I’ve been thinking about having some sort of contest on this site. The idea came to me the other day when I found you could get $250 in Facebook advertising for free. That reminded me that you can also get around $100 or so for free with Microsoft Adcenter, and another $50 with Yahoo search marketing. That got me thinking: How much could someone make using only free advertising coupons? I’m seriously interested in finding out.

So, yeah. I’d like to have month-long contest. I’ll obviously have to dig up all of those coupon codes, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The only problem I’m seeing right now is prizes. I’m really not in a position to be throwing around XBox 360s and Amazon gift certificates. If anybody out there would like to help sponsor my contest, let me know. I can promise a bunch of free backlinks (the rules would require entrants to post a complete list of prizes on their site, which includes a backlink to your site).

If there’s enough interest (and sponsors), I’ll work out the specific rules soon.

Edit: When I said ‘help sponsor the contest’, I didn’t mean gift cards and game consoles only.  If you’d like to donate an ad spot on your site, or $5 via paypal, that’d be appreciated just as much.

There’s this guy.  He seems to know a thing or two about Facebook advertising.  He also seems to know where to find coupon codes: There are four listed on his site right now, totaling to $250.  That’s a lot of free clicks.  If you’ve ever wanted to try advertising on Facebook, but haven’t wanted to pay up, now’s your chance.

You know what I found the most disappointing about that whole thing though?  It wasn’t the theft of my landing page, it was the people who leapt in to justify it.

“Everybody steals landing pages.”

It’s just 1s and 0s, right?  Victimless crime, right?  Well, what about the people who make their living off of web page design?  They’re losing business.

“It’s ok because he’s a newbie.  He doesn’t have money to spend on landing pages.”

You know what?  I’m new at this too.  The guy who stole my LP actually spent more on his campaign than I did.  Why is it that he deserves a free LP when I had to pay for mine?

“It’s just part of the business.”

That’s incredibly disheartening, and it really destroys any incentive for me to try to be original.  Why put forth any effort to be creative/unique?  Just find what works and steal it.

Oh well

That campaign is over, so I guess there’s no point in worrying about it.  It’s a shame though:  Three more leads and I would have gotten my first $1,000+ check.

BIG F’N EDIT: My affiliate manager contacted me and let me know that I had 3 uncredited leads, which were just added.  In other words, last month I made over $1,000 with Advaliant.  First $1k+ month ever.

User-driven image rating sites

I started with a little site called Rate My Betta (I like Bettas). Did some advertising on relevant forums, got about a dozen users and a couple dozen pictures, and then kinda forgot about it. That site has received 8 visits in the last month.

Coupon site

What was I thinking? Breaking into the coupon site niche is nigh-impossible. You have to compete with sites that have been around for over a decade and span multiple niches. In any case, I created a site for Dell coupons, updated it daily for a week or two, and got bored.

The worst network on the net

Remember when I said I’d create 1,000 autoblogs and see what happened? Well, I got to 25 and found better uses for my time. I did get my first takedown threat the other day though.

Actual SEO

The modest amount of success I’ve had online has come from PPC, so a few months ago I decided to create a site that used only SEO to get it’s traffic. This site flat out failed. I picked an offer and built an entire site around it. I found a couple dozen articles, threw in some adsense code and an eBay auction feed, and called it a day. I learned a few valuable lessons from that experiment, the most important one being that Google doesn’t like duplicate content.

eBay niche stores

Last month I wanted to slowly build an empire of niche stores. That empire stopped at two. Together, they’ve made me something like $27, so maybe I should have kept going. That being said, both sites have the exact same layout which, well, sucks. That project is the first on my list to pursue, if I ever get around to it.

Gaming blog

Yes, I actually tried to make a gaming blog. Fell apart when I ran out of things to complain about.  That, and I really don’t have the budget to stay on top of new releases.

Oh well

For every 5 projects I put on hold, I have one that’s actually working.  I’ll just keep plugging away until I find something that works.

1. Get the word out about my new, Purdue-themed free blog hosting service.  You may be wondering why I created a free blog hosting service.  Well, each blog will have access to 15 or so themes (so far), and each one of those themes has a few Adsense blocks on it.  Adsense blocks with my publisher ID.  There are 36,000 students on this campus, and if even 0.5% of them sign up, I’ll have a lot of free content being created.  See where I’m going with this?
2. Encourage people to sign up for that Vista Print business card offer, which incidentally pays me $12 per lead.

I’ll be placing them primarily in the Engineering and Management buildings.  If that works out, I’ll place some in other areas around campus as well.  We’ll see how this works out.

My Paypal balance is Monopoly money to me, so I went ahead and sent $3 CAD (that’s $3.03 US) his way. I wish him the best of luck with his little venture.

Maybe I should try this. I wonder if

www.SendGeoffToJapanBecauseHeSucksAtMoneyAndCantSaveUp3000USD.com

is taken.

Edit: Wow, I got a personal thank-you email.  Very classy.

Phase 1 - Freak out

Here’s what I heard coming out of my boss’s office on that fateful day: “Mmblmlmbmlm can’t get rich blah blah Geoff blah blah how’d he find out about this?”  I’d written something about my company being acquired by The Planet, and in a flash of brilliance, linked to their website.  From what I understand, my article was scraped and blasted out in the company newsletter.  Oops.

My bosses were confused, because we don’t have any Geoffs working here.  Unfortunately for me, that defense would be flimsy at best, since I’m a smart guy who puts pictures of himself on the Internet.  As soon as they clicked on the ‘About the Author’ link, I’d be screwed.

Phase 2 - Think fast

I did a quick damage assessment:  Had I ever talked about company secrets or said anything offensive about my coworkers/bosses/company logo?  Thankfully, I’m not an idiot.  I rarely talk about work at all on this site, and all you guys know is that I’m involved in some sort of technical support or something.  I always laugh at the people who rant about their bosses on their blogs, only to get caught at some point a few weeks later.  It’s important to remember that the Internet is public, and everything you say on your blog can be seen by anyone as long as it’s online (and probably after that too.  Thanks Google cache).

Phase 3 - Walk of shame

Phase two lasted around 3 seconds, so my bosses hadn’t found my about page yet.  I decided to minimize the damage and admit that the site was mine (”Did I hear someone talking about my blog?”).  In situations like these, if you know you’re going to be identified, just come out and admit it (otherwise, you’ll look like you have something to hide).

If you do have something to hide, well, you’re screwed.  I guess you could quickly edit your wp-config.php file to point at the wrong database, thus taking your site offline and buying you some time.  That said, cover your tracks better next time.

Phase 4 - Forget about it

Pretend it never happened and hope that you haven’t acquired a couple of new readers.

Phase 5 - Reap the benefits

“So, you know a few things about Adwords and blogging?  Lets talk in my office.”

Phase 5 may or may not happen.  Suffice it to say, I was surprised.  Nothing’s come of it yet, but we’ll see.

Actually, I might be doing a lot more with blogging and Adwords soon. I’ll see if I can tell you guys about that later.

Anyway, I’m doing pretty well with the Advaliant Green Tea offer right now. The contest is still going on, so you guys should join in while there’s still time.

Well, the numbers are in, and I can’t say I’m surprised:

Impressions: 3,106 (2,003 unique).

Clicks: 40 (36 unique).

Leads: 0 (0…yeah).

That’s right, I made $0 with my little 125×125 free iPod add. It wasn’t a total waste though. I did find that:

1. You can get thousands of free impressions and dozens of free clicks with project wonderful.
2. 125×125 ads aren’t very descriptive or eye-catching.
3. People may not be as stupid as I thought (doubtful though).

Next on my experiment list: Paying for ad space. I’m going to pick a site that accepts skyscraper banners, gets over 100,000 hits per day, and costs in the $5-$10 per day range. That, combined with a site-appropriate ad, should produce some results. We’ll see.

Today’s ReviewU target is The Limelight, a blog that’s about everything. Seriously, I can’t figure out what niche this blog fills. Is it a money blog? Photo blog? Inspirational? Political? All of those topics are on the front page, and I can’t figure out where he’s going with this. That’s ok though, there’s nothing wrong with an everything blog. Sometimes it’s nice to just share whatever is on your mind. The problem with that, however, is that you can’t expect many readers. More on that later.

Get to the gripes already

Ok, fine. What can I say about this blog? Well, for starters, it’s trying to do everything at once. No, I’m not talking about the subject matter, I’m talking about the widgets. This blog is very, very “busy”. On the left sidebar, we’ve got three social bookmarking icons and an adsense block (ew). On the right, we see recent articles, ad blocks (including Entrecard), categories, archives, an empty links block (big no-no), the meta menu (also unnecessary), and the BlogRush widget (I hate BlogRush).  Up top we’ve got a simple nav bar and the RSS links (why would anybody want to subscribe to a site’s comments?).  On the bottom we see a tag cloud (who really looks at the footer anyway?).

The main content area is full of truncated articles.  Personally, I can’t stand those.  To me, they’re just a ploy to get more pageviews.  If I’m reading an article, I don’t want to have to click to see all of it.  I know a lot of people are fine with that, I’m just saying that personally, I hate it.  Given that the articles are rather long, though, I guess it works for this site. Expanding the full articles reveals even more Adsense blocks, which work ok with the theme (not saying I like them though).

Oh, and there seems to be some phantom buttons in the nav bar.  Move your mouse below the actual links and you’ll see them.  I know, I’m nitpicking.

The everything blog

I really don’t understand blogs with no niche.  They make me think of personal blogs, and why would I want to read your personal blog?  Unless you have a lot of credibility (celebrity, professor, etc), why would I want to listen to what you have to say?  Retaining readers on a no-niche blog must be very difficult (I’ve never tried it, so I have no idea).  Since this blog doesn’t use Feedburner, I have no way of knowing how many subscribers he has (which, of course, doesn’t do anything for his credibility). dnScoop tells me that the site is over 4 years old, and that its Alexa traffic is nonexistent, so I guess I’m right about the readership retention thing.  My humble suggestion would be to submit each and every article written to Digg, stumbleupon, etc, until you have a steady stream of returning visitors.  It’s hard enough to become recognized as an authority in one niche, so gaining recognition in everything may very well be impossible.

Overall

There’s nothing terribly wrong with this site, but it’s going to be an uphill battle getting and keeping readers.  Social bookmarking is your friend, and sadly, that’s all I can think of.