MelvinBlog

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

Ramblings

The Sponsor’s Post

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Well this is follow up of the “thank you sponsors” post that started last month. I thought I would make a version of this every month (every time I feel lazy about posting something). I also had a thought to make different and creative titles every month.  This month is a great month. I am pretty sold out in terms of advertising and text link and you’re gonna see some advertisers up their up to decades. 😉

For this month here are the free plugs. Note: I have been a little picky on advertisers. I had three calls for a casino ad and I turned it down. But well, I do accept adult advertising! 🙂

  • – Site that provides great stuffs and offers from the internet. Looks like a BANS site but then its not
  • – Myspace Friend Adder is a blackhat great tool for adding unlimited number of friends on Myspace without any hassle. We all know how good myspace is as a marketing tool right?
  • – The NetFool is a blog that promotes the make money online niche. Well, he’s tackling stock market and probably I think he has the best blog in the whole 15-25 years old kids industry! I’m serious.

  •  – Again this one looked to be book for a decade here. PWP is a site for internet marketing newbies.
  • – We all know how Carl Ocab managed to brand himself online. Make sure to receive exclusive offers from him.
  • – Michael Corao has been doing SEO and I think his service worths a look.

Text Links

Those are the advertisers for this period. You can just see the value that the advertisers get from me. Not only they get cheap rates, they do also get a lot of exposures. For the next month, my prices will drastically increase and I have stats to back it up. 🙂

Can Blogs Help You Make Money?

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Well this is a great question by one of my childhood friend. He was very curious about how blogs can help people make money. In all honesty, blogs CAN’T make you money, and although they can help, it’s just not as easy as people think. Why? Well blogs first and foremost is a place bloggers where stuck their own notes and what they are putting their is all based on their OWN experience and opinion. You see guys put “Making money with PPC” or maybe with Website Flipping or so but the truth is it’s based on their own experience (most of the time). They have done it well so they can recommend it and in this way they can help you learn and gain some knowledge about it. But their’s no way they’re helping you make money, or maybe they do but it’s still up to you.

I don’t really have problems with this but it’s just that what worked for others doesn’t mean will work with you (or doesn’t mean it won’t work for you). Yeah, they are plenty of blogs there that provide useful and superb resources.  You can always read a good article about Pay Per Click and still suck at doing it. You can print a ebook about making money with articles but still fail. Bottom line is people do things differently and have different expertise. Or Maybe making money online is just not for you

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.

Shoemoney Has A New Theme

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Well the ever famous Shoemoney has his theme get tweaked a little. Though he never announced it, it’s obvious. He has been promoting his newsletters and well this is the first time he has done this one. If you feel you will benefit from it, then signing up is a must.

Well the blog’s theme is nice but well I still believe the old one is better. You can see his blog have it’s own frontpage wherein the three subheaders are shown whereas it isn’t when you’re reading the post on the link directly. I got some reasons why the former theme was better

  • Better Width, Better Spacing – In his previous template he had everything extended. In this recent one he had a margin at both sides. Well IMHO the better the spacing the better it looks…
  • No threaded comments anymore – Though this one can be installed, I still think the threaded comments is one of the better part of commenting system of blogs. In this blog there is no threaded plugin because it’s not functioning well. So while removing the threaded plugin can be a wise move to lessen junk comments, I can say it’s still valuable. Large blogs like shoemoney aren’t just blogs. They are like forums. People talk in it, exchange their 2 cents and well criticize each other. Thats why I feel it’s important.
  • Looks like MMO blog – With the new theme, shoe’s blog has become like most “make money online” blogs there. The structure reminds me of most mmo (junk) blogs in the industry. Shoe never claimed his blog as mmo neither as a “blogging know how-to” blog.

Well a new theme is a fresh start. Sometimes it helps your readers feel more refreshing. I don’t know, maybe Im the only one thinking the old theme of shoe was better. How bout you, do you think your theme is that good?

Ad Spots/Types I Don’t Think Look Good For Readers

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Well as you can see I am almost pretty sold out on private ads. Maybe that’s because of the super duper affordable but quality advertising I am giving them. 😉 There are some who have booked it for long term. If you are interested in advertising (I know you’re not!), look at the advertising page.

So, selling ad spots depends on the owner. You can oversell every space on your blog to make money. Just look the evil Chow and the number of ads on his site. But of course sometimes this may hurt your readership (in some cases they dont). Well, these are the spots and/or type of ads that I hate:

  • Stripe Ads – I will never consider this one. On older browsers, sites that have stripes do not look well. But well even though if everyone is using Firefox, I wouldn’t still consider it. For me it’s annoying and would hurt your readers (literally)
  • Leaderboard – Although I have used it in my basketball blog, it isn’t really much of a great choice I think. After all it’s very HUGE and the focus of your reader will instead shift to the leader one.
  • 300X250 – Again Chow and some guys like Tyler Cruz and Carl Ocab are selling this spot. Why I don’t think its good? Well because oftentimes people will wonder what’s the relation of that pic/ad to the certain post! Your readers will wonder what is it for and it’s not so good for branding. Will never try it!
  • Peel away Ads – For some other people they have had some success with it but for me it’s like giving almost 1/4 of your blog to advertising. Although it’s not as intrusive as others, I have received feedbacks that it slows down your blog/site. Anything that makes a site slow is BAD!

That’s it for now. Maybe someday I can appreciate those spots and start thinking of selling them (no way!) But well it depends on people and needs. Maybe if I need it badly to buy me a house and lot then I would consider it. 🙂

Top Commentators, Prizes and Incentives

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So again I am stucked on a very busy weekend with all people making me look like a slave. Like what I have done last month I have given the top commentators some gifts back for commenting a lot. Last time it’s an ebook about incentive marketing. This time it will be entrecard credits and one will get a free advertising on this blog via a link. 😉 If you do not, I just won a contest on Grademoney’s blog and I won 5000 entrecards from Bloggernoob who will also do a review on my blog.

Also I was able to finally receive the Atomic Blogging package worth $37 which I have won Carl Ocab’s Contest. The ebook is a great book and there are some items there that is well worthed. Another thing to say is that I will doing some incentive marketing here on my blog and on some forums. Incentive marketing is something that I have NEVER tried before so i think i’m gonna try to put up some efforts to it. This one is a great and busy week with some great post from all over the world. Check them out:

Now who said its bad to give a lot of outgoing links? 😉