Trawling the Net

A month of failure D:

2012-02-28T11:46:00.000Z

So I kinda failed on my set goals for the month. Granted, this turned out to be just about the busiest month of the past 12, but excuses are poor.

There is still a chance that I can get the Triond articles written in time. Two days left after all, but Postloop isn't an option. It's still earned me more money than everything else combined, but I've not been keeping up with the posts. Combined with some of my more favoured forums going inactive and leaving me with nothing to do that wouldn't count as "spam", Postloop is out.

Maybe next month I'll do better. At least I managed to achieve my four blog posts for the month. Now let's see if I can double it for next month.

The Reapers are here.

2012-02-19T12:29:00.000Z

I don't need to say much more, do I? This game is the most anticipated game of 2012 (and it's coming out in March), and if it's even half as enjoyable as the first two it'll live up to my expectations. Completing a story two games in the making is something not many other franchises offer to the same extent as Mass Effect manages.

Me wants it.

Star Trek Online

2012-02-11T19:50:00.000Z

I've started playing Star Trek Online, so naturally my productivity is at a whole new low. Trying to decide between being a damage tanking cruiser or a damage dealing escort has taken up more of my time than I care to admit.

The game is amazing fun in space, but ground combat is very poor and is only "meh" at best. But if you can find a way of staying in space and never touching the ground of a planet, then the game is great fun.

Now...back to killing Borg.

Funding a Desktop

2012-02-03T11:46:00.000Z

I have given myself a goal. And part of that goal is actually posting to this damn blog. :(

I'm sorry I'm so very terrible at keeping up with things. I really, really am. With any luck, I'll manage to get at least one post a week done (preferably on Fridays when I have loads of free time) for this month, and then we can see where I go from there. I need to get this desktop of mine so I can start being creative again. A laptop just isn't cutting it.

Wish me luck folks!

Halloween Is Coming

2011-10-23T16:03:00.000+01:00

I've always loved Halloween, it's just a great time of year. Having the chance to scare the life out of children, dressing up, having friends over.... It's awesome.

I don't have many plans this year unfortunately. I'm very, very busy and will probably be spending all my time working for college, or trying to get another short story or two published. If I do have the time to spare, I can see myself having a few friends over for a scary movie night. Dressing up is mandatory, of course.

What will you be dressing up as? Or will you be dressing up at all for Halloween? Any parties, trick or treating or other fun stuff? Or do you prefer not to celebrate the event? Come, share. Let us get to know one another. :D

Going to a Concert

2011-10-19T15:53:00.000+01:00

I'm heading to a Concert in November, which overall is shaping up to be a pretty great month. The act Asethetic Perfection is performing in Dublin on November 19th, and I'm really looking forward to going. It's not often a band I actually like can be found in Ireland, let alone close enough for me to actually go on a date I have free. Needless to say, I'm proper thrilled about this.

My article writing has stalled. I burned myself out in September, and now I can't think of anything to write for either Triond or Factoidz. Hopefully my spark will come back before the end of the month so I can get something published before Halloween. Finger's firmly crossed anyway.

Getting Paid to Blog

2011-08-22T13:16:00.000+01:00

I've been asked a lot of times, "How do you make money blogging?". I usually find myself repeating the same thing over and over again on numerous different websites, so I figured it was time to finally do one big blog post and get it over and done with. Now, whenever I get asked that simple question, I can just direct people here and everyone can get every detail of my advice.

If you already have a blog, then skip down past the first few parts.

PLEASE NOTE: For about the past year I have been a terrible example of blogging for money. I've been busy and neglected my blog network and earning sites, and so please don't use my earnings as an example. I only manage to get maybe a week's worth of activity on any one blog every month, whereas a dedicated person working a month's worth of time can make much MUCH more than I do.

Setting Up a Blog
Depending on how professional you want your blog to be, will depend on how you set it up. In most cases, BlogSpot is more than enough for a blog owner. It offers loads of options for customisation of your blog, and is free to set up an account. It also allows you to purchase a domain name in the event that you want to have a www.yournamehere.com style URL, otherwise the standard blogspot subdomain should be plenty for your purposes.

Next up is deciding what kind of blog you want to write. I'll leave this up to you, but niche websites tend to earn the most when it comes to making money through your blog. If you write good quality, valuable articles for people to read and come back to, you'll make far more than a personal blog writer who every so often posts something interesting or amusing. Make sure whatever you write is easily understood by people who want to read it, is interesting and most of all that you enjoy writing about it.

Getting Viewers
Getting Viewers is the most important part of your blog, for obvious reasons. You need readers who will keep coming back to your blog to read your articles, so keep an eye out for what your readers like and respond to. Make sure your articles are interesting and well written, and FREQUENT. It's better to write up one slightly above average article every day than five really well written posts in a month.

Then you need to get your first viewers in to see your blog and know it's there. If you've managed your SEO well, then you should find a trickle of readers starting to pour in from Google and other search engines. This is your most valuable source of readership, and always, always keep an eye on what search terms people are using to find you and remember to keep those search terms in mind when writing your blog posts. Aim for a keyword density of about 2 keywords or phrases every paragraph at the very least. Preferably squeeze one in every sentence, but be careful not to oversaturate your posts.

Entrecard is a good way to get your first few viewers. Sign up to Entrecard and then look through the list of various categories to find the one which suits your blog the most. Visit a few of the blogs there and drop your Entrecard on their blog. This let's them know that you visited them and more often than not they'll visit you back to drop off their own Entrecard. Make sure to drop back on anyone who drops on you because it encourages people to keep coming back to drop their ECs. Then, using the EC Points you earn, you can buy advertising on people's blogs, getting you even more viewers.

Monetising Your Blog
And here's the part you were probably most interested in. After all, setting up a blog isn't that difficult, so why should you worry about that bit? Well then, here we go.

Affiliate Earning
One of the most common ways to make money while blogging. There are two ways I advise doing this if this is how you plan on making money while blogging.

Clickbank is one of the most used affiliate marketplaces when it comes to blogging. There are thousands of digital products for you to sell, and for each one you get a cut of the money made if it's bought through your affiliate link.
Amazon Affiliates (UK) and Amazon Affiliates (US) both offer great opportunities to earn through Amazon sales. This is fantastic if the blog you're doing involves reviewing books or movies or something similar, since you can include Amazon affiliate links in all of your articles.

Paid Links
Linkbucks offers a great opportunity, especially for Bloggers and website owners, in which you can make money just by sharing links. The ultimate way to make money through Linkbucks is by creating a script which you insert in the code of your website. This automatically converts every link on your web page or blog into a Linkbucks link type of your choosing, allowing to earn every time someone clicks off your website. Just insert the code once and you'll be making money in no time.

Paid Posts
SocialSpark is probably one of the best ways to make money while you're blogging. By accepting offers to write on your blog, you earn money by writing reviews of websites, products and services. SocialSpark pays through Paypal, so it's incredibly easy to join up. So long as you can keep to their terms and conditions, and write good quality posts, SocialSpark will prove to be one of the best income streams for you.

Advertising
The last thing (but still extremely important) for you to think about is advertising programs. Overloading your web page or blog with ads is a sure fire way to drive away visitors, so only throw these in once you've got a decent level of repeat readers. There are two services I can recommend here.

AdBrite: AdBrite is a good alternative to the extremely strict Google AdSense. I'd normally advise staying away from Google AdSense until you already have a very large readership and a top level (.com) domain name. AdBrite make for an excellent alternative.
Adgitize: I cannot recommend Adgitize enough for a blogger. An advertising solution aimed solely at Bloggers, Adgitize is one of the greatest services a Blogger can sign up for. They have so many ways to earn money on their service beyond just their advertising, and they reward Bloggers for being active members of the Blogging community and doing the things a Blogger should do. They also drive a small amount of free traffic your way! Follow this tutorial on making the most of adgitize.

So there you go! Those are all the methods I use to make money from blogging. And despite only actively blogging one week a month at most, I still make a substantial amount. You could easily make much more if you were careful and stuck to your schedule!

Getting a Job

2011-08-20T20:49:00.000+01:00

So my search for employment came up a bust this summer. I honestly don't know where I'd be qualified to work though, so I suppose that's to be expected.

Ideally I'm happy stacking shelves somewhere that I can understand to some degree the stuff I am in fact stacking. A game store (video games or tabletop) would be perfect, since I'm slightly OCD regarding shelving and really love gaming, so win-win.

I've not been able to get a job in the past six months, which is a shame. But being a full time student nowhere wants to hire me. The only place which called me back had to apologise because they were looking for full time staff all year around, and I can only offer my time during the summer. So I've been trying to make money online through various means, and none of them successful due to being away from my computer for long periods of time during the summer. As I'm sure you can tell, this blog slipped my mind completely. Adgitize earnings are down and I can't even remember the last time I dropped Entrecards on sites.

Oh well. Back to college, back to work....rather illogically. Let's see if I can keep posts coming more than twice a week for at least two month straight, eh?

Triond Earnings decreasing, Factoidz rising

2011-08-18T16:53:00.001+01:00

So I started focusing more on Factoidz after figuring out that maybe writing for multiple sites isn't such a bad idea at all. Another piece of motivation for doing this was watching my Triond earnings slowly decline towards lower and lower CPM values, which as you can guess unnerved me to some measurable degree.

I've decided that I love Factoidz. It is more limiting in its scope of articles than Triond, but the earning potential for the website is infinitely higher. It pays for loads of different things, offering bonuses to people who keep writing quality, well publicised articles and people who take up their article assignments. Combined with their Buzz It Up program and the fact that people are offered incentives to create quality backlinks to already existing articles, it certainly takes a great deal of the work out of the publicising of your article which is ever present in Triond.

I'd recommend signing up to Factoidz if you haven't already, and get writing!

Exams over, summer of unemployment ahead

2011-05-19T15:58:00.000+01:00

With the exams well and truly over, I can now settle back into a summer of unemployment and being constantly poor. Fun times truly lie ahead.

Silver lining means I now have more time to write Triond and Factoidz articles, which is handy for rectifying the lack of money problem I have. Hopefully, if everything goes according to plan. I hope to get at least one new article on each site every two days, ideally one on each every day for the whole summer. That should offer a huge boost in earnings from both websites, and I'll be sure to post payment proofs if people want them.

I don't have any holiday plans for the summer, primarily due to not being able to afford one, but I do plan on hanging out with my friends. I've already gone to the cinema twice to see new movies, and there are plans to go to the zoo. So supa fun socialising lies ahead. Hopefully I'll be able to afford it.

Into the exams

2011-04-23T00:20:00.000+01:00

I'm entering the exam period for my university, which means stress levels are really very high right now. Everything should be over in 3 weeks, which is fortunate. It's not too long a period of time to be worried over stuff...

Long time no Write

2011-04-04T12:49:00.000+01:00

Yeah, it's been a while since I last wrote here and a lot has happened since then. And by a lot, of course, I mean practically nothing at all. Google still hasn't given me back my blog, I'm still in college and I'm still broke. :(

I've written a few more articles for Triond, and beyond that fallen horribly lax in my other online ventures and communities. I hope to rectify that this month, after all it's a new monthly beginning, so why not use it to signal a new beginning for me as well.

Aspiring to be a Pop Star?

2011-03-04T22:55:00.000Z

Are you an aspiring pop star? Have you got the voice and the talent to be the next Leona Lewis or Alexandra Burke? Then Bodyform’s ‘Release Your Whoah’ competition is perfect for you!

Still Waiting on a Blog

2011-03-03T22:28:00.001Z

As I said I would in an earlier post, I set up a new blog for myself. This one niche based as opposed to being personal, and I finally got it set up on Thursday of last week.

Then Google shut it down.

Apparently it sparked warning signs in their anti-spam blog detection systems and they shut it down. Now, I don't know how that could have happened because I'd written one post and in it I had declared everything I was going to do. Even the schedule I'd be keeping to. Alas, apparently it was a spam blog and had to vanish in the ether.

I contacted Google about restoring it, and they said I would have it back within 48 hours. Well it's been almost twice that time now and I'm still waiting...

Not impressed Google. Not impressed at all.

The End of the Internet

2011-03-01T22:32:00.000Z

In case you were not aware, the internet is apparently dying.

I wish I was kidding about this, though I don't think it's going to turn out to be as big a deal as some people think it is. In the mean time read all about the end of the internet here.

What would you do if the internet ended?

Triond's February Bonus Over

2011-02-28T22:02:00.000Z

Triond's gotten into the pretty great habit of providing bonuses to people who write a large number of articles every month. They've done it every second month since about August 2010, and their best one yet is coming to an end.

The February bonus was a hard bonus to achieve completely. After all, there's only 28 days in February, and Triond was asking us to write 20 articles this month. Given my rather slow rate of article turnover, that was a hard to task to achieve, but I managed it on the very last day by going on a two hour blitz and turning over five articles. Which earns me a 20% bonus to my earnings by the end of the month, which is pretty awesome I think.

Skype vs MSN

2011-02-22T14:44:00.002Z

I'm beginning to see the appeal of Skype.

I've been a longtime user of MSN, and for about five years I never had need nor want to use Skype. After all, doesn't MSN have everything Skype has? Video calls, text conversations, sharing files. Besides, I didn't want to have to download something else and set up another account without dire need.

Then one of my friends moved away. And he used Skype, so I, naturally, got it too.

And it is so much better than MSN. It crashes less, it seems faster, the video calls are just better, not to mention they can manage multiple people in conversation over video at once. Skype even lets you know when a message has not been sent, and when precisely it does. MSN still drops messages all the time.

Long live the Skype regime, for it climbs the rubble of the old rule of MSN Messenger.

Christchurch's Pain

2011-02-22T14:21:00.000Z

For those who don't know yet, Christchurch, New Zealand was recently hit by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. At least 65 people are known to have died (as of my writing this), and many more are missing. This great tragedy has rocked New Zealand, but it's at times like these that humanity becomes pretty damn awesome.

All across the internet, people are rallying to help the victims of the earthquake. Google has provided a great system for helping people find their lost loved ones here, and thousands have already pledged their support across Facebook and Twitter. If you're lost at understanding the terrible cost inflicted upon Christchurch, there's a website here which tracks - in real time - the series of aftershocks which have torn into the area around Christchurch.

My heart goes out to all those lost to the Earthquake, and to those who have had their lives forever ruined by this vicious disaster.

God bless Christchurch.

Ro2 Payment Proof

2011-02-21T13:04:00.000Z

After a month of on and off membership, I finally managed to reach payout over at Ro2. A full, $1.02 all to myself. Okay, yes, only getting a dollar after a month of membership is pretty poor. After all I earn at least ten times that a month on Triond on a bad month. But you have to consider I don't spend a lot of time on there. I only make 50 lines or so a day, and that's when I remember to login. I'm going to try and be far more active there from now on and see how I do. For now though, the Payment Proof!

New blogs.

2011-02-19T18:43:00.001Z

So I'm going to try and open a few new, more niche related, blogs. This blog transformed into a sort of personal blog of my own, where I give passing comments on anything which comes into my mind. I'm going to try and staart concentrating on more niche based blogs. On what niches, I don't know. There's a lot I have an interest in and might start writing about.

Zoonik is going to keep going. We have the domain name for at least another few months, and unless we manage to make the money required to keep the domain, it's going to die off. It'll be sad to see Zoonik go, since it's a good effort (and the most successful blog I've had), but it's just not covering its own costs, and neither of us publishers are actually able to put aside enough time to create good quality content for it. We might revive it in the future if the domain name is still free, but for now it's time to let it go.

I'm also going to renew my blogging career. From now on, I'll be posting blogs here every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to keep content coming fresh. There could be random blog posts in between, detailing new game news or other spur of the moment information. But the main blog posts will be occuring on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday from now on.

Watch this space.

The New Samsung Galaxy S

2011-02-18T23:45:00.002Z

New Dead Island Trailer

2011-02-17T20:53:00.000Z

The new Dead Island trailer looks seriously impressive. A heart wrenching tale told from both the start and the end all at once (Memento anyone?), involving a loving family and their hotel resort. Oh, and zombies. Lots of zombies.

Delving deeper into Twitter

2011-02-16T00:06:00.000Z

As some of you may or may not know, I maintain an irregularly updated Twitter account, updated even more irregularly than this blog. As hard as that is to believe.

For the longest time, I never understood the idea of Twitter. It seemed to just be a cheaper version of blogging to me. Why would I want to know what someone is eating for dinner, and what their newest high score in Space Invaders is? I signed up and promptly forgot all about my account, letting it sink to general degradation save for the odd automated tweets from my Triond account.

Now though, a whole new life has been brought to my Twitter account. I've started tweeting again, and not just personal stuff. I tweet news as I find it (usually regarding real world and video gaming news), and am slowly gathering Twitter followers. It's a slow, arduous process, but I'm slowly beginning to see a value in having and maintaining a Twitter account, so I continue to maintain it.

Of course, Twitter is nothing without followers. So if you could kindly click this link here and do me a favour...

Make Money Being Social

2011-02-14T23:45:00.002Z

I wrote another article, which hopefully will do quite well. I am painfully short on money right now, so I have to get all the money I can. Please check out my article and spread the word about it? Please? I'll give you a cookie...

Make Money Being Social on the Internet

I play too many games.

2011-02-13T16:23:00.000Z

I play too many damn online games. Between Facebook and other games, I find myself in general just wasting away all my time in unproductive manners.

Not that I care. After all, these games are so much fun, and truth be told, I don't have a lot of productive stuff to be doing in the first place. I find myself spending most of my waking hours playing my Facebook games, or one of the myriad of other games I play online. My top two games on Facebook are easily Mafia Wars and World War: Total Domination. Outside of Facebook, I find myself playing more and more of Mafia Empire. It's a really simple game, and because you regain energy and bravery really quickly, you can keep playing all throughout the day.

As it stands, in all of those games I...well...I suck. I haven't really achieved much, but I still really enjoy playing. It's nice to not have to worry about college work, and instead just worry about my Gang's income.