ended up here, on My PPC Advertising dot Info.

If so, then please let me tell you that I won't be talking about an e-book which you can download it for free or buy it from a certain website, and which will show you how to make tens of thousands of dollars everyday, for the rest of your life. Nope, it won't happen today. In fact, I ain't gonna review/promote ( whatever you wanna call it ) ANY e-book in this article. "Ok, then you've just wasted my time with this stupid crap!! I hate you for that..I really do!!", I hear you saying out loud.

I'm aware of that. And you're not forced to like me or my blog, that's for sure. But I'd like to ask you a favor, before jumping head-in first next time you want to say something: at least, please read the post I'm writing till the end and you'll see what's about, ok? :)

So, as I was saying, it happened to find a website today, which looked like a sales letter ( I think you're pretty familiar with this type of websites..you know, the ones that are trying to sell you a miracle product, e-book, service, what-so-ever.. )..and to be honest, it was a sales letter. But the thing about this particular site was that it wasn't you're ordinary "buy my product and experience the best moments of your life" type of crap. Nope..this one was extremely funny. Yeah, you've heard that right: funny!

The author of this web page ( haven't seen his real name anywhere on the site ) was actually making fun of all those sales letters websites you see on the internet. This funny little site is called MyStupidEbook.com. And despite it may sound like the owner is selling an ebook, he isn't! As I've mentioned, he only makes fun of those annoying sales letters sites we all know ( NOTE: Don't get me wrong here fellas: there are sites that DO sell you good products/e-books/services, but there are also awful ones. Neither me or the owner of MSE ( MyStupidEbook ) are trashing the ones that are worth being visited! ).

I've spent some time earlier today reading the above mentioned site, and I've started laughing at one moment. Why? I mean come on..how can't you not laugh when the owner says that ( and I quote from his "Yahoo Publisher Network payment statement" ):

"Date: Nov. 6, 2006

Subject: Dear Yahoo! Publisher,

When we got to work this morning and saw how much you made, we shit ourselves. We would like to pay you with PayPal. Not through PayPal, with PayPal. The whole company."

And next to this message, he shows a "proof of payment" from his "Yahoo! Publisher account", which reads: Infinity Dollars ( and the sign..that upside down 8 ) - LOL!

But that's not all! Oh no! He also says that his ebook is so damn great, that he is actually so rich that he can afford owning an Air Craft Carrier, the planet Mars, have Superman as a servant and also own Australia..LMAO!

Credits go to MyStupidEbook.com

Another "convincing" section of his website are the testimonials. And the owner says they all come from "real people just like you, who've made it big". I guess this part is a must-read for anyone willing to buy his "e-book". What could've asked for more? They are REAL people ( haha ).

If this review convinced you to go and buy the "ebook", then please go ahead and do this now, until the current special offer ends! Normally, you'd buy it at "$152,000/piece", but only if you act now, you'll get it at little below $500! Definitely, an offer you wouldn't wanna miss at all. This can change your life, starting today!! Buy now!

April's income and traffic report

2008-05-01T23:19:00.001+03:00

As you can see, it's that time again: it's the beginning of a new month, when most "Make Money Online" blog owners are showing their readers and visitors what they've managed to achieve in the previous month ( and I'm talking about income and traffic reports, mainly ). Because this has now became a tradition ( yes, I think it can be called like that ), I would like to also stick to it and present you my last month's achievements. This is nothing too fancy, just a short and to the point article ( at least, that's what I say now, cause sometimes I get carried away and I almost forget to put an end to my posts - LOL! ). So, with no further ado, here are my income and traffic reports..

1. Income report

I can say that April was quite a good month for me. Why? Because I've managed to earn $121.63. Is it a lot? Is it too little? As I said already, it's ok. Really, I'm not the kind of guy who's expecting to make thousands with this blog, at this stage ( especially when I didn't even had much time lately to take care of it ). And it wouldn't be right either. It's not a smart move to have high expectations, only to see that you're not accomplishing them in the end. This can become frustrating, believe me.

Now, you might want to know which were the income sources that earned me almost 122 dollars. Because I see you're a bit curious, I'll make a list and show them to you.

- Buxed.info ( a PTC - Paid To Click - website ): $16.55
- Bux.to: $1.00
- Bidvertiser: $0.06
- SpeedyAds: $0.31

- Text-Link-Ads: $8.50

- TNX paid review: $30
- Webdesign for a friend: $65.21

TOTAL: $121.63

So, as you can see from the list above, even though I haven't been to active in the blogosphere ( or on the "Make Money Online" stage, as a whole ), I still managed to make some good bucks :). I'd say it's not bad at all, huh ( but of course, there's always room for better stats, you know )?

2. Traffic report

In April, my blog was visited by 1,140 people, which generated 1,452 page views. The traffic was indeed a bit lower than in other previous months, because as I've already mentioned in this post, I haven't had much time available to invest it in writing more articles or promoting the blog as I should've done. Out of those 1,140 visitors, 941 were seeing my blog for the first time, the rest being returning visitors ( 199, to be exact ).

The main traffic sources were, as follows:

- EntreCard: 73 visitors
- MakeMoneyForBeginners: 64 visitors
- LinkReferral: 60 visitors
- EntreCard Widget: 55 visitors

Of course, there were other sites or blogs that have sent traffic to my blog, but if I were to mention them all in this post, the list would be way too long and potentially boring for anyone ( even for me ). Other stats: Google PR: downgraded to zero ( I have no idea why, but who cares, anyway? ); Alexa Rank: 176,689; Technorati Rank: 236,302

"In the end, what are your goals for this month?", I hear you ask. Well, as usual: producing more quality content, improving my blog's traffic, search engine position, Page Rank ( even though I do not care that much about Google's PR anyway ) and launching my very first niche website. I told you before that I'm working on a niche site..Until now, I've managed to find a host for it, a design and the content ( which is important, by the way. I mean, what's a site or blog without content? I tell you what it is: just a simple, blank webpage..nothing more ). I still have to optimize it for the search engines and start advertising it, before seeing any profits from it. But I'm patient. I have no reason to rush out and have high expectations ( remember what I've said in the beginning of this article? ).

And now, I would like to thank all of you for once again being here with me: thanks to all my readers ( 33 - keep'em coming! ), visitors, friends, advertisers etc. Without you, I'm sure there wouldn't be no My PPC Advertising dot Info. I wish you all the very best!

Yours truly,
Tiberius Burciu

I'm back to my usual blogging routine

2008-04-30T21:18:00.002+03:00

First of all, I want to say a warm hello to all my readers and visitors. As you can see, I've returned home from the countryside and I'm once again ready to resume my usual daily activity, which also includes blogging. I've mentioned in the last article I wrote before leaving for my Easter holiday ( which, by the way, was awesome ), that I have no intentions in not updating this blog anymore. I mean, why would I want to do so? I believe that you all like what I write here, so it wouldn't be fair to you, if I were to shut it down or not updating it regularly no more.

Don't worry: this won't gonna happen ( not now, nor tomorrow, or next month ). I will blog at My PPC Advertising dot Info as long as possible and I hope you'll remain my loyal readers and visitors for the life of this blog ( though of course, you're not forced to do so :). Now, you're probably wondering when will I publish the next article? The answer is tomorrow, because it's the 1st of May. And this means that a new month starts and as you already know, this is the time when most "Make Money Online" blogs are publishing their income reports and other stats, from the previous month, which just ended. Until then, I still have some work to do at my niche website: I must add 8 more pages to it, after which I'll be able to start promoting it and hopefully, I'll manage to drive some traffic to it..because, if there's no traffic, there are no money, right?

So, I'll get in touch with you again tomorrow, when my monthly income report will be revealed, along with other information and miscellaneous thoughts and ramblings of mine. Till then, I wish you all an wonderful day/evening and have fun!

Best regards,
Tiberius Burciu

I will be away for a couple of days

2008-04-24T15:42:00.002+03:00

Yep, the title says it all: I'm going to take a short break, for the next 3-4 days, starting from tomorrow. I wanted to let you know about this, so not to think that I've dumped this blog for good and that I will never going to updated it again. But why this little break, you ask? The answer is simple: there are only a few days left until Easter ( yes, us, Romanians are celebrating this holiday in April..probably a bit later than the rest of you, who've already celebrated it ), so there are a lot of things to be done until then ( and you know what I mean ).

Also, I won't be home during this break I'll take. Tomorrow, I'll leave Pitesti ( the city I currently live in ) and I'll head to the countryside ( 60 km away from the above mentioned city ), with a friend of mine. We, along with our families, other relatives and a couple of other friends, will be spending the Easter holiday there. Even though the weather isn't too good now ( at the moment I'm writing this post, it rains ), I hope we'll have a nice time, after all.

Once I'll be back home, I'll resume my blogging routine, as usual. But until then, I'd like to wish you a Happy Easter, ( especially to all my fellow Romanians ) and take care of you, alright? I don't wanna hear that one of you have done something bad, as I'm gonna spank him/her if I find out -LOL! Now, for the rest of this day, I have some work to do at my niche website, so I don't know for sure if I'll write another article on this blog ( I have to "play around" with HTML codes, and this is not such an easy job, mainly because there are a lot of pages to be created, a ton of links/hyperlinks to be written and so on ). In this case, I wish you a nice day!

Cheers guys!

Yet another EntreCard-like website - 125Exchange.com

2008-04-22T22:48:00.002+03:00

By now, it's very likely that you might have heard about EntreCard, no matter if you're a blogger or a blog reader. Lots of people talked about this service, there were tons of articles written about it and it generated quite a lot of buzz in the blogosphere since it was born. But just in case you have no clue what EC is, let me tell you in just a few words.

Simply put, EntreCard is a free traffic building service. In order to benefit from it, you first have to create an account. You don't have to worry, as no one will charge you for becoming a member of this site ( remember, I've just mentioned above that this is a free service ). Now, once you've successfully created your account, the next step you have to take is to install a traffic widget on your blog ( just like the one you see here, in the "Drop it!" box ). The installation is pretty simple: just copy the widget's HTML code from your EC account and paste it somewhere on your blog, in a place where you think will get the most exposure. That's it! If you've done this operation correctly, then you should be able to see the widget in the place you've put it. If not, then you've probably forgotten to copy a part of the HTML code. In this case, just repeat the earlier mentioned operation once again.

After you're done with this step, you can start earning EC credits. You can do this several ways: by visiting and dropping your on EC card on other blogs, by approving other people's ads to run on your widget, or by letting other bloggers drop their cards on you. The more credits you have, the more ad spaces you can buy on other widgets.

"Ok, ok, I know what EntreCard is already! Just get to the point of today's post, will ya?!" Oh yeah, I got carried away for a second. Thanks for the reminder! 125Exchange.com ( the EC-like service I'm going to talk about now ) is a free traffic building tool, too. If you wanna take advantage of it, you must sign up first ( well, I guess it was an obvious thing, anyway, right? Just felt the need to say it :) It doesn't matter if you're John Chow, Shoemoney or John Cow, or just a newbie blogger: you will be accepted to use this service, as long as you're not breaking any rules.

And speaking of rules, I think it's important for you to know which this are ( quoted from the 125Exchange official website ):

1. Your ad must look professional. Homemade looking ads will not displayed on other blogs.
2. Blogs only. Your blog must have at least 20 posts and be recognized by Compete.com.
3. You can only promote your blog or your services. No third party sales, CPA, lead sales, etc.
4. No get rich quick schemes or MLM opportunities.
5. All banner ads and blogs are approved for content before being activated in the Exchange.
6. All banner ads must be displayed above the fold on your blog.
7. Your blog must not contain adult or other inappropriate content.
8. Your blog must be quality and fast loading.
9. Your banner ads must be less than 30 KB size.
10. You can upload up to 3 different banner ads and monitor statistics for each ad.
11. If you operate more than one blog, you are welcome to enter all of them in the Exchange
12. You can start or pause your ads at anytime.
13. All blogs and ads will be monitored on a regular basis.
14. You can place multiple ads per page for extra exposure, above the fold.
15. The code generated must be pasted in the 'body' of your page. The system will not start trading until it sees the code and receives 10 impressions.

"I've read all the rules and I've signed up for my account. What's next?", you ask. If you've done so, then you're one step closer to start receiving new visitors to your blog. But before this to happen, you still need to do the following:

1. Upload a 125x125 banner to your account ( if you do not have one, my recommendation is to contact Jay and ask him to design one for you ).

2. Select the categories where you want your ad to appear ( and the ones from where other ads will be displayed on your blog ) as well as the countries. There are about 43 categories, so its most likely to find the right one for your blog. If you want to get maximum exposure for your ad(s), you can set them to be displayed in all categories and countries, 24 hours a day, 7 days/week.

3. Once you've completed number 1 and number 2 steps, don't forget to include 125Exchange's traffic widget on your blog! If you don't do it, your own ad will not be displayed and you won't be receiving any visitors!

What else should I tell you about this service? Umm, let's see..Oh, yes: when you'll create an account for the first time, you'll receive 5,000 free impressions, just to get you started. Not only that, but you'll also be earning more impressions, if you refer others to 125Exchange.com, or by writing a short review about the service they provide ( by doing so, your account will be credited with another 3,000 free impressions! ).

You know what I like to say: if you want to know more about a service/website/program I promote, then why not to check it out yourself? I mean, this one is free to join, you have nothing to lose and you can even see some extra visitors coming to your blog. I think it worth a try, huh?

Emoticons for your Blogger blog's posts

2008-04-19T20:04:00.000+03:00

Since I've started blogging on Blogger ( back in August 2007 ), I've always had one regret: and that was the fact that you can't use emoticons in your posts. Some of you might say "So, what's the big deal? This blogging platform has its own limitations. If you want to use smileys and emoticons, why not to switch to WordPress?" Yeah, I agree: there are some limitations when it comes about Google's blogging platform and a switch to WP ( WordPress ) would solve the emoticons problem, but why not to try and find a solution to it ( other than the one already mentioned above ) ?

So, this made me wonder: how can one Blogger blogger can finally include emoticons in his articles? I mean, there are lots of people who use this graphical signs and I tend to believe that they kinda spice up the posts a little bit, don't you think? With this said, I've decided to do a little search of my own and see where can I find a script or HTML code which you can include it in your blog's template and make emoticons available. The first thing I did was to go to Google.com and type in the search form the following keywords: "smileys for blogger blogs". Then, I've hit "Enter" and after a few seconds, I got the results: lots of websites and weblogs ( or simply, blogs ), were offering scripts and HTML codes for displaying emoticons in your blog's posts.

As the list of results was quite big, I've clicked on the link of the first blog which appeared on page one, in SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages ). I took the code listed on the respective blog ( named BloggerEmoticons ) and paste it in my own blog's template. After a few unsuccessful attempts in making this HTML code to work, I said to myself: "Ok, I had enough with it! I just have to find either another code, or something similar, but less easier to work with." Now, don't get me wrong: I won't say the code wasn't working at all. But the point is that I'm by no means a HTML expert, even though I know the basics of working with this type of programming language. And I get pissed off, when seeing that things don't wanna work the way they should, no matter how much I try this.

So, I've dumped the above mentioned script ( or code, name it however you like ) and started looking for an alternative to it. Didn't took me much time to find one..Want to know it's name? Of course you do: the site is called Emoticonizer.info. You'll ask me: "So, what I'm gonna find here? An easier to use script or HTML code to include it in my Blogger blog's template?" My answer is no. "What?! Then why in the world are you wasting my time with this site?" I'm not wasting anyone's time ( because you and I both know time is money ) but I should give a more detailed explanation of what can be found on Emoticonizer dot Info.

They are offering you not just one single HTML code, but a bunch of them. And this is because each of this codes correspond to a certain emoticon. "I got that, but I'm a busy blogger or [ insert other appropriate words here :) ], and have no time to visit this site daily, just to copy/paste smileys codes into my blog posts..Isn't there an even easier alternative to this?" Luckily for you, there is such an alternative. Emoticonizer.info has some small pieces of software which you can download for free and use them to instantly generate emoticons/smileys, without you having to visit the site every time you need them.

You don't have to worry: the softwares are not some complicated tools, which can only be used by seasoned programmers, nor they contain any types of viruses or spywares. I know this, because I've tested them myself. It's all about clicking on an emoticon and obtaining the code for it, then copying and pasting that code into your blog's template. It's really that simple! You'll see below some screenshots of one of the softwares I'm talking about. Note how simple its interface is.

To the left: The simple to use interface of the emoticons creation software

To the left: An example of emoticon sign ( the "Big Grin" )

To the left: The "More Smileys" function, which allows you to use various other emoticons in your blog posts

As you can see, it's easy to use. I know, I said there are HTML codes involved here, but you've seen none. It's true: only some emoticons are made of a code, while others are just a combination of signs ( like : ) or : D ). I would recommend you to use the "Yahoo!" smileys, as they're the most known type of emoticons ( and are made of a HTML code ).

Of course, you too can find other scripts related to the ones I've talked about today. Just do a more detailed search on Google and you should find something useful. In the meantime, I hope this post wasn't too boring for you, but rather interesting and maybe it even answered to some of your questions about how to use emoticons in your Blogger blog's posts. Until next time, have a nice day!

How to build a profitable opt in list in 3 easy steps

2008-04-16T12:58:00.001+03:00

So, you've just heard that all these big gurus out there on the internet are making money with opt-in lists..and I'm talking big money, not just a few measly pennies per month. Now, you're probably saying to yourself: "Oh, this sounds easy. I can do it too. How hard can it be? I've already finished reading and learning all the tricks of the trade, and I can get started right away." Obviously, the next step you'd take would be to build your very own opt-in list, following the steps you've learned earlier and listening to what your "mentors" have to say, while they would "guide" you to become "rich and famous". Only that, after a few months of high hopes and maybe even a few hundreds/thousands dollars spent on maintaining your list, you will see very little to no results.

At this point, you'll wonder what you've done wrong. I mean, you've followed all the necessary steps, but still, you ain't making those big bucks you're waiting for. The thing is that you've simply dived in, choosing to talk about a topic you thought you knew lots about it and thought it can bring you truckloads of money and popularity. It's not enough to only write a few articles, send them to your opt-in list subscribers and hope they'll go to your site and buy one of your products or sign up for a service you're promoting. But don't worry, as I have decided to give you 3 easy steps to follow, in order to start seeing profits from all the efforts you've put in creating, maintaining and growing your list. With no further useless chatting, I present you the steps:

1. The first thing you should do when deciding to make money with an opt-in list, is to get your customers to trust you and the products/services you sell. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you've started a list and have a few hundred people subscribed to it, would make you a believable and respected seller. Take time and write articles about the topic/product/service you want to promote to your list, join some forums and ask for people's opinion about what you have to offer. While you're at this forums, try to get involved in discussions as often as possible, so you can show your potential customers that you know a thing or two about your products. Once you'll gain enough trust and respect from the others, you'll start seeing customers coming to your site, subscribing to your opt-in list and buying from you.

2. Next, you'll have to find a product or service that people really need it. Again, make sure you do a research about it first, and learn how it works and what benefits can bring you and especially to your customers. They will want one product which is simple to use, doesn't requires them to be rocket scientists and which will satisfy their needs. If you have such a product or service, then you're on your way of making some sales and some cash :). And don't forget to give your subscribers some promotional materials, so they can promote it if they liked it.

3. And the final step ( at least in this article you're reading ), would be to make friends with other opt-in lists owners. Try to find someone who already launched a list and had success with it. You may ask why? Because even though you might think you know everything and you don't need to learn anything new anymore, you still need a person who knows more than you and can give you a few more useful tips about building an opt-in list.

This people are experienced opt-in list owners and they'll be able to tell what it's ok to do and what's not, as they've gone through the same situations before and know how to deal with them, when they appear.

Conclusion: building an opt-in list is not a thing which will happen overnight and will make you rich instantly. There are many efforts and preparations to be made, as lists are built from zero and as the time goes by, you need to be sure you're maintaining it properly, to ensure quality content being delivered to its subscribers. I guess you wouldn't like your customers to start unsubscribing from your list, just because you weren't able to keep it organized and manageable, right?

Yahoo! Mail server is experiencing some problems

2008-04-15T00:00:00.000+03:00

This is a very short post ( unlike most I'm writing usually ) to let you know that the Yahoo! Mail server is having some technical problems ( I guess ). So it's very likely that you may not be able to check your emails, until the situation returns to normal. And I don't think I'm the only one unable to read his email messages.. If anyone else encountered the same issues like me, please be patient and don't worry. Very soon, the service should work again ( that's what I hope, cause it's actually becoming a bit annoying to receive the "Timed Out" error, every time I try to login in to my email account ). Stay tuned, as I'll write a new ( and lot more interesting ) article, very soon. Cheers!

Make money with your blog or improve its traffic with TNX.net

2008-04-10T00:46:00.001+03:00

It's very possible that most of you guys have already heard about TNX.net. But let's face it: there are still people out there ( either webmasters, bloggers or just simple web surfers ) that may not have had the chance of checking out this service just yet. This is why I thought it would be nice to talk about it in today's post. So, what is TNX, after all? First of all, the term "TNX" it's an abbreviation of "Thanks". Don't you tell me you never-ever used this short form when sending SMS messages or while chatting online with your friends, via your favorite IM ( Instant Messaging ) program, as I won't believe you:).

"So, that's it? It's just a simple, stupid and boring abbreviation of an word?!" I'm sorry to disappoint you and making you feel like you're wasting your time here, but it is more than that. If you'd stop interrupting me so often, you'd have the opportunity to find out more about this website. Simply said, TNX is a new text link advertising platform, which is addressing to both publishers and advertisers. Obviously, the first category of people want to monetize their sites or blogs and have an additional income source ( different from the ones they may already use ), while the second category would like to spread the word about their products, services etc and drive more traffic to their sites ( therefore, generating more sales and earning more money ). How exactly does it works?

Well, first of all you have to sign up for a free account, so you can use this income generating/advertising platform. Once you complete this easy step ( where you just have to fill in a form with some basic details ), you can proceed to either earning money or advertising your site/blog. What I'd like to mention, for those who have registered mainly for promotion purposes, is that the guys from TNX.net are giving 5,000 points to all new members, to help them with their campaigns ( normally, such amount of points would cost you around $10 ). But there's a catch: to get them, you'll have to go to the DP forums ( DP = Digital Point ) and leave a reply to this thread, saying that you've just signed up and you'd like to receive your free points ( the promotion is still active, as far as I know. NOTE: DO NOT..and I say again..DO NOT forget to also tell TNX staff what's your ID and username, so they can know to who should send those points! ).

If you follow the above mentioned steps correctly, you should get your points. I don't think this whole process is that complicated..After your account is credited, you can start buying links on other relevant websites, so you can improve your websites' or blog's ranks ( and I'm talking about Google PageRank, Alexa PR etc..you got the picture, right? :). What if you just want to make money and you're not so interested in advertising? What should you do? Answer: Again, the process is simple: instead of starting an advertising campaign, just go to the "Webmaster" section of your account ( which is placed on the left-hand side menu of the TNX.net website ) and click on the "Get code" tab. NOTE 2: all the codes located on the "Get code" page are in PHP, ASP/ASPX and PERL language. Unless your hosting account can accept this type of codes, you won't be able to start displaying any links, therefore, you won't make money!

If your hosting account CAN handle this types of codes, you're free to use them ( and congratulations ;)! Also, don't forget to first add a site to your TNX account, for an easier way of tracking your performances ( and not only ). This is made by clicking on the "Add new site" tab, located right next to the "Get code" tab, in the "Webmaster" section.

Believe me when I say that there are many more things to be mentioned about this fine service. But because this article is probably too long already, I would like to give you the opportunity to find out more about TNX.net yourselves. It's not that I'm an lazy-ass and I don't wanna write all the details..it's just that I like to let my visitors learn more about the sites, programs etc I present by themselves too. Wouldn't you do the same?

Before coming to an end, I would like to let you know a few more things:

1. TNX is running its own affiliate program. Yep, just refer other webmasters/bloggers and earn even more.
2. They also have a free tool which can make all links you're using for advertising campaigns to look as normal as they can be in any search engine's eyes.
3. And last, but not least, you're provided with some useful tips on how to rank high on SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages ) for almost any competitive keywords or key phrases.

I hope TNX well help you make money with your blog or website, or it will improve its ranks ( should you choose to advertise via this service ). Good luck!

Here's how writing articles can improve your business

2008-04-07T22:31:00.002+03:00

There is a wide variety of strategies you can adopt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require money. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic? Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business:

1. Reach more people

When you write good articles, it would be a shame not to share them with other people. You can post your articles on your website/blog or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines, article directories or other online publishing websites. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well. Submit your articles to popular e-zines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you. Thus, you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article; you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic.

2. Free Advertising

Believe it or not, by submitting your articles to other websites, you have the opportunity to advertise your website without paying any kind of fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site's link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully to making some profit. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space. You have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer.

3. Gain High Search Engine Ranking

Create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.

4. Increases Link Popularity

Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, you can simply submit an article to other sites. Do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publish your article, you automatically get a link partner. Try to get as many link partners as you can. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5. Optimizes your site for improved search engine ranking

By making your site keyword rich, you can improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site. However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid keyword-stuffing just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most visitors. Relevance and quality are still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized.

6. Establishes a Good Impression and Reputation

By writing original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site/blog and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

7. Enhances your credibility through references and feedback

Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedback when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by the feedback, as it will create a good impression on your potential clients as well as your existing customers. Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode your business.

Always check an EBay seller's reputation before buying from him

2008-04-04T23:23:00.003+03:00

When you buy something from an eBay seller, you are giving them your money and hoping that you will get something in return. However many guarantees of safety eBay might make to you, nothing is certain: if you just give your money to scammers all the time without doing any checks then the chances are you won't get all of that money back.
That's why you should always check the seller's reputation, or 'feedback rating'. This is a quick and easy-to-read summary of their history as an eBay seller, which gives you some idea of whether or not you should trust them with your money. Buying anything is a calculated risk: you want to minimize that risk.

Checking feedback ratings

On each item's description page, there is a box in the top-right hand corner about the seller, with the title 'Seller information'. This contains the seller's name, their feedback score, and their positive feedback percentage, as well as any stars they have earned.
Different colored stars are given to eBay sellers depending on their rating, in this sequence: yellow, blue, turquoise, purple, red, green, shooting yellow, shooting turquoise, shooting purple, shooting red. Anyone with a 'shooting' star is an experienced eBay member who you should be able to trust.
If you click on the seller's name, you can get to a more detailed view of their reputation - their 'member profile' page. This page shows the total number of people who gave them a positive or negative rating, as well as a breakdown by time. You can also see a complete history of all the comments that have ever been left about them, with the most recent first.

What you need to look for

You might assume that anyone with a very high number can be trusted, but that isn't always true. It is more important to look at their positive feedback percentage - and you should really consider anything below 99% to be a red flag and investigate further.
Take a look through the first visible page with the most recent transactions: are there any negative comments? What do they say? Take others' experiences into account, as they could happen to you if you deal with this person. Be careful not to punish sellers unfairly, however, if they did bad things in their past on eBay but have improved since. You should look at the breakdown by time and ignore any negative feedback that was left a long time ago. Equally, though, you should sit up and pay attention if a seller seems to have been left an out-of-character amount of bad feedback in the last month or so.

Now that you know why it is important to check a seller's reputation, I believe you'll be more careful and think twice, once you decide to buy something from eBay. Keep sharp and be safe!

Monthly income and traffic report

2008-04-02T00:08:00.003+03:00

An warm hello to all my readers, subscribers and visitors in the new month of April. Nope, this is not a joke: I'm back after a long period of absence. Probably that some of you thought "That's it..This guy is not going to update his blog anymore..He's out of the blogging game." Well, you were wrong! You see, I had some problems that I had to take care of ( nothing serious, so don't worry :) and I'm now glad to tell you that I can finally return to my everyday blogging routine. I know, I've mentioned this in my last post too, but I broke that promise. It was unfair to do this, so I'm very sorry for that. I'm not the kind of person to say one thing and then just not respect his own words, but as I've already told you, I had to deal with some personal problems, plus I was kinda busy at college, with some projects, test papers and all the rest ( I think you know what I'm talking about, especially if you too are a student ). Heck, there were some crazy times around here!

Not anymore! Those times are now over! From today on, this blog will once again be updated at least once every 2 days. And yes, this is a promise which I'm not planning to break! You don't have to unsubscribe, no need to forget about it and never return here. In fact, I will appreciate every visit, every comment, every friend, link or banner exchange request you might propose to me and I will be more than willing to do it. So, if you want me to be your friend, or if you feel the need to voice your opinion regarding one of my articles, just do so. I'll make sure to return the favor:)

Right..I feel better now and I hope you understood why I missed the action that much:) Let's get to the main subject of this post, shall we? The grand total for last month was [insert drum rolls here ]...$59.53. Comparing this amount with the one earned in February ( $106.61 ), I can say it's smaller, but not bad. Want to know which were my main income sources? Here it are:

- EntireWeb's SpeedyAds: $ 0.95
- Bidvertiser: $ 0.97
- Blogsvertise: $ 10
- FreeMoneyTeam: $ 1.63
- Zluf Advertising: $ 20.59
- Storze: $ 20
- LamPay Ads: $ 2.80
- FeedProfit: $ 2.59

TOTAL: $ 59.53

As about traffic stats, we have the following numbers:

- Total number of visitors: approximately 2,000 ( 1,973, to be exact )
- First time visitors: 1,663
- Best day: 03/02/2008: 178 people visited my blog
- Top referrers: - EntreCard: 148 people
- StumbleUpon: 142 people
- LinkReferral: 105 people
- EntreCard Widget: 101 people
- Total number of page views: 2,593

I'm totally aware that I could have had better results than the ones you see above, but because I was so lazy...I mean busy, I lost a lot. March was the laziest month I've ever had, because I only wrote 7 ( ! ) articles. That's no productive blogging, believe me.. But as you've already guessed it, I'm about to change that. I'm going to turn April in one of those productive blogging months both me and you were used to see here, at MyPPCAdvertising blog.

So..what other plans do I have for the following days and weeks of this current month? As usual: to write quality content, promote my blog, increase my readership, provide useful information, interact with my fellow bloggers, invest some time in promoting my other "businesses" and to keep the promise I've made in the beginning of this post:). I hope I'll manage to do that, so please wish my luck and support me however you can ( by commenting on this blog, recommend it to your friends, adding me as friend on social networking websites etc ). In the end, I would like to thank everyone who supported me so far ( not just in March ): my friends, subscribers, visitors, commentators, advertisers, and anyone that I may have forgotten to mention here. Thank you very much, guys ( and girls, alike :)! There wouldn't be this blog without your help!

Best regards and take care!
PS: It's a bit late for this, but better now than never: Happy Easter to those of you who have celebrated this holiday! Hope you've enjoyed it! Here in Romania, there are still 23 days left until Easter:) ( I said 23, because it's 2nd of April already ).

5 easy ways to drive traffic to your website or blog

2008-03-19T12:48:00.004+02:00

First, something a bit off-topic: I'm glad to have returned to my normal blogging routine, after 7 days of inactivity. You may wonder why I haven't published any article for almost a week (!). The thing is I was quite busy, both at college and in my daily life. Plus, I also spent some time online reading lots of interesting stuffs and joining some programs and websites which I found to be useful in promoting my blog and some of the affiliate links I have. I would like to apologize to all those who haven't received any news from me lately, to my subscribers ( which weren't able to read new and fresh articles on a daily basis ) and to anyone who either contacted me via email or through comments and didn't got an answer yet. Don't worry, I'm back now and I will contact you. I promise:)

With that said, let's get to the main subject of this article: driving traffic to a blog or website using 5 easy and even free ways to do it. I believe that you already know how important the traffic is, so I don't have to stress this once again. Not that I hate doing it, but it's somehow obvious:) In fact, it's a no-brainer: without visitors coming to your website/blog, you won't be able to get noticed or earn money. The saying "Build it and they will come" looks a bit outdated to me. Of course, it is important to build a web page, so anyone can see it, but if it doesn't receives any traffic, it's pretty much useless..all your work has been in vain ( sad, but true ).

Now, you're probably thinking: "How can I drive traffic to my newly created site ( or blog ), without having to rob a bank to pay for it?" No problem, I will explain you right away. Just keep reading this article until the end ( and yeah, don't rob any banks, please..it's not necessary :)

1. One of the first methods you can use to increase the number of visitors your site/blog gets, are the forums. It is a known fact that this types of online communities can send you a considerable amount of traffic. And all this for free! Yep, most forums you'll encounter and you'll sign up for won't ask you to pay anything in order to have a membership there. Not only that, but you'll also receive answers to your questions, tips, articles and various other sources of information, which can prove to be useful to anyone. By being an active member, you'll earn the respect of the others, good karma and everyone will consider you as a guy who knows what he 's talking about.

2. Writing articles and/or other kind of content. If you're a good writer, why not to start creating some informative articles and distribute them to a bunch of article directories? It is a win-win situation: people who are interested in the information you offer in those articles will be satisfied they've found it ( and that it had helped them ) and will also visit your website/blog, should they want to read even more or buy one of your products. Not to mention the amount of traffic you may get from doing so ( which is free, by the way ).

3. Exchange links with other webmasters or bloggers. This is yet another proven way of increasing your traffic stats. Every time you exchange links with a fellow blogger, for example, and he/she has a well-trafficked blog, you'll be able to "steal" some visitors, too ( steal here is a figurative term, meaning driving visitors to your own blog..don't think at something else :). For this to happen, you first have to find such a blog and make sure it's in the same niche as yours.

4. Publish a newsletter. If you have regular visitors and a websites which is offering information, reviews etc on a certain topic ( such as how to correctly SEO your web pages, for example ), you have to send such a newsletter to all your subscribers periodically. It may may be hard for you to write so many articles on a daily, weekly etc basis, but if you know someone who could and would like to help you, then this should make your job easier. In the end, all your efforts will bring you some results ( in this case, visitors ).

5. Traffic exchanges. I know this type of websites aren't everyone's favorites, but they can also send some traffic down your way. Even though they may seem as waste of time in your point of view, you can at least try them for a period of time. And if they don't give you good results, you can stop using them whenever you wish. I don't think it hurts to try them.

This are my top 5 picks for today. Yes, there are many other ways of driving traffic to your site or blog ( either for free or for a reasonable amount of money ), but the list would be way too long and I don't want to bore you to death. Time isn't something we have in great supply, this is why I want to keep things to the point:) If you are interested in reading more about this topic, I would advise you to go to EZineArticles.com and read more interesting articles, in the "Traffic Building" section..or simply google for this terms: "traffic building", "drive free traffic to your site", or "free website traffic", and you should find lots of resources to help you. I wish you good luck and enjoy the articles you find!

Number 1in Google in 120 days - Oh, really?!

2008-03-13T17:53:00.001+02:00

I know, it's everyone's dream to be number 1 in Google's SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages ). But the fight for this position is very fierce. You're not the only one hoping to get there and you'll have to fight your way to the top. Your competitors want the same thing and they will try to be one step ahead of you, so you must be prepared to outrun them at anytime. This means you'll have to spend some time understanding how a search engine works, do some SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) for your site/blog, spend some money on advertising ( and especially on pay per click advertising ), write keyword rich articles and quality content. If you're going to do all this properly, then you may have the chance of being the "king of the hill" on Google and other search engines, for the business/niche you're involved in to.

As you can see from above, it's no easy task to be the best..and to maintain this status all the time. Usually, when a webmaster or blogger wants to rank high on SERPs for a certain keyword or keyphrase ( which is relevant to his business or niche ), he'll want to search engine optimize his site or blog. If he knows how to do this by himself ( and do it right ), then he won't need a SEO specialist or company to do it for him. Hence, he won't pay a dime for the job. On the other hand, if he isn't so savvy, he may need help. And believe me, SEO services are quite expensive, not just useful. But if you have a large expenses budget, then I guess you can afford them:)

Now, there are good search engine optimization companies and individuals and bad ones, too. This is why it's important to first do a little research and see what company can provide you the best services, at a reasonable price. If you think that you've found the right one, then you can go with it. If not, keep looking, there has to be one to fit your needs and tastes.

Let's get to today's subject, though. And no, it's not about SEO and how to do it right. It's about a website I have heard and visited lately, named 1on40.com. What's this all about, you ask? Let me explain it to you: this guys claim that they can get your site/blog from its current position on SERPs ( be it 1000 or 10,000 etc ), to number 1, in just 4 months ( that's 120 days ). And best of all, it's free! Well, at least while they're still in BETA ( and this testing period ends somewhere around 30 of March ). So, according to what they say, if you sign up now as a client, you will be able to take advantage of their service, without paying a single cent, for 120 days. Once you'll get to be #1, you'll have to start bidding on that position, so you can keep it.Also, if you're an affiliate, you have the opportunity of making money, by referring clients willing to try the service ( not just during BETA, but even after this period ends ).

Now, I don't know about you, but this looks somehow shady to me. You may ask me why? Because I've done a quick search on Google, for the terms "1on40.com scam" and found some articles, on various sites, blogs and forums, stating that this service is indeed a scam. Chris Bailey mention the same thing on his blog, reminding us about other "get top position quick on search engines and flood your website with traffic and sales" scams which existed on the internet few time ago ( such as Monopolizer.com and MoreThanTraffic.com - very similar to 1on40.com ). In this case, here are the red flags you should pay attention to, should you be interested in signing up as a client for 1on40.com:

1. Guaranteeing something which can not be achieved, though ethical means ( yes, this guys are actually so sure they'll get your site to the top, that they guarantee the service is working ).

2. Lots of anonymous and probably fake testimonials ( I've seen them myself and these were the kind of testimonials you see on all those scam sites out there: people claiming to make thousands of dollars per month, after using the X product or service ).

3. The 1on40.com website has no PR and seems it's not on a top position for keywords such as "SEO" or "SEO services", which should be specific for it.

4. They promise you to submit your site/blog on other "search engines" too. I've put the words "search" and "engines" between quotes, because the ones they'll submit to, don't even exist or are not SEs ( search engines ) at all.

( Thanks to Chris Bailey for the above information )

From what you've read by now, you're probably thinking that it's not worth your time to sign up for 1on40.com. And yes, you're right. I would also recommend anyone who reads this article to stay away from such a site. Even though they don't want you to pay them, you'll still waste your time using their service. Not to mention that your site or blog may be hurt, if this guys won't be using ethical SEO methods, during the 4 months period, while they'll try to get it to the top. Be safe!

Got some ad space free? Monetize it with RevResponse

2008-03-10T21:13:00.003+02:00

Until about 2 days ago, I wasn't aware of the existence of RevResponse.com. If someone would have said to me "I'm making money online with my blog/website by using RevResponse and I'm satisfied with the results ", I guess I simply have said that I have no idea what this is. Fortunately, now I know what RR is. But probably you don't, so I'll have to tell you more about this opportunity.

I've discovered the above mentioned website by accident, while visiting various blogs, through EntreCard. At one time, I've stopped by a tech blog, as far as I can remember and read some of the articles listed there. Just before leaving it, I noticed on the left hand sidebar of the respective blog, a kind of widget ( or better-said, a banner with some ads ). And below that banner, there was a text link saying something like "Monetize your ad space with RevResponse" ( now, I can't say for sure that the text of the link was the way I've put it above, but nevertheless, was similar ). You know the saying: "Curiosity killed the cat." And you've guessed it: I've clicked the link and went to the official RR website, just to check it out in detail ( I had no intention to sign up, at first..remember: I was curious :).

How can you make money with it? There are 2 main ways of earning with RR: you either display some banners on your website, blog, newsletter or RSS feed, featuring subscription to various magazines ( such as Profit Magazine, EWeek, The Scientist, to name just a few of them ), or, if you think you already have enough advertisements placed on the site, you can promote your own TradePub.com co-branded website, which you're given once you become a RevResponse affiliate. Either way, you WILL make money. The minimum commission you'll get for every successful subscription to any of the advertised magazines, it's $1.50 ( which I don't think it's a low one, by the way ). I haven't found which is the maximum amount of money you may receive for your work, but I guess it depends on how much the owners of the respective publications are willing to pay to RevResponse.com.

Now, let's talk about that co-branded website I've mentioned earlier. What I like about it, is that it's not just like all the other affiliate sites out there. You too know that, when you become an affiliate for a certain program, you may receive a site, so you can promote the products or services of the company for which you've registered. Most of the time, this sites look all the same ( take AffiliateJunktion, for example - just take a look at a few replica websites provided by AJ, if you have the chance to do it, and you'll see what I mean ). But not RR's websites. It's true, you promote the same products like any other affiliate, only that your own site's design will NOT be the same with someone else's.

Instead, the site hosted on TradePub's subdomain ( like http://myaffiliatesite.tradepub.com ), will look EXACTLY like your site or blog ( speaking in terms of design, not content. You don't have to worry about content duplication, as this doesn't exists..only the design it's "duplicated", not your articles. So, the Mighty Google won't penalize you for this :). Don't understand? Here's an example:

I have signed up using this blog's URL: http://www.myppcadvertising.info. No need to show how the design of my blog looks, as you can see it yourself right now;) And my RevResponse affiliate website looks like this: http://myppcadvertising.tradepub.com. Now, you know what I mean? As you can see/you'll see, both the blog and the site have the same design, only that content is totally different. That's something unique, isn't it?

There are no differences between the earnings you generate from your original website/blog ( the one with which you've signed up for a RR account ) and those which come form your TradePub.com site. Same commission as told before. Signing up for RevResponse is fast, easy and most of all, free. Yes, you don't have to pay a single cent ( not tomorrow, next week or next month..but never! ). Once you will register to be an affiliate, your application will first have to be approved ( meaning that the staff of RR will have to take a look at your site/blog and decide if you're eligible or not for their program. If yes, you'll be notified about it and you'll receive your login details. If not, you won't get this details, but you will be notified too ). So, if you want to make money with RevResponse, just sign up now and start earning. Good luck!

SpeedyAds and MFA sites - A possible combination?

2008-03-08T22:43:00.003+02:00

Ok, hold on a second..what's with that title? Looks like being wrong, huh? I must be drunk or something..How the heck you can combine Made For Adsense ( MFA ) websites with EntireWeb's contextual ads and see any results ( like earnings )? I know, I know, may sound a bit strange ( or more than just a bit ), but this thing really is possible. Don't believe me? Then let me explain you how I got to this conclusion.

When I had a Google Adsense account ( and I say "I had", because I was banned long time ago ), I was looking for some MFA websites, because I was curious to test them myself and see if and how do they work. So, I've stumbled upon a site which was offering free, ready-made Adsense websites ( I believe that the respective website is called FreeAdsenseSites.net, though I'm not quite sure, as I haven't logged in to my account for some time ). All you had to do was to create a free account, choose what MFA site you want to download after registering and then you had to confirm your registration, so you could receive full access to the site. You could also refer other people to FreeAdsenseSites.net and for every person you were bringing, you would receive points. With the points you had gathered, you were able to "buy" other ready-made sites, from their shop. All the sites you were "buying" ( there were no money involved, you were "paying" only with points ) were having different topics, hence they were geared towards a specific niche, such as Xboxes or Xbox games, for example.

I never had time to really put the sites I have downloaded to the test, so I set them aside for a while. After starting this blog ( on 5th of August 2007, to be precise ), I've remembered about signing up for a SpeedyAds account. Just in case you don't know what this ads are, here's a short and quick description: they are contextual ads ( very similar to Adsense ads ), served by EntireWeb.com, which can be placed on a site or blog and can bring you money every time a visitor clicks them ( so they are pay per click ads ). Signing up for an account at EW is very easy and free: just go to their website, click on the "Sign Up" button, complete the registration form and when you're done, log in to your new publisher account, generate some HTML codes for banner ads and then place them on your site. This whole operation may seem complicated as I've explained it here, but you'll see it's not like that, once you'll do it yourself.

"Yes, I got that, but still..how is it possible to combine MFA websites with Speedy Ads?", I hear you say. Well, that's simple: we have EntireWeb's ads, which are contextual, right? And we have those Made For Adsense sites, which are optimized to work with such type of advertisements. Just grab one site like that ( or more :), and place some banner ads from SpeedyAds on the them, by simply doing a copy/paste operation. Of course, you do have to possess some HTML knowledges, to be able to work with HTML codes, but you DO NOT have to by Einstein to make this work ( I mean, look at me..I'm no genius either, but I've managed to put together this test site, just to see if MFA websites and SpeedyAds can work when combined ).

So, have I made thousands of dollars yet, with this crazy and strange idea? Nope. Why? Because I haven't promoted my MFA ( or should I call it "Made For SpeedyAds"? ) site for now. I was just curious to find out if such a combination will work, or not. I was thinking that maybe this type of sites are made ONLY for Adsense and will not perform well if I will use other alternatives to Google's ads on them. I will have enough time to concentrate on my domain names site later on, should I consider it is a way of earning some extra money online. But for now, I will keep it in "BETA" for a while:)

If you'd like to try this idea of mine too, feel free to do it and please don't forget to tell me what results you were able to get. Good luck!

AffiliateJunktion - A way of making money online or just another scam?

2008-03-05T01:44:00.001+02:00

The reason why I've written this post is because I would like to hear your opinion about AffiliateJunktion.com. I want to know how many of you are actually involved in this program and if you earn any good money out of it. As you may have guessed, I'm not using this money making opportunity, this is why I can't tell you my own opinions and experiences. But it's always nice to read, see or hear what other people have to say:)

So ok, you're already looking strange at me, because you may not know what I'm talking about. Not a problem, I will clear everything up for you in just a second. Because I'm an active internet surfer ( like most of you, I believe ), I'm always visiting lots of websites. Not all are related to topics such as making money online, search engine optimization or affiliate marketing ( hey, I need to take a break from time to time too :), but it are interesting and informative, nonetheless. And lately, I'm keep seeing AffiliateJunktion.com replica websites popping up almost everywhere I turn my head. Now, don't get me wrong: I won't say "This is a scam and avoided it at all costs!", as it would be a silly thing from me, especially that I'm not a member of this site.

But curiosity kicks in and I just can't help it to ask myself: "How profitable this opportunity really is? It looks like a good way of making money, if so many people are joining AJ everyday."
All those who have signed up to get a replica website and start making some greens with it, have already promoted their sites heavily, mainly through Google AdWords. Not only that, but there's also a good chance for you to simply stumble upon one while googling for ways of earning money online:). But what does AffiliateJunktion offers, so people just can't say no? Things are pretty simple to explain ( and please correct me if I'm wrong ): first of all, you have to sign up to the above mentioned website. Once you're done with this step, you need to buy a hosting package and a domain name for your future website ( the costs are somewhere around 60 or 70 bucks, as far as I've seen ). Your replica website will be ready in 24 hours, after which you can start promoting it and earning some moolas ( dollars, I mean ). How do you make money and how do you advertise it?

Simple: you just have to refer as many people as possible to AffiliateJunktion and they will pay up to $2/lead ( this means you get paid for every person which joins this site via your own one ). As about advertising, you're given a certain amount of money ( for free, you don't have to refund the sum later on ) so you can place Google and Yahoo ads, this way trying to attract potential customers. You also receive support from your own affiliate manager and if you have any further questions or you encounter any problems, you can contact the main support team from AJ.

That's all and it looks simple. Probably that's why so many have signed up for this opportunity. I read myself on a forum few days ago that a certain affiliate has managed to earn as much as 6000 dollars per month, since he ( or she, can't remember exactly ) took advantage of the offer. And in general, all of the persons who got their AJ replica website made some nice money out of it. But there were also others who have experienced lower earnings or were unable to earn anything at all ( as in any business..seems plausible ).

Now, I'm asking you: Are you a member of AffiliateJunktion.com? And if yes, would like to share your own experience as an "insider"? Would be really nice to see some opinions about this highly popular ( I say this because I guess it is, since they already have lots of members ) website. Either good or bad, just let them coming! Thanks:)

It's official! Shrtnd.com is now live! Wanna check it out?

2008-03-05T00:51:00.001+02:00

You're probably curious to find out what this post will be about. It sure has to do with some money making opportunity or some way of building traffic for your site or blog ( the usual topics I write about here ). Want to know the real answer? It's no..exactly..no! Not today. Why? Because I have something else to talk about and show you.

If you remember, in some of my latest posts I was apologizing for not posting new articles daily. And I was also mentioning that I'm working at a "secret project" with my friend Peter, from MakingMoneyExperiment.com. I have a good news for all of you: we've finished our website yesterday and it is ready to go live now! "But what's you site about? Won't you tell us?"

I was about to do that:) I'm sure that most of you already know what TinyURL.com is and you're probably using this service for quite a while now. In case you have no idea about it, let me explain you what's about: TinyURL.com is an URL shortening service..a free one, to be exact. "Oh, and why is it so special", you ask. Because here you can transform long and ugly URLs ( such as http://www.myownwebsite.com/index.php/images/myphoto.jpg ) in to ones which are considerably shorter and look better ( such as http://www.tinyurl.com/myphoto ). This can prove to be an useful service especially if you're an affiliate marketer. Usually, the URLs you have to promote are very long, complicated and quite hard to remember, even for you. Not to mention that some potential clients of yours may not even click those links, if they see so many numbers, symbols or characters in it. What's the result of this? You make few sales and not enough money..sad, huh? It's not your fault, but that's some people's nature: they are doubtful.

Now let's talk about Shrtnd.com, the site me and Peter put together ( oh look, I got a rhyme :P ).
First of all, it is similar to Tinyurl.com. Yes, you're right: it's an URL shortening service ( by the way, we provided it for free, too! ). The funny thing is that we weren't even thinking to start such a site. But one day, I was surfing the web and found some scripts for sale. More exactly, it was a pack of 10 scripts, valued by its owner at just $8. I know what you may say: "So cheap?! Probably they are not even working!" Guess what: the scripts are fully functional! At least the one we used:) I thought: "Heck, this stuffs may be useful someday, so let me grab the pack!"

I've paid 8 bucks via PayPal and few minutes later I was already the owner of those scripts. The next day I've sent an email to Peter and asked him "How about starting an URL shortening website?" And he agreed. Before doing anything else, we've setup a free hosting account at X10hosting.com, so we can test the script to the max. After that, we bought a hosting pack from HostGator, a domain name from NameCheap and we moved the newly created site to its current "home". But the job wasn't finished yet. There was no text on the website, so we had to think at it and write down..I mean, we couldn't just leave the site as it was..a simple, blank template. Sounds too unprofessional.

Today, our URL shortening service is ready to be launched! You can visit the site at anytime you want and give it a try. There you can find out more reasons on why you should use such a service and if you think it's useful to you ( or any of your friends ), feel free to link to it or even blog about it. Speaking about spreading the word..Me and Peter thought at a little and evil contest, to call it so: the first 10 bloggers who will write a short review about our site, will be rewarded with 200 EntreCard credits! Yeah, it's not actually an outstanding contest, but we appreciate it if you're one of those 10 blog owners to talk about Shrtnd.com ( Shrtnd stands for Shortened ).

All you have to do to grab your free EC credits, is to write a short article about the site we've just launched and link to it. That's all! Once you're done, leave me a comment on this post ( or go to Peter's blog at MakingMoneyExperiment.com and comment there ), mentioning the exact link of the review. We will take a look at it and if it's ok, you'll get your credits. But in order for this to happen, you have to be an EntreCard user! If you're not, you won't get the prize!

We will contact every winner via EC's private messaging system, so be sure to leave us a link to your EC profile:) Thank you so very much! And enjoy the service:)

Blog income and traffic reports

2008-03-02T17:40:00.003+02:00

Good day to you, all my readers and visitors. As you know, we've just started a whole new month. And you also know that this is the time when I release my blog income and traffic reports. There's no exception today either..It may be a bit delayed, but a blogger's life is sometimes quite busy: you have to write new articles daily, you have to search for fresh information, to promote your blog and so on. That's why I've posted the article about my reports today, instead of yesterday. If you're curious to see how much cash I've earned last month or how many people visited my blog in February, then please keep reading until the end of the post:)

As usual, I will start by showing you which were the programs and websites that brought me a nice income last month. And this are:

- BringABuddy: $0.59
- EntireWeb SpeedyAds: $0.48
- Bidvertiser: $0.31
- Comission Junction ( also known as CJ ): $100
- Sponsored Reviews: $3.25
- FreeMoneyTeam: $1.18
- LamPay Ads: $0.80

TOTAL: $106.61

The best money maker in February for me was Commission Junction, which earned me 100 bucks ( as you can see from the list above ). The rest of the programs I use for monetizing this blog made only pennies, comparing them with CJ. The truth is, I was more concerned about promoting my blog, rather than earning money, that's why I "only" managed to make $106.61. And this is what I'm going to do in the following weeks to come: I will work on increasing my traffic flow and RSS feed subscribers, which are 2 important aspects, in terms of running a successful blog.

Now, let's move on to analyzing the traffic stats. Last month, this blog was visited by a total of 3,011 people, which generated about 4,210 page views. Most of the visitors arrived here from StumbleUpon ( 860 ), EntreCard ( 209 ), LinkReferral ( 208 ) and from the EntreCard widget ( through the ads placed by me on other blogs - 163 ). The rest came from search engines, various directories, forums, or websites. I'm satisfied with this numbers, especially because it are better than it were in January. As about other stats, I can say that my Google PR ( Page Rank ) remained at 3, as before ( no increase or decrease yet ), but my Alexa and Technorati ranks improved: 256,805 ( for Alexa ) and 418,100 ( for Technorati ).

Conclusion: As you can see too, February was a good month, overall. But this doesn't mean that March will be the same. In fact, I'm planning on improving my stats even more. This will require me to put in extra efforts, but I'm willing to do it. If you want to help me, you can do it by either subscribing to my RSS feed or by telling others about my blog. In the end, I would like to thank you all: my readers, visitors, commentators and others who have been with me until now and helped me grow this blog. I'm aware that without you, I wouldn't be where I am now. Hope you'll keep close to me in the following weeks and months to come, too!

5 qualities of an affiliate marketer

2008-02-28T17:41:00.004+02:00

First of all, before starting to talk about today's topic, I would like to apologize for not posting any new articles in the last 2 days. It's not that I don't want to write anything anymore, but I'm currently a bit busy, working on a project with my friend Querblogger, from MakingMoneyExperiment.com blog. If you'd like to know what this project involves..well, I'm afraid I can't disclose this just yet:) Things are almost ready, so when we'll go live with our new website ( yes, it's an website, not an atomic bomb, or something else shady :), we will tell you more about it and we will let you see it and test-drive it. But for now, let's keep it as a surprise.

With this said ( and hoping that you now understand why I wasn't posting anything this days ), I should move on and tell you about the 5 qualities that make an affiliate marketer good and successful. You'll see that it's not just about luck or how much money you're willing to invest, but also about how determined or optimistic you are in your quest to make money from affiliate marketing. So here it are the qualities I was mentioning above:

1. You must have the desire to learn. When you'll first start as an affiliate marketer, you may not know all the tips and tricks of the trade, so you have to be patient and have the desire to learn and be trained. The truth is, we learn every day. Even though we may not be in high school or college anymore, we still find out new things daily, either it's at the work place or somewhere else. So it happens in affiliate marketing too: we constantly need to improve our knowledge, our skills, in order to be successful.

2. You have to invest time and effort. Very true! Results won't appear instantly, just because you've set up a site, bought a domain name and threw in some affiliate links and some content. You will have to spend time in promoting your site, adding more content, improving its loading time, its design etc and all this actions require you to do some efforts. No one says you won't be seeing any kind of results in the long run, but everyone will tell you that you have to work to achieve them, as they won't simply pop up in your way.

3. You must be determined. I would say "You must be determined to succeed". If you don't want to make money and be a successful affiliate marketer, why have you started a site and wasted so much time in spreading the word about it, anyway? This really makes no sense. If you lack determination, then it is better for you not to do it. Maybe this isn't for you..in this case, a 9 to 5 job is more appropriate..

4. You must be disciplined. If you'll say to yourself "I'm a disciplined guy and I want to do my best to start seeing some results with my affiliate marketing business." and you also going to do it, then you'll be a step closer in achieving your goals.

5. You must be optimistic. Whatever your goals are, whatever your niche is, you have to be optimistic when it comes about reaching the wanted results. You should never leave anything and anyone to discourage you! Most of the time, you'll hear people saying: "Are you sure you now what you're doing?" or "Man, you'll get nowhere with this site/blog..stop wasting time. I personally believe making money online it's just a waste of time." Well, this kind of persons either don't have a clue of what they're talking about, or they simply want to make you quit, by repeating the same phrases as those above, over and over, to you. In this case, just ignore them and "keep walking":) You know better than this guys and gals what you have to do.

So, there you have, my dear readers and fellow bloggers/webmasters/netrepreneurs. This are the 5 qualities that make an affiliate marketer a good one and will ensure his success. There are probably others, but I was able to come up with "only" those mentioned above. If you know of other such qualities, feel free to leave a comment and tell me which are. Thanks for taking time and reading this article!

Do you like my new design?

2008-02-25T22:13:00.004+02:00

Finally, after a whole day of hard work, tears and blood ( well, it wasn't so hard, but I like how this expression sounds :), I've managed to come up with a new design for my blog. I was starting to get bored by the old template I had, so I've decided it's time for a change. To tell you the truth, I wasn't planning any major redesigning job so soon, but because I found this wonderful theme you see now, I really wanted to do it. But how did all started?

Few days ago, I've done a quick search on Google for the following keywords: "free blogger templates". As you may imagine, I found lots of websites and blogs which were offering what I was looking for. Now, the problem was that most of the themes and templates presented on those sites and blogs were pretty much the same, only a few being newer. I've seen them before, so I got bored after browsing through various categories, lists etc, searching for the right one for my blog.
But just when I was ready to move on to something else ( like checking my emails, for example ), I saw in Google's SERPS ( Search Engine Results Pages ) one site which I have never visited before. Because I was curious to see if there are any other different Blogger templates than on the other sites, I've clicked the link and I was redirected to EBlogtemplates.com. From the moment I got to this site, the first things which caught my attention were the templates. Why? The answer is: this ones looked unique and I've never seen them before. Not to mention that EBT is not just a place from where you can download new themes for your blog, but also the place to learn various tips and tricks on how to improve it, too.

After taking a look at the themes' gallery, I've picked one which I thought would do well for this blog: it is called WP Theme Polaroid and you're looking at it right now:). Yes, you're correct: it's a WordPress template, converted to be used on Blogger blogs ( like mine ). Never thought making a new template from scratch requires so much work and good skills, such as programming, designing etc. And to quote the owner of Eblogtemplates.com "those who are creating such themes are artists". Believe it or not, it's true. You have to know to work with HTML codes, to design the headers, various icons etc which appear in a template and to use different softwares, so you can do a good work. I admit: I'm not talented when it comes about about drawing or creating designs, this is why I admire those who are doing this.

Even though I said I'm not such a talent at making templates, I still have enough knowledges on how to make them work on this blog:). You thought it's an easy job to change your blogs' design? Well then, you need to think again. It's not a breeze and you probably know it. So, what I've done yesterday?

First of all, I've uploaded this new template and replaced the old one. After that, everything had to be done from scratch once again: I had to copy and paste the META tags and keywords back in the newly uploaded template, to set the fav icon ( that little image which appears right before my blog's URL, represented by my country's flag ), to place the Google Analytics tracking code and the social bookmarking script ( from Feedburner ) and other codes that had to be implemented. Next step was to customize the other parts of the theme, such as the "About Me" and "About the blog" boxes you see on the right and left side of my big photo, the photo itself, the "Recent Comments" box and all the other boxes, widgets or functions which had to be customized correctly.

Have I finished the work now? Almost. Why just almost? I still need to create 3 pages ( About Me, Advertise and Contact ) and link them to the buttons from the top navigation menu. When I'm done with those ones too, I can say for sure that my customization process has ended indeed. You should be able to see and browse my blog without any problems, as I've tested the new template in 4 different browsers: FireFox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. There were no difficulties encountered! However, here's a note for IE users: when visiting this blog, you may not be able to see my fav icon. I guess this is a glitch of this browser, as the fav icon is clearly visible in the other 3 browsers with which I've tested the blog. Oh, and almost forgot: my friend Querblogger reported that there were some pop-ups which appeared when he visited the blog, from his FireFox browser. I DO NOT use pop-ups or pop-unders on this blog and never used such things! They are annoying for anyone and I don't want to drive away my readers and visitors. Again, during my test period, there were no pop-ups, pop-unders etc on this blog, and they did not appeared on any of the 4 browsers used for the test! Should you encounter such a problem, do let me know about it.

Now I would like and appreciate to hear your opinions about my new design:) Thanks!

Is Shoemoney's reputation going down the drain?

2008-02-22T20:30:00.002+02:00

You were probably used to hear phrases like "A-list bloggers are cool, they make loads of cash, they are the best, so let's do what they do and we'll also be rich." or "John Chow sucks..He knows nothing about blogging, he's just talking about what he ate 1 day ago or who he met at I-don't-know-what conference or reunion..or whatever." And believe me, this are quite usual things you hear or read in the blogosphere. It's nothing new. Almost everywhere you look, there are some people, bloggers, webmasters, marketers, forum owners etc, who don't like John Chow or Jeremy Shoemoney. Even I wrote about Chow few months ago, expressing my opinion on how much he really helped others in making money online ( as he claims on his blog and in his Adwords ads ). For sure, the articles I saw on his blog didn't gave me the needed information. So I can say he hasn't been of any use to me. But that's just me, and I'm very wrong ( according to his fans, which may read this post now ). Anyway, let's put John aside for now. I don't care what is he blogging about now, as I'm not visiting his blog anymore. It's just too damn boring..Plus, I'm not his fan, nor I will ever be..not his fan and not his copy, either. Sorry, but I want to be as original as possible:)

How about talking about former AuctionAds.com's owner..don't know who he was? Not that it matters, but his name is Jeremy Shoemaker ( aka Shoemoney - no linklove for this guy..you'll see why ). Last night, I was spending some time on one of my favorite forums, Bloggeries, reading some threads, when I came across this one, written by an user named blogenchancingtips. If you'll read it, you'll see it's only a small summary of three larger threads published on WickedFire.com forum. There, the owner of WF is practically blasting Shoemoney and is accusing him of being a liar and a scammer. Well, I agree, we're not all saints, but what I've read about Shoemaker, really made me think "I never knew he might have done that..".

For example, Jon, who runs the WickedFire forum ( and who also received a C&D ( Cease & Decist ) letter from Shoemoney ), says that this guy actually faked his famous Adsense check! I'm sure that most of you who've been visiting Shoemoney.com lately know about it and you also know the amount of money shown on the check: $132,970. Guess what: according to the same forum owner, it seems Jeremy Shoemaker photoshoped the whole check to make it look like being that big ( I'm talking about the sum of money here...). In fact, the real one was showing only $132,97 ( anyone noticing the difference? ). I can't say this is true, not I can deny it.

But if Shoemaker did this, then he either did it for fun ( don't think it's funny, though ), or he did it on purpose, to make people believe that he was paid that much by Google. Either way, I don't think it's fair. Hold on a second! It seems this is not the only gimmick done by Shoemoney. He may have also fabricated some numbers ( referring to technical data of AuctionAds.com's servers ), when promoting his site. From what I've seen on another blog ( I'm really sorry for not remembering its URL now ), Shoemaker used some old scripts and hardware for his servers, which could have been an instable combination, unable to support the number of ads which he claimed the servers were supporting daily ( up to a few 10s of millions ).

Apart from the above mentioned tricks/gimmicks, whatever you'd like to call them, Shoemoney may have tried to bribe DMOZ's editors too, not to mention that he was kicked out from Yahoo!'s affiliate program, for delivering very pool quality traffic to their site ( he posted on his own blog the conversation he had with one of Yahoo!'s representatives, and it can clearly be seen that 65% of the traffic he sent through his blog, to Yahoo was crap..even worse, those where "customers" who were using false information or stolen credit cards, in their attempt to sign up for Yahoo!'s services ). And the list can go on, believe it or not. It doesn't ends here.

The owner of WickedFire.com is determined to dig deeper and see what other things he can find out about Shoemoney and he wants to put this guy out of the money making industry! In his opinion, it would do more harm, than good to have Jeremy Shoemaker around.

Now, I don't know what Shoemoney has done, or what not. I even don't care, as long as this hasn't affected anyone ( but it seems this happened ). And I won't say I'm backing him up or Jon, from WF. But I would really like to see if we can find out the truth about this "A-list blogger".
Only then those who are now worshiping him will finally see his real nature.

A quick note: This is not a bashing post. I don't know who this guy Shoemoney is and I'm not interested in him, his blog or his businesses..or whatever. I wrote this article because I thought it would be a good piece of information and you may actually be willing to read it. If I've hurt Shoemaker directly, or one of his fans, do let me know ( a C&D letter is one its way to me too? ).

BringABuddy and make a buck

2008-02-20T23:46:00.003+02:00

Yes, the above title does sounds like an invitation ( and I think it is :). You're now gonna ask me "Where exactly should I bring this buddy and who's going to pay me?". Don't be impatient, I will tell you what to do in just a couple of seconds. The other days I was pinging my blog at Ipings.com ( or was it Pingoat.com? Can't say for sure.. ), and one Google Adsense ad caught my attention. And because I was curious to find out more about this site named BringABuddy.net, I've clicked on the respective ad.

From the moment I got on the site, one thought came through my mind: this service is similar to Scratchback.com. "So, if it's similar, why are you talking about it? Anyone who'd like to know how BringABuddy.net works should see your post about Scratchback.com. Isn't that easier?", is your next question. It would be easier this way, I agree, but since most of my readers and visitors are probably new here ( how about subscribing to my RSS feed, if so? ), it's better for me to explain in this post how BringABuddy works, rather than saying "Oh, just go and read this post and you'll find out..". Plus, there are a few terms used on the BAB website, which you won't find them on the SB site and have to be explained right in this post.

Let's get going! First of all, how can BringABuddy.net can help you make money? What it has to offer? The answer: BAB is a way for you to start accepting donations on your blog, it's your fancy "money jar", if you like to call it so. Here's how it works: before making any money with this site, you have to be a member ( obvious, don't you think? ). Signing up it's easy, fast and most of all, free. Yep, no monthly fees, contracts, payments etc. Completely free!

Good, so you've just signed up? What's the next step? Update your profile. To do this, once you've logged in, go to the "Profile" tab, which can be found in your account, just below the BringABuddy BETA header of the site. Things that have to be updated:

1. Tick the following boxes: Website owner, Advertiser, Bringa ( NOTE: You don't have to tick them all. Usually, one is enough. But hey, if you want to make money, advertise or refer new users to BringABuddy at the same time, then please feel free to tick all of them! ).

2. Activate your Rewards Account. "What's that?" Answer: the Rewards Account is actually BAB's referral program. If you set it as active, you will make some extra money for every blog or website owner you send to the site and signs up. NOTE: It requires a one-time activation payment of $2.80, made only via PayPal ( so make sure you have a PP account ).

3. Your payment method ( which by the way is PayPal only! ). In the field next to the "PayPal Email", put in your correct PP email address. If it's not the correct one, then you can't receive your money. Be sure you double check it:)

4. Your normal email address..meaning the one with which you've signed up. Don't worry, it won't be shared with any 3rd party. It's required so the BringABuddy's staff can contact you for various questions, reports etc.

5. Your nickname..usually, the one you used to register on the site and the one which is part of your login details.

6. A hover message. This one is optional. In the field next to where it says "Hover Message" write what you'd like to appear to someone, when he/she hovers the mouse pointer over your nickname. It can be your websites'/blog's URL or just about anything you can think of:).

Once you're done, don't forget to save the changes, by clicking on the little "Save" button, located at the bottom of the profile page. Now, let's move to step 2: Create your BringABuddy widget. Start by clicking on the "Activities" tab, from the top navigation menu of the site. Then click on the "Add a widget" button that you'll see shortly after the "Activities" page loads. You'll be redirected to the widget selection zone. Pick the one you like. There are 9 of them: from the "Minimalist" type, to the "Slate Blue" one. Actually, it all look the same, but the colors are different:). Next, edit the widget, by giving it a name, a description, setting the URL of the page where it will be displayed, the number BringABuddys and Linkas, as well as the cost of a link which will be purchased ( see, that's how you'll make money: people will buy links on your blog or website. No need to worry, as all are made "NoFollow" automatically, so it won't be taken into consideration by the search engines ) as well as the colors of the widget ( try to blend it in your site's design ). When you're done, click on the "Update" button and you'll get a HTML code which has to be placed on your site/blog, via the copy and paste command:). If everything is correctly set, the widget should be visible. If not, then see where you've made a mistake.Pretty cool, huh? That's what I call an easy way of making a buck.

In the end, here are a couple or terms used on the BringABuddy website, as well as here, which you may not know:

Linka: the person who's buying a link in your widget
Bringa: the person who's bringing visitors to a site..kinda like a recruiter:)
BringaLink: your referral link
BringaReward: your reward for bringing new referrals

More answers to your other questions can be found on the FAQ page of the BAB website. So make sure you visit it;) PS: You'll get paid once you reach $20, via PayPal..I almost forgot about that:) Good luck!

Want me to digg, stumble or sphinn your blog posts?

2008-02-19T00:01:00.003+02:00

Let me ask you once again: Do you want me to digg, stumble or sphinn your blog posts? What's wrong..oh, you're probably thinking that I'm fooling around..Well, hear this: no, I'm not fooling around and I'm not kidding ( not this time ). I'm really serious about this. In fact, I have decided to do a little experiment and see how many of you bloggers will be interested in having your articles digged, stumbled or sphinned by me. If you're asking "What's the catch?", here's the answer: I want to increase my blog's traffic and RSS feed subscribers ( hopefully ) and I thought "How the heck should I do it?" I know, this is quite a no-brainer, as most of you'd say "Why don't you organize a contest? This would be nice and you would increase your traffic, the number of RSS feed subscribers and whatever else you want.." Contests are a nice way of driving traffic to a blog, indeed, but I'm aiming to provide this "service" ( if I can call it like that ) for a long period of time from now, unlike a contest, which only lasts for a couple of days.

So, I've thought to do something else, a bit more special, than just the good ol' contest thingy:) And this is how the "Digg, stumble or sphinn my post for free" idea was born. "Huh?! What's that? Free diggs, stumbles and sphinns? Gotta be joking, right?" You've definitely missed the first paragraph of this post and especially this phrase: "Well, hear this: no, I'm not fooling around and I'm not kidding ( not this time )". Now, you've probably realized that things are getting more and more serious here, at My PPC Advertising blog, so you want to know more about how this "service" works. If so, then please read the rest of the article:)

I saw that many fellow bloggers really want to increase their blogs' traffic and improve the overall stats. And because they know that getting as much visitors as possible is a very important aspect of a successful blog, they are willing to do anything to achieve this goal..even paying for others to do the hard work of digging, stumbling, sphinning etc their blog articles. Whilst I agree this is not quite an easy task ( actually, it's a bit time consuming, and you probably know it yourself ) and those that are doing it, deserve to be paid, I can't agree with some which are not fair when it comes about pricing their services. They just tend to ask a high price for only a few diggs or stumbles which may or may not be done properly.

There's where I come to the rescue:) I want to offer FREE diggs, stumbles and sphinns to ANYONE who runs a blog and wants my help! Ok, I know that my one little vote won't actually send you on the first page of Digg, StumbleUpon or Sphinn, but it adds up to the ones you already received ( and who knows, it may even get you on the main page of the above mentioned websites ;). You can't even imagine what being featured on such a site means: a lot of traffic coming to your blog..and I'm not talking about 10, 20 or 50 visitors, but 100s or even 1000s of them! I can see you're a bit excited, so let's get down to business ( I mean, here are the rules :):

1. I will offer 5 diggs, stumbles or sphinns to each one of you, per day. Obviously, the votes will be for different articles, not for just one ( you either tell me what articles do you want me to vote, or I will pick them myself, in case you haven't already mentioned this ).

2. I will respond to a maximum of 10 requests every day ( do the math: 5 votes/day X 10 requests FROM DIFFERENT people = 50 votes daily ). Why such a limited number? Because this is a time-consuming task, as I've already told you and I really am a busy guy, not just online, but also in real-life ( I hope you understand this :).

3. To make my job easier, I will like to kindly ask you to provide me a voting button or link, in the beginning or at the end of the posts you want me to digg, stumble or sphinn. In my opinion, it's a time-saving way of voting:).

4. Do not forget to mention what kind of votes do you want to get from me: diggs, sphinns or stumbles ( NOTE: not specifying the exact method of voting, will result in your requests' cancellation ).

5. Once the voting operation is completed, I will leave you a comment on your blog, so be sure you have the comments enabled.

6. Only good quality articles will be submitted by me to Digg.com, StumbleUpon .com or Sphinn.com. If you don't have such posts on your blog, please DO NOT waste my time..or yours.

7. While I do not ask you to do the same for me, I will really appreciate if you'd stumble, digg or sphinn some of my own blog posts. After all, I believe this is the least I deserve for offering this free service..am I right?:)

This are all the rules. I haven't mentioned that only appropriate articles will be voted, meaning that no hate, adult, warez, crackz or the like related posts will be submitted to those 3 sites I've talked about above..but you already figured that out, I know that;)

With this said, let the voting begin! Best regards to you all!

Get more traffic from TrafficEra

2008-02-17T23:03:00.005+02:00

When it comes about driving traffic to my blog, I'm always interested in testing every method that may look promising. Until now, I've tried many traffic building websites and programs, from search engine submission to social networking websites. Whilst most of them worked, there were also others that failed and brought me no results ( I know, nothing it's perfect, not even the internet ).
If a program fails, no matter how much you like it and no matter how nice it may be, then it's time to say goodbye. Why am I saying this? I don't want to upset no one, but since you're seeing no results, why would you want to waste your time with that respective traffic generating site or program? It's not worth it and it's about time to move on to another one, which hopefully is better than the previous you've tried.

Now, let me tell you about a new website I found, that can help anyone who's looking to increase the traffic that's coming to his site or blog, and which is free to join ( what can I say..I like freebies :). Some days ago, I was browsing through some sites listed in the LinkReferral traffic directory, and I've stumbled upon one named TrafficEra.com. And because I was curious to see how it works and how it can help me, I've signed up (remember, in the beginning of this paragraph I've mentioned it's free to join ). If you're asking what was my first impression about the site, here it is: it's quite promising. In fact, I like the concept that stands behind it and this is why:

Unlike any other sites out there, this one incorporates 4 traffic building methods: surfing, splash pages, banner advertising and social networking. Believe it or not, it's true! "But I have Google Adsense ads on my site/blog and I don't want to use automatic scripts that can generate invalid impressions on them..I may be banned for this.." I hear ya..and I also know the Adsense rules.
If so, then nobody will force you to surf to earn credits or use the splash pages to promote the site you own. You can make use of the other 2 methods: banner advertising and social networking. As a free member, you will get the following benefits:

1. 0.2 credits for each second you spend surfing through other members' websites or blogs
2. A 5 to 1 surfing ratio
3. Powerful networking platform
4. The possibility of meeting and connecting to all the members from the TE site
5. You can create unlimited groups and add unlimited contacts
6. You can add up to 3 sites to your account and promote them via splash pages or surfing
..and many more. The complete list of benefits can be seen here. If you feel like spending some cash and want to take advantage of the more features this program can offer you, then you can upgrade your membership at anytime. When you sign up for free, you're a Silver member. The other types of paid memberships are, as follows: Gold ( $19,99/month ), Platinum ( $29,99/month ) and Club ( which is by invite only and it's $49,99/month ).

So you've just registered on TrafficEra. Now what? Go ahead and update your profile, upload a photo of yourself, and start making some friends, joining teams and groups that fit your site's or blogs' topics the best. Engage in discussions, give answers, or ask questions about the things you don't know to well..be sociable! The more friends you get, the more groups and teams you join and the more referrals and credits you earn, the more chance are for you to be a top member of this site and have a good personal value.

There are a lot of things to be said about this traffic building website. I may have missed some details in this article, this is why I recommend you to visit TrafficEra.com today and read more about it and about what it has to offer you. I wish you good luck and may you get on top;)

The Making Money Experiment blog - In review

2008-02-15T22:14:00.002+02:00

Since this blog was created, back in August 2007, there have been written many reviews about various websites, blogs, products and services I've considered them to be useful to you, my readers and visitors. But it've been quite a while since I haven't reviewed a blog of one of my fellow bloggers and friends. This is why today I will present you a blog called The Making Money Experiment, which belongs to Peter Leitsch, better known as Querblogger ( a very friendly and like-minded friend of mine from Germany..the country of Michael Ballack ( for those who are soccer fans :) ).

Before going in to more details about his online journal, let's see how our friendship started. For sure, we first met many months ago, in 2007, via LinkReferral ( not only that this is a good traffic source, but you can also make some new friends there too ). Can't remember exactly if Peter reviewed my blog at LR or if I was the first to review his blog, but we soon become friends. And from there on, we've started to exchange opinions, comments on our blogs, emails and make jokes, every time we were discussing something ( we are the kind of guys who do like to entertain themselves and their readers ;). Right now, we are planning a little "evil" thing ( won't tell you what's about..it's our secret :), because we are "evil" bloggers ( that's one of our jokes: we name ourselves "evil bloggers" who are "dreaming" to buy the good ol' Google one day...ha ha ).

Let's move to describing Peter's blog..As you can see from the title, it's about making money online. There are many blogs like this in the blogosphere ( including mine ), but what matters the most is how the authors are writing their articles. You may see 2 articles talking about affiliate marketing, for example, but most likely, they won't be the same ( of course, there's an exception: if one of the bloggers simply copied the original article and pasted it on his blog, without any modification, then this is called plagiarism ). So, what's the point of this explanation? What I want to say is that Querblogger is not the kind of person to simply copy/paste articles from other blogs on his own..he writes each and every article with his words, trying to tell his readers and visitors the importance of the topic he is blogging about in the respective article. You don't have to believe me..Just go here, here and here and see for yourselves.

"When did Peter started his blog?" I hear you asking. The answer: after "scanning" his archives, I found that TMME ( The Making Money Experiment ) was created back in October 2007 ( right at the beginning of the month ). And because it's a make money online blog, you'll find articles about different money making opportunities and programs, such WidgetBucks, Paid.vg, or the newly born Pay-Per-Play ads. Also, he is talking about some free traffic source, like LinkReferral, BlogRush or EntreCard. This are just a few examples of his articles that he wrote till now. But there are more from where this came and I would recommend you to read them, if you have time ( if not, bookmark his blog or subscribe to his RSS feed :).

As about the design and navigation, all I can say is this: it's a pleasure to navigate through his blog's pages, because it loads fast, fonts and the text are very easy to read and you can understand everything he is talking about. The green and blue colors used for the template, along with the graphics, look very nice and blend perfectly. There are few ads, no pop-ups or any other annoying adverts. A well done designing job, for a Blogger.com hosted blog;)

I'm sure I can talk about Peter and his blog for many more minutes, but I don't want to tell you just everything..find out for yourselves:) PS: Don't forget to leave a comment, after going there. It's always nice to interact with the blogger behind the respective blog. Have a nice "trip" to The Making Money Experiment and enjoy your stay! PPS: Is this evil enough, Querblogger:)?

How to succeed with Google AdWords?

2008-02-12T22:48:00.002+02:00

So, you've just built your first website and want to let people know that it exists. What to do next? Hmm, I don't really know for sure, but how about starting to spam everybody? If you were thinking this way, then I must tell you it's totally wrong! No one likes to receive an unsolicited email, where the sender promotes his products or services, which are of no interest to him or her. Believe me, I know how annoying it is to deal with more than 20 spam mails a day ( fortunately, this emails are sent to an address which I now rarely use it, so they don't clutter my main email address ). And I'm sure you wouldn't like this to happen to you, too. If so, then DO NOT SPAM!

Instead, be more creative and think at some ways to promote your newly created website. Try banner advertising, search engine submission, directory submission or pay per click advertising.
And because I've mentioned pay per click advertising, let's talk about Google AdWords a bit. Just in case you haven't heard about it by now ( which I kinda doubt ), this is an advertising platform offered by Google.com ( yes, that Google ). Many websites, blogs or businesses owners are using it everyday, to spread the word about their services or products which they have to offer to their customers, on the internet.

An AdWords campaign can be either cheap, or expensive, depending to what niche is your website or blog aimed. But if you can afford to spend a lot of money on advertising, then this shouldn't be a problem for you. Either way, this type of campaigns can prove themselves effective, if are done properly.

If you already know how to create a successful AdWords campaign and market your site/blog, then probably you don't have to read this article anymore. On the other hand, if you need some tips to improve the one you already run and make it successful, you should read the next few steps and remember them, once you're ready to advertise on Google Adwords.

1. Create a good campaign and use it effectively. Google's duty is to give you the opportunity to advertise your website or blog the best possible, so you to be satisfied. Yours is to make sure you pay them for this. And since you give them your hard earned cash, you really have to be sure that the campaign you've started is fit to what you want to achieve. Google will profit from you, no matter if your campaign is good or bad.

If it's good, then you too will see results and you'd want to use Google's AdWords advertising platform for weeks, months or years to come. If not, then you're probably doing something wrong and you need to take some time and fix the problem. This is why creating and using a campaign effectively will save you from this burden.

2. Use the tools Google is giving you to target your audience. It's not recommended to start targeting each and every market possible from countries around the world. Instead, try to concentrate on the one that matters to you. When you create your campaign, use the right keywords or keyphrases and select the regions/countries where your ad will appear. This way, you'll make sure that you're reaching the right visitors ( or potential customers ).

3. Compose the proper ad. What sense does a campaign have, if your ad isn't attention-grabbing? Is there any reason for you to continue it? I guess not. In order to get visitors clicking the ad, you have to be careful how you write it. And since you have a limited number of characters to do it, you need to be creative. There's no room to start writing stories and also, you just can't write 2 words and hope people will click on the ad and visit your site. The text must be appealing to the visitors and make them want to see what you have on the site or blog.

4. Use the correct keywords. Another important aspect when creating an AdWords campaign. And it can turn out to be difficult for some advertisers to decide on which keywords are right for their ad. If you can't do it yourself, then you should probably try a keywords suggestion tool ( and Google has one, as far as I know ). This will help to come up with just the right ones you need. Avoid using those technical terms, even if your site is about tech, gadgets and things like this. Put yourself in the shoes of an average person, who's not such a tech-savvy and think on what keywords he/she may type in, when searching on Google. You may even find the ones you were looking for!

This are my tips for today. I know there are more, but those ones came through my mind for the moment. You can find more, if you're interested, by searching and reading more articles, ebooks, or reports on Google AdWords. Once you've figured out how to succeed with it, then nothing should stop you. Good luck!

Online casino games at 32vegas.com

2008-02-11T00:43:00.000+02:00

You know the saying "All work and no play". But it really has to be like that? I mean yes, we have to work to earn money and sustain ourselves and our families, but we also have to take some time to relax and forget about the daily madness and about that boss who most of us have. Everyone chooses to spend his free time in his own way: taking trips, going to parties, playing outdoor sports ( like soccer, football etc ) or staying at home and enjoying a video game.

Also, there are others who may prefer something else..for example, he or she would like to go to an online casino and play the games listed there: blackjack, slots, roulette, craps and many others. And if you're one of them, then the following website of which I'll talk about, may be of interest to you. First of all, it is called 32Vegas.com and it is an online gambling casino, as may have noticed already. I'm not really the one who spends most of his time playing casino games, but from time to time I like to visit such a site and see what's new or even play a game ( I usually play free games, as I'm not an experienced player and it would be quite sad for me to lose my hard earned money like that ).

"Ok, I understand that...But what games can I play at 32vegas?", you'll ask me. I know you're probably interested by now, so I will cut to the chase: if you visit their games page, you'll see that the following ones are available: card games, video slots, table games, video poker, casino specials and progressive games. In order for you to play them, you have to become a member. To do this, you have to download a special software, used to run the games, access the member's area and to stay in contact with the online casino. You don't need to worry, as this type of softwares are not harmful for your computer ( I had a couple installed on my own hard drive and nothing bad happened ). Once you've installed the program, you'll be able to start playing any games you want, either in "Practice Mode" or for "Real Money". If you're like me ( a less experienced player ), then you should play in the "Practice Mode" for a while, untill you feel that you're prepared to move on to the next serious step: playing for real money.

Now let's talk about the design of the site. You know that this aspect counts too, when you're visiting a website. If everything looks good and you like it, if it is easy to navigate through and you find the information you need fast, then you'll going to return to that site in the following days ( or even months ). If not, then you'll be just another internet surfer who came just once and will never return.

At this online casino, you'll see that it worth to return day after day. And I'm not saying that just to give you a false impression about it. In fact, once you'll visit the site, you'll see I was right: the template looks just awesome ( it fits the topic of the site perfectly ), it has a very easy to use navigation menu, very accessible, just below the header, plus a translation interface, which allows you to translate the entire text written on the pages of the site, in your own language: Polish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and many others. All the pages, boxes, banners and advertisements are correctly placed and you'll see no missing or broken links, no strange looking banners, or any other designing mistakes. I tell you, everything was done by the book!

As a conclusion, I really like this site and I would play around on it every day, if I would have so much free time ( which unfortunately I don't ). But if you DO have some time to spend online and want to exercise your skills by gambling, then feel free to go to 32Vegas.com. Have fun!

PS: I'll post below a screenshot of the main page of the online casino, for those who'd like a "preview" of the site, before going there:)

Article marketing mistakes you have to avoid

2008-02-10T00:51:00.000+02:00

Driving traffic to a site or blog is done through various methods, such as search engine submission, search engine marketing, banner advertising, pay per click advertising, directories submission etc.It's up to the webmaster ( or blogger ) to select the right ways which he/she thinks will work for him/her. You have to remember that whilst a promotion method may work for one of your friends or fellow webmaster, may not bring you the same results. You really don't have to copy others. Instead, try to be as original as you can ( this is what you're visitors and readers will appreciate when viewing your site or blog ).

Do you know that it is possible to drive traffic to a site/blog if you write articles and publish them on various directories or ezines, too? If you had no idea about this yet, I'm telling you that this thing can be done. Now, don't just open Notepad or Microsoft Word and start typing as a mad man, just because it is possible. You have to to think about it for a moment: are you really ready to do it? Can you write attention-grabbing articles, which will make readers flock to your site or blog to read more or to buy one of your products or services? If so, then go ahead and do it. You're probably a good article writer and never thought at this before ( how about becoming a freelancer and making some good money from this talent of yours, too, huh? )

But what exactly is article marketing? As the name says it, it's all about marketing your articles, with the purpose of announcing it to the world, driving traffic to your website/blog, building reputation and delivering your targeted readers the information they need. So, you kinda found out what this "mysterious" term is and you'd like to start doing some article marketing, because you consider you did a great job in writing a couple of articles and you really want others to read them.

Hold on a second! Where do you think you're going so fast? Marketing an article may look as something "cool" to you, but you have to know some basic stuffs about it..and when I say that, I'm thinking about the mistakes you have to avoid, while promoting your articles. If you want to know what are this mistakes, please keep reading this article till the end ( you're probably going to consider it useful :)...

1. Unclear targeted audience. You see, lots of article writers tend not to write for a certain niche or targeted audience. What they do instead is to write for everybody. This is wrong. Because if you want to reach interested readers ( and potential visitors or even customers ), you have to write for them, not for the whole world wide web! You want to get them in visiting your site or blog, they are your main target. So, concentrate on this people and start writing articles which will be of interest to them.

2. Desperate times may require desperate actions: SPAM. Ok, I know you want traffic to flood your site, but come on...don't spam each and every category of each and every article directory and ezine that exists on the internet! It's totally a not recommended, hated and annoying thing to deal with. Instead of getting that "flood of traffic" you so desperately need, you may get a ton of complaints, negative votes or bad karma from the users or owners of the article directories and ezines where you've "submitted" your articles. Not to mention that your reputation is at stake, if you start spamming.

3. Using the wrong titles or headlines for your articles. Maybe "wrong" it's not quite the right word, but rather inappropriate. If you do not write attention-grabbing articles, that have the correct ( and appealing ) headlines, then it really doesn't matter how good the article is. The readers will not give it much attention and will move on to read other, better written articles. Take time in coming up with the best titles you can for those articles of yours and you'll see that people will read them.

4. How about thinking of your readers first, before of you? The articles you write are not for your own eyes only. You create them because you want others to read them and because you want to share the information and knowledge you have with your readers. So think of them too. They may not care too much if you're a seasoned article writer or internet entrepreneur, or you've just started doing online businesses a couple of months ago. But they will care about the information they'll read from you. If this is good, then they will appreciate it and will appreciate you also.

5. Please check your spelling and grammar. The last ( but not the least ) mistake is not to pay attention on how you're writing your articles. You may know what you're talking about, but if you start doing many spelling or grammar mistakes in an article, especially if you write in a language which is not your native one ( for example writing articles in English, while your native language is Romanian ( in my case ) ), can make it look funny and the readers will have the tendency to skip it and think that you're a lousy writer. This is why I'd recommend you to read and re-read the newly written articles and correct any mistakes you find, BEFORE submitting them to any ezine or articles directory.

That's pretty much it my list with the most important mistakes you have to avoid, while doing article marketing. If I have omitted any other mistake, then please feel free and tell me, by commenting on this article. Thank you for taking time and reading the article and be careful next time you want to get involved in article marketing. Be sure you don't commit any of the above mentioned mistakes.

Online Cupons and cupons codes at CuponChief

2008-02-08T23:44:00.000+02:00

I believe that many of you like to go shopping, right? Well, I like this too. Even though patience isn't really my number one characteristic, some times I just feel the need to visit some stores, to see what new products or services are available ( if there are any ). If you're asking me what types of shops I like to visit, I will answer you that mostly those which are selling electronics ( such as cell phones, laptops, personal computers, computer parts, various accessories etc ). But I wouldn't say no if some of my friends would invite my to go visit a clothes store or a shoes store. This are interesting places to see, too, so it shouldn't be ignored.

I also like to go to a store or shop ( be it an online or offline one ) when there are various promotions, as you can buy products or services at a lower price or you can even win a couple of prizes ( if the respective store is holding a contest ). But how about if you're lucky to receive a coupon from your favorite shopping place? Or from any other store in your city ? Wouldn't this be a happy moment for you? I'm sure it would, as you would immediately go and take advantage of the discounts offered by that coupon.

And because we brought into discussion the terms "discounts" and "coupon", I would like to tell you about a website which was created just for people like you, who're probably looking for the above mentioned things ( discounts and coupons ). It is called CuponChief.com and it is offering coupons, coupons codes, shopping discounts and online deals from stores such as BestBuy, where you can find some great products, like 8 GB Zune MP 3 player, with a $20 discount, select digital cameras ( with a 5 % up to 15 % discount plus free shipping ), flash drives ( with a 15 % discount ) and many more other useful products; BlueNille, from where you can buy a sterling silver loop heart pendant with a 20 % discount, or a sterling silver oval four-frame locket with cable chain, with the same discount ( just to name a few products ); DellHome, where you can buy various electronics, such as laptops, flat panel monitors or desktop computers, all having different discounts, according to their performances. EBags, GAP, Overstock.com plus 3 more important suppliers are completing the list of shops for which you can get a coupon code or a discount, that you can apply it to a future order you'll make.

There are also many categories which you can browse and search for some coupons. They are easy accessible, being located just under the "Coupons by Store" navigation menu, which is located on the right-hand side of the site. And because it are many, this should keep you busy for a while:) Overall, I'm pleased with what I saw on the CuponChief website: it's a clean site, professionally designed, easy to navigate and very useful, through its main purpose: that of offering you the best deals you'd ever wanted;)

In the end, I would like to show you a screenshot taken by me on the main page of the CC site, so you can make an idea about the place you'll going to visit. Happy shopping!

Need free advertising? Get it from AdsFlip

2008-02-06T19:09:00.000+02:00

Traffic..everybody's talking about driving traffic to your blog or website, everyday, wherever you look. Why do you think they're doing that? Let me tell you: because traffic is very important. You know the saying: No traffic, no sales. And it is very true. In fact, it doesn't matter if you're actually selling something from your website or blog..you still need people to come to it, if you want to make money from those Adsense banners you've placed on it, for example. Do you really think that by magic, cash will appear in your Google Adsense account, without having to do nothing? Sorry to disappoint you, but there's no such thing as magic tricks that will make money grow in trees ( waiting for you to pick them up ). You have to work, should you want to see results. That's the rule.
One of the aspects where you have to put in some efforts, is the promotion of your site/blog. The more people that come to it, the more chances of earning a quite decent monthly income you have.

There are various ways of advertising/promoting a site or blog: search engine submission, search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, banner advertising, directory inclusion or other low cost and even free advertising services that you may find on the internet. It's up to you to chose the right one. If you have a large advertising budget, it may be easier for you to select an advertising solution which may not be so available to webmasters or bloggers with a lower budget. But what about if you're just starting out, with almost zero advertising money and very little possibilities of improving this situation?

If so, then I would recommend you to search for free or low cost promotion services. You don't have to give an arm and a leg, just to drive some traffic to your site. There are such types of advertising methods on the internet which are free or quite cheap. I know, you will say: But cheap or free it's not all the time the right solution...Yes, you're right. But ( again this word ) do you have any other options for now? Thought so...

Here's where AdsFlip comes to the rescue. What is this, you're asking me? It is a pay per click advertising service, offered by IWebTool, of I'm not mistaking. It is similar to AdLeaf or AdGridWork, of which I have discussed about here ( you can find the respective articles in the "Free Advertising" category, located in the "Browse by category" menu, that can be found on the right sidebar of this blog ). You want to know how it works? Here are the steps:

1. First of all, you have to sign up for a free account ( yes, the account is free and there are no hidden fees, ever! )

2. Create your own ad, which will be displayed on other websites and blogs from the AdsFlip network ( make sure it relates to your blog's/site's topic(s) )

3. Insert some text ad banners on your own blog or website, in order to earn credits, that will be used to "pay" for advertising, through the AF network.

4. Enjoy the free traffic:)

I've mentioned about credits and paying for advertising, even though it's a free service..So, was I not telling the truth? Of course I was:) You see, since you don't pay any money at all for using this advertising network, you still have to earn some credits, in order for your ad to run on other sites and blogs. Without them, your ad won't run. The same thing happens when you're advertising on AdWords too ( which is a paid service, as you all know ): if you ran out of money, the ad you were displaying on different sites will stop being shown, untill you deposit a new amount of cash.

At AdsFlip, you're not paying money ( as I said, it's free to join and use this advertising platform ), just credits. The more credits you earn, by displaying text ad banners on your own site or blog, the more times your ad will be shown on other webpages from the AF network. Pretty simple to understand.

Here's another good news for you: if you sign up now, you'll get 1,000 credits as bonus! With this, you'll be able to start showing your ad in just minutes and also, start receiving new visitors. So, what are you waiting for? Go to AdsFlip now and get your free account!

Got problems with your PC? BugDoctor.com will help you

2008-02-03T20:48:00.000+02:00

You know, the question which lays on the banner above it's pretty good: "Does your computer have bugs?" And no, I'm not talking about real, living bugs..like the ones you may happen to squash on the street..What I'm talking about are errors. That's how an error, or a malfunctioning of a computer is called: bug. Also, viruses, spywares and other harmful pieces of software that can find a place on your PC's hard drive, are called bugs, too. And believe me, there's nothing more annoying than experiencing such problems. When frustration ( and even anger ) reaches a high level, you're tempted to simply open the window and throw the computer on to the sidewalk.

But why to do that? When you can simply install an application which will clean your hard drive and repair all those nasty errors. This little "magic" tool is named Bug Doctor. You want to know how I found out about it? It shouldn't be hard to imagine: I've just stumbled upon it while navigating on the internet. And because I was a bit curious to see what it can do, I've visited the official website, located at BugDoctor.com.

There, I watched their demo video, where they show you how to use the software, after installing it and what type of errors were detected. As many of you know, the main errors are caused by installing and uninstalling programs, games and other applications, missing shortcuts, broken registries, corrupt files, corrupt fonts etc. This may not affect your computer's functioning the next day, but over the time, if the hard drive is cluttered with too many problems like this, you'll sure going to notice a slight decrease of its performances: it will open the programs, games, movies etc slower than it should, it can "freeze" ( requiring a restart ), it can crash or even worse, your hard disk may need to be replaced ( it happened to me twice, because of some undetected bugs and viruses. So I had to pull money out of my pocket and go buy a new HDD ( hard drive ), which is not quite a cheap computer part here in Romania - it costs about $100 ).

Since then, I thought it is wiser to install an application such as Bug Doctor, rather than feeling sorry for not doing so, later. As I haven't yet tested the above mentioned software, I thought to take a "test-drive" and see how well it performs. The guys who created the application are offering everyone a free scan. After taking advantage of this offer, I have discovered that my computer has 165 errors that have to be fixed. And here comes the catch: if you want to fix the errors, you need to have an unlock key..and guess what? It's not free. Yes, you have to order one from the official website. The prices are, as follows:

- One month membership - $29.95: includes scanning and repairing of all detected errors + unlimited free tech support

- One year membership - $49.95: this seems to be the most popular membership offered by BugDoctor.com. With this, you'll be able to scan and repair the errors from your computer's hard drive many times ( not just for 30 days, like you get for the first membership ) + again, free and unlimited tech support, anytime you need it.

- Lifetime License - $97.00: if you're the kind of person who'd rather prefer to pay a one-time fee, than a monthly or yearly subscription, then this is the right offer for you. For $97.00 ( I know it's not that cheap, but I'm sure it worth every penny ), you get all the above benefits ( from the 2 previously mentioned memberships ), + free updates and a free CD that contains the software. All the updates and bonuses which you will receive, are for life and you don't need to pay anything else! ( just the one-time fee I've mentioned about ).

So, if you have problems and bugs "crawling" through your PC, then don't let them feel like home there! Because it's your computer, not their's. Just install the Bug Doctor and show them who's the REAL boss:).

NOTE: This is just a review of a software I found it to be useful. You're not, by any mean, forced to buy it, if you don't want to. This is NOT a sales letter!

Let's welcome the new month of February

2008-02-01T21:40:00.000+02:00

January is already over and here we are, starting a whole new month: February. I was just thinking at how the time flies so fast and before we know it, this year will eventually end too. But not to worry. We still have many months ahead ( 11, to be exact ) and many things will happen, that's for sure. This is why I think we should better think what we'll do tomorrow, rather than thinking about what will do in July, for example.

You know that usually, at the beginning of a new month, all bloggers are showing their monthly reports, telling their readers and visitors what they've managed to accomplish in the previous month. And this is exactly what I'll do now: I will compile my monthly report, so you all can see how much cash I've earned ( not a fortune, of course, but enough, considering that last month I haven't spent too much time on making money, but more on driving traffic to this blog ) and how many people actually visited the blog.

First of all, let's start with my earnings report.. Last month, I've managed to make around $43.19, with a slight increase of $1.89 than in December 2007 ( when I've earned $41.30 ). If you'd like to know which were the sources that brought me all this money, I'll tell you in a moment:

- SponsoredReviews: $19.5
- Blogsvertise: $20
- Bidvertiser: $2.32
- FeedProfit: $0.28 ( will do a review on them in the following days )
- Adster: $0.11
- Entireweb's SpeedyAds: $0.08
- LinkReferral: $0.90

TOTAL: $43.19

I'm currently a member of many other money making opportunities, but I didn't had time lately to get involved with all of them very seriously, this is why I only managed to make money with only few of this websites and programs. Let's hope this month things will be better than in January.

Now, let's move on to the statistics report..Last month, a number of 1,737 people have visited this blog, and a percentage of them helped me earn money:) ( this is why I would want to thank them a lot ). All this visitors generated a total of 2,199 pageviews. My main traffic sources were, and still are, LinkReferral ( which sent me 248 visitors ) and Entrecard ( 243 visitors ). The rest of the visitors came from various other websites and blogs, such as BlogEngage, BloggingZoom, PostOnFire, Making Money Experiment, IncomeForEveryone and many others.

So, what do I think about January, overall? Well, my opinion is that it was a good month and I'm quite satisfied with my earnings and traffic numbers. They look good and I have every reason to believe that I will be able to improve them even more in the following weeks and months. I'll have to put in more efforts and I should see the results appearing not too far in the future.

"You got any targets for this month and for the ones to come?" I was sure that some of you will ask me this question:) Of course I do! As I've mentioned in the beginning of this article, many of my money making opportunities in which I'm involved ( and other projects too ) were kinda left aside, mainly because I was busy with various other things in the real life ( especially with passing all those annoying exams I was keep talking about in the last two articles I wrote in January :). So, I've decided that it is time for me not to "ignore" them anymore.

I still have an unfinished Squidoo Lens and a One Euro Wiki page, that also has to be edited ( and yes, nobody will do it for me ). Besides that, I still haven't joined most of the money making programs listed in my FreeMoneyTeam account. I'm planning to do it starting from tomorrow. Well, there are many, many other projects in which I'm involved and I also have to take care of this "baby" ( I mean my blog :), to write fresh and interesting articles, to make sure it's available all the time, to drive traffic to it etc., which is not something hard ( but also not too easy either ).

In the end of this report, I would like to thank you all: my readers, visitors, advertisers, friends ( Querblogger, Rome, Marko, Javo and all the others ), for being here for me and my blog. Because of you, I've managed to make this blog a bit more popular every month and earn money with it. But most of all, I'm glad that I can offer you the information you want, about the topics you're interested in, every day. Once again, thank you guys!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that my blog's Page Rank is 3, my Alexa Rank is 397,053 and the Technorati rank also decreased ( which is a good sign :) to 587,893. The number of subscribed readers to my RSS feed is 19 ( low, but I'm working to improve it ;). All this ranks improved in just under 2 months after buying my .info domain name..So yes, having a TLD ( Top Level Domain ) helps..

Well, that's it..hope I haven't forgot something else :P

AffiliateBot - Where every affiliate earns money

2008-01-30T18:11:00.000+02:00

Hello to all my dear readers and visitors! Yes, it's me, Tiberius Burciu, the owner of this blog and I'm back:) You may wonder where I've been till now? Just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, where I threw away some cash at a few casinos and wandered on the big boulevards, in a luxurious Hummer limousine...Ok, it wasn't like that, I was just kidding;) I'm not a millionaire so I can't say I can afford such a lifestyle.

Now seriously, the reason why you haven't seen any new posts on my blog lately, was that I had to study for some exams ( I've mentioned that I have 4 this session in the last article I wrote, 3 days ago ). 3 are already over and I can say I'm satisfied with the results ( I'm not the kind of person to chase high marks, so any number starting from 7 ( D ) it's ok for me :). One of the recent exams that I've passed was at Law, where I was able to secure a 10 ( A ). The other 2 where at Negotiation and Management ( I got a 9 ( B ) at Management and a 7 ( D ), at Negotiation ). There's one more left, at Marketing and once I'm finished with this, the session is over:D ( finally! ).

Don't want to go too much off-topic however, as I will be talking about a new money making opportunity today. So, here it is..

AffiliateBot is an website similar to CJ ( Commission Junction - this site was presented by me in a separate article, which can be found in the "Make Money With.." category from the "Browse by category" menu, located on the right sidebar ). But if you don't know how a site like this can help you make some money with your blog or website and if you don't have time to browse through my categories, I will tell you more about in just a second. So, what you have to do to start earning cash?

First of all, you need a blog or a website ( kinda obvious, isn't it ? ). It doesn't matter either it's a big or a small one, a well-trafficked or an average-trafficked one, or if it's new or old. What it does matter is to own it and make sure other people know about it ( you will need to drive some traffic to it, since you want to make money ). If you have one of these, then you can go to step 2: signing up for AffiliateBot. The whole process is very easy. All you have to do is to go to the main page of the site and click on the "Join now" orange button, from the "Affiliates" column ( the button is located to the bottom of the main page and it's very easy to see. You can't miss it :).

Once you've clicked that button, you'll go to a sign up page, where you have to type in your email, the password you want to use for you new account ( has to be inserted twice ) and the country you're from. After that, you only have 2 more steps to go ( one of them being to confirm your membership ). Then, when you're a confirmed member, you will be able to complete your profile, add the websites/blogs that you own and with which you want to make money and also set how would you like to be paid ( via check or PayPal ( if you don't have a PP account yet, you can get one free, by clicking here ). The minimum amount of money which you can withdraw, either by check or PayPal, is $50. The maximum amount is the one you set :) ( meaning $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000 etc - with the condition of earning that much, of course ). There's one thing you should know, if you set your payment method to be PayPal: you MUST verify your PP email address, before receiving any money.

How to do this? Simple: just insert your PP email address in the field where you're asked to insert it ( in your "Payment Settings" sub-menu, from the "Account" menu of your account ) and you will get a message saying that it has to be verified and that a verification link was sent to your current email address ( the one with which you've signed up ). Once you receive that link via email, click it ( yes, you have to click it..and don't worry, nothing bad will happen :). After clicking the link, you will go to a confirmation page where you'll see a message stating that the email has been verified. That's it! From now on, you will be able to receive money into your PayPal account, without any problems.

If you can't sign up for a PP account ( therefore being unable to receive money this way ), select the check option. The minimum sum to withdraw is the same ( $50 ). NOTE: Be sure to give your real home address and country, as you may not receive any checks, should you insert any fictitious or false address.

Step 3 ( and the last one ) is to go and browse the advertisers' database of the AffiliateBot website, to find one which will fit your tastes or blog's topic. Once you have found it, just select the links or banners you want to use to promote his services/products and place them on your site/blog. Now, every time a visitor goes to the advertiser's website, e-store, e-mall etc and buys something, you will get a commission. After you reach the minimum amount of money for withdraw, you'll get paid. Easy, isn't it?

If you're interested in making money with AffiliateBot, then feel free to sign up for a free publisher account, anytime, by clicking the banner below. Thank you:)

Tricks to avoid and tips to remember on driving traffic to your site

2008-01-27T23:13:00.000+02:00

We all know how important the traffic is for our sites or blogs. We would do anything we could, just to improve it. Most people are saying that content is the king, which is true. But what about if you don't generate any kind of traffic, so it can be seen? Isn't that great content of yours becoming useless? Who would read it, except of you? On the other hand, if your website/blog is trafficked well, then whatever you're writing or you're offering on it, becomes a source of information for the visitors, who will return the following days, weeks or even months, to check for updates.

It's not hard to start receiving visitors to a site or blog, but it isn't easy either. Why I'm saying that? Because if you already have a high advertising budget, then you're able to promote it better, this way managing to attract a larger number of people to see it. But if you're just starting on the internet and you can't afford spending big amounts of cash on advertising, then it may a bit hard for you to drive the traffic you need to your site/blog.

Fortunately, there are lots of advertising methods and companies this days, which can help you on this issue. However, you have to be careful which of these are right for you and if they will really want to give you a hand, or just rip you off. The scammers in the advertising industry ( there are scammers here too, as anywhere on the internet ) would do anything they can just to steal as much money from you as they can, without even giving you any help at all.

With this mind, I've managed to put together a list of things you should consider, when looking for a way to promote a site or blog that you own, or you're affiliated with:

1. While usually paid advertising websites work better than the free ones, don't forget to check this ones too. Because some times, a free site can be more efficient than a paid one. Also, check for some free submission softwares too, if you'd like to save time.

2. Do not throw away your cash on information that you could have gotten for free. Some advertising agencies or websites will try to sell you "tips" on how to obtain better search engine rankings or how to increase your website's traffic for example, for a large amount of money. Before doing anything that you may regret in the future, think twice and do some researches. If you're lucky, you may find those much needed information for free, on article directories or ezines, for example.

3. Don't believe promises that are too good to be true. Why? It's somehow obvious: most of the time, are just that: too good to be true. Avoid the individuals or companies who are telling you that they are the best and they can help you. Anyone is free to say that, but not anyone is actually the way they claim they are.

4. If something works poorly, then it's time to say goodbye and move to better things. Once you saw that one of your techniques, strategies or methods aren't working anymore and your traffic is decreasing or stagnates, get rid of it right away. Then try to apply the other techniques which worked and are still working.

5. Learn to do things by yourself and fast. I'm not telling you to rush in doing something stupid, but what I want to say is that you have to learn to apply all the strategies you've learned fast, if you want to see results sooner, than later.Also, you can't just ask somebody to do the work for you every time you need it to be done..this is why it's important to learn to do things by yourself, as no one will be holding your hand for life, telling you what to do. Once you've learned the methods of driving traffic to your site or blog, you won't even need someone to tell you what must be done. You'll know it yourself:)

6. Make the most out of your advertising budget. If you want your website to be popular and successful, then you have to spend your promotion money wisely.

7. The look and feel of your website/blog. This 2 factors are determining, when it comes to driving traffic to it. A professionally designed, easy to navigate and uncluttered site is more likely to attract lots of visitors, than one which is hard to navigate or it has too much content and advertising mixed together..

8. Ask someone to review your site or blog. Tell then to give you their honest opinions on how are they seeing it. Be prepared to receive some negative comments too, if the site isn't looking or responding too good. This kind of comments can prove to be very helpful and will help you to change what has to be changed.

9. Check those persons or companies which are offering you their services. Do not fall for their "too good to be true" offers, as they don't care about you, your site or your traffic. The only thing they care is to benefit from you. So be careful to whom you're addressing to, when you want to start and advertising campaign.

I think that there are more tips to remember and tricks to avoid, than the ones I've already mentioned, but this are some of the most important. So, next time you're trying to advertise your website or blog, do remember about what I've told you today..it may prove helpful:) Take care!

Things to know in affiliate marketing

2008-01-24T22:16:00.000+02:00

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not posting an article yesterday, but currently I'm quite busy, both online and in real life. And especially in the real life ( you know, the one where interact with real people, eat real food, drink real water, sodas etc :), because I have some exams to pass ( it's the winter session here in Romania, at the university I study ). So, I have to be prepared for all of them. It are just 4, but still can't say I'm too relaxed.

Now, let's concentrate to today's article, as I don't want to bore you with my busy schedule:). As you've probably noticed already, I will be talking about affiliate marketing..again. It shouldn't be a surprise for any of you, because I've discussed many times about this topic. And since I'm studying marketing myself, it makes sense to tell you new information about it, every time I have the opportunity to do it.

By now, you've heard many times people talking on how they're making money online, either with their blogs or websites. It doesn't matter how much they're earning: just $50 or even up to $50,000/month, the idea is they've managed to do it. But you're probably wondering how is this possible? Well, most of them are affiliate marketers. Still don't know what's an affiliate marketer? He/she is a person who promotes and sells other person's/company's products or services and receives a commission for doing so, while helping the respective individual or company to spread the word about a certain product or service.

But in order to be a successful affiliate marketer and to earn some serious cash out of this, you have to know a couple of important things about affiliate marketing. Let's see which it are:

1. The target market. Yes, this is the first important aspect on our list. And it's obvious why. If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, then you have to be sure that you're selling the right products to the right audience. Imagine trying to sell a webhosting package to an audience which definitely doesn't needs it, but it's looking for software downloads, for example..Would they be interested in your offer? Maybe very few ( or none ). This will result in little to no sales and a very small profit ( or nothing at all ).

2. The quality of your products or services. Another important thing to think at. If you have high-quality products and services, then your customers would want to return to your website and order again and again, in the future. On the other hand, if the products/services you recommend to others suck, then you'll probably make very few sales ( if you're lucky enough ). Once again, you will not be able to make any serious income.

3. The sales letter. A good sales letter can make the difference between being successful or just another affiliate marketer who have failed in this field. This is why it's important to check the sales letters of the products or services which you recommend ( if there are any ). If you consider this are good and can convince a potential customer to buy the service/product from you, then go ahead and use them...if not, try to create ones yourself ( if you can't do them yourself, then ask someone you know and has some experience in creating sales letters, to create them for you ).

4. Promotional materials and methods. Every money making opportunity for which you sign up this days, has some promotional materials and methods available for its affiliates, so they can easily promote it. Either it's just an affiliate link or an entire range of other promotional methods, they must be present in your member's area.

5. Profitability. This is the last ( but not the least ) thing you should consider when signing up as an affiliate for a certain program. You have to know how much you will be paid for the efforts you put in promoting the respective product or service? How big your commissions are? Usually, a higher commission is a great motivation for anyone, and you'd want to do your best to ensure you'll manage to get as much sales as possible, so you can earn more money.

I'm sure there are a few more aspects at which you should think at, when signing up as an affiliate marketer, but the 5 mentioned above are the most important ones. If this are ok, then it means you're on the right way to making your first money online:) Good luck!

Want a T Shirt? Get it from WholesaleDirectUSA

2008-01-22T21:05:00.000+02:00

Do you like T shirts? Well, I think everybody loves to wear them, especially in the summer time, when the weather becomes really hot. Nowadays, there are lots of models to choose from and lots of stores to visit, so we don't have to just go and buy the first T shirt we see, even though we may not like it. Shoppings can be done either offline, at your favorite shop, or you can opt for an online store, such as WholesaleDirectUSA, which sells a wide range of products, such as blank t-shirts or wholesale urban wear ( for the guys who like hip hop or rap :).

Being a person who really likes to "wander" around on the internet, visiting various types of online stores ( from the ones which sell computers, mobiles, etc to those which sell clothing ), I thought to see what this particular website has to offer me. As I already mentioned, they have lots of t-shirts for sale. I'm sure that if I were to start browsing a little more closer, I would find a right one for me too. Anyone who would like to buy some cheap t-shirts, should visit this e-store. Oh, did I said "cheap t-shirts"? Yes, because it is true. Here you can buy how many you want, with prices starting from just $1.5, $1.84, $2 etc, depending on the size of the t-shirt, color and the category from which you have selected it.

Either you're a girl or a guy, or you'd like a certain type of t-shirt having a certain type of color, you will find the right one for you at WholesaleDirectUSA.com. Let me clear a thing for you: this e-store is not a place to go if you're thinking yourself a star and you'd mind buying a simple t-shirt which may or may not have a logo or some text printed on it or if it's not from a company such as Gucci or Armani. This is a wholesale store: you buy cheap and good quality clothes for you to wear them anytime, not just at a fancy millionaire's party. So, if you do have something against this place, then don't visit it:)

On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who's wondering where he/she can find some nice t-shirts and would like to buy a bunch of them for cheap, then this is the right e-store for you. But that's not all. This guys aren't selling just tees. They also sell hoodies, sport shirts, thermal shirts, golf and polo shirts and many more. There has to be something you may like there, so why not to check it out?

Anytime you'd like to get yourself a new tee or hoodie, don't forget about WholesaleDirectUSA.com, your faithful online store for cheap clothes:)

Photrade - Share photos and make money

2008-01-20T23:11:00.000+02:00

I believe that any of you have some photos on your computer, camera, CDs, phone etc. And I think you're also sharing them with your friends and family very often ( at least, this is what I do: every time I take some new "shots", I quickly save them on my hard-drive and then send it to all my friends, so they can view them too ). Now, let me ask you how are you actually sharing them? Here's how I do it: either by attaching them to an email, sending them through an MMS ( via my mobile phone ), burning them on a CD, via Yahoo Messenger ( most preferred method )..or simply uploading them on photo sharing sites.

If you haven't heard of photo sharing websites till now, then you've probably lived under a rock ( no hard feelings, it's just an expression :). There are dozens of sites like this on the internet nowadays and it can be pretty hard to decide to which one of them will you upload all the photos you have. Why? Because all of them have appealing features, such as more storage space, more ways to share your photos via external links, widgets etc..or the opportunity of making money.

Yes, you've heard that right. I said: "the opportunity of making money." And I wasn't talking about the opportunity of those sites to make money only..but also about YOURS too. How is that possible? The concept behind this is pretty simple: the more members a site like this has, the more photos will be uploaded and the more traffic will be generated. And because the sites are monetized ( usually with Google Adsense ads ), they will generate a nice income. Since you're a member and you're helping them make money and offer a nice service like this to others too, you're getting paid. How much? Would be hard to say, as it depends on how much money the owners make, how many members are on the site, how much traffic it received etc. But you can earn a couple of dollars every month ( you won't quit your 9-5 job this way, but you'll probably have enough money to go to a movie :). And if you are a really active and popular member and you're promoting your profile like mad, you will have the chance of earning more money.

And this is pretty much the "story" of the site I would like to show you today. It is called Photrade and it's a place where you can upload all your favorite photos and also earn some "cocos" ( that's the term I use for money :). Here's how to get started:

First of all, you have to know something: the membership is available by invite-only. So unless you know someone who's a member already and who can send you such an invite, you can't join ( they're still in BETA and I think this is why they've implemented such a system ). Every member has the right to send no more than 3 invites ( once you've sent them all, that's it..). And the most important thing, besides earning money is the price of the membership: $0 ( that's ZERO dollars ! ). Yup, you don't have to pay any fees..no monthly, annually or other types of fees.

Cool, you've received an invite and signed up..Now what? Oh, you DO want to make money, don't you:)? Listen closely: go and update your profile. Upload a photo of yourself, write few words about you, what are your interests and what's the URL of your site or blog..if you have any ( nice, some free advertising too :). Once this step is completed, start uploading and sharing photos like mad! As I've already mentioned above, the more popular you are, the more money you may earn ( and also the fame..and the rest :). If just sharing the photos isn't enough for you, then hear this: you'll also get paid every time someone will buy one of your "masterpieces" ( I mean photos :). There you have it! One free, easy and fun way to start making money online..and you don't even need a blog or site for this.

Oh, I almost forgot: you can cash out once you've reached $15, via PayPal. To find out more about Photrade and to start sharing your photos with your friends ( also making a profit ), then feel free to visit the official site at www.photrade.com.

PS: I've used all my invites, but you can talk to Querblogger or Rome ( two of my fellow bloggers ) and probably they may be able to give you one. Don't forget to ask them nicely:)

Oh well...Google banned me

2008-01-19T22:34:00.000+02:00

Come on..you really thought so?! I haven't done anything THAT bad, in order to get banned from Google's index and no to appear in the SERPS ( Search Engine Results Pages ) anymore. But while I was checking some blogs earlier today, I found an article on EZRichProject, about a website named GoogleBannedMySite.com. The guys that are behind this site claim that they can help you get back up in the search indexes in Google, after being banned by them. Because I really wanted to know more ( as I haven't heard about such a website until now ), I went to see with my own eyes what GBMS ( GoogleBannedMySite ) can do for a webmaster or blogger who not only that he may have been bitch-slapped, but also banned by the big "G" ( Google ).

At the first glance, the site looks pretty good, has a clean and nice design and a couple of tools that can be useful to you, such as: the Google Banned Tool, which is basically a checking tool, which shows you if you're banned or not and the Survey, which is rather a service, than a tool. If you're wondering what exactly is this survey stuff, I will tell you: as I already mentioned, is a service performed by the staff of GBMS, meant to fully check and identify the causes of your Google ban. What will they check? The following:

- Inbound Links
- Outbound Links
- Cloaking
- Meta Redirects
- Robot Files
- Automated Queries
- Irrelevant Keywords
- Irrelevant Contents
- Duplications
- Inaccurate Programming Languages
- Robot Doorways
- Bad Affiliations
- Outbound Banned Contents
- Server Agents
- HTML Error Codes
- And many other tests.

And if they will find any of the above problems on your blog or site, they'll help you to get rid of them and get you back up and running again on Google. If your trying this by yourself, then you may not know exactly what to look for and may take you a looong time to identify the exact problems. So a service like the one offered by GoogleBannedMySite.com can be just the one you're trying to find.

Of course, this is not free. The Google Banned Tool is free and you can use it as many times as you want and for any domain you have, but the Survey is paid. The price of this is a one-time fee of $29.95 for every site or blog you own. In my opinion, it's not that much if you really care about putting your blog or business back on the Google's SERPS. The fact is, the big "G" won't care either if you are a big business or just a small entrenpreneur, once you're making a wrong move..they will ban you! Because, as you know, they stick to their rules.

So, if you're interested to check this site out, then you can go to GoogleBannedMySite.com and find out more. And if already tried this service, do let me know if it worked for you:)

BizReef - Make money as freelancer

2008-01-18T22:06:00.000+02:00

As I'm always searching for new ways to make money online, it happened to find a website called BizReef. The good thing about is that you don't have to own a site or blog to join it, because such things are not required here. It is not a pay per click advertising network, nor a get paid to write sponsored reviews either. If you're curious to find out how you can start earning money with BizReef, without the need of a site or blog, I will tell you in just a couple of seconds.

A long time ago, when this blog was still "young" and was on a Blogspot subdomain, I wrote a post about a freelancing website, named ScriptLance, where you can sign up for free and make money by taking part to various projects. More exactly, what do you have to do? Here are the steps: first of all, in order to take part at any project or make any money, you need to get an account. Without it, you can't do anything on that site, apart of just visiting it as a simple guest. Once you become a member ( for free ), you're entitled to bid for any of the open projects listed there.

Now, you know that usually bidding means offering a sum of money to someone, for a product or service, higher than the previous interested buyer. But here, at ScriptLance ( or at BizReef, as this are both freelancing sites ), you don't have to buy anything. Even though you're bidding for a certain project, this doesn't mean you're going to buy it. Instead, if you bid just the right price, you may be lucky and the project owner may choose you for completing it. After accepting to work with the respective client, you must make sure you're going to do your job in the time frame mentioned before accepting the job. So, for example, if you agreed to do a web designing job in 14 days, then you better be ready before the time runs out. Nothing bad will happen to you, but the client who have hired you may think that you're not serious and you're wasting his time, so he may want to cancel any further negotiations and not even pay you, if you delivered his website in a month, instead of 2 weeks.

If everything went well and the project owner is happy with your work, then he will pay you the amount you've asked him ( it can be 100, 200, 500, 1000 bucks etc, depending on how complex the project is ). Usually payments are done via PayPal, EGold, Check, MoneyBookers ( for ScriptLance ) and Google Checkout ( at BizReef ).

I've talked about SL and the steps you need to take, if you want to earn money with a freelancing website. But haven't mentioned anything about BizReef, except for the fact it's similar to SL. So let me tell you a few things about it. Obviously, if you're a freelancer and want to make money, you need to sign up first. Once you're done with this step, you need to complete your freelancer profile and let people know what you can do. For example, if you're a good writer, then you can offer your potential clients services such as article writing, article rewriting, fictional or non-fictional writing etc. If you're a good website designer, then you can offer various designing services. I think you got the picture here;)

After you're chosen to complete a project ( either after bidding on one or after being picked by a client, without any bidding ), you will have to complete it. Once it's done and everyone is happy, then you're going to get paid, according to the deal made with the client. Payments are made via PayPal or Google Checkout.

If you're interested to see how a project looks like, then feel free to click here ( by the way, I'm not involved in that project, nor you have any obligation to accept it or sign up for BizReef..it's just an example :). So, if you think you're good at writing articles or designing sites, for example and would like to earn some extra cash ( without the need of a blog or site ), then you can go to BizReef.com and sign up for a free freelancer account..or if you need to hire a freelancer, then sign up for a free client account. Good luck!

Improve your English with Whitesmoke

2008-01-16T23:15:00.000+02:00

As you may know, blogging is not just about having a cool design or lots of sponsors to support you. It's also about the content you write, how attractive this is and how many people like it. Because if they do, they will return to your blog on a daily basis, or if they don't have enough time, will subscribe to your RSS feed, so to be sure that they will get the latest articles you produce. But if you seem not to care about how you think and write you articles, or if your just blogging for the sake of money, then it's very likely to drive away your visitors and readers, as they don't like this kind of stuffs. Sooner or later, you will have very few subscribers ( or none ) and the traffic to your blog may decrease. As you can see, it really matters what are you writing and especially how well.

That's what I want to talk about: how well-written are your blog articles? Let's face it: we're bloggers from every corner of the world, speaking languages such as German, Romanian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Dutch etc and English ( the language in which most blogs are written ) is not our native language. So it's kinda normal to make some spelling or grammar mistakes. Now, I'm not talking about one mistake at every 2 words, but at one or 2 per article. Whilst it's not a tragedy to make this mistakes ( because, as I've said, English is not our native language ), overdoing it can cause us some problems.

The visitors and readers of our blogs will tend to overlook the small mistakes we make, if this are very rare or they know that we're from non-English speaking countries. But what will they do, if they see a whole article full of "bugs" and "glitches"? This will probably annoy them a lot and will eventually force them to leave the blogs they read ( and never return ). I know that, because I tend to do the same. I'm not mean, but I don't like to bang my head against the PC's monitor, trying to understand what a blogger says, in a broken English...

So, how can a guy like me and you can improve his writing skills? Here are 2 possibilities:

1. Attending some English classes or
2. Using Whitesmoke

You're probably wondering what Whitesmoke is? Any kind of anti-tobacco spray, or something?
Well, no. Even though its name may make you think of smoking and cigars, it's not that..Instead, it is a computer software which will help you improve your writing skills. It is recommended to be used not only by you, as an individual, at home, but also by business alike. They neede it too. Below is a list with the things for which this software is good:

- Letter Writing
- Business Writing
- Legal Writing
- Blogging
- Creative Writing
.. and more

And here's how it can help you: the software will perform:
- Grammar Check
- Punctuation Check
- Spell Check
- Proofreading and Editing
- Text Enrichment
and it also has an English Dictionary and a Thesaurus of Synonyms, very useful when you are stuck and don't know how to write or translate a word for sure.

Of course, there are more features that this software has and which can't be all mentioned here, as this post would become too long. Not to mention that it got some awards and it is highly appreciated by the customers who have used it so far..If you too want to have this all-in-one software, I would like to recommend you visiting the official WhiteSmoke website, to find out more about it. Should you find it useful, then you can order one copy:) It's $79.95 ( for the General Use version ). Not that cheap, but a good investment for anyone looking to improve his writing skills;). To get your hands on one of the Whitesmoke's versions, please click the banner below..Thank you!

The new Criteo Tag Cloud

2008-01-15T21:41:00.000+02:00

A couple of months ago I've mentioned about Criteo. If you don't know what this is, you can read the article about it here. But just in case you don't feel the need of clicking that link, here's a short description of this service: with Criteo you can drive traffic to your blog and also make some money at the same time, and all this for free. That's right: you don't have to pay anything to sign up for a Criteo account. Once you're a member, you can install a widget on your blog ( similar to one from BlogRush ), which is called "Auto Roll" and start driving free traffic. The widget is easy to install and is highly customizable, so it will fit your blog's template. If driving free traffic to your own blog is not enough, then you may want to earn some cash too. How can you do that? By placing some PPC ads. Every time someone will click them, you'll earn money. It's that simple..

Now, why would I want to talk about Criteo once again? Wasn't enough the first time? Yes, it was enough and I believe that those of you who have seen the first article about this service, you understood what's about. But this time I'll be talking about something else..A brand-new way of making money with Criteo: the Tag Cloud. If you want to find out more about it, then please read on..

I was checking my email inbox today, when I saw an email from the above mentioned website. Here's what they say:

"Cher utilisateur,

Tout d’abord, nous tenons à vous remercier pour votre participation active et votre confiance ! Grâce à vous, plus de 12 000 blogueurs utilisent un widget Criteo.

Vouz avez participé à la BETA de Criteo Ads. Nous avons tenu compte de vos remarques et suggestions.

Nous sommes donc heureux de vous annoncer le lancement de notre nouveau widget: Criteo Cloud

Nous espérons que ce nouveau widget vous séduira et qu’il répondra à vos attentes.

Nous vous souhaitons beaucoup de succès en 2008 !

Laurence & Peter,
de la part de toute l’équipe Criteo"

You see, that's the "fun part": it's written in French, because the Criteo Company is from France:) Whilst I know what they're saying, I will have to translate it for the rest of you who probably don't speak French ( hey, I'm not an expert either, even though I've studied this language for 10 years ( since I was in the 2nd grade and untill I've graduated the high school..that's the 12th grade :), so if I make any mistakes, don't kill me, ok? :). Here it goes:

"Dear user,

We would like to thank you for your active participation and confidence! Thanks to you, more than 12,000 bloggers are now using a Criteo widget.

You have participated at the BETA version of Criteo Ads. We've listened to all your remarks and suggestions.

So now we're happy to announce the launch of our new widget: Criteo Cloud.

We hope that you'll like this new widget and find it useful.

We wish you lots of success in 2008!

Laurence & Peter,
in the name of all Criteo team"

So, more exactly, how will you make money with their new widget? It's simple: once you become a member of Criteo, you will be able to create a cloud with keywords related to a certain category ( for example "Internet" ). After that, you will have to install it on your blog. And once you're done with this step too, you will start earning money every time one of your visitors clicks the keywords that appear in the Tag Cloud. It's basically similar to pay per click ads, the only difference being that there won't be any text ads inside the cloud, but only keywords ( such as "make money online", for example ).

For now though, this widget is in BETA and it's only available to blogs that are written in French. But the guys from Criteo are promising that they will make this service available worldwide very soon..which is a good news, because we'll all be able to make some money with it this way too ( not just those lucky French people out there :). Untill then, we'll have to wait..

Anyway, if you're interested to test-drive the Criteo Cloud ( or "nuage" in French ), you're free to sign up for an account at www.criteo.com. Have fun!

UPDATE: I almost forgot to tell you: those who will test-drive the Criteo Cloud will have the chance of winning 1000 Euros/week. That's right: every week, one lucky publisher will be drawn at their lottery and will win money! All you have to do to enter the contest, is to simply install a Tag Cloud on your blog..that's it! Good luck!

Make money free with Free Money Team

2008-01-14T18:53:00.000+02:00

Ever heard of Marketing Pond? If you did, or if you're a member of this website already, then you know what's about: a site which is offering you multiple sources of FREE monthly income. Now, I'm not talking about scam programs or any other types of hypes, promising you to earn thousands of dollars per day, for paying a certain fee. I'm talking about free programs, such as paid to click websites, paid to complete offers, paid to take surveys etc, which can bring you a good monthly income, without having to pay anything for joining them. All you have to do is to get your own free Marketing Pond account, sign up for the programs recommended in the members area and promote your referral link, in order to sign others and earn even more.

If you're the kind of person how's expecting to earn a bunch of cash from the above mentioned programs, without doing any work and without promoting the referral link, then I think this opportunity is not for you. Why I say that? You see, all this money making opportunities listed at Marketing Pond or at Free Money Team won't make you rich. This are programs where you'll earn 1 cent per click or a few bucks per survey, this is why getting as much referrals as possible is important, if you're really serious about earning any significant income. Once you do this, you'll see that the efforts you put in signing up and building a downline, are paying off.

Now, let me tell you few things about Free Money Team, the new money making opportunity that I have stumbled upon a couple of days ago, while reading a blog called "I Make Money on Facebook". As I've already mentioned when talking about Marketing Pond, this program is similar to it. All you have to do to start earning some free money with FMT ( Free Money Team ), is to sign up for a free account, log in to your members area and join all the programs which are recommended there. No need to worry, as all the websites you'll be joining have no membership fees and all are paying. Also, don't forget to join the programs which are listed in the "Get free traffic" section of the Free Money Team website. You have to do this, in order to let other people know about this opportunity and get as ,many referrals as possible. The more you manage to sign up under you, the more income you'll make every month.

It may not mean too much for you in the beginning, when you'll earn a cent here or a buck there, but as the time will pass and you'll be getting more referrals, all those cents and bucks will eventually add up and you'll make a more serious income. Also, some of you may think that by joining this kind of programs, you'll only waste your time and won't be making enough money to quit your day job. Well, this money making opportunities aren't meant to make you rich, but rather to give some extra cash, which may be helpful. Plus, I believe that this are one of the most serious and honest ways of starting to make money online. So, forget about all those scams out there, which are made only to waste your time and money and join a program that at least has the possibility to bring you some extra money in you pocket ( or PayPal account ) every month, by doing simple things as clicking ads or completing surveys and having fun.

Any time you wish to join Free Money Team, your free to do it. You won't have to pay any membership fees for joining this website or for joining any of the opportunities listed inside the members area, as they are all free. Registration is easy and fast and you'll be able to start making some money as soon as you are a member. I wish you good luck!

Online backgammon - Wanna play?

2008-01-12T20:50:00.000+02:00

Online backgammon is one of the ways with the help of which you may want to relax a bit, after a hard day of blogging or work. Of course, there are several other types of games you may play online, but if you really are a fan of backgammons, then I believe you're going to be interested in the site I'll be talking about in the following lines.

Gammon-Fortune is just the right place for any gammons fan. Here, he can play backgammon, have some fun and also participate in online competitions, for a chance to win real money. If you're the type of player who's only doing this for fun, then you definitely need to see this place. You're going to ask me: "What can I find at this website?" Believe me, you'll find lots of interesting things to see, such as information about the website, information about backgammons ( for rookie players especially, as they may want to know more before signing up and start playing ), tournaments, downloads and also the chance of becoming an affiliate and earning some money from your favorite website and game.

You don't have to worry about how easy will you be able to navigate this backgammon online website, as the navigation menu is extremely user-friendly and easy to use. All the links to the pages of this website are placed in a very visible spot, above the template and are very accessible. The overall design of the site is very professional and you can clearly see how the owner took time to come up with the best, cleanest and wonderful template he could come up with. You won't find any pesky ads or annoying pop-ups flying around the site or crashing your browser, as this site isn't monetized with that kind of stuffs ( actually, haven't seen any ads at all! ). Everything is kept nice and simple, yet it is pretty attractive, especially for you, as a fan of backgammons.

So, if you're looking for a place to play your favorite game, then you can go to Gammon-Fortune.com and sign up. Good luck!

AdLeaf - Kinda like AdWords, but free

2008-01-11T22:29:00.000+02:00

After taking a good luck at some of my first blog posts and making sure that I haven't talked about AdLeaf already, I've decided that it's time to do this know. If you wonder "What's AdLeaf?", I will tell you right away. It is not a money making opportunity, even though it contains the little "Ad" word. But what is it then? An useful website that will help you? Yes. Now, there's another question that I'm sure your going to think at: "And how will AdLeaf help me?" Ok, I see that you're a bit impatient and want to know more about this website.. Let me explain you what is the purpose of it..

Simply put, AdLeaf is a good way of driving free traffic to your blog. It's not like Entrecard or BlogRush, where you have to place a widget on your blog's sidebar, but it's something similar to Google AdWords. The only difference between the above mentioned website and AdWords is that this service is free to join and free to use. That's right: you don't have to pay any fees to become an AdLeaf member. All you have to do to start receiving free traffic to your blog or website ( the services can be used by both webmasters and bloggers ), is to sign up to AL, submit your blog for approval and write a Google AdWords-like ad for your blog. After that, when you're approved, you will have to insert a piece of HTML code on your blog and you will start displaying other ads, from other webmasters and bloggers from the AdLeaf network. You can select what type of banner you want to use for your blog ( a skyscraper, a leaderboard, a 468x60 banner etc ) and what colors this should have. The colors can be changed so the banner should be blended smoothly into your blog's sidebar or wherever you'd like to place it.

Once you've done the above mentioned steps and everything is in place, your ad will be displayed on other blogs and websites from the AL network and you will start receiving free visitors. As long as you will keep the banners from AdLeaf on your blog or website, you will earn credits which will be used towards your advertising needs. There are no costs involved here, like at AdWords, for example, where you have to pay big bucks if you want to advertise a site/blog. You'll be able to "pay" with the credits you earn. The more credits you have, the more times your own ad will appear on the AL network and the more visitors you'll receive. It's simple, free and easy to join and use AdLeaf. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to just write an ad, select a type of banner, choose some colors and copy/paste some HTML on your blog. Anyone can do it. And if you've done copy and paste jobs before ( and I'm very sure you did ), then this is the only "skill" you'll need.

So, is AdLeaf working? Will you start receiving 100's or 1000's of visitors to your blog or website? I can't say that. Why? Because it's pretty difficult to come up with a sure answer. There are a lot of factors which can influence you traffic, such as how well is your ad written, how attractive it is, where you've placed the AdLeaf banners on your site or blog etc. It's just like if you'd ask me "Am I going to earn 100 bucks in 5 minutes with AdSense?" Can't say that either..it's pretty much similar to what I've already mentioned about AdLeaf:) Anyway, since this is a free service and it's very easy to use, you can give it a try. You can't never know where the highest number of visitors will come from. And if it won't work to well for you, you can stop using it, without saying that you've wasted any money on it.

Why viral marketing is the most powerful way of advertising?

2008-01-10T21:55:00.000+02:00

You know that in in order to make any sales from your website, you have to advertise it and let your potential customers know that it exists. You can't just simply build an website for your business and then sit and hope that maybe some "lost" internet surfers will land to it and hopefully buy something. This is not how the business are done ( especially online ). It is an old saying: "No traffic, no sales. No sales, no money." And believe me, it's very true.. Website promotion can be done in various ways: through pay per click advertising, banner advertising, search engine submission, search engine marketing ( also known as SEM ) etc. But I think that one of the most powerful ways of reaching a big number of customers in a relatively short period of time, is through viral marketing ( or viral advertising ). I'm talking about viral marketing done ONLINE.

You may wonder why is this type of marketing so effective? Apart from the fact that you can reach a big number of customers in a short period of time ( as I've already mentioned above ), you can also use the advantage of the internet, which has the characteristic of being one of the fastest way to not only finding information about the things you're interested in, but also to spreading the word about a product or service that you want to offer. This is why viral marketing, if done correctly, can have very good results.

Now, this are not the only benefits. In the following lines, I will show 4 more benefits of viral marketing. So, if you want to find them out, then continue reading this article ( may be helpful :)

1. It is easy to execute. Really, as more and more advertising services appear daily and offer a wide palette of advertising solutions, starting your own viral marketing campaign shouldn't be so hard. All you have to do is to find the right company willing to help you in setting the campaign. I won't say this is easy, because there are lots of advertising companies, offering various services, at various prices. But once you've found it and everything is ready to go, then you know you've made the right choice.

2. Low-cost. You don't have to spend a fortune on marketing your business, in the hope of reaching as much customers as possible. Today, with so many advertising agencies and companies being "just a click away", you can take the advantage of having the opportunity to choose the right quality/price ratio, which should fit your business ( and budget, too ). And viral marketing can prove cheaper than the direct mail advertising, for example, which is costly.

3. Targeted. Yes, viral marketing can be ( and it is ) targeted. Of course, is your interest in making it targeted, as you want to reach as many potential customers as possible. And as long as you'll keep advertising and marketing your business to the right clients, you won't have any problems in making sales and making money.

4. High and rapid response rate. As this type of marketing has the possibility of reaching the business' target market, there's a high chance of having high turnover ratio. Even of you won't make a ton of sales from the first incoming customers, you will still benefit of making profits from the traffic which will result afterwards.

This are some great benefits that you can take advantage of, for your business. Viral marketing is indeed one powerful tool to increase popularity of a product or service. However, just like any other things, proper use of the technique is necessary. A single mistake or misuse of it may mean permanent damage to the product or service being promoted.

Is EntreCard working?

2008-01-09T22:50:00.000+02:00

If you're a blogger, it's likely to have heard about EntreCard. And even if you're just a reader or a webmaster, it's also likely to have heard ( or read ) about this new way of driving traffic to a blog ( yes, EntreCard is aimed to the blogoshpere ). I've already talked about EC in an article written in December 2007 and I've explained there what it's all about ( if you're interested in reading more about it, then feel free to read the article I was mentioning, by clicking here ). You may be wondering why I'm discussing about it once again..? Because right now, I'm not trying to duplicate what I've already said, but I would like to tell you if EntreCard worked for me or not.

Since I've heard about this free service ( yes, it's free to sign up for an EC account and there are no monthly or hidden fees ), I've thought that I must use it, as it may help me increase my blog's traffic. So, I went to this website and created an account. After that, I've placed their widget on my blog and I've started exchanging cards with other fellow bloggers who were having the same EntreCard widget on their blogs, in order to gain not only traffic, but also credits ( which are used to "pay" for advertising on other blogs ). Until now, I've managed to earn about 600 credits. Already, I've used more than a half of them to buy ads on other blogs. If you're interested to know on what blogs, here it are: CarlOcab.com, EtienneTeo.com, TheUniversityKid.com and the InternetDreamer.co.uk. The ads were bought recently and were approved by the bloggers above and will run for a full day on their blogs, later this month ( the first advert will go live on 01/10/2008, on TheUniversityKid.com ). Now, because I've "invested" some of the credits I had, I hope I will receive even more visitors than before, when I wasn't using them for advertising my blog for free.

Until now, I've only talked about how many credits I have and on what blogs I will advertise my own blog, but haven't said anything about the results I had so far with EntreCard. My question was : "Is EntreCard working?" I guess that it is time to answer.. Before using this free traffic resource, I was receiving about 50 visitors/day to this blog. Most of the traffic was coming from LinkReferral ( and it still does ) and the rest from Google and other websites and blogs where I've submitted my blog or left comments. In the first day of using EntreCard, my traffic increased to 70 visitors ( not actually a ton of visitors, but it was good to see 20 more interested in reading my blog ). As the days have passed, this number remain stable, showing that EC CAN deliver some good traffic and improve my stats. At the end of last month ( and year ), 100+ visitors were sent by EntreCard to my blog, adding them to the total of 1500+ who have seen this blog throughout December. Below are some stats, showing you exactly how many visitors came to this blog in December '07 and how many from EC...

Above: The total number of visitors that came to my blog in December last year

Above: The number of visitors who were sent to my blog by Entrecard ( see the third row from the graph, which shows 148 ).

So, to give a final answer to this question: "Is EntreCard working?" YES! As you've seen in the stats above, EC is working. It sent me almost 150 visitors the whole month ( it should have been per day, but it's a start ), so I can clearly say it's a good source of free traffic. I will continue using this source and I hope I will reach even better results, as I need more traffic to this blog. If you too are looking for a free way to increase your own blog's number of visitors, why not to check out EntreCard? It's free, fast and fun. Not to mention that you have the chance of meeting new fellow bloggers and starting some friendships:) Good luck!

The elements of a viral ebook

2008-01-08T22:34:00.000+02:00

Well, the elements I will be talking about in this article apply to any e-book, either it's a viral one or not ( but usually, most of the e-books are viral ). You see, the purpose of an e-book it's not just i that of bringing you some profit ( in case you sell it ), but also to offer people who are downloading it the information they want to find out about a certain topic. This is why it's important to take some time and think what information you'll put in it and how will it look like. You can't simply mix a bunch of useless paragraphs and a ton of affiliate links, even if your book is about making money online, for example. You have to explain how the programs presented in there are working and why do you think others should use them. Also, it wouldn't be recommended to tell lies, just to impress you readers.

The way the e-book will look like is equally important. The colors, graphics or other elements matter too. This will make the difference between being a viral and successful book or just another boring and annoying piece of information, which will "gather dust" on someone's hard-drive. In the following lines I will be talking a bit more about which are the elements of a viral e-book. Should you be interested, then read on please..

1. If you decide to use multiple colors for your e-book's cover, then go for a combination between red, blue, black or white. You don't have to make the book look like a birthday party invitation, by over-exaggerating with colors and graphics, but you should make it pleasant for the eye. For example, if you decide to use yellow for its cover, then you can associate this color with some black, to give it a good contrast.

2. Use strong fonts for your book's main title ( either Arial Black for short titles or Impact for longer ones ). Why you should do this ? Because you'd want to attract your reader's attention and make him want to see what's inside it. If you're using some small, hard to read and unclear fonts, chances are that no one will ever bother in reading the rest of the e-book, no matter how good the content might be.

3. Limited number of fonts. While it's recommended in using strong fonts and even combine them together, overdoing it will make your e-book look like a total mess. People will think you're just playing around with fonts, to see which looks better. They won't know either your e-book is actually something serious to look at, or just a joke. This is why limiting the number of fonts to just 3, will save you of the mess.

4. Don't forget to include the following too:
- a good subtitle ( as the main title is already set )
- the author's name and
- the URL from where the e-book can be downloaded ( in case someone may need to re-download it, if he deleted it accidentally or wasn't able to download it for the first time, due to technical problems, for example ).

5. Include some short biography of yourself and copyrights information, so people should know and take note about them. Also, you can tell your readers what they can find in the e-book ( just keep it short, like a summary, without telling them everything right from the beginning ).

6. The table of contents. One of the most important element of an e-book. Some people may not have enough time to read your book entirely at once, so they may want to see a couple of chapters of it, to have an idea on what they can find in it. Not having the table of contents, would be very hard for that reader to just start searching for a certain paragraph to read.

7. The layout and content of the pages. The layout should be simple and the content shouldn't bother the reader, by having him/her read all those long paragraphs. Just keep it short, but to the point. Also, it's recommended to keep this simple layout and content presentation for all the pages and not make your e-book look like a personal dairy, by combining various colors, graphics or other visual elements together.

8. A page of clear and full instructions on how someone can rebrand the e-book. It's better to include this page in the book, as it would be unpleasant for you to be waken up in the middle of the night by a phone call or be bombarded with a ton of emails asking you how to rebrand it.

The key of creating a viral e-book: simplicity. If your e-book is simple, yet very informative and interesting, people will start downloading it in no time and in the end, as more and more internet surfers will find out about it, you'll know you've created a viral e-book, that has all the elements mentioned above.

Advantages and disadvantages of low cost internet advertising

2008-01-07T21:26:00.000+02:00

You know that I like talking about free and low cost advertising here, at my blog. The reason why I'm doing this, is because free or low cost advertising can be as effective as paid advertising, otherwise, I wouldn't be wasting my time telling you about how nice is to promote your site for free or for some low cost fees. And I do think that you too would like to be able to promote your own blog or website via multiple sources, which won't necessarily dry out your advertising budget ( I know you care about this budget, especially if it is limited ). Plus, I've always considered that if you're doing things right, this types of blog/website promotion would be helpful.

Now, you know that every service or product has its own advantages and disadvantages..and you also know that nothing is perfect in this world ( just show me one single thing that it is perfect, and I will say I was wrong :). When it comes to low cost advertising, we can definitely talk about its advantages and disadvantages too. If you want to know which this are, then I'm sure you'll be interested in reading this entire article..

Let's start with "the nice things" ( advantages ) first:

1. Well, it's low cost ( which is pretty obvious ). If you want to advertise your blog or website and reach a certain audience, then you have a couple of alternatives to select from: free advertising or expensive advertising. You may also go for free advertising, which can deliver you some extra traffic, but if you don't have a good advertising budget, you may not be able to take advantage of the expensive one I was mentioning before. So, the next step would be to choose the low cost advertising.

2. You can capture the market. Of course, you can capture a certain market ( or a niche you're involved in ) if you're advertising your website or blog via expensive advertising. In fact, you'll be able to do it even better, since this type of advertising will definitely work better. But, if you're not the kind of guy who's growing money in trees, then again, low cost advertising will be the solution to your needs ( and will eventually help you to capture that market ( or at least, a part of it )).

3. It's hassle-free. All you need to start benefiting from this form of advertising, is a computer, an internet connection and of course, a website or a blog, and a product or service that you want to promote. This way, you won't even have to leave your house to advertise your business.

4. No need to update your ads that often. Well, you can't just let an ad run for ever, without bringing any changes to it, but the online ads ( unlike TV ads, for example ), don't need to be updated that often. They can run for a while, before you decide making a change.

Now, let's see the "not-so-nice things" ( disadvantages ):

1. Limited market captured. Because this is low cost, you can not expect in capturing the entire market ( or niche ). You will manage to capture usually just a part of it. If you're satisfied with that, then this should be ok for you and you may not consider it a disadvantage. On the other hand, if you want the whole market to be yours, then you'll probably starting looking elsewhere, for more advertising.

2. Additional costs. You see, everything we do ( either online or offline ), comes with an additional cost: when we buy a car, we will need parts later on, to replace the old ones, thus resulting in additional costs; or if we build an website and we'll need a new design for it, we will have to pay, as professional designs don't come free ( unless you manage to win one :). Same applies to this form of advertising. If you don't have time to do website/blog promotion yourself, then you may think in paying someone. So, here it goes: additional costs.

Probably that there are more advantages and disadvantages, but for the moment, this are the ones I've thought off. Anyways, low cost advertising can work for you too, if it's done properly, as I said before. You just have to find the right strategies and apply them and soon, you should see the results:)

Various types of affiliate marketing

2008-01-06T22:16:00.000+02:00

Are you an affiliate marketer? How are you earning money online? What are your revenue sources?

Ok, ok, this is not a police interrogation. Also, I'm not conducting any polls at this time. But I think someone may have asked you the above questions, at least once. It doesn't matter who asked: your friends, your family ( I guess they already know how you're making money :), your fellow marketers, bloggers or readers..but you've probably had to answer to the questions I've mentioned.

Probably you've told this curious fellows that you're an affiliate marketer. Some of them may have heard what's an affiliate marketer, while others wanted to know more. So, you've started to tell them that you're making some money online with PPC ( Pay Per Click ) affiliate marketing, PPP ( Pay Per Performance ) or PPS ( Pay Per Sale ) affiliate marketing. By now, those who didn't knew too much already, may be puzzled. Inevitably, they will ask you: "What are this types of affiliate marketing? Can you tell me more about them?" You will be able to tell them more, if you read and remember this article.. Let's see the meanings of all this types of affiliate marketing, shall we?

NOTE: Before explaining all the terms I've mentioned above, I want to once again remember you what's an affiliate marketer. I've done this several times, while writing other affiliate marketing related articles on this blog, but I would like to say it again, just in case you're a first time visitor..An affiliate marketer is a person who's selling other companies'/individual's products or services and is receiving a commission for his work. This is how an affiliate marketer earns money online. Now, we can proceed further...

1. PPC ( Pay Per Click ) - This is the first type of affiliate marketing program we will start with. You want to know how you will get paid by signing up for such a program or website? As the name say, you will be paid on a per click basis. So will the merchant to which you're affiliated be charged, every time someone is clicking his ads or banners. You don't have to wait for a visitor you've sent to the merchants site, to make a sale, so you can get paid. It's enough for that visitor to click the ad or banner of your merchant/advertiser posted on your site/blog, and you will get paid a certain amount of cash ( starting from several cents, up to several dollars ).

2. PPP ( Pay Per Performance ) - As the name suggests, an advertiser you're affiliated with, will only pay you once a sale was completed at his website, by a visitor you've sent there. This time, if the respective visitor is only clicking the ad or banner of your advertiser and visits his site, without buying anything, you won't get any commissions. This type of affiliate marketing is the most lucrative one, and it is preferred by many online marketers, because the profits they make are pretty good, commissions varying from 5% to 60% or more ( this is just an estimation.. ). Also, the advertisers prefer it too, because they will only have to pay IF a visitor actually bought something from their website, not just clicked their ad.

The PPP affiliate marketing can be divided in to two popular sub-types:

- the PPS ( Pay Per Sale ) sub-type: as I already mentioned above, you, as an affiliate, are only making a commission IF a visitor referred by you to your advertiser's site, is buying one of his products or signs up for his service(s). But no matter how you're paid ( commission or fixed fee ), you will make more money from this type of affiliate marketing, than the PPC type, because usually, the commissions or fees are higher for PPP ( or PPS ).

- and the PPL ( Pay Per Lead ) sub-type: this is a slight variation of the PPS sub-type and it is used more often by insurance and finances companies, that need leads, in order to grow their businesses. You get paid every time you send a visitor to this kind of website, and that visitor is filling up a form there ( showing interest in the services offered by the company ). You get paid on a fixed fee basis.

3. Single, Two or Multi-Tier affiliate marketing..let's talk about each one of them..

- In the Single-Tier ( or level ) affiliate marketing, you get paid for every DIRECT referral or traffic you've brought to the advertiser's/merchant's website. The above mentioned types of affiliate marketing ( PPC, PPP ) fall under this category.

- In the Two-Tiers affiliate marketing, you are paid not only for DIRECT referrals, but also for the referrals brought to the advertiser's website by this ones ( this second-level referrals are also known as INDIRECT referrals ).

- And in the Multi-Tier affiliate marketing, you're getting paid from multiple levels of referrals you've referred to your advertiser's website.

4. Residual Income affiliate marketing - In this type of affiliate marketing, you're paid not just once, for a purchase made by a customer you referred to your advertiser's website, but also for each and every future purchase this customer will make. You're share will be based either on a commission or on a fixed fee.

So you see, there are quite a few types of affiliate marketing you can experiment. What's the right one for you? Would be hard for me to tell. It's only up to you to decide which of the above types will work and fit better to you.

Vobucks will help you make money

2008-01-05T22:24:00.000+02:00

I don't know how many of you heard about Vobucks, so I'll tell you more about it immediately. To be honest, I've never heard of this website before signing up for it, about 1 month ago..The reason why I'm writing about it now, is because I've just received a confirmation email from them, letting me know that I was accepted as their new member ( lucky me :P ). I almost forgot about them, since I haven't received any news from them, from the day I've registered. But as it said: "Better later than never." I guess that the reason why I haven't received any emails from them until know, was because they had to check my blog and make sure it was OK to be included in their database, without breaking any rules. Plus, let's not forget that last month was December, and it was a busy month for most of us, especially when preparing for the holidays.

Now, let's get down to "business" and see what's so special about the Vobucks website and how it can help us make some money with our blogs.. First of all, I have to tell you that the above mentioned website is similar to CJ ( Commission Junction - a site I've talked about back in December ( look for it in the Make Money With category, from the "Browse by category" menu, found on the right sidebar )). So, what you have to do start making money with VB?

Well, you have to have a site or blog, before even thinking of joining this money making opportunity. Why? The reason is simple: you will need a place where to put some of the banners or text links of the advertisers you will want to promote, in order to make money. You may even want to do a review about them, so a site or blog is necessary ( NOTE: You don't have to do a review of your advertisers, so you can get paid. I've mentioned this just in case you may think of doing so :). If you already own a site/blog, then you can skip this step and go directly to Vobucks, to sign up for a free publisher account ( to do so, click here ). Once you're approved and you're a member, you can start earning some money, by selecting as many advertisers as you want, and placing their text links or banners on your site or blog. Now, every time a visitor will click those banners or links and will take an action on the advertiser's website, you will receive a commission ( this is called a CPA ( Cost Per Action ) system, meaning that the visitor has to take action, in order for you to get that commission, not just to click the banner/link only ). You will see that there are a lot of advertisers listed on this website, each of them offering unique services or products to be promoted by the affiliates. Being so many, it shouldn't be so hard in finding the right advertiser(s) for your own blog or site.

Now, you may want to know how will you get paid and when? The minimum payout is at $100 ( this is the first-time payment, after which you'll be paid when reaching $50 ) and it is made via check, direct deposit, Epaassporte, MoneyBookers or PayPal ( just like the rest of the payments which will follow it ). Another cool thing about Vobucks is that they will pay you DAILY, every time you'll reach the minimum payout ( $50 )! If you want to find out more about this opportunity and to sign up, why not to visit the official VB ( Vobucks )? You have nothing to lose, only to gain:) Good luck!

Make money with LinkReferral

2008-01-04T19:56:00.000+02:00

So, you thought LinkReferral is only earning you free traffic, right? Well, yes, this is true. But, if you're an upgraded member, you can also make money with LR, by referring new members to this traffic generating directory. Your referred members don't have to do anything else, once they get to the main page of LinkReferral.com ( except signing up, of course :). They don't have to spend their money on any additional paid services that LR is offering, nor they have to upgrade their membership ( which would cost them a one-time fee of $50 ). If the people you've sent over become members, you get paid 0.15 for each of them ( on the 1st level ). I know, it's not a fortune, but you can't complain: this are free money.. Just imagine referring about 10 members every day ( may sound optimistic, but not impossible ): you'll then earn about $1.5 daily and $45 a month. Not bad, huh? You're interested in finding out more about this new money making opportunity? Then, please, read on..

I'm a member of LinkReferral for a long while now. My first account was setup when I've intended to promote one site of mine ( if I'm not wrong, it was a dating website ). Over time, I got involved in searching more ways of making money online and getting free traffic to an website, that I've completely forgot about promoting the site I was mentioning above. So, I kinda lost my interest in doing any promotion and advertising for it. But the situation changed once I've started this blog. I was decided that this time I shouldn't ignore promoting my new blog ( as it happened with my dating website ). I've created a new account at LR and I've started promoting this blog you're reading now. I'm still an active member, only that now I'm a premium one:)

Yup, that's right: I've upgraded my membership, once I saw I can make money with this website, not only driving traffic to my blog. Since I had no money few months ago when the account was created, I had to wait to raise $50 to do the upgrade. Fortunately, I've managed to get this amount of cash and finally become a Premium member last month ( December 2007 ).
Now, you may wonder what benefits you can get, as an upgraded LinkReferral member? Let me show you what you get, for your one-time 50 bucks fee that you pay:

1. You receive commissions for every purchase your referred members make. So, for example, if a member you've referred to LinkReferral buys advertising worth $100, you get paid $15. Or, if he upgrades his membership ( like I did ), you get $7.50.

2. You get paid every time you refer a new member to LR. As I said before, this new member only has to sign up as a basic ( or free ) member, for you to get paid. Once he does that, you earn $0.15 ( on the first level..and there are 5 levels deep, so you will earn money from all this levels too! ).

3. You get paid not only for your direct referrals, but also for every action taken by all the members you referred, 5 levels deep. So, for example, if a referral from the 4th level upgrades his membership or buys advertising on LinkReferral, you earn money. Take a look below and see how much you'll get paid for every level:

Level 1: 15%
Level 2: 5%
Level 3: 3%
Level 4: 2%
Level 5: 1 %

Also, besides being paid for each member you bring at LR, you'll also benefit of 1 month of free advertising on the site ( valued at $25 ), plus, you'll have access to more traffic building resources. A basic member doesn't receives all this benefits if he signs up only..Nevertheless, he will receive lots of visitors and valuable reviews from other members. So, if you want to become an upgraded member and start making some money with LinkReferral, or you just need more traffic to your site or blog, then I suggest you to click right here and sign up for your free account ( later on, once you have the money for upgrading, you can purchase a Premium Membership, via PayPal, or any other paid services they offer ). Let the traffic flow! :)

The death of pay per click advertising

2008-01-03T21:51:00.000+02:00

Well actually, pay per click advertising isn't dead..and I'm sure it won't die for the years to come. But I needed a catchy title for today's article and thought that the one above will be appropriate:) I hope I haven't scared any of you.. Now, let's talk about a new way of advertising websites, blogs, businesses etc: it's called PPP, which stands for Pay Per Play advertising. I don't know how many of you heard about it, so let me tell you few information about this new and revolutionary form of promotion..

As I've already mentioned in some of the previous articles I wrote here, I'm constantly searching for ways to earn money online, either by blogging or doing anything else, such as affiliate marketing, completing surveys, reading emails, writing reviews etc ( yes, believe it or not, I'm doing this stuffs too :). So, it was almost inevitably not to stumble upon this new money making opportunity, called Pay Per Play advertising. In the above paragraph I've mentioned that PPP advertising is a way of promoting a website, blog or business online..but not only that: you can also earn money with it, just like it happens with pay per click advertising.

But how does it works? First of all, let's see how pay per click advertising works..

1. For an advertiser: once he built his first websites and want people to find out about it, he will have to promote it. And one of the ways to do it is via PPC ads. So, he'll select an advertising network like Google Adwords, he'll set the keywords relevant to his website, the advertising budget and then his ad will go live. Every time someone will click his ad, he'll pay a certain amount of money for that click.

2. For a publisher: once he built a blog or website and got some decent traffic to it, he'll want to monetize it. And one of the ways to do it will be via pay per click ads. So, he'll go to Google Adsense, for example, sign up for a free account and place some ads on his site/blog. Now, every time someone will click the ads placed on his site, he will get paid.

The above concept is pretty much similar to Pay Per Play advertising. The difference is that the ads are not text-based and visitors won't have to click them, in order for a publisher to get paid. You're now wondering: "But what are this PPP ads and how will I make money with them?" This is a good question which is fairly easy to answer: as the name suggests, the PPP ads are audio ads and will play automatically each time a visitor will see your site. And guess what? You will get paid. That's right: your visitors won't have to click any text-based ads or buy anything, so you can make money. They'll just have to hear a 5 seconds long audio ad..

I've just signed up for this new money making opportunity recently and I'm still learning. The official launch date of the PPP network is in February this year. Till then, no ads will be available for you, even if you have inserted the HTML code in your blog or website. So, we still have to wait a bit. If you too want to sign up for free and make money with pay per play ads, you can click here to visit the official website and find out more information.

Would like to tell you that the ads aren't intrusive and I don't believe it will drive away your visitors. Also, they won't interfere with any other applications or widgets that you're running on your website or blog. Lasting only 5 seconds, your visitors won't get bored..If you want to hear a pay per play ad, then visit this website. You think that this might be the money making opportunity you were waiting for? Then feel free to sign up for pay per play ads right away, by clicking this link. Good luck!

Welcome 2008!

2008-01-02T19:21:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone! How are you today? I'm just fine and glad to be back updating my blog. Lately, you can think I was lazy or had no will to continue blogging. I assure you it wasn't like that. As you all know, there were the winter holidays, the Christmas, the New Year's Eve etc and I really had no time to keep this blog updated. Plus, I had to take a break and spend some time with my family and friends. Of course, I didn't just sat all day long inside the house; I've also spent my time with a friend at the country for Christmas and enjoyed the pace and the fresh air I found there. We went to play some table-tennis and also took some photos, while taking a ride with Adrian's car ( Adrian is my friend I was talking about :). Once I got back home, at Pitesti ( the city I live in in Romania ), I had to prepare for the New Year's Eve: done some shoppings, helped my parents around the house and also relaxed listening to some music and playing some computer games.

Now, that the holidays have passed ( at least here in Romania ), it's time to once again resume my blogging activity. And today I would like to talk about what I think about last year, show you my last month's traffic and earnings reports and, in the end, to say what are my goals for 2008.
Let's start with what I think of 2007:

- this was a good year for me, in generally. I've managed to create this blog, to maintain it properly and to start making some money with it. It's true, I haven't earned thousands of dollars, but I was able to earn up to $130 in November, for example, which is a good start. Considering that I had no money to advertise it, to buy a domain from the start, or to host it on WordPress, I believe that I've still managed to do a good job with it:);

- also, in the last couple of days from December 2007, I've discovered some few more ways to make money online and increase my blog's traffic. I'll be talking about this methods and I'll use them over the next following weeks and months of 2008.

Now let's move on to the reports:

- last month ( and year ), I've earned about $41.3. This is about 3 times less than in November, when I've made $130, as I've mentioned above. You may wonder why? Because last month I've spent more time investigating various ways of making money online and traffic generating methods, than just concentrating on earning money alone with this blog. Also, December was a month with lots of holidays etc and my traffic decreased a bit, plus I took the break I was talking about in the beginning of this post. So, it was kinda normal to have lower earnings. If you want to know which money making programs/websites brought me those $41.3, here it are:

- AdBrite: $0.07
- Bidvertiser: $0.83
- WidgetBucks: $0.51 ( only from a referral, as I don't display their banners now )
- EntireWeb ( SpeedyAds ): $0.41
- ScratchBack (Tip Me ): $4.41
- FeedProfit: $1.82
- Blogsvertise: $17.50
- SponsoredReviews: $9.75
- Smorty: $6
TOTAL: $41.3

My blog was visited by a number of 1521 people, from all over the world. Out of this, 251 came from LinkReferral, 208 from StumbleUpon and 148 from Entrecard, just to name some of the traffic sources I use to get this blog noticed. I usually receive about 77 unique visitors daily and in one particular day I've received over 200 (!) from StumbleUpon! ( Don't ask me how it happened..it just did ). You can see my traffic stats for that day ( 12/22/2007 ) below..

Above: You can see the number of visitors I've received per total on 22nd of December 2007 - 233

Above: The StumbleUpon traffic on 22nd December 2007: over 200 visitors!

Finally, I would like to talk about my 2008 goals:

1. First of all, I want to improve this blog a lot and let's hope I'll made it. I'm thinking in ordering a custom template, which will fit my tastes better than this one, drive more traffic to it and monetize it better.

2. I'm also planning in completing some projects I've started back in 2007: my Squidoo page and my One Euro Wiki page, which are currently sitting and "gathering dust" on the net:).

3. And the last goal: to start an Affiliate Junktion website and make some money with it ( this way, I will try and diversify my income sources :)

I'm looking forward in seeing what 2008 has for me;) Regards and thanks to all my readers ( 19 ), visitors and advertisers which helped me back in 2007, when I've started my blogging journey. I hope you'll be by my side this year too:) Thanks guys and girls!

Articles - An affordable internet marketing method

2007-12-30T19:25:00.000+02:00

First of all, I would like to apologies for not writing any new posts lately, but as you know, the New Year's Eve is fast approaching and we are all busy like heck, trying to finish all those last-minute things for this very special night. It was my case also: I had to do a lot of shoppings, to help my parents with various little "jobs" around the house, plus I caught a cold, which didn't let me do anything else in the last couple of days. Now I feel a lot better and I thought to write one last post in 2007. As you may have noticed, the title of it is "Articles - An affordable internet marketing method". I will try and keep it short and to the point, highlighting the most important features of this internet marketing method. I know you may not have the time to read long articles, as you're probably busy with something else:) So, here it goes..

You know that content is the king..and you can say that again. But why are articles considered a surefire way to drive traffic to your website or blog? And also, why are it considered as being an affordable internet marketing method? Because internet surfers never can get enough of information, no matter what's the topic. So, either if you write articles about making money online, affiliate marketing, gardening or dating, for example, no one will say it's enough and won't read it. On the contrary: they will be eager to read fresh articles, to find out more about the topic they're interested in. So you see, this is why articles are a surefire way to drive traffic to your blog or website ( usually for free ) and are also considered an affordable internet marketing method. Now, let me highlight those important features ( or better said, benefits ) of article writing:

1. First of all, it's free. That's right: writing articles won't cost you a fortune..not even a cent. The only costs that may be involved are those of your Internet Service Provider and of your electricity company. All you need to start writing articles is a computer ( or even a pen and paper ), your own hands and some creativity, in order to compile an article.

2. You'll get noticed immediately. As soon as you'll submit your articles at article directories that receive lots of visitors, your own website or blog will start receiving new visitors from them and more and more people will see what's your site about and who are you ( This is why it's important not to forget to add that bio box, which usually goes along with your articles and contains some information about you ).

3. Backlinks. Once your articles hit the article directories, other webmasters and bloggers will make use of them. And since republishing your article on other sites for free is protected by copyrights, those who want to do this will have to keep the link to your website/blog intact, as a way of thanking you. That's how you'll gain some backlinks and even more traffic for your own blog/website.

4. Reputation. By writing articles frequently and submitting them to various article directories, people will start to notice you and see who you are, what you do, in what field you're expert in. This way, you'll start to build your reputation, or, if you already have one, you'll improve it.

This are just a couple of benefits ( the most important ones, as I already mentioned ). Of course, you'll discover others yourself, as soon as you're going to start writing some articles. This shouldn't be a tedious and boring task, if you like to write. And especially if you want to drive some free traffic to your blog/website and get noticed. Just let that creative juice flow and I'm sure you'll come up with some quality articles:)

PS: Now if you excuse me, I'll have to submit this article to some directories, such as BloggingZoom, in order to receive some traffic from them and some votes;) Plus, I haven't yet played any match at Football Manager 2006 ( I say 2006, as Football Manager 2008 has been disappointing :( I have to relax from time to time, you know...:) Cheers and I wish you a Happy New Year and may you have a rocking party:D.

Complete free offers and make money

2007-12-27T19:07:00.000+02:00

First of all, let me say hello to you all. I just got back home today, from my little trip I took to the country side ( you can read more about it in my last post, just below this one ). And of course, let me wish you a Happy New Year, as the New Year's Eve is just around the corner. Now, let's get down to "business". Today I would like to tell you about another way you can use to make money online: completing free offers. I'm sure you've heard a lot about this thing, so let me explain you how it works.

You see, the concept is pretty simple: you sign up for free at a certain website that offers this kind of service ( completing free or trial offers and getting paid ), you complete 1 or 2 offers, get some referrals to do the same and you get your gift. This gift I'm talking about can be either cash ( usually sent via PayPal ) or a product, such as a laptop, an IPod or a MP3 player. Now, you may ask how can someone just give you this products and all those money, for free ( or at very low cost fees )? The answer: those who are the owners of such websites are paid by advertisers, to promote their services and products. So, every time a visitor signs up, completes an offer and refers friends to do the same, the website who's offering the gifts is making money ( not just a couple of pennies, as there are hundreds and thousands of people who are using this kind of websites to make some money or to get a free laptop, IPod etc, daily ) from its advertisers. This way, it is able to cover the costs of giving you the gifts for free.

However, you can't say you'll get rich completing offers. Also, I've seen lots of sites which are offering this opportunity only to residents from certain countries, such as United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand etc. So, if you were thinking of signing up, and you're not from the countries I've named above, then you won't be able to receive your gift ( especially if we're talking about a product, which has to be delivered to your home address ). Anyway, lots of people are already members of sites like Notebooks4Free.com or MobilePhones4Free.com and are earning money and other gifts. As I already mentioned, they are residents of the United States, UK or Canada etc, so they can receive them to their home addresses ( lucky fellows :). I can't say the same for me, as I live in Romania ( in case you didn't knew ) and my country isn't yet accepted at this websites. The reason why we're not accepted is because the advertisers who are paying the gifts aren't available for Romanian residents too, so we can not complete their offers.

I've always considered completing offers and getting free gifts and money as an easy, fun and of course, free way of making some extra money online. You don't have to own your own website or blog, if you don't want, you don't have to force anyone to sign up under you, as referral and you do not have to spend huge amounts of money on the offers that are available, as some are even free of charge. Of course, in order to get your gifts, you have to bring in some referrals, as they will help you earn it faster. Again, I haven't tried this opportunity for the reason mentioned above ( read paragraph 3, the last 2 sentences ). But other fellow bloggers and webmasters are promoting this websites, signing new referrals and getting free cash and gifts already. So, if you'd like to give it a try and you're sure your country is listed on sites like Notebooks4Free.com or MobilePhones4Free.com etc, then sign up, get your referral link and promote. I'm sure you'll manage to bring some new people to this websites and get your gifts faster. Good luck!

Just a quick note

2007-12-22T22:25:00.000+02:00

I'm sure a lot of people will visit my blog this days ( until Christmas ) and would want to find some more useful posts, tips and advice on how to monetize your blog, how to advertise it for free or what other low cost promotion methods to use. But I have to tell you something: tomorrow I will leave Pitesti ( my hometown ), for a couple of days, to spend the Christmas with a friend, at the country side. So, this means I won't be posting any fresh content. At least, not until next Wednesday ( 26th December ), when I will return home. You know that everyone needs a break, even us, bloggers. We really need some time to relax, to spend it with our friends, family etc. In fact, even you, as a reader, you need a break.

There are moments in our lives when we really feel the need of a well-deserved pause. Indeed, no one says you should actually quit taking care of your blog for a year, or whatever. But a couple of days of blogging-free time will remember you that you also have a family, friends and most of all, a real life, away from your computer. In your quest of making money online, it may happen to forget about all the things I've mentioned above, and become too addicted to your blog, which may be a not so pleasant thing.

This is why I've decide that it's time to allow myself a few days off of the blogging business:). As I already mentioned, I will go to meet this friend of mine ( who's not a blogger, by the way, but rather an addicted Counter-Strike player...hahaha ), at the country side and also see my grandparents, which live there. So, all it remains to me now is to wish you all a Merry Christmas, happy holidays and may Santa Claus bring you your most wanted gift:) Take care of yourselves and enjoy the Christmas day next to your loved ones:) Will get in touch again once I'll return home ( on Wednesday, I hope ). Cheers!

Monetize your blog with AdVolcano

2007-12-21T23:05:00.000+02:00

Because this blog is about making money online and pay per click advertising ( I know, right now I'm not talking about this topic, even though I should, as the URL of my blog is My PPC Advertising ), I've decided to look for more monetization resources that involve placing ads on a blog or site and getting paid every time someone clicks on those ads. And so I've discovered AdVolcano, a website which is similar to Bidvertiser, AdBrite or any other pay per click advertising networks I've presented so far. The concept is the same: you sign up for a free publisher account, you submit your website and then you get a piece of HTML code that has to be inserted in your blog's sidebar or wherever you wish, in order to start displaying ads and making money.

Till now, nothing new or different ( it may even get boring to hear the same thing over and over again, but if we talk about advertising networks and pay per click ads, then the things are pretty much resembling ). But I believe AdVolcano is introducing a new concept, of which I haven't heard about just yet: the CPT model ( CPT stands for Cost Per Term ). How is this different from the other concepts you already know about? In your traditional CPC model ( Cost Per Click ), an advertiser will have to pay every time someone clicks his ad, while using the new type of advertising proposed by ADV ( AdVolcano ), an advertiser only pays if he wants to place his ad on your blog for a certain period of time ( 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year etc ), no matter how many clicks his ad gets. Here's an example, to better understand the system:

- Let's say advertiser A would like to buy some ad space on your blog. And let's also assume you're offering the following pre-determined periods of time from which he can choose:
- 1 day
- 7 days ( 1 week )
- 14 days ( 2 weeks )
- 21 days ( 3 weeks )
- 28 days ( 4 weeks )
- 30 days ( 1 month )
- 90 days ( 3 months )
- 180 days ( 6 months ) and
- 365 days ( 1 year )

As you're free to set your own price ( unlike the other networks ), you may be setting the following price:
- $5 for 1 day
- $35 for 7 days
- $70 for 14 days
- $105 for 21 days
- $140 for 28 days
- $150 for 30 days
- $450 for 90 days
- $900 for 180 days and
- $1825 for 365 days

So, when advertiser A decides he wants to buy an ad spot from you for 30 days, for example, he will have to pay you $150. There will be no other fees, because it won't matter the number of clicks his ad will get, as I already told you. This CPT model isn't influenced by this variable. An advertiser is only paying for the period of time he is willing to advertise on your blog, and that's it. Once his ad reached the end of the "contract", to call it like that, he may or may not want to renew his deal with you. If he is satisfied, he'll do it..if not..well, you can figure it out yourself:)

Through this new model of advertising, the guys from AdVolcano are trying to eliminate the CPC fraud ( Cost Per Click ) which may appear. In my opinion, this is an interesting way of advertising your blog. And I do believe that, by not having to pay for every click, you won't have to pay thousands of dollars for your blog's promotion campaigns. Of course, you will pay a publisher a certain fee, because he is renting you his advertising space, but it will be cheaper then paying for every click. If you find a good publisher, which has a decent traffic every month and you think his site or blog is the best place to put your ad on, then I'm sure you will close a deal with him, if the price he asks is fair. This is why I recommend to all publishers to try and set a correct price for renting your ad space.

If you have a blog or site which receives a good amount of traffic every month, then you can ask for more money from your advertisers. But if only get a few visitors per month, then don't ask $100 for a 1 day ad, for example. The reason for not doing this is simple: no one will buy an ad from you, if they see you're having such high prices, but very low traffic.

AdVolcano is paying its publishers via check only ( at least for now ), once you reach the minimum payout you set ( it can be $25, $50, $100 etc ). If you want to advertise your website via this network, then you will have to pay for the ads you place with a credit card, as this is the only option available. To find out more about this monetization resource, then I recommend you to visit the official AdVolcano website as soon as possible. Good luck earning money with ADV!

Choose the right link exchange service

2007-12-20T21:23:00.000+02:00

You know that one of the strategies through which you can increase the rank and popularity of your website or blog, is exchanging links with other fellow webmasters or bloggers. The higher the Page Rank of the site or blog you're linking is, the more chances of receiving a high PR for your own blog are. But not only the rank of the linking site is important. In fact, the old saying of "The higher the Page Rank is, the better", become a bit outdated. Right now, it matters the most the quality of that respective website. So, that old saying I've mentioned before can now be translated as "The higher quality a site has, the better for you."

With all this link exchange services out there on the Internet nowadays, is pretty hard to select the right one. You see, not every website that offers link building services is necessarily useful. You may encounter some scams, or you may simply sign up for one site that can't deliver what promised, as it should do. And searching for the appropriate service can be a long and pretty tedious job. So, what's the right link exchange website to sign up for?

While I was doing some searches of my own on Google, I've seen one website that may help you, in your quest of improving your Page Rank, blog/site popularity and traffic. This site is called Link Exchange Experts, a place from where you can also buy text links, if you have some money to spend. They are offering you 2 types of memberships:

1. The first one is called "Volunteer", and is a free one. Yes, by choosing this plan, you won't have to pay anything. You just sign up, submit your site and then you will receive a special code that must be placed on the submitted site, in order for you to be able to start the link exchanging process. This is why it's important to have an website that supports either ASP ( Windows ) or PHP ( Linux, Unix ) type of language. If your site supports the above mentioned programming languages, then you can go ahead and sign up for this plan. If not, then you may have to build a new one. Also, an important thing to know: sites that have inappropriate content ( such as adult websites ) are not allowed in the LEE ( Link Exchange Experts ) network.

2. The second membership is called "VIP" and as you can see, this isn't just for anyone and his dog. Why I say that? Because this is the type of membership "for clients with slightly larger monthly marketing budgets", as the guys from Link Exchange Experts say ( and I kinda like this phrase:) . And yes, you do have to pay for this one. No more freebies, this time. What's the price? Well, if you can afford it, it's $199.95/month ( yeah, I know, it's expensive, but I'm sure it worth its money ). So, what do you get for all this money? The following:

- Over 600 backlinks
- A higher page rank than the "Volunteer" membership gets
- Personal Search Engine Optimization ( or SEO ) advice
- 24 hour set up time
and a few more.

As you can see, you definitely get more benefits for the monthly fee you pay. If you consider that your website really needs a higher PR, more visitors and more popularity ( and I'm pretty sure you do ), then I suggest you to visit Link Exchange Experts and sign up for one of their available memberships. And if you have money to spend ( only IF ), then you can go straight for the "VIP" plan. May be expensive, but it worth.

The John Chow bashing national sport

2007-12-19T21:58:00.000+02:00

Don't be fooled about the word "sport" I've placed in my article's title..I won't be talking about any kind of sports, as this blog isn't about sports news. Instead, I will talk about how some other fellow bloggers of mine have started a new type of online "activity", to call it so. If I were to give it a name, I'd call it: "Let's bash John Chow" . And it seems that, in the end, has become a "national sport", after all. Why I say that?

Because not everybody is a John Chow fan. Of course, we all know him, what he does, how much he earns with his blog etc. But let's face it: how many of you are his loyal readers? How many of you have joined his affiliate programs? Or how many of you felt that he has helped you to make money online, in a way or another? In my case, since I've started to visit his blog - JohnChow.com - I haven't seen any real helpful tip or advice on making money online..I know that I shouldn't expect for some miracles only because I've visited JC's blog, but he says his blog is about making cash. The only one earning something is him and not us. How should we expect learning something from him, when he's only talking about what he ate, who he met at I-don't-know-what-event or what cars he likes?

You will come and say: "It's a personal blog, so he can talk about any topic he wants.." Yeah, I agree..But what about helping us, remember? How can I learn how to monetize my blog, from Mr. Chow, if his talking about a Lamborghini "whatever" or what's his latest ReviewMe review?
Now, let's get back to my fellow bloggers I was talking about earlier..and especially at Vic, from BloggerUnleashed. This guy really is unleashed and he really dislikes John Chow.

In one of his articles, called "John Chow Unclogged", Vic is practically kicking Chow's -ss! He never liked the "dot Com mogul" and he'll never like him, that's for sure. Just look what he says in that article:

"Now let’s really look at the hypocrisy of John Chow. While he is telling his readers how much Google sucks and how Adsense sucks and you need to use text-link ads (which paid him for the promo) and how IZEA is the good guy and Google is evil (Also was paid to promo) let’s look at his site TheTechZone dot com OMG his primary advertising all over the site is mmm Adsense and no paid text links with dofollow, but yet when Yaro Starak who had a post he wrote called “PageRank doesn’t matter” which btw is another joke got bitched slapped by Google and he started losing money made a full change of posture on how really important Google and Page Rank where, John Chow wrote a post called “OK, Google… They Surrender” in which he made fun of Yaro and wrote “I’m sure many other blogs have tossed up the white flag at Google. However, I am not one of them, but I have no problems with any blogs that does bend over and pass Google the lube.” WHAT A FUCKING HYPOCRITE. Now the MORONIC HEARD OF JOHN CHOW WANABEES went straight to there blogs to write post like hey fuck Google let’s use ASK dot com LMAO but yet John Chow is quietly making his money from Google and Adsense on his niche blog, again WHAT A FUCKING HYPOCRITE."

I wouldn't call this "love", you know. You may not agree with what Vic says ( or I say ), but at some point, this is correct. I feel that John Chow ( please note: I'm not giving him any link love ) is kinda losing it. Now, I'm not saying that Vic influenced me in any way to not like JC. I don't need no one to tell me what to do, nor I will never tell anyone how to run his blog or business. I've seen myself how "helpful" this "mogul" is and I don't like guys like him at all.

I don't know what you think about Chow, but the bottom line for me is that I've never learned anything for him and will never learn. And I'm not the kind of guy who's practicing the -ss-kissing activity, like others do, when it's about the "big dogs" of the blogosphere. If I don't like someone, then that's it! No more "ifs" or "buts"..For sure, John Chow doesn't care what I say, but it doesn't matter. I have the right at free speech and I'm making use of it:)

Make money blogging with CJ

2007-12-19T00:23:00.000+02:00

Oh, so many "make money online blogging" blogs, so many affiliate programs to choose from, so many people telling you "go for that program" or "how about signing up as my affiliate".. At this point, you may already be confused and you may already be chasing too many money making opportunities, without much success. If you've read one of my previous articles, called "3 common mistakes in affiliate marketing", you probably remember that one of the most common mistakes made by many newbie marketers, is choosing to promote way too many affiliate programs, therefore, forgetting to concentrate one the most important ones and diminishing their overall results. Today's post here at My PPC Advertising blog will be about a place where you can find the right affiliate programs to promote on your blog or website. We will be talking about CJ.

I can already hear most of you asking "Who's CJ"? Well, CJ is not a person, it's a website. The abbreviation stands for Commission Junction. Probably that some of the more seasoned online marketers who are going to visit this blog, already know about the website I'm talking about. So, for them may not be something new. But for the other part of my visitors, who aren't yet aware what's this site about, the current article may be interesting and useful ( at least, that's what I hope and aim:)

As I don't want to make you believe I'm wasting your time, I'll cut down to the chase and tell you more about CJ. Commission Junction is one of the important websites you must visit, if you want to generate more income sources for your blog. Until now, you're probably already monetizing your blog with pay per click ads or other income sources. So, you're thinking "It's time for me to do some affiliate marketing". This sounds pretty easy to say it, but it may prove a bit difficult to start, as you'll soon see that there are just too many programs to promote and you may be tempted to join them all. Remember about the mistake number 2 in the article I've mentioned in the beginning of this post: joining too many programs may not be a smart choice, in the long run.

So, here comes Commission Junction to help you. What CJ does, is practically bringing together websites promoting their products through affiliate programs, and marketers, which are aiming to:

1. Websites: make their products and services known to as many people as possible, thus earning more customers and making more sales and

2. Affiliate marketers: trying to make some nice monthly income, by affiliating to this websites.

Once you'll sign up for a free CJ account ( that's right, signing up at CJ won't cost you a penny ), you will be able to search through their extensive advertisers' database and link up with several ones, who you think are matching up with your blog's niche and topics. So, for example, if you're blogging about web hosting, scripts, WordPress themes/plug ins etc, you may want to find an advertiser who's a web hosting company and promote its services. I tell you, some web hosting companies are really going to pay you some handsome money, if you manage to bring in new customers, who'll pay for that company's services.

After selecting the right advertiser, you will have to get some banners/links and put them on your blog, so you can promote the products/services offered by that advertiser and get paid. All this process is done very easy. Is just a copy/paste job, nothing much, as the links and banners are already supplied by the advertiser. Every time you make a sale, you're paid a commission, according to how much is a certain advertiser willing to pay its affiliates. Pretty simple..

When you've reached the minimum amount of money you've set to receive a check from CJ, you will be notified about that, and the check will be sent to your home address, mentioned in your affiliate profile ( this is why it's important to sign up with REAL PERSONAL INFORMATION, or else you won't see any checks! ). Once the check arrives to your home, you can go and cash it in at any bank in your town/city.

There are many to be said about Commission Junction, but I would like to let you discover the opportunity this money making website is offering to you, the blogger. Therefore, feel free to visit CJ and sign up for your free affiliate marketer account and start earning some money with that blog you have there:) Good luck, my friends!

My ImmenseHits results

2007-12-17T23:11:00.000+02:00

I don't know if you remember or you've read my post about the ImmenseHits experiment, but now I'm ready to tell you the results. If you haven't see the post where I talk about this traffic selling website, then feel free to read about it here.

First of all, let me tell my first time visitors and readers who haven't had the chance to find out more about ImmenseHits, what's this site about. As I've mentioned above, it's a site from where you can purchase traffic for your own site or blog, starting at $7.95 for 10,000 visitors. They also have other plans, depending on your needs. The plan I bought ( the cheapest one, $7.95 for 10,000 visitors ) seemed just right, as I didn't want to throw away my money, in case it doesn't work. The other plans are, as follow:

- $19.95 for 25,000 visitors
- $38.99 for 100,000 visitors
- $48.99 for 150,000 visitors
- $68.99 for 250,000 visitors
- $135.99 for 450,000 visitors and
- $299.95 for 1,000,000 visitors

As I've said, I didn't intended to risk spending hundreds of dollars on this service and to get scammed, in case it would fail to deliver what it promised me, so I've only got 10,000 visitors for only $7.95. You may be tempted to dive in head-first and buy as many visitors as possible, from this site, thinking that you've made the best choice ever. Heck, some of you may even think that they will never going to advertise on Google AdWords or Bidvertiser, for example, because they can get lot more visitors from ImmenseHits, for just pennies. Well, this is true ( only the "for just pennies" part..), you will pay less cash to get visitors than you would spend on Google AdWords.
The bad thing is that you'll either receive only a few visitors, from the amount you've bought, or no visitors at all! This happened to me: I've paid $7.95 and they've promised me to send 10,000 visitors to my blog last month. Also, they've told me from where all this traffic will come, when the campaign will start and how much will last.

To tell you the truth, I was kinda skeptical about this. I've just made quick comparison between the price ImmenseHits have for delivering you traffic and how much would cost you to advertise through and advertising network such as Google AdWords. I knew that it would cost you some serious money to advertise your blog or site via Google, so I thought that the prices displayed by ImmenseHits aren't up to standards. I mean, just imagine for a while, what it would mean to try and reach 1,000,000 visitors/month by advertising on AdWords, for example...I tell you, you would be broke..you would have to spend thousands ( if not even tens of thousands ) of dollars to get your blog or site flooded by 1,000,000 visitors!

And look at ImmenseHits' price for 1,000,000 visitors/month: $299.95..Isn't this raising you a red flag? I'm sure it does. It also raised that flag to me too, but I've decided to try it. I kept checking my traffic stats last month, just to see if there was any change. Guess what? No change at all! They haven't sent me one single visitor! And my stats aren't wrong. Also, I haven't created a wrong traffic campaign at IH. The truth is that this guys are just scammers. They will steal your money, will not send you any traffic ( or will do it, but only to give you some crap, good for nothing, shitty traffic ) and you will waste your time with them!

Now, I'm not upset for paying them almost $8, as I wasn't expecting ImmenseHits to send me any visitors. I wanted to experiment their services and to convince myself if this worth. I haven't asked my money back. Honestly, I don't care about them ( there were only $7.95, after all..). They haven't broke the bank by getting away with my bucks...But what I dislike the most, is their dishonesty and the will to just rip people off. Not to mention that I've sent them an email and never got a reply for them, not even till today...Maybe they will send a reply next century, who knows:)

My conclusion: don't waste your time with ImmenseHits. There are other low cost advertising opportunities on the Internet that WILL deliver what they promise and those are the ones you should try, not ImmenseCrap..sorry, ImmenseHits.

EzineArticles - Your source for free articles

2007-12-16T18:54:00.000+02:00

Have you ever wanted to find a site that can offer you good and interesting articles to read? The kind of articles from which you can learn something? If you ask me, I'm always interested in such articles. No matter what the subject is, if an article proves to suit my tastes, I will read it. Currently, I have about 2000 and something articles stored on my computer's hard drive. I know, this sounds like I'm storing an entire library on my computer, but I assure you that all are good quality articles, downloaded for free from different websites found on the internet. I'm not wasting my time in gathering any junk piece of article that I see online, just to stuff my computer with it.

You may wonder why I've downloaded so many article? The answer is because I must stay informed about the topics I cover on this blog. Plus, every article brings something new..has a different topic than the one I've seen previously and it learns me new things, that I didn't knew about before. If you too are interested in finding such articles, to get some fresh content for your blog, you should search on Google for "free PLR articles" or "free PLR products" ( where PLR stands for Private Label Rights ). You will find many websites offering not just articles, but also useful softwares and digital products that can help you start a new home based business or improve the one you already have.

Now, let me talk about this interesting website I've found recently, while I was searching for more ways to improve my blog's traffic and earnings..The site is called EzineArticles.com, and it has a wide selection of articles, covering many topics, such as traffic building, blogging, business, or self improvement. I tell you, it's kinda like a goldmine for anyone who wants to find that fresh blog content I was talking about. Being interested in articles about traffic building, I've read a couple of them and I must say that I liked them and I've really learned something new. There are lots of articles, not just 2000 ( like I have on my computer ) and about 77,819 authors that are currently submitting new ones. So, you can imagine just how many articles are in only one category..

This is one of the sites that I've bookmarked and which I'm visiting on a daily basis. If I'll ever need new articles to create content for this blog, that's the site I'll go to. I was impressed by the number of articles and authors and also by the ease of navigation and friendliness of this website. All the articles you will find there are free to use, as long as you keep the author's information ( website URL and name ) intact ( this way, you give him/her credits for giving you a valuable article ).

One of my advice is that you should rewrite the articles you download from any free articles directory or free PLR website. Why? There are a couple of reasons for doing that, but one of the important reasons is that you will avoid duplicate content, which Google doesn't like. You may not be aware, but lots of webmasters and bloggers are using this articles, because they either have no time to write ones themselves, or they don't have the necessary amount of money to pay a writer. So, it may happen to find the same article on 2 different websites..that's duplication and, as I said, Google doesn't like. This is why you should spend some time in rewriting all the articles you gather from EzineArticles or from any other websites like it. You don't have to do this at once. But if you plan to publish an article on your site or blog tomorrow, for example, then you should rewrite it today, so to be ready for publishing.

To conclude, EzineArticles is one of the sites that I recommend to all webmasters and bloggers who are looking to create some new content for their blogs/websites, to improve their RSS subscriptions or their ranks.

Make money selling spy gear

2007-12-15T22:07:00.000+02:00

What a title for this article..It may already make you feel like being in a James Bond movie. But, yes, it's true that you can start making some really nice money online as an affiliate marketer, by selling spy gear. Now, I'm not talking about some science-fiction weapons, body armors or super hightech cars. Instead, I'm referring to normal equipment, such as DVR Recorders, Voice Recoders, Spy Software, GPS Vehicle Tracking, Spy Cameras, Body Worn Cameras, PI Gear ( which I guess it refers to Private Investigator Gear ), Cheating Spouses and Bug Detectors. All this things can be purchased online from SpyGear4U and are the perfect choice for any Private Investigators companies or anyone who needs such gadgets.

I know about this interesting online shop for a while, since I was looking for some affiliate marketing programs to join. And most of the time, when I was searching on Google for "make money online", the results were showing this website too. When I first discovered this money making opportunity, I was kinda eager to sign up and promote it, but at that time I didn't had an website or a blog ( like I do now ) and also, wasn't able to get a PayPal account, as Romania ( my home country ), wasn't a member of this payment processor. By not having a PayPal account, I couldn't receive my possible commissions, as they are paying only via this payment processor. So, I've decide that I will give it a try, once I get myself a blog and after Romania becomes a PP member. Now, it's time for me to "test drive" this affiliate program.

But before I do this, I will make a short presentation of what you will get, if you decide to join SpyGear4U's affiliate program. First of all, who can become an affiliate? The answer: Anyone who has the possibility and the will to promote the spy gear products and softwares and make some money for doing so. My personal opinion is that this program can be a good income source especially for webmasters or bloggers that are in the tech field. Why? Because, as you will be able to see if you visit the above mentioned website, it's all about gadgets. So, any tech junkie is the right candidate to sign up and make money with SpyGear4U's affiliate program. Of course, you too can join, even if your blog or website isn't about gadgets and technology. If you simply believe that this is the right program for you, then you're free to take advantage of this opportunity. Now, let's get to the part that it interests you the most: making money with SG4U.

Here is what you'll get, as an affiliate:

- 10% of all the sales that were generated through your affiliate link
- instant notification by email, about all the sales you've managed to close
- FREE sign up
- password protected page, so you can check all the stats of your campaign
- custom affiliate site co-branding
- full technical support
and many more other features.

As in affiliate program that you join, there are also some requirements you need to meet, so that you can be accepted. This program makes no exception, so the requirements are the following:

- you must place your affiliate links/banners on your site or blog, so you can make sales
- you are not allowed to promote the SpyGear4U products via spamming methods of any kind
- all websites and blogs are accepted, except those that have adult content
- you must have a PayPal account, in order to receive your commissions
- you are not allowed to make any illegal copies of the official SpyGear4U website and claim that it's yours.

If you understand all the above rules and you have no problem in respecting them, then you can join right now and start making some cash. But that's not all..if you don't have your own website or blog, or if you simply want to start a new home based business, then SG4U can help you. They offer custom affiliate websites, branded with your logo, affiliate ID and any other images or slogans you want. As you guessed, this don't come for free. If you want such an website, you will have to pay a one-time setup fee, of $49.95. To this, you will have to add the $12.99 monthly hosting fee and your yearly domain name renewal fee.

The investment may not be too cheap, but you have to admit that this is one good opportunity to start your own spy gear selling business and make some nice income out of it. You just have to make sure you're using the right marketing strategies and I'm sure you'll see the money coming to you not long after you start the business. If you want to find out more about the SpyGear4U affiliate program, then visit the official website at www.spygear4u.com. I wish you good luck!

3 common mistakes in affiliate marketing

2007-12-14T20:47:00.000+02:00

...which should be avoided. This should be the entire title of this article. But I've decided to keep it short, so I've only said "3 common mistakes in affiliate marketing". Now, let's see what's this article about.. First of all, I want to say that affiliate marketing is an effective and powerful way of making some bucks online. The programs that allow you to join and get paid commissions for the work you do, are attracting more and more people in starting their own journey as affiliate marketers. The reason behind this, it's because it are easy to join, implement and are paying some nice commissions on a regular basis.

Till now, everything looks easy and pinky ( meaning stress-free, in this case ). But you have to know that it's not 100 % like that. Like in any business ( either it's an online or an offline one ), there are some pitfalls and some mistakes that must by avoided, in order not to encounter any drawbacks or income losses. As you may have guessed, the list should be long. But today, I'm only going to mention the 3 most common ones. Here we go..

1. The wrong affiliate program. I know you want to start making money from affiliate marketing and this is why you may be tempted to sign up for the very first program that you find. My advice is not to simply join the "bandwagon". If some of your friends, fellow marketers or fellow bloggers joined a certain program, this doesn't mean that you should do the same. Also, even though that program may be right for your friends, it may be inappropriate for you.

You have to do some research before even thinking to choose a product or service to promote, as affiliate marketer. It's very true that if you select the product which appeals you the most, you'll have more success with it and you'll make money, than if you'd choose a product just for the sake of earning money.

2. Too many affiliate programs. Most of you will say now "What's wrong in joining many affiliate programs and having multiple sources of income?" Well, nothing is wrong in that and you are right: you can earn more money quickly and from many sources, not just one, if you want to sign up with a lot of programs. But if you'll just keep on joining program after program and start concentrating on promoting all of them, instead on taking care of the most important ones, then you'll risk wasting your time with those less profitable programs. Also, your earnings may not be the ones you're expecting ( which can be disheartening for some of you ). You'll even end up saying that "this program sucks" or "that program sucks" or that affiliate marketing sucks, when it may not be like that. It's always better to first join only one program and take a "test drive". If you've managed to earn some money with that one and the results are good, then you can join a second one, a third one, a fourth one etc.

3. The last, but not the least mistake is not buying the product or not trying the service you recommend to others. If you really are serious about making money online as affiliate marketer, then you have to show people ( and potential customers ) why should they buy the product or sign up for a service you are promoting. If you haven't used them and you're just recommending them because "you've heard that are the best", then those potential customers may not want to try them. Of course, you can't simply test every product or service and then go and tell people it are the best..it's impossible. Instead, talk about the ones you've already used. Give a short review about "that product" or "that service" and show people the benefits of buying or signing up for them.

For example, if you promote a hosting company, then write a short review about it, highlighting the benefits and the features this offers for its customers, such as how much bandwidth and web space it offers, what is the best hosting plan, what are the best offers and deals, in comparison with another hosting company. You can also express your own opinion and even tell your potential customers which hosting plan to choose, what other extra options to include in their hosting plan etc. Of course, in order to do that, you should have tried those things for yourself. This will show people that you're serious and you know what you're talking about, when promoting the company.

It may seem some easy to avoid mistakes, but if you're a beginner in this field, you may not even notice them and you can end up in rather losing profits and wasting time, than making any income. As it is said, time is the key. You have to take some time and analyze your marketing strategies and see if you're on the right track. If you are, then you will start making some money and maximize your revenues.

Plastic Surgery in Beverly Hills

2007-12-13T14:55:00.000+02:00

I was approached by a fellow blogger few days ago to write a few words about his blogs, that deal with plastic surgery information and tips. I know this sounds strange for a make money online blog to talk about medical information, but since this person asked me nicely, I won't going to say "NO".

One of the first blogs I will be talking about is this plastic surgery blog. As you'll see, this is a BlogSpot hosted blog, that has one of the default templates offered by Blogger. The aspect of this blog shouldn't stop you visit it: even though it's a free hosted blog, you won't see any excessive advertising or annoying pop ups and pop unders. Also, it is very easy to navigate, read and find the information you need, about plastic surgery. This blog presents all the types of surgeries that a person can undertake: liposuction, rhinoplasty, weight loss, or any kinds of make overs. The topics this blog is covering are very useful to anyone who wants to find out more about this medical procedures or wants to have one for himself/herself. I'm pretty sure that you're not thinking in having one too and that you're satisfied with how you look now, but I think that you should visit this blog, as you will be able to find out more about plastic surgery and plastic surgeons.

The other blog I will be talking about now is another plastic surgery information blog. Again, this is a BlogSpot blog too, which has a simple, but good design, it's easy to navigate, to read and to find the information and articles you need. Being similar to the one above, this one is also talking about various plastic surgery procedures: men plastic surgery, breast implants or liposuction. By seeing this two blogs, so far I realize that they are actually having the same topic, with some little differences. Both blogs are geared more to women than to men, even though the second blog has some posts about men plastic surgery too.

The third and last of the blogs I will present you , is called simply Plastic Surgery, a cosmetic surgery blog. This one isn't hosted at Blogger, but I believe that it is also a free hosted blog too. Not that this matters too much, but I just wanted to mention that, for people who may be interested in knowing this. The blog I'm talking about know is not just about the medical procedures only. It is also talking about winter-care for the skin, surgery gift cards, plastic surgery blogs and many other interesting topics related to this domain. So, if you're the person who's looking for more info on this topic, then you should visit the above mentioned blogs, as I'm not an expert in this field:)

Top Level Domains vs free domains

2007-12-12T15:09:00.000+02:00

I was wondering which is the best choice for your blog or website: to have a TLD ( Top Level Domain ) or to have a free domain for it? Obviously, most of you will go for the first kind of domain names ( the TLDs ). Even though this type of domains don't come for free, they aren't expensive either and it will help you establish your online presence in a more professional way, than the free domain names. The free domains, on the other hand, will make your blog or website look cheap and unprofessional. Of course, no one should blame you for using a free domain or a subdomain, if you really don't have the necessary amount of cash to buy one for 1, 2 3 or 10 years. Sometimes, it happens to start your online money making journey with very little or no money at all. In this case, buying a domain for your newly created blog/site may not be number 1 on your priorities list. I know what that mean, as this was exactly how I've started with this blog: with zero ( 0 ) dollars budget for promoting it or for buying a domain name.

Now, the situation has changed: I've managed to earn some money with my blog and finally bought a new domain name. It wasn't easy to make this money and it wasn't something that happened in the first 5 minutes, after starting the blogging journey, either. I'm not trying to show off now, but just trying to prove you that if you keep blogging and start earning some money, you can fulfill some of your goals, such as buying a domain name, promoting your blog etc.

Now, back to today's topic..As I've mentioned above, a Top Level Domain is what every site or blog needs, if it wants to stand out of the rest of the pack. Many free hosted blogs are using the BlogSpot or WordPress subdomains, for example ( it was my case also, as this blog is hosted by Blogger ). The problem is, if you want to make some money with your free BlogSpot or WordPress blog and you don't have at least a serious domain name, your income opportunities may be limited. Even though you may have a good Alexa, Technorati or Google rank, you may not be eligible for some money making opportunities, such as SponsoredReviews, Blogsvertise or PayPerPost. Why? Because if you want to make some serious cash with this websites, you need a domain name, as most of the advertisers don't accept free hosted blogs, such as BlogSpot or WordPress.com ones. By having a TLD, you increase your chance to be accepted by this advertisers and start making the money you've always wanted.

If you want to buy a domain name for your blog or website, you don't have to spend a fortune. There are a lot of domain registrars that offer cheap domains, such as NameCheap.com or www.GoDaddy.com. I got my .info domain name from NameCheap, for $4.88 for one year. Of course, you don't have to get your own domain from the same place like me. This is why I recommend you to do a little research and see what registrar suits you best and then go ahead and buy your domain. Also, I must warn you that you have to avoid the registrars that are asking you a whole lot more money for a domain, than the ones I've mentioned above. Or else, you may end up paying as much as $35 for a .net domain name, for example.

But if you don't have the necessary amount of money to get your own domain name, there's no problem. I have nothing against sites or blogs that are hosted free and use free domain names ( such as co.nr or .tk ), as long as this free domains aren't having excessive advertising, pop ups or pop unders, that can cause long delays in the blog's or site's loading time. As you can see, free domains aren't actually that free. They do come with a catch and sometimes with a lot ads, to pay for their use. Also, there are TLD domains that are given away for free, but you can encounter the same problem as with the free domains. Plus, you're never sure what will happen with that domain name, as long as you can't control it. My recommendation is: if you don't have enough money, go for a free domain. Once you manage to earn some money online, go and buy your own customized one. You may lose your PR, your Alexa and Technorati ranks, but once you get them back, you will be able to start making some serious cash with your blog/website.

Feeling lucky? Then play some poker

2007-12-11T18:42:00.000+02:00

You already know that there are a lot of ways to start earning money online and there's no need to remind them again. But maybe not all of you are attracted by the idea of creating a blog or website, promoting it, monetizing it and waiting to make some cash. And some of you may even like to earn some really quick cash, without having to take the above mentioned steps. It's your choice after all and by no means will I force you to earn money in a way you don't like. So, what's the money making opportunity I'll talk about today? This website is called MacPokerOnline and, as you can see, it's about poker.

If you're the kind of person who's looking for a way to earn big cash in a short period of time or you're just interested to visit a well-put together website about poker and find out how to become a better player or what are the latest games and technology in the world of gambling, then you've came to the right place. MacPokerOnline.com is offering you a variety of games such as Pacific Poker, Full Tilt Poker, reviews ( like the one about PokerStars ), poker bonuses and casino bonuses. You can immediately tell that the owner ( or owners ) of this poker portal have put in a lot of work, by gathering together the best resources about this game. The design of the website is excellent, the navigation menu is correctly placed and very accessible and it is easy to find the information you need, either it's an article or a review about a certain poker site.

I've visited their "Poker Articles" page and saw some very interesting ones, like the one about how to play blackjack, from which I quote the following lines:

"Blackjack has gained popularity amongst casino players due to its simplicity, speed, and excitement. However, blackjack is also played largely for fun.

There are various strategies of playing blackjack, each developed by the each individual player. While deciding a "winning" method, always refer to the methods used in casinos.

Basic Rules

The most elementary rule of the game is to obtain 21 or as close to it as possible without exceeding and defeating the dealer’s hand. However, prior to the dealer dealing in any cards, a player must lay a bet. This can be done by placing the chips or money in the designated area on the Blackjack table. The dealer distributes two cards to every player and lastly to themselves. One of dealer's cards is laid face up and the other face down. All the face cards (Kings, Queens, and Jacks) carry 10 points. The Ace is worth either 1 or 11 points (based on what value benefits you the most). The remaining cards have a value equal to that of the card. E.g. the 2 of spades is worth 2 points."

If you're interested in reading more about this game, then you should visit MacPokerOnline, as you'll find more articles and resources about poker and other online casino games. This is an website recommended to all casino fans and players, being the right place and the most comprehensive portal I have ever seen.

Google is for sale?

2007-12-10T19:28:00.000+02:00

I know that this article would rather be appropriate on a news blog or on a tech blog, but I consider that this is an important information, so I have to share it with you. Plus, I don't think it's off-topic at all, since it's about Google ( yes, again I'll talk about them :). So, what's this article about and what I'll tell you about the big G ( Google )? Something you don't know yet? If you want to find out, just read on.

The story starts like this: long time ago, I've subscribed to a Romanian news site, called Wall-Street.ro. They send various newsletters on a daily basis, with lots of interesting news, such as local, national or international events, shows, persons etc. As you see, it's not a site about making money online. Even though I run a blog on this topic, earning cash online is not my only interest. A couple of days ago ( 1 or 2, I don't remember for sure ), I've received a news from this site, with the following headtitle: " The Russian billionaires Abramovici and Deripaska want to buy Google." Now that's an interesting news to read.

As I couldn't resist not open this email, I went to read more about this possible deal. It is said that Roman Abramovici and Oleg Deripaska want to acquire the American company Google, for about 10 billion dollars. But who are this 2 Russian billionaires? Some of you may know who Roman Abramovici is: the owner of Chelsea FC, the well-known football club from United Kingdom. Besides this, he also has some other businesses, such as oil wells etc. As about Oleg Deripaska, I've never heard about him. All what I've managed to find out is that he appeared in "Forbes" Magazine and his personal wealth is estimated at about 16.8 billion dollars. Roman's wealth is estimated at 18.2 billion dollars, and he also appeared in "Forbes", being ranked as the 11th rich guy of the world.

For now, neither Roman Abramovici or Oleg Deripaska, haven't confirmed or denied that they would like to buy Google. Also, the 10 billion dollars price seems to be a bit irrelevant for the real value of the big G, as Facebook for example ( a company created by Mark Elliot Zuckerberg ), is valued at 15 billion dollars. We can't say for sure if Google will be bought by the 2 Russian billionaires and when it going to happen, but it is pretty interesting to see what will be the end result of this "let's buy Google" story. Of course, I don't think that the owners of this well-known search engine will simply give their company away for "just" $10 billion. As I mentioned before, things are not clear right now, it's more like a rumor.

Nevertheless, this remains a hot topic and if I'll see any updates coming from Wall-Street.ro, I will let you know about it. Now I wonder: when Google will be a Russian company ( if this will ever happen ), how will we thank them for upgrading our blog's or site's PR, for example? Something like "Thank you, Google!" or "Spasiva, Google!" ( meaning "Thank you, Google!", in Russian )?

3 things needed in affiliate marketing to survive

2007-12-09T16:42:00.000+02:00

Who doesn't want to start making some money online? Just show me one person that doesn't want that..I think you won't find one. You know that every day, millions and millions of people are surfing the Internet, looking for various type of information, news, articles etc, about the things they're interested in, such as stocks, finances, movies, music and so on. Most of those people are looking for ways of earning a few bucks online. As you know, there are lots of websites, programs and opportunities that promise you to make you rich. Most are just scams and you'll waste your money and time with them. But there also honest opportunities, that will make you money. I'm not talking about earning millions per month, but rather making a good living.

One of the ways to start your journey to a better financial status, is affiliate marketing. What is an affiliate? An affiliate is a person who's selling other people's or companies' products and receives a commission for that. Why would a company want to use affiliate marketing? It's kinda simple: that company may not have much resources of promoting its products or it simply wants to spread the word about the products or services it offers, faster. So, the company implements this marketing strategy called "affiliate marketing": it allows people to sign up as affiliates, it helps them make money and it also helps itself, by spreading the word much faster, as I've said above.

There are a lot of companies and websites that are offering you the opportunity of earning money online, by being their affiliate. All you have to do is to find the right companies and start promoting their products or services. But in order to do this, you first need 3 important things as an affiliate, if you want to survive online. So, here it are:

1. Use unique webpages for every product you promote. It's just not right and very unprofessional to simply throw on a single page all the products and services you sell as an affiliate. Also, I wouldn't recommend you to place only banners on your site or blog, without mentioning something about those products. If you want to make some sales and to earn money, then write some short reviews about all the products and services you promote, to let people know why this will be good for them. Inform people about the benefits of a certain product or service and show them that it worth giving it a try. It's not nice to force someone to buy from you, if he/she doesn't wants to. Instead, try to convince them nicely and he/she may want to close a sale.

2. Give your readers free reports. Try to position this reports at the very top side of your pages, so visitors can see them clearly. Also, you can create some autoresponders and send any information, tips and advice about the products, to the visitors who'll sign up to receive them. Researches show that a sale is usually closed after the 7th contact made with the potential buyer.

3. The third and the most important thing you need as an affiliate marketer who wants to make money online, is traffic. You know that you can't make any sales without it. Of course, in order to make sales, you need targeted traffic. It's absolutely no use in wasting your time with untargeted visitors, who simply come to your blog or website, take a very quick look at what you have to offer and then leave, without even being interested in your offers. You can use various ways in bringing targeted traffic to your blog or site: Google AdWords, Bidvertiser, AdBrite etc ( if you want to use pay per click ads ), article writing and marketing, social bookmarking websites, forums etc. But I believe that the fastest results are given by the above mentioned pay per click advertising networks.

So you see, it's not that simple to start making money as an affiliate marketer. But also, it's not impossible either. Lots of people are earning money this way every month. As I said in the beginning, affiliate marketing may not make you rich, but it will help you improve your financial status. Good luck!

15,000 dollars for what..?

2007-12-08T16:31:00.000+02:00

You may have heard that Kumiko, from CashQuests, sold her blog a few weeks ago. It was a blog about making money online and other various and interesting topics. The guys who bought the blog are those from IEntry.com. They've paid Kumiko $15,000! In my opinion, that's a very good amount of cash. I'm pretty sure that she can start a network of blogs and make lots of money from it, now that she has $15,000. Of course, she can do whatever she wants with that amount of cash, it's her choice.

I must say that I've visited the CashQuests blog several times, before and after it was sold to IEntry. Before, there were a lot of useful and comprehensive articles, the blog was designed as it should be and it wasn't cluttered with pesky ads and huge banners. But now, the situation has changed very much. It seems that the guys from the company mentioned above are now experimenting various monetization methods on the blog, because when I've seen the blog last night, I thought that they have turn it into a huge advertising page: there were some 160x600 wide skyscrapers on the left sidebar and about another 2 enormous ad banners on the right sidebar. Besides that, there were no new articles posted. The blog looked so unprofessional with all those big ad banners and I really closed my browser window pretty fast, as I couldn't stand seeing them. I have nothing against monetization ( especially that Kumiko's blog was about making money online ), but what I've seen was a bit too exaggerated.

I wonder what those from IEntry are planning to do with the new blog they bought: keep it as it was, a blog about making money online, or they will convert it into a company's blog? I have no idea for the moment, but I would recommend them to do something useful with it and not to make it just a dull advertising platform ( I know, I know, you'll say that I have no right to tell IEntry how to run its businesses, but I'm not the kind of guy who'll just start telling that "Let me show you how to run your own blog" crap. It's not what I intend to do. Instead, I'd rather give them some constructive criticism, to let them know that not everybody will like to see a boring blog..at least, not me ).

This makes me wonder "$15,000 for what...?" Why did they paid that big amount of money to get their hands on Kumiko's blog, if they're intending to practically make it boring? I mean, 15,000 "yoyos" ( to quote JohnCow ) is a lot. I wouldn't sell my blog for such a sum, if I would know that those who'll buy it, will ruin it a bit ( or more ). But I would sell my blog to someone who's interested in continuing my work ( He shouldn't necessarily be an expert, as will not look to sell the blog to a guru. But, once you are able to pay me a considerable amount of money ( like it happened with CashQuests, for example ), then I expect that person to know what he/she wants ).

So, as conclusion, I believe that Kumiko's blog will start losing its popularity over time ( if it didn't started already..). But if IEntry takes action and keeps the blog's niche and starts to improve it some more ( I don't know if that's the case, but they may want to do that ), then the blog may remain popular or will start to regain its popularity. Only the time will tell...

You're a spammer

2007-12-07T20:43:00.000+02:00

Not, it's not about a certain blog, website or person that I caught it spamming my blog. It's about me..yeah, you read that correct: I'm a spammer. I haven't been accused by someone for spamming his blog or for leaving spammy ads. But who did said that I'm a spammer, after all? First of all, let me ask you something: When you say "Blogger.com", with which big company are you associating it? What's that? Google, you've said? Then you're right. Google owns Blogger.com ( hell, it almost owns the Internet! ). So, to get back to the initial question, who said that I'm a spammer? You tell me:) It's pretty obvious: Google.

Indeed, Google marked my blog as a "splog" ( splog stands for spam blog ). The good thing is that the blog wasn't deleted from Google's indexes, and it still appears in SERPS ( Search Engine Results Pages ) when you look for it. The bad thing is that it was blocked by Blogger's staff and it couldn't be visited by nobody. This is why I apologies to all my readers and visitors for the fact that the blog wasn't available for a while today. It wasn't my fault, nor someone else's. It just happened to be mistakenly marked as a spam blog.

To tell you the truth, I didn't even had any idea that my blog was blocked for this reason. I woke up today at 11:30 AM, turned on my computer and then started my daily online routine: I've checked my emails, my earnings, visited a couple of blogs, forums etc and then I've signed in my HiStats account, to see how many visitors came to my blog until that hour, since last night. Once I saw the stats, I've noticed something weird: today's stats were indicating zero pageviews and zero visitors. At first, I've thought that something happened with the stats or that my blog counter wasn't working. It happened once before, so this wasn't something to worry about. Then, I've logged out of my account and went to college, as I had classes today.

When I came back home, I've logged in to my Histats account again, to see if now the numbers were modified. Guess what: No modifications, no visitors, no pageviews, no nothing. Now I've said to myself "What the heck is going on?". So, I've decided to see if there wasn't something wrong with my blog. I've typed in my browser window its URL and hit "Enter". I was surprised to see an error page ( you know that Blogger error page, that says something like " This blog does not exists " or whatever..). I didn't panicked, as I knew I haven't deleted the blog. Next, I went to check my Blogger.com account.

I've logged in and saw that this blog was moved at the end of my blogs list ( I have 2 more blogs, one that bears my name ( Tiberius Burciu ) and another one that was my first Blogger blog about making money online, that I've started it in August, but only posted about 10 articles, before this one was born ). Usually, the blog you read now it's placed between my personal blog ( which is the first in the list ) and my first blog ( which is the last ), in that list. This time, it was moved down the list .

I've tried to click it and check the settings, but I couldn't. Then, I've noticed a little orange question mark near its title and a hyperlinked text below. I first clicked the little question mark, to go to Blogger.com help section. There I saw why my blog couldn't be edited or seen by nobody: it was marked as spam. I asked myself: "Spam? Since when is my blog considered a splog? It makes no sense..." After reading the help file, I've returned to my "Dashbord" and clicked that hyperlinked text, typed in a verification code and sent my unblock request to Google. They mentioned that, if I don't receive an email from them in 20(!) days, then my blog was deleted.

Fortunately, that email arrived pretty fast and I've read it, to see what Google has to say about my blog. As I thought, they made a mistake:) There was no spam content here, so they apologies to me " for any inconvenience" that it was caused by their blockade. So, here I am, back in business again:D I'm one happy blogger:) Your apologies are accepted, Google:)

Need a shopping cart software?

2007-12-06T17:18:00.000+02:00

If you've decided to start an online business, like an e-store for example, the you need a professional ecommerce software. Without it, you can not offer your customers a reliable service and good shopping experience. So, it is highly probable that you will not succeed with your shop. This is why it's better to look for a trusted shopping cart provider and to take advantage of their offers. Shopping carts are not expensive softwares, only that you need to know where to get one at a reasonable price.

Here comes AShopCommerce, one of the providers I was mentioning above. They have a variety of plans, created to suit and fit the needs of any online store owners. The first plan they are offering is called "Starter" and it comes for $69 per month. What you get: fully customizable storefront, hosting, built-in design themes, webspace ( 50 MB ), bandwidth ( 5GB/month ), daily store back-ups, sales reporting and many more. The second one is called "Advanced" and it includes all the features of the "Starter" plan, but it offers more webspace ( 100 MB ), more bandwidth ( 10 GB/month ), more products can be included in the shopping cart ( up to 1000, instead of just 500, for the "Starter" plan ). The "Professional" plan has similar features with the other plans, only that, again, you get more webspace, bandwidth, more products can be included in the shopping cart ( up to 2000 ), than for the previous 2 plans. The last plan is called "Enterprise" and I do believe that it was created for very big e-stores, because you get: 1000 MB webspace, 50 GB/month bandwidth, and the shopping cart can hold as much as 5000 products! Of course, if you want a better plan, you have to pay more, too. The "Advanced" plan will cost you $89/month, "Professional" - $179/month and the "Enterprise" plan will pull no less than $349/month out of your pocket. But if you can afford to pay that much for a shopping cart software, then it means you really earn serious cash with your store. As you see, it doesn't come cheap, but if you're serious about starting an online shop, then you need the right tools.

AShopCommerce.com is offering you a 10 days trial, to test their software, without having to pay anything. If you're satisfied, than you can go ahead and sign up for the plan you find most suitable for your business. Also, they offer other optional services, not just shopping carts: logo design, flash animation, search engine submission and optimization and many many more other useful ones. You must visit the site yourselves, if you want to see the whole range of products and services and the list of prices. AShopCommerce - your shopping cart provider.

Could you help them?

2007-12-05T16:59:00.000+02:00

I was reading on JohnCow.com 2 days ago, about 2 young boys that are trying to raise some money ( actually, a lot of money ), to gave them to their uncle and aunt, so they can adopt a kid from China, named Bin. It looks like the aunt and uncle of this 2 boys really want to have this child adopted, but they do not have the money for paying for adoption. They need about $10,000 to get this Chinese boy into their lives, in USA. The 2 young boys managed to raise almost $3000 until now, through various fund-raising activities, such as selling candies and brownies etc. But they still need $7000 to reach their goal.

Who are this 2 little boys? As I've read on their site - www.boys4hire.info - they are David and Jack Hogg and are 6, respectively 2 1/2 years old and live in Charlotte, NC, United States. David and Jack are very eager to raise all the money needed for the adoption of Bin, which will be their "12th ( and last ) cousin" as they say ( lots of cousins they have: ). Bin is a deaf child, meaning that he can't hear what others are telling him, but he can "speak" very well through sign language. The whole family wants to have him, even though he has this disability. They love him and want him very much.

So, David and Jack decided that it is time to start raising some money for the adoption. After they've completed some fund-raising activities in their hometown, they've thought of going online and they've created the above mentioned website: Boys4Hire ( with the help of their parents, of course ). The site is pretty simple: it has an "About" page, where you can read about this 2 "young entrepreneurs" and their will of raising money for Bin's adoption. Also, the site has a "Guestbook", where you can leave your thoughts about their initiative or some words of encouragement, and a blog. All they want is to help them reach the $10,000 goal, by donating as low as 1 dollar. Of course, you can give them more, but that's the minimum amount set by them.
The donations are made via PayPal.

If you'd like to help them and give them a buck or more, or if you want to know more about David and Jack, then you should visit their website: www.boys4hire.info. PS: John Cow said that anyone who's donating money to this kids, will get a linkback to his blog and his personal "Thank you" note, in one of his posts, this month. What about that?

EntreCard gives you free traffic

2007-12-04T20:47:00.001+02:00

In case you haven't heard about EntreCard, then let me explain you what this is and how it works..and most of all, how this can bring some new visitors to your blog ( for FREE! ). Yes, you've read that right: free advertising for your blog. I know you like freebies ( so do I and most of the people you will ask ). I was visiting some blogs yesterday - JohnChow.com, EtienneTeo.com, JohnCow.com - and I saw that all this blogs were displaying a 125x125 widget, from the above mentioned website: EntreCard. I already knew about the fact that this new advertising concept can bring you free traffic, but until yesterday, I haven't tested it. This is why I've decided that it's time to sign up and get my own widget ( you can see it on the left side sidebar, in the "Drop your card" box ).

The sign up process was easy, fast and free. In just a couple of minutes I was having the account set up and the widget already embedded in my blog's sidebar. As a result of using the EntreCard widget yesterday, my traffic increased with about 20 visitors more than my usual flow of traffic ( which is 50 ). So, I received a total of 70 visitors, which is pretty close to the target I want to reach: 100 visitors/day. Now let me tell you a bit more about this interesting advertising method and how you too can start bringing some visitors to your blog..

First of all, you have to go to EntreCard.com and sign up for a free account. When you're on the sign up page, insert all the data needed to create your account, such as user name, password, email, blog description, blog category, URL, and a 125x125 banner. If you don't have such a banner, you can select some standard ones, offered by EntreCard ( also for free ). When you're done, complete the sign up process, by clicking on the "Sign up" button at the end of the registration form. Once the account is active and you've placed the widget on your blog, you can start earning some points. This points are used as a "currency" for paying for advertising your blog on other blogs. The more you have, the more days you'll be able to advertise on a certain blog.

How do you obtain this points? It's simple: every time you drop your EntreCard card on another blog, via the widget, you get 1 point; every time someone else is dropping you their card on your blog, you get 1 point, plus you can receive points when another blogger is advertising his blog on yours. There are a lot of categories where you can list your blog, in the EntreCard listings: from art, to fashion, or from internet marketing to making money online. Just select the right one for your blog and start exchanging cards with other fellow bloggers. You have the ability to accept and reject the advertiser. So, if you don't want that a certain blog to appear in your widget, you simply reject it. You can have as many as 9 advertiser accepted to show up in the widget. Once the spots are full, anyone else interested in appearing in your EntreCard widget, will have to wait until one of the advertisers ends its campaign.

The EntreCard widget loads very fast and it is not slowing down your blog's load time. Also, it's not taking up too much space in your blog's sidebar, so you can rest assured that it won't alter the look of your blog in anyway. If you're interested in exchanging cards with other bloggers and receiving some more traffic to your blog, then feel free to visit the EntreCard website. My opinion: this is better than BlogRush ( at least, that's my case :).

Free Adsense websites

2007-12-03T19:47:00.000+02:00

Even though I've been banned from Google Adsense's publisher program, that doesn't mean I won't be talking about this topic no more. It's true, I will not going to sign up for another AdSense account, just to get banned again next time I generate "invalid clicks or impressions". But, as I said before, I will still talk about AdSense and give advice and tips about this money making opportunity. Today, I would like to tell you about a place from where you can get some free Adsense websites: Free Adsense Sites.net. What are this sites, in the first place? For those who don't know, are a good way of earning some monthly checks from the Big Daddy Google ( now I hope you really love me, Google:). It are made especially to be used along with Google ads, and to bring you some good income. As you'll see by visiting the above mentioned, the respective websites are not having complicated designs or don't use any tricks to make you money, but it are rather simple, yet very effective.

Yes, it are very effective in bring you money, if you use effective tactics to bring some traffic to them. If not, you may not be able to earn too much from them. So, how can you grab such sites?
First of all, you have to go to Free Adsense Sites.net, choose the site you'd like to download, then sign up for a free account. After you become a member of FAS ( Free Adsense Sites ), you can download your website, edit some HTML pages and then upload it at a free or paid host and start making some money with it. Don't get scared about the words "edit some HTML pages", as you don't have to create the site yourself. It's already created for you, the only thing you have to do is to insert some Google Adsense ads in it.

Once you're done with this step too, all that is left is to get as much traffic as you can to the site, so you can start earning those checks you're dreaming about. I know that you to receive as many visitors as possible, but remember that you have to play fair. DO NOT promote your Adsense website via autosurf websites, FFAs ( Free For All pages ), or any other way that it is against Google's TOS ( Terms Of Service ). By doing so, you will be banned and you will lose all the money you've earned till then. And you wouldn't like this to happen, right?

When you sign up for Free Adsense Sites website, you're allowed to chose only one website from the list that it is available on the site. There are 6 Adsense websites, covering 6 different topics, such as: mortgage advice, fitness guide, credit cards, beauty guide, Xbox guide and ID fraud. You can get more free websites if you refer more people to this site. When you do this, you will get some points. This points can be used in the "Market Place" to get new Adsense websites that cover other interesting and useful topics. Also, you have the opportunity to get 50 more free websites if you sign up for a special hosting offer, at Host Gator. Believe it or not, this offer states that you will get a hosting package ( the "Baby" hosting plan ), for just $0.01/month! So, you can have your sites up and running on Host Gator for just 1 cent. If you do not have a domain name to use for your sites, then you have to buy one ( you can use a free domain for your sites, but it is recommended to get a TLD ( Top Level Domain ), if you want to stand out from the rest ).

So, with just a small investment, you can start raking some serious cash from Google, by using this AdSense websites, ready-made for you. For more details about AdSense sites and how to set them up to make money for you, please visit Free Adsense Sites.net. Enjoy your membership!