single mom earning online

Making money online with single mom earning online

2010-09-30T15:48:00.001+08:00

Welcome to single mom earning online dot com!!!

My name is Eve and I'm a stay at home working mom where I share what I know about legitimate work from home opportunities, legit data entry jobs and other available free jobs online through freelancing, free to join affiliate sites and programs, making money blogging tips and more.

My blog is not about how to make tons of money online fast nor provide free easy way to get rich. Instead, it's all about providing you good information about the different ways to earn money online that you can try. Together with my honest recommendations based from either my own opinion, experience or judgment regarding the free money making sites and work at home programs.

So, if you've been asking the questions, "How can I make money online?", "Where can I start earning money for free?", "How can I get a job online?", then I really hope that you'd find my earning online tips and ideas helpful.

How to start making money online?
Check ways to earn money online to see your different options.

Are you new to making money online?
Check my Frequently Asked Questions about earning money online to help you understand some of the most common things.

Where to find all the posts I've made?
Check my blog archive on the left side to see all the posts I've made from October 2009 up to present. Just simply click on the arrows to see the titles.

WARNING: BEFORE USING ANY OF MY ARTICLES
what is plagiarism

Help and support single mom earning online through these simple ways...

Share my earning money online tips to others. If you like any of my money making tips and find it helpful, you can easily share that with your other friends on twitter or facebook. Just click on the widget around the right side of my blog. Its really easy.

Become a follower of single mom earning online. Want to show you love me (or maybe just my blog... hehe)? Well, you can simply do that by following my blog. And if you have a blog as well, I'll post your badge or link at my recent supporters' section.

By the way, don't forget to bookmark my blog and thanks for visiting...

Last day for my $75 blog post contest

2010-09-19T01:09:00.002+08:00

I have been extremely busy last week due to the projects I got. A reason why I wasn't able to visit back to those who are nice enough to keep dropping by my blog and wasn't able to even reply to the comments I get. =(

But, I will try to do those this week, hopefully. hehe

Anyway, today is the last day I'll be accepting entries to my contest. So, if you haven't joined my contest yet, feel free to do so. Basically, you just need to create a simple blog post about my sponsor. If you have many blogs, you can make an entry for all of those, giving you more chances on winning something. To learn more about the current contest, you can check out my $75 blog post contest for diamondearrings.org.

I'm really drained right now, but I'm still happy to get some nice projects and hopefully things keep getting better. It also made me realized how unhappy I am with my current template. haha I just never get contented with how my blog looks like. And its often a challenge to whip something nice but still considering too many things such as page load and other stuff. But anyway, I'm surely going to be changing it and will post about the new cool stuff I learned lately. I was even thinking on making a custom design template giveaway. Though, I'm still not sure about that.lol And for the pending blog awards I got, I'll be posting that as well this week. Promise! hehe

How to earn money at Microworkers.com?

2010-09-04T23:48:00.000+08:00

Microworkers.com is where you'll get to find little assignments to work on and earn money from.

It's like a little freelance site in my opinion. Though the difference is that, you don't really need to make a bid. You can also choose what task you only want to take. And from the available tasks, you can simply accept the work right away, complete the assignment, then submit your work for approval.

Types of assignments you'll find at Microworkers

Available tasks you'll see at Microworkers vary differently depending on what the employers are asking. You'll get to find easy tasks such as a simple sign up, become a fan at their facebook account or twitter. Others ask for a blog comment or forum post. There are also some asking for an ad post at Craiglist. Overall, there's really a lot of different tasks you'll see in there where some assignments take only a few minutes to do and others take longer to finish. So far, the highest paying assignments I see are for creating a blog post (normally, requiring at least around 50 words) where you can get paid around $1 to $2.

How many available tasks are there?

Available tasks at Microworkers sometimes range from 100 or more. This is from my own account. I believe the number of available tasks still depends on what country you are based. I'm not sure, but I think US based members get more tasks available for them compared to international members.

Minimum payout

The minimum payout in Microworkers is $9.

How to cash your earnings at Microworkers?

Once you reached enough money at Microworkers, you can now request to withdraw your earnings. But, before you could cash out your earnings at Microworkers, you'll have to key in a pin code that they'll be mailing you once you request for your first payment (just like when you sign up for a Google Adsense account). This is why its important that you put real information when you first sign up for an account with them such as your name and mailing address.

After receiving their mail, just key in your pin to verify your account.

How much money can you earn from your referrals?

At Microworkers, you get a bonus of $1 for each referral once they get to reach their first $25 earnings at the site.

Check other types of get paid to sites where you can earn money from
get paid to sites

How to earn money at Squidoo.com?

2010-09-04T23:15:00.000+08:00

Squidoo.com is an establish site where you can create and publish articles online. You can choose whatever topic you'd like to create. And the pages you create with squidoo are called lenses.

You can make money through revenue shares or by other affiliate partners and also earn money from your referrals.

I know Squidoo is a really cool site, especially for those who love to write. But unfortunately, due to lack of time again, I haven't been able to really give some time to my Squidoo account. I haven't even publish a single lens in there, but will be trying to find time to do that in the near future. When that happens, I'm surely going to blog more information about it here.

Anyway, if you have some time and you're someone who loves to write, you definitely have to try checking out Squidoo. And this isn't just for earning money since Squidoo is also a great way driving additional traffic to your blog.

How to start at Squidoo?

After signing up for a free account, you'll have to think about what your lens is going to be about. You can make a lens about making money online or whatever topic that you really love writing about. The more articles you publish, the better chance you'd get with earning money from your Squidoo lenses.

How much money can you earn from your referrals?

You get to earn $5 for every referral who signs up and gets to reach their first $15 earnings with Squidoo. So, its also best that you try to guide your referrals on how to make money at Squidoo.

Minimum payout

The minimum payout at Squidoo is $1. But, from your profile account, you can actually set your payment settings and change it to $5, $10, and so on and so forth. It's really up to you.

Check other types of get paid to sites where you can earn money from
get paid to sites

You might also be interested on my post...
jobs online for writers

How to earn money at Shareapic.net?

2010-09-03T01:28:00.002+08:00

Shareapic.net is one of the popular get paid to share images around. Here, you can start making money from your photos and even earn a percentage of what your referrals are earning.

You can invite your friends to view your gallery and every time someone views an image (by clicking on it), it is equal to 1 image view. The more image view you have, the more you'll earn money with them.

First few things to do

After signing up with Shareapic, just simply create a gallery. You can create different galleries for different types of images you have. Then, just upload your images to your gallery and start sharing that to others. You can post the uploaded images anywhere such as to forums, blogs, social networking accounts or to other pages on the web.

How much money can you make per image view?

How much money you exactly get to earn per image view varies differently every month. It is being based on how much Shareapic have earned from their advertisers each month and then distribute it to all of its members through calculating each image view to be fair for everyone. So, it always depends on how much the site has actually earned. Though usually, how much you get per image view is quite small. So, you have to try and get your images exposed to others more.

How to increase your image views?

If you have a blog like me, then you already have an advantage. You can post your images from shareapic at your blog and even use those at your blog posts. If you look around my other posts, you'll see that I kept using my shareapic images especially at my tutorials. Recently, I added one image I have with shareapic at my homepage and did get an increase with the number of image views I get. Though its not enough yet at the moment. So, I'll update you guys how everything went in the future.

What to avoid?

They aren't very strict actually. But one thing that you should try avoiding is clicking in your own images. They won't tolerate any cheaters, so be honest. =) Also, when uploading images to your account at Shareapic, be sure that you have the rights to all the images. Any image is fine as long as it’s not offensive by nature or anything that has adult content on it.

Minimum payout

The minimum payout in Shareapic is $20. Once you get to reach that amount, you can cash out your money already.

Check other types of get paid to sites where you can earn money from
get paid to sites

How to earn money at Mypage5.com?

2010-09-03T01:25:00.000+08:00

Mypage5.com is one of the social networking sites that reward its members with money. If you like socializing a lot and meeting new friends, then I'm sure you'll find this get paid to socialize site a nice place to hang around.

You can make money here through various of ways on being active to their site. But, how much you could earn each day is somewhat limited.

Here's the list of how much money you can earn for every action you do, including the limit of each action you can do per day.

Create blog (this is like just opening a discussion): 4cents each

Limit of paid blogs: 5 per day

Blog Comment: 1cent each

Limit of paid blog comment: 10 per day

Upload video: 3cents each

Limit of paid blog comment: 3 per day

Video comment: 1cents each

Limit of paid video comment: 5 per day

Post classified: 1cent each

Limit of paid post: 1 per day

Start topic in a group: 1cent each

Limit of paid topic: 1 per day

Group Comment: 1cent each

Limit of paid group comment: 1 per day

Profile comment: 1cent each

Limit of paid profile comment: 15 per day

Upload photo to album: 1cent each

Limit of paid upload photo: 400 overall

Photo comment: 1cent each

Limit of paid photo comment: 3 per day

Band comment: 1cent each

Limit of paid band comment: 2 per day

Chat reward: 2cents each

Minimum time on chat room to be paid: 15 minutes

What you shouldn't forget during sign up

When you sign up for a free account at Mypage5 and uploads a photo during the sign up, you will be rewarded with $5 just by doing that. So, don't forget to upload your photo during the sign up process.

What I hate about Mypage5?

Well, aside from the slow loading page (which they tried to improve recently), is that they don't allow you to post any links at your profile page. I really hate that cause I'm always taking advantage on posting up my blog's link to all my social networking accounts which I think should really be a normal feature to any social sites.

And while you can earn 5% of what your referrals are earning, I have to warn you that the banners or profile links they'll provide you aren't referral links at all. You won't get any credit if someone joins their site through some banners or links. The only way to get credited for your referrals is by inviting them through email. But overall, Mypage5 is still a legit site.

Minimum payout

The minimum payout in Mypage5 is $25. Once you get to reach that amount, you can cash out your money already.

Check other types of get paid to sites where you can earn money from
get paid to sites

How to earn money at Mylot.com?

2010-09-03T01:23:00.001+08:00

Mylot.com is one of the best get paid to post sites, not just because of the money they reward you with, but also because its really different from other typical paid to post sites. It's like a forum (actually, it is... hehe), but definitely don't have the boring look of it.

You can make money at Mylot through many ways. Below I've listed the different activities where you can earn money from.

Different ways to make money at Mylot

1. Creating a new discussion.
2. Replying at discussions.
(whether its a discussion you originally created or a discussion created by other members)
3. Uploading images along with your post.
4. Accepting tasks.
(you'll find available tasks at the main menu bar named "TASKS")
5. Using the search box.
(This is a recently added way of rewarding their members, but avoid abusing this feature)
6. Referral bonuses.

How to increase your earnings

Mylot never discloses how much they exactly pay their members per post at discussions. But, I usually notice getting paid around one to two cents per post. Though, that's just a rough calculation. Mylot encourages its members to add quality posts to the community. So, one liner comments usually don't get paid. Especially replies that only states, thank you, I agree, and other really short and not so meaningful posts. If you want to increase your chances on getting paid with your posts, try to write longer posts and try to always reply to members who have responded to your discussion.

As for your referrals, you get an equal of 25% of what they are earning through discussions and uploading images. The 25% is not from your referral, but a bonus from mylot. So far, this is my favorite get paid to site I've ever joined.

What to avoid?

Mylot implements a lot of rules, so be sure to drop by their FAQ section (under "Mylot" at the menu bar). One of those, is not allowing members to post referral links at discussions. I see this quite a lot from newbies at mylot where they start a discussion or reply to a discussion and just throw in all their referral links. If you'd like to invite others to sign up under your referral link, Mylot allows you to post all that up at your profile page without any limits at all.

Minimum payout

The minimum payout in Mylot is $10. Once your account have reached that amount before the month ends, Mylot would automatically send the payment around the 15th or 16th day of the following month.

Proof of payment from mylot

Check other types of get paid to sites where you can earn money from
get paid to sites

How to earn more money per click at Adsense?

2010-08-29T13:58:00.002+08:00

When you're trying to make money with Adsense, I'm sure you've also wondered how to get more clicks on your ads. Since more clicks means more money.

But, even if you managed to get a lot of clicks, that still won't guarantee you to make a lot of money out of it. And this is because, we usually get different amounts for every click someone does on our ads. Sometimes, we get a dollar or more per click, sometimes we get 1 cent. Obviously, its better to get one click worth one dollar than get 10 clicks worth one cent, right.

That's why, even though it's truly amazing how we, as bloggers, can actually earn money blogging by simply joining ads affiliate programs such as Google Adsense, we still need to learn how the cost per click is determined to maximize our potential earnings. And by understanding the cost per click (CPC) Adwords pricing system implements, we can have an idea how we can increase our chances on earning more money per click.

So, how is the cost per click determined?

The cost per click we get paid at Adsense is basically determined by how much the advertisers are willing to pay for each click on their ad. Advertisers at Adsense goes through a bidding process where we, as Adsense publishers, obviously don't have control over. In the end, we get our share as publishers up to 68% of the total amount Google Adsense get from the advertisers. And that is for an Adsense content block. Since, how much revenue share we can get varies from the different products they offer.

But, even though we have no control over the bidding process, from that, we can have an idea how and why there are clicks with less value and why there are clicks that is worth a lot.

What can we do to target good paying ads?

The ads that show up on our Adsense block is a result of our own doing, at least most of the time. And this is through what we blog about, what our blog is all about and what keywords we use in our blog posts. So, if you're diligent enough researching for some good keywords to use relating to your blog post, then you can usually expect an increase on the cost per click you'll get. There are some bloggers even getting more than $10 per click. Though I haven't really experienced that.lol

Your niche matters when it comes to how much you can earn per click

There are businesses that tend to have more budget allotted for advertising and are willing to pay more money. Partly because, they are expecting much more in return. So, its obvious how some niches get to earn more money per click. A lot have said that blogs relating to health, insurance, business, lawyer and a few other more, are high paying niches when it comes to earning money with Adsense. But, I wouldn't be detailing that simply because I don't want to encourage anyone to blog about something that they aren't really familiar with just to target high paying ads. If you don't know anything about a niche, I strongly advise that you don't start a blog about it. Spam blogs and MFA (Made For Adsense) blogs are widely frowned upon. And Google doesn't obviously like those type of blogs either. You can also get your Blogger blogs deleted because of that or get your Adsense account canceled.

Do some research and use keyword phrases wisely regarding your niche

Since, keywords are what usually trigger a particular ad to show up, its best that you make some effort researching competitive keyword phrases to use relating to your niche to somehow target good paying ads. Because obviously, when a specific keyword or keyword phrases are competitive and well widely searched, the tendency is that advertisers will have to bid more for that specific keyword/s. So, the end result would be higher CPC rate, or cost per click. But of course, you have to pair that up with a good ranking at serps and a stable good traffic. Since, you wouldn't be earning much if you're not getting enough traffic and enough clicks.

In the end, no matter how many clicks you get per day, if you keep getting low value clicks, overall, it may not be worth it. And for that, you really need to consider learning why you are getting those low valued clicks. Why? It's because, in every visitor you get who clicks on an ad, you are actually sending each of them away from your blog. And if you only get paid 1 cent for that, well I'm not sure with you, but for me, its definitely not worth it.

This is especially because we know how it takes some time and effort to drive traffic to our blogs. And surely our efforts aren't worth 1 cent, right. lol So, better try and do something about it if you're noticing low clicks on your Adsense account.

How to get more clicks on your ads?

2010-08-24T09:23:00.008+08:00

Aiming to get more clicks is where some people get frustrated trying to make money with ads affiliate programs. There are already bloggers who are making tons of money from their blogs just by running ads, particularly Adsense. Unfortunately, some people thought they could just set up a blog, sit down and wait for the tons of clicks to happen naturally.

If it was as simple as that, I'm pretty sure even lawyers or doctors would have left their jobs to become a blogger instead, don't you think? lol The bottom line is, everything that involves legit success with earning money online, also means hard work and patience. And the more money you want to earn, the more work you'll need to invest.

First of all, for those who are thinking that they can get away on cheating Google Adsense by clicking at their own ads or asking people for exchange clicks, better think again. Personally, its not worth the time if you want a long term income from Adsense. Since, sooner or later you'll be busted and get your account closed.

Anyway, there's a lot of things involved when it comes to getting more clicks and eventually making more money, overall. Below, I'll try to explain a few main keys and different things you should consider to get more clicks.

Get more traffic, get more clicks

There are many ways to drive additional traffic for your blogs such as socializing and promoting your blog on other sites. But, those ways may not always work best if you're focusing on earning more clicks on your ads. What works best is getting natural traffic coming from SERP or search engine result pages. Because usually, people who came from search results are people who are most likely to click your ads since they obviously are searching for something.

And that's where SEO or search engine optimization plays an important part in getting your posts more visible at search results. The higher your posts rank at serps, particularly at the 1st page, the more chances you'll have in gaining more natural traffic for your blog. So, you might want to try optimizing your blog on-page and off-page.

More relevant ads, more clicks

If you have a post about making money online and suddenly the ads that are showing are about women pregnancy or something, obviously, there's a very little chance that your visitor would click on that ad, right? So, the more relevant the ads are to your post or niche, the more likely that you get more clicks.

And this is why its important that you stick with your niche and do some keyword research. If you have a habit on posting just about anything that comes to your mind, chances are, search engines or spider bots would have a hard time determining what your blog is actually all about. And that can cause higher chances of unrelated ads to show up. Since, ads are triggered by certain keywords.

This is also why, creating a blog with a specific niche has advantages. The more consistent you are on a topic, the better chances you'll have in getting relevant ads to show up. Here's a few important things to consider when writing a post. But, there's really more to this. How much money you will earn per click also has something to do with what your blog is all about.

Choice of ad format, color and position, also affect your clicks

Obviously, the choice of ad format and even colors can greatly affect the number of clicks you can get. And where you decide to place the ads on a page also matters. More bloggers have been saying that blending your ads with the current color theme your blog has can increase your chances in getting more clicks and earning more money. Personally, blending my adsense works better with me as well. But, you really have to make your own experiments. Some people still claim that highlighting their ads is better. Why?

This is because we have different blogs, we have different type of readers and we have different template design or theme. All of these can have effects and therefore, sometimes the end result can be different for each of us.

In the end, no matter how much traffic you get to your site, how you present your ads is really crucial. For the mean time, you really should be working on optimizing your blog and working on creating more posts regularly. You might also want to read my post on how to get more money per click at Adsense.

Make money blogging with ads affiliate programs

2010-08-24T08:52:00.008+08:00

Ads affiliate programs are a great way to monetize your blogs and an easy way (in terms of setting it up) to earn money blogging. And one of the reasons why its a popular choice among bloggers is that, it enables you to serve ads and earn money from them without troubling yourself hunting for direct advertisers. Since looking for potential advertisers is really not that easy and almost impossible for a newly created blog. Normally, to be an affiliate publisher, you just need to sign up for an account and get your blog approved.

How can you earn money with ads affiliate program?

Different ad serving networks may have different rules regarding their program on how exactly you can earn money with them, so its always best that you check their terms individually before signing up to get yourself familiarized with what you should or should not do.

Having said that, how each program works greatly depends on what advertising model they choose to use. But, the most common type of internet advertising model ads affiliate programs usually implement is the PPC (pay per click), where they only charge money at advertisers when their ad is clicked. Meaning, as publisher, you get to earn money when someone clicks on your ad.

Now, this is where the mind boggling part starts when it comes to how you can actually earn more money. And from here on, this just gives birth to more and more questions. The deeper you dig, the more you'll realize how earning money through blogging isn't as simple as it first seem to be. But don't get frustrated. If you are serious on becoming successful in terms of making money from your blog through ads affiliate programs, there's always a way to do this. This is by implementing best practices and by knowing how things really work and how certain things are judged or determined.

I'm pretty sure, you'll be asking questions such as...

How to get more clicks on your ads?
How to earn more money per click at Adsense?

Ads affiliate program you can try
Google Adsense

Angryeve's not so angry friends online

2010-08-21T06:59:00.035+08:00

Here's a little proof of how I'm starting to really loose my social life in the real world.lol

Anyway, I'm glad that I made a lot of nice friends online through blogging and surely hope to meet more.

Most of them are working moms like me who are making money online.

My most loved bloggers

I have to put Mona on top of the list because she was really my first close friend online. Although she hasn't been active on her blog for a long time but I heard she'll be getting back to it pretty soon. She blogs mostly about money making sites where she earns from. A simple work at home mom like me who is very good at keeping secrets.hehe

I first met Jem when she joined my first contest I held here. From then on, we became good friends. She's another work at home mom and I have to say, she's literally one of the most friendliest bloggers I've met. On her blog, she talks about her life experiences and other helpful tips in blogging, healthy life style and more. I just love this girl!

Steven Luck, a blogger based in Indonesia, is a friend I met at mypage5. He talks more about programming stuff and shares what he knows with his readers at his blog. He's a really friendly guy and easy to talk to. I actually promised him that I'll try to keep spamming his shoutbox as long as I'm alive. LOL

Other bloggers I find really nice (at least to me... lol)

Pink Stuff Galore
I Love Cupcakes! Yummy!

Newly found friends

Happy Family
Women's Perspective
Jettro's Hangout
Yellow Bells
Senior Debutante
Limberella's Corner
Your Daily Feed
It's My Life

My favorite Blog Catalog members

One Cool Site Blogging Tips
I consider Timethief a really smart girl, she's like a walking encyclopedia in my opinion.lol Someday, I plan to kidnap her and if I'm ever successful with that, I'll try to do a brain transplant. bwahahaha

The Housebound Writer
Andrew Carson is just one funny guy who happens to be the nicest person around at BC, at least based from my very biased opinion.hehe

Will be adding more. =)

$75 blog post for diamondearrings.org contest

2010-08-18T05:22:00.105+08:00

Contest closed. Official winners will be announced on Tuesday. Good luck everyone! =)

This is a sponsored contest by diamondearrings.org. You have to be a follower of single mom earning online to join this contest (new followers are always welcome).

Prizes

$25 for the best blog post

(will be chosen by diamondearrings.org)

$25 for another blog post winner

(will be chosen by me randomly using random.org)

$25 for the top referrer of this contest

(status will be posted at the bottom of this post)

For a total of $75 to be given a way!!! Payments for the winners will be send through PayPal, so make sure you have a valid one. This contest will be accepting entries until September 18, 2010, 10pm (GMT +8).

What to do?

1. Just simply blog about diamondearrings.org.

They are currently running a promo on their site which you can talk about. But the blog post should be about their site and not about this contest. By the way, if you'd like to create another blog post to get referrals, that's alright but not required.

2. In your blog post, include a link to http://www.diamondearrings.org using the anchor text "diamond stud earrings" or "diamond earrings". You can simply copy the code below.

<a href="http://www.diamondearrings.org">diamond stud earrings</a>

3. After writing a blog post, just make a comment here which will be your entry for this contest. Only one entry allowed per blog.

What to include on your entry comment?

1. Just put the name of your referrer and his/her blog. And then put the complete url of the blog post you made for diamondearrings.org. Your referrer should be a participant of this contest already.

Sample entry:

Referred by: your referrer's name of your referrer's blog url
Blog post: the complete url of the blog post you made

Note: If you learned about this contest directly from me or my blog, just put single mom earning online as your referrer and you need to grab my badge and put it on your sidebar.

Bloggers who have more than one blog

If you have more than one blog, you can also submit that as a separate entry. Plus, for the other blogs you have, you can already put yourself as the referrer. =)

CURRENT ENTRIES
#1 SUPERMOMMYJEM referred:0

esupermommyjem.blogspot.com

#2 YELLOW BELLS referred:0

myyellowbells.blogspot.com

#3 WORKINGATHOME referred:1

w0rkingath0me.blogspot.com

#4 STEVEN LUCK referred:3

earningslab.blogspot.com

#5 KAYCE referred:4

kayeshayne.blogspot.com

#6 SHERRY referred:2

iluvcontest.blogspot.com

#7 REDAMETHYST referred:1

redcontestcraze.blogspot.com

#8 STEVEN LUCK referred:add to entry #4

languagerslab.blogspot.com

#9 STEVEN LUCK referred:add to entry #4

programmerslab.blogspot.com

#10 BELLE referred:0

maharlikah.blogspot.com

#11 KENNETH MANALAD referred:10

sushii.info

#12 MYS referred:0

writtenbymys.com

#13 BONZ referred:3

pinkstuffgalore.blogspot.com

#14 CORNELIO referred:1

cornelio03-lifesjourney.blogspot.com

#15 CURTNEY referred:0

momentosofgrowingup.blogspot.com

#16 MINNIERUNNER referred:0

minniemadz.blogspot.com

#17 LUCK referred:add to entry #4

stevenluck.wordpress.com

#18 JULEE referred:0

jonbonjovious.blogspot.com

#19 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

pinoyteenblogger.info

#20 LIMBERELLA referred:0

limberella.blogspot.com

#21 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

themoneybug.info

#22 SHERRY32 referred:0

payingsiteswithpaymentproof.blogspot.com

#23 LINA referred:0

engagementandrings.blogspot.com

#24 SETH referred:0

amomsfreewill.blogspot.com

#25 YOUR DAILY FEED referred:0

your-daily-feed.blogspot.com

#26 INDAH KAI referred:1

kcaiyah.co.cc

#27 INDAH KAI referred:add to entry #26

pinkhijab.info

#28 GENIUZ referred:0

geniuzs.blogspot.com

#29 BONZ referred:add to entry #13

justlovebloggingit.info

#30 MEL AVILA AVARILLA referred:0

literatti-aliteraryblog.blogspot.com

#31 GENNY referred:2

preciousgem24.blogspot.com

#32 GENNY referred:add to entry #31

gennyinabattle.blogspot.com

#33 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

just-contest.blogspot.com

#34 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

paperstar.co.cc

#35 GENNY referred:add to entry #31

measawoman.blogspot.com

#36 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

skinnydoll.info

#37 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

iheartadsense.blogspot.com

#38 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

theblushingdork.blogspot.com

#39 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

the.pockybox.net

#40 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

superkenny.org

#41 KENNETH MANALAD referred:add to entry #11

candysky.org

#42 BONZ referred:add to entry #13

littlezoiessteps.com

#43 BONZ referred:add to entry #13

littlezoiesmom.blogspot.com

REMINDER:

Diamondearrings.org has a promo at their site where they are giving away free simulated diamond earrings for a limited time, but those are not real diamonds. Please make that clear on your blog posts. Thanks! =)

For any questions about this contest, feel free send me an email.

Is Alexa traffic rank still important in making money?

2010-08-16T03:56:00.004+08:00

Some people say that Alexa traffic rankings aren't really accurate to the point that its useless because its easy to manipulate. Well, regarding being not that 100% accurate, I agree. But, when it comes to being useless, not really. For bloggers who are aiming on earning money with their blogs by getting direct advertisers, it still helps to get a decent Alexa traffic rank. Some advertisers still require that, although not all.

Anyway, I wasn't really very active here on my blog for a long time, partly because I just didn't have much extra time before. Up until recently, I decided to revive my blog, do some optimizations and try to promote it. So, around mid of July, I also tried to check my Alexa ranking and found out I was at around 4,753,338. Yikes! Definitely not good, but I wasn't surprised. And I have no idea about my rank before that cause I never really took the time to check.

My Alexa rank last July 13, 2010.

How did I handle my low Alexa traffic rank?

I tried to look around and see what I can do to help me get a better traffic rank at Alexa. And I found tons of tips on how to do it. But, most of the tips I've read are techniques to actually manipulate the results into something not accurate at all. Like, installing Alexa toolbar and setting your blog as your home page, visiting your blog a few times a day and other useless techniques. At least for me, that's useless... cause what's the point on getting a better Alexa traffic rank if you know its fake/manipulated. And even if you get to use your manipulated Alexa traffic to lure some advertisers on sponsoring on your blog, one way or another, your advertisers would have an idea on how your blog is really doing during the process. And this could just result on loosing some trust on your site. So, I've decided to just stick on the natural and genuine way.

So, why do others claim Alexa is inaccurate?

Aside from the fact that it can easily be manipulated, Alexa only counts visitors who are using the Alexa toolbar. And since not all visitors you get even knows about Alexa, some obviously aren't using its toolbar. So, if you have like for example a 100 visitors per day not using Alexa toolbar, then that won't be counted or credited to your traffic rank.

How to make Alexa count your visitors who aren't using Alexa toolbar?

One thing I did was to install an Alexa traffic rank widget on my blog. They say this is a way to help Alexa effectively count even visitors without their toolbar. I also downloaded Alexa toolbar, but had to take it away after a few days cause I already have tons of other stuff installed like the seobook and web developer toolbar.

How to improve your Alexa traffic rank the right way?

Once you've installed the Alexa widget, at least you can be assured that they'd somehow count all, if not, at least most of your visitors. Instead of wasting my time following manipulative tactics, I just focused more on trying to promote my site, and get genuine visitors through some off page optimizations and other ways to get additional traffic.

In just a month, I took 4 million off from my Alexa rank

Yesterday, after one month of installing the Alexa widget and trying to drive real traffic to my blog, my Alexa went from almost 5 million (July 13), up to around just 1,012,593 today. Yehey! I'm happy because I know its genuine. Yesterday, it was around 993,097. I hope I get to see better results in the future.

Anyway, you can try to manipulate it, but in the end, you'll just be making a fool out of yourself. Besides, without manipulating it, you'll find the other data Alexa provides are pretty helpful.

Analyze your blog and make good use of the data you gather

My stats today (Aug 16, 2010)

Around 1,000,000 is definitely still not something to brag about. Usually, getting at the top 100,000 are said to be more favorable with potential advertisers. So, that means, I still need to work on promoting my blog and do some more SEO stuff to pull more natural traffic from search results. But, I know it would be harder, since the closer you get to the top #1 at Alexa, the slower the progress could be.

From the stats that Alexa provided, they get a calculation that most of my visitors spends around 31 minutes and views around 6.2 pages per visit. Now, that just confirms that my efforts on internal linking for my inner pages and providing a good navigation menu of my main categories are paying off. It means that most of my visitors stay longer and read more posts. And I don't just based that from Alexa, I also look at my Google Analytics and Google Webmasters tools (another helpful tools in assessing the status of your blog). From my Analytics, I get a close result, with an estimation of 4.4 pageviews per visit. My bounce rate at Alexa is 35%, while Analytics states 41.52%. So, I guess, I still need to keep working on making more informative posts.

How accurate are the tools?

Overall, I still believe that tools are not 100% accurate. But, if you know that you aren't doing any schemes to manipulate the results, at least you'll get a close estimation of how your blog is really doing. I consider them really important and helpful, cause through these tools, I get to have an idea on what and how I can still improve my blog.

So, how important is Alexa in making money?

Well, like I said, if you're planning to make money from your blogs by targeting direct advertisers, you have to try and make your blog do well on almost every aspect such as traffic, PR, good content and etc. This is because its not easy to get direct advertisers. But, if you try to make your blog get a decent result and reputation, including your Alexa traffic rank, the process on finding a potential sponsor would be much easier. Alexa is not the most important thing, but it can usually help to provide confirmation on your traffic.

How to make a bid at Odesk.com?

2010-08-14T02:15:00.003+08:00

If you're interested in freelancing at Odesk.com, you obviously need to make a bid since bidding is an important step to start earning money at any freelance sites.

So here's a step by step guide on how to make a bid at Odesk.com.

Step 1
Once you are logged in at Odesk.com, just click on "FIND JOBS" under the "find contractors and jobs" menu located at the top, to see all available categories and type of online jobs you can apply to.

Step 2
Choose a job category you are interested with. Like for example, "blog and article writing" under WRITING AND TRANSLATIONS main job category.

Step 3
Now, you'd be able to see all the available freelance projects under "blog and article writing" for you to choose from. From the project listing, you can see snippets of information about the specific work required and other details such as if its a "fixed price" project or an "hourly" type project. Just click on the project title that interest you.

Step 4
After clicking the project title, you'd be able to see the full description for the work required and other information regarding the project and your employer. As usual, employers are not always the same. Some employers prefer to put a short and general description about the freelance project and just discuss down the details through interviews while some prefer to write all the details down. Either way, you really should take time reading the description. I know how common sense that sounds. But, I honestly know some people very lazy at reading descriptions. They bid even without fully understanding the job required by the employers. So, read, understand and take your time to analyze the project. If you've understood the job required and would like to work on it, just click on the yellow "apply to this job" button.

Step 5
Set your bid for the freelance project. Put your asking price like for example, $10 per hour. Odesk.com will then automatically show you the additional fee they would charge the employers. Include your message and don't forget to check the "Agree to Terms" checkbox. Then click on the "apply to this job" button once again.

If you're applying to a fixed price type project, there's a popup reminding you of some terms Odesk.com has regarding fixed price projects. Just check the checkbox on "Yes, I understand" then click "continue to apply".

Once you've completed the bidding process, you just have to wait for an interview from the employer. For the mean time, you can try and apply for other available freelance jobs. But, I really recommend that you take the "Odesk Readiness Test" which is for free. If you don't take this test, you can only have a maximum of 2 bids per week allowed which will limit your chances on getting a freelance project.

Effective ways to drive additional traffic to your blog

2010-08-09T04:16:00.005+08:00

Writing quality content is the first step. And doing some on-page and off-page optimizations may bring you in some natural traffic from search results and other places. But that's not going to be enough.

You'll still need to work on driving more traffic before you could start earning money through blogging, at least something decent. Consider traffic the life of your blog. Without traffic, your time invested creating quality content would go to waste. Without traffic how do you expect advertisers to want to advertise on your blog? Without traffic how do you expect to get clicks on your ads? Bottom line, if you want some good money flowing in your blog, you definitely need a good amount of regular traffic coming in. And with so many blogs on the net right now, the competition can be quite tough.

Social sites and forums

For me, socializing is one of the best ways to get quality traffic. Social media sites such as facebook and twitter had been very effective for a lot of blogs/websites. Unfortunately, I'm not active at those sites, again due to lack of time. But, if you have some time to spend on facebook and twitter or better yet, if you are already active there, you can definitely use those sites to gain more traffic. But there are tons of other sites aside from those. Luckily for me, since I'm on the money making online niche, some of my get paid to sites come in handy. Like my get paid to post site, Mylot.com. Since most of the people who join there are already interested in earning money online, obviously, promoting my blog there would earn me more targeted and quality traffic. Its like I'm getting paid to promote my own blog.lol

Overall, the key to this is to be active on the social site or forum you choose to promote your blog at. The more active you are at discussions, the more people you'll meet. And if you join social sites or forums that cater specifically to your niche, then the better quality traffic you may get. So, always take advantage on posting in your links at your social profiles.

Blog hopping

Special thanks to my good friend online, supermommyjem, for encouraging me to try this. Recently, I've been blog hopping. And so far, I'm liking it. I get to meet new friends, see other blogs and even get new followers on my blog for that. Its another easy and simple way to explore and get your blog exposed in the blogging community. Just don't forget to drop them a comment or a message at their shoutbox. And if you also like their blogs, follow them in return or give them some love by spending some time on reading their posts.

So, where do I start? Well, I always start at my own followers' blogs, then I just let myself hop from followers to followers. The blogging community isn't really that big, it only seems so if you isolate yourself from the others.

Turning dofollow

Here's another option you can consider. Recently, I just removed the "nofollow" tag at my comment form, but only at the commenter's link. Because if I went dofollow all the way, I'm afraid I'll be dealing with more spam comments. But the advantage of turning dofollow is that you'd be able to submit your blog to dofollow directories and dofollow search engines which can of course lead you with some additional traffic. Although, I have to admit, your blog would be prone on getting spams. So, I really advice that you moderate your comments. Anyway, I'm still having trouble on getting my site listed on some dofollow sites cause they require my blog to remove the nofollow tag even at the comments itself which I will never do...lol That's just too risky for me cause I'm still watching out my outgoing links.

I know I may not get quality traffic from this, but I felt that its still worth the try since it only took me a few minutes to remove the nofollow tag. After that, I just need to get my blog listed on a few dofollow directories. With just a little work, I can already expect a lifetime additional traffic from those directories as long as I don't violate any of their TOS, of course.

Contest

Another effective way to attract some traffic to your site is by making cool contests. The benefits that you can get from it would really depend on a lot of things such as how good the prize is, how hard the contest is and etc... But if you are planning to do a contest, whether its a big contest or just a small one, my simple advice is, be honest and always be fair to everyone. The more transparent your contest is, the more credible it would be. And gaining trust from my readers had always been one of my personal aims.

Traffic exchange

Another way to boost your traffic is by engaging with traffic exchanges. Please note that I only included this option to show you what others are doing. But for my own blog, I don't do that. Because usually (not all the time though), people coming from traffic exchanges are often in a hurry. They do visit but then they leave right away cause they still need to visit more blogs on their traffic exchange list. And one disadvantage of that would be getting higher bounce rate. If you're running Adsense like me, how much you earn per click can get affected. But of course, the result is not always bad. Traffic exchanges work pretty well with other bloggers. I guess, it just depends on what you're aiming for.

PTC sites

A lot of you might be aware of earning money through get paid to click sites. But, not everyone who joins there are there to earn money. Some of them uses ptc sites to get traffic. Some even pays ptc sites to advertise their blog. By doing so, it will earn them tons of unique traffic per day. But again, I don't use that for my blog for the same reason as the above. I am more on targeting quality traffic than tons of quick hits which I personally consider useless or at least not worth my time. Plus, if you are running Adsense, I believe that's against their TOS. But feel free to correct me if that's wrong. =)

Anyway, sometimes what works for me may not always work for you and vice versa. And usually, it depends on what your goal is for your blog. In the end, you decide what strategy works well for you and your time.

Basics on how to optimize your blog (off-page)

2010-08-07T03:21:00.007+08:00

I think its safe to say that there are two main reasons why people even bother doing some off-page optimizations. One is for traffic, and the other one is for pagerank or PR (a reputation that Google gives every webpage). Personally, I am more focused and motivated in getting quality traffic than PR. But, why would I limit myself in aiming on just one, when I can actually hit two birds in one stone, at least most of the time. And that's where quality plays an important role.

I've already covered some basic tips on on-page optimizations that you can do for your blog. Now, its time to point out some basic off-page optimizations to give your blog more exposure and give you higher chances in earning money through blogging. Below are some common practices and link building strategies that you can do.

Directory submission

Some people say directory submission is so old school and just a waste of time or useless. But I'd like to disagree to that. I believe its only useless if you keep submitting your blog to poor quality directories. Also, you have to be aware that most of the directories you'll find may ask for a reciprocal link in order to get listed. Personally, I think its just fair. But, you have to keep checking the directories you are linking back to because some are very tricky. They don't notify you even after rejecting your blog to get listed. So, what happens is that you keep linking to them. In the end, they get to have higher pr and exposure while you get nothing out of it. If you have submitted your blog to a certain directory for a long time now and your blog is still not listed at their site, then you might want to consider removing that reciprocal link already. Come to think about it, its not even a reciprocal link since they're not even linking to your blog.lol Currently, I'm still not done doing my homework in finding quality directories. But one of the top blog directories I would recommend is Blog Catalog and Technorati. You can also try Blog Directory.

Blog commenting and forum posting

This is the most abused link building strategy in my opinion. I think if you're doing blog commenting and forum posting solely for PR purposes only, then you are starting it the wrong way already. And most likely, you'll just end up spamming every blog and forum you see. The forums and comment forms at blogs are there to promote interaction among readers. So, keeping that in mind would give you an idea on how to do things correctly. Commenting something like... "Thanks" then dropping your link is mostly referred to as spamming! And that goes the same with other well known spammy phrases such as "nice post", "nice info", "thanks for sharing"... blah blah

But if you do it right, it can certainly help your blog a lot and help you build a good reputation. I still get some traffic from comments I made ages ago and to think that there were tons of comments ahead of mine. So, I guess that means my comment was interesting enough to get them visit my blog. It's not really that complicated. Just try to keep your comments relevant to the post. Add something useful, informative, interesting or just share some honest opinion. People don't usually click links just because someone told them to. So, if you really want them to get interested in visiting your link, then give them a reason by composing a quality comment. But if you are friends with the blog owner, that's a different story. I accept any comments even off topic ones if its coming from my friends online.lol And that's simply because I know its a genuine comment. If you're new with this, you might want to check my post on jobs for blog commenters to learn about some basic things.

Article submission or guest posting

I haven't tried this due to lack of time, but the benefits of doing article submission and guest posting are pretty obvious. This is most especially if you submit your article to high ranking sites with good traffic. Through this, you'd be able to promote your own blog and reach a wider audience. Links within posts, assuming its a dofollow, also pass up some nice amount of link juice, by the way. For guest posting though, it still depends whether the blog owner is open for that. When you find a good blog, the best way to know if they are open to guest posting is to contact the owner. But aside from article directories and other blogs to guest post at, you can also use some sites like squidoo or hubpages where you can also earn money from your articles while trying to attract additional traffic for your blog plus some link juice. That's like hitting 3 birds in one stone, don't you think? lol

Link exchange

Link exchanges are really common among bloggers and an easy way in getting some stable backlinks for your site for free. But quality earns a big difference. High pr sites that are linking to you gives more benefits, and if the site is related to your blog, its even better. If you are doing link exchanges, you might want to do some regular checking as well. There are some who offer link exchange but after linking back to them for a while, they'll remove your link on their site without even notifying you. Others are honest, but unfortunately have tons and tons of links already at their homepage that means its not capable enough on passing in some nice link juice anymore... even traffic. So, if you decide to do some link exchanges, just keep in mind that not all may offer you a fair benefit. But the decision is still up to you. I have to admit, I've turned down a lot of requests and offers for that before. Am I cruel? Well, not really.lol The only reason for that is that I haven't decided yet on how to organize it.

As a wrap, my advice is, always try to think of quality! Aiming for quality in everything you do with your blog brings in a much better and much stable positive results.

Next stop, learning some effective ways to drive additional traffic for your blog.

Jobs online for blog commenters

2010-08-02T15:22:00.005+08:00

Here's another easy freelance job online you can try applying for at freelance sites - blog commenting. And this is usually found under the job category "link building" or "SEO" projects.

So, what does a blog commenter do? Well, its pretty self explanatory, you just drop a comment on blogs. But, you also need to include a hyperlink or to make it simpler, a clickable link to the site you're doing this job for and use a preferred anchor text or keyword tag.

Why is there a job for blog commenter?

As part of link building, blog commenting, if done right, has been very effective in terms of not just driving additional traffic to a site but also passing in some link juice. And since other site owners just don't have time to do it themselves, they simply hire someone else to do it and thus blog commenting job is born.

If you have a blog of your own, then learning how to do this properly is really important. This is so you could take advantage of the additional link juice for your own site every time you make a comment on other blogs. This helps on getting a higher Pagerank which for some type of blogs is considered important. Most especially on sites that are trying to earn money from it or even trying to sell it for a higher price.

How to make a hyperlink or clickable link?

If you want to include the link in a comment, here's what you should type.

<a href="http://nameofthewebsite.com">your anchor text</a>

And here's how its normally gonna look like in a page...

your anchor text

To create your own link, you just need to change the text highlighted in green with your own information. First, the complete url or web address. Make sure you include the http://. Second, your preferred keyword that you want to show up as a link. Pretty easy, right.

Basic things you need to know

Pagerank or PR. PR is a reputation that Google gives every web page of a site. Its ranked from 0 to 10, where 10 is the highest. PR is determined in many ways but mostly with links pointing towards a certain page where quality links pass more link juice. By quality, it means, links coming from sites with the same or related niche. And the higher PR a page has, the more link juice it passes. To check the current PR of a page, you can visit prchecker.info for that. Or you can just install the Google toolbar where you can automatically see the PR of every web page you visit. I use seobook which is also free.

Dofollow and nofollow. Technically, the use of "dofollow" term is not quite right since by default every link is followed by spider bots. But the term is widely accepted. Anyway, due to spam and stuff, the "nofollow" tag was invented. So, whenever a link has a nofollow attribute, the spider bots just don't index it. As a result, it doesn't pass any link juice to help with PR. That's why some people aim to comment on blogs that don't have nofollow tag at their comment forms.

So, how do you check whether a link is nofollow or not? If you're using firefox like me, you can download the nodofollow add-on which is free. Once you've downloaded that, just right click your mouse and you'll then be able to see a new option "nodofollow". Click on that and you'll see all the links on a page color coded. Links that are dofollow are in blue, ones that are not would be in pink.

Things to keep in mind

Blog commenting has been abused tons of times already. And because of that, most blog owners have tighten up a bit when it comes to accepting comments. And this is very usual on blogs with no nofollow tags and have a higher PR. So, whether you are doing this for a client or for your own blog, always try to read the full post where you're making a comment at. Because if you don't even take time to read the post, you'll often find yourself with nothing useful to say at the comment form other than... "nice post". Where most strict blog owners would think about it as plain spamming.

Legit freelance sites I recommend
freelancing at Freelancer.com
freelancing at Odesk.com

Other easy freelance jobs you can try=
jobs online for no skills
jobs online for writers

Featuring my recent followers

2010-07-30T20:04:00.005+08:00

I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but I've been paranoid about getting my page to load faster.lol But then again, I just really want to say thanks to my followers in my own little way. So now, I've decided to push this simple idea through. After all, my followers are one of the people who have been supporting my blog and giving me inspiration to keep blogging. So, I guess its just right to give a little something back. =)

Starting today, I'll be adding a section at my blog for my recent followers including their ~~125x125~~ 100x100 button, if they have one. But if they don't, I'll still add up a direct link. So, I hope you include the link to your blog at the account you use for signing up as my follower. Since usually, its the only way I could get to know about your blog. Although, the better way of letting me know which blog of yours you want me to feature, in case you have more than one, would be by sending me an email. I still have to watch out for my outgoing links so I'll need to limit myself on just featuring my latest 4 followers. Though, I may suddenly add more.lol

This may not be a big deal for some, but I hope it makes some of my followers happy. =) In case you are one of my latest followers and I miss out on adding your button, feel free to send me an email.

Mylot proof of payment

2010-07-28T11:36:00.003+08:00

I first joined mylot last year cause I heard its another legit way to make some extra money online. But I was only active there for more than a month cause I was really busy on a lot of other things. Though, I still drop by once in a while whenever I'm free. But I have to say, that among my get paid to sites, mylot is really my favorite. And there's a lot of reasons why I say that.

Most of the poeple who join the site got interested obviously because of the reward money mylot offers its members. But what's great about mylot is that, there's no limit on how many posts you can make per day. So, the more quality posts you make, means more earnings. Just imagine you get to be paid just for chatting with friends. Really nice, right.

The minimum payout at mylot is $10 and during my first month, I almost reached that but was a few cents short before the cut off time.lol But eventually, I get to cash that out the following month. I know this proof of payment should have been posted a long time ago. But its better late than never. So, here goes my proof of payment from mylot that I got last year.

Still not a member?
CLICK HERE TO JOIN MYLOT

Basics on how to optimize your blog (on-page)

2010-07-22T13:20:00.017+08:00

Aside from writing quality posts, another basic step you need to do in order to earn money through blogging is to optimize your blog. You need to do this to have better rankings in search results, better PR, better traffic and be able to provide a better user-experience for your visitors.

There are two ways to optimize your blog. One is called on-page optimization and the other one is off-page optimization. Basically, on-page deals with tweaking or improving things within your blog such as navigation, design, content and other things that you can control and modify. On the other hand, off-page deals more with link building and driving traffic to your site. Both optimizations are essential and needed to give your site a better chance of success in making money from it.

For this post, I'll just be discussing some basic on-page optimizations for you to consider.

CONTENT

Make a research on your aimed keywords. I have to admit, when I first started blogging, I didn't make any research on my targeted keywords. I just sort of targeted them.lol But, that's definitely not a smart thing to do especially if you are also targeting to make some money from your blog. If you want to find some great information regarding a certain keyword, you can use the free tool Google provide such as the adword keyword tool. You'll get some estimations on how many people search for a certain term, how competitive it is, and get suggestions for other related keywords you can use.

Consider your keywords on posts and titles. I've already mentioned this on my previous post about the important things to consider when writing a post. Keywords are undeniably one of the things we should always try to consider including to get better search engine visibility and rankings. But, even if we get to lure people to click on the link to our site from a search result, if they don't see a post worth reading due to too much keyword stuffing, then there's a big chance our efforts would just go to waste. That's why your post shouldn't be all about your keywords. Your first top priority should be quality and that's where we need to be crafty in including our keywords.

Altering heading tags on post titles. Some people advice to use h1 or h2 heading tags to our post titles to give it more weight for search engines. Honestly, I only use h2 tags at my post titles since I like to reserve the h1 tag only for my blog title. Either way, making sure that your post titles are wrapped with h1 or at least h2 heading tags is good. By default, blogger templates have an h2 tag on post titles.

Altering heading tags on widgets. While altering the heading tags for post titles may seem to be a common advice, altering heading tags on widgets are often forgotten. I don't seem to care about this before, up until I suddenly took a glimpse at yahoo site explorer. And guess what, I was surprised to see that they say my blog was about followers, share this blog and etc. I found out that by default, most widget titles are wrapped in h2 tags. I've already made some changes and gave the widget titles an h4 tag, except for the followers widget cause I can't seem to make it change.

Practice building internal links. Some blogs have widgets that display recent posts or related posts. Although, those are very helpful in keeping visitors from leaving sometimes, its usually not enough. And I don't think it could replace the benefits that internal linking provides. You can't expect people to know about all your past posts or always have the time to really dig in your blog archive. The least that you can do is provide them with handpicked links related to the exact post they are currently reading. By doing this, you're not just helping your readers but also your old posts getting additional exposure. If you always try to stick with your niche, then you'll always find something relevant to link in with your every post.

FASTER LOADING TIME

Minimize the number of posts displayed. By default, blogger shows 10 posts in one page. That means it takes longer for a page to completely load especially if you write really long posts with images in it. From your blogger dashboard, you can adjust the number of posts by going to "settings" then choose "formatting".

Minimize graphics. Although putting nice graphics on your site can help attract readers visually. But, this will also add a lot to your loading time and http requests. I can't remember how many times I had to revise my blog because of that. In the end, any graphics you put should really serve a purpose. If its just there to look cute, then you might as well consider removing it. I know, its kinda hard especially when it makes your site look really nice. But, putting a balance to everything means throwing some unnecessary things away.

Minimize badges/buttons on your homepage. If you have a lot of blog awards, or simply display tons of buttons of your friends' sites, you might also want to consider doing something about that. Each button has a different image which are fetch from different urls. Overall, too much of it is obviously an additional burden. Now, I'm not saying you should throw those away as well. But, what you can do is create another page solely for that and put a link to that page at your home page. In that way, you'll still be able to show your awards or friends' badges for anyone who is interested without crowding up your home page or other posts.

Minimize widgets. Basically, widgets are in nature created to be helpful, right. But there are also widgets that really don't serve much purpose. I won't even try to name what those widgets are since I don't really intend to insult anyone. But every widget you add also adds to your page loading time. So try to choose widgets wisely and only include what you just need for your blog. You won't believe it, but there was a time where I even added a game widget here.lol Definitely served no special purpose for my niche.

Overall, less is better. I'm saying this while considering the new added factor that Google considers when giving our blogs' PR. Since loading time is now a factor that determines our PR, we really have to think hard before adding something new at our blog that would definitely contribute to its loading time. And even if you don't care about your PR at all, you should still aim for faster loading time to decrease bounce rate. If your page takes too long to load, chances of your visitors leaving your site is quite high. Aside from that, a page that is so crowded can easily give your visitors a big headache which is another reason for them to leave. I know its easier said than done. I always find it a challenge to put a good balance to everything at my blog. But, by at least keeping ourselves reminded of the advantages and disadvantages can help us somehow be cautious on what we include in our blogs.

After that, its time to look at some basics on how to optimize your blog (off-page).

Important things to consider when writing a post

2010-07-18T09:54:00.012+08:00

Whether you want to earn money through blogging or not, its really important to take time on creating quality posts. If you don't have any good content on your blog, then no matter how you optimize it for search engines or drive traffic to it, in the end, it still won't go that far both in terms of making money or getting a good reputation.

So, what are the things to consider when writing your posts?

Write original posts and don't steal others' work

If you think you can get away and earn some easy cash by copying others' work then claiming it as your own, better think again. In case you haven't heard, plagiarism is a serious offense and you could definitely get sued for that. And if you think that since the web has too many blogs already and the chances of getting caught by the original author is just too small, then you're wrong again. There's a website called, copyscape.com where webmasters could go and check if their content are being copied somewhere else. In addition to that, search engines such as Google totally hates duplicate content. They take plagiarism seriously and penalize blogs that commit this. And when that happens, your posts are put into the sandbox and not displayed on search results. But, the worse that could happen is when Blogger closes your account along with all your posts. Besides, if you plan to create a blog but don't want to spend some time writing on your own, either you hire someone else or just don't start a blog at all. Unless, your blog doesn't need much writing such as a photoblog or videoblog.

Stick with your niche

If your blog is about making money online like mine, I'm sure your readers who visit your blog are expecting to learn more about earning online or other things related to that. And that's the reason why you need to stay close with your niche when creating posts. If you start posting more about other stuff such as what you ate yesterday, where you went last month, what movies you like or anything that is not related to your niche, then that would not just bring confusion to your readers but also great disappointment. And the chances of your visitors leaving your blog is greatly high. That's unless your blog is about you and your life experiences. But if you claim that your blog is about something else, then better stick to that.

Don't forget your keywords

This is part of optimizing your blog for search engines. Since, search engines bring us natural traffic, you definitely want your blog to show up on search results more often most especially on queries that are related to your topic. So, how do search engines figure out what to display. Well, there are other factors, but one of the most obvious methods is displaying posts that have relevant phrases matching the searcher's query. So, try not to forget about your targeted keywords both on your posts and on your titles as much as you could. But, if your keywords just really don't fit on the title or sentence, its either you reconstruct that or just don't bother on including those. Only add your keywords where you see fit and if it still makes sense for humans to read and understand. You have to remember that real people are much more important than search engine spiders. Plus, be aware that you can also get penalized with overdoing things or keyword stuffing.

Make your posts easier to understand

Not everyone who visits your blog has English as their first language. And for that, its safer and better to just keep your words as simple as you could. And by making your posts simpler to read, chances are, you'll be reaching a wider audience. The more your posts are easier to understand, the longer people will more likely stay and that means good traffic for you.

Check for errors

Although typos and grammatical errors are inevitable sometimes. You should always try to correct those as soon as you noticed some. People at the blogging community are often nice and considerate. But having too many errors can lessen the credibility of your posts. Even worse, makes your posts confusing and can even be misinterpreted by others sometimes.

Overall, credibility is important. Though, getting some trust and respect from others can't be possibly done overnight. That's why you'll have to be consistent in providing your visitors and readers with quality posts. Tricking them to go to your site is useless if they aren't even gonna spend some time in there due to uninteresting or poor posts. Your content is the first most important thing and you should really give time into writing it. In the long run, it will reflect the credibility of your blog. And if more people see your blog worthy, they will naturally share your blog with others or follow you. Either way, quality content will give you nothing but positive effects such as additional traffic and popularity.

What's next?
How to optimize your blog (on-page)

How to create a blog at blogger or blogspot?

2010-07-13T20:48:00.011+08:00

Since I'll be writing tips about how to earn money through blogging, I have to at least start by walking you in with the basics such as creating your own working blog at Blogger.com. By the way, Blogger and Blogspot are just the same.

The only requirement you'll need is to have an email account with gmail. Its the only way you'd be able to sign up for a free account with Blogger.com. So, if you don't have a gmail account yet, please create one first.

Step 1: Go to Blogger homepage

If you have a gmail account already, the first thing you'll have to do is go to Blogger.com. Then go ahead and click on the "create a blog" button as shown below.

Step 2: Create account

Type in your email address and put your chosen password.

For the display name option, you can choose whatever you prefer. Like here on my blog, you'll see my chosen pen name is Angryeve, and it shows up on all of my posts. Don't worry if you're not sure yet on what you like cause you can always edit this once you got your blog set up already.

You can check the box on email notifications or leave it blank. Add your birthday information and type the corresponding word on the captcha form(word verification).

Lastly, make sure to check the box on Acceptance of Terms and hit the "continue" button.

Step 3: Name a blog

For the blog title, you can always edit this under your settings and it doesn't always have to be exactly the same with your blog address url. Though on my blog, you can see that I put my blog title exactly the same with my blog url. This is so people who visit here would be more familiar with my url address. And if they haven't bookmarked my blog yet then try to search me naturally on the net, more or less they would be typing something like single mom earning online.

But, once you put a name for your blog address (url), this would be your permanent url and you won't be able to edit it (unless you decide to buy your own domain name in the future). So, its really important that you think about what blog address you want before hitting the continue button. Also, its a best practice that you try and get a name that includes words that describe what your blog is all about where you'll get some benefits from it on the long run. I decided to use "single mom earning online" because my niche(topic) is all about earning money online. I would have preferred "earning online single mom" in an seo point of view because search engines will put more weight on the first word/s. But, if I did that, it wouldn't sound nice, right? Plus, I didn't created my blog primarily for the search engines, it was meant for users. So, you still have to put a balance and try to make it easier to remember.

Once you have decided on what name you want, click on "check availability" first. This is to see whether the name is already taken or still available. Almost all short names which are good are already taken. A reason why I ended up with such a long name. When you find a name that is available, just click "continue".

Step 4: Choose template

The very last and easiest step is choosing your template design. As always, you can edit this and choose another template anytime. Just click on a design then click "continue".

If everything went well, you should now be seeing a confirmation message that your blog has been created like as shown below.

Congratulations! Now, you have a blog. Its pretty easy, right? But, right now your blog doesn't have anything on it. So, click on "start blogging" button and you'll be brought to your posting page area. But, if you don't want to write anything yet, cause you want to look around your settings first, that's alright. Just simply click on the "dashboard" link at the top right of your page. From there, you'll have access to everything within your account.

But eventually, you'll need to start making some posts...
Important things to consider when writing a post

How to earn money through blogging?

2010-07-11T03:14:00.030+08:00

Interested on how to earn money online through blogging? Well, a lot of people have been buzzing about the earning opportunities through it. Besides, you can get a blog for free, blog all you want for free both with the possibility of having a legit and real decent income from it. Plus, as the owner of the blog, you have tons of different options to choose from on how to make money from it. I've listed some options below to choose from.

So, why isn't every blogger earning???

Unfortunately, a lot of people who tried earning either get frustrated or just give up. The end result, they fail. So, how is it frustrating when some people claim that earning through it was so easy to do? The answer to that is a big and simple... NO! It's not easy and it's not simple especially when you don't even have any idea on how earning money exactly works with blogs. You have to understand that people who are already earning $100, $1000 or more per DAY with their blogs didn't get to that point without exerting some hard work.

The good news is, anyone can really earn money through blogging. You just have to know the basics first from setting up a blog to how things really work, then step by step try to implement the best practices around on maximizing your blog's potential. Of course, you'll need to have a blog first...

how to create a blog at blogger or blogspot

But, creating a blog is only the beginning. You still need to do some work before you could start earning money from it. You really can't expect your blog to start producing money if you haven't done anything other than setting it up. So, before thinking about money, try implementing some basic and helpful ways to improve your blog.

Things to do on your blog

Important things to consider when writing a post
Optimize your blog (on-page)
Optimize your blog (off-page)
effective ways to drive additional traffic to your blog

Now, it's time to check on the different options a blogger has in making money through blogging. Since there's a lot of opportunities in monetizing your blog, I'll try to cut the list down into 3 main ways on how you can earn money from it.

3 main ways to earn money from your blog

make money with ads affiliate programs
earn money with paid blog posts
earn money with direct advertisers

NOTE: This post is not yet complete. I still need to make more posts, at least get the basics done as soon as I can and add the links here. So, be sure to keep coming back...

Freelancing at Odesk.com

2010-07-09T19:30:00.016+08:00

Odesk.com, is another trusted and legit freelance site where to find available freelancing jobs that is free to join. There's no minimum bid at Odesk, so you are free to set the amount of your bids to whichever you like. But of course, try to be reasonable when setting a price.

If you're confused about bidding, check my post on
what is a bid at freelance sites?
how to make a bid at Odesk.com?

Clients at Odesk.com are called employers, while freelancers like us are called contractors. You can also withdraw your earnings at Odesk through PayPal.

So, what's so special about Odesk? Well, aside from the ordinary of having a lot of different jobs available to bid and work on, here's a few things that Odesk offers that other freelance sites usually don't.

Everything for free for freelancers

If you are already familiar with freelance sites, you'll notice that most of them will try to get a percentage from the projects you won, which I think is pretty reasonable. That's how other freelance sites earn. But, with Odesk, there won't be any deduction from your earnings. Meaning, if your bid is $100 on a project and won the bidding, then you'll get your earnings in full.

How do they do that? Simple really. They just don't charge anything to freelancers/contractors. They only charge clients/employers a small percentage for every project and that's where they earn. Aside from that, you can also take tests to add credibility to your profile for free as well. Just recently, I noticed freelancer.com have added this feature on their site, where freelancers like us could take some tests related to our targeted projects. But unfortunately, at freelancer.com, their tests aren't for free and you'll have to pay a specific amount before being able to take the test. But, you don't need to worry about that at Odesk.

Another cool feature at Odesk

Aside from the fact that everything's free for freelancers, at Odesk, you can also take projects in an hourly basis. When scanning for projects at Odesk, you'll see just under the title of the project whether it is an "hourly" type or "fixed-price". Projects at most freelance sites are usually set to a fixed agreed price between you and your client. But, at odesk, you'll find a lot of projects there where you can work by hour and get paid based on how many hours you've worked on a project, times how much you charge per hour. And what's even better is that Odesk guarantees the payment for hourly based projects.

If you're ready to become a freelancer at Odesk.com, all you need to do now is sign up for a free account.

Another legit freelance site I recommend
freelancing at freelancer.com

Getting back on track

2010-07-07T19:48:00.007+08:00

Well, due to tons of problems I've had lately, I just wasn't able to give anymore time for my single mom earning online. And I've been away for so long that I can't bear it anymore to not go back into blogging. =)

Fortunately, things are getting much better now even though I consider the progress a bit slow. For my eve web design website, unfortunately, I've decided not to launch the ready-made themes yet. The themes were actually ready and complete months and months ago, but I thought its better to wait a little bit more up until things are perfected. And with both Blogger and Wordpress big updates on their layout structure, there's definitely gonna be some tweaking required.

Anyway, I'm also happy about getting some emails from people requesting for me to post about their sites. Maybe, in the future I'll allow some guest posting as well so that single mom earning online blog would be able to share more and more ways to earn money online. Though I still may need to do some research on those earning sites just to be sure they are legit and won't waste any of our time. Either way, I'm definitely back on posting new tips and ideas. And as I've promised before, I'll also start posting tips for blogging in general. Since another popular way on earning money online is through blogging, if done right.

In case you like to give some earning money online suggestions for me to post about, as always, feel free to do that through the comment form or email me directly. But please don't spam my mailbox, alright. =)