More Traffic Tips and 2007 Wrap-up

First, here is another article on driving traffic to your website:

5 Steps to More Free Website Traffic!

Article written by Jennifer Haubein

One of the biggest questions I receive as a website developer is how to get a website to rank number one Google or Yahoo? This can be a difficult task to achieve, but with a few steps you will be on your way to more free traffic.

Before we get started let me define some techie terminology for you.

Title Tag- In HTML code, the title tag specifies the title of your Web page. It is code which is inserted into the header of your web page.

Meta Tag- Used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes.

On to the steps that will help bring in that free traffic!

1) Get More Inbound Links- The number one way search engines determine ranking is based on how many other websites are linking to your website. This is very important, because this is something you can do as a business owner. It takes a lot of dedication but the quicker you grow your inbound links, the closer to number one you will get. The easiest way to get more inbound links is to submit your website to online directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ. Also, if you write an ezine then submit your ezine articles to an article directory like EzineArticles.com. Make sure you include a link back to your website in resource box of your article.

2) Pay attention to your competitors- There is a reason why your competitor's website is number one, they understand search engine optimization. So why don't you find out what they are doing. Find out what websites are linking to your competitors website and try to get your website listed there as well. Go to Yahoo.com and enter the following into the search engine box:

linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com-site:www.your-competitor.com

(Replace your-competitor with your biggest competitor's domain name)

Also, take a look at their titles at the top of the web page and if you're feeling adventurous take a look at the source code to find out what key words they are using.

3) Keywords- Keywords within your website are the next best way to boost your ranking. As a business owner make sure to think about your keywords when you are writing your website copy. Your main keywords should be used at least 4-5 times within your copy. Also, make sure to include these keywords within your title tag, meta tags, and even your domain name if possible.

4) Time Can Be Your Friend or Enemy- It depends on your circumstances as to whether this is a bad thing, but search engines reward the websites that have been around a while. Also, make sure that you are aware that it takes sometimes two months to see your new website listed within the search engines or to see any new results. Be patient, you won't get to number one overnight.

5) Make Sure Your Website is Searchable- This can be difficult for you as the business owner, but you need to make sure your website is using text as much as possible. Graphics and Flash technology are not searchable by the search engines. Unfortunately there are still only 9 reliable font choices available on the web, so some things will need to be graphics rather than text. But please do not make your entire webpage images or else there will be nothing to search. You can help Google see your website effectively by setting up a sitemap with Google. We sell a solution called Traffic Blazer that handles all of this for you. Traffic Blazer will develop the sitemap automatically and give you step by step instructions on how to submit it to Google.

Off to Greece

Next, I would just like to say that it's been a blast in PM Money's first year of existence. I suppose I should mention that my low posting frequency has been due to being at university. In turn, I have had a relatively low success making money from this blog in particular, but the earnings haven't been invisible. I am steadily increasing my income and learning things as I go along. I am making money with other blogs. This blog is more for me to write down my thoughts and lessons learned.

I will be going on vacation to Greece and thus I will post again in January. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with this blog despite its low post rate. I still like doing it and hope you watch as it evolves.

Merry Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Eid, or whatever else you may celebrate. Leave me an email, I'd love to get some chat going with other bloggers/readers. Reach me at morrow0000 to the g mail.

Adam Ginsberg on the Top Ways of Driving Traffic To Your Website

Adam Ginsberg gives you a list on the top ways to drive traffic to your website, as well as his personal favourites.

I'll have to admit that I do not rely on internet marketing for my income, but the trend seems to be that the more reliant you are on it, the more unethical your tactics are. Mr. Ginsberg promotes email marketing, but as long as I live I will never try that. I hate spam just as much as anyone else.

Anyways, here it is. Let me know what you think of his tactics. If you are more interested in learning how to make money on eBay, his main focus, go to adamginsberg.com.

16 Website Types to Make You Money

Thanks to Dosh Dosh for this article.

1. Affiliate Review Website. Create a website that reviews affiliate products like make money online programs, web hosting services etc. Run it on Wordpress and update it everyday with affiliate feeds or articles. How much you’ll make depends on how thick (amount of content) the website is.

2. Product Fan Blog. Create a Wordpress blog around a popular product and update everyday with news about the product. The iPhone is a good example of a hot product to choose. Traffic will be quite decent over time if the products have longevity.

3. Auction websites. Create a website that is similar to eBay to allow users to sell and buy products from each other. You will generate income by monetizing through ads and drawing a commission through each sale. You might get some steady revenue if you sell high ticket products or go niche enough to get a loyal user base.

4. Dating Websites. Dating websites are communities which allow users to register, chat with and meet other interested users. They can be easily setup with turnkey scripts although you’ll really need a customized template and some coding work done to make it competitive or attractive enough to get some users. Markus Frind is currently the biggest individual Adsense publisher and makes well over $10K a day from his free dating site, Plenty of Fish.

5. Made for Adsense Websites. These are websites with a keyword domain and they come with a bunch of pre written articles around a specific topic. Examples of common topics include acne, cancer, health and finance. These are generally boring, low maintenance sites that are plastered with contextual ads. Incredibly easy to create using the Wordpress platform.

6. Affiliate Product Website. This is a salespage which sells an electronic product like an eBook. Create the product, buy an existing one or just get someone to do it. The main way to make money is to drive or buy traffic to your salespage and make money when they buy your eBook or opt into your email list. This is an easy way to generate some real income, especially if you are have a great niche product or am skilled in promoting your personal brand and salespage.

7. Online Games/Arcade Sites. Get someone to develop an online game that is for members only and earn money by selling points, which allow users to unlock extra options within the game. Arcade sites are simply sites with a collection of flash or online games. They are monetized through display ads. Games can spread quickly if they are very well designed and appealing.

8. Forums or Social Network. Pick a topic that is able to attract a decent amount of users and create a forum or social network. Income will not come quickly and a lot of work is needed to build the community. Create a blog on the same domain and use for promotional purposes. There is a potential to earn a good amount of money when the forum gets big or popular.

9. Specialized Search Engines. Build a search tool that allows visitors find media of specific types. Include your adsense ads within the search pages. This sort of tools usually don’t do very well unless you provide additional value on top of search. Examples of things to add include ajax search, folksonomy and recommendation engines.

10. Paid Membership Site. These are membership sites which provide ongoing educational lessons on a specific topic or offer a large archive of resources, along with a forum. An example of this is the Teaching Sells website. Members will pay a fixed fee every month to maintain their membership.

11. Design/Coding Service Site. Create a website that offers customized logo or website design, alongside coding for PSD to XHTML, Wordpress and Joomla. Hire freelance coders and designers and manage them. Pay them a portion of each sale and promote your website through blogs and webmaster forums.

12. File Hosting Website. Set up a file host which allows users to upload and share their files online with other users. There’s a tremendous amount of competition in this niche so its very difficult to make some real money unless you innovate on features or market it well.

13. Web Directories. A web directory provides listings for websites and makes money from both display advertising and sale of premium listings. Most of the work needs to be focused on marketing and branding the site. Niche directories with a good reputation might find it easier to make money.

14. Online Web tool. This includes URL shorteners, spell checkers, picture editors, file converters and various webmaster tools (keyword volume, link popularity). Visitors will often return to your site to use these tools if they are comprehensive enough or if your site is well designed and genuinely useful.
15. Proxies. Proxies are websites which allow a websurfer to not only surf anonymously but bypass certain filters which prevent one from viewing a site. They are popular with the Myspace crowd and will often require a dedicated server. There are many proxies on the market but they may be worth exploring. Income is largely passive.

16. Commercial Template Sites. Basically this involves the creation of ready made website templates for sale. They can be bundled up into sales packages and traffic can be obtained through PPC advertising. If you’re not interested in producing original templates, you can run the site using affiliate feeds from the other more established template websites like Template Monster.

Ad-to-Content Ratio for Your Blog

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RSS Feed Competition on the Horizon

This past weekend I was challenged to an RSS Feed competition by Michael over at Michael Talk. Weighing my options it seems like participating in this can only be a good thing. Essentially we will set a start and finish time for the competition, in which we will try to get as many people as possible to subscribe to our respective feeds. Here's likely what will be involved:

• FeedBurner email subscriptions so I can track the number of new subscribers to the blog
• Randomly drawn prizes for my email subscribers
• Some sort of award going to either Michael Talk or my blog...could be free ad space? I don't really know.

When Shoe Money and John Chow did this, they chose to give the winner a one way link to their page. In terms of their two sites, thats a pretty big award seeing how they are often competing for viewership. I'd say that's hardly the case here. Any publicity either of us gives to the other is positive. That's why I look forward to doing this. I'm not sure if it will happen before the end of this year, as I will be on vacation for part of December. I can't afford to lose any promotion time. :p

P.S. Make Money Blogging Part III is coming!

make money online - make money blogging - earn money online (What the hell is wrong with my Google Adsense ads? These public service ads are murdering my clickthrough rate. What is that! Will fix it later...)

Make Money Blogging Part II

Another form of revenue through blogging can come through the sole activity of selling text links. Every blog out there contains plenty of text links, so the commercial route of this will fit your website design just fine without looking out of place.

Similar to blogs that are made for commercial posting, the text link blog can make you money with little traffic. Ideally, you want to have a higher PageRank in order give your site the appeal to link buyers. However, your PageRank should not be the reason you sell the links. To avoid damaging your own PageRank, you will need to do one of a few things. Firstly, the links should be relevant to your content in some way. Google is less likely to bother you if there is some value to the links you display. Secondly, you can divert the purpose of selling links from solely making money. For example, the My Top Spots widget allows for your readers to get a no-follow link back to their site in exchange for a tip; you set the price.

If you’re not worried about your PageRank, which is less the case for people with no marketing money, you can keep going with my text-link optimization suggestions. To make sure you keep a constantly rising profit for text links, you want to assure two things. First, set a price which suits the amount of traffic you get. Use this as a base price. Then, you can add an extra cost for ‘premium’ listing which may include a link at the end of a blog post, at the top of your blogroll, or in a special section for your ‘favorite websites’. Second, you want to limit the amount of time the link gets on your website. This obviously means that you aren’t committed to sites, but more importantly that if your traffic increases over that time, you can raise the price for next time around. As Google struggles to keep a tough foothold over text-link selling, you will see an overflow of pioneers trying to profit from the lost market space. My Tops Spots is only the beginning.

Another completely different way of profiting from the blogging world is to maintain and create another blog’s content. If you’re a proficient writer, you can forget about having a blog altogether and write for numerous blogs. This will then expose your abilities and possibly lead to more assignments. To do this, you will need to join a blog network. This is for those who don’t like operating a website and would prefer to just get paid for posting.

A newer, developing type of blogging is starting to be used more and more these days, but doesn’t apply to everyone. If you already have a business page, you can create a blog to give updates about your company, its products and the people who make it happen. If you think this is too informal for your company then you’re mistaken. Huge sites such as Google, Alexa and Facebook all run personal blogs. The blog can be used to promote the business and acts as another source of traffic.

Make Money Blogging Part I

There are several ways to make money by blogging. Luckily, many do not find writing a blog a chore. If you can make money doing what you like, the better hope you have at maintaining it, building up your readers and increasing your revenue. There are a number of approaches to making money with your blog.

If you plan on spending a lot of time on your blog, the rewards will be greater. Therefore, you need to pick a topic you know a lot about or have an interest in. If you have a number of topics which fit this description, then pick the one which you think is the most popular to others. In this type of blog, you will be providing useful information and your personal takes on your subject. High maintenance, but high reward.

Many also choose to blog on topics which give them pay automatically. Advertisers will fork out money to get you to promote their products or services in a blog post. The more traffic your blog gets, the more the advertiser will be willing to pay you. This technique can provide you with a substantial income, but the reality is that it will be tough to simply run a blog with sponsored posts. You must already have an established blog intact in order to make a success out of your sponsored posts campaign. Sponsored posts will also likely bring down the credibility of your website if it was once a personal blog. You need to limit the number of sponsored posts you make. I’ll leave that judgment up to you. Ultimately you should not try to make a living solely on sponsored posts, but they’re a good way to make a quick buck.

Another way to generate revenue from a blog is much easier but less rewarding. With multiple blogs you can generate income with little work and no maintenance. If you create a blog with 25 keyword-filled posts on a topic, and do that for a large number of blogs, each will earn you a few bucks a month. Once they’re set up, they won’t need much maintenance. To boost your success with these, you should write about something that doesn’t need updating regularly. In other words, don’t talk about things like celebrity gossip or sports results. Here is a list of websites that will pay you for reviewing products:

PayPerPost
Blogsvertise
Review Me
Smorty
SponsoredReviews
LoudLaunch
Blogitive
BloggerWave

Which ever route you take, make sure you’re writing about stuff that you actually understand yourself. If it becomes evident that you’re just blogging for a profit, it will not bode well for creating a loyal fan base. The world of blogging has lucrative potential, and it’s up to you to fulfill it.

Stay tuned for Make Money Blogging Part II.

Internet Transformed by PageRank Update

So, I wake up this morning, and surely enough, my page rank has risen to 4. Not only had mine changed this time, but it seems like every websites'. One thing which seems universal is that pages selling text links were penalized by lower page ranks. It also appears that there is a lot more parity among blogs' page ranks, which could be for a number of reasons. For example, ProBlogger, which is ranked in the top 2,200 most trafficked websites on the internet, had a page rank of 4 for a short while. Now, my blog which has barely existed for three months, has that page rank while ProBlogger moved up to PR 6. To put it into context, around 150 pages total are linking to this website, while tens of thousands have linked to ProBlogger over the years.

I'm not completely sure why Google has done this, but I'm going to speculate what this might mean. I've always thought of Google as trying to govern the internet and determine its directions. What will likely occur from the penalization of page rank is more aggressive advertising from marketers in order to maintain online profits. This could be Google's way of trying to boost the internet's 'GDP', as opposed to the common belief that it is to give quality websites more of a chance against rich ones. What do you guys think about this? What could this mean for a websites' profits in the future?

As a Blogger You Will Be Judged

A lot of this will seem ironic…but at least I’m not ignorant. Here is a list of things you really need to think about if you own a blog.

First, visitors take about 10 seconds to determine what kind of content you have. And they have a set of assumptions and things to focus in on when they show up. They aren’t going to read all of your posts to decide that they like you. They may read one, but other things will catch their eye.

If the visitor has access to your traffic reports, Alexa rank, PageRank or RSS subscribership, you need to be cautious. People are afraid to admit that they trust the ‘market’ in terms of quality articles. If the first articles they read are poorer but you have a large number of subscribers, they will continue reading. If your first few articles are good but you have a weak subscribership, they will continue reading. But if you have a few weak articles and a weak subscribership, they won’t be coming back. If you’re not sure what a strong subscribership looks like, you should look around at the established blogs in your niche. Most have over 1,000 people subscribed. That doesn’t mean you should hold off putting a widget on your site; after all a few hundred subscribers still looks good. But for the most part hold off for a bit showing your subscribership.

If you’re blogging about money, don’t focus too hardcore on yourself until you get established. People will only want to hear from you once you’ve become an icon for blogging success (read: John Chow). Until then try to focus on your readers. I don’t mean ‘suck up to them’ but you more the less need to do that. Don’t build yourself up yet; the only real thing between you and your readers is that you own the blog. Problogger’s little cartoon described it best: To become a famous blogger you either need to blog and then become famous, or become famous and then blog. So just be yourself.

One last thing is tailored towards the finance/home business blogging family. Okay, you’re making money, great. Don’t make it into your website theme. You aren’t John Chow. Don’t turn your blog into your adventure to make money online, because it puts too much focus on yourself, not your readers. Do they really want to keep reading if you are only talking about how you’re doing great, and how they could be too? You want to sound like a blogger, not a pyramid scheme advertiser.

So I guess the point of this article is basically to say, don’t try anything out of your reach when you blog. Stick to your guns, represent yourself well on your blog, and at least try your best to sound like you know what the hell you’re talking about.

As a sidenote, all of these tips have come from experience, and I have made all of these mistakes before. That's why to a few of my readers this post may sound quite ironic. But I'm still learning, right?

A Huge Leap Forward for Peter Morrow's Online Money

Well, Darren Rowse of Problogger had told his readers to forget about Page Rank and build a better blog. I took those words seriously, and recently, I've been spending more time on this site. In his article, he said that he believed Google was updating its Page Rank database. I suppose he was right. Just this evening I checked my barely three month old blog and surely enough I now have a Page Rank of 4! This is truly more than I had hoped for.

Now that I've got it I'm interested to see what I can do to maximize my traffic. As most of you know, Google uses PageRank and keywords to rank pages in search results. Therefore, what I should focus on is picking the right keywords. If I changed this sites title to 'Make Money Online', I would likely wind up on the bottom of the first/top of the second page of results, pretty much guaranteeing 50 page views a day from that keyword alone. But what if I picked something more unique? It's really hard to say. Until PMM gets re-cached by search engines and a few weeks of traffic analysis comes in, I won't be able to make a fair assessment. But I'm pretty excited.

Business Philosophy: Case study on Online Scams

Okay, I’m deviating a little bit on this post. You won’t find any new ways to make money online in this rant, but please stick with me. I’m delving a little more into the topic of online scams.

I look at Surf Junky and images of Enron pop into my head. The first thing you’re probably thinking is, ‘Whoa there, Enron stole millions from shareholders, lied explicitly, whereas Surf Junky is a private company and explained in their terms and conditions clearly that they make no guarantee of profits and that they can withhold any payment.’ Yes, you’re right. Surf Junky is not stealing your money. They didn’t ask you for a dime, and don’t have the same sort of legal agreement that a shareholder would have with a company.

But how is it that we tolerate these scams? You’re probably thinking, ‘Well, tough luck. If you had read the terms and conditions closely you would have known what you were getting into.’

True, yes.

But what kind of company is allowed to employ individuals to fuel their profits with a 100% guarantee that no profit can be made by those very people? How is it that we are so ridiculously laissez-faire about this issue that the relentless drive to make money that we forget our democratic values? Our values are of capitalism, human rights, safety and responsible government. It is one of our values that laws can change to better suit the general good of the public. And don’t come back with me saying that laws leave morality off the table. Not all laws are designed to simply help the public; some are in fact only to protect the individual. Let me make this distinction clear: Killing is illegal because it hurts the public, whereas not wearing a seatbelt is illegal because the government has decided that it is the best for the individual. The same goes for polygamy, in which the government has made a moral judgment on the issue which has indeterminate outcomes.

So why are we too stubborn to stop these deceptions of the public? Well, for starters, we don’t know how, so we give up. Is it too hard to make a clear cut distinction between what is and is not a scam? Where does Surf Junky’s income come from? The labor of the public (although it’s not tough labor by any stretch of the imagination). Is it not clear that there is something wrong with deceiving your ‘workers’ into believing that they will be paid? This is different than if there is a variety of success levels and you purport that you will become very wealthy from it. No, Surf Junky is unique in that they pay out to nobody, but claim that they will. Therefore, are they a real business? I think you could make the case that they are an illegitimate one.

Of course, there will be those that say they are completely legitimate in that those who use the site are voluntarily helping it, and not intending to be paid by the company. This is a slippery slope argument in that the terms and conditions completely trumps any uncertainty to this. Then, would you not see it as a problem that if you are logged in, you cannot read the terms and conditions? I would say this is the same as withholding a legal contract from a signatory – which is incredibly undemocratic.

It’s sad that the pursuit for wealth still allows this kind of misconduct. So do I have any validity at all or do you see me as Karl Marx? Because I’m not. I’m as close as you can be to a liberal in terms of business sense. But this is something that is driving me nuts. It’s our responsibility as internet users to want to improve the legal state of the environment of our success.

I am tired and busy and I don't want to spend any more of my time dealing with the shortcomings of the internet and the idiots the exploit it, so I'm going to sign off for now. I haven't proofread this article at all so I am sorry for any grammatical errors. But I really just wanted to write a 'rant', so I haven't edited anything I've said. It's all there.

I have not linked to Surf Junky because they don't deserve any more incoming links. If you really want to check them out, Google it.

Please comment!

Make Money with Liberty Reserve

Liberty Reserve is one of the e-currencies available in the cyber world. It is gaining momentum nowadays and is being used to make online transactions either for trading or for funding your FOREX account. They have a 100% irrevocable payment system and digital currency. You can send or receive money to or from anyone in the world.

Its special features include:

• Get paid, stay paid - unlike credit cards, all payments are irrevocable. You can even send payments to many users at once using the batch pay option.
• Pay your bills - Just use any of our approved exchange providers to send a check to you or anyone and anywhere in the world in exchange for your Liberty Reserve funds.

The company is protected by an offshore Trust, and is at all times backed 100% by U.S. dollars for LR-USD accounts, and by gold for LR-gold accounts, etc. They offer extremely competitive rates & discrete, confidential service. Free accounts. Internal transfer costs are a maximum 25 cents.

Like other e-currency, Liberty Reserve also has a referral program. Everyone could take part and make money with this great opportunity. All you have to do is open an account and have at least USD10 balance in your account to be a referrer plus:-

1. Post your referrer link on any online page. Direct referral links entered in a browser will not work.
2. Referrers that generate a lot of fake accounts will be frozen. Warn your friends and clients not to open fake accounts.
3. The most important thing is you must not pay people for signing up under you.

You will earn $0.25 cents on every referral without any limits and each member that signs up using your referral link gets $0.05 in their account . All referrals are paid automatically upon successful account activation. Sounds pretty good.

It will not stop there, as a referrer, you will receive 10% of any fee that is generated from that user for his or her internal spend transactions. These payments will be automatically made to your account as long as that user is active.

Open your free Liberty Reserve account now.

Please feel free to comment on this article, I would really like to hear what you guys think about this opportunity.

Thanks to www.syidan.com for this article submission.

The Dangers of Making Money Online

Let’s admit it: social interactions on the internet is not the same as in real life. You aren’t held accountable for things in the same way and people can’t see your face. Big companies try their best to dig into your pockets and time and get away unscathed. It leaves you angry and greatly discourages you from continuing to work on your goals. There are a few pointers I feel are necessary to share:

Read the Terms and Conditions! If the website doesn't have any, you shouldn’t go near it. I used to skim over the Terms and Conditions part until I realized that it’s used as a legal tool. For example, Agloco’s membership agreement reads:

"The amount of money that will be credited to your account for each hour of Active Surfing by You, or for the Active Surfing of Your Referrals or Extended Referrals (the "Hourly Rate(s)") may vary. You agree that AGLOCO™ may change (decrease or increase) any Hourly Rate at any time for any country or countries effective as of the posting of such new Hourly Rate(s) on the Global Payment Table.”

That basically gives Agloco the license to decrease the Hourly Rate to something which is completely worthless. If that were to happen, you might not have wasted money, but you wasted time. I don’t think Agloco is a scam, but I do think it is a rather sketchy business plan.

Don’t put your money down up front. Many schemes are designed to appear to be a real product when in fact they are luring you to join their business plan to recruit other members. This may be a pyramid scheme or something similar.

Don’t trust anything that a company claims about itself. Really, don’t. A company can rave about how great its customers are doing and how much they’re earning. The reality is that they can say that as long as it’s happened once before. For example, you will find any website which purports that you will get rich from their service has to put the following, somewhere on their site:

“Every effort has been made to accurately represent this product and its potential. Even though this industry is one of the few where one can write their own check in terms of earnings, there is no guarantee that you will earn any money using the techniques and ideas in these materials. Examples in these materials are not to be interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. Earning potential is entirely dependent on the person using our product, ideas and techniques. We do not purport this as a "get rich scheme."”

Whatever their claims may be, you need to be aware this. You also need to be aware that what they really mean is that every effort has been made to accurately not get their asses sued. You need to come to face with the fact that it is a lot easier for scam artists to get away on the internet, and, due to these statements, virtually impossible for you to take them to court. Chances are you wouldn’t do such a thing anyways.

I had a chance to ask Mr. GPT a few questions about online scams, and he writes,

“Some advice I give to people looking to avoid scams is always check for payment proof. Sometimes the websites will contain a Payment Proof page, such as www.cashninjas.com. Other times, you may have to check their forums. Which brings me to my next point. Read up on the forums if they have one. Especially the "Support" section. Note what people are having problems with and how to avoid it.

”And last but not least, use Google to your advantage. Try typing in the site you're possibly going to join and add scam at the end. One of the well known scams, SurfJunky, still exists to this day. But by a simple Google search of SurfJunky scam, you can easily see that the program is a scam. Remember to read some of the links Google gives you as well. Just because one site says it's a scam doesn't mean it is. However, with SurfJunky, for example, you can easily tell the majority of the results say it is a scam.”

And now let’s look at a couple encouraging snippets out of Surf Junky’s Terms of Service:

“Surf Junky is currently in a beta testing phase. Members will be notified by email when Surf Junky is no longer in the beta phase of it's development. Any credit or commission earned during this beta testing time shall not be considered as payable income.”

And…

“Payments may be withheld by Surf Junky for any given reason for any period of time. Payment periods end on the last day of every month.”

It takes a lot less time to skim the Terms and Conditions than it does to figure out that it was a scam after all. The only reason I got tricked by this myself is because a blog I read recommended it. Clearly they hadn’t used it before.

The take-home message out of all of this is to realize that very few things are free. Those sites that are free tend to make it very difficult to accumulate money. If you want to make money online, realize that the only person who is going to protect you from scams like these is yourself.

Increase the Number of Posts Read by a Given Visitor

Once you have got a reader visiting your site, the next step is to get them not only read one post but also multiple posts.

Here are 4 simple strategies in which you can increase the number of posts read:

1) Put 3-5 related posts linked at the bottom of each post. This way, if a reader likes a particular post, he or she is likely to reader another post about the same topic.

2) Have a listed of 'Featured Articles' or 'Most Popular Articles' in the sidebar or somewhere the reader can easily see.

3) Embed links to other posts about a similar topic. Below is an example post:

After that shocking status graph comparison yesterday, Alexa is back to normal again. The glitch lasted only for about one day. If you haven't read my post about the Alexa Shock please click HERE.

4) Have a list of previous posts listed in the sidebar of your blog. This will allow readers to read your previous articles.

Thanks to http://mmomethods.blogspot.com for this article submission.

Submit your own article and have it posted on my front page for free

Are you a money blogger? Do you want some free traffic to your blog? Do you want a link back to your site from a Page Rank 4 website? Well, I have the opportunity for you.

If you've got an article related to making money online I would be more than glad to post it here for you. It will be in my archive and thousands upon thousands of people will get to read it.

A few things you need to keep in mind before you submit:
1. I reserve the right to decline or remove the article at any point.
2. I will not post it if it is riddled with spelling errors or poor grammar. I don't mind fixing the odd typo, but please proofread.
3. One image maximum, 300 word minimum.

If you're ready to submit, contact me with the text and clearly identify what you want the title to read. Submit as many articles as you wish, but don't expect them to all be selected.

morrow0000* *= at g mail dot com
The reason my email is chopped in half is to stop spammers finding it in a search.

Website Promotion: Article Marketing

Article Marketing is one of the more rewarding free internet promotion schemes out there. Article directories are hungry for content which can be redistributed. Thousands of webmasters then take this content and place it on their website. This article can contain a link to the writer’s website, and hence you receive a free one way link.

Not everyone has the time to market through article writing, but the results seem to be visible, and secure. There is always the possibility that the person taking the article will remove your name and claim it as their own, but the hope is that a number leave your link on it. This is a good way to boost your PageRank, as your URL will virally spread around the internet.
You don’t simply want to be writing articles for the sake of increasing your PageRank. You want to give the reader a reason to read more of your material. The article should be short, simple, and informative. It must make them need more information.

In order for your article to be a success, it has to be relevant to your area. Most people don’t want to be reading piles of material, so keep it brief, and make it original. Give your own spin on the topic to show that you aren’t regurgitating information that would make them want to close your window and search it on Google. That’s good that you’ve interested them in your topic, but what use is it if they’re off on Google where your site likely isn’t at the top of the list anyways.

When you write your article – make sure the title explains exactly what you’re talking about. No cliffhangers – unless you think it’s relevant. The more keywords are in your title, the better the article will do.

There are two ways you can get your Articles, and thus your website, out there:

1. Article Directories: Sign up. Here’s a list:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.articlegold.com

2. Newsletters: I won’t tell you where to go for this. You’ll need to look for websites in your topic which provide newsletters, and offer to give them content. The degree of success that you will get from this will vary, but it’s worth a try. Submit a few of your ‘best’ articles to several websites and see how you do.

Once you’ve got your articles nicely polished and ready for exposure, start posting on article directories all over the internet. You’ll be earning that traffic instantly.

Make Money Selling E-Books

Return Potential: Hundreds to thousands annually, depending on effort investment

Investment Estimate: $ 10 – 200 dollars

Effort requirement: High, then Medium, then Potentially Low

A hot money maker these days is lesser known outside of the internet realm, but is a high reward technique. The market for E-books is great, and you can make a huge profit selling them. What’s better is that you’ll be able to say it’s your own work. Writers of E-books will sell you the rights to take the E-book, modify it and then resell it.

You first want to own a website in your field of expertise. To get sales from your E-book, you must prove that you have knowledge of that topic. The E-book must be marketed as a step up from the free information on your website. It is this passive approach to selling your product which will yield the highest results. If you feel you do not have the time or experience to write your own E-book (which I will get into later), buying the right to modify one is an excellent approach.

Not all E-books will give you rights to all of the profit. You decide whether you think you can market your E-book enough for you to demand 100% profits, or if you don’t mind passing on commission to the seller of the E-book. If you’re thinking big, I would recommend buying an E-book that gives you all of your profits. You don’t want to have anyone to answer to if your sales take off, because overall you will lose a lot of earnings.

You may also want to do other things with your newly purchased E-book. As the E-book will be higher quality content likely written by an expert, you may want to get your edge on competition by offering it for free. If you have a decent amount of exposure to your website, your viewers will appreciate your charity. In turn you will have more viewers, and thus more ad revenue.

You can also do a little bit of both. Giving your readers a taste, say a few chapters of your E-book, will give them the confidence they need to make a purchase. If they like the material, they will want more and see it as in their best interest to fork out the money.

Another use of your E-book for turning a profit is to use it as a bonus incentive. If you sell products or services, you can offer the E-book for free when a user makes a purchase or signs up. The more offers and bonuses you shell out, the more of an advantage you will have on other sellers.

And then there’s the E-book writer’s perspective. First, think of something you know a lot about. It could be your field of work, your education, your hobbies or abilities, or something else. If you can package that into something which you think others would consider buying, you should sell it as an E-book, as well as offering to sell the rights to it. People will highly value original material which you’ve put good time and thought into.


Here’s a list of places you can find E-books which sell away their publishing rights as well as resources relating to the selling of the rights:

Two markets for buying and selling E-book rightsL
http://www.sourcecodegoldmine.com
http://www.plrpro.com

A website with free information on how to market your E-book or rights:
http://www.viralmarketinggiveaway4.com

Here is a picture of money to assure that this website continues to get targeted traffic. Apparently using the correct keywords isn't important to some silly bloggers out there!

Money Bloggers: I'm looking for link partners

Hey money bloggers, I'm extending an offer to you to get your website on my blogroll in return for mine on yours. If you're interested leave a comment with your URL and the title of your website. I'll post your link up as soon as I see the reciporical on your website. I will delete your link if your site doesn't get updated at least once every 60 days. Your site must be primarily in English, and primarily about money and finance.

Here are a few stats about P Morrow's Online Money.

Online Since: July 12, 2007
PageRank: 4
Alexa Rank: 500,000
Technorati Authority: 80+
A link to this site would be displayed as: P Morrow's Online Money with a link to http://www.pjmorrow.com/

Paid Social Media Programs to Earn You Some Money On the Side

There are ways to make money online without having to be locked into anything. Most of us just want to get in and get out with some money in our pockets. If that’s what you’re looking for, there are plenty of ways to do so. They require time, but they are all leisurely and do not require you to do things you don’t feel like doing. If you have any spare time at all, you can maximize that simply by getting paid small amount of money for doing what you want, when you want. Here are a list of websites which utilize this idea and value your service:

Dada - Social site with a revenue sharing program that pays you for referring friends and driving traffic.

Jyve - Pays you to provide answers, advice and peer support to people in need of some help.

Cruxy - Specializes in social video, but serves as a venue to sell your digital media.

BitWine - Get paid to give advice and answer questions for people, on subjects of your interests and choice.

Ether - Make money answering questions for your peers over the phone. You set your rates and call availability.

UpBlogger - Social network site that pays you based on the amount of visits you receive to your uploaded content.

JustAnswer - Help others solve their problems and earn money for your knowledge.

MetaCafe - Upload your videos and earn money based on the number of views you receive.

ChaCha - Get paid to offer support to members of their community.

AssociatedContent - Earn money by uploading your videos, text, audio and images to their site. Earnings are determined by the exposure you receive from your content.

myLot - Pays you for posting, commenting and using their social network.

KnowBrainers - Another site that pays you to get involved with the community and answer questions. Optionally you can answer questions through the RSS feeds on your own blog.

Agloco: The Money Maker of the Future?

If you've explored ways to make money online through other websites than your own, you're sure to have ran into a little site called Agloco.

Actually, Agloco isn't small at all. Alexa currently ranks it just above 2,000. They're also on the verge of going public. Their goal at the minute is to get listed on the LSE (London Stock Exchange). If and when that does happen, all of your shares which can be earned today can be converted into cash. Agloco has gone viral all over the internet, with millions of individuals recruiting others in order to gain referral money. The product itself is a toolbar which reads what you do while you're online. Then, your time spend online (which is currently maxed at 5 hours a month) gets converted into shares, which gets converted into cash based on the sales the Agloco toolbar generates that month. Their platform is that the toolbar 'gives the individual a share of the internet' and 'economizes' it. In other words, you get a piece of their earnings: something most other big sites don't ever do.

Little known is that Agloco was previously known as 'AllAdvantage'. This website paid out more than 100 million dollars to their customers, so they aren't kidding around.

When Agloco goes public, you'll want to get your credit for helping them make their profits.

Sign up for Agloco (removed because Agloco has folded!)

Making your website visible via PageRank

I have discontinued this program out of speculation that it will hurt my PageRank. For all who exchanged links with me in this program, I apologize. I recommend that you too remove the list.

Here are a few articles on how to boost your traffic:

Adam Ginsberg on the Top Ways of Driving Traffic To Your Website

Increase the Number of Posts Read by a Given Visitor

Website Promotion: Article Marketing

Ad to Content Ratio For Your Blog (and traffic tips)

Your Guide to Making Money with Adsense: Part II

Although all of the ads are text ads, there are currently four layout options to select from. And although all four ad styles can be effective, the “skyscraper” ads placed toward the top right side of your page or the “Leaderboard” ads placed at the top of the page generally will provide a higher click-through rate than the other two styles.

However, each page is different and will produce different results. For this reason, you may want to test your pages and display the style that produces the highest click-through rate.

You are probably thinking the more links the increased likelihood that someone will click on the link, but the opposite is usually true. If a visitor visits your site/blog only to be inundated by ads, the likelihood that the visitor will stay on your site dramatically decreases. The visitor is looking for good content/information about the topic they are interested in, they don't want to see a slew of ads.

Another interesting placement of the ads comes with the Adsense for Content Link Unit. Reports have been made that a horizontal link unit below the banner does extremely well. What this sounds like, however, is that the user is confused into thinking the Ad unit is a menu for your website. This could have positive or negative results, however what is clear is that it yields strong profits and is in fact labeled by Google. Your call whether this will be a good idea. You should take notice that I am currently trying out this technique.

Some small pieces of useful advice:

Add a picture next to each Adsense ad. Choose some small pictures that are related to the subject of your blog/site and add them next to each Adsense ad in order to draw the viewer’s attention to an image which is clearly not an ad. This way the ads really blend into your site/blog.

Switch your account to the Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up setting. What this will do is remove the text below the ad which reads ‘Advertise on this Site’. Most people reading your ads will not be advertisers, they will be readers. Removing this text will make your ads blend in more – and this a higher Click-through rate (CTR). On the other end, advertisers to your website use Google Adwords to target their ads to your site. To sum it up, all the ‘Advertise on the Site’ button is meant for is to get more advertisers to sign up for Adwords.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Adsense tips. Come back soon as I will go further into detail on ways to manually make money online via a website or blog.

Your Guide to Making Money with Adsense: Part I

Before you even think about using Adsense, there are a few basics we must run through. You can skip these if you feel they don't apply to you. But if you're already making money on Adsense I would highly recommend you read this useful guide anyways.

Money
1. You must own or decide to make a website.
Not everyone is a webmaster, not everyone can create wonderful layouts and pages of their own with code, but pretty much everyone can make a website these days.

2. You must generate traffic to your website in order to give Adsense a chance at making you money. There are multiple ways of getting traffic. It can either be earned or bought. To earn it, you must obviously have good content, and lots of it. Your website must be 'sticky' in that the visitor has a reason to come back whether it's to sort through all of your material or to get updates. This is the way you go about maintaining traffic levels instead of busting your wallet. You don't have to, but you can add your website to directories and request link exchanges with other websites. And, you absolutely must make it easy for your viewers to find your website on search engines. But these are things for another day. The alternative is for those who are confident that an investment in marketing will bring them a sound response and net profits.

So you've got your site and you're ready to convert your traffic into earnings. Good job getting this far. It should be a cruise from here, right? You'd like to think so, but most people make careless mistakes in how they advertise on their website, and this is the place where you will find advice. Onto the Adsense tips!

Sites are limited to three units on a page so as to not overwhelm readers. Positioning is crucial. Studies show that the most viewed area of a page is toward the top and left (where the majority of English language writing begins). Placing ads right after the content or embedding them in the articles are also effective techniques. Google has examples of placement to guide you once you join AdSense.

Adsense allows you to customize the ad colors to match the look of your site. Use this ability to make the ads look like the rest of the links on your site and be sure to match the background color as well. Visitors will respond better as they see will give the text a chance instead of unconsciously rejecting them as advertisements. Most advertisers make the mistake of drawing the reader's attention to their ad with vibrant colours and perhaps an animation or sound. That certainly catches your eye, but does it make you want to buy something from them if you know they're just out to grab your attention? The customer feels better knowing that it was them who was interested in the actual content of the ad, not the flashy colors that drew them in.

1. Ads at the top of the page and on the left of the page perform better than any other ads.
2. Ads without background colour and borders perform better than ads within borders with background colour.
3. Ads within content pages perform better than any other ads.
4. A search box on every page gives you another chance for earning Adsense income.
5. Your link at the top of the ad should be blue like a normal
link, the ad should be black, and the URL should also be black so that it blends in with the ad copy. That makes the link stand out and gives you a better chance of someone clicking on it.

Stay tuned for Your Guide to Success with Adsense: Part II.

Diversify and Multiply your Cashflow

With a little effort, you can earn a little cash. But as long as you don't mind that the money isn't pouring in by the truckload in a week, and if you've created multiple streams of small amounts of cash, the bottom line will slowly crawl up until all of those little streams turn into an 'ocean' of cash. It's not eBay, but it won't dig into your free time like eBay does. I'm going to put together another list of links to places which I personally pick. Companies are willing to award a little bit of cash for a little bit of effort - which if you don't mind, will be an alright upgrade to your lifestyle. The key is that there are tons and tons of websites which are willing to offer you this. If you diversify your cash flow, you will be earning lots of little cheques, as opposed to the mystical 'big cheque'. That's all I'm willing to promise you. You'll find, on the optimistic side, that your payroll will increase if you put more effort and tell others about their website. You will be credited for work that others do, and if you just put that little amount of time, you can really build up the profits.

Without further ado:

Note: I will be updating this list for the next few weeks. Keep checking back as it will grow.

Bux.to - You get paid to read ads. You collect money for doing basically nothing, so you've got nothing to lose by signing up.
TreasureTrooper - Get paid to complete offers, fill out forms, surveys, or other miscellaneous tasks. Payout is $20.

COMING SOON: Your complete manual for success with Adsense

Get a small (but consistent) stream of cash just by reading emails

Here is a list of online programs which will send you emails periodically. You get paid for reading each one, sponsored by the advertisers. It seems we've moved into an age where so much junk gets filtered that advertisers are paying now just to be seen via email. One thing you need to consider is that before you get a paycheck you must reach a minimum amount of earnings. For example, a few websites will require you to build up 50 dollars before they send out a cheque. This is normal for a business, as it would be a waste of time to send out cheques for 15 and 20 cents. AdSense's quota is 100 dollars, but these email programs will have much lower requirements. Here is a list of ones I have used:

Send More Info - 10 Dollars before payout
E-Mail Pays U - 50 Dollars before payout
Ouah - 15 Dollars before payout
Email Cash Pro - 11 Dollars before payout
Cash Money Email - 50 Dollars before payout

I would suggest you look out for more, but here are ones which are good for everyone. I would suggest you create or designate a separate email to set these accounts up, as you will be looking through a lot of emails. It's all worth it in the long run.

Four Suggestions for You

Not everyone is a veteran when it comes to ad revenue, so here are four ways to make money. They require time and resources, but less than you'd think.

1. Sign up for Google's Adsense program.
A good company that converts traffic into revenue. A classy company with a successful program. A plus is that it fits in nicely to any website without making it look trashy. People don't like to be bombarded with ads, so text is a good idea for your own website. That's why I use it. I'm just like you, it's nothing personal, I just don't see that there's anything to lose from gaining a little bit of money no matter what the site is about.

2. Sign up for surveys which pay you to fill them out.
If you've got extra time you may as well sign up an email account which can be designated for this. Advertisers are eager to know what you want to buy, so they will pay good money to gather that information. Once again, I'm not going to promote anyone here. I'll leave it to you to set that up.

3. Sign up for pay-click emails which will pay you for seeing their advertisements.
If you don't mind a few extra clicks you will be able to build up a little extra cash. The more you sign up for the more emails you get - most websites will limit the amount of emails you recieve so that you can't make truckloads, so signing up for different websites is the best way to go about making this avenue of income worthwhile.

4. Sell your excess items online.
Ebay, for example, is a great place to start. You have a lot of stuff sitting around that I'm sure you don't need. I'm sure I don't need to explain the selling tactics but as you know, even if you're only getting a fraction of the original price back in return, there will be more than a handful of suitors willing to pay up.

Introduction

Here's something this blog will pride itself on that you'll be hard to find elseswhere: real advice. Most websites and blogs skew your perspective of making money by either decieving you or directing you to their affiliates, telling you they have the best money making tactics or programs. This blog will walk you through ways to make successful use of your time in order to easily and efficiently convert your downtime into extra money. I've got advice to share, as long as there are those who will listen. I'm not going to say this blog is the best, or will in turn earn you the most money, because we all know that it's up to you to make the most of it. You've all got a lot of money making potential, no matter what your skill set is. Use that potential to its fullest.

Peter

About Peter Morrow

My name is Peter Morrow and I'm a new blogger and entrepreneur. I started blogging in 2007, and have expanded into other forms of making money online since then. My goal is to make a healthy income online while maintaining a full time job.

I'm 19 years old and currently attend Queens' University in Canada. I was raised in Oakville, Canada, and I still live there today. I was born in Northern Ireland, but immigrated to Canada when I was two.

I don't have much on my resume yet in terms of online accomplishments, but I have some big projects on the horizon. I've always wanted to have a website, but I never thought it would be a blog. Surely enough, here I am today, blogging away!

Apart From The Internet...

I like to exercise, listen to music, play soccer and hockey, and support the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL.

Recommended Money Makers

Here is a complete list of sites I use to make money online.

The bulk of my income comes from selling text links on my various websites. I have found that LinkWorth is the most effective in that regard. I sold my first text link on that website, and I've been satisfied with it since. Sign Up Your Website At Linkworth.

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