Monetization Tactics

What’s up Max Banner Ads!

by Melvin · Jul 1, 2008

So everyone seems to be intrigued with this new plugin from Maxpress. Max Banner Ads is a plugin that makes it very easy to add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog. The good thing is you don’t need to alter any codes in your theme. Sounds good right? That is just the prelude. Another thing that it does is that it automatically tracks the statistics of the specific banner. It shows the impression, CTR and so on. After reading Chow’s post about it I immediately take a look at the site, grab my copy of it and installed it.

As you can see, the plugin automatically lets you add banners from almost everywhere in your site. You can rotate as many as you want. And add the fact that it is free. Yes, it’s free. So you’re thinking now everything about it is positive? Well not quite. The plugin after activating it, actually is not still activated. You will be asked to subscribe to Maxpress newsletter, and it’s not optional. If you don’t want to, then you cannot use the plugin! For me I find very annoying. That simple subscription would probably have a huge impact on those who want to use the plugin. Another thing is that under the banner there is a link ala Project Wonderful. As of now I haven’t tried if you can remove the linkback to their site. Geez…

So all in all I find this plugin still useful. Though, OIO direct is still better by far, Max Banner Ads is free and would be very beneficial to those who do not have a $37. Yes, the subscription looks spammy and the linkback is annoying but sure the plugin worths a great look. If you have any other things to say about this plugin then say it…

Monetization Scheme That Doesn’t Make You Sweat

by Melvin · Jun 19, 2008

Well in my entire life I have always been hearing people complaining that they are not making money with their blogs. In my own opinion that is incredibly impossible. While one may not make a lot of money from his blog, sure he can make even some cents or dollars. So getting back to monetizing, I can agree it’s hard to make a consistent income from blog but then I’m also sure that making money is very possible.

So if you have a blog that exists for a decade now and still haven’t made any money, my dear this one is for you. I’m surprised that many people do not know this things so I’m sharing it. Remember this will make you money but don’t expect this to make you money consistently. Here we go:

Matched.co.uk –> You’ve probably have heard it already, maybe not. Matched.co.uk is a site that pays you 3 pounds per ad (where’s the pound sign on keyboard?). They oftentimes give up to 5 ads. The ads just look like an adsense ad and you can place it everywhere. The ugly thing is they pay monthly, so you will have to wait, and I know waiting sucks!
Money4banners –> Almost exactly works the same way as the former. It gives a banner and pays you $5 for it. It’s different because the ads are a little lively but is not intrusive. As of now they are very picky with the applicants. If you have a blog as great as mine then you would probably get accepted also. Btw, I am planning to add it after the 468×60 ad from dp expires.
Money4Blogs –> Well this is my favorite one. The only thing you need to do is put a link on your site/blogroll and they will pay you for that. They pay on a yearly basis. The great thing here is the link can be nofollowed. I have tested it in my basketball blog twice. The first link costs $50 for one year. The other one costs $120 for a year mainly because when I applied again my site is a pr3 and 600,000 in alexa. After putting the link they would pay you immediately, I mean really immediately. After I placed the link I went to defecate for maybe 5-10 minutes and then upon opening my paypal account it’s already there.
PayPerPost –> This one sucks I believe. But this is an easy $20 to you my dear! When a blog gets accepted at PayPerPost (even if it’s a pr0 and over 3 m in alexa) you are eligible for the $20 review about payperpost.

So that are the ways to do it. Let me make it clear, I have tried all of those programs and made money from them and I can guarantee it’s very possible you can too. Why do I need to do this? For startup cost. Jason of the University Kid always emphasizes the importance of working for startup costs. And it depends to you on where and how to use it.

Experimenting With Search Funds

by Melvin · Jun 16, 2008

I know you guys are very familiar with get paid to search program known as Search Funds or now known as homepages friends. Basically it’s just a network that pays you for every search you do. Sounds scam right? Well I don’t really do get paid to, but I think this one will be an exception. As a student, and affiliate marketer and blogger, I do probably about 30 searches a day. And joining this type of network makes sense besides it’s free and it’s cost is next to nothing. I’ve been using it for close to a month now and I have £2 on my account. The minimum payout is £20 and obviously I’m very far from it.

So going back to the plan, well I have something not so evil going in my mind. I am the upcoming treasurer of our university’s information technology and computer science organization department and more probably my friends and/or our group would dominate each positions (because we are intelligent nice people). So what am I gonna do is just simply change the default Google search engine and search box on browsers of computers in the laboratory to my search engine with Search Funds. Then that’s it, students in the laboratory are students so oftentimes they do research. 😉 I will be tracking everything there by myself. And in a month I will put here the results. 🙂

Btw, if you haven’t heard search funds and somehow is interested here’s their Search Funds homepage

To Monetize Or To Not

by Melvin · Jun 13, 2008

monetize or not? So today I am going to set my views about monetizing blogs and when should you start it. I have read several blog posts about this but I think I’m going to have my share of what my thoughts are about monetizing blogs too early. Doing my own research, I have found out that 80% of blogs that are created have goals of putting advertisements on it and make the most out of it. And if I’m gonna base it with what I have seen most, I can say that out of 80% only 10-15% make decent money from their blog.

Monetizing a blog too early is an issue for a long time. I remember a great friend Carl Ocab writing a post that one should monetize early. Obviously I commented explaining my side and he had his reply to my comment. So back to monetizing I think it’s not really bad to monetize the blog very early. In fact you can sell your space cheap if your blog is new. But what I think most people are forgetting is that you don’t really need to expect a lot from it. Oftentimes, one would put a chitika banner and upon seeing that the blog hasn’t even made a dollar on a week, he would put the banner out and say that chitika isn’t effective. Net Business Blog owner Matt Coddlington said that monetizing your blog early will help you understand that it doesn’t go that easy.

Why not monetize? Well I think the single reason I can say people must need to understand is that they have to work their traffic first. In my experience when you’re traffic starts increasing then money wouldn’t be that hard. The problem when people start monetizing is that their focus shifts from acquiring a lot of traffic first to working so hard on monetizing. They keep on signing on different programs, work hard on ad placements, tweak their layouts to accommodate ads so they already forgot the need for traffic. I know you guys heard it already that you can’t focus on two things. You must always set your priorities and then do what should have been done.

I hope I made a point here. I’m not against monetizing new blogs. In fact you may see me work for monetizing this blog in few weeks or so. The key is always the traffic. In every income report of the famous John Chow you always see him stress in the last paragraph to drive truckloads of traffic first, before starting to explore monetization options. If you intend to monetize you’re blog early then just don’t expect too much. I know it’s hard to be patient but if you really want to reap the fruits of you’re blog then you must work well for it.

I think it’s like having sex. You don’t enjoy your partner if she’s just around 10-16 years old (tell me if you do). And you would certainly enjoy her when you do her on her peak which 18 years old onwards. Am I missing something?

If you like this post you may want to sphinn it or digg or reddit or just subscribe to my feeds.

People Will Not Read Your Blog

by Melvin · Jun 6, 2008

…much more to comment on your post. Well with over 20 billions of blogs in the blogosphere, it’s really hard for new blogs or even old blogs to obtain some trust and get some disciples followers. I know some will easily say that if you promote it well, then most likely things are gonna go well. Maybe not! Writing great content is hoisted all over the World Wide Web. By far it is still the most effective way of convincing people that you really worth the attention. But how is good content good? How do you make people like you? Your blog? Here are some simple tips that to my surprise I see many do not do.

• Spontaneity. Well my blog is very new. I have created it just last May 27. And the sad part is after creating and making the first post, mosquitoes don’t want me to have a great start so they gave me the dengue and I was confined for 4 days. So what about it? Well looking to my blog I got about over 20 comments already and I can say it’s a great number because I see most blogs that do not have a comment for most posts and it’s a big pain. When writing a post in blog, I suggest being natural with what you feel. I mean some bloggers tend to put so much pressure on perfecting their post and it really hurt their blog. Just go with what you feel, after all it’s a blog, it’s YOUR blog. And how many times do you see shoemoney writing about lost episodes, johnchow about his fine dining and look, they get tons of comments for that!

• Affiliate links. I really despise reading blogs with affiliate links on almost every post. That’s why I don’t read chow’s blog that much. =p Btw, putting an affiliate links are not really bad but should be held moderately. Remember that you’re providing readers informations and helping them, not the other way around.

• Super duper Self promotion. Oftentimes, I really see blogs that have some promotions about themselves on the first page and I think it’s not really a great way. Most of this blogs are about SEO and it’s obvious that they are indeed selling their services and boasting. In my humble opinion, I feel that can be put instead at the about page where it really does not mess the content.

• Flawed template. Ok, I admit the first time I bought my theme I edit it heavily not knowing that it made my sidebar pushed down. I didn’t see it because I’m using firefox (though some did) and I really thank people for letting me know it (they are from blog premiere and some from digital point). Right now the template has still some flaws and I’m really doing everything to clean the mess.

• You don’t read their blog. So if you don’t read other peoples blog then chances are they don’t read your blog. Most blogs out there are really informative and I can say that it has really helped me a lot in some aspects. To reward them why not link to them?

These are just few things that popped into my mind when thinking about people who say “why don’t you visit my blog anymore”. You can always add something there and everyone has his own views. I’m glad to hear some from you…