My quest to make money on the internet

rssHugger, Just Another Feed Directory?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:00:00 +0000

In the never ending quest to promote blog and feed I've registered with rssHugger, another feed directory.

What makes this one special that I'm dedicating a whole post to it? To be honest, I'm not sure at the moment, it just looks like a feed directory like any other, you can search for topics, there is a list of the most recently added and a Top 100. Pretty standard stuff really, the only reason I'm writing a post about it at all is that is part of the registration process, you either have to pay $20 dollars to add your blog or write a post about it. I chose to write the post, at the end of the day it costs me nothing, they get another backlink and a plug.

Once I've written this post and published it, I can then go and add this blog to the directory, this then gives me my own page with links to my posts and feed subscription. I will write an update to this post once my page is up and running.

My blog sucks and other musings

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:12:00 +0000

Yes, you heard me right, MY BLOG SUCKS, and I know what you're thinking, your're thinking, YES IT DOES. And your right it does, it absolutley stinks, you're also probably thinking, how have you only just realised this?

Well, actually I realised this a little while back, but I've just carried on sucking anyway regardless. Below is a list of reasons that I feel this blog sucks, please feel free to respond with others.

Boring and unoriginal content
Uninteresting to look at
Poorley written posts
Lack of imagination
The only visitors I'm getting at the moment are from Entrecard
The blog offers no discernable value

The biggest mistake I've made with this blog is starting it again, I'm getting less visitors and making less money now that I've started posting again than when I had left it for 10 months. Part of this is due to the changes in template and the domain name, this really killed my traffic from search engines. Prior to this I was getting 100 -150 visitors a day from search engines alone, now I barely get 70 - 80 total. I get the odd boost here and there when I've stumbled or dugg one of my own posts, but unless I constantly drop entrecards or promote on different social sites the number of visitors drops dramatically. Part of the reason why I've lost my search engine visitors is that I'm waiting for it to be reindexed after the change in domain name. The number of visitors I get is meaningless if they don't stop for long and read my posts.

The visitors I do get to the site don't stay long and very rarely comment, this just goes to show how unengaging my content is. This post isn't a bid for sympathy or for people to say that my blog doesn't suck, what I want is for this blog not to suck, what I need is feedback. I need readers of this post to let me know what would make this blog better, what kind of posts they want to read, if there are any positives at all about this blog that I can concentrate on and do more of. Without feedback this blog is going to fade away and eventually be trashed, another failed blog.

I look at all the new blogs that have now cropped up and the quality of them are amazing and the writing is brilliant, I'm not sure if I can compete with them. I'm not an especially creative person and I don't find writing all that easy, just this small piece has taken me hours to write and it's still not very good.

Please help me make this blog better, tell me what you want from this blog, is there a subject that I haven't covered here that you would like me to write about, then just let me know.

Photo by aromano

$20 in FREE Clicks from Bidvertiser

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:00:00 +0000

If you fancy a bit of free advertising for your blog or website then Bidvertiser are offering $20 worth of free clicks when you sign up. There is no obligation to spend anymore than this, upon sign up you will be asked for your credit card details but you will only be charged if you go over the $20. You can have your ads placed on hundreds of sites in less than 10 minutes for free, just click here.

Poll Result - What do you think of the new look?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:56:00 +0000

Not exactly an overwhelming response to the poll, 10 people liked the new look and 2 people didn't care, with over 2,000 visitors in the past week, that's less than 1% response rate.

Photo by MarilynJane

Thank you to those that did respond even if it's just to say you didn't care. I'll try to make the next poll a bit more interesting and hopefully I'll get a few more responses.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest goings on here at My quest to make money on the internet, then you can subscribe to my feed through your favourite feed reader or via email.

Bidvertiser, a possible alternative to Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:11:00 +0000

With so many people these days having their Adsense accounts closed for little or no fathomable reason, I thought it prudent to look for an alternative, just in case this happens to me.

The first alternative I'm trying at the moment is Bidvertiser. Bidvertiser have 3 programs you can can use, Advertiser, Publisher and Referral.

Advertiser Program

The advertiser program is for placing your own ads on other peoples sites, this works on a bidding system, I haven't looked into this much as I currently have no plans to advertise this blog through them.

Publisher Program

The publisher program allows you to display ad boxes of various sizes and shape on your site, they look a lot like Adsense ad boxes. Adsense and Bidvertiser differ in that Bidvertiser ads are not contextual, they are not related to the content of your site but are bidded on by advertisers.

Listed here are some pros and cons to this method of displaying ads as I see them:

Pros

The price-per-click you get is based on the quality and popularity of your website. The more popular and appealing your site is, the higher price-per-click you will get.
Sites with little content or Flash sites will benefit more from this.
You can approve or deny the ads that are shown.

Cons

Ads aren't as targeted to content, if you have keyword rich content this will not matter.
To make the ads more targeted takes more effort as you will have to approve or deny ads.
Bidvertiser is not used as widely by advertisers as Adsense.

As well as ads on your site you can also add Bidvertiser ads to your RSS Feed, this gives you a further avenue for monetization.

Referral Program

The referral program allows you to refer both publishers and advertisers, below are the payment levels:

When a user signs as an advertiser and first spends $10, we'll credit your account with $5. When that same advertiser spends $50, you will be credited with an additional $20.
When a user signs as a publisher and first earns $10, we'll credit your account with $10. When that same publisher earns $50, you will be credited with an additional $40.

Conclusion

Signing up to Bidvertiser was simple and was approved straight away and I had the ad units setup with in a matter of minutes. Adding ads to my RSS Feed was also a breeze, setting up took very little time.

Its too early to tell yet whether or not Bidvertiser can really be an alternative to Adsense, I'm going to use them for a month or two to see what happens and make a decision then whether to keep them or not.

Get $20 in FREE Clicks to Advertise Here!

Guest Post - Pay Per Click

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:42:00 +0000

This is a guest post courtesy of Turn One Pound into One Million.

There are a huge amount of Pay Per Click sites on the web at the moment. Many of them new and quite a few older ones. It is very easy and pretty cheap to set up your own site as you can buy the code or even buy a fully set up site for a relatively cheap price. The thing is that if you want to earn money as a member of these sites you need to be able to choose one which is going to pay you, going to be around for a long time and not rip you off. When choosing a site I would give you the following advice:

1. If your friends use this type of sites join the ones they have been paid by
2. Join up as a free member to start with - do not pay to upgrade or buy referrals until you are happy that the site is a good one
3. Do not join too many at once as you will not be able to keep on top of them all.

I joined about 5 of these sites to start with and used them for a month. I then discarded the ones that were not earning me much money, either because there was not the opportunity to earn much or because the amount available to earn was very small. I ten joined a few more. I kept doing this and have managed to have a group of sites which I feel happy with and most of which have paid me. Below is my 'top five'

1. Bux.to
2. Adbux
3. Clixsense
4. Wordlinx
5. Linkgrand

These are not in my order of preference. They have all paid me apart from the bottom one where I used my earnings to buy advertising credits. Clixsense pays by cheque (in US dollars) and the others pay by Paypal. However, it seems that Paypal may be stopping PTC sites using them soon and if this happens it seems that many will be switching to Alertpay, we will have to wait and see what happens over the next few weeks.

To earn money on these sites you have to click a link or banner and view it for up to 30 seconds. This can earn you anything from $0.03 to $0.01 and sometimes on Clixsense you can get more. All sites offer the option to upgrade where you can get more advertisements and possibly make more money per 'click'. They also tend to sell referrals. Referrals can be very useful as you can usually earn a percentage of what they earn. Some sites offer 100% and some members earn so much from their referrals that they do not actually click many of the links themselves but just rely on their referrals doing it for them. There are mixed feelings as to whether it is best to buy referrals from the sites themselves or by using sites such as Buyrefs or Getrefs. Personally I have found that the best referrals are friends who have joined up to both support you and earn some money for themselves.

If you would like more information about how to earn money online please take a look at my blog : Turn One Pound into One Million Thank you.

Not another flaming post about Entrecard

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Yes it is. Everybody must have heard about Entrecard by now, it's the latest thing to grab the blogosphere, if you haven't then rather than explain it again myself read this article on ProBlogger.

Do you know what Entrecard is all about now?

Excellent then lets begin. The reason why I haven't written an explanation of what Entrecard is and what it does, is because there are already 100s if not 1000s of posts on this subject already and I wanted this post to be about my experience of Entrecard.

What has Entrecard done for me?

I joined Entrecard about 11 days ago and in that time I've had 187 unique visitors, 153 from the Entrecard website itself and 34 via Entrecard ads placed on other blogs. That's only 17 unique visitors a day but when your only getting 140+ visitors a day anyway this is a significant number. You can see from my stats below that I get repeat visitors as the number of cards dropped is greater than the number of unique visitors, I sometimes get the same visitors everyday.

The downside to this is that according to Google Analytics the bounce rate for these visitors is 94%, this suggests the visitors are just dropping their cards and leaving. Now, ofcourse this could be because they don't like my blog and are immediatley leaving to find a better site or this is just a general trend of Entrecard. I've always said in the past though that all traffic is good traffic, if out of 187 visitors only one subscribes to my feed, reads my other posts or signs up for an affiliate program through me then I'm happy with that.

Personally speaking when I visit a blog with an Entrecard widget I try to at least read some of the posts and even comment where approriate and I have something to say before I dop my card. One of the great things about Entrecard is that through it I have found some really good blogs that I have subscribed to their feed and go back to read their latest posts, dropping a card is just a bonus.

Let me know what you think of Entrecard have you experienced the same thing as me are visitors just dropping and leaving or are they staying and reading. Maybe I can learn something from this, maybe I need to do something to make my content more engaging to minimize the bouncing.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

Calling All Bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:19:00 +0000

To make this blog a bit more interesting and diverse, I'm looking for some guest posters to write some posts about making money, internet marketing, blogging or social networking. I want an original piece, it does't matter how long it is, it just needs to be interesting and helpful to other bloggers. In return for a post you will get a one way link from within the post and on the sidebar, there will be no need to link back to me, you can also have your logo inside the post.

If your interested in becoming a guest poster please send an email to westen30 at martinsquest2makemoneyonline.com.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

How I Halved my RSS Subscriber Count Over a Couple of Days

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:47:00 +0000

It seems I wrote too soon, if you haven't read my previous post on How I doubled my RSS Subscriber Count Over night, I can tell you that on sunday night I submitted my feed to over 40 Feed Directories, the following day I had doubled my subscribers. Today however, my subscriber count has almost halved to just above what it was on Sunday, the count has gradually dropped to this over the last few days. I'm not sure why it spiked like that or why it has now dropped back down, it maybe because people subscribed and then realised they weren't interested in the content and unsubscribed I'm not sure.

Have any of you tried submitting to all those directories? Did you have an increase in your subscriber account? Did you then get the drop or did you manage to sustain the increase?

Please leave a comment if you can answer any of these questions, let me know your exeriences or if you have any tips for on increasing subscribers.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

Probably the biggest mistake in the world, ever!

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:56:00 +0000

Ok, the title is a bit of an exageration, but, if you read yesterdays post you will already know that I seem to have lost a lot of visitors from the Search Engines, after writing that post I decided to make it worse. I've now moved my blog from the blogspot.com domain to a custom domain name, which probably pretty much puts me back to square one in terms of Pagerank and Search Engine Rankings. I really don't know what I was thinking I'm now going to have to try and re-establish back links, resubmit the new domain to directories, I'm going to have to redo all the work I did 18 months ago. In the long run though I'm hoping all the changes I've made to the blog will eventually pay off.

Can I please ask anybody who reads this that has an existing link to http://westen30.blogspot.com on their blog please change it to the new address http://www.martinsquest2makemoneyonline.com, would be very grateful.

Aggh, I've lost all my Search Engine Visitors!

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:01:00 +0000

Checking out my stats this morning on Google Analytics I found that I've had a drastic drop in visitors from the search engines. I think this is since I put on the new template, when I deployed it I had forgotten to copy across my keyword and description meta tags and the Google Webmaster Tools verification code, so I think Google had stopped indexing my site properly. I have now fixed this so I hope I get my ranking in the search engines back, up until recently I was appearing on the first page of Google for the search term "make money on the internet". This could be a very costly mistake in terms of traffic and Adsense clicks, I have no idea how long it will take to reappear in the searches if I will at all.

I had been wondering why my traffic figures weren't going up as much as I thought they should I have been doing a lot of promotion lately and I was getting visitors from lots of other sources.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

Building Interactivity into a Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:00:00 +0000

I want to make this blog a bit more interactive, by that I mean more reader involvement, I want the readers of this blog to interact with it in some way, but I don't know what to do. I've added a weekly poll to the sidebar, this is pretty boring I know, but it was all I could think of, please do vote on this weeks question though even if it's to say "I don't care".

So, what else can I do? I'm going to ask for your help in this, what can I do to make this blog more interactive? If you have any suggestions please put them in a comment to this post, I'll even throw in 50 Entrecard Credits for the best suggestion. I know 50 credits isn't much with all these contests offering 1000s of credits around, but you don't have to write a post about this or subscribe to my feed, all I'm asking for are some suggestions.

Get those thinking caps on guys.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

How I Doubled my RSS Subscriber Count Over Night

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:08:00 +0000

Let me say first of all that I only had 50 subscribers yesterday to start with, so what I did will probably only really make a difference to those people who only have a small number of subscribers. If you've already got 1000's of subscribers I don't think this will make much difference to you, you're certainly not going to double your count like I have.

So what did I do to pull this amazing feat off? Well something really simple actually, I just submitted my feed to over 40 Feed Directories, it took about 45 minutes to work down the list, but if this is the result it was time well spent. I'm hoping that this is just the beginning and that the count will continue to grow.

Why didn't I do this before? I'd already submitted my blog address to probablly 100's of directories in the past, and to be honest they didn't seem to do anything for my traffic at all. I never thought of submitting my feed to directories before this, I just thought it would be a waste of time, but after reading an article on another blog about this I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately I can't remember which blog I read the article on as I would have provided a link to it.

This isn't just a bug in Feedburner is it? I've been reading quite a few posts lately about people who have said that Feedburner has been reporting in thier counters exagerated subscriber figures, but this was few days ago and I believe the problem has been fixed. I believe that the new count is correct, I've looked at the Feedburner stats and the figures seem to add up. I may well be writing a post tomorrow though saying that my count has dropped back down to 50, I hope not.

Update: 4 days after writing this post my subscriber count fell back down to nearly what it was before this, to read all about it click here.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

Monetization Strategy - Update

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Only a day after I posted my monetization strategy and there's already been a spanner put in the works. I attempted to implement Kontera's ContentLink inline ads yesterday, I copied the supplied code into the suggested place in my template and my whole layout got screwed up. I've tried droping the code in different places in the template, but it doesn't appear to make any difference, I think this is because I'm not using a standard template anymore. I'm going to continue to try and fix the problem myself, but I'm also going to contact Kontera for some help.

I still think inline ads are worth trying, so if I can't get ContentLink to work, I might give Adbrite another shot or look for a different inline ads provider. If anyone has any recommendations on this front please drop me a comment.

If you found this post interesting, then please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, you can also receive updates via e-mail.

Monetization Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:09:00 +0000

As I mentioned in my Time for a Change post, I felt I needed to come up with some kind of plan for how I'm going to monetize the new look blog and this is it. As I see there are ? main areas to consider for monetizing my blog, contextual text links and banners ads, affiliate ads, inline ads and direct banner ads. I'm now going to look at each one individually.

Contextual Text Links and Banner Ads

By this ofcourse I mean Google Adsense, there are other companies that offer the same sort of advertising, but I'm already making money with them, so I want to leave this part alone. Over the next few weeks I'm going to play around with ad unit placement to see what gives me the best click-thru rate.

Affiliate Ads

To begin with I will be promoting 2 affiliate programs through 125x125 ads placed in one of the sidebars under the title "Affiliates". The 2 programs that I will be using are Adult Friend Finder and 888.com, I'm already making good money from Adult Friend Finder so I will continue to push that and as online gambling is so popular these days I think 888.com has good potential. I'm also on the lookout for a third program to promote alongside the other 2, I will then concentrate on just these for a month and see how they perform. If after a month any of them fail to perform I will start to look for alternatives.

Inline Ads

Inline ads are ads that popup when you hover over certain keywords on a page. I've already tried this before with Adbrite, with quite poor results, this may have been down to Adbrite not serving any quality ads. This time I'm going to use Kontera's ContentLink ads instead and see how they perform, as I said before I will give it a try for a month, if the ads don't perform well I will remove them.

Direct Banner Ads

At the moment I don't feel I get enough traffic that I can sell space directly to advertisers so for the time being I'm going to put a "Featured Ads" heading in the sidebar with a number of 125x125 banners from Commision Juntion, 888.com and Adult Friend Finder. I've also signed up with Project Wonderful to give them a try, I'm currently waiting for them to approve my blog. Project Wonderful apparently offer advertisers the opportunity to bid for ad space on your blog, I've heard some good reports about them so I'll give it a try.

One thing that I'm going to stop doing is putting big banners ads at the end of posts, as it makes the site look cluttered and unappealing and they don't perfom that well anyway. Once I've implemented all these things I'm going to watch very closely over the next few months, what performs and what doesn't, if something doesn't perform well it will be removed.

Well, that's the plan, I'm now going to start putting the ads into place, I will let you know how it goes.

New Look

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:46:00 +0000

I haven't wasted any time, I've just bit the bullet and implemented a new template courtesy of Jackbook.com, I hope everyone agrees that it's an improvement on the old one. I've stripped the advertising right down for the time being concentrating mainly on Adsense, I will leave it like this until I come up with a solid advertising strategy. I want this new look to be part of a complete re-branding, so I will be designing some new banners to advertise the site once I've come up with promotions plan.

I hope you like the new look, let me know what you think by leaving me a comment.

Time for a Change

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:07:00 +0000

I recently wrote an article for Blog About Your Blog about how this blog still made money and increased the number of visitors to it while being inactive for a period of 10 months. Last night I realised that for all intents and purposes this blog is still inactive, since I started writing on here again last month I've written 7 posts, all of which are just filler. There is not 1 post written since I came back of any real value to anyone, this blog has become stale with no new content worth reading, even the old posts are out of date now.

Things have changed in the world of blogging and making money from blogs, there are hundred of new programs out there for bloggers to make money and there is no information about them here. I look at the likes of Mike and his blog and I realise how far behind I've fallen. Mike and I started blogging around about the same time, our weekly reports always coincided but Mike has kept going, he writes good quality posts every day and he's kept his blog fresh by giving it a new look and not using the standard templates. Even though we started at the same time we are worlds apart now, Mike has a successful and interesting blog, where as mine has become stale and boring. You only have to look at my stats to see that even though traffic has increased, nobody stays for long, they take a brief look and then there off to find something more interesting, the only saving grace is that quite often they click on ad on they're way out that makes me a few cents.

This may all sound like self pity, but it's not I have just come to the realization that if I really do want to make this blog successful and I really do want to make money from it, then I'm going to have to put some effort into it. So, what am I going to do about it? Well, the way I see it there are 4 areas that need attention, looks, content, advertising and promotion, not necessarily in that order though.

Looks

This blog needs a new look, it looks very dated, it wasn't exactly cutting edge when I started but when I look at some of the other blogs around at the moment, this blog really does look bad. So, I'm on the lookout for a new template. I've already started looking and I've even been trying a few templates out, I hope to choose one and implement it by the end of next week.

Content

The quality of posts on this blog lately has been really poor, this is something that I really need to work on. When I first started this blog I was always writing posts about the new things that I had tried to either get more visitors or some new money making scheme, I used to write posts that attempted at least to help others make money too. From now on I'm going to try and focus on writing better quality posts, I'm going to go back to writing about new affiliate programs and ways of building traffic again.

Advertising

I need to come up with a new advertising strategy, in the past I have just put any old advertising on this site with no real thought put into it. When I do the redesign of the site I'm also going to rethink things like the type of ads I'm going to display, ad placement, what products to promote and who I'm going to affiliate myself with. When I come up with a new strategy I will post it here.

Promotion

I need to start promoting this blog again, I'm not sure how yet, but I need to re-brand this blog first, it needs to be brought up to date so that when I come to promote it, new visitors won't be put off by what I have now. I need to attract visitors that are going to stay and read the content and that are going to come back time and again. I'm not going to do any promotion of this blog until it has been revamped. Again this is something that needs a strategy rather than just plowing into it without thought, like I said about advertising once I've come up with a strategy I will post it.

Watch out for the new My quest to make money on the internet coming soon to a web browser near you.

Friend Finder - 10 Months On

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:26:00 +0000

In the time that I've been away from blogging one of my most successful affiliate programs has been the Friend Finder Network or more specifically Adult Friend Finder, so far I've made a total of $818. Of that I've actually been paid $705 (approx. £350), most of that has been becuase of 1 referred affiliate who himself has made over $7000. If you have an adult blog or website I can highly recommend Adult Friend Finder as they have a lot of different sites that can be promoted with lots of marketing material. Friend Finder also have different payout options, per click, per order and a percentage program, the affiliate I mentioned earlier is on per order and has referred 440 members.

You can see my original post about Adult Friend Finder here.

Looking for Link Partners

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:57:00 +0000

This week I launched my new blog Martin's Personal Development Blog and I am now seeking link partners for it. If you have or know someone who has a personal development blog I would be very interested in exchanging links, if you would too the please visit my blog and leave a comment on this post with your blog's address.

Many thanks
Martin

Launch of my new blog

noreply@blogger.com (Martin) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:38:00 +0000

Today is the day that I launched my latest blog "Martin's Personal Development Blog", catchy name huh? This will be a diary of my progress on my journey of self improvement, I hope to write a new post every day so please check regularly for updates (if your interested ofcourse).