How to Grow Roses

I've just set up a site called "How to Grow Beautiful Roses". This is designed to sell an ebook with the same name (plus two bonus ebooks). There is also an affiliate program, set up with PayDotCom which pays out 50% to affiliates for all sales made.

NeoBux Payment Request

I've made a payment request for my NeoBux account. Total amount requested was $2.10, which I requested to be paid to my AlertPay account. Payment was made immediately.

Neobux Referral Renting

I've deposited $5 in my NeoBux referral account. Using this balance, you can rent referrals from them for 1 month, during which you will earn referral income from them. At the end of this period, the referrals will be returned to NeoBux.

I've never done this before, all other sites have offered to sell you them outright. I've purchased a pack of 10 referrals for $3. Now to see how it goes.

Another Uquick Payment

I've received another payment of $3 by PayPal from the Uquick affiliate program.

myLot Payment Received

I've received the myLot payment for October and November. Total amount paid was $21.50.

Affiliate Program Directories

I've updated my list of Affiliate Program Directories. Some new ones have been added, some dead ones have been removed, and notes have been added to some of the directories listed.

Latest Qassia Crawl

Qassia has crawled my web directory again. Unlike previous crawls, the distribution is a flat rate of Q$400, rather than a percentage of total Q$.

Paid to Click Site Wants Proof of Identity

There was a discussion on myLot about a Paid to Click program that was asking for what I would consider to be an excessive amount of documentation before it would pay out. The site in question was asking for copies of a utility bill and/or ID before they would make payment.

Now, I cannot think of a good reason for this. I can think of plenty of bad ones, but when Google doesn't require this for their AdSense program, why does this site require it?

Although the program wasn't actually specified by the original poster, it was suggested it was UrOnlineBux and I checked and yes, their ToS does have mention that as a possible requirement for payout. I've ceased activity with the site for the moment.

Kongregate November Earnings

Kongregate earnings for November are in. Total earned during this period was $0.23, the best earner being UFO Assault.

MochiAds November Earnings

Total MochiAds earnings for November were $0.05. This was all from games published as a developer, rather than games hosted as a publisher. Although there were some ad impressions made as a publisher, there were not enough to make any money.

Although the earnings are not impressive, the thing to keep in mind is that, as a developer, these games were being published anyway for no revenue - and $0.05 is a lot better than nothing. In addition, some of the games published would have been published anyway - such as mine.

myLot November Earnings

myLot earnings for November were $12.31. This, combined with October's earnings of $9.19, brings the total owed to $21.50, which should be paid on or before 15th December.

First Massive Links Commission

A bit over a month ago, I removed the AdSense ads from my web directory, and replaced them with Massive Links ads instead. I've now made my first commission from these ads. Still haven't installed a banner rotator promoting the various web directory affiliate programs yet, though. Of course, it doesn't help that a lot of them don't actually have banners in the size I want to use there.

NeoBux

I've just joined another Paid to Click site, NeoBux. NeoBux has a $2 minimum payout threshold, and apparently pays out all payment requests immediately, which would be a nice change.

I Made a Sale

I've just made my first sale of a product promoted through my WeeklyPLRArticles list building site. The product sold was Content Rewriter Pro software which is designed to help make rewriting articles much easier. Now, I haven't received payment yet - should be received via PayPal in about 30 days or so - and the total number of subscribers on the list is now 79.

BlogRush Shut Down

BlogRush has been shut down. Here's the message that was sent out regarding this:

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service. If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web. Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web. During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn't grow without its fair share of problems -- from security issues to abusive users trying to 'game' the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service's full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn't work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

I want to say "Thank You" to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them. We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it's the 'right' thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it's not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it's all said and done, and it was by choice. There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn't in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from "going for it" to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn't be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

myLot Payment Threshold Reached

As expected, the myLot payment threshold was quickly passed this month. Payment will be received on or before December 15th for the total earnings from October and November, so the total could go quite a bit higher.

MochiAds October Earnings

MochiAds October earnings are in. Total earned for the period was $0.21, mostly from publishing my own flash games, only one of which so far have I really distributed. Still, much better than the nothing I used to earn for the same effort.

Kongregate October Earnings

Kongregate earnings for October are now in. Total earned during this period was $2.12, the majority from the Mars Slider game.

myLot Earnings for October

myLot earnings for October are in. Total earned was $9.19, mostly from referrals. This is just under the $10 payment threshold, which will probably be quickly reached in November.

UFO Assault Submitted to GoofyGamer

I cam across a service at GoofyGamer that takes Flash games and submits them to (currently) 121 sites. I've submitted the UFO Assault game to begin with to see how this goes. With any luck, this should greatly increase the games' exposure, and therefore its' MochiAds revenue.

AdSense Ads Removed

I've decided to remove all the Google AdSense ads from my web directory. The ads have never done very well there, and I've had better returns from other web directories affiliate programs, notably V7N and Uquick. To start with, I've replaced the ads with banners promoting Massive Links, although I will look into placing a banner rotator there instead.

All miscellaneous and category pages are now showing the new ads. Details pages still need doing, as only the most recent have been built with the new ad. There are a few other pages on the main site that need altering too.

Mars Slider Update

Somewhat to my surprise, the Mars Slider game I added to Kongregate is doing better than the other two games combines. It also still has a rating of over 2, so is still showing in the normal pages.

There have been some error reports regarding a bug in the game. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to duplicate the error, but I think I know what must be causing it. I'm trying to fix it now.

From other comments, I have come up with an idea for another, more complex, version of the game.

V7N Paid

I've received another payment of $125 from the V7N affiliate program. This was the current outstanding balance, and brings the total received up to $450.

Another Game Added to Kongregate

I've just added another game, Mars Slider, to Kongregate. It's nothing stunning, just a simple slider puzzle game.

myLot Payment Received

I've just received a payment of $10.05 from myLot for my earnings from August and September. The site continues to pay regularly and on time.

Another Yuwie Random Referral

I've just received another random referral at Yuwie. This is the eighth one I've got so far.

10Bux Payment Request

10Bux have got rid of their new payment system, and returned to the old version. Better in that you don't have to try and catch the admin during the few minutes a day that they're on, which wasn't very good. I've submitted a new payment request for $25.12.

So far, haven't been doing too well with payment requests.

10Bux: Site hacked, existing requests deleted, had to submit new one.
Bux.to: Payment request submitted 6 months ago. Not deleted, but well out of their ToS for payments.
Bux3: Site hacked, existing requests deleted, had to submit new one.
Buxit.info: Site gone.
World Bux: Site hacked twice, existing requests deleted, had to submit new one.

Yuwie September Earnings

Yuwie earnings for September are now in. Total earned was nothing, due to very little activity by either myself or my referrals.

IsabelMarco Stops Paying Free Members

IsabelMarco has announced that they're stopping paying free members. Here's the post from the forums:

This change is to protect our investors and ourselfs!

Today we deleted nearly 60 accounts ( autoclickers )
Today we deleted more then 3000 fake accounts made by cheaters.
Lost aprox: more then 15.000$ ( thats our and also your money! )

most complainers come from free members! 99% of cheaters are free members!

Conclusion:

NO MORE PAYOUTS FOR FREE MEMBERS!
FREE MEMBERS CAN SUBSCRIBE AND CLICK AS MANY ADS THEY WANT,PLAY LOTTERIE AND SO ON.

EVERYBODY FROM NOW ON HAS TO BE pREMIUM TO GET HIS PAYOUTS!

there will always be enough to invest, and you can still refer

We have to get rid off those people who are only here to cheat or to earn money on the back of others (investors)

WE HOPE THAT ALL OUR INVESTORS CAN AGREE WITH THIS!
IT WILL BENEFIT US ALL
WE WILL GET MORE TRUST FROM ADVERTISERS BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT WE HAVE QUALITY MEMBERS FROM NOW ON.

SUCCES TO YOU ALL!

I doubt I'll upgrade, unless I can use my balance for it. I won't upgrade from free membership in these sites until I know they pay. Too many vanish to risk doing otherwise.

MochiAds September Earnings

MochiAds September earnings are now in, a massive $0.02. This is based on ads being displayed in my two games - on two viable sites - and a handful of other peoples games being added to my Flash Games Site and Games Portal.

Earnings are not stunning. For my two games, neither has been distributed much yet where the ads can be displayed, so not much progress there so far. For other peoples games, my Flash Games Site isn't that popular, and, whilst my Games Portal is more popular, only games that save high scores to my arcade get the most game plays. I shall see if I can get some MochiAds developers to add the relevant code to their games.

Kongregate September Earnings

Kongregate earnings for September are now in. Total earned was $0.63. Not a huge amount admittedly, although only two games have been submitted so far and, frankly, they're not exactly stunning.

It is, however, a great improvement over previous game earnings - which was nothing. I'll update and add my other games to the site, plus develop a few more from tutorials.

myLot September Earnings

myLot September earnings are now in. Total earned was $5.59. Together with the outstanding balance from the previous month, this was just enough to qualify for payment. Payment should be received on or before October 15th.

10Bux Back

The 10Bux site is now back up and running. However, all existing payment requests were cancelled, and a new system introduced.

New payout system: the payout pages will be open whenever the administrator of the PaidClicks Network is online, for a few minutes, several times per day. This way the accounts will be audited right after that, and the payments will be sent, via PayPal or AlertPay, much quicker, usually within a few minutes after the request. All pending payouts have been refunded. This solution may not be liked by everyone, but this was the best way we found to be able to send payouts in a lightning fast time, one of the main things which turned the PaidClicks Network in a respected and well-known company in the PTC business for much time, since our beginning almost a year ago.

Can't say I really like the idea. Although prompt payment is good, the chance of being online during the few minutes that you can cash out every day could be pretty small, especially if you're in a substantially different time zone.

Quiz Me Approved

I'd been waiting for some time to get Quiz Me approved at MochiAds, but it turned out it was approved very quickly, I'd mistaken the distribution approval for ad approval. It hasn't been approved for distribution yet, due to a weird problem that means the questions don't load on some installs unless the full local path to the questions file is added in the game. I'm looking into it.

Meanwhile, as well as adding it on Kongregate, I've also added it to my Games Portal and my Flash Games Site here: Quiz Me.

If I can get this bug sorted out, I'll get it distributed more places, at some of the portals, and via the phpBB Arcade and Amod

Another Game Added to Kongregate

I added another Flash game, UFO Assault, to Kongregate. It's a game I made a while ago, and I made a couple of improvements to it before adding it. Hasn't been rated as well as Quiz Me though, only receiving a rating of 1.56 so far. Various comments, some useful like:

the turning is insanely touchy. The shooting is annoying - need to be able to shoot multiple shots. Pressing again should not cancel out your previous shot.

which gives me some ideas for improving the game. Some less than useful like "suckage" which isn't helpful at all. Still, can't get annoyed when someone who is probably pretty young posts something like that.

On the plus side, Quiz Me's rating is now up to 2.03, which means it will now be visible in the lists. Could do with being higher, just to be safe.

Kongregate Update

My Quiz Me game has been now been reviewed the necessary 75 times. Unfortunately, it only got a rating of 1.97. A rating of 2 or more is required to show up in the various lists available. The game can still be played, but it's less likely that that will happen unless its' rating improves slightly.

There have been 239 ad impressions from the games played. At 35% share that's $0. I need the game to be played more often, so I'll have to see if I can improve it, then get some more people to play and review it.

Quiz Me added to Kongregate

I've added the Quiz Me Flash game to Kongregate, a games portal that shares ad revenue with developers. The game has already been played several times, although I don't know how well it will do in the long run. Will be interesting to see what sort of revenue it makes from this site.

10Bux (hopefully) Back Soon

I visited the 10Bux website to see if it was still gone, and found this message posted there:

Hello.

We're finally coming back.
After a few days with DDoS attack problems, we had to dump our former host (Liquid Web) and find a new one, which could offer us some protection for those kind of attacks.
It wasn't an easy task, as those companies offering DDoS protection have outrageous prices, but we finally found something worth a try.
We will keep the websites shut down for a few more days, to correct some bugs and add new features which we're sure you will like.
We want to be fully operational at the moment of our return, so if you have patiently waited until now, I'm sure you don't mind waiting a few days more to see some improvements. :)
Premium members and banner advertisements will, of course, have their expiration dates extended.

Our expected return date is Sunday, September 21st. Until then, stay tuned!

Best regards, the PaidClicks Network administration.

Seems they're not permanently gone after all. For some reason, these type of sites seem to suffer from a lot of attacks against them

MochiAds for Publishers

I was looking into all the features at MochiAds and found MochiAds for publishers. This enables webmasters to add Flash games to their sites, and get paid for people playing on them.

I'm adding the games to my Flash Games Site and Games Portal to see how they perform.

Monetising Flash Games

I have previously made and distributed some simple Flash games to use as viral advertising for my games portal, mainly for use with the phpBB2 arcade and activity mods. Recently, I discovered that you can add advertising in games, such as MochiAds, and get paid for the impressions generated.

I've just submitted a game to them for approval, and I'm going to give it a try. The game is a simple trivia game, and, unfortunately, I was unable to use some of the options available due to my copy of Flash being second hand and about four years old. I also can't tell what earnings per hour this would work out at, as I never made a note of the total time spent on the game. I'll start doing so in the future, although not for the couple of games I'm working on currently.

Still, it's stuff I would have done anyway as part of my site promotion, so it's bonus money anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens.

10Bux Gone

The 10Bux site has been down for quite a while now, so it's probably gone too. I've had to resubmit my cashout requests to both Bux3 and World-Bux, presumably due to the sites being hacked. It's pretty annoying, even if it's not their fault, to have to go through the whole process of waiting several months yet again.

Yuwie August Earnings

Yuwie earnings for August are now in. Total earnings were $0.12, mostly from referrals.

AdSense Referrals Gone

Well, Google's AdSense referrals program has now been discontinued, so I've removed the gadget from the blog layout. Still unsure why they stopped it, or whether it's going to be replaced with something.

e-gold Hacked Again

I posted some time ago about my dislike for e-gold because you have no recourse if your account is hacked. Well, the first time it happened, I specifically opened an e-gold account to keep most of my money in. I don't use this account anywhere else, and it's supposed to send out a pin request if your IP address is different from the previous time you logged on.

I've just checked this account, and someone still managed to break into it and empty it, this time to the tune of $18.85. More money gone with no recourse. As a payment processor, e-gold is totally useless and unsecure. DO NOT USE IT.

myLot August Earnings

myLot earnings for August are now in. Total earnings were $4.46, below the $10 payment threshold. Hopefully, this will be passed by the end of September.

Bux3 and WorldBux Back

Bux3 and WorldBux are backup, with by the looks of things minimal data loss. Still waiting on payments from both of them, and the attacks aren't helping.

PlusBux is still parked on GoDaddy, so it looks like that's gone, and Buxit.info is still showing no website at it's address, which doesn't look at all promising.

Qassia Crawled

Qassia has crawled my main site again, this time generating Q$445. They have also now come out of private beta, so it is now possible for anyone to sign up.

More Steps to Get Your Article Declined

Here are some other faults I've come across with submitted articles that can get them rejected.

Problems With Pen Names

If you submit articles you've written on the different article directories around, you will more than likely find that these allow you to have a username, which you use to login, and at least one pen names, which are shown as the name of the author of the article. Now, I've seen a few faults here.

The initial fault is usually caused when you already have an account at an article site, then join an article submission program such as iSnare. The distribution service will generate you a new account, and in some cases, if the pen name you use with the submission service is the same as one you already have at the site, you may end up with a blank as the distribution services pen name, as the identical one is declined. This means that the ability of search engines to spider your articles is significantly decreased, as there are no links to "About the Author" or similar pages. Some directories will decline your article should this happen.

Next, using your site URL as your pen name is often not appreciated either, so just don't do it. In addition, quite a number of sites will reject articles written by something other than First Name Last Name, so, although conditions do alter from site to site, it's doubtful that any will object to a pen name of, for example, "John Smith", whilst will reject or remove articles by "mysite.com" or "The SEO Guru". Just stick with a standard name, even if it's not your actual one, and you will avoid any problems like this.

Bad Usage of Article Spinners

You may not have heard of services such as these, or you may use something similar without realizing it. There are a number of different versions around, but what they all have in common is that they are designed to take one article, and make a number of different versions of it. The differences may be only minor, but the concept is to make a variety of "unique" articles to avoid duplicate content filters.

Now, there is nothing wrong with doing this, but there are wrong ways of doing it. If the spinner replaces words or phrases with variations, for example, "In the beginning" could also be phrased as "To start with", after doing this for an article and producing a number of variants, read each one through to make sure they still make sense. It's quite easy to produce gibberish if you don't, and most decent article directories don't like to publish gibberish. If an article needs tweaking, do so manually. Far better to make sure you spend a bit of time now on the article, then having to fix it after rejection.

The next problem is if you generate a batch of 20 variant articles, submit each article to a different site. Therefore, 20 articles to 20 sites. Or submit them to groups of directories, one article to 10 sites, the next to a further 10 etc. Don't submit all 20 variants to the same directory. That will probably just get them rejected, and you may get your account deleted for annoying the site owner.

Submission guidelines, and what an article directory or site will accept or decline do change, sometimes quite substantially, from directory to directory, but if you are cautious, you'll get less articles rejected.

Adrian Kennelly runs DirectoryGold Web Directory and Article Directory. See it for more articles on Writing Articles.

I Made a Lens

I've made and published a lens on Squidoo. Okay, there isn't much there yet, as I'm still feeling my way around, but lenses can apparently be good sources of traffic, as well as generating some income. Lets see how it goes. The lens topic is the same as this blog, Online Money Making.

Bux3 Back (nearly)

Well, it appears Bux3 hasn't totally gone. There was a message on the domain earlier saying that they were recovering from a database hack - not the first one either I think - and now the site is there, although not working correctly yet. I wonder how much damage the hack has done.

WorldBux, which was, the last I heard, also owned by the same company is still totally down. Also, Buxit.info has been down for several days now.

SFI Paid

I've received a payment of $51.80 from SFI, this being my accumulated commissions for several months, and the amount owing having passed the $50 PayPal payment threshold. The amount paid isn't, unfortunately, more than my current costs, although it's nice that they do pay.

Another Random Referral

I've just received my seventh random referral from Yuwie.They don't appear too active as yet though.

Qassia Crawled

Qassia has crawled my main web directory in their sticker mania promotion. The site was actually crawled twice in a row, as they were trying to diagnose some problems certain sites were having with the crawls. The crawls earned Q$418 and Q$426. I've also earned some money from their revenue sharing program.

Yuwie Earnings for July

Yuwie earnings for July are now in. Total earned was $0.08, mostly from referral efforts. There seems to be a trend with active referrals; they will initially be active, then, when this activity fails to make a significant amount of money, the activity level then tails off. To really make any sort of income from Yuwie, a substantial referral tree is a must.

myLot Paid

I have received a payment of $20.06 for my myLot earnings from June and July. This site is becoming a regular payer, as well as an enjoyable site to use.

World Bux, Bux3 and PlusBux all Gone

I haven't been online that much over the past week or so, as I've been sorting out my house so that the repairs for the flood damage I suffered last year could be started. Went to the PlusBux, World Bux and Bux 3 websites, and they all seem to be gone. PlusBux is showing the GoDaddy parked domain page; WorldBux and Bux3 both have a search page with "This domain may be for sale by its owner" messages.

Looks like I won't be getting the $37 or so I'd requested from Bux3 and World Bux

WeeklyPLRArticles

I've now passed over 50 subscribers with my WeeklyPLRArticles site. Admittedly, it's taken over 8 months to get to this stage, so not that impressive as yet. Still, it's the largest list I've managed to build.

Link Referral has been quite successful at generating signups to this.

myLot Earnings for July

myLot earnings for July are in. Total earned for the month was $11.50. Total outstanding balance at the end of July is $20.31. This is past the $10 payment threshold, and I expect payment fairly soon.

Qassia Crawled Again

Another crawl has done done by Qassia of my web directory for their sticker mania promo, this time generating Q$409.

This brings my total Qassia dollars to Q$20,927.

GetRef Gold Membership Update

My latest gold membership at GetRef has now expired. Results from this were not as good as the previous one.

At the end of the membership, I had 16.935 credits, $0.02 cash, 56 first, 9 second and 3 third level referrals.

Gain for the period was 1.7 credits and 13 first level referrals.

Sixth Yuwie Random Referral

I've just received my sixth random referral from Yuwie. Initial appearances are showing the referral to be active.

Qassia Crawled

My web directory has had another crawl done by Qassia, this time generating Q$396.

Sometimes, I'd like to be able to answer comments, or rate the ratings, on bits of intel I publish there, having had two people complain that one of my last bits was an advert. Them considering it to be an advert would suggest, to me anyway, that either they didn't read it, or they don't know what an advert is. It's not an advert if the links you publish are to sites you don't own or get any benefit from. Adding a feature like that would probably be too open to abuse though.

PlusBux Back Up

PlusBux is now back up. Or, rather, PlusBux v3 is back up. Looks like the downtime was due to an upgrade being carried out, a promising sign.

Second Second Level Yuwie Referral

I've just noticed that I've gained my second Level 2 referral at Yuwie. Given that it's under my most active referral, it's probably another random referral.

Plusbux Still Down

Plusbux is still down. I checked on another ISP, due to the annoying search redirect my main ISP uses, and it is down. Could be just a server outage, will have to wait and see.

Domain Names

If you market on the internet, odds are at some point you're going to need to purchase a domain name. My personal preference is for GoDaddy. I've found them to be possibly the cheapest registrar, as long as you're careful when you buy.

The probable reason they're the cheapest, and why you need to be careful when buying a name, is the number of optional extras they'll try to sell you, all of which add up.

Feed Pinging

I've been trying something new. I have a number of feeds burned at FeedBurner. Now, normally when I update a blog, I ping the feed using Pingates. For those feeds that I've also burned at FeedBurner, I'm also pinging that feed as well, to see - if I can - what difference it makes.

Two More V7N Commissions

It's becoming a really good month for V7N. Another two sales have been made in the last few days. Hope this keeps up.

PlusBux Down

PlusBux is currently down, or maybe gone to completely. When I try and visit it, I get redirected to the stupid search results page my ISP is redirecting errors to. Sort of like those companies that buy up domain names on expiry and stick their search pages on.

FeedBurner

FeedBurner is a way of publishing your blog's feed. Simply join FeedBurner, and submit your blog's feed to them. You will then end up with a new feed URL. FeedBurner feeds are formatted so as to be compatible with the major directories. You also get access to a variety of stats that help you analyse your traffic and subscribers, and see where they come from.

Should your feed be popular enough, you may be able to participate in the FeedBurner Ad Network, and either monetize your blog or earn extra money. FeedBurner is now a part of Google.

I have a number of RSS feeds burned using FeedBurner. The one for this blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/EgdcLtd

Promoting Your Blog Feed

If you have a blog, it's going to have an XML, Atom, or RSS feed. Mine, for this blog, is http://egdcltd.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Now, one type of place you can promote this is forums. Some forums, for example DigitalPoint and VileSilencer, allow you to add your blog feed to your profile. Others will allow this also. Both of these forums run on vBulletin, so check those out first. Not all blogs are compatible though. Current ones supported, as stated on DP, are Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress and MySpace.

Go into your User Control Panel, and, usually, look for "Edit Options" link. Click this, and where this feature is enabled, you will see a box that allows you to enter your feed URL - see the first picture. Enter your URL there.

Your last post will then be displayed, with a clickable link, under your username, avatar, etc. everytime you post - see second picture.This may drive traffic to your blog from other forum members clicking the link, and, if the forum is popular, can also drive search engine spiders, and thus traffic, there also.

V7N

Made three sales so far this month with the V7N affiliate program, which is very good. Best month ever in fact. Haven't received the funds yet of course.

Flash Games Site

I've added quite a few new games to my Flash Games Site, and the site is ranking in Google. No result yet from the BidVertiser ads yet, still, it's early days as far as the site is concerned.

I've also got quite a number of MoreGamers credits stacked up. Now, I just need to get a banner so I can use them.

Qassia Crawled

Qassia has just crawled my web directory again, this time generating $387 Qassia.

Yuwie Earnings for June

Yuwie earnings for June are now in. A substantial increase in revenue over April and May's earnings, although not as high as March's. This was mostly due to the activity of one random referral. A slightly higher RSR as well.

Bux3 Payouts Delayed

Bux3 has posted a notice saying that all payouts are going to be delayed. Annoying, as I should have been receiving my payment from them shortly, according to their ToS.

Payouts are delayed for 30 days until we get all accounts back to normal. We will still payout but they will be slow until the database crash issue is resolved. So please bare with us.

Uquick Payment

Received another payment of $3 from Uquick. This makes the total earned from this program $106.50, so I'd have to say this program is also Recommended.

10Bux Payment Request

I've today passed the $10 payment threshold at 10Bux and put in a request for payment via AlertPay.

Although I've looked through the ToS, I can't seem to find anything that says how long payments are supposed to take.

Google AdSense Referrals

I'd recently decided to try using Google's AdSense Referral ads. These ads paid you for each action, rather than per click or per impression, so had the possibility of generating good returns. Then, I received an email from Google saying they were going to discontinue the referrals program during the last week in August. Even though I've read the AdSense blog, I'm still not really sure why they're doing this. Perhaps poor performance?

myLot Payment Threshold Passed

I've just passed the $10 myLot payment threshold, again largely due to referral earnings. This means that I will receive a payment from them on or before 15th August. Given that earnings are calculated to the end of July, it's possible quite a bit more money will be added on before then.

Fifth Yuwie Random Referral

Just got my fifth random referral from Yuwie. I seem to be getting them more frequently these days. Looks like keeping signed in to the site whenever I'm online is working.

WeeklyPLRArticles Update

I've been promoting my WeeklyPLRArticles site using Link Referral. So far, it's proving more successful then it was for Yuwie, and new subscribers have been signing up fairly regularly for my GetResponse list.

This is probably because I'm the only one promoting my site, whilst a lot of other people were promoting Yuwie.

GetRef Gold Membership Update

I have already got another two referrals in my downline at GetRef from my latest gold membership. No credits earned from either as yet, but it's still early days.

BidVertiser Added to Flash Games Site

I've decided to add BidVertiser ads to my Flash Games Site, replacing the previous Google ones, as a trial. I've replaced all the Google ads, as having two similar programs on the same domain can result in losing your Google account.

Fourth Yuwie Random Referral

I just received my fourth random referral from Yuwie. They don't appear to have been active as yet though.

myLot Earnings for June

myLot earnings for June are now in. Total income from referrals and my own earnings were $8.56 and the payout threshold is $10 by the end of the month. Given how close it is to the threshold, I'm pretty sure it will be met by the end of July.

Another Yuwie Referral

I've just got another referral to Yuwie. This wasn't a random referral, or one got through any promotions I have run, so it must have been through my signup link somewhere. Perhaps from this blog.

myLot Update

After a sluggish start to the month, my myLot earnings have significantly picked up again, mostly due to referral efforts. Although I didn't make the payment threshold this month, I should hopefully reach it next month.

GetRef Gold Membership Renewed

I've renewed my gold membership at GetRef today for $4.99. I currently have $0.02 in cash earned, 15.235 credits, 43 first level, 9 second level and 3 third level members. I'm making a note of all these to see how much they increase by the end.

Internet Marketing Centre

The Internet Marketing Centre, run by Derek Gehl, has a whole bunch of software and information products for the internet marketer. There's also a sub-affiliate program, so you can earn money from sub-affiliates you recruit.

Payments are made by check for all sales in one month in the month following.

Aviva Directory Affiliate Program

The Aviva affiliate program is similar to the V7N one. You receive $20 commission for each sale made through your affiliate link. Payment is made after money owed passes $50. I haven't yet made any sales with this affiliate program, but I have only a few links to it active.

WeeklyPLRArticles

I'm up to 30 subscribers who have signed up to WeeklyPLRArticles and confirmed their subscriptions (I've half a dozen more who haven't confirmed). Not really enough to try sending out a broadcast to the list promoting something. Doubt I'd get any response.

Another V7N Payment Received

I've just received another $25 payment from V7N into my PayPal account. Total received is now $325. This was an affiliate sale from only a couple of weeks back too, so very fast payment this time.

How do I get Visitors to my Site?

I've been answering this question a lot on myLot, so I thought I'd post up my responses here for reference.

Simply building a website is not enough, you need to get people visiting it. I wouldn't suggest using thinks like Google AdWords if you're new to it, it's far too easy to lose money on. Start getting links to your sites, one place you can do this for free is by adding a link to it from free web directories. A good list is here: http://info.vilesilencer.com

Try to build reciprocal links with related but non-competing sites; no matter what SEO experts say, you can still get good, relevant traffic to your site from them.

Add a blog, or an RSS feed (say, of your newest products). Everytime you get write a new blog entry, or add a product, ping the site feed using sites like this: http://pingates.com

Write articles (or have them written for you by authors you can find at places like Scriptlance) with links to your site in the resource box. Distribute them using services like Article Marketer.

Add a link to your site everywhere you can without causing problems; eg forum signatures and profiles.

Adverbux has a New Owner

Looks like Adverbux now has a new owner, although I don't seem to have received any emails regarding it. Don't actually know when the sites' owenership changed, although I'm looking for further details. It was only when I saw something about donating tp the former owner that I realized.

bux.to Update

Current balance earned on bux.to is $61.36. Of this, $17.63 was requested to be withdrawn on 3rd April.

Still haven't received the requested payment; however, the ToS state 60 working days for non-premium members, which isn't up yet. Should therefore receive payment by abouth 3rd July.

Another Payment From V7N

I've received another payment of $25 from the V7N affiliate program. Given that I've now received $300 from this program, I have to say it's Recommended.

Third Yuwie Random Referral

I've received my third random referral from Yuwie. These referrals are gained merely from being active. This one hasn't as yet been very active.

World Bux Payment Update

I heard back from World Bux regarding the support request I submitted about the Payment Denied showing in my history. Apparently, this was due to the site being attacked a few days ago (the weird problem I noted) and payment requests needed to be resubmitted.

I made a new payment request for the current balance of $19.41. I hope the amount of time I have to wait for the request to be processed hasn't reset to the current date, rather than the original one.

World Bux Payment Denied

I just checked the status of my payment request at World Bux and the status was Payment Denied. I'm not sure what that means, as it wasn't one of the listed possible statuses, so I've submitted a support ticket.

It could have been a problem with my AlertPay email. I tried removing the email I was using from my existing account, in order to use it to open a business account. There were a number of problems when I tried to do that (it wasn't recognizing the fact that the email had been removed, so wouldn't let me use it to open a new account) or because my account is unverified. I'll see what the response is.

UrOnlineBux Update

I'm nearly up to three dollars at UrOnlineBux. This is solely through my own efforts, as I'm waiting until some of the the other sites pay me - giving me a balance in my AlertPay account - before I buy any referrals. Although I may look into GetRef to see if that can generate me some. Cashout threshold is $10, so still some way to go.

Paid to Click Programs

What are Paid to Click programs? Well, the concept is fairly simple. Members join the site, then click on advertisers links. The member then has to wait and view the advertisers site whilst a timer counts down to zero. The actual time needed to wait can vary, but is usually not more than 30 seconds. After the visit, the member is then credited for viewing the advertisers site.

Most programs will also allow you to earn from your referrals website visits too. The amount of referral depth can vary, but a lot of the current programs only have one level of depth - that is, you will only earn from members you have directly recruited, and not from their referrals.

HTMail Paid

I joined HTMail quite a few years ago, and until recently had pretty much forgotten about it. Then, I checked up on it, and found they were going to pay off all outstanding members balances. I checked my secondary PayPal account, and found that the monies had been sent - although, I had forgotten about the request too - , so, I think HTMail can be classed as Recommended.

Second Yuwie Random Referral

I've received my second random referral at Yuwie. So far, they've proved to be more active than the first. It would be nice if they stayed active.

Crawled Again

Qassia crawled my web directory again, for their sticker mania promo. This time, I got 376 Qassia dollars. More than last time, which isn't surprising, as it's based on a percentage of my total Qassia dollar worth, which, after the last crawl, naturally increased.

Weird Problem at World Bux

Currently, every time I visit the World Bux site, I get redirected to another site shortly after the page loads. I have no idea why this is happening.

Yuwie May Earnings

Yuwie earnings for may are now in. Again, they're not that stunning, even lower than last month. Once again, both my own activity and the activity of my referrals was lower than the previous month.

Hopefully, next month will be better, as my latest random referral is much more active.

Blog Rush Update

I've currently got one referral with BlogRush, although as yet they haven't generated any credits. I've not had any visits via the widget in quite some time. As only the title of each post is displayed on the widget, perhaps I need to improve my naming. Not something I'm terribly good at, unfortunately.

Bux3 Currently Down

Bux3 is currently down. Their site is displaying the following message:

Site is being Updated please check back in a couple of hours.

Now, this message has actually been there for a lot longer than a couple of hours. Well over a day that I know of. Updating sites, and fixing server stuff I know from personal experience can take longer than planned, so I hop it's just a glitch.

10Bux Update

Current balance at 10Bux is $7.50 with one referral. This puts me three quarters of the way towards payout.

myLot Paid

I've just received a payment of $14.60 from myLot. Payment was supposed to be on or before the 15th June, so they're prompt payers.

I'm going to consider this a Recommended program.

Second Yuwie Random Referral

I've received my second random referral at Yuwie. So far, they've proved to be more active than the first. It would be nice if they stayed active.

TitanClicks

TitanClicks, after a longer than expected downtime, is now finally back up again. The site, and, in fact, the entire network of sites to which it belongs had been sold - due to the fact that the previous owner is off to college. Not bad, founding a bunch of sites and selling them whilst you're still in school.

GetRef Gold Membership Update

My gold membership at GetRef has just expired. During my gold membership, I received 17 random referrals (indicated in gold in the first screen capture). Three of these have, so far, earned me credits from their efforts.

In addition, I also have nine level 2 referrals and three level 3. I can't tell whether these were from gold member random referrals promoting their own referral link, but I think there is quite a good chance.

Finally. I earned $0.02 in income, as shown in the third screen capture. Not exactly massive, I know, but better than nothing. I also earned a number of credits from referrals efforts, although I didn't make a note of how many. Probably somewhere in the region of 16 or so. Enough to get a few referrals at some of the programs I'm promoting.

I'm not going to renew the gold membership immediately, although I will do it again at some point.

Adverbux

It looks like Adverbux has ceased the Paid to Click part of its' program - which effectively means it's no longer a paid to click program.

Instead, the concentration is on the Paid to Signup section. You will still earn money from your referrals, for every offer they complete.

Now, in the short term this will more than likely reduce the income earned from being a member. However, in the long term, this may well contribute to the programs longevity and stability. Advertisers will pay money knowing they will get a response from it, making Adverbux more of a Paid for Action program.

myLot Earnings for May

myLot earnings for May took me past the payment threshold of $10. Total earnings were $14.60. Accordingly, I should receive this by PayPal on or before June 15th.

A substantial portion of these earnings were generated by referrals, although mostly at the beginning of the month rather than at the end.

Link Referral

I've decided to stop promoting Yuwie on Link Referral, as to date I've had no success at all doing so. Instead, I've decided to try promoting WeeklyPLRArticles.

What Are Traffic Exchanges?

Traffic Exchanges are sites where, typically, you visit other members websites. In return, other members will visit your website(s). Link Referral and Traffic Swarm are two examples of this type of traffic exchange. These types of sites are, however, against the terms of service for Google's AdSense program, so don't use them with any site displaying AdSense ads.

48 GetRef Referrals

I now have a total of 48 referrals at GetRef; 39 first level and 9 second level, although not all of them are currently active by any stretch. I believe that one of my first levels has purchased a gold membership, so is getting random referrals from that.

You earn 10% of the credits earned by your referrals from joining programs, down to five levels deep.

Crawled

Well Qassia has done a crawl of my main web directory, which I'd put a banner on for their sticker mania promo, and I've received a total of 363 Qassia dollars for the crawl. Boosts my sites in the rankings slightly.

What is Contextual Advertising?

I have referred to BidVertiser and Google AdSense/Adwords as being examples of Contextual Advertising. Another example is the Yahoo Publisher Network (which is currently only accepting sites that have a predominately US & English base). So, what is it?

Contextual advertising is advertising that is dynamic and changes to reflect the content of the page it's displayed on. For example, on a page where the primary content is about mobile/cellular phones, the advertising displayed will typically be for mobile/cellular products. e.g. ringtones, screensavers, wallpaper, or for phones themselves.

This should result in a higher clickthrough ratio than traditional banner advertising, because surfers are (hopefully, it doesn't always work quite right) only viewing ads specifically targetted at their interest. If they are viewing a page on mobile phones, then it's supposed they are interested in mobile phone products.

BidVertiser

BidVertiser is another contextual advertising program, similar to Google AdSense/AdWords where you get paid from clickthroughs of ads placed on your site. It also includes a referral program, where you can earn from referring publishers or advertisers to the program.

Minimum payout threshold is $10 through PayPal, or $50 by cheque. I haven't yet used this program anywhere, as you can't use a program similar to AdSense on any site running it (I checked, Google's ToS seemed to only restrict it by page). I'll decide which site to use it on, or maybe create a new one.

Isabelmarco's Moneymaker

Isabelmarco's Moneymaker is another Paid to Click program I'm a member of. You receive $0.01 for every site you visit, and $0.07 for every site visited by your direct referrals. These amounts increase for premium (paying) members. Some clicks do appear to be worth more money though. Minimum payout threshold is $9 through Alertpay.

I currently have no referrals, as I haven't yet purchased any, or done any marketing of my own. The number of ads available every day is fairly high though.

Moneybookers

Moneybookers is another Payment Processor. It's not as big or as popular as PayPal, only being accepted in 30+ countries, and is based in the UK. It has a referral program, which pays you 30% of the fees generated by the referral.

SFI

I've been a member of SFI for quite some time now. I'm an Executive Affiliate because I make a regular monthly payment to be a member of IAHBE. I've only got one member in my downline so far, and haven't put any effort into promoting it in quite a while, being involved in other things. The member in my downline is also a paying member, so I do get commission every month, which is paid out by PayPal when it reaches the payout threshold. It isn't greater than my subscription payment by any means, but they do pay.

Best Day Ever with Google AdSense

I've had the largest amount of income that I've ever earned from my Google AdSense account for one day today. Easily double the next best. It still may be well under what the experts are getting; still I'm pleased about it. Now, if only I could do this well every day.

Sticker Mania Promo at Qassia

Qassia are currently running a promotion for members. If you add a sticker (button with link) to the front page of your site with the highest credit allocation, in my case, my web directory, your site will be crawled by them at least once per month, and every time it's crawled and the sticker is found there, you'll receive some more credits. I'm giving it a go.

WeeklyPLRArticles Update

Just reached 20 subscribers to my list at WeeklyPLRArticles. I think the majority of these have been gained through the random matrix mailings at Your Lucky List, although the site is showing up in Google.

Not a terribly impressive number of subscribers yet, but it is working gradually. I believe that I've also had a couple of signups at Qassia through the list.

TextLinkBrokers

TextLinkBrokers is a service which allows approved websites to sell links on their site, text link ads or through hosted marketing pages. Now, whilst this can generate a useful source of revenue for webmasters, Google recently threw a hissy fit regarding people selling links without "nofollow" tags on their websites, claiming that it was being used to artificially manipulate the search results.

Personally, I consider that a bit off, since Google manipulates their search results anyway, by putting sponsored links at the top, Okay, many, if not all, internet marketers know that the top links on Google are paid for advertisements, but everyone I know who isn't an internet marketer doesn't. They instead think those links are at the top because they are the best, not because someone paid for their site to be there. Seems like a case of do as I say, not do as I do on Google's part.

So, before using TextLinkBrokers, decide whether or not it will be worth it. The income may be good, but Google may decide to be nasty towards you for doing it. Payment is made by PayPal when your account passes $100.

TitanClicks has a new Owner

TitanClicks now has a new owner. I think it was actually sold a while ago, but it's only just being transferred to the new owners server. The site seems to be in transition currently, with no ads available at the moment.

Indirect Links are Bad

Similar to the concept I mentioned in Reciprocal Linking is Dead, you likely have come across this too. An indirect link is a link that doesn't go to http://www.yoursite.com but instead passes though some other script firs, e.g. http://www.someothersite.com/out.php?yoursite

For the same reasons that reciprocal linking is considered worthless, indirect links are also; namely, they don't improve your search engine rankings. And, for the same reason that reciprocal links still have value, so do these. Indirect links, from somewhere targeted towards your site's niche or market, can still generate useful traffic.

Free Classified Ad Sites

I've started making a list of free classified ad sites that aren't specific to the US & Canada. I've found a number of lists in the past, but a fair number of sites don't allow classifieds from outside US or Canada, or were simply dead. Here's my list so far.

04Ads
1America Mall
Best Ads
Call Harry
Classified Ads
Classifieds for Free
Craigslist
EC E-Classified Ads
Graand
Hyt
Iklanfree
I Net Giant
Kick Ads
Kugli
Smallbiz-ads

Buxit.info Payment Request

I've passed the $5 minimum payout threshold with Buxit.info, so I've submitted a payment request. Payments are made through PayPal.

The site is also a lot faster now.

Branded Flash Games

Flash games are very popular computer games that make use of Adobe's (formally Macromedia) Flash player. By adding links to their website in the games, then distributing those games free of charge to any who want them, companies are able to get their site linked to from dozens of others. Okay, links embedded in a Flash game are pretty hard for a search engine to read, but people can click them and go straight to their site directly from the game, rather than a search engine.

Whilst the biggest users of branded Flash games are undoubtedly games sites, such as Miniclip (although they don't seem to actually give the swf files away any longer), many other businesses have used Flash games as a way to promote themselves. Usually, in these cases, the games will be relevant to what they're selling. Car companies for instance tend to use driving games for their promotions.

I use a number of Flash games to promote my main games site, currently one purchased, and the rest I made myself. Okay, they aren't the best games around, but I don't have Miniclip's budget.