MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

Monetization Tactics

Is Direct Ad Sponsorship Really Worth It?

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When the Google Adsense era came to oblivion (wtF!) or when most people realize that using AdSense isn’t really as lucrative as 123, they forget it and turned their head to what is known as Direct Ad Sales or Sponsorship. Well you might have read a ton of post about direct ad sales and I can’t argue that this could possibly be the highest form of income earner for a blog. What I can say here is that it isn’t really as easy as what it seems especially for newbies or for people on the more unorthodox niche and I know most people can testify for it.

So positive things with direct ad sales is of course, you’re cutting the middleman, then its better for blogs in this niche and for branding, it also makes a lot of income possible. The problem with it now is that, even though you’re on an Alexa of 100,000 and below it still cannot assure you that you can get out $100 on ad sales on a month. I know some people who are really on a situation like that. Another problem is that, because the value of almost everything is close to being a junk, advertisers are not lenient anymore to advertise for a month. They test for the first 5 days, if they want the results, they’ll continue if not they’ll take their ad again!

One more problem is when the blogger or publisher gets desperate because no one is advertising for their blog, they’ll do a firesale! They sell their ads for so cheap, which is not bad but is not good either because you’re making your income source  underachieve. In which if you put up a WidgetBucks Ad or maybe shoppingads you can likely get some more. Again, Im not degrading the value of Direct sales, its just that sometimes it’s not for everyone.

What other alternatives for unsponsored sidebar? A lot!  You can let CPM banners take that or you can run some affiliate products there or you can just remove the sidebar and optimize it contextually! The thing here is that you always want to get the highest income possible. If you’re on a debt niche, then Im pretty sure you’ll get no private ad deals w/c means no income, but when you run AdSense there,  more likely it will  generate you some income. If my memory serves me right I think ads related to it pay $1 up to $5 per click.  I guess thats it for today and let me know you’re strong voice.

Does Your Blog Really Add Value?

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The exams are almost over and so is the contest. I am very thrilled to have this many contestants and I think it really boosted my blog’s traffic and search rankings. 🙂 To all sponsors and participants, I really wanted to thank you for supporting my first contest.

So, before I made a post about giving reason why people should follow and read your blog. While I never really considered this blog a “helpful blog”, I think I have still provided some value to my readers by giving out necessary tips. Let’s face it, when your blog doesn’t hand out something useful then more likely people will just leave you.

So today I will just list here some of the useful posts from this blog that can hopefully benefit you. I also do hope that some of the my new readers can read it in case they haven’t before. Here it is:

The Whole Make Money Online Concept

Blogging Tips

Blog Monetization

Affiliate Marketing

Some recommended reads

How to Make Money Outside Internet Marketing

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Although the title looks like that one you have been seeing in email spams and “get-rich quick sales pages, it’s actually not. A lot of people jumping into internet marketing always have this question “How do I start? I dont know anything about internet marketing?” The answer is always read, try to learn, test, then learn again.

But as always there are a ton of ways on how you can make money online if you’re dumb and poor about internet marketing. We all know it takes time before you can completely grasp the whole concept of it, but whats the need on learning it if you can make some cash without it? 🙂 Today I have compiled ways on how you can actually make money online without any knowledge about IM. The only thing you need is the basic read and write knowledge as well as some persistence on your part. I believe all of them costs nothing (although if you have the money, the better)  Here they are:

  • Forum Posting – Forum Posting is basically posting in a forum and getting paid. It’s not really that big but if you can work quick, then you can definitely have your earnings up. ForumsFirst.com is one that pays for it. They are probably the most reliable and better forum posting company. You can also look at some forums like dp and v7n, as normally there are people that look for forum fillers.

SECRET TIP: With this type people often whine “I don’t type fast” While typing fast is a huge factor in this one, it’s not totally the only thing that can give you success with it. Why not use a dicatation software? In my previous stints with doing it, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you’re a Mac user you can use Mac Dictate. What is a dictation software? Basically its a software that converts your voice to text. COol? Definitely! You can make $50 a day easily with forum posting with this type of software. $50 a day? Yeah, something most affiliate marketers cant even reach!

  • Get Paid To Sites – GPT sites are sites that pay people to complete an offer. Maybe a short survey, or signup to a free site, or maybe something that requires a credit card. Believe me there’s no shortage of this sites. Why? Because some affiliate marketers are incentivizing some offers, thats why they come to these sites, pay them and earn. Win-Win situation for all! Jim of TNF has a list which he personally recommends
  • Freelancing – Contrary to what most people are saying, freelancing is really a lucrative thing. A lot of people are looking to outsource (including me). They look for designers, article writers, coders, data entry personnels, and many more. I mean Im sure at least you know how to do one of it right? Freelancers are the one whom I often called as “partners in business”.  Elance.com is one company which probably is the biggest.
  • Starting A Contest Blog – I hate doing stuffs like this but basically lets face it, you can actually make some cash/gadgets with contests nowadays. 85% of contests require blogging and doing it costs you nothing. What are you waiting for? Create a free blogger blog, fill it with some content, then start hunting for contests. I know a lot of people making good use of contest blogs and taking advantage of contests.

SECRET TIP: How do you know a contest is live? Easy, just look at other contest blogs and you will know it. Contest bloggers try to find contest as much as they can so they are actually doing the work for you. Search Google for terms “contest blogs” “blog contests” or so and you’ll find a ton.

  • Selling Photos – Selling photos is something that I have never done and will never do in my entire life. But after countless hours of doing research about it I found out it can really be a good business. If you have a camera, then go into a peaceful place (cemetery?) and take shots. Then sell it to  sites like iStockPhoto and StockExpert.

Now with this list, I dont really see any reason why people cannot make any money online. Although it doesn’t make you that big, I believe seeing your first dollars would make you more inspired. And inspirations do a lot. Anyway if you can add anything valuable to this list then don’t be shy to put it in the comments. Or if you have some questions, then ask them.  My goal is to get more to add in this list and hopefully share it in some of the local forums here in my country. 🙂 What say you?

The December WidgetBucks Experiment

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When I tried Widgetbucks almost a year ago, I had great hopes that it can make me more money than Adsense. The truth is it really did! 2 weeks after joining widgetbucks I was banned from Adsense for what they called “gaming” them! I made about a nice $31 on one of my sites back then. But well widgetbucks just dont blend well w/my sites. The widgets drastically make my sites slower to load and most people are pissed w/it.

Until November, when widgetbucks made a makeover and they did email everyone about their rvamped network. So I gave it a go to this blog and you can see it running at the right bottom part. Basically what convinced me to put this into it is the fact that we are close to holiday and people are likely interested with holiday/christmas items like Christmas trees and so on. Also companies are giving out massive discounts and fire sales for great products so its easy to have their attention.

Anyway widgetbucks pays on two types. First is for clicks. They pay some pennies per click if the clicks are from US and Canada I believe. They also pay on a CPM basis for most countries I believe but it varies. Say for every thousand impression for US, their’s an ecpm of over $2 while in Asia not even a dollar per thousand mille. Again its on per impression not uniques and i believe me getting 60,000 pageviews and about 40,000 on US traffic, is fair! Let’s see how far this thing will go!

Widgetsucks gives a free $25 on signup but again the thrill is that you have to make $25 more to be into the minimum of $50 payout. Most newbies tend to be attracted with free signups but never managed to get into cashing it out.

Why Some People Get Affiliate Referrals So Easy

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Most of you here are bloggers and when you started months ago or even until today you place some affiliate links on your blog. On the sidebar, maybe in posts or in footers/headers. But well to be honest, I’m sure we’re all not getting the referrals we thought we could get when we were starting out. The truth about it is that you will really get low conversions on referrals and thats the bitter truth about it. People nowadays, because of information overload or maybe what you can call it, have become skeptic on things like these. Not so long ago you can do a review of something w/your affiliate link and have people jump on the bandwagon immediately. But then its different now.

Saying it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. 🙂 Of course there are ways to increase affiliate earnings from your blog. This is different so to speak with the whole affiliate marketing but I believe affiliate links on blogs can itself buy you a shirt and shoes every month. W/o further adieu, here are the tips:

  1. Don’t make them sign, if you yourself haven’t made money w/it. – this is mostly the case a lot of people don’t get. Ok they’ve read this program pays $10 per signup, then they sign w/it, promote the program itself and say to their readers “this program is great and you should try” but the real reason is that it gets them $10 which I feel is cheap. I believe if you can show people your account or how you’ve fared w/them, then you can more likely encourage them to sign up under you. Like here, you’ve seen me made some posts w/pepperjamnetwork. Apart from me getting nearly $20 on every posts of it, is that I really make money w/them even outside this blog( and bigger amount). They’ve had some nice dating offers and I had a lot of campaigns w/them before so I promote them. Show proofs!
  2. Have a Nice Rep First – As I’ve said earlier, its hard to make tons referrals from blogs. But make no mistake w/guys like Zac Johnson and some other big affiliate bloggers. I mean Zac is earning a thousand dollars from affiliate earnings from his blog alone! Why? Because he’s a super affiliate! Its the human psychology that when they see someone making a lot with something, they tend to think that hopefully they can too w/the same program the person is using. And I believe Zac uses a lot of affiliate networks to make a living so just guess how many people signs on almost all program under him. Again it helps for you to have a great rep first.
  3. Be transparent and honest – Wth my ancient post about whether you are signing under aff.links or not, I mentioned that if it really gives out value, then I signed through the link. I mean the guy who showed me that must be compensated for the thing right? Most people want to cloak links, mask them and try to look it natural. But I got to differ. I am a big believer that people don’t care if its an affiliate link or not. Some bloggers even say, that the certain link is an affiliate link. If you have the former 2 things mentioned above, I dont see the need for not being transparent.

This blog hasn’t really made thousands of affiliate referrals every month. But then for me to see it makes hundreds and see people saying “I will sign under you” is something that makes me feel well. Not all that worked for me will work for them and I know by being too good to be true and to honest w/my posts, they understand it well.

Make More Money This Christmas

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With just about 40+ days before Christmas, I know some of you are now starting to save and try to earn more money for the holiday. I’m sure we have a lot of things to buy, and gift give to this Christmas. As December comes in, I expect the malls here in the Philippines to give massive discounts on some gadgets and shirts and every gift related to Christmas. Of course, I also do expect it to be saturated quickly as people are extremely fast especially with discounted items.

Like you, I have also 1 million reasons to make more money now. Gifts for my family, foods for the holidays, date with the girl I care, and of course stuffs to buy for myself. Right now I am really working hard in it because I was close to zero (my debit card and paypal) when November started. Anyway, today I will unveil the things I  do to make more money for myself this Christmas. Be sure to give out your own tips to me too. 🙂

  1. Holiday Offers (Affiliate Marketing) – as all of you know, affiliate marketing is my bread and butter. Although it seems like I always lose big money every time I try to grow my campaigns, I always keep on trying. Look holiday-related offers from your network and be sure to take good advantage of them. I have purchased up several domains as well as sites just specifically for the Christmas season.
  2. Catching up with the Minimum Payout – Well yesterday I do a quick roundup of sites/networks that I have seemed to forgot that I am using. I have found out I have $47 on my WidgetBucks account and $44 on Clickbooth (sites that both have a minimum payout of $50). I have moved some of my campaigns from Copeac to Clickbooth just to make it pass the minimum or better to get over $100. I also still have some unpaid revenue from Popuptraffic.com but they don’t seem to respond to my emails (I’m close to filing a legal case to them)
  3. Forum Posting – Again, this is what I turned into during the days i need startup income. I have a four hour internet class during Saturdays and I believe the only time we take to discuss and do machine problems is 2 hours. If you type as quick as me you can immediately make $20 an hour with it. Head on to forumsfirst now to try your luck w/it.
  4. Save Money Offline – Well again this is the hardest part I am doing right now. I used to spend more than what my parents give me so this is really a tough challenge. But well I did have 3 ft coin bank in which I started filling it out w/$0.3 – $1 a day since October. I hope to get surprised when I open it this December.
  5. Firing people – LOL. Well I do have some writers for my other blog and some coders and some psd creators. Because God doesn’t bless me w/those talents, I have to outsource and hire. They are compensated based on what my certain site makes for a month. Now I am firing them all and is planning to retain them early next year. Hope to save some moolah then! 😉

Again these are what I am doing to make more money this holiday, I hope I gave some ideas that could be well-pondering for anyone. Like what I’ve said, I’m interested to know your take w/it and give your own ways too. Maybe I can do it too! 🙂

Make Some Money By Placing Banners

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I am not really a fan of these “place a banner” and get monthly payments or anything like that but sometimes stuffs like this will help people or new people build something for startup and it does not cause anything to join. So I thought I would be making a post about it.

Well What I am talking about here is freebies 4 Webmaster. Last July they contacted me introducing their services, I though they were just scam or maybe they are really so I turned down their offer. But then last month I was playing with monetization here in this blog and you may notice me placing different things on the sidebar and doing A and B testing. Then one friend referred this now to me. I pasted the 468X60 on the lower part of the sidebar. I did it last August 20 and then yesterday I received 10 British Pounds from them which means they really pay. They do also promise to pay monthly for keeping that banner on my site. Lets see.