Make Money with Halloween & Christmas Holidays

Hello fellow moneymakers, it's been a while! I've been busy working on a batch of mini sites lately in anticipation of online shopping season. Mainly I'm tinkering with Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger blogs and some self-hosted websites. Two of the biggest moneymaker holidays are quickly approaching us with Halloween and Christmas 2009. Preparing for these can be fun (or burdensome) depending on how you choose to go about making money with them. I'm here to drop some food for thought and let you know what I've been working on lately.

With Halloween the main thing people will buy online is their costumes, masks or accessories to go with them. You could create Hubpages or Squidoo lenses, or even infobarrels related to this, to make money off Adsense, or by selling Amazon products. I would have recommended eBay products as well, but with their new pricing system, I'll take Amazon (more on that later). Anyhow, Halloween is one potential way to profit online, if you get cracking and create sites. I found through a few of my blogs where I talked about some Halloween related topics, that I received traffic for unrelated topics that involved costumes. So from there, those costumes were made into full blog posts, have seen some sales. You don't really need a Halloween site per se, as you can find many ways to tie the holiday in with your blog theme. Cooking, photography, entertainment, etc etc, all have some sort of relation to the holiday. Mixed bag blogs, fashion, music...the list continues...be creative and keep checking Google Hot Trends for some ideas on upcoming Halloween stuff.

Christmas is really your big time to profit. Some people start their shopping months ahead of time, while most wait until around mid-November, and particulary for Black Friday / Cyber Monday. It's key to have some product-oriented sites set up for these holidays, and even afterward. I downloaded Jackie Lee's Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint here, which is a nice little e-book to get you started. She prefers Squidoo, and there's some pros and cons to using them. The best is the fact that Squidoo shares the sales with you through their Amazon modules at the commission rate of 4%. Compared to Hubpages you might not always get that, because of their revenue split of 60% / %40 impressions. Of course there are ways around that..

With Hubpages you can stick your Amazon Associates link into the hub you write up, as long as you don't go spam crazy. I'd recommend two total Amazon links, perhaps one in the top and one at bottom. I learned that too much Amazon on a Hub will make Ezine articles not accept an article linking to that Hub. So tread carefully when you create your Amazon hubs or lenses. Squidoo is more lenient on allowing more affiliate links, but to a limit. The advantage to Hubpages over Squidoo is they seem to rank better in some cases with Google and other sites. I've found Squidoo always brought me a lot of Yahoo search traffic. It really depends on which keywords or product you're targeting.

Blogger blogs are another option for Amazon Associates products. Consider creating a Christmas holiday style blog as recommended by Jackie Lee from Internet Marketing Strategy for Moms. She suggests a blogger blog as a way to build links to your Squidoo lenses (or Hubpages) to get them ranked for the terms. Of course you could also just make the Blogger blog full of Christmas gift products with Amazon Associates links to the items.

Of course all of this got me thinking, why not have both a Christmas and Halloween website, self-hosted. Netfirms sells domains for just $7 for the first year, and Hostgator is my preferred hosting service, with GoDaddy probably second. Yes, these one-time holiday sites would exist year round, but they would make you bigtime profits if done properly. By that I mean, finding the right keywords for your URL that aren't too competitive. Otherwise, your self-hosted sites might just get lost in a sea of millions of Google results for Halloween and Christmas. But having these two huge holiday sites could prove valuable in terms of link power down the road, as well as in making money off the shopping done for these holidays.

If you want more insight on how a guy is making tons of money with Adsense via Amazon sites, check out 6 Months Later: $300 Daily w/Adsense (Lessons Learned) by XFactor over at Warrior Forums. Just don't get too caught up in reading all of the posts, as it's a HUGE forum thread, but contains very valuable insights.

Also, your holiday or Christmas site could really be a product review site, which if you think about it could make you money year round, as people are interested in all sorts of products that Amazon sells. You'll start to realize you might own a lot of stuff that other people are looking up online. Furthermore, eBay Partner Networks allows you to use code on self-hosted Wordpress or static websites. So you've got more options to make money - even though Amazon seems the better of the options. Chitika, Widgetbucks and other affiliate programs are even more creative ways to cash in.

That said, I'm not feeling the new EPN Quality click deal so much. To date my clicks have been worth 1 cent on several days, then 3 cents on several days. Would I prefer 3 cent clicks over someone buying an Amazon associates product to give me a 4% or 6% commission...I think you know the answer to that my friends..

So get started on making your way towards Christmas profits. It's not too late to start finding a way to profit from the 2009 season, and even preparing a website for the 2010 season and beyond!

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer

How to Make Money with SEO Traffic & Leveraging

It's been a while but I'm back again...As usual other projects have consumed me, but I wanted to share something I started thinking about more in the recent weeks. Once you're earning with Adsense on several sites, and maybe earning with some other moneymakers like Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, you might want to expand your efforts. You might produce several blogs or sites, and find that some work really well to make you money, while others fail.

Sometimes you discover that no matter how much traffic you might get on a particular blog site, it's incredibly tough to make money off that traffic. One example may be music or entertainment blogs, which are popular, but it's hard to say how profitable they are. These can be tough to monetize in my experiences. You try the Google Adsense route, but learn that the ads just don't get the clicks, or the ads just don't pay you jack for them. In some cases they even lead to smart pricing. So you swap out Google and try something else. If you're on blogger, you can't use eBay Partner Network, but can go with Shopping Ads or Amazon Associates. You continue to see that it's even tougher to convert, however there are some tricks, tips and other things you can keep in mind. Don't go hitting the "Delete" button for that particular blog, or decide to give up on the site. Here's some food for thought and ideas of ways to make money online with your content that brings the big traffic but doesn't seem to make you any money.

Leverage your Traffic to other Sites

Consider using a blog that gets big bursts of traffic as powerful leverage to bring traffic somewhere else. Why waste the efforts right? Let's say you've got a blog that you make no money with, but would like to, and it's getting a few thousand visitors a day based on some specific posts you did. Consider using that blog to bring the traffic to another site that converts. One example is Associated Content, where you can make money for writing online.. Over there you'll make $1.50 for every 1,000 page views. Doesn't sound like a lot but it all adds up, and that kinda money could pay for hosting charges or help you buy a domain. Maybe consider writing a general article that really sparks attention, that will get people clicking to it on AC. Most celebrity scandal topics could do pretty well on AC, so why write it about on the blog if you can do a 400-500 word article on AC that makes you some extra dinero? Another good example is to send them over to a good Squidoo lens, where the more traffic your lens gets, the better rank it achieves, and in some strange, mysterious formula, that could possibly give you a nicer payout.

Another consideration is using Widgetbucks which also pays for clicks and impressions. I used Widgetbucks in this form months ago until I earned a payout, and have re-introduced it in a few places that were scoring high traffic. Widgetbucks pays you for both clicks and then impressions, so the more impressions you get on your blog or site, the closer you'll get towards a payout. The minimum for Widgetbucks is $50, which again is not going to help you retire, but it will help you squeeze money out of that blog that's not performing.

Chitika is yet another one to try, and in their case the payment is just $10 minimum, so you can earn a bit of extra money to invest into your online moneymaking, buy yourself lunch, go see a movie, or whatever else the money can do for you.

From there, I just recommend testing to find what works. Consider trying related affiliate programs that Pay-Per-Lead on your blog. Back to our hard-to-monetize blog examples, a friend recently asked me about making money with a blog, saying he'd like to start a music blog. He specifically mentioned making money with Google Adsense, and based on experience, music blogs are tough to monetize. That's when you really need to put your thinking cap on though. Can you refer people to buying sheet music, musical instruments, artist albums, or joining some sort of subscription site? Consider using programs from Linkshare, Amazon Associates and Shareasale as well as Commission Junction.

Always think of Monetization

If all else fails, consider creating a catchy, clickable advertisement banner to go up at the top of your highly trafficked blog (or hire someone to make a simple one). Use it to grab those viewers and direct them to another site that you can make money with, or even to a Clickbank product. It will be indirectly making you money if you have your traffic sent to the right place (including AC or Squidoo). My overall point here is you need the mindset to make money online, to keep finding ways to monetize all your content, even the stuff that doesn't seem worth it. That's not to say put all your effort in, but keep it in the back of your head.

You need to try new things with the under-performing blogs until you can determine what works best with them. And yes, in some cases you'll try 5-10 ideas and nothing seems to work. Give them a chance though, maybe several thousand impressions before you swap them out though. Do your best to track the stats using what the various programs allow you to. There's no sense in letting any traffic go to waste these days, so always be thinking of ways to monetize it if you really want to profit at this online moneymaking game...

(As for Adsense, there's a really interesting, informative forum post over at Warrior Forums, you may or may not have seen from a guy that makes $300-500 a day using about 30 websites he built with Adsense. Check it out here.)

eBay Partner Network Changing the Rules

The eBay Partner Network (EPN) is such a wonderful moneymaker, depending on how you play it...EPN allows us moneymakers to place affiliate links, banners and flash displays in places like Blogger, Squidoo and Hubpages. People head to the eBay site through our links and we score! Unfortunately, there's been a recent email bulletin sent out by the EPN people claiming that they are making a major set of policy changes which is going to reduce our abilities to profit:

Important updates to the Network Code of Conduct include the following:

* eBay Partner Network does not compensate for sales that come from invalid click activity, which includes, but is not limited to the following:
o clicks generated by a publisher clicking on their own ads
o automated clicking tools/traffic sources/robots
o activity generated by other deceptive software
* Publishers may only place links and/or promotional content on sites they own. Affiliate links on third party sites such as Craigslist, MySpace, etc. are not allowed.
* You will not redirect any traffic to middle servers for the sole purpose of masking your referring source of traffic. This includes the use of URL shortening services (including but not limited to tinyurl.com, short.to and cloakedlink.com).

There's been some confusion about what this all means exactly, (see Network Code of Conduct for more). Some say it means no more EPN on Squidoo or Hubpages. However, there was never any specific mention of either of those sites in eBay's language. What they did "seem to say" is that you can't put tiny URL links or re-directs on your sites to mask eBay partner links, and that you can't use eBay links on sites that don't allow these affiliate links under their terms. Way to confuse the masses eBay Partner Network! If it's a "partner network", I'd think that means we all work together. Instead, eBay's recent notice gives current, active EPN members til August 1st to get their sites straightened out. That can mean a lot of work for those of us with lots of internet properties around the net! There has been a lot of buzz on the eBay Partner network forums, with EPN staff chiming in to clear some things up, sorta.

Of course the hubpages community is up in arms about this, discussing the amount of work it will take to remove all of the capsules from their hundreds of hubs. Luckily, one of the Hub staff members has mentioned they have sent communication to EPN, but will also be working on a built-in tool with hubs to allow mass removal of all eBay modules off your hubs, should this be necessary. The Hub staff also kindly suggested they would switch things over so that they would get 100% of the eBay revenue. At least they're finding solutions to help the masses, rather than getting in the way!

My advice is either get working to remove your eBay affiliate links from places that they shouldn't be (i.e. sites like article directories, myspace, facebook, squidoo, twitter). Remember that Squidoo uses eBay revenue sharing modules, so you should be most concerned with removing affiliate links you may have placed into your lenses. It will mean time and work, but it will also mean staying in this eBay moneymaking program, which is starting to look like it wants to be exclusive to your own properties, such as websites you pay to run. We've all got a good 10 days or so to get our butts in gear, so maybe break your internet properties (Blogger blogs, Squidoo lenses, Hubs, etc) into manageable lists and check off your progress as you examine them and remove the improper EPN links.

And of course my other advice is to tap into the many other moneymakers that you can choose from online. Diversify. These programs change rules and go out of business all the time, so constant worrying over one will just be too much stress...So don't stress over EPN and find more ways to make money online!

PS: On a side note it seems as of today 7/20 that the EPN reporting system is having some issues, so don't despair if you're not seeing stats on your dashboard. If you are, maybe I should despair! ;)

SEO & Keywords will Make You Money!

Let's face it folks, there's no such thing as shortcuts to internet millions, but there are some very hardworking individuals out there sharing their knowledge and insight. One I've mentioned is Courtney Tuttle of The Keyword Academy. I recently joined just due to the fact that the Hubpages phenomenon has really taken off. Joining TKA allows you to view training videos done by Court and his associate mark, and also provides you with forums as well as some great webinars. They dedicated a webinar just to the building of hubpages and how to get it ranked.

Another guy that I respect for his hardworking online money making efforts is Grizzly who also teaches How to Make Money Online. He hasn't shown himself via any recent posts, meaning he's extremely busy working away, which is what we all need to learn to do to make money in this game. But if you immerse yourself in his blog entries, you'll find a true "wealth of information". His posts may seem to go on and on, but that's his style. They're still full of Golden nuggets of wisdom for how to make money online.

Now enter Ben of Make Money Online with SEO. Ben just might be the hardest working dude online from what he's written at his blog. He apparently forces himself to create 100's upon 100's of hubpages, Squidoo lenses, ezine articles and info barrel articles. In fact, reading his blog taught me of Info Barrels which is yet another way to improve your link power and make money. Ben shares a strategy of creating a hubpage, info barrel and ezine article all based around the same keyword or phrase. You then link from the ezine to the info barrel to the hub page, and watch it rank! I'm testing this as you read this, by creating infobarrels to hook up to my existing hubs. InfoBarrels also give you a 70% cut of the Adsense, while Hubs give you just 60% of the impressions. Ben is working towards an income of $50 to $100 a day. Not too shabby and his writing is truly inspirational to those who can't motivate themselves to just do it, when it comes to online work.

Now many gurus stress how you need to join social media sites and become an A-List blogger. John Chow and Shoemoney entice us with pictures of their lavish dinners and trips to see UFC fights, as well as pictures of beautiful girls from trade shows. Readers are sucked in and just toss up a pretty looking MMO blog to finally realize the good life. But it just doesn't come that easily. And that's why SEO and Keywords are key to your online success. I've seen it myself and attribute my success to the inspiration of Courtney Tuttle, Grizzly and most recently Ben of MMO with SEO, because these guys throw themselves into their work and just do it.

Due to this you don't see these guys posting so much on a daily basis. And why is that? Because they are busy with countless other projects making money. They aren't here to show us what they're eating, or which show girl they caught on their new digital camera. They aren't sharing predictions for UFC 100 or showing us who they bumped elbows with at the blog expos. Again, they're working, because work is what produces income, unless you inherit a fortune, win the lottery or discover oil on your property. Lesson learned: work=money, but I think we all already knew that, we just don't choose to accept it. Accept it, and get busy making yourself a nice extra income online!

Google's Wonder Wheel for SEO

(Google continues to give us more help in search engine ranking)

A newer innovation in the world of Google is the Google Wonder Wheel. You may have heard about this new search related feature you can tap into, or it may be news to you. I honestly learned of this just a few days ago, but already see it as a useful tool when it comes to crafting blog content and even creating hubpages to make money online.

Apparently, Google unveiled the Wonder Wheel experimentally to select internet users. If you do a simple Google search, you may notice under your search box and to the left a bit it says "Web" and then "Show options". Click "Show options" to unveil a panel of various Google search info you can tap into such as:

Videos
Forums
Reviews

Recent results
Past 24 hours
Past week
Past year

You'll also notice "› Standard view" which has the Wonder wheel below it. Click on that and you'll launch the Wonder Wheel for your particular keyword(s) search. In my example below I did a search on the late Michael Jackson. What it gives is a branch out from the original term to other terms and keyword phrases that internet users tend to search for.



This is helpful as it allows you to create a smart linking structure around your keyword you want to rank for. It gives you related material to write about on blog posts or Hubs or Squidoo lenses, which you can link back to the keyword phrase you're trying to rank for. Make sure to use SEO optimization when crafting your related posts and good internal linking. This cwill help solidify your ranking for key terms and bring you the extra traffic and potential money you're looking to earn.

Latest Obsessions: Hubpages & iTunes Podcasts

It's been a while friends, and unfortunately I was getting a bit complacent with my earnings and chose to enjoy some time away from blogging. Complacency is definitely a bad flaw at times, as it will rob you of your drive to make money as you feel "well this is good enough". A break was needed though, as we all burn out at times. I'm now focused again. I've recently been devoting my attention to two great moneymaker tools online: Hubpages and Podcasts.

First off, Hubs are compared a lot to Squidoo lenses, and in many respects they are similar in how you craft them with text, pictures, videos, RSS feeds and eBay/Amazon products. However, the Hubpages staff seems much more prone to kick you off for "overly promotional" pages. They generally don't allow more than 3 links to a blog or site. So when you build a hubpage, consider building it on a topic related to the keywords you want to rank for. In the past few weeks, I've been inspired by Courtney Tuttle's personal experiment to create 100 hubs in 30 days time and see how much income and link juice they generate. While I don't expect to do 100 like Courtney due to other projects, I've completed 10 hubs in about a 5 day span now, and set up Adsense, Amazon Associates and eBay Partner Networks to be associated with my Hubpages. It seems hard to track how much you're earning on Adsense from Hubs, but you may notice you've made X dollars and your report doesn't account totally for all the clicks. Those missing clicks are most likely from your hubs. Some simple math will tell you how many dollars or cents you've made. You don't even need to link out if you choose not to, as you may just decide to create free hubs for their potential revenue. Keep in mind it's a revenue sharing deal, so Hubpages will be giving you a % of the click money (more info on revenue sharing). Hubpages, like Squidoo, social bookmarking and article directories, can be a great way to get powerful links to your keyword content, so consider utilizing the free site as best you can. Get started at Hubpages here.

My other obsession as of late is listening to iTunes Podcasts during occasional free time. I know many bloggers who will tell you that you should be podcasting in addition to blogging and making videos all while marketing your stuff. Honestly though, who has time for all of that? Many success mentors and gurus suggest that we should constantly feed our minds with positive food, such as books, and audio tapes. Podcasts can do that if you find ones that interest you, and you can listen streaming through iTunes, or download to listen to later, or put on your iPod/iPhone. I recommend that when you have down time, you take a gander at what's available for free to listen to at iTunes Podcasts. The "Self-help" and "Business" categories offer a plethora of great shows, and some which are bad or just blatant advertising. I've enjoyed a few that talk about how to apply the Secret to your life, how to create wealth, entrepreneurial topics and SEO. And if you need to relax, there's some great meditation and relaxation style podcasts. The Inner Health Studios one in particular seems to put me at ease and to sleep almost whenever I want...so check them out, because they just might give you the inspiration, ideas or stress relief you need to make more money...Now it's about time for the The Monetizer to go listen to a relaxing podcast and take a power nap!

Lesson Learned in Blogging: Be Prepared!

First off, apologies to the faithful readers who stop by and view the Monetizer blog regularly. It's been a while folks, and ironically not even a day after I installed a brand new, more powerful wireless router, there was an internet outage here in the area. It turns out there was a bad fire in a nearby town which ended up damaging a major fiber optics line. That incident left The Monetizer and many other people without the internet for days. It's hard to remember back to a time when people didn't rely on the internet as heavily, but I do seem to recall them. Amazingly, the internet allows us to do so much from banking to making money online and keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, that we really take it for granted. When it goes down many of us are lost.

Needless to say, when the net is down, so is my ability to update any of my blogs, check my online accounts, etc. My streak of updating one of my most heavily search engine visited blogs ended on Tuesday, as I had no way to post. I could have driven around looking for a free wi fi spot with my MAC laptop, but in a remote woodsy area, that can be a challenge and quite time consuming. But now in hindsight I've come up with some helpful things for all regular bloggers to keep in mind. These are just in case a disaster or minor incident strikes that interferes with your ability to blog, such as your internet service is out or your computer goes down. You basically should consider several alternatives and backup plans to keep your blog in business during those times. These may be common sense, but they're lifesavers in the blogging biz. Here's some ideas...

1) Schedule your blog posts in advance - Both blogger and wordpress allow the ability to create a blog post and then set the time and date of your choosing. I've used this feature quite a bit for my one blog, to automatically post at a certain hour each Monday and Friday. It's been quite helpful, and when I took a vacation, I set up a series of 5 blog posts to go up each day I was away. Definitely a life saver, and it could also provide you a nice break from blogging if you want it.

2)Have another blogger on staff - Whether this be your family member, friend or someone you hire, having another person authorized to post for you can also be helpful. Maybe it's a virtual assistant you hire. These people can be prepared to be your lifeline and post a blog or just an update to let your readers know what's going on and why you might not be posting in the near future.

3) Find the internet - As today continues with no internet service, I'm coming up with all the possibilities of internet services I can use free of charge. Examples are public libraries, friend or family in nearby areas, and the good ol' Bojangles fast food stop which offers free Wi-fi to patrons. I'm contemplating getting myself to one of these soon, because I hate to let my fans down and also realize that if the internet is out for days my email box will probably be overflowing with spam!

I've also considered the option of phones. I don't have the fancy Blackberry or iPhone quite yet, but I'm assuming these could also be lifesavers and allow people to blog over that wireless service. Granted, many of us find typing on a regulation size keyboard easier than the tiny ones that come with a phone. There may be ways to upload text from your computer to the phone/PDA so keep that in mind as another alternative.

It's times like these that truly put you to the test and can make or break your business. Folks, my best blogging advice is to always be prepared as best you can when disaster strikes. Always have a plan so that your blogging business can "weather the storm" and keep on going, and your readers will stay with you.

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer

Everyone's a Twitterer, even Oprah!

It's official. After yesterday's episode of Oprah hit the airwaves, millions of Americans more have now learned about the phenomenon that is Twitter (You can follow Oprah on Twitter here). On yesterday's show, Oprah had the creators of Twitter on including Evan Williams, as well as Mr. Twitter popularity himself, Ashton Kucher, aka @aplusk. As you may know Kucher was in a heated battle with CNN's Twitter to see which of them could amass 1 million followers first. The movie star won it, and was saying how great it is that he can defeat a media giant like CNN, because it shows just how powerful social media really is. On an interesting note, Kucher promotes the celebrity gossip humor site blahgirls.com with his Twitter profile. And by the way, CNN has also achieved 1 million followers. It's starting to look like the next battle may be Britney Spears versus Ellen Degeneres for 1 million. It's also amazing how now that the 2008 election has passed, Barack Obama's Twitter is falling down the Top 10 list.. View the top Twitterers here

Also, there's talk about Google possibly buying up Twitter. You can already feel the moneymaking wheels start to spin.

In Google's earnings call, CEO Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying:

"Without commenting specifically about Twitter ... you could imagine that ... it could be a channel for product information, marketing information, real-time information for which you can hang advertising products, whether it's a text ad or a video ad or so forth off of it ... It strikes me that's a logical strategy for them to pursue and something that we would be very happy to pursue with them and all other players in that space.” (via SIA)

As we all know Google is slowly taking over the web world, and if you're using Adsense you're probably aware there's Adsense for websites/blogs, mobile content, RSS feeds and domain names. So what's next, Adsense for Twitter?

If you're not on the bandwagon, now's as good a time as any to join, and Follow the Monetizer at Twitter. It's rare these days not to go to any company or superstar's website and not see icons or "join up" pictures for Facebook and Twitter. If the big folks are doing, the little folks can benefit just as much. I read an article discussing the concept of getting rid of the whole "follower count" on Twitter, because it makes those with less followers feel as if they're not being heard. That may be true, but there's plenty of ways to increase your followers, namely following others, holding contests and tweeting things that others will be interested in. Others have even mentioned that you should make it a habit to include hashtags "#" in front of key words when you send a Tweet. An example would be:

Learning a new strategy for testing #Adsense ads on my site.

In that Tweet, the word Adsense gets emphasis and picked up amongst searches for Adsense via Twitter. If you do this regularly, supposedly you can gain more and more followers. Also consider using search.twitter.com where you can type in specific searches across Twitter, then follow people who mentioned those keywords in their Tweets. These are just a few tips and tricks to get targeted Twitter followers based on your niche.

The Monetizer will be one of the first to admit I'm no Twitter expert, but have started learning ways it can be implemented into my various projects. You may hate technology but it's usually the businesses, brands and entrepreneurs who embrace it and find creative new ways to market who benefit the most from sites like Twitter.

Extra tip: Check out the Top Twitterers list and see what sorts of websites each are promoting. You may discover some new monetization ideas from their sites, blogs, etc for your niche!

Follow the Monetizer at Twitter!

Google Adsense Privacy Policy & Using Hot Trends

Today was spent feverishly updating or in some cases creating privacy policies for my various blogs and websites running Google Adsense. Just like my 2008 state tax returns, I've been procrastinating on getting this done. The major problem I had to work with was that I created a few fansites for different topics and each of those use Adsense on multiple HTML pages I uploaded. Luckily I had the aid of CoffeeCup HTML Editor (a nice freebie) to let me quickly modify the codes of each site (to add a link to my privacy policies). Per Google's new Interest based advertising it's imperative that you have a privacy policy for your blog or website(s) that run Adsense ads (and it's been advised you have the new Google part added into your prvacy policies by April 8, 2009, today). For a great example of a privacy policy you can modify refer to Grizzly's Make Money Online site's Privacy Policy. Sorry if this news is hitting anyone late but as of my posting you still have a few hours until April 8th ends.

I also want to highly recommend to readers that you consider checking the Google Hot Trends site daily if you're not making this a habit already. In the past week I've been doing this more and crafting blog post for various niche blogs based upon applicable topics. I tend to choose topics I see with longtail keywords I can target that I can be competitive with. Some of the hot trends have had very low competiton and brought nice extra surges in traffic to my various blogs. The key of course is properly monetizing that traffic, which I'm still tweaking on some niches. Still, I believe Hot Trends should not be overlooked in blogging, it will definitely give you topics to blog about (unless your niche is really, really obscure like "Toe Fungus" or "Sardine recipes").

Now it's time for me to start thinking about doing my state income tax returns again, perhaps I'll start them tomorrow....

Latest Linkbuilding & Exchange Strategies

In the past month I purchased three new domains and set up Wordpress blogs on them, in the hopes of generating even more online income. Recently, I began to focus on just one of the sites in particular, as well as The Monetizer blog, in a linkbuilding frenzy. Day by day I've used the 3 methods below and suggest if you're serious about your linkbuilding campaign you look into them as well (if you're not using them already).

1) Grizz Niche Support Page - This is one great resource created by Grizzly, author of Make Money Online with Grizzly and Make Money Online for Beginners. On this page you'll find a list of bloggers from new to veteran, looking for link exchanges. Each blogger lists out their various sites and you can add yourself to the list in the comments field. You can also go about emailing as many of those people as you want, letting them know you're interested in setting up a link exchange, whether it be inside a blog post or on your blogroll. Grizz recommends the in post variety, while the sitewide blogroll link doesn't necessarily hit you at all in your attempts to increase page rank and search traffic.

2) Entrecard bloggers - A lot of people tend to bash Entrecard as a traffic source, and they may be justified in this, however the site does offer another advantage: finding blogs in your niche(s) to network with and exchange links with. I've made several great link exchanges here with all sorts of blogs. As you know the Make Money Online category there is heavily saturated, so you can likely find someone there willing to give you some link love. Simply go to the "Campaign" tab, then search on your desired category, message the person on Entrecard (or their site), and you've got another potential link exchange. I think it's good practice to drop your card on them also, just as a way to intro yourself and blog, but don't get caught up in the dropping! :)

3) Article submissions - This is the tried and true linkbuilding method, recommended by Courtney Tuttle, and I have to say it's worked quite well for me. I currently use a free program called Article Directory Submitter which requires some manual work on your part, but definitely makes things easier than going to each site on your own. Of course you'll need to register yourself on many of these sites before you can proceed. From there I develop articles around 500 words total, and insert 2 links into the main body as well as the author resource box. Some sites allow the links in the article, others prefer them only in your resource box area.

Now depending on the search term you're trying to rank for you may need to write 10 plus articles to see some success. Outsourcing may be your friend for that, more on that below. I usually find that 2-3 articles, combined with submitting your site or specific page links to Socialmarker.com's sites can usually help you rank pretty well for a medium competitive term (maybe 600,000 results or less). Terms in the low millions for search volume will require quite a bit more work on your part. Something I've yet to try but will soon be looking into is outsourcing the article writing. As much as I enjoy blogging and writing, it can become tedious and paying someone else a few bucks for a 500 word article isn't such a bad idea! Consider Craigslist.org as your source to set up ads to find writers. A tip I learned from an interview on Yaro Starak's Internet Business blog - Entrepreneurs Journey is to use the Phillipines as your source, because you can hire writers cheaper there. According to the gentleman in the interview, they see the lesser (several dollars for an article) money you pay them as quite good based on their own currency rates. Of course use that advice at your own discretion based on your own feelings towards paying someone less in another country. Give it a try if you want and experiment with how much money you offer for an article there. I've noticed people in the Entrecard marketplace who offer to write blog posts as well, so consider asking them to write you an article and pay up the EC's.

The above 3 methods are my latest means of linkbuilding for some new blog websites I've created. I'm focusing on one site in particular and doing a little bit of each of the above each day. The key to success for any blog project you're working on is consistent action day after day, so that one day it all pays off in the form of passive earnings from online income. Give the above a try yourself, stay focused and consistent and you'll be doing yourself a great moneymaking favor!

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer

Make Money Online with Entrecard!

Finally, for all those who have bemoaned and complained that Entrecard is a big waste of time and traffic, the blogging advertisement system has some great news. The Entrecard powers that be made a major decision to help all its users make money with Entrecard while improving the value of EC's.

The following comes from an email I just received from Entrecard:

A real ad network
We will be opening as much as 50% of our ad impressions network-wide to third party advertisers. We will be accepting cash payments to run 125x125 advertisements through our widget network. Ads will be sold as run of network, or targeted by category, for a low CPM rate to be announced. Please plan your daily entrecard ad purchasing accordingly. Whereas before, when you purchased an ad, you were buying a minimum of 100% of the impressions, you are now buying a minimum of 50%. However, the maximum is still 100% of the impressions, because if we have no ads booked for that category, or for the network, for any given day, you will still get all of the impressions.

Exchange your credits for CASH
With the money we make selling as much as 50% of our network impressions, we will purchase your credits from you, and delete them from the system. This means we're going to let you sell credits for cash, right from your dashboard! This has been the single most requested feature since we launched Entrecard. Members have clamored for a way to sell Entrecard credits for cash, but the same problem always arose: where does the money come from to let people sell their credits? How do we use our greatest resource (millions of daily impressions across ~60 niches) to benefit everyone? After much deliberation, the answer became clear. We must open up our ad network, and funnel the proceeds of the entire operation back to you, the members!

Their email goes on to discuss them making your Entrecard credits more valuable then they used to be. Basically Entrecard credits have been created rapidly but not used as fast, leading to what they consider inflation. To combat this they want to buy out and eliminate all those spare credits. Of course there's a few catches, such as the fact all Entrecard bloggers must now display their widgets "above the fold", and also the fact that 3rd party advertisers will be able to utilize your ad space now.

Entrecard's email offers a nice concise recap of this major announcement....

You can boil this down to the following 4 bullet points:

1. In a week, we're launching an ad network where anyone can advertise through Entrecard widgets for CPM rates. This can be run of network advertising, or targeted by category. We are making available 50% of our inventory, or approximately 40 million monthly impressions.
2. With the money we make, we are going to buy credits back from you. You will be allowed to sell credits via your dashboard, and we will devote 75% of daily sales to buying credits back.
3. The economy will no longer be in a state of inflation, but rather in deflation which means your credits will gradually start becoming more valuable.
4. For all this to work, we must institute an above-the-fold rule, which goes into effect in a week.

So let your creative gears start turning...You can see now that if you're offering services through the Entrecard marketplace, you can earn actual cash for that work rather than advertising credits. Plus if you have credits just sitting in your account, now you can cash em in for money! So add Entrecard to the list of ways to make money online!

2 Rookie Google Adsense Mistakes to Avoid

So many of the Make Money Online bloggers like to talk about making money with Google Adsense, whether it be how they are planning to purchase a house with their checks someday, or how they're struggling to even earn the minimum for their first check. Some say it's the only way to truly make decent money online, while others will denounce it. You'll even read claims by some that Adsense isn't worth setting up, implementing, testing and re-testing until you get it right. I respectfully dissent.

There are people earning decent amounts and better on a monthly basis from the Google Adsense program, The Monetizer included, and you can be one also. You've seen the infamous checks of bigwigs like Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemaker.com) and Markus Frind (Plentyoffish.com). While my checks aren't near that size, they are good part-time income from one of my recommended money making sources. When I first started out, I was a rookie with Adsense, and to a degree I still consider myself learning the ropes, but I am earning a decent amount. I won't lie as we all know making money usually takes some work or effort, and when it's coming from a publicly traded company like Google, you better believe they don't want to just give it away. That's where Smartpricing comes in, and my understanding is it's to basically protect the people buying ads on Google, so that they are getting "worthwhile clicks from potential buyers" rather than social media clicks or untargeted traffic clicks.

This past weekend The Monetizer decided to undertake a project based on several posts I read about "Google Adsense Smartpricing". In essence, there's been strong suggestions made that you should seriously consider removing Adsense from any site or blog where you're not getting a 2% click rate or higher. Some even suggest it should be 3% or higher, or else remove the Google Adsense ads from that particular page or site. I've had one blog site in particular which has had tons of traffic, but in recent months I saw per click amounts really plummet. Despite that, I've had other sites which had high clicks, making me question if I was smartpriced or not. I decided better safe than sorry, and why risk it happening if it hasn't?

One mistake I made was putting Adsense in too many places, that is on too many blogs and sites. Some topics just don't pay well for Adsense, so why have a site generating pennies, especially if it's not getting clicks? When you start out, your goal is always to make as much as you can, but don't get overzealous and put Adsense everywhere. Testing is good, but overdoing it can cause a headache later. In my case, I made this mistake and was using a free web host just to bypass buying hosting. That lead me to having a lot of html pages I uploaded, each with Adsense ads in them. You can imagine the work it takes to undo that mistake!

The second mistake I've made was I didn't track every single Adsense unit, ad or search box used. I realized now that I had placed a search box somewhere which is generating money and clicks, but didn't track it at all. When you've got a lot of sites and blogs with Google search on them, not knowing which is your top earner can be devastating, even if it's still bringing the money! From the get go, make sure you've put some specific identifying titles on each ad you use on your sites, so you can track each one's effectiveness.

So over this past weekend I ran an advanced report on my Adsense account, and took a look at the overall stats by channels for the past 2 years. Then I began the arduous task of removing Adsense from various pages where the CTR% was below 2%. I've fixed many pages, and if I notice my Adsense income shoot back up, I'll know I've discovered the culprit and hopefully fixed the problem. My goal was to see Adsense earnings continually increase, not hit a lull as I kept doing more work. As I wait to see if click rates increase, I will continue to remove the ads on sites which have low percents, and suggest that anyone else feeling this smart pricing effect do the same. Taking precaution now can help you on your way to those nice monthly income checks from Adsense that other bloggers blog to you about.

One final word: I read an interesting free e-book PDF this past weekend, which made a good point saying you should master one monetization method fully before moving on to mastering the next method. While it's ok to add in some other affiliate offers or ads on your site(s), consider making mastery of Adsense a priority if you truly want to earn those monthly checks from the Big G..

Recommended reading:

How To Get Worthless Adsense Clicks by Courtney Tuttle

Is Adsense Smart Pricing Killing Your Earnings? by Grizzly

Make Money Online - Up Your Twitter Status!

(Become a Twitter celeb!)

Months ago The Monetizer was a member of Twitter but didn't quite see its value or have much reason to use it. However, the more I read about those who are successfully using Twitter to their advantage, the more it makes sense to "go with the Twitter flow". Let me give you some new ways to look at Twitter and some things to do to increase your Twitter followers, which in turn will help you attract new blog readers, contacts, networking opportunities, site visitors and money spenders!



1) Pimp your profile - Like many say, branding yourself is the way to make the big bucks with a blog. If you've already got an Entrecard logo, great! Use that as your small Twitter icon, or use a really, really good picture of yourself. Try to make it professional or catchy.

Also consider getting yourself a free Twitter theme background, or modifying one/creating your own. If you see someone else's Twitter background you like, do a right click on it and "View image". You can always save theirs and use it as a reference (don't steal!) To upload your new background, simply go to the "Settings" tab on your upper menu for Twitter, then go to "Design", if you scroll down on that page you'll see a button that says "". Click that and you can upload your new background, then click "Save".

Also make sure you have a link to follow you at Twitter somewhere on your site(s) and blog(s).


(Monetizer follows Guy & some of his followers)

2) Follow the followers of top gurus - I picked up this tip at NickMarks.com's blog post, but it has worked well for me so far. Within a day I've been able to move from around 200 followers up towards 500. My goal by month's end is 1,000. Consider following the followers of John Chow, Problogger, Guy Kawasaki and John Reese, just to name a few with a lot of followers who are in similar niches as Moneymakers. Even if you're not in the IM or Moneymaker niche, they can still potentially bring you people so don't discount the followers!

Check out this recent post about 20 Celebs on Twitter. Use them to get followers as they might relate to your niche, or even if they don't!



3) Use these Twitter tools - Twitterfeed, Twittercounter.com, Twitter Karma, TweetDeck, and TweetLater. Twitterfeed allows you to plug in your RSS from your blog so anytime you post a new blog, it will be Tweeted to Twitter for you, with a link to your blog post and a line of intro from your post. TweetLater is a great automator tool where you can set up your Twitter account so that you automatically follow and direct message anyone who follows you. You can also set it so if someone unfollows you, you unfollow them! The Your Twitter Karma site is helpful in that it allows you to import your list of Following and Followers, and then unfollow any of those your following who don't follow you back. Great for management purposes. Tweetdeck will allow you to see what's being said about anything, including you, your blog, product, etc!

4) Check out this insightful blog post by Guy Kawasaki. He details exactly what you need to do with Twitter and why. Great stuff.

5) Follow The Monetizer on Twitter, I follow back :)

Twitter is becoming the "It" tool of the times, so if you're not on "Twit", get on it, and start Tweeting!

Here's to your success!
The Monetizer

PS - Got any cool Twitter tools, tips or stories? Feel free to share em in the comments section below!

Domain Purchased & Wordpress Setup

Recently, The Monetizer ran into a bigtime issue (potential scam) with a website called Regfly.com. They supposedly sell domain names with privacy protection included, but after a week and no sign of the domain I purchased in WHOIS, I submitted a dispute to my credit card company. See "Beware of Domain Scams!" for more info on that. That's all pending, but in the meantime I decided to take advantage of the free domain deal offered by BUY.com and GoDaddy, mentioned in my previous post. I bought a cheap DVD and then within 48 hours received my code for a free domain name (free for the first year) from GoDaddy. After some careful consideration, I took the plunge and used my coupon there to get a domain.

Right after my domain purchase, I immediately pointed my DNS (Domain Name Servers) to my Hostgator hosting account. With Hostgator's baby package you can host unlimited domains under one account for $10 a month, which is a great deal. Even cooler, you can set up Wordpress very simply through Hostgator's control panel. For a great tutorial check out Courtney Tuttle's Internet Marketing post: "Finalizing Hosting and Installing WordPress".

So within less than an hour I was able to buy a domain name, have it registered and set up hosting with Wordpress. Now all I have to do is choose my Wordpress theme, install plugins and transfer the Blogger blog stuff to Wordpress. Since I've been a longtime user of Blogger and barely scratched the surface with Wordpress, I'll detail my further adventures in an upcoming post. As mentioned above I recommend, consult Courtney Tuttle's Marketing School for a great video tutorial on setting up all of the above for your blog!

Study the Best & Replicate Success

Many personal development gurus including Anthony Robbins recommend the idea of studying those who are successful in what you want to achieve, then modeling their habits, traits and mindsets. As far as the make money online realm goes, two of the most successful bloggers are John Chow (Johnchow.com) and Darren Rowse (Problogger.net). John Chow recently layed out the plan for how to get your blog business to really take off in 2009.

Here's the major points John makes:

- Get a domain and Wordpress blog
- Brand yourself
- Post frequently and regularly
- Use Twitter
- Build a mailing list

Some people will quickly say "The Monetizer uses Blogspot". Correct friends, but 2009 will be my year to move one of my blogs onto a hosted domain. I believe this alone can take a blog to that next level, and I regret not doing it sooner with another blog I run. Opposing viewpoints correctly claim that one can make money using free Blogspot blogs as well, but if you want a blog that not only makes money but can also be sold for a hefty sum one day, getting a domain is key.

Branding is very important as we all know. It's what sets you apart from the rest, giving you a distinct look, feel and presence online. My brand is the adorable green moneymaking man, The Monetizer. Some call him "shifty-eyed" or may view him as greedy, but all in all he works for the good of money. 2009 is a great time to evaluate your blog or website's brand concept. Logos can be cheaply purchased by freelancers these days.

Here at the Monetizer blog I will admit there's times when I'm positing several entries a week, and times when my other blogs have exhausted my energy. I'm going to make a goal in 2009 to post much more regularly with at least 3-5 entries per week here. If you've got just one blog there's really no excuse not to be posting 3 times a week, if not daily. This can help you get discovered by search engines and gain new subscribers.

I don't currently use a mailing list but definitely see the advantages in having them for your blog or website. If you were to use your feedburner account to email all your RSS subscribers "Hey buy this cool moneymaking product", you'd quickly find your RSS count diminishing. A mailing list allows you to send out newsletters highlighting blog posts, insider tips and of course affiliate or commission-based products to people who opted in to the mailing list.

The Monetizer uses Twitter but not like others use it, and that may change in 2009. Many twitterers use the program to gain a massive following, but also to propose questions, network and find out about news, deals, websites and events. Many businesses are jumping on the bandwagon, such as Amazon.com which posts its latest MP3 album deals and more on Twitter. For bloggers, there's also a great program available that automatically will post your blog links to Twitter as they publish. This way anyone following you can click the link and arrive to the post. John Chow and others have even suggested that Twitter may become the new RSS.

Of course debates run rampant amongst bloggers as to the value of using Twitter or how often you should post, but it doesn't get much more simple or logical than what John suggests. He's been able to take his blog from $0 to over $30,000 a month, and that track record speaks volumes in itself. A few other things that John Chow has done to achieve success: networking, paid reviews, media spots such as TV & magazines, and last but not least, eating and taking pics of his meals. Follow in Mr. Chow's footsteps with your blog and you just might find similar or greater success. Just like someone can always "build the better mousetrap", it's still possible to build a better "make money online" blog. Here's to your success!

Find Hot Content & Make Money with Trendhunter

Ready to blog about the latest or up and coming new trends? It can be a great way to increase potential traffic and blog subscribers, by staying ahead of the crowd. There just happens to be a helpful, stylish new site which consists of members who hunt down the coolest stuff out there... Trendhunter.com is an online magazine, community site where members spot and hunt for the latest and hottest trends. (join community for free) Built in 2005, Trendhunter is the brainchild of Jeremy Gutsche, who wanted a creative business site to spot trends. The concept has the site able to identify all sorts of trends & even micro-trends in anticipation of "the next big thing"s. One of the testimonial quotes promoting the site from MTV says "At Trendhunter, find out what's cool, before its cool". See more testimonials and media here. The site presents visitors with the hottest trends over the past day, week, or month. You may already see the wheels spinning in your mind as to how this can help you with blogging about the latest and greatest info for your particular niche...

Google Trends is the popular program many bloggers have taken a liking to as it helps you spot search trends. From there you can craft blog posts to take advantage of these hot topics, and possibly gain a lot of search traffic to your blog. Trendhunter may present an even better way to do this, and allows you to embed the hot new trends right into your blog. They offer 99 flavors of RSS to add into your blog's sidebar columns, as well as widgets for Myspace, Twitter & Facebook, banners and many other cool tools to show off the hot or upcoming trends.

Just to give an example of last Thursday's hot trends in a 24 hour period:

Real Furbys, 40 Facebook Innovations, Top 20 Kickass Extreme and Gothic Greetings ranked amongst the top 5 hottest trends over a 24 hour time frame on Thursday, November 20, 2008.

In addition to their free trend reports, Trendhunter offers what many companies really want, the 2009 niche trend reports. Their perfect for strategizing and marketing to the current and up-and-coming "it" generations. These reports come at a price which may be hefty for the average blogger or small business owner. A year long subscription to reports runs about $1,500, with individual reports costing up to $500 or so.

Trendhunter offers a section of "Top Sites", where websites and blogs which are identified as top trend-finding sites are listed. The aforementioned Google Trends is there, as are well-knowns like Boing Boing & Techcrunch. If you author a blog of this nature which looks at the latest trends (mixed bag niche even), it may be a great promotional idea to submit your blog or site to Trendhunter. According to the site, you'd leverage their 8 million visitors worth of traffic!

And wouldn't you leave it to the Monetizer to find the "EARN $" section of Trendhunter.com! They have a small section which they say is ideal for students or bloggers, because in reality we're all trend hunters. From the looks of their revenue-sharing program, you're payed for submitting new trends. They also run Google adsense, so you may be sharing in those profits, similar to Squidoo. They claim to have 8 million visitors to the site, which could make for a lot of page views if you get a trend into the top trends. According to their site, their top trendhunters earn $1,000 a month! You can read more info about their moneymaking program here.

So bookmark Trendhunter and keep an eye on it. It just might give you something to blog about before the rest of your niche does, and give yet another way to make money online!

SEO Tips from Entrepreneur Magazine

The latest issue of Entrepreneur magazine offers plenty of great advice for starting your own business and promoting its growth, which includes marketing via a website. Amongst the articles is one which provides 5 Ways to Maximize Your SEO for your website (or blog). Below, The Monetizer provides you with each of their SEO tips, with my own commentary added in to each tip.

1) Get a Good Domain - You've heard this advice many times: If you're planning a profitable blog, make sure to purchase a domain early, and make it catchy and easy to remember. Avoid long names and dashes, & make it a dotcom if possible. According to Entrepreneur mag, you should also make sure your domain is built with keywords relative to your product or blog topic, if possible. For example "mypetproducts.com" if you're selling products for pets. Most small business owners know that these days with the economy hurting, using online marketing to create a presence is essential though.

There's open debates over whether your blog needs a domain though. The Monetizer prefers free Blogspot blogs for now, but definitely sees the advantage of having a domain. One thing I would have liked to have created is a forum section for one of my blogs. Having a domain with GoDaddy or HostGator would allow for this. If you are going to get a domain, make sure to purchase it early to allow for domain-aging, which will eventually help SEO.

2) Take Care with Titles - Make sure that each of your website's pages have unique, keyword-appropriate and search-engine friendly titles. According to the article, if you're building a website from scratch with an HTML editor, many times they won't point out you're missing title tags. Blogging platforms such as Blogger and Wordpress have the feature built in, which is why blogs continue to be so popular for SEO and money-making.

3) Use Keywords Wisely - In terms of your webpage or blog content, don't keyword spam them. For example, you've titled an article or site page "Helpful iPhone Apps". Don't continuously spam those keywords in your article or blog post. Instead, use that combination 2-5 times (sparingly) and also use keywords that relate to the ones you want to target.

4) Make Your Contact Info Obvious - This tip relates more to small businesses trying to start up a new venture, but it can relate to the idea of blog branding/networking as well. The article contends that you should hot link your email, even though there are email spammers running amuck. They contend that you want customers and network contacts to be able to find you. This is up to you my friends, and you may notice other bloggers use "myemail[at]hotmail[dot]com" to prevent being spammed. Personal preference here, but make sure you allow readers or site visitors a way to contact you. It could go a long way towards link building, networking and getting your site known by the masses.

5) Link Up - The biggest advice amongst SEO experts and from Entrepreneur mag, may be to get high quality backlinks to your site from similar sites. If you're blogging about travel, seek out blogs in your niche and try to work out friendly link exchanges. The more you get, the higher your PageRank can climb, and the better your search engine results can be! If you're using Entrecard, consider making up a friendly note to send to other bloggers there in your niche. It's an easy way to find a lot of related blogs in one place that you can easily contact and network with!

Keep the 5 above tips in mind when you're updating your blog next time. Recently, The Monetizer has started to work harder to title posts on other blogs I author, to make sure they have a shot at capitalizing off search traffic. When you think up a post, go to one of the SEO Tools like SEO Book or the Google Adwords Suggestion Tool, and type the keywords of your post. See if some other results come up you can work into your title.

You can find the above 5 tips and much more in the December 2008 issue of Entrepreneur magazine.

Does Modeling Equal Blogging Success?

The book "Unlimited Power" by Anthony Robbins discusses the topic of how to achieve the same success as others. In his book, Robbins suggests that if you model your actions, techniques and/or thought process as close as possible to the successful person's, you too should achieve a similar success. It's not always true, but it can produce great results.

For example, Michael Jordan is one of the greatest, if not greatest all-time NBA player. Future stars such as Kobe Bryant and Lebron James credit their success to studying Jordan while growing up, mimicking his style and basically putting in the hard work he did to succeed. Many NBA players even go as far as hiring Tim Grover, who is MJ's personal trainer. Grover gets them in top physical shape with grueling workouts just like he did for MJ. You see in this example, how players study the legends and in effect become the next legends.

I feel the same can be said of John Chow, Shoemoney and Problogger among other "A-List" bloggers. Here's some things I take away from their success, simple and broadly stated concepts:

- They all are dedicated to their niche, and blog at least daily.
- They all have their blogs self-hosted.
- They've all had their blog sites designed by pros.
- They all offer something different with their blogs, whether it be John Chow's dining photos, or Shoe's UFC predictions. Each blog is unique and speaks to audiences on many levels.
- They continuously test and implement new monetization strategies to see what works best.
- They realize their blog readers are extremely important for their bottom-line results, and they do everything they can to reward them.
- They benefit at times from the use of guest-post bloggers.
- They don't stop with what they have. You see John Chow has hit a $30,000 a month level and claims he won't stop there. Is this greed or purely incentive to always improve, always do better?

These are just 3 A-List bloggers, and there's many more out there in various niches. There's also many up and coming bloggers who will set the blogosphere ablaze with great new blogs and material. I feel we can all take away from the concept of modeling. This isn't to say copy their exact blog designs and steal their material, but it is to say following most of the above concepts will help you on your way to blogging success.

Find a blog in your niche that is doing very well and study it. It may even be your biggest competitor who is outdoing your site. See what it is that has them doing so well, and model to improve your blog in those areas. Are they higher up in search results? Do they have more content posted? Do they get more reader feedback and if so why? There's plenty of things you can look at then attempt to model those techniques for your blog.

I hope this provides some quick food for thought on how to make your blog even more successful than before.

The Battle of the Browsers!

Let's face it folks, Internet Explorer is yesterday's news. What used to dominate our web surfing is now being taken out by the new kids..Since the Monetizer likes to test out new tech toys and web stuff, I've been testing several of the other browsers. Some I've used longer than others, but others I recently downloaded I'm enjoying quite a bit. Today we'll take a look at IE replacements: Firefox, Safari, Opera & Google's Chrome. Most of the browsers listed below are available for PC and Mac users, meaning things are becoming even more compatible online. I'll reveal my favorite browser below, but each of these browsers offers fun, fast and fancy ways to surf the web.

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Firefox (by Mozilla) - The baddest of the bunch, it's been taking over IE for some time. In fact I urge you if you're reading this post on IE, consider a switch to Mozilla Firefox. The current version is Firefox 3, a free download. It runs much smoother, spell checks your typing on sites, and has some great add-ons. I personally like the color finder (finds a HTML code for a specific color on any site), and Screen Grab (grab a whole web page or part of it, save it or copy it to an art program). Trust me folks, if you're using IE and not Firefox, you're limiting your surfing :)



Features offered:
- One-click boomarking
- Improved performance
- Smart Location Bar
- Password Manager
- Instant Web Site ID
- Full Zoom
- Platform Native Look & Feel

Check out Firefox here!

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Safari (by Apple) - The Monetizer fell in love with Safari as a Mac/Apple user. It was a great day when I discovered Apple had launched the browser for PC users as a free download. What I like most is the speed of this browser, as well as its futuristic Chrome look. Sometimes speed is all in the mind, but Safari does seem to move quick when browsing or using a site. You can also download Safari for the iPhone, perfect for Apple's tech toy. Safari's ultra-futuristic and makes you feel like your browsing in the year 2010..in a few years you will be!



Features offered:
- Fast performance
- Easy bookmarking
- Tabbed Browsing
- Built-in RSS
- Forms AutoFill
- Private Browsing

Check out Safari here!

Opera - What used to be your grandmother's favorite event to attend is now a uniquely named Web browser. The Opera browser would rank 3rd behind Firefox and Safari, but it may be a tie with Safari in the minds of some. I haven't used it quite as much as the other two, but I am using it to create this very blog post you're reading. What I like most Opera's "Speed Dial" (see screenshot below). It has thumbnails of your 9 favorite (or most visited) websites for when you first launch Opera. You simply click the square which shows the site you want and BAM! you're there. You could set up Blogger, Myspace, Google, eBay, Amazon, or whatever sites you frequent for even easier access. And there's also the standard bookmarks, tabs and much more. The browser also seems faster just like Safari for browsing use. It also offers a Download Manager with BitTorrent, a link synchronizer between your PC and mobile device, widgets, customizations and much more!



Features offered:
- Quick Find
- Opera Link
- Speed Dial
- Download manager with BitTorrent
- Tabs and sessions
- Content Blocking
- Zoom & Fit to width
- Built in e-mail & newsfeeds

Check out Opera here!

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Chrome (by Google) - Google loves to be involved in everything we do nowadays, and they also want to out-do everyone else. It's the biggest search engine known to mankind, and also our beloved Adsense resides there. In fact it seems they will one day have micrchips installed into our own human flesh, so we can be Google mapped, run ads and do telepathic emails. All kidding aside, this is the newest of the browsers, but as of right now I'm not using it quite so much because it's a BETA. Since it's still being developed, the features on Safari, Opera and Firefox appeal to me more.

Chrome does look like it has potential though, in a freaky way. The browser will actually adapt to your surfing patterns and at some point when you launch the browser, it will show your "most visited" sites, for easier access. It's similar to Opera's "Speed Dial" mentioned above" as it offers thumbnails of the sites for you to click on and access. There's a quick app launch feature, to allow you to launche your favorite web apps straight from desktop.Also Chrome offers the "crash control" feature. I've already noticed on just a few uses of Chrome, it tends to crash on certain sites. Since it's new, I expect it to be upgraded with bug fixes, but for now I'll stick to Firefox, Opera and Safari. Gary Conn has even written an interesting "conspiracy theory" blog post about Chrome, discussing its information collecting powers and why it runs slow. Google Chrome Scares The CHROME out of me… by Garry Conn



Features offered:
-New Tab page
-Application shortcuts
-Dynamic tabs
-Crash control
-Incognito mode
-Safe browsing
-Instant bookmarks
-Importing settings
-Simpler downloads

Check out Google Chrome here!

As mentioned above, with the exception of Chrome, the other 3 will work on a PC or Mac. Also, all of the above browsers are FREE!

You'll find overlapping features in many of the browsers above, such as tabs and recovery of your last session. The web browser you use for your internet activities is really a matter of personal preferences. Each of the above offer similar features and functions for web browsing capabilities, and may offer you great features for blogging and money making. I highly recommend Firefox to all those not using it, but would advise bloggers to consider downloading a few of the above. This way you can make sure your blog is being viewed accurately across all browsers. The last thing you want is your blog to look great on Firefox and IE, but look like trash on the other browsers! So collect em' all, and trade them with your friends! Whatever you do, kick IE to the curb!

(Note: Don't ignore IE competely, keep it around for viewing your blog to make sure it looks ok to those who haven't made the "switch" just yet).

To Blog or Not to Blog about MMO?

To Blog or Not to Blog about Making Money Online? That is the question...

The Monetizer continues to see differing opinions about the whole MMO niche and whether it needs anyone else to speak on it. There are those who will tell you it's a lousy niche to be in, because competition is high and there's thousands of MMO blogs already. They'll tell you that there's no room for growth and no reason to be talking about such a crowded blog topic. They'll convince you to give up on blogging in the niche before you've even given it a second thought!

The Monetizer tends to take a more optimistic and opposite opinion. While the niche may be crowded, there's millions of internet users with more added daily. To think that these internet users immediately flock to John Chow, Shoemoney, Darren Rowse or the other big names is preposterous. If you play your cards right, you'll be able to build your own audience.

Playing your cards right means 2 things:

1)Bringing something new to the MMO niche - Put your own very, very unique spin on Making Money Online. New ideas will attract a new type of audience. Remember there's plenty of internet users to attract, so target unique audiences. (example: an MMO blog devoted to senior citizens might be one way to go) Currently, there's MMO blogs devoted to people trying to get out of debt, MMO blogs for kids, and MMO blogs for newbies. Consider an untapped audience for your new ideas in making money online.

2)Establishing good SEO early on - This can be the toughest aspect of MMO due to competition. You'll need to find ways to really compete with the major players in order to attract your own audience. Consider going after money making terms that the others aren't looking at. There's plenty of internet users who love money making survey and offer sites, so that's just one aspect to consider for search engine positioning.

This blog post is mostly food for thought and hopefully inspiration to not give up on a niche before you even try. There's no reason to fear the MMO niche if you feel you've got plenty to say about it, and can bring your own unique perspectives. It will take many parts hard work along with creativity to get yourself noticed, but the end results are well worth it!

No matter what your blog topic, the Monetizer agrees on one thing. It should be something you have a good feel for and won't get bored with. A lot of MMO blogs tend to copycat the rest and eventually suffer from blogger's burnout. If you wisely choose a subject you really have a passion for, you're less likely to fade into the blogosphere, and more likely to establish an audience who can make you money!

(Note: You may have also noticed a less frequent posting rate here at the Monetizer blog. Due to some recent issues, posting won't be daily here, but still expect more of the same great Monetizer rants, content and info about Making Money Online!)