Extra Cash Challenge

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels - The Best of The Rest

2009-11-06T00:33:00.000Z

Now that I have reviewed my top five survey panels, I thought I would give a mention to a few others that I like. I apologize for the UK bias to this, but this is where I live and I can only review from my own experience:

Panelbase
Panelbase offer a consumer related surveys for which you are rewarded in cash. Payout is at £10 which is paid directly into your bank account. The only downside is that surveys are not that frequent (monthly on average). They are one of quickest panels to payout - you will receive your money within 7 days of requesting it.

YouGov
YouGov is an international survey panel who offer surveys based on political opinions, social attitudes and views on various brands. Rewards are in the form of cash, although some are for an entry into a prize draw. Surveys are rather infrequent (monthly on average).

Opinium

Opinium is a UK based survey panel that offers short surveys on politics and social issues. Surveys are usually monthly on average.

One Poll
One Poll is UK based panel and is quite unlike any other survey panel that I have ever come across. The surveys are very short - they are always on a single page so you can see how long they are before you start. The rewards are in cash, although very small for each survey. Having said that there are new surveys daily and it only takes a couple of minutes per survey. They are generally based on a variety of social attitude type topics, so more interesting than the usual consumer related ones.

Monthly Total for October

2009-11-01T11:53:00.000Z

This month has been considerably better than the previous few months, although I am still not making as much progress as I would like. I feel that I have lost a little momentum with my internet marketing efforts - I had hoped to get another couple of campaigns up and running, but I have not achieved this. I started one; I identified my niche, found some great keywords, but then realised that I know nothing whatsoever about the subject. I am happy to learn, but in my present stlightly de-motivated state the learning curve is just too big. I will come back to it I think but I need to do some serious reading first. I have now identified another niche which I feel more comfortable with and made a tentative start.

It is frustrating that I have not yet had a payout from Clickbank as I have not satisfied the payout criteria - you have to make at least five sales with at least five different credit cards. I have made the required number of sales but some of these have been paid with Paypal which they don't count for meeting payout criteria.

Also I have managed to be distracted by (a) changing the template of this blog (which did need to be done) and (b) playing with Twitter and exploring money making opportunities there - not made anything yet!

I have also got back to selling a few things on Ebay which has boosted my total - not great timing though with the postal strike!

So, here are the totals for October:

Private advertising: £40.86/$67.50
Quickpenny: £26.23/$43.33
Squidoo: £2.94/$4.93
Ebay: £30.55/$50.47

Total = £100.58/$166.23

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels #5 - Ipsos

2009-10-31T21:59:00.000Z

Ipsos is another of my favourite survey panels. Ipsos Mori are a respected and well established consumer research company so you can be sure that the survey invites that you participate in are genuine market research. Invites are sent by e-mail and, as you have the opportunity to sign up all members of your household, will be targetted towards the most appropriate person to complete. They tend to focus on consumer issues, so they are generally seeking your views on a particular brand, or on a new product, or an advertising campaign, and so on.

The surveys are generally well put together and, unlike most other panels, if you lose interest in the survey, or your PC crashes mid survey, you can usually come back later and complete it where you left off.

In return for completing the surveys you are rewarded with points which you can then trade in for gift vouchers. The only down side is that real money is not an option for your rewards, but there are wide range of vouchers available.

Ipsos is an international panel and available in many countries around the world.

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels #4 - Toluna

2009-10-25T23:21:00.000Z

Toluna is different from most other survey panels in that the site allows you to register to test products at home. Once you have tested the product you are invited to give your opinion. The site also has a community element to it in that there are polls you can vote on and submit your own polls if you want to.

But, as for the surveys, I receive these almost daily, although I do get screened out of many of these. For each survey you will receive points which you can ultimately trade in for a range of shopping vouchers. The surveys are varied, but usually consumer related but cover a wide range of topics from movies to toothpaste! The main downside is that you do not have any option to receive cash. I personally trade my points in for Amazon e-vouchers which I then put towards our Christmas fund.

Toluna is available to residents of the US, Canada, the UK and most of Europe.

New Extra Cash Challenge Twitter Identity

2009-10-23T20:34:00.000+01:00

I have been using Twitter for a while and I am only really just getting the hang of it. However, it has occurred to me recently that my tweets appear somewhat random as I dabble in various areas and have several RSS feeds automatically sending tweets for me. So as a part of my current re-development of Extra Cash Challenge I have decided to create a separate Twitter identity dedicated entirely to making money online and to this blog.

This new identity is @XCashChallenge. By following me on Twitter you will catch the very latest in what I am up to. Anyone following me, I will follow back!

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels #3 - New Vista

2009-10-21T21:40:00.001+01:00

New Vista, formerly known as It's Your View, is a UK based survey panel. They offer a variety of consumer market research and lifestyle surveys which are easy to complete. Sign up is easy, but restricted to residents of the UK. Although they are not an international panel I have included them in this series because they are one of the best paying - they say that they pay £1 per approximately five minutes spent. This better than most other panels, although the down side is that the payment threshold is £50, so it takes a little while before you see any of your money. Surveys are also not as frequent as many other panels (I receive around two surveys per month), but the rate of screen out is much lower.

With all surveys you need to exercise care in completing them. However, with New Vista you need to be particularly careful as they include some questions to check out just how much care you are taking. If your answers conflict with each other then you will not receive your reward.

I think that New Vista are well worth doing surveys with as the rewards are that much higher than other panels.

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels #2 - Global Test Market

2009-10-17T23:13:00.000+01:00

Global Test Market are an international survey panel who offer regular market research surveys for which you are rewarded with Marketpoints. Once you reach 1000 points you can trade them in for cash - each point is worth $0.05, so 1000 point is $50. The surveys are mixture of views on products, advertising and movies. Like most survey panels you can expect to be screened out of many of the surveys you are offered, the difference here is that you will still receive 5 points if you are not eligible - not much, but it all counts.

Signing up is easy. There are a number of short profiling surveys on the site which they say helps match you with surveys. To be honest, I don't know how much difference these make, but I try and keep mine up to date anyway.

You will be sent your survey invitation by e-mail and it is just a case of clicking on the link. Alternatively you can log into the site and access them from there. When you redeem your points you will receive your payment by cheque converted into your local currency, although it this can take several weeks to arrive.

I have found Global Test Market to be one of the most reliable survey panels around and survey invitations are very regular.

Working on a New Look for Extra Cash Challenge

2009-10-14T00:02:00.002+01:00

I have come to radical decision that I no longer like the template that I did have. The reasons for this are:

It takes too long to load
Too many other people have the same template
I didn't like the look of the sidebars.

I wanted something that is clean and simple, and much easier to navigate. I couldn't find anything that I liked to download, so I have been trying to make one myself. I am not nearly clever enough to make one from scratch so I have taken the Blogger Minima template and have been modifying it with the help of template hacks that I have found on various blogs. I am still playing with it at the moment so at the time of writing you will see that most of the links across the top don't go anywhere and the sidebars are a bit empty. I am trying to avoid unnecessary clutter so I will thinking through carefully what will be going in.

You can see what I have been playing with on my experimental blog.

Reviews of the Best Survey Panels #1 - Review of Lightspeed Surveys

2009-10-08T22:48:00.001+01:00

I thought I would start my series of reviews of the best survey panels with Lightspeed. OK, so I have reviewed them here before, but it makes sense to cover them within this series as I have found them to be one of the best. Signing up is straightforward, and then you will soon start receiving surveys. The surveys you receive are genuine market research, generally asking your opinions on existing products, new product ideas or on advertising.

You will be informed of new surveys by e-mail, but you can also log into the website to see what surveys are available. On the website you will also see minipolls for which you are entered into prize draws (no, I have never won anything!) and short match surveys which help to match you with future surveys.

For each surveys you will be rewarded with points - unlike most other survey panels you are credited with these points instantly. You can then trade in the points for gifts or cash via Paypal. If you choose to take the cash option, there is a very low payment threshold (here in the UK you can cash your points at just £1) and you will receive your cash within 7 days.

Lightspeed is an international panel and is open to participants from many parts of the world.

Can You Really Make Any Money From Suveys? The Good, Bad and the Ugly of Paid Surveys

2009-10-05T00:00:00.001+01:00

For many people, taking online paid surveys is their first step into the world of making money online. Well that's how it was for me anyway. It has to be said that people have a range of experiences with survey panels, some good, some bad, and some positively ugly! So, what does doing paid surveys involve anyway? Well, in order for companies to understand what the views of consumers (that's you and me!) are, what they want, how they might view a particular new product idea, how they view particular advertising, etc. they need to go out and ask them. If they fail to do this and try and guess what the consumer wants, then there is a good chance their product will fail. Paid surveys are one way thay these companies can achieve this, and achieve it quickly.

The good thing for us is that it gives us the opportunity to make a little extra money, although often the rewards are not paid in cash but in vouchers or gifts. However, you should not expect to make vast sums from these surveys - most pay between $1 to $5 per survey. You may see ads suggesting you can make a living from doing surveys - all I can say is that this has not been my experience. And I belong to a lot of survey panels!

Most survey panels are about legitimate market research. These panels operate strict privacy policies and will not share your details with anyone and are not concerned with selling you anything. Some survey companies are actually more concerned with selling your details on to fill your inbox up with spam. There are also a few companies that present themselves as legitimate market research, but are actually about selling you stuff.

My Tips for Checking Out a Survey Panel

Read through all the information on the website to check whether they are actually concerned with market research.
Read the Terms and Conditions carefully
Carefully read the Privacy Policy - if you see the phrase "we may share your details with trusted partners" (or somthing similar), then avoid.
Read reviews of survey panels.

Although I am not doing as many surveys as I used to due to lack of time, I still do them and they still bring in some useful extra cash. Personally, I think that it is certainly worth doing surveys for bringing some extra money, just don't give up the day job!!

I am intending to review the best survey panels (and couple of the worst) that I have used over the coming weeks. The experiences that I will describe will be mine and mine alone, so if you have a different experience then please leave a comment to let me know.

Monthly Total for September

2009-10-01T19:04:00.000+01:00

September has been another pretty poor month in terms of what I have actually received. I have made a couple of affiliate sales, but have not yet met the payout criteria for Clickbank or other affiliate programs that I registered with. Here are the totals anyway:

Surveys: £5 (Just the Answer)
Squidoo: £0.90
Private Advertising: £4.87

Total = £10.77 (or $17.19)

Pretty disappointing really. I am still working to my plan and I am hoping it will start to pay off soon. At least I know I will beat that total in October - I have made more than double the September figure today!

Formulating A Plan: Working Towards Niche Sites

2009-09-26T21:22:00.002+01:00

If I have learned anything about Internet Marketing it is that it is important to have a plan. That's all very well of course, but what plan?! I have been using One Week Marketing as a starting point over the last couple of months, but I have been thinking about where to go from here. I am keen to move on to putting together some Wordpress niche sites and was considering using my existing One Week Marketing campaigns as a launchpad for these sites. However, my existing campaigns are fairly undeveloped so I don't really know what will convert and what won't at this point, so there is a danger of devoting a lot of time developing a niche site only to find that I cannot attract sufficient visitors, or I get visitors, but no buying visitors. So I have decided to develop my campaigns further on Squidoo etc to really test them out before moving on to niche sites.

So, here is my 3 step plan:

Set up 10 One Week Marketing campaigns.
Go back and improve on each campaign - improve my Squidoo lenses, write more articles, increase monetisation options if appropriate, get in more backlinks, etc.
See which campaigns are converting and set up Wordpress niche sites using the OWM campaigns as a launchpad.

Between improving campaigns I will be seeking out more potentially lucrative niches to start more campaigns. I am currently up to my 7th campaign so I am looking forward to moving on to stage 2 soon!

So, what's your plan?

Have You Been Trying to Contact Me?

2009-09-22T23:50:00.002+01:00

I have noticed in recent weeks when checking my stats that a number of people have clicked on my "Contact Me" tab, but nothing has been arriving in me e-mail inbox. So I thought I had better check that it was actually working - and I discovered that it was not!! So I have now changed my provider and the new link does now actually work. In case you are interested my new provider for the Contact Me form is FormSpring who offer free forms or you can upgrade to a paid version for additional features.

So, if you have tried to contact me within the last four weeks or so and had no response, if you would like to propose a link exchange, if you want to buy advertising on Extra Cash Challenge, if you want to request to write a guest post.......or if you just want to so say hi, then click on the Contact Me tab at the top and fill in the form.

Get Paid to Search the Internet: Goodbye Scour, Hello Swagbucks!

2009-09-16T21:55:00.003+01:00

For the last few months I have been using Scour to search the internet. The deal was for every search you did you earned points. You could also earn extra points for voting and commenting. And then, without any warning, the points system has been abandoned this month. There is no option for cashing in the points that I had earned so far, which is really quite annoying. They say that this is so that they can concentrate on improving the search experience.

As a result of this I have abandoned Scour in favour of Swagbucks. The way Swagbucks works is that every time you search the internet you have a chance or winning points, known as Swag Bucks. These can be traded in for various prizes (including vouchers). I have to say that it is much quicker and results are more relevant than Scour anyway, so Swagbucks is definitely my search engine of choice. After all, what can be easier than getting paid for doing what you do anyway!

How Changes to the Ebay Partner Network Policy May Affect You

2009-09-12T22:38:00.004+01:00

There have been a number of changes at the Ebay Partner Network recently, but the particular change that I am concentrating on here is that you are no longer able to display Ebay ads on websites that are not your own. This change actually took place a few months ago, but I have to admit it passed me by. I did read something about it on an e-mail from HubPages, but didn't really take much notice. Then after doing a bit of research at Squidoo I realised there was a problem.

So here are few examples of sites that are affected:

Squidoo - you should no longer put your own Ebay affiliate RSS feed onto your lenses.
Qondio - you should no longer add Ebay ads
Infobarrel - the site have already removed Ebay ads

If you have your own Ebay ads on Squidoo or Qondio, or any other site that is not yours, then you need to remove them now. If you don't then you risk being removed from the Ebay Partner Network!

These are not affected:

Squidoo - Squidoo's own Ebay affiliate module is not affected and you should continue using these.
HubPages - The Ebay affiliate module is not affected.

So far I have not made any money at all from being with EPN, but this is basically because I have not yet utlised it much yet. However, I plan to incorporate these ads to a greater extent as I expand my affiliate empire. But more about that on another post...........

Monthly Total for August

2009-09-01T22:19:00.003+01:00

It has become a tradition at Extra Cash Challenge at the beginning of each month for me to review my online earnings over the previous month and to look at my mission to create on-going online earnings. My self-imposed rules are that I only post the earnings I have actually received - this is as a result of the fact that I have learned that there are occasions that I have "earned" money never to actually receive it. Likewise, due to thresholds for payment, there are some earnings that it may well be some time before I actually get to see any of it. Adsense is a good case in point where at my current rate it will take me another 3 year before I will see any of this! I am working on increasing my Adsense income, but you get my point.

Anyway, to this month's earnings. This month's earnings have been.......(drumroll please).....ZERO!! That's right, nothing, zilch, nada, zip, nowt!!!!

This makes this month officially my worst month since I started posting my online earnings!

This does not mean I haven't earned anything. On the contrary, I have continued to earn from Adsense, I have done a few surveys, continued to get decent traffic to my Squidoo lenses and Bukisa pages, I have clicked on some paid e-mails and (most importantly) made a few affiliate sales. Unfortunately, only one of my affiliate sales gave me a decent commission, the others were really very small. But, nevertheless, this is the most sales I have made in a single month. There are also a few payments pending which I hope to receive shortly.

So, (working on the "glass half full" principle) not all bad news then!

How Can Web Directories Help Me?

2009-08-20T09:39:00.003+01:00

The primary purpose of the internet is to provide information, but it has become an increasingly crowded place where both finding the right information and content providers ensuring that they are found by the right people has become an industry in itself. Whether you are someone looking for information or providing it, web directories can help you. If you are a provider of content by having your own website or blog then a business web directory provide all important links. Many directories can provide you with good quality links, substantially improving your visibility to search engines. Not only that though, they provide another means by which you can be found.

If you are searching for information then a web directory provides a good alternative to search engines. Of course, unlike search engines, you will not be searching the entire web to find what you want, but this may be a good thing. Also, unlike search engines, web directories are hand edited so this can lead more focused results.

The number of directories has expanded enormously over recent years, and it is true that they vary enormously in quality. Some directories will simply list sites according to category, whereas others will provide more information to assist you in finding what you want. The most well known and most established are Yahoo Directory and DMOZ. Getting you site listed in DMOZ (which is free) can be notoriously tricky as each submission is hand edited and the editors are quite picky about which sites are included. However, the value of the link is very high when seen by search engines, so inclusion is invaluable. Some other directories may be less choosy, but the value of the link is substantially less.

So, if you have a website it is likely that you will be looking to increase traffic and visibility then web directories could part of the solution to this particular problem. After all, without traffic, what's the point?

Squidoo Alternatives #10 - Xomba Review

2009-08-14T19:32:00.005+01:00

Continuing my series of alternatives to Squidoo (i.e. sites where you get paid to write your own content and where you have the opportunity to link to your own site) brings me to Xomba. I signed up with Xomba months ago, but never got around to doing anything with it. So I thought it was about time that I checked it out. There are 2 types of content that you can post. The first they call a Xombyte, which is an article about anything you want to write about. The second is a Xomblurb, which is a review about other sites, much like social bookmarking sites except that you are expected to write at least 50 words.

The interface is straightforward enough - basically just a blank box to type into. There are no fancy modules or anything here. The earning ability from Xomba comes from Adsense which you share with the site - 50% of the impressions are yours. The good news, however, is that you can use affiliate links on Xomba so there is some potential to use Xombytes for internet marketing. The downside is that links are nofollow so will not be of great value to you if you are looking for get more links to your blog/website to increase Page Rank.

Overall, Xomba is worth putting some effort into as an opportunity to gain a bit more Adsense income (although the 50% revenue share is a bit low) and their pages rank very well. The fact that you can use affiliate links is a definite bonus.

Here is the definitive list of alternatives to Squidoo

Earnings for July

2009-08-02T10:18:00.006+01:00

This month has been pretty poor again really. Remember though that I only count what I have actually received, so I have continued earning over the month, but this won't show up in the way that I count it. Here are the figures anyway:

Surveys: £6 (£1 - Opinion World, £5 - That's What I Think)
Blogrolled: £2.96
Blogsvertise: £2.96
Private Advertising: £3.27
Ebay: £6.96

Total = £22.15 (or $37.02)

I am not expecting August's earnings to be any better really, especially as I am away for the next week. However, I am working to a longer term plan that I really hope to start paying off in 2 to 3 months when I hope to be earning a reasonable amount in affiliate income. The challenge, as ever, is how to use my limited time effectively. All suggestions welcome!

Qassia is Dead! Long Live Qondio! - With Even Better Revenue Sharing

2009-07-30T23:53:00.005+01:00

The revenue sharing site, Qassia, has been going through some changes recently. Most notably its name - it is now Qondio. Why the name change? Well who knows! I have reviewed Qassia previously, but just to remind you what it is about, it is (yet another) site where you can add your own content and you can earn from a share of the advertising revenue generated by your content.

It has a slightly different look about it now - the rather dodgy washed out pink has been replaced with a rather more tasteful olive green. As a result the site just looks that much better.

The real change though is in the revenue sharing model. It has always been the case that 100% of the revenue generated by the ads on your Intels (the name they give for your content pages) and on your profile page is yours. However, now you can specify which ads you want to display - so you are not limited to Adsense, you can put in the codes for whatever ad network you like! Setting it up is a little bit fiddly to begin with (it is all done via uniQlicks) but once this is done you don't need to touch it again. The only downside is that you can't seem specify different ads for different Intels - or not as far as I can tell anyway. So you will need to find ads that work with any content rather then being content specific.

So far I have only briefly dabbled with Qondio, but with these changes I definitely intend to put more effort into creating more Intels and hopefully making some money from them!

Squidoo Alternatives #9 - Infobarrel

2009-07-14T21:43:00.005+01:00

With the changes in Squidoo's policies this seems like a good time to have another look at what alternatives are out there. I signed up with Infobarrel several months ago, but never got around to doing anything with it. So, mostly with a view to getting more links to various projects I thought I would look at it again. The site allows you submit your own content (it has to be original content) in one of four formats:

Blank article template - basically a blank page to fill as you like
Video article - page that contains a video. This can contain several videos
How-to article - step-by-step article describing how to do something (much like e-How)
Review Article - review of product, service, movie, etc.

If you are stuck for something to write about there is a long list available of suggested titles, although it has to be said that some of these are quite obscure.

The money making aspect of Infobarrel is from Adsense and Ebay's partner program - basically 75% of the impressions are yours.

You can include include links within your articles and it would appear that these links are do-follow, so valuable for promoting your website, blog, etc.

But...... you cannot include affiliate links within your articles. Or that is how I read the terms of service anyway. This is what is says:

"........InfoBarrel will remove from the Materials any links that link/refer to advertisements or any other content of promotional/advertising nature. "

This obviously limits its usefulness in terms of internet marketing - it may provide useful links into a Squidoo lens, or to a niche site, but no opportunity to directly market products.

Overall, I like Infobarrel. It has a good look to it and the templates give a range of options, and the "How-to" template is a particularly good one for quickly writing a structured article. I am intending to use it more to gain more links to my blogs and maybe to some of my Squidoo lenses, and to niche sites when I get to the stage of constructing them. And, of course, to boost my Adsense and Ebay Partner income!

Here is the definitive list of alternatives to Squidoo.

Internet Marketing in a Recession

2009-07-07T13:15:00.003+01:00

With few signs of the current recession coming to an immediate end, inevitably sales to internet marketers will be hit. But does this mean that we should shut up shop and wait for things to get better? Or do we just carry on as if nothing has changed?

Market trends show that people are still spending money, but instead consumers are more interested in getting back to living a more basic and frugal lifestyle and, ironically, are willing to spend money to help them achieve this. People are also looking to decrease their impact upon the environment, whether this should be reducing their energy usage (and cost) or through buying products that are more environmentally friendly.

Clearly then, there are opportunities here for the savvy internet marketer to capitalize on these changing trends. So in order to maintain sales there needs to be a change of emphasis.

A further trend is in relation to those people who suddenly find themselves out of work and looking for ways to generate an income. The make money online niche is severely overcrowded already, so to try and gain a foothold here is somewhat challenging. However, there are various other work from home type niches and product that have less competition and could meet the needs of people in this situation.

So, the recession doesn’t mean the end of internet marketing. It means that you need to adapt.

Interestingly, I heard the other day that the sales of champagne are on the increase! I have no idea what that means.....

Total Earnings for June

2009-07-02T23:47:00.003+01:00

Earnings for June have been a little disappointing, mainly because I have been focusing on the longer term rather than grabbing quick cash. Here are the figures (only including money I have actually received):

Surveys - £20 (Home of Research)
Blogsvertise - £5.94
Squidoo - £0.61
Ebay - £16.62

Total = £43.17 (or $70.55)

Not great really. I don't expect July to be too much better as the kind of activity I am focusing on should gradually increase income over time and unlikely to produce quick results.

My Thoughts on Squidoo Policy Changes: How They Affect You!

2009-06-26T21:51:00.009+01:00

If you are a Squidoo member then you will probably aware of the impending policy changes due to take place in July. If you haven't read them then you can find them here.

This a very brief summary of the changes are as follows:

No porn.
Limit of 9 outbound links to a single domain.
No lenses on junk topics.

I have no problem with the no porn rule - not that I am prudish in any way, I just don't feel that it is good for the site's credibility.

Also the new outbound link rule I don't see as a problem - I think that 9 links to a single destination is enough for any page.

Where I struggle is the junk topics issue. I can see that there is a need to clean up Squidoo and that lenses that are nothing but sales pages with no useful content do nothing for the site, and probably don't help Squidoo's rankings with the search engines. I tend to work on the principle that if you are using Squidoo for affiliate marketing then you need to provide useful and entertaining information, after all people do not search for sales pages. It is about "pre-selling" - i.e. giving people some of the information that they are looking for, and then pointing them in the direction of where they can find more, or buy a product in keeping with the subject that you have been talking about.

However, the policy changes refer to junk topics and lists the following as examples:

Free movie downloads.
Hoodia Gordoni.
Acai berry reviews.
Toenail fungus sales.
LoseBellyFat!
Pharmaceuticals.
WoW gold farming.
Forex reports.
Adult content.
And on and on.

To me, this list is somewhat ill-defined. How do we know what is, or will become a junk topic? I would imagine most of our lenses will be just fine, but I know that a few of mine may just fall into the junk category.

So, what should you do?

Well, here are my suggestions:

Review your lenses
Check your outbound links and amend as necessary
Do your lenses lack original and useful content? - if so amend accordingly
Does the subject of your lens fall into the "junk" category - consider amending, deleting or exporting your content elsewhere.

What are your options if you want to export my content elsewhere?

Consider one of the many alternatives to Squidoo, but bear in mind they all have their own policies, most of which are stricter than Squidoo's new policies, so check carefully.
Build your own niche website - your best option is build a site with Wordpress. There are, of course, cost implications for this in respect of web hosting and domain names. Alternatively, you could use one of the free website builders such as Google Sites or Yola - hosting for these sites is also FREE!

So are the changes a good thing or a bad thing?

I think that there is currently a lot of junk on Squidoo with little or no useful content, and this can only be harmful to the site's credibility and to its authority as seen by search engines. Overall, I think that the changes are a good thing. BUT, I for one would like more clarity over what constitutes "junk" subjects.

So, what do you think?

My Today.com Account has Been Disabled

2009-06-20T00:38:00.005+01:00

Back in January I started a blog on Today.com, thinking that blogging on a paid network might bring in some easy cash. I always fancied the idea of having a political and current affairs blog, so I thought this was an opportunity to do that and make some money along the way. And so, Comments of a Nobody was born. The first month I was to be paid $1 per post and then after that it would be adjusted according to how much traffic I was receiving. Unfortunately, because I submitted my blog feed to Zimbio, I was caught out by the duplicate content rule and therefore many of my early posts were not accepted for payment.

Then, as I was not attracting much traffic the payment rules were changed to $2 per 1000 visitors. As a result of these two factors I became rather less inclined to write posts. Also, another factor was the topic I had chosen - to write decent posts, even short ones, required a lot of research and thought, and consequently, a lot of time.

The e-mail I received does give me the option to resurrect my account, but after much thought I have decided to let it go. Comments of a Nobody is still there, I just can't add to it nor will I earn anything from it - although I will benefit from the backlinks to here and some of my other projects. The moral of this is that there are only so many hours in the day and you simply cannot do everything.