I Need Discipline

August 2010 Blog Income Report

2010-09-02T19:39:31Z

The month of August meant more to me than just the sad anniversary of my beloved pet dog passing away three years ago, it also marked the first full month that I had decided to take this blogging lark from a part-time hobby and turn it into a full-time job.

I did not fully achieve this, I took pretty much every Friday, Saturday and Sunday off and I would often take days off during the week. Actually I did pretty much nothing for the last four or five days of August.

This is 100% my own fault though and something that I must address immediately if I am to make a serious go of this. I really don’t want to have to go back to an offline 9-5 job any time soon!

Page Impressions & Visitor Count

The unique visitor count for August stands at 1,064, which is a nice increase of 329 from the month of July.

The page impression count for August stands at 2,289, which is a massive increase of 711 from the month of July.

This means that each unique visitor looked at 2.15 pages.

I think this has to be the highest monthly traffic count I have ever received. I am not going to count back when I was using the StatTraq plugin because they would count admin clicks, robots and web spiders.

Money Money Money!

Adbrite = $0.45 (-$0.48)
AdsDaq = $0.62 (+$0.09)
Adsense = $1.88 (-$0.99)
Adtoll = $0.00 (+/-$0.00)
Infolinks = $0.43 (-$1.76)
Kontera = $0.00 (-$0.05)
Passive Income = $2.09 (new)
Private Ad = $60.00 (new)
Reviews = $246.36 (-$9.98)
Smowtion = $0.61 (+$0.21)
TLA = $6.66 (-$3.34)
UnderDog = $0.11 (-$0.07)

Total = $319.21 (+$25.27)

- Infolinks has had to be removed from this blog because it was accepted into the PayU2Blog network and they refuse to work with blogs who have in-line ads. I’ll make much more money with PayU2Blog.

- I have not added the money I earned from Twitter because more than a couple of them have locked publishers out of their accounts without explanations.

- I have added a new income stream this month, it is called passive income. I will write a proper post about this soon, but what it is in a nutshell is a way of earning money by submitting your articles to article sites and getting paid every time someone visits one.

Top Five Search Terms

I like this part of the monthly income report. It is amazing how people find this blog on search engines.

1. i need discipline
2. unfollow non followers
3. specticles
4. wordpress internal server error
5. need of discipline

Popular Posts Of The Month

1. 19 Blog Review Networks
2. July 2010 Blog Income Report
3. I’ve Been Accused Of Posting Duplicate Content
4. 5 Free Twitter Tools To Unfollow Non-Followers
5. 4 Ways To Make Money With Facebook

5 Top Site Referrals

The top five sites that sent the most visitors to this blog.

1. forums.digitalpoint.com
2. twitter.com
3. intensedebate.com
4. cafeblogger.net
5. facebook.com

- I do not include Google in this part because it ALWAYS comes top.

This blog, and me earning money online, would not be possible if it was not for those awesome folk over at Bluehost. If you are looking for quality, reliable and cheap hosting then I urge you to check them out today.

2 Things You Probably Didn’t Know You Can Do With Google Analytics

2010-08-27T02:02:41Z

Google Analytic has been something of a Godsend for me. I have used countless traffic tracking plugins, scripts and websites over the years and nothing has come remotely close to being as accurate as Google Analytic has.

Although many of us use this free stats tool I am going to gamble by saying that very few of us actually know just how powerful this site can be. It has little features that even I have only just found out about and I’ve been using this site for around two years now.

Two of the features, that I recently discovered, have made my online income-earning life so much more easier that I thought I would create a post and share them both with you.

1. Have Your Traffic Reports Emailed To You

On the first of every month I log into my Google Analytics account to get the information that I need to write my monthly Blog Income Reports. This is the most time-consuming part of the process and sometime it can become quite tiresome.

So just how must it feel for people who like/have to check their stats more than once a month, like once a week?

Google Analytics have a lovely feature where you can have the stats emailed to your email address. This means no more having to visit their site and login just to look at your stats and they will only email you the information you ask for.

It is easy to set up as well.

To send on a regularly scheduled basis:

(a) Click Email below the title of the report you want to send.
(b) When the Set-up Email screen appears, find the Schedule tab.
(c) Enter a list of recipients in the To field.
(d) Specify a format for the email (XML, PDF, CSV or TSV).
(e) Provide a subject and description.
(f) Select a schedule from the drop-down menu of daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
(g) Click Schedule.

2. Exclude Traffic That Is Generated By You

I am sure you have done this, you visit your blog every now and again to check out if the posts are showing up OK or if the ads or widgets are not messing about with the overall design of your blog.

If, like me, you do it regularly then this can play a bit of havoc with your stats because Google Analytics will count these hits.

You can use a neat little feature to exclude your own visits from the stats and all you have to do is enter your IP address (or a collection of IP addresses). It will then exclude any visits form the IP addresses you listed.

(a) Click Filter Manager from the Analytics Settings page
(b) Enter a Filter Name for this filter
(c) From the Filter Type drop-down list, select Exclude all traffic from an IP address
(d) The IP address field will auto-populate with an example IP address. Enter the correct value. Remember to use regular expressions when entering any IP address. For example, if the IP address to filter is:

176.168.1.1
then the IP address value will be:
176\.168\.1\.1

You may also enter a range of IP addresses. For example:
Range: 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14
IP address value : ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$

For help finding the correct expression for your range of IP addresses, use our tool:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55572

(e) Select the profiles to which this filter should be applied in the Available Website Profiles box
(f) Click Add to move the selected profiles into the Selected Website Profiles list
(g) Click Finish to save this filter, or Cancel to return to the previous page

A more detailed tutorial can be found here

There are many other features but I think those two are the ones that we will be able to get the most from for now. Did you already know about these? Are you using ones that I have not mentioned? Drop us a comment below and let us all know.

I Am Finally A ReviewMe Premium Market Blog

2010-08-27T02:02:12Z

Believe it or not I actually need to do a big ‘thank you’ to John Chow right now (no I have not lost my senses), for it was him, and his useless blog, that initially exposed me to the pleasures of making money online by writing paid and sponsored review posts.

From looking at the amount I have earnt from them it might come to you as a surprise to find out that ReviewMe were in fact the very first review network that I had ever joined. The reason I had only earnt about $30 is down to my blog not ranking high enough.

Today I received news that after years of waiting my blog had finally been accepted into their premium market place. This is great news as it means I can now be found by the advertisers and I can select my own price for reviews.

When you first join the network you are not put into their premium market place, your blog has to undergo a second review by the admin team to see if it meets their high standards. So while that is happening you are left in ReviewMe Limbo scratching around for the few $5.00 review scraps that are thrown your way, but you have to fight for these with the other blogs who are also in ReviewMe Limbo with you.

But when you do get into their premium market place then you can be found by thousands of advertisers and you can charge whatever you want, some charge as little as $30 a review while others charge the maximum of $1,000. When I first joined John Chow was charging $750 a go and doing several a week.

The first thing that stands out from ReviewMe is that they insist that every review be accompanied with an announcement that it is a paid post. This is hardly ever heard of and I am sitting here scratching my head trying to think of another network that even insists that some are accompanied with one, never mind every single one.

I like that because I think that if you tell your reader it is a paid review then they will be less inclined to jump down your throat when you stop writing about your normal topics and publish a post about credit card protection or even a Branson vacation package.

Another great thing that puts them higher than other networks is that they don’t just accept PayPal. This may be a shock but not everyone on the internet uses PayPal, there are actually countries that ban it. So to offer the ability to be paid by check is a big enticement. They also offer payment via a prepaid Debit MasterCard powered by Payoneer.

Their payout is slightly confusing. I took up their PayPal option and it clearly says they require you to have a minimum of $25 before you can be paid, but I have received my $30 in $5 instalments. So I’m not sure if they have abolished the $25 rule and just haven’t updated their site.

They do have an affiliate program, which is new, but I’m not too sure about it. They only offer to pay you if you sign-up advertisers and not bloggers. But if you can attract advertisers to sign-up (and launch a campaign) then they will pay you $25 for each one. Now if they could only set one up for the bloggers.

ReviewMe have been around for since 2006 so they are clearly not a fly-by-night operation and if the big guns like John Chow, TechCrunch, ShoeMoney, Jim Karter, etc, are saying good things about them then they must be doing a lot of things right.

Pros
- Pay every fortnight.
- Easy & simple layout.
- Insist you lets readers know it is a paid post.
- The affiliate program pays well.

Cons
- Difficult to get into the premium market where the proper money is.
- Unless you get into the premium market place there are few offers.
- Their affiliate program only pays if you attract advertisers to sign up.

Link From Blog: The Ugly Duckling Of Review Networks

2010-08-27T02:01:32Z

Me writing this blog is not just about me making an income online (although it is about 90% of that if I’m being completely honest), but it is also about helping you guys and girls make money as well. And to do this I need to be completely honest all the time, so you should not be too shocked when I start this review off by saying that Link From Blog is quite possibly the ugliest sponsored post network that I have ever come across.

Now take a moment to let that sink in.

This is not going to be a demolition job of them and their network, far from it, I actually look upon them quite favourably but the fact that they have a horrible design layout can not be ignored and it almost put me off signing up with them.

The design is not the only thing that needs drastic improvements (sorry to go on about the design but it is really horrible), they need to have a look at the way the review opportunities are listed. There is no easy way to find out which reviews are new and which ones have been there for months or even years.

The new opportunities are supposed to be marked with the word ‘New‘ coloured in red but most of the time this does not happen. In fact it was by sheer luck that I discovered that they have developed a program for your computer which delivers to you an update when a new opportunity goes live.

This really is a nice little program, and every review network should be using something like this, but why oh why are Link From Blog not shouting about this program from the rooftops and linking prominently to it on every page of their site?

Not only is this little gem of a program hidden really well but they also seem to want to hide their help pages.

For example there are three types of opportunity:

Post: A post means the advertiser requires that you slip their link and anchor text into a blog post. It doesn’t have to be about their company or product, although it would obviously hurt your blog if you did not try and blend the link into the article.

Short Review: The advertiser requires that you publish a short review of their company or product on your blog. This would be about 50-100 words long and normally requires a link or two being slipped in.

Detailed Review: The advertiser wants a really detailed and in-depth review done of their company or product. This will normally includes several links and even pictures some times. You’re looking at about 250+ words.

When I first signed up to the network I was not aware of what those three option meant, I had to really dig out the help page that relates to explaining them. Again this is the kind of thing that they should be putting out front.

The types of opportunities you will come across are very wide and range from credit cards right through to security and education, so probably something for everyone. Although the prices can be rather ridiculous at times. $0.10 for a post? $1.00 for an in-depth review? No thanks!

They do have an affiliate program, which is something that I think makes a network a whole lot better when you can earn a passive income. But before you get too happy about that even this is not as it should be. Any blogger or advertiser signing up under you has to earn/spend $500 before you will receive your referral fee of $50.00.

Even though $50.00 is a nice offer I do think a minimum of $500 is a tad high, especially for a blogger as most bloggers won’t earn that much with 19 Blog Review Networks, never mind just one. Their payout of $50 is rather high as well I fancy.

As I said, this is not meant to come over as a demolition job. They do have a lot of happy members, and a regular stream of opportunities and as I write this they have just shy of 800 review opportunities on offer.

Pros:
- Regular opportunities.
- Wide range of topics to blog about.
- They pretty much take any blog.
- They offer bonuses of up to $4 for submitting additional blogs.
- You can spend any money you earn on advertising.

Cons:
- Horrible, horrible, design.
- Hard to determine new offers from old offers.
- High $50 payout minimum.
- Need referrers to earn/spend $500 to receive your bonus.

Don’t be afraid of signing up with them though, if you have a PR2+ blog then there is a great chance you can earn enough to hit that $50 mark within a month, sooner if you add more than one blog.

Click Here To Sign Up

Why Ethical SEO Works

2010-08-21T00:40:28Z

This is a guest post by Steve Lazuka of Interact Media, a website content marketing firm based in Ohio. He also writes on his content marketing blog, providing useful information for fellow marketers.

It would be naïve to suggest that the business world is made up of nothing but ladies and gentleman of commerce competing using Queensbury rules and slapping each other on the back when they lose out on a contract or customer.

Business can be tough and competitive and there’s nothing wrong with that; after all, people’s livelihoods depend on its success. But that is still no excuse to indulge in unethical SEO. There are a number of reasons for this and being aware of then will not just prevent a business from gaining the wrath of everyone from Google to individual customers, but will actually help a website maximize its potential and gain greater customer loyalty.

Beware of indulging in keyword overkill. If you have ever come across a web page like this, you will know how off putting it can be. You will have typed in a word of phrase to your search engine and been presented with what looks like an interesting option. However, when reading the page you are greeted with text that barely makes sense as it is littered with inappropriate keywords that render the meaning incomprehensible. How does that make you feel? The chances are that you will feel cheated and conned and more importantly from the business’s point of view, unlikely to visit their site ever again, let alone actually buying anything. It’s a cheap trick and should be avoided at all costs. If you’re using a SEO company, make sure it is a reputable one who can provide creative content that combines keyword utilization with strong copy. Your customer will thank you for it.

Beware SEO companies or procedures that guarantee a page one Google ranking overnight. It may be possible, but the tactics will be unethical and will only serve to turn your customers off in their droves. A good, effective SEO strategy will involve liaising with a SEO company and agreeing on the best use of keywords combined with the best copy. This combination is the secret to sustained search engine success. SEO content needs to be accurate and effective to sustain hits and interest in a business’s site. Without this, the chances are that any initial search engine ranking success will be short-lived before your site disappears into the mists of the internet and with it, chances of business success.

Perhaps most importantly is a very basic principle: ethical SEO is good for the long-term health of a business. Customers can often tell when they’re being ripped off and even if they don’t, they will soon figure it out. This will lead to resentment and worse for the business, word of mouth. This is almost impossible to counter and can do untold damage to a business’s reputation. It simply is not worth it, so it actually pays to be ethical. Think about what you would want from a business’s website and start from here. Cheap tricks do not endear a business to its clients and you can bet your bottom dollar that a competitor who has taken the time to work out an ethical and structured content marketing strategy will be more than happy to sit back and take your customers.

If you are ever tempted to indulge in unethical SEO procedures ask yourself one simple question: would you rather increase the number of visitors to your site by unethical methods only to see them turn away with your reputation in tatters or build a long-term customer base who trust your products/services and keep coming back for years to come? When you look at it that way, it’s not such a tough decision. Ethical SEO will repay your investment time and time again.

Blogitive Throw Around False Accusations Of Theft

2010-08-27T02:00:45Z

A couple of weeks ago I found out that I had been unceremoniously kicked out of the Blogitive network and banned from using it. I had no idea why as I had received no communication about this at all.

They refused to answer any of my emails and I had to resort to throwing a public tantrum on my Twitter account before one of their employee (who I had tagged in the rant), from another department, offered to pass on my emails to them.

They eventually replied to me and accused me of stealing reviews, submitting them to their network and passing them off as my own. But as it was my first offense they would take pity on me and let me back in just this once.

No apology though.

As you can imagine I was outraged and fired off an email insisting that I was innocent and urging them to send me proof that I was a thief. I may be a terrible writer but I would certainly not contemplate stealing content from anybody.

Of course I heard nothing back so I fired off a second email and I also emailed the person from the other department. Within hours I had received an email back from Chelsea Parry:

Yes, that is what I said.

We usually suspend Blogitive accounts for one of two reasons, the first being that you posted duplicate content, the second being that you repeatedly re-submitted a post to our system intentionally without correcting it.

We do not keep a record of why bloggers are banned so I cannot tell you with certainty what the problem was. It is indeed possible that you were banned by accident but not very likely.

So what I am taking away from this is that they are accusing me of stealing and submitting duplicate reviews (the second option has never happened to me) but refuse to put forward any proof to back up their allegation?

This experience has left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth. I think after they approve my latest collection of articles I will not be using them any more. Which is shame because apart from throwing around (false) accusations of theft and plagiarism I actually looked upon them as an OK company.

4 Ways I Made My Blog Load Quick As A Flash

2010-08-18T19:33:28Z

For the past several months I had received the odd complaint from visitors and readers that my blog was taking a bit of time to load up. I had checked it out and found that it took about 10 seconds to fully load up and thought that it was not worth the hassle of tinkering just to shave off a couple of seconds.

How wrong I was!

I had a few little minor problems with the admin panel as well. It was nothing that I deemed to be too troublesome for me that it warranted messing about with the files. It just meant that I could not have certain plugins as they did not show properly or run correctly.

Finally tonight I had decided to finally act. I had received several emails complaining of the slowness and a couple of plugins had started spitting out complaints about my site not loading quick enough for them to work.

Since I had a bit of free time I rolled up my sleeves and got under the hood of my blog and had a bit of a tinker about. Within fifteenth minutes I had made my blog load up twice as quickly as I had done before!

Here is what I did.

1. Get Rid Of Those Unwanted Themes

I must admit that this is mainly something for speeding up the admin panel, and certainly making it look nicer to your eye.

We have all done this at one time or another; you upload a load of themes, pick the one you want, but more often than not you just don’t remove the ones you don’t want. Save them onto your PC if you really have to but get them off your server.

2. Deactivate & Delete Those Plugins

Plugins are great, they help you do all manner of things to your blog. The problem is that the more plugins that you have on your list, the most they slow down the loading of your blog. Even if they are deactivated.

When I had a look at my list I had what I would considering a lot, I had 37. I decided to be absolutely ruthless and deactivated and removed the ones that I could do without or simply did not need.

I whittled the list down to 22, which I think you will agree is slightly more manageable.

3. Repair & Optimise Your Database

WARNING: Backup your database before you even think about editing it!

I actually found out about this little tip completely by chance. I typed in ‘how to speed up your wordpress blog’ into Google and this was one of the methods. I’m not 100% sure how it works but what I am sure of is that it does indeed work.

You log into your Hosting Cpanel, go to the phpMyAdmin page of your database, tick all the tables and then click Repair from the drop down menu. Once this is done do the same again but this time select Optimise from the menu.

4. Installed The W3 Total Cache Plugin

I know some cynics might say that my blog has speeded up because of this plugin. Well you are wrong, my blog was speeded up before I installed the plugin. This baby just helped make it load even faster!

Download W3Total Cache Plugin

If any of these methods help you then I’d love to know via the comments section.

Blog Advertising Store: Another Site That Doesn’t Pay

2010-08-27T02:00:18Z

Most of you will no doubt be aware that I have a policy when working with networks and companies. That policy is that I like to give networks and companies the benefit of the doubt when I work with them. A lot of the time it works but some times, like now, it can backfire on me and leave me feeling rather stupid.

I first came across Blog Advertising Store when it was going by the name of Paid Post, they then changed their name to Paying Post before finally changing it to their current name of Blog Advertising Store. I’m not sure if they have had more than three name changes.

Some people might point out that any company that changes their name three times in two years obviously should be avoided. Even the $100 payout minimum did not look too off-putting to me.

As I write this I have earnt a total of $116 and even though I have sent them at least half a dozen emails they have not paid me and have ignored every email I’ve sent. And apparently I’m not the only one, nobody has received a payment from them and a quick Google search proves this.

Will I learn something from this? I doubt it. The next time a network comes along with great promises, and an excellently designed web site, I’ll probably still sign up and write about things like sexy costumes because I’m an idiot.

Sunday Ramblings #4

2010-08-17T23:47:00Z

How Do You Distract The Distractions?

Since I have started trying my hand at blogging full-time I have learnt a number of small lessons. But the most important lesson that I have learnt has been that there are lots of little things on the internet that will distract you from your task and can seriously hurt your income.

You know what I’m talking about, those little things that you find yourself doing instead of writing that article or meeting that deadline for a client.

Personally the things that distract me the most are Facebook, Twitter, Live Windows Messenger and checking my emails.

Now ones I listed above may sound like trivial distractions to you, but to me they are a big pain in the butt and a huge contributory factor to why I don’t make as much money as I could.

I find it hard to concentrate at the best of times and it doesn’t take much for me to stop what I am doing and log into one of the applications I have listed above.

Received Another Payment From Linkworth

On Tuesday I received yet another payment from Linkworth. I have received payments from this network before and although this time it was only for $26.71 I am still happy to receive it.

Passive Income With Article Content Sites

During the week I read a blog post on the excellent Smart Passive Income blog about 13 alternative ways to earn money with article writing sites. Thanks to this interesting post I joined a load of them and have submitted some articles. It is the kind of thing that will generate income over time, not straight away.

I have already started seeing results from Bukisa and Hubpages.

Working For Yourself Is Great For Your Hobby

2010-08-27T02:02:58Z

The one thing that I have always loved about becoming my own boss, and making money online from home, is that I get to spend a lot more of my free time doing what I want to do. When I had a job I would spend any free time at work looking at internet sites.

Now that I work from home, for myself, I can do things that were just out of the question when I was working in the real world. Take today for example, I was struggling to focus on work so I got up and went to see the excellent Manga exhibition at a local art gallery.

Could I have done that if I was working 9to5 in an office for a big company?

The same goes for hobbies as well.

Say you like customising your car, if you work from home you could stop what you are doing and just go outside and install that new billet grills you have spent a nice fortune on. I’m not into cars. It doesn’t really matter what your hobby it, my point is working from home means you can indulge in it when you want to.

My hobby of watching stand-up comedy comes into play, I can take a break and put on a stand-up comedy DVD or even go to a local club to watch some live comedy. Although the latter tends to happen in the evening more.

Do you indulge in your hobbies when you want to thanks to working from home?

This post contains a paid link.

I Need Discipline

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