Scraping Pennies http://scrapingpennies.com Tight budget. Audacious goal. Full Transparency. Tue, 13 May 2008 22:59:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 en 1956372http://www.feedburner.com Creating Redirects for Affiliate Links http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/creating-redirects-for-affiliate-links/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/creating-redirects-for-affiliate-links/#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 22:30:04 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=15 You may have noticed already, but I use redirect pages when I link out to different programs. Some of those programs are affiliate links, but not all of them. I will use these redirect pages for almost all the links out for advertiser programs, for three main reasons.

Reason 1: Protecting affiliate links

Not all the links are affiliate links, but some are. Affiliate links are often formed in a way that the affiliate information is easy to derive from the address. These parts can easily be stripped if someone doesn’t want you to receive the commissions that are associated with that. While I don’t like it when people do that (it won’t make it cheaper for you in any way), I don’t care about the people who do it. I care about the software that does that.

There is malicious software out there that hijacks affiliate links, stripping my affiliate-id and replacing it with the id of someone else. This is what I really don’t like, because the intentions of the visitor are good, but they and I are harmed by someone with malicious intent.

As far as I’ve been able to find this happens by software on the visitors pc. But there are also reports about hacked websites, where files and links have been replaced. Serious stuff!

Reason 2: Central Link Management

The outbound (affiliate) links are all placed inside a nice little folder on my server. If a program decides to change the structure of their affiliate link (I know TLA did this once) I can simply go to that folder, modify the appropriate file and all my links are okay again.

This is also a benefit in case you might want to sell you blog at one point. Not all affiliate accounts are transferrable, and for the ones that aren’t you (or the new owner) can simple replace the affiliate links in the redirects and the entire archive of posts links to the new affiliate id. Easy as pie!

Reason 3: Easy Opt-Out

It’s feasible that I change my mind about a program, or have other reasons to not wanting to link out to a program any longer. In that case I can easily replace the redirect page, with another page with the same name, explaining all the reasons why I don’t promote that program anymore.

It’s the easy opt-out. I want out, but I don’t want to go back through all my articles to find where I linked to that particular program (would take hours). I simply replace it with another page (which would take minutes).

How to create a redirect

There are several methods to choose from, but there are two methods that I will describe here:

  • Meta refresh
    This method uses the meta-tag in the header of the HTML file to redirect to another page. It uses client-side redirects (in other words, the internet browser does the work). This method has been abused with malicious intent by spammers and is discouraged by search engines. But it works.
  • .htaccess redirect
    This method uses the .htaccess file on the server to redirect pages to another address. This method uses server-side redirects, which means that the internet browser doesn’t even notice it. This method is pretty safe, but only works on Apache servers.

Meta Refresh

This is not really hard to do. What you need is a simple text editor and FTP access to your server.

Step 1: Open the text editor, and copy paste the following template in there.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<title>[INSERT PAGE TITLE HERE]</title>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
<script>window.location="[INSERT AFFILIATE URL HERE]";</script>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url=[INSERT AFFILIATE URL HERE]">
</head>
<body>
<p align="center">You are being taken to the correct page.
<br>If the page does load after 5 seconds,
<a href="[INSERT AFFILIATE URL HERE]">click here</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

Step 2: Insert the correct links and save.
Replace the [INSERT … HERE] placeholders with the appropriate content. After that save the document as a .html or .php file.

Step 3: Upload the file to the server
Start your FTP-program (I use FileZilla) and upload the file to your server.

Step 4: Link to it.
That’s it, now use that link instead of the original link. You could even add the rel=nofollow attribute to the link to tell search engines that they need not follow the link (but a lot of them do it anyway).

.htaccess redirect

Editing the .htaccess file can make your website inaccessible if done incorrectly. Always make sure you have a back-up of the current version of the .htaccess file, to go back to a working version.

.htaccess is a file on Apache servers. It’s a very powerful tool, but often requires rather detailed technical knowledge to edit. Thankfully it’s not that difficult for the purpose of redirecting pages on server level.

Step 1: Check for existing .htaccess
First you need to find out whether you have a .htaccess file already. Start your FTP-program (make sure your program shows the .htaccess file), browse to the root of your domain and look for it (it’s usually on top of the list). If it’s there, download it. Make sure to make a back-up of the current file!

Step 2: Edit it to add redirects
Open the .htaccess file in a text editor and add the following lines to the file.

# Temporary redirects for affiliate links
Redirect 302 /[subdir]/[filename] http://example.com/?id=12345
Redirect 302 /[subdir]/[filename] http://example.com/?id=34567
# End of affiliate redirects

Now replace /[subdir]/[filename] with the right link, and replace http://example.com/?id=12345 with the address you want to send your visitors to when they click the link.

Make sure you use a temporary redirect. The status code 302 tells the other server that the page is redirected temporary, and that they should not update their addresses to the new address.

For example, for my e-junkie affiliate link this looks like this:

Redirect 302 /go/e-junkie.php http://www.e-junkie.com/?r=11261

Step 3: Save and upload
Upload and overwrite the old .htaccess file on the server.
Again make sure you have a back-up of the old version before you do this!

Step 4: Link to it.
That’s it, now use that link instead of the original link. It doesn’t even matter if there’s a file or not on the original location.

If you’re using WordPress as your (self-hosted) blogging platform, you could also use Joost de Valk’s plugin Robots Meta to edit the .htaccess file from within the WordPress admin interface.

Again, use caution with this file. Make sure you have a copy of a working version and ftp-access to your server in case things go wrong. An error in the .htaccess file could effectively deny you access to the WordPress Admin interface. In which case you’ll have to replace the erroneous file with the back-up through FTP.

Recap

Redirecting your affiliate links is not a sneaky trick, it’s a legitimate way to protect yourself and your visitors from the effects of malicious software that targets those links. Using the .htaccess method is preferred, because it’s not discouraged by search engines.

Nothing is entirely safe, because there are always ways to hack a site. But using this method, you’ll eliminate that 80-90% of causes. If you make sure you protect your .htaccess file properly too, you’re well on your way to being safe.

While I may be hiding protecting my affiliate codes, Scraping Pennies still gives full transparency about it. That’s what this blog is all about, making money online and showing how I do it. Subscribe now, to stay on top of tricks and tips like these. It might just make you a couple of pennies, heck a dime even!

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/creating-redirects-for-affiliate-links/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fcreating-redirects-for-affiliate-links%2F Monetization Policy for Scraping Pennies http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/monetization-policy-for-scraping-pennies/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/monetization-policy-for-scraping-pennies/#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 14:47:40 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=14 This is only a small post now, but I will expand it as a page later on.

My aim is to give full transparency on Scraping Pennies, and I call upon you to ask me questions when things are not clear. One of the main things I’m disclosing right now, is the monetization policy. In fact it’s pretty short and simple:

“If it can be monetized, it WILL be monetized. Unless…”

The “Unless…” part is my escape. It’s a highly subjective part, and I will define it along the way, as I encounter situations in which I choose not to monetize.

This can happen for instance when terms and conditions prevent me from giving any transparency. There are some advertisement programs who state that you can’t disclose any part of their service. Text Link Ads for one, has a service that has this condition. I declined it, because it goes against the spirit of Scraping Pennies.

On the other hand I know Google Adsense prevents the disclosure of some metrics in their program. While this doesn’t give full transparency, the amount of transparency I can give is enough to align with the aim of Scraping Pennies.

I can also imagine that there are opportunities that clash with my personal values and ethics. I don’t want to promote scammy, spammy, sneaky and shady activities. In those situations I will go with my gut feeling and report my decision here as well. Scraping Pennies is as much about what I do to make money online, as it is about what I choose NOT to do.

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/monetization-policy-for-scraping-pennies/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fmonetization-policy-for-scraping-pennies%2F Weekly Income Report - 2 http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-2/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-2/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 08:27:48 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=13 Every week on I will report on the performance of this blog. Target is to give full transparency on money and hours spent and money earned. DO ask questions if things are not clear.

This week I invested hours, not money. This caused an increase in the money/hour figure, but only fictional. There’s no money inflow, so I’m only diluting the loss with hours. It’s still a loss at a little less than $1 per hour. This week I’m setting out strategies, and I’m probably going to invest some money.

Key Performance Indicators

Earn / Burn rate (this week): $ 0 / hour
Earn / Burn rate (cumulative): $ 0.96 / hour
Cumulative hours spent: 19.25 hours
Cumulative result: - $18.51

Money spent

I did not spend any money this week. I mainly put in hours, using free resources. Check the credits page to see what resources exactly.

Money earned

Nothing…yet.

Hours spent

  • Technical: 0.75 hours
    • Creating hoplink pages
  • Creating Content: 3.75 hours
    • Three posts
    • Credits page
  • Design: 10.5 hours
    • Browsing free themes
    • Finding and editing images
    • Changing the design in CSS
  • Monetization: 1.5 hours

Total hours: 16.5 hours

Budget status (this week)

Balance (start): $181.49
Cash In: $ 0
Cash Out: $ 0
Balance (end): $ 181.49

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-2/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fweekly-income-report-2%2F Advertiser Networks vs. New Blogs http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/advertiser-networks-vs-new-blogs/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/advertiser-networks-vs-new-blogs/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 21:15:40 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=12 A small new blog applying at giant advertiser networks. It’s really a tale of David and Goliath. Although David’s chances in this match-up are far slimmer than in the original.

Advertiser Networks

There are several advertiser networks that will match advertisers to publishers (bloggers and other people with websites). They have the advantage that they have a bigger mass than the average blog on the internet and are able to publish advertisements to a much larger audience than a single blog can do.

They are the middle men. Now the term middle men may bring up all kinds of negative feelings, but that’s not necessary. Sure they get take a (large) cut of the advertisers paycheck, but they do provide the service of finding advertisers. Or of advertisers finding them, but that’s kind of like the same thing. Advertisers will not find you if you’re a small new blog, like Scraping Pennies is right now.

Signing up as a new blog

Last night I tried to sign-up for three rather well known advertiser networks:

Text Link Ads
Text Link Ads sells text links in several forms and shapes. As links in a sidebar, beneath a single post, in RSS feeds, or even within the content of a post. Google isn’t particularly fond of them, but advertisers are. So for Making Money Online it’s an interesting alternative.

Signing up was easy. The account was set up in a matter of minutes, but that doesn’t mean you’re taken into the inventory of publishers automatically. TLA reviews the submissions (mostly automatic I assume), and it didn’t take long (less than 24 hours) for the rejection to hit my mailbox. As a consolation I’m enrolled into the affiliate program. Yay! I’ve got a banner now.

ReviewMe
ReviewMe is a site that pays you for writing blog posts with reviews about blogs, products, books, services and more. You’ve got the liberty to choose what you review, so you can review the things you like and discard what you don’t. That is…if you’re allowed into the program :)

They let me fill in all the forms, and declined my application automatically and instantly. Not enough traffic and inbound links (that’s not surprising). “Try again in a few months.” Okay, that’s not nice! I understand it of course, but please let people check their eligibility before they fill out the forms! Or wait 24 hours before telling them like TLA does. That at least gives the appearance that you gave it some thought.

And why is there no affiliate program?

Kontera Content Links
Kontera provides a system that scans your content live to find words that they have advertisers for. If they find these keywords, they turn them into recognizable links. Hover over the links and a small pop-up appears with the site or product from the advertiser. If visitors click on the link inside that pop-up, you’ll get a share of the revenue.

Signing up here was easy as well. But they warn you beforehand that you need to comply with some (not so stringent) program terms. Again, I’m not admitted into the program instantly. They need to review my application. Oh boy. No answer yet, but I can guess what it will be.

UPDATE (2008-05-13): I actually got approved into the program. That was highly unexpected, but a nice surprise nevertheless!

The giants win…for now anyway

I did not expect that I would excite the advertiser networks with my new unknown, but soon to be very famous blog. I mean, they probably get a lot of applications like this on a daily basis.

The reason I applied for the networks so early was to report the experiences here. When you’re starting out as a new blog and you intend to monetize, you should focus on getting traffic and links. This little experiment just showed you why.

No traffic and no links, and they drop you like a brick. So it’s time to create some buzz around Scraping Pennies!

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/advertiser-networks-vs-new-blogs/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fadvertiser-networks-vs-new-blogs%2F Why The $200 Budget to Start With? http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/why-the-200-budget-to-start-with/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/why-the-200-budget-to-start-with/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 14:19:59 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=10 You might be wondering why I chose to start with a $200 budget, instead of starting from scratch with no budget at all, without a penny to scrape with in the first place. Well, there’s three reasons why I chose to start with a budget (and damn good ones too).

1. Commitment

The fact that I put in money is a token of commitment. If I quit, I’m at a loss. A tangible loss. $200 is an amount big enough to do some nice things with, and as such is big enough to make it a loss I can feel. After all I could’ve bought an Apple iPod nano 8GB, or six seasons of the series 24 on DVD, or the first three seasons of Lost and $100 change. Or I could’ve treated my wife and myself to a very luxurious day at a Spa-resort, including hot stone massages. Get the picture?

That $200 makes things more real, and make sure that I take this experiment serious. It makes sure that the psychology of investing money is helping me to succeed, or at the least to persist.

2. Brand and Web Presence Continuity

The budget enables me to build a brand and have continuity in web presence from day 1. Having my own domain with affordable hosting simply costs money. But because the blog remains in the same address from day one, every link you get stays in place. There’s a lasting presence on the web, and every effort you put in building the brand adds to the value of the brand.

And a strong brand and a strong web presence increases the likelihood of getting a nice price for your blog, in case you decide to sell it one day. Of course, that’s totally out of the question for Scraping Pennies for now. We’re just starting, but it’s good to know that every effort adds to the total value of the brand.

Of course there are free domains and free hosting, they’re widely available even. But they either show ads that don’t earn YOU money but them (the hosts), have terrible performance (and most of the times both!) and generally have a very amateuristic image. And as soon as you start to get serious, you want to move to your own domain and start building your web presence from there (again).

3. Kick-Starting The Earnings Curve

Making Money Online is not new, there are more blogs about it. And there are many systems and tools that you can use to earn money. Some are free, but a lot of them are not. Having the $200 budget makes sure that I can decide on buying a tool or entering a program, that can help me earn money faster. But the budget is tight enough to make sure I take deliberate decisions, instead of impulsive ones.

The $200 budget will help to skip the pennies stages of the Earning Curve as soon as possible and speed ahead to the dollars stage of the curve. After all, my intention with Scraping Pennies is not to scrape pennies ;) I intend to get past that stage, and by disclosing everything it’s going to be an interesting case study on how making money online is done.

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/why-the-200-budget-to-start-with/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fwhy-the-200-budget-to-start-with%2F Weekly Income Report - 1 http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-1/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-1/#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 21:18:44 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=4 Every week on I will report on the performance of this blog. Target is to give full transparency on money and hours spent and money earned. DO ask questions if things are not clear.

Key Performance Indicators

Earn / Burn rate (this week): $ 6.73 / hour
Earn / Burn rate (cumulative): $ 6.73 / hour
Cumulative result: - $18.51

Money spent

  • Domain registration (GoDaddy): $10.19
  • Hosting May Deluxe Plan (GoDaddy): $8.32

Total spent: $18.51

Money earned

Nothing.

Hours spent

  • Technical: 2.5 hours
    • Domain registration
    • Setting up hosting
    • WordPress configuration
    • Feedburner integration
    • Google Analytics integration
  • Creating Content: 0.25 hours

Total hours: 2.75 hours

Budget status

Balance (start): $200.00
Cash In: $ 0
Cash Out: $ 18.51
Balance (end): $ 181.49

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]]> http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/weekly-income-report-1/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=ScrapingPennies&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fscrapingpennies.com%2F2008%2F05%2Fweekly-income-report-1%2F Welcome to Scraping Pennies http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/welcome-to-scraping-pennies/ http://scrapingpennies.com/2008/05/welcome-to-scraping-pennies/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 18:26:13 +0000 Lode http://scrapingpennies.com/?p=3 Welcome to Scraping Pennies!

Chances are that you’re reading this post, even before the launch of this blog. In that case you’re reading in an RSS reader, and have subscribed even before the official launch. Wow!

So to give you a sneak preview of what you can expect from Scraping Pennies, I’m going to share a part of the upcoming about-page with you guys and gals.

So tell us, what’s Scraping Pennies?

The name Scraping Pennies means “to be poor; to earn very little money”. And face it, a lot of bloggers are doing just that. Earning very little money. And if it would be the only source of income, yeah we would know the meaning of poor! We would be scraping pennies to make ends meet.

Scraping Pennies, the blog, is an experiment. But not a casual experiment, it’s serious business. The concept is to start with a tight budget of $200. The goal is to get to a four figure monthly income as soon as possible, and beyond. And what’s going to be remarkable is that I will give FULL TRANSPARENCY.

That’s right: Full Transparency.

I’ll give an overview every week on Sunday with:

  • Money spent in full detail (how much, on what, why)
  • Money earned in full detail (how much, from what source)
  • Hours spent (how many, on what, why)
  • Income per hour - weekly
  • Income per hour - cumulative
  • Balance statement (how much is left / did I make from the $200)

And more, if that’s needed to give full transparency.

I’ll write about strategies, about the various methods of making money online and more. You’ll also be part of my frustrations (I know they’ll be there), my failures and mistakes (they’ll be there too) but you’ll also be part of my successes and the times I just got lucky. I hope that the latter two are more frequent than the first two of course.

This blog will launch on May 14. The budget is too tight to start with give-aways. But if you’re among the first 50 to comment on this post, I will make it worth your while when this blog takes off.

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