MelvinBlog

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

Monetization Tactics

Sponsored Review’s Publishers Are Retarded (OverPriced)

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I was surfing at the Sponsored Reviews one time and had a great look at all blogs filtered by the price of the review in descending order. I was amazed to see that many blogs listed there are overpriced and have even gone beyond $9,000 for a single review. The bad thing is that the blogs are more like junk blogs or some others have really bad rankings. Take a look: (click for larger images)

sponsored reviews retarded

Well I have about 4 blogs there and I just recently included this blog in it. I don’t really serious aboutmelvin blog taking reviews there, I just placed mine there for added exposure. For me a review is very painful and I cannot really endure it that’s why I let my cousin do it for me. But well as many people always say, paid post is one of the easier way to get some money and startup income. I can say I pretty made over a hundred there just this year.

Back again to those overpriced oxymorons, I don’t really have anything against them. I mean I can say it’s easy to game the advertisers in sponsoredreviews. I remember one time I even had a bid accepted at my multiply blog so I guess advertisers are lenient about spending money in there. Maybe someday If i need a big money so hard, then I’ll try my luck on scraping them. 😉

The Importance of StartUp Income

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startup incomeI always like to go back to the old days wherein I used to struggle and almost “cry” trying hard ti make money online. Well, I still struggle today but never cry anymore. 😉 So I can say one thing that has really made me up on internet marketing is the startup income. During those hard times, I have the money to cover up all failing projects and dumb purchases. It’s also evident to see that when you’re carving up something online or even offline, you need to have some startup cash to cover your expenses. Jason always points it out in some of his post saying you have to work for some small income first to get you online for bigger things. I agree on that. Before I was doing some freelancing to cover up some PPC cost and advertising expenses. Of course its risky because you will 85% sure fail. But well I was more of yearning about learning that time.

Well, if you’re thinking how you can build some initial income here’s what I can suggest to you:

  • Forum Posting – This one is easy but you have to have hardwork. Forumsfirst pays $0.20 for each 40 word comment. They pay via paypal and the minimum is $10. If you type very fast (like me) and have a great WPM accuracy then a $10 can be easily made by an hour. Cool!
  • GPT – A while a back ago I asked Jim of the Netfool why he is promoting GPT sites. He responded saying because everyone can make money from it so easy. All you have to do is complete free offers. Check out The Net Fools GPT sites.
  • Freelancing – Before I used to embark a lot of time in this one. Before I used to have a good grammar before blogging made my grammar look atrocious! If you’re up on writing articles, coding and so then this one is for you.
  • Digital Point – Last month I made a post about how you can make a living on DP forum. Again DP has an enormous opportunity on making money. You can join contests, do some data entry jobs and boast yyour portfolio there. After all there is no middle man so you get a fair share of everything.

Of course there are tons of it but at least these are what I can say have worked for me well. At the end it is all about determination and hardwork. I guess it always pays off at the end.

CPM Ads: Underrated MoneyMaker

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I often hear questions in forums that say “I have the traffic but little income from my blog”. Well as what I have observed people saying it, are people who are putting their earnings largely on Adsense. Though Adsense has had been a great money maker for some, almost 85% of people in this world are still not successful from using it… So getting back from the statement, I always answer “try CPM ads”. CPM stands for Cost per Millie, meaning you are gonna paid per 1000 impression. Take note, impression is not unique visitors, its pageviews!

So why do I think it’s an underrated moneymaker? Well just look. If you’re blog is getting about the normal 5000 uniques a month and say 12000 pageviews, then you’re on your way to $30 per month. People oftentimes think of selling direct ad sales but sometimes you cannot find anyone who will buy it. Especially if you’re blog is something very unrelated to internet marketing, then chances are people will notcare about your ad space. With CPM ads you can make money easily. And the sky is the limit. On my basketball blog, I had a large leaderboard CPM banner at the top that really pays me well. What I have done is I have ordered a cheap 100,000 US traffic. And with some advertisers paying up to $4 per cpm (US based), thats a really great deal for me. And that’s just the prelude. You can do more, “read more buttons” hot or not, voting scripts, and etc) Just do note that some CPM networks are very strict with some shady techniques and you’re account can be terminated, do it at your own risk!

Well one thing famous bloggers don’t like CPM is that it gives user a bad experience. Oftentimes ads are not good to user experience because they are unrelated. ANother is that sometimes they show flash ads that slows down your site! They also take a huge chunk of your income, 30-40%. Sites like Chow and Problogger could have had tripled their earnings that easy. But well it’s really bad to branding so I guess theirs no way they would try putting CPM ads on their sites…

How about you how do you find CPM ads? Have you considered trying and using them?

To Live And Die With DP

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Digital PointYesterday I was playing a little in Digital Point Forums. I am trying to surf all places there and I can really see how much the site is getting traffic. As you can see DP forum has about 100-150,000 uniques a day. That is just simply wild! Well with the forum, I can see a lot of people just lurking around there and spending a lot of time there and hey they’re making a lot of money.

I can say i testify on it. I believe that DP has enormous money making opportunities there. Back summer April and May I spend a lot of time to it, Advertising and Link Sales in particular. What you need there is to be really quick and a bit luck. You always have to be the first or second. About 30% of people there are looking to buy and hire something. Many people are looking for things to be done in a timely manner and those guys usually go to digital point. Aside from doing it directly, you also eliminate the middle man and both will surely benefit from it. So just take a look at those people who are good with doing logos and images. You see every minute there’s almost a new client asking for a logo. And I believe for these experts they can craft great logos in less than 5 minutes or so. You can also establish a great long term relationship with some people there.

The downside only though, is that since you do it directly, sometimes you run and chase people for payments. You also have to fight scammers there and those who are just out there to make a quick buck and leave. That’s why looking for an itrader always makes sense. Overall it’s really good to spend time there. So what say you? You may probably want to enter making money online, but too lazy to do affiliate marketing. Besides blogging won’t make you rich. Maybe trying to live and die with Digital Point is the next best thing!

How To Make Money Offline

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Making money online has never been so kind to you. So what to do now? Actually there are million of things and ideas that you can do to make money offline. Yes, actually these are ideas that a student or literally anyone can apply. If the online world is cruel to you, then why bother? Switch! Many people are so wrong on thinking that their time will come. My goodness, if this field isn’t for you then pack your things and go. So how can you make money offline? Well it’s up on your skills. But here I am going to specify how a college student like me who is handsome slightly lazy can be able to do it so easy. Actually it depends on your skills really.

  1. Do your classmates project. This is probably my favorite thing to do. This trimester we have a subject entitled Web Programming. We are using Visual Web Developer to make login pages and database. So this one happened just recently. The professor told us that the major exam will not be written. We just need to pass a .aspx website with login and register and masterpages and thats it. What happened? Sadly, most of the people on the other class do not have the software and some of them do not have an idea on how to do it. So here we come, we start offering our services and later charging $$$.
  2. Buy and sell. Another thing that can easily be done by everyone. Actually for me, it is very easy to pretend what I am selling is very expensive yet it’s not! You might earn not so much, but then you have literally done nothing to get the job done.
  3. Deposit your money. Last year upon the arrival of my WidgetBucks check, I have asked top personnels and some forums on what’s the best thing to do with it. Most say, reinvest it! Others tell you should keep on learning. What caught my attention was Shoemoney’s response via twitter saying “Put it in bank and sit on it’s interest”. This is true. You will do nothing and let money flowing. I know most of you do it the more hardcore way.

Making money offline is like a “lost art”. When the dot com boom started, it seems like everyone just jumped into it and forgot that there’s so much real business offline. I know you, as a reader understands my point. So maybe you can share me your own tips on making some cash offline? 😉

How To Get That Advertising

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Disclaimer: This is an article based on my experiences and wouldn’t guarantee anything on your part. People do things differently and I can say this is what worked best for me all throughout.

So I was being asked by my friends on schools on how did I get that many ads on my site while my site is new and unpopular? I told them “I just flaunt with advertisers”. That statement though, is just 1/4 behind the real thing about selling ads on your site. Many blogs have struggled immensely on finding advertisers on their blogs. The truth is you would really struggle! I know most people doing selling are new and unestablished blogs. Selling the spot is really hard especially when you’re content is a little out of place. So I have written here some thoughts on how to get advertisers for your blog (preferably for new blogs):

  • Putting affiliate links – It’s a rule of thumb that when your blog is new, then just try placing affiliate links there! It’s good and bad on some point, let me explain what I think. When affiliate ads are placed on your site, advertisers will come to think that spots are full and/or it would give them an ugly impression and will ask themselves “What am I getting here being the first one to advertise?” Obviously that’s a great point. When there’s only one advertiser on your part, make sure he’ll feel special because he’s the only ONE! It’s ok to put affiliate links as long as in moderation. For example in my blog, the only affiliate banner there is sponsored reviews and revresponse at the links part.
  • Sell yourself cheap! – This is always an issue on whether you are going to sell your blog’s space for cheap or not. Actually I pretty much believe starting out low is good, why? Because people love cheap prices? There are tons of people in digital point looking for super cheap advertising. If you are selling $20 on a banner and only getting 1 advertiser per 2 month, then why not sell it for $5 and get 4 in a month?
  • Show your booty hole what you’ve got. – This is one of the biggest misconceptions of people/bloggers. They tend to create an advertising page, then feel lazy and then just rush it. BIG mistake! Just saying you’re getting 1000 uniques a day is not enough. People look for proofs, they look for informations, they look for pictures. Showing it, makes people expect what they can get for a very cheap advertising. It also builds a good reputation around the blogosphere. Tell them your uniques, alexa, technorati, serp, countries where visitors originated, such those things. Maybe like this advertising page 😉
  • Contact them – This is common nowadays because it’s very effective. Most bloggers look for other blogs advertisers and contact them directly offering advertising. What I have learned here is that you have to be keen and logical. You cannot look at Shoemoney’s blog and then contact Clickbooth and asking them to advertise. Just look on how the advertisers are targeting channels. Some target niche blogs, some do target blogging tips blogs and so. Example here in my blog is the Blogriffic advertisement. I have seen that advertisement on some small blogs around the blogosphere. From that point, you can see that this is an advertiser willing to take advertising on small blogs and not on risky and costly ones. After that I contact Salwa and offered him her my advertising page and she said she would. That easy!
  • Get a great theme – This one is a no brainer. You don’t expect to handle ads with a Kubrick Theme. Heck this one is so easy as there are so many many many themes compatible with block ads and others.

Again this is what I have used for the past few years and have found it effective for me. You may not agree with me at some point but I am sure some of this are self-explanatory. If we are different in thoughts here, then how do you do advertising on you’re part?

RevResponse Looks Good!

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So last Monday I was contacted by a friend highly recommending RevResponse Program. Sure I know this one seeing on some established blogs. I have also seen some post about it. After signing I immediately play with it and have seen that they are giving everyone a lot of potential in making money with this program. Actually after some days of experimenting with it I’m not surprised to see that I already have incurred $30  for just 3 days.

Before everything else what is RevResponse? RevResponse is simply a site that supplies free white papers and catalogs and let publishers get compensated for giving them so. They are working on a CPA basis. It’s very attractive because it’s for free. You can get paid for giving your audience free resources. How much do they pay? They pay $1.50 per complete signup and usually some advertisers are paying more depending on your conversions. Revresponse offers a lot of free resources in different industry but most are business related.

Actually they require nothing for signup. No minimum traffic or whatsoever. In terms of placing banners they do the whole process for you. The banners are javascript so it surely would take a slight toll on your site. Another thing is that RevResponse gives you a unique site for promotion of all this catalogs. It is something like “http://publishername.tradepub.com. In my case it looks like this. So overall I can conclude that it’s a good program. The thing here is that most people love free resources and would surely and easily bite in this offer very easy. The only thing that I will do now is wait for my payment. They pay every 45 days in which for me is not good. 🙁 All in all I don’t see anything wrong the program. How about you? You read this blog everyday and maybe you can tell me something more about Revresponse!