Extra Cash Challenge

Total Earnings for April 2012

2012-05-26T12:58:00.000+01:00

Yes, April! I am way behind schedule! I have been really busy lately and have got out of the habit blogging both here and on my other blogs. Here are the totals anyway:

Clickbank: £22.70
Squidoo: $1.24
Surveys: $6.26
Amazon.co.uk Associates: $41.70

Total = $70.90

Pretty disappointing really, but then I haven't really been putting much work in recently, so I can't complain.

No One Size Fits All Credit Card

2012-04-27T00:24:00.000+01:00

Guest post

I have been thinking about switching to a different credit card lately, but it is kind of an overwhelming task to figure out which one is going to be the best for me. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different cards to choose from all with different incentives, interest rates, perks, and pitfalls. There are so many factors to consider before you can even narrow down what is important to look for? Do you pay your card off in full each month or are you paying interest as you pay down your debt? Do you travel frequently, especially to foreign countries? Are you a student or a business owner? I have been trying to do my own research in order to compare credit cards, but then I found there are websites which will do just that for you. You are able to see all laid out for you the benefit, uses, interest rates, signing bonuses, etc. so that comparing cards is actually easy. For me personally I think a card which has a good rewards program is the most ideal feature. I generally pay my balance in full, but use my card a lot in order to earn extra points. I am not sure yet if I want to go with a card that specializes in frequent flier miles because ideally I would love to start traveling more, or if that will give me the most “bang for my buck” so to speak. I have seen some cards which give you a pretty decent amount of points just for signing up which would really be nice. If I had a balance I still needed to pay off on my current credit card and was paying interest, the most important thing I would be looking for is a card which allows for balance transfers with a 0% interest rate for at least a few years. Because I do plan to travel more in the future, especially out of the country, it is probably important for me to also look into the service fees associated with money exchange and using your card out of the country. It's hard to be sure you are getting the best fit (and deal) possible when there are so many options, but at least there are tools which can help you sort through what is worth and what is not.

Total Earnings for March 2012

2012-04-07T12:20:00.000+01:00

Well this has been quite an interesting month in that one of my sites found itself on page one of search results for many of the key search phrases. This also happened to be at the height of the buying season for the particular product that this site focuses on. So for a period this site was getting an average of 250 visitors per day and averaging $20 per day in commission. Sadly this only lasted a week or so before traffic the site fell back down the search engine rankings and traffic returned to a mere trickle. This was good while it lasted and gave a tantalizing glimpse into just what is possible. This spike in traffic meant that I made a record breaking $269 during March. Of I won't see this for a couple of months so this doesn't get counted in this month's total.

Elsewhere, there was not much happening really. This has been a busy month in other parts of my life which has meant that I have had very little time to put into my online empire. I have made a couple of Clickbank sales at least which has kept things ticking over.

Here are the totals:

Swagbucks: $5.00
Squidoo: $2.65
Private Advertising: $79.39
Clcikbank: $20.58

Total: $107.62

Not too bad I guess considering how little I have actually done this month.

Total Earnings for February 2012

2012-03-06T23:14:00.001Z

This has been a bit of a quiet month in some respects. I must confess to not doing a great deal of work on my various projects. I have decided to cut down on some of my projects and where some domain names have been due to expire on projects that have not been performing or I have not got around to doing what I had originally intended to do, I have just let them expire. I have been spreading myself too thinly and not focusing enough.

On the positive side I have received my Amazon earnings from Christmas which was a great boost. Here are the totals for this month:

Amazon.co.uk: $135.16
Amazon.com: $186.53
Squidoo: $0.98
Surveys: $31.51 (Pinecone, Surveyhead)

Total: $354.18

Not bad really. If I could repeat that level of sales on Amazon every month I would be very happy!

Monthly Total Earnings for January 2012

2012-01-31T22:29:00.000Z

Into the first month of 2012 and while I am really hoping that my earnings will really turn a corner, I hope that this month does not set the trend for the rest of the year. There have been a couple of good things - my first Amazon.co.uk payout and the first two Clickbank sales of the year - overall there is no sign at present of things taking off. My focus has really been my new blog. At the moment I really just focusing on getting more content on there before I really try and bring in some traffic and ultimately some money. It has not made me anything so far and nor would I expect it to. However, traffic is starting to pick up a bit and I have noticed a few other blogs have linked to me already, so it is looking promising.

Traffic has, predictably, dropped off to my review sites following Christmas, but I am still getting traffic and I have made more sales than I expected. I have decided to keep working on my most successful site building up content and trying to get more traffic. Once this is really performing as I would like then I will move on to the next one.

Here are my earnings for this month:

Clickbank: $39.29
Swagbucks: $5.00
Surveys: $40.10 (Pure Profile)
Squidoo: $5.33
Amazon.co.uk: $47.68
Sponsored Reviews: $5.00

Total Earnings = $142.40

Actually not too bad in the end especially considering it was just following Christmas. Let's see what February brings.

Make Money from Surveys with Surveyhead

2012-01-14T22:05:00.001Z

Companies across the world need to check out with consumers what we think about their products or advertising campaigns. After all, iIf they proceeded with developing products without even considering what their potential customers think then this could lead to financial failure. As a result these companies are willing to invest a great deal into finding out what we think. One way of doing this is through online surveys. The participants in surveys gain not only by gaining a sneak preview of upcoming products or new movies, but also receive a payment, either in the form of gifts or cash. There are various surveys sites available where you sign up and take part.

One such survey site is Surveyhead. Although the site is US based it offers surveys to people across the world. Each paid survey usually lasts between 15 to 20 minutes and are easy to follow.

Surveyhead offer a particularly wide range of rewards. Of course there is cash payable through Paypal, but as well as this there are MP3 downloads, merchant codes for many top brands and virtual gaming currencies for gaming communities and Facebook. To start you off you even get a $5 bonus just for signing up.

So why not help shape products of the future and earn yourself some extra money or one of the other various rewards available through taking surveys for cash at Surveyhead

End of Year Report for 2011

2012-01-07T23:51:00.000Z

Another of trying to make money online has passed, so time to review my progress. This year my focus has been on trying to earn money as an affiliate, although I have earned money through other means as well. I have tended to move away from using Squidoo to earn money through Clickbank. This, it seems, was a good move as Squidoo are getting stricter on what you can put on your lenses anything deemed "overly promotional" will be locked and subsequently deleted.

Instead I have tended to move more towards making money from Amazon and setting up a number of review sites. A couple of these performed fairly well over the Christmas period so this bodes well for the future.

I have been guilty of flitting from one thing to another over the last year and I think that my earnings have suffered as a result. I did become a little more focused in the final few months and I think this did help my earnings.

So here are my totals for the year (previous year's total shown in brackets):

Clickbank: $184.74 ($364.08)
Amazon: $129.74 ($0)
Adsense: $101.22 ($101.42)
Private Advertising: $423.70 ($60.00)
Surveys: $296.43 ($358.09)
Squidoo: $30.10 ($54.32)
EBay: $426.90 ($232.44)
Swagbucks: $40 ($45)
Zlio: $1.67 ($0)
Hits4Pay: $25.18 ($0)
Blogsvertise: $25 ($25)
MyLikes: $1.65 ($0)
Quickpenny: $40.66 ($0)

Total Earnings for 2011 = $1726.99

Earnings for 2010 were $1367.30 so an increase of $359.69. A bit of an increase, but certainly not enough to radically change my life!

Let's just also review my targets from last year:

More One Week Marketing campaigns. I only actually did one more over the whole of last year. The reason for this is that I put a lot of time into the one I did and it did not produce any sales at all. As a result I became disillusioned with using Squidoo as a basis for selling products.
List Building. This never got going. I had intended to use Squidoo as a basis for building a subscriber list, but decided against it given their recent tightening of their rules.
Create and sell my own product. Nope, didn't manage this one either. My wife was going to create an ebook which I was going to sell for her, but this hasn't yet got off the ground.
Create more niche sites: I achieved this although my original intention had been to make money Adsense from these. Most of the site I have made have been more focused on making money from Amazon. Some of these have been quite successful, but some have not. I have learned that it is better to work more on a few sites and get them to succeed rather than to try and spread my efforts over lots of sites.
More Squidoo lenses. I have become a little disillusioned with Squidoo over the last year and have come to the conclusion that it is better to have your own sites.

For the coming year I intend to focus on:

Focus on my new blog for which I intend to become a complete go-to resource for my niche. I intend to build content and traffic over the coming months. Alongside this I intend to build a related subscriber list.
Further build content and traffic on my existing niche sites. Some of these sites are also suitable for list building so this is something else I intend to pursue.
I may build more niche/review site, but only when I am satisfied that my existing sites are performing the best that they can.

This is a much smaller and more tightly focused list of aims than previous years. And this, I believe, is more likely to lead me to success in 2012.

Monthly Total Earnings for December 2011

2011-12-31T20:16:00.001Z

Well this is the last monthly earnings total for 2011 and it brings with it some interesting developments. I had hoped to have set up a number of Amazon review sites in time for Christmas. Whilst I did achieve this I had not developed them as much as I would have liked nor did I think I had done enough to get decent traffic. Nevertheless a couple of the sites did attract quite a bit of traffic in the run up to Christmas and made a number of sales. In total I made 64 sales on Amazon.com and 60 sales on Amazon.co.uk this month. This made me a combined total of $229.00. This smashes my previous record by a significant margin. I do have to be realistic though and recognize that sales will plummet in the months following the Christmas rush. However, it is very encouraging that I have been able to achieve this and if I can develop the other review sites further then I should be able to expect some sustained growth in commissions.

Unfortunately Amazon takes a couple of months to verify its commissions so I won't get to see this money until February. Traditionally in these monthly earnings posts I only count what I have actually received so the total is not nearly as impressive. Here is what I have received this month:

Clickbank: $20.58
Surveys: $6.21
Squidoo: $1.23

Total = $28.02

Not a very impressive total in the end, but I am looking forward to receiving my Amazon commissions in February.

Why Has Squidoo Locked My Lens?

2011-12-17T23:28:00.001Z

I have been building Squidoo lenses for quite a while now, although recently I have been spending less time on them preferring instead to build my own sites. It seems that recently Squidoo has been getting stricter on lensmasters who do not keep to the terms of use and any dubious lenses are locked. The reasons for getting a lens locked usually relate to things like containing duplicate content, being overly promotional or just plain spammy.

I have had a couple of lenses locked previously and to be honest I don't think I had much to complain about as there was some duplicate content lifted from Amazon and the lenses existed purely to sell a product with my Amazon affiliate links. I figured there was no real way back for these so I just deleted them.

However, I have more recently had another lens blocked that contains entirely original content and is not promotional - it does contain three Amazon affiliate links to books related to the subject, but this is entirely within the rules. It also contains Squidoo's Ebay module. It contain a dead link which is what I am guessing tripped off Squidoo systems. This was to a Clickbank product which no longer exists - this was one single link at the end of the lens. I have now removed this link.

I have e-mailed the folks at Squidoo a while ago now and have had no response. This is very frustrating as if there is no response within 60 days then the lens will just be deleted from Squidoo. This is all rather ironic as this is probably the most original of my lenses and I really put it together to be useful to other people rather than to make any money. It is the lens that has had the most comments and positive feedback and one of my most visited lenses. Ultimately if I get no response then I will have to export my content elsewhere.

This has dented my faith in Squidoo somewhat, but has reinforced for me the need to focus on my own websites rather than relying on making money from posting content on someone else's.

Total Earnings for November 2011

2011-12-05T22:15:00.001Z

Another month gone and I have been extremely bad at posting not only here but on my other blog. I had hoped to devote my time to getting some sites ready to maximize my earnings from Christmas, but as ever time has run away from me. I do have some sites which have been making some money from Christmas shoppers, but they are not as well developed and as visible in the search engines as I would like. I am intending to continue to develop these over the coming months and hopefully they will continue to earn me some money.

I have continued to make sales on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and I am expecting to receive a payout from both of these shortly. My total this month was particularly helped by a big sale on Ebay.

Here are the totals:

Ebay: $383.38
Clickbank: $11.20
Surveys: $25.04
Swagbucks: $5.00
Squidoo: $2.64

Total = $427.26

A pretty decent total all in all, but this is not something I can really repeat as it was only brought about by selling an item on Ebay that I don't need any more and I don't have many more of those!

Monthly Earnings for October 2011

2011-11-02T00:53:00.000Z

Another month past and another month of some positives, but also some considerable frustrations. The big news of this month is that I have had my first payout as an Amazon.com affiliate. This has taken quite a while, but I have really only been concentrating on Amazon in the last few months.

This month I have made a total of 26 Amazon sales across the .com and .co.uk sites earning $51 in all. Not bad, but certainly not life changing. I am hoping that in the run up to Christmas I will make more sales.

In relation to Clickbank sales, I have made 2 this month after a couple of months not making any. I can't really complain about this though as I have been concentrating on my Amazon review sites.

Here are the totals (this is what I have actually received, not necessarily what I have earned this month):

$129.74 - Amazon.com
$6.37 - Surveys (Pinecone)
$2.23 - Squidoo

Total = $138.34

Still a long way from earning enough to really make a difference. I am focusing Amazon review sites at the moment, but only in the run up to Christmas and then I want to move onto something else.

Monthly Total for September 2011

2011-10-01T21:53:00.001+01:00

Time to review my monthly earnings again. I am still struggling to turn that corner to make real money online. I have had some successes this month, but not enough to make a real difference. I have not made any Clickbank sales at all this month (the Clickbank income showing this month is from August), but I have made 18 Amazon sales (11 on co.uk and 7 on .com) which has brought in $26 in income overall.

I have made a tentative start this month on an authority blog which I am intending will be my main project. However, I am not expecting this to make any money for a little while yet.

So here are my totals for September (bearing in mind this is the money I have actually received):

Clickbank: $14.86
Private advertising: $30
Surveys: $90.38 (YouGov: $77.91, Pinecone: $12.47)
Swagbucks: $5
Squidoo: $2.60
Zlio: $1.67

Total = $144.51

Still rather short of where I want it to be, but not too bad I guess.

Choosing a Niche for an Authority Blog

2011-09-28T22:22:00.001+01:00

I am well aware that in my making money online efforts I have been guilty of flitting from one thing to another in my frustration at the lack of money that I am making. I decided some time ago that I needed a single main project to focus on. That single project, I decided, should be an authority blog. I did originally think that rather than a blog I would write a series of linked Squidoo on a single niche, but I abandonded that idea as I did not think this would do I what I wanted. I have decided to chart my progress on this new project here.

So the first task then is to choose a niche. The main criteria for a niche for an authority blog is that it has to be a subject that you are interested in and know something about. After all, you are going to have to write regularly about the subject and be willing to research any areas that you don't know much about. If you try and focus a blog on something that you think might be lucrative but have little interest in then you will quickly lose interest. In my case I have decided on a niche that is quite broad based on the idea that it needs to be in order to ensure that I can keep coming up with new things to say.

If you are not sure what to choose then think about what you enjoy talking about with friends and what you regularly seek information about. Is there anything that if you were put in front of a group of people what you could talk about and sound reasonably knowledgeable. Tempting though it might be, you should avoid making your authority blog about making money online - there are already far too many out there!

Next take a look at other blogs in your niche and look at how many subscribers there are, how many comments are left, etc. to give you an idea of traffic and popularity. Also take a look at their posting schedule, what sort of things they write about and how they are monetized.

I have already chosen my niche and confident that I have enough to say so I am ready to start.

Total Earnings for August 2011

2011-08-31T23:53:00.000+01:00

Another month passed and time to report my earnings. It feels that it has been pretty slow going recently, but at least this month I have received my second Adsense cheque. However, I have made no Clickbank sales at all (Clickbank income showing this month is from last month's sales). I have made 10 Amazon sales, although these were all pretty small.

Here are the totals:

Adsense: $101.22
Clickbank: $35.72
Swagbucks: $5.00
Squidoo: $1.49
Surveys: $6.50 (Pinecone)
Hits4Pay: $25.18
Private advertising: $40.00

Total = $215.11

Thanks to the Adsense payout this month's payment wasn't actually too bad after all.

Zlio Bites the Dust

2011-08-21T14:47:00.001+01:00

Zlio was a service where you could easily build your own shop in a matter of minutes. You did not sell your own products, you received a commission for every item sold by the various retailers that you could worked with Zlio. It's a straightforward concept and one that proved very popular. However, Zlio have been losing money over the last few years and it seems that they have finally accepted that they are not going to be able to turn this around. So now Zlio will be closing down on 11th September 2011 and all shops will cease to be from that point.

It seems that the fatal blow was Zlio losing a court case against a SEO company who said that they would be able to improve the standing of Zlio shops in Google searches. Also they have had to pay damages to the SEO company for making the dispute public on Twitter.

I have three Zlio shops, none of which make me hardly any money. Having said that I have put very little energy into promoting them and getting traffic to them. In truth I have no problem with letting them go as I really gave up on trying to make any money on them quite some time ago. So really it means that I have 3 less sites to worry about and means I can stop fretting about the fact they are not getting any traffic. I had various plans in my head to improve traffic to these shops which would have involved lots of work. I am quite glad now that I never got around to doing anything about it!

Monthly Earnings for July 2011

2011-08-10T22:01:00.000+01:00

This post is a little late as I have been away for a few days. The first thing to acknowledge is the fact that I have not posted at all to this blog over the last month, which is not good at all - I will try and do better over the coming weeks.

During July, I concentrated on building a couple of Amazon review sites and driving traffic to them. I have really just been experimenting with these to try and find out what works best. One of the sites was previously just a site with minimal content and lots of Adsense ads. As this site ranks quite well I decided to add some more content and add in some Amazon links. I don't use Adsense on my other Amazon sites, so this is a bit of an experiment to see how it does. This all seems to be paying off though as I made six Amazon sales in July which made me a total of $32 which is a record for a single month. However, as a UK based Amazon.com affiliate I have to earn $100 before I see my money. I have actually passed this threshold now, but it will be a few weeks before the sales are verified and I receive my cheque.

I have also reached the threshold for receiving my second Adsense payment and I should receive my cheque for this any day now.

So here are the totals for last month:

Clickbank: $12.18
Surveys: $12.91 (Pinecone)
Squidoo: $4.33
EBay: $9.66

Total = $39.08

This is pretty poor really. However, I do feel encouraged by my recent relative success with my Amazon sites, so I am hopeful things will pick up soon.

Monthly Earnings for June2011

2011-07-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

June has been a better month than the previous two, although it has not been without its frustrations. A couple of private advertising sales have bumped up my total. A downside is that I have had couple of refunds on my Clickbank sales; I have only ever had one previous refund so to have two in one month is disappointing.

I have been concentrating recently on building Amazon review sites recently. I have two up and running and traffic from these is slowly building. However, they have only given me one sale so far. I have made four Amazon sales overall this month which has brought me frustratingly close to that $100 payout.

Here are the totals:

Private advertising: $120.37
Blogsvertise: $20
Squidoo: $2.86
MyLikes: $1.65
Swagbucks: $5
Surveys: $6.43 (Pinecone)
EBay: $20.86

Total = $177.17

A definite improvement, but still less than I want it to be.

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2011-06-16T23:09:00.002+01:00

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Making Your Articles Work Harder #2: Turning Articles into YouTube Videos

2011-06-11T10:55:00.004+01:00

Once you have written some articles to submit to article directories, why stop there? You might as well make your hard work stretch as far as you can. One way of doing this is to turn your articles into YouTube videos. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I think this is the quickest and easiest way you will find and does not require any specialist knowledge of video editing software, and what's more there is no cost involved in buying software either.

The first thing you need to do is to turn your article into a format that is suitable for a video. The easiest way of doing this is to turn it into a slideshow presentation. You could use Powerpoint for this, but in this instance I recommend you download Open Office for free. The reason for this is that Open Office has a presentation application known as Impress which has a useful feature that is not available on Powerpoint.

Once you have downloaded Open Office then click on the "Presentation" icon to start. This will then guide you through the process of starting a presentation allowing you to select a template and a background. I suggest that you use a blank template, but use a colored background (but don't forget to change the color of the text to make it more visible).

Once you are past this you will see it looks pretty much like Powerpoint where, on a basic level, you can just type into the slide. Now, open up your article in Word, Notepad or whatever else you used to write it. Your task now is to translate your article into a presentation. Obviously, start with your title slide, but make sure that you put the url of your website under the title so that is the first thing that the viewer sees. What you need to do from here is to avoid making your slides too wordy otherwise people will not have chance to read them and lose interest. So, what you can do is cut and paste short sentences from your article or, summarize your content into bullet points. I think that bullet points are much more effective as they get your point across quickly and effectively. Make sure that your final slide also includes the url of your website again.

Once you have completed your presentation, making sure that you saved it of course, now comes the fancy bit! On the top left of the screen, click "File" then on the drop down choose "Wizards", then on the next drop down choose "Web Page".

Just follow the wizard through clicking "Next" when asked. What this will do is create a folder of files that you could use to upload your presentation to the internet. However, we are not going to do that. If you go into the folder you will see that it contains a number of HTML files and some image files. It is actually just the image files you want as these images contain your individual slides.

Now, head on over to YouTube. If you haven't done so already then create an account there. Once you have done this you can start creating your video. If you already have software for creating videos then you could use that, but we are going for the easy and free method that does not you to buy any software. Here is what you do:

Click on "Upload"
On the right hand side of the screen you will see a box which says "Create your own animation - try now"
Click that link

Once you done this you see a number of options for services for creating your video. My personal preference is for "One True Media", but by all means experiment and see which you prefer.

Once you have clicked on the One True Media "Create Video" button you will be asked what files you want to upload. Simply select your image files that you created earlier and click upload. Once they have finished uploading then click the "Done" button.

You will then see this menu open up:

This gives a range of options for editing your video - but my recommendation is to keep it simple. You can see a "Choose Music" option here which allows you to choose from a number of pre-loaded options (overcomes any copyright issues) or you can upload your own if you prefer.

Once you are happy with your creation then simply click the "Publish to YouTube" button. Remember to add a description when prompted including a link to your site. You cannot use HTML so you have to just type in the url of your site (including the http://) and it will automatically convert to a clickable link.

Once your video is live then remember to bookmark it, Tweet about it, tell your Facebook friends, blog about it, etc. Don't forget that you can embed your video into blog posts, Squidoo lenses, HubPages Hubs, etc.

There you have it - the easiest cost-free method of converting articles into YouTube videos known to man (or woman!). The only downside to this method is there is no option of uploading your video to other video sharing sites, for that you really need to download some software to do this which usually involves spending some money.

Monthly Earnings for May 2011

2011-06-01T22:27:00.000+01:00

Well, another month past and time to post my earnings. Things have been rather slow going recently and I still feel that things have not really got off the ground as I hoped they might do. I have made three Clickbank sales and one Amazon sale this month, and Adsense earnings have picked up a little. Nevertheless, I seem to be struggling to turn a corner and make significant money. Here are the totals anyway:

Clickbank: $30.45
Surveys: $13.06 (Pinecone)
Swagbucks: $5
Squidoo: $1.22
Ebay: $9.75

Total = $59.48

Quite disappointing really, so I am hoping that I will improve over the coming months.

Why You Need to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft

2011-05-21T23:52:00.000+01:00

Whilst this digital age has added greater convenience to many aspects of our lives, it is also enabled thieves more ways to get hold of our money. We are all used to receiving those less than convincing scam e-mails telling us that a long lost relative wants to leave us large amounts of money, but amongst these are more convincing e-mails supposedly from banks telling us that we need to confirm our information for security purposes. Then there are fake websites set up entirely to convince us to enter specific details about ourselves.

The effect of this can be to simply take money from your account or alternatively to set up accounts or receive services in your name. Even if you realize that elements of your identity have been stolen it can be a difficult, lengthy and often stressful process to rectify this.

As a result of this growing problem many people are turning to identity theft protection in order to monitor your situation and help to ensure that your information is not being compromised. There are a number of services available which will monitor how information is being used and will alert you should a suspicious event occur.

One such service is Identity Hawk which will provides an assessment of the risk of your personal data and how vulnerable it is to abuse. Also is constantly monitors records over the internet to detect potential threats. Whenever a suspicious event occurs you are sent an e-mail or text so you know immediately and can take steps to address this.

In addition to any protection you take out you should always check your bank accounts very regularly in order to check for any unusual activity. If you do see any unexpected transactions you should contact your bank immediately.

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2011-05-07T21:03:00.001+01:00

I am really liking the @free Twitter account. Only the best free offers w/o the hype.

Monthly Earnings for April 2011

2011-05-01T19:22:00.002+01:00

Following last month's high, my earnings have dropped off somewhat this month. However, on a more positive note I have made my first Clickbank sales of the year, two in fact. Also I have made another two Amazon sales (albeit rather small ones).

Here are the totals:

Clickbank: $19.52
Surveys: (Pinecone) $6.68
Squidoo: $4.81
Swagbucks: $5

Total = $36.01

A pretty disappointing total all in all. Let's hope that May is better!

Making Your Articles Work Harder #1 - Using Document Sharing Sites

2011-04-19T23:44:00.001+01:00

Submitting articles to article directories is a great way to gain back links to your website, blog, Squidoo lens, etc., but once you have put time and effort into writing your article shouldn't you get as much value out of them as you can? You can submit your article to multiple directories of course, but what I want to discuss here is using document sharing sites. The best known of these are Scribd and Docstoc which are the two I use most. Docstoc also has a revenue sharing element using Adsense which is nice bonus. There are also a number of others out there that are worth trying but I only have limited experience of those.

First of all, what is a document sharing site? Well it is simply a site where you can upload a document. Usually they can take a number of formats, but PDF is the most common - you can use Word if you prefer, but your document will not look as professional and you run the risk of someone downloading your document and editing it for their own purposes.

You can convert your articles to PDF format by using Open Office which can be downloaded for free. Open Office is similar to Microsoft Office and includes a word processor very similar to Word, with the important distinction that it allows you to convert your documents into PDF at the click of a button. During this process, make sure that you include links to your site - unlike article directories you can put your links wherever you like, so you could put one in the body of the article and another in the footer. Also, you can put in affiliate links. If you want to you can spruce up your article with some pictures as well, but this is not essential.

All you have to do now is upload your document to Scribd and/or Docstoc. Simply register with the sites, click the upload button and follow the instructions.

Unlike submissions to article directories this will not help your site get found in the search engines. So why do it? Well it is simply another way of helping people find you - what you are aiming for is for people to download your document, perhaps share with others and then click on the links to visit your site. It is very quick and easy to do, so well worth the effort.

Does your personality define the car you drive? - Sponsored Post

2011-04-16T21:56:00.001+01:00

When I saw the question "what kind of 'ride' are you" this is not what I was expecting...