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!

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!

It Pays to Run Kontera Ads!

Hello make money online fans, just wanted to let you know that real checks are sent by Kontera (see image above)! They're the advertising company that provides those underlined in-text links to various products and services, and you earn per click. Out of the blue, I received a check from Kontera in the mail last week (I don't check Kontera stats as regularly as some other advertising programs). Now while they took longer to earn with than Google Adsense does, they did send a real check as promised once my account reached the $100 mark. I recommend them strongly as a passive, additional income supplement. You may even be surprised with another check in the mail as I was! (That book The Secret really works!)

I was able to apply for Kontera way back when I first started blogging thanks to John Chow, A-List blogger. Chow provides a post on his blog called How to Make Money Online with Kontera which gives you a great starting point for this advertiser. Your best shot if your blog(s) haven't taken off yet in terms of traffic and page views is to enter “John Chow Kontera partnership” into the Comments field. This will allow smaller, newer blogs to participate with Kontera. Also be advised as John Chow tells readers, the Kontera advertisements take about a week to learn the content of your blog, so don't be discouraged if the links aren't showing up immediately!

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer Making Money Online

The Boomertowne Shutdown

As a member of Gather.com, The Monetizer sees all sorts of information passed on regarding various pay sites, Paypal, eBay and more. The recent buzz has been about Boomertowne.com. (See post: Boomertowne = Ghost Town?)

Well it now appears Boomertowne is shutdown. Becky Ford of CompareRewards.com contacted Boomertowne founder Herschel "Buzz" Peddicord, asking about the website's status and future plans. The following was his response to Becky:

RE: Saddened by the news about BT -- a response if you could, please?
Sunday, September 21, 2008 4:37 PM
From: "buzz peddicord"
To: comparerewards@yahoo.com

Unfortunately illness, economic downturn, and mass cheating drove the company bankrupt. Several millions were lost by investors and even though we tried to sell and raise capitol, the lousy economy made that impossible. The investors including me lost millions of dollars trying to build a real community. When the economy went south companies quit advertising and income dropped to 10 percent of what it had reached. That combined with mass point cheating made it impossible to go on. No site that offers rewards will succeed as long as people devote so much time trying to beat the system. It tells you something about our society.

(Violin music plays)

So it appears Boomertowne may have gone under like many other businesses
struggling to survive in these rough economic times. However, I can definitely
make a case that most website-based businesses should have a leg up on
brick-and-mortart types. Boomertowne worked as an incentive-based social
media site geared towards the Boomer baby generation. It relied on the users to
generate ad revenue through thousands of page impressions and ad clicks. I
haven't looked into it fully, but they may have had a subscription-based dating
service as well. BT claims they lost advertiser sponsorship due to the economy,
but if this were true how do entrepreneurs like John Chow, Shoemoney and Darren Rowse continue to prosper? All 3 have indicated dips in income at times, but they continue to provide what people want, and continue to implement new moneymaking strategies.

As for people cheating Boomer's system, that's still a problem many social media and incentive-based sites must combat. Myspace and Facebook are the two biggest social media sites on the web and must constantly battle this. The difference may be that neither site really offers its members gift card rewards. It might have made sense for Boomertowne to safeguard its self against these problems before a single reward was even offered, but hindsight is everything. Perhaps there also lies an opportunity for some clever entrepreneurs. Create a reliable database tracking system or website software to prevent such cheating on websites. Offer it for free to the first few upstart social media sites you find, and then begin sales (and make sure The Monetizer receives royalties ;)

When all is said and done, Boomertowne clearly put all its eggs in one basket, and that basket broke.

Goodbye Boomertowne, it's been nice knowing ya!

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.

Make Money with Entrecard & eBay!

Oh no, it's another Entrecard article! Well this has an interesting spin to it, in that you can actually profit from your "hard-earned" Entrecard credits. Basically there's been plenty of sales of the EC's done via the leading auction site online, eBay. Smart bloggers now realize that purchasing these otherwise free credits can help them establish their blog through cheaper advertising. Time is money as they say, and who really has the time to go around dropping their card off on 1,000's of blogs?

Check out some of these recently ended eBay auctions:


View the latest Entrecard auctions on eBay.

Apologies if the image makes the prices hard to read...But, as you can see you can make money off those "free" Entrecard credits you can accumulate by allowing others to advertise on you, or by dropping your card, or having others drop it on you! There's no word on how long these will be in demand on eBay, but advertising costs people, so why not buy it in the form of EC's? This way if someone buys a few thousand credits they can advertise on a blog like John Chow or Problogger for a fraction of the cost. While it's only for a day, that exposure can be pretty big for a new blog. One of the most successful days for me with Entrecard was the day I was on Problogger, as it brought many visitors, EC droppers and hopefully a few new readers!

The other interesting thing here is how prices vary. You see someone received $7.50 on a Buy it Now for 1,000 credits, while another sale of 2,000 credits went for just $6.50? Yet another auction for 2,000 credits reached $12.50? The average cost for 1,000 credits looks to be about $4.50 to $5 based on the higher auctions, but I think most people would take what they can get for a free online credit! Supply and demand is clearly still there for the EC's on eBay if you price them just right and promote the auctions well. Flipping them for extra money could help you purchase that domain name for your blog or other services....Or on the other hand if you're looking to advertise, you could find a low-cost EC auction on eBay. There doesn't appear to be any restriction on selling the credits, although EC itself appears to be forming its own online market to sell them amongst members too.

If you've sold EC's, or have bought them on eBay, or are considering either, or just want to weigh in on this moneymaking move, feel free to share your thoughts here.

John Chow's 10,000 Entrecard Credit Contest

In a previous post I noted that John Cow is giving away a Xbox 360 Elite and GTA 4 to one lucky raffle winner. Now I find out of yet another contest, with John Chow giving one lucky winner 10,000 of his saved up Entrecard credits.

With 10,000 EC's you could do a lot of advertising, or go shopping in the EC store for things like banners, EC card logos, gift certificates, e-Books and other cool stuff. Right now, Chow's blog is priced at 1,000 credits to advertise on, so you could get yourself onto his blog, or some of the other more expensive blogs to advertise at. According to Chow, Darren Rowse's Problogger is up to 4,096 credits to advertise (wow I got in early on that one!)

I know a lot of people who come through to the Monetizer's blog like using Entrecard, so be sure to check out John Chow's 10,000 EC credit contest here if you haven't already.

EC Contest, BloggingZoom, Chow & Sex Sells!

For those who haven't entered yet, the "Hit 777 EC's with the Monetizer" contest is still running! A lucky winner will be chosen February 1st. There's been enough entrants so far to provide the prize, but there's still under a week left to get your shot at hitting it big! Check out the contest details here and get entered so you can do some clever advertising with EntreCard!

Unfortunate news was provided by Courtney Tuttle that Blogging Zoom was hacked a few days ago. It appears the site is back up and running now and has a very stylish Web 2.0 look to it. If you aren't registered yet, please head over and check out BloggingZoom. It's a great site to promote your content and network with other bloggers!

On a side note I've noticed recently that John Chow definitely realizes the importance of "sex sells". He has several recent posts about booth babes including an interesting video showing the power of his camera's Zoom feature. Gary Conn has an article discussing how female bloggers definitely have an advantage these days due to the whole sex appeal aspect. Check out Gary's article titled "Female Bloggers, Search Engine Marketing and Sex". I've always told female friends they need to start blogging!

A final rant is that the Monetizer has noticed tons of conflicting theories around the blogosphere. Do this, do that. You can't do this, you won't make money, etc etc. Some bloggers talk about not revealing your strategies and ideas online, because it's not in your best interest. Others say there aren't enough blogs saying "how to make money" or what to do. I say take all advice you get from blogs online with a grain of salt. Remember that blogs aren't exactly newspapers, and even newspapers have been known to sensationalize and skew stories. It's hard to call any blogger an authority per se, because there's some people who've achieved greater successes, but still others who provide great, useful ideas. Learn all you can and experiment on your own, sometimes you can come up with winning ideas that way!

(Note: Make sure to sign up for Ximmy.com if you haven't yet. It's a great place to share content URL's and vote, similar to Digg.com. However, this site pays for your time and effort!)

Work to Make Money Online

All too often this concept is very overlooked online when it comes to making any sort of income. Mainly people have this conception that just adding Adsense code to a blog or site, or just signing up for a program will start making them instant money. It just doesn't work this way folks. You get paid for work in the real world, and making money online involves work too. If money were free, we wouldn't need make money online blogs...John Chow would be primarily blogging about food and Shoemoney about UFC.

Almost everyone's a rookie when they start out with Adsense. You may have read up on it, but it's going to take extra planning and tweaking to get it to work for your particular site. Not only that but in order to get paid by Adsense, you need enough traffic visiting your site to get the impressions/clicks to earn the $100 minimum payout. Getting traffic takes work, whether it be search engine optimization, promotion/marketing, building social networks or even offline publicizing. To expect Adsense to make you a steady income off a blog just by adding the code is a bad assumption. Many times it may even take several blogs or sites to earn a check from Google. It may also take several months before you even see that first check. But believe that it will take work. If it doesn't, then you're probably spending money to make your money.

Then there's the referrals signing up for programs. I've had individuals say "ok I'll sign up through you so you'll get the credit/incentive". The referrals don't work this way. For example, Widgetbucks or ShoppingAds (formerly AuctionAds). You can sign up for them, and you'll have $25 to start in your account. But simply signing up doesn't earn the referrer money. The referrer earns money through their own work and your work. And you'll earn extra money through the work you put in, to get your own referrals and implement the code on your site. PayPerPost is the same. You can sign up through a referrer, but they don't make a dime until 1)your blog is approved and 2)you post about PayPerPost. There's the work. Even survey programs seem like great concepts. But you're being paid for work, in terms of filling out surveys, which takes your time and effort.

Don't believe for a minute that guys like John Chow, Shoemoney or Darren Rowse are just lucky individuals who happened to make a fortune online. All 3 have worked extremely hard to get to where they are. So how hard are you willing to work to make money online yourself?

Win 1200 EC's from Earnablog!

It's a new year, and why not start it off with a load of free Entrecard credits? Earnablog has decided to bestow 1,200 EC's on one lucky winner in the New Year of 2008. The winner gets chosen on January 7th and gets the great bargaining power of all those advertising credits. As they point out on their post about the contest, 1200 EC's could buy you 5 days advertising on John Chow's blog. Or you could get lucky and get in on Problogger or John Cow..There's plenty of great advertising opportunities where you could make your blog more visible. You could also use those credits to simply turn around and give them away, increasing your own RSS or link backs to your blog!

Head over to Earnablog's contest details for more specifics on this contest. Make sure you are a member of Entrecard as well. If Monetizer wins, most likely you will see a big giveaway here of more Entrecard credits...Stay tuned, and good luck!

Use Clever Tactics but Keep Your Rep Up

All it takes is a little creativity to boost your blog's popularity or traffic levels. Using a contest, a catchy blog entry or something that hasn't been seen before online can usually give your blog an increased interest level. It's something to consider implementing, but always use tactics very carefully.

For example, there was the "Great RSS Battle" between Shoemoney and John Chow. While it was a friendly battle between the two top bloggers, it also benefited them both quite a bit. They gained a LOT more subscribers overall no matter who the winner was. The Monetizer was already subscribed to both of them, so it was a no contest here. But the point is, they were able to use a contest amongst them to really stir things up with friendly competition. You can do that with your own blog, depending on the subject matter. For example, if you blog about the NFL or another sport, why not have a friendly 'Pick Em'" contest against a fellow blogger. Each of you would of course give credit to the other on your respective blogs with a link to their blog and discuss your predictions. You could do this on other topics as well, but things with predictions (sports, Entertainment awards, etc) are usually an easy and good natured contest.

John Cow, which is considered a spoof of the John Chow blog also had a neat tactic recently. One day he blogged about making sure you back up your blog entries, a very important thing for us all to remember. About a day later, the blog post read "H4acked", indicating Turkish Data Processing Military had taken the Cow blog over. The tactic was to show people just what might happen should you not have your blog backed up. Bloggers blogged about the "security breach" too, so it helped John Cow quite a bit. And John Cow was able to teach readers the valuable lesson he wanted to illustrate in a creative way on his blog (as well as make 1 easy blog post called "H4cked").

Tactics of course should not be unscrupulous. For example there was a recent controversy over someone impersonating John Chow to email John Cow about a new RSS promotion. The fakers were promising to "sell RSS subscribers" to blogs that wanted to up their feed counts. Gary Conn discusses how being a fake can hurt you over at his blog. Impersonating a bigtime blogger is no way to jumpstart your blog, your business or your reputation online. This sort of tactic will only hurt you because it will damage your reputation and possibly result in civil or criminal penalties.

Bottom line: Use creative tactics, but tread carefully because your blog's reputation is at stake.

Just in Case You Missed It..

Since The Monetizer frequents quite a few blogs around the blogosphere, thought it would be nice to share various news, older and newer for those who may be interested.

So just in case you missed it...

Shoemoney defeated John Chow in the "Great RSS Battle of October 2007".

BlogRush has finally unveiled a dashboard full of stats to view about your blog widgets.

WidgetBucks has announced that its Widgets load quicker now so your sites wont suffer as much from load time issues.

CourtneyTuttle and friends have unveiled a cool new blogger's bookmarking/social media type site, Blogging Zoom. which is built for the bloggers who want to get their blogs noticed and benefit more from SEO.

PayPerPost is now under IZEA

Amazon Associates is giving you 20% commission on any MP3 digital downloads you refer people to buy from Amazon (through December).

DayJobNuker was kicked out of a casino for bringing in a Boost shake.

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series with a 4 games to 0 sweep over the Colorado Rockies.

The NBA season is now underway.

Spider-Man 3 (2-Disc Special Edition) hit DVD this past week.

There are still ways for you to make money online.

PageRank Drop Doesn't Hurt The Monetizer

The popular topic of a day or so ago, or for the next few days it seems, is how Google has dropped the PageRank of many top notch bloggers and other sites around the world wide web. It was an unexpected and sudden drop that maybe several weren't expecting, but Google is well known as "masters of the unexpected". The Monetizer is pleased to say this blog is new (under 3 months) on Blogspot and has a Page Rank of "n/a". Google can't drop me below that, but maybe they will develop a reason to.

There's a smattering of articles around the blogosphere discussing the PageRank issue, how it may effect the way you monetize your blog site, and how to work it to your advantage.

DoshDosh's Maki writes Google PageRank Doesn't Matter. Can We Stop Talking about it Now?, discussing how PageRank is a "webmaster fetish", and that complaining about it on a blog isn't the best thing to be doing.

John Chow discusses Turning a Negative into a Positve, by realizing that you, the site owner, control your blog monetization, not Google PageRank. Chow has indicated he has removed the PageRank stat from his advertising page as well.

Courtney Tuttle presents an Alternate Theory for Google PageRank Drops which discusses blog sites selling Text Link Ads as the possible reason for the PageRank drops. Courtney also discusses her thoughts on how PageRank drop may affect popular blog monetizers, ReviewMe and PayPerPost.

Ben Cook at BloggingExperiment.com discusses how to Use the Confusion to Gain an Edge. He discusses the idea of using other blog sites' PageRank drops to sell your own site even more.

Another thing taken into consideration (by Paid review type sites, and ad sales sites) is your site or blog's Alexa Rank, which helps display how traveled a blog or website is. Monetizer highly advises you to download the Alexa toolbar, codename: "Sparky" for your web browser. This toolbar will show you a site's Alexa traffic rank in the bottom lower right corner of your web browser. The lower the number, the more heavily traveled a site or blog is. It's always fun to watch the stat when you visit your own blogs or sites to see how they might be improving in Alexa rank. The little stat can also help you determine great places to set up shop and promote, because you want to be seen in high traffic areas :)

Miscellaneous Monetizer Mayhem

Friday is always one of the most anticipated days of our week. Here's some random mayhem to check out. Monetizer promises to get back to moneymaking soon :)

TMZ.com has revealed the contestants for "Celebrity Apprentice" run by Mr. Moneybags himself, Donald Trump. Check out the celeb gallery at TMZ. (Hint: contestants include a UFC fighter, a sidelined WWE star, a former boxing champ and a former queen of mean from the Apprentice) You can also read about the cast here.

Also TMZ reveals that the sock from the foot of the paparazzi guy that Britney ran over is up for auction on Ebay. View the auction here, which benefits the Children's Defense Fund. Upon last check the sock was at $1,025.

John Chow and Shoemoney continue their battle over who can get the most RSS subscribers this month. Since Chow was already running a contest with several prizes on his blog, Shoemoney has joined in with a TON of sponsored prizes including cash, free site reviews and much more. Check it out here to find out how to enter. A great lesson to take away here is blog competitions can help your subscriber base, as do prizes..

Contests & Prizes Galore!

Ok don't get too excited, this is not about a contest from the Monetizer (yet) but from other people online! That's right, one cool thing Monetizer has noticed is how generous other blog sites like to be in giving away stuff like the iPhone, iPods, Nintendo Wii's, Blog Designs, Cash and more! Some of them even win stuff from one contest, then just turn around and give it away to someone in their own contest..Smart thinking!

RockNRollSolo.com has a win a 16gb iPod touch contest going on until November 12th. The iPod Touch is a pretty nifty piece of technology complete with a you guessed it, a touch screen. You can flip through album covers for your music, watch videos or movies, check out your stored pics, and surf the internet all on a 3.5 inch screen! It has a gift avalue of approximately $399. To enter this one, just head over to win a 16gb ipodtouch at rocknrollsolocom and follow the rules!

There's a big bad blogger battle going on between blog legends, Shoemoney and John Chow. Each guy is trying to outdo the other in terms of getting the most RSS subscribers for his blog before the end of this month. Monetizer previously mentioned John Chow's contest which includes a ton of prizes. Since Chow is giving away prizes, Shoemoney decided he will give away a prize a day because he's been slacking in the contest. Head over to Shoe's blog to sign up for his RSS so you don't miss out!

Beyond those big 3, if you want to check out other contests going on you may want to check out this blog: MyBlogContests.com for more great giveaways!

Navigating the Blogosphere

A few points to cover here today for all bloggers and site owners. The main theme here (related to the recent Columbus Day holiday) is navigating the rough waters of blogging and blogs in general.

First off, Monetizer mentioned 5 favorite blogs here which deal with Money Making, PPC, affiliate programs, marketing and better blogging. They are inspirational, but shouldn't be consider the ultimate blogs or moneymaking law. There's a ton of blogs out there on the subject of blogging better, SEO, making money, affiliate programs, advertising, etc etc. There's plenty of people out there who are creative and have great unique ideas for you to consider. So don't stop at just a few blogs who may be considered "top in the game", because you may very well find some of the hidden gems on lesser known blogs. Most likely if you blog, you also enjoy reading others' work. Get familiar with as many related blogs as you possibly can, and engage in discussions and comments with the blogs and their authors. This can help yours grow by either receiving link love, comments back, featured posts or new network connections.

Now in terms of your blog's navigation, is your blog up to par? Can you easily find your way around your various categories, various posts, blog topics, contact page, home page, about page and other important spots? Most of the time the answer here is "no" or you could make things easier or better to navigate. Monetizer knows it firsthand. You make blog entry posts and you decide "hmmm.. this one needs another new category". You end up with 100's of categories making it tougher to organize them into concise ways for a reader to find their way around. All is not lost though.

Keep in mind when planning a blog you need to keep it as organized as possible. You want readers to find other posts you've written, so don't keep them hidden. You also want some of your best areas and entries on display. John Chow even discusses why you need a "top posts" or "popular posts" area prominently displayed on your blog. In fact, take a look at the organization of his blog or Darren Rowse's Problogger.net sometime. They've ensured that you're "attacked" from all sides of he blog, top, right side and bottom, with different and popular spots to check out on their blogs.

Put yourself in the reader's chair, assuming if you really enjoyed one post on a blog site, you'll want to poke around for more cool stuff there. One of my favorite ways to provide this is to create a drop down menu on the sidebar. Use it to list out your topics as linked options, list specific pages and more. You can use the EchoEcho.com's link there to create customized code after you input your links and titles for the menu options. The site will give you a piece of Java code and HTML code to use in your template. This will make for a nice, neat way of getting around your blog, and could earn you more page impressions, subscribers, ad money or referral signups.

Another idea I recently thought of implementing is "Last 25 Posts" or "Last 50" or even "Last 100 Posts" section. You could do this by creating a single blog entry page and then adding Feedburner RSS Buzzboost code onto it. Set it up to display 25, 50 or 100 RSS fed headlines on that page by altering the Feedburner code. The "How to" for modifying that Buzzboost feed display is found on the Buzzboost page of your Feedburner account. Make the "Last 25, 50 or 100 Posts" page one of your earlier blog entries, and have it linked to somewhere prominent on all your blog pages. That way you won't have to update the page yourself, and a reader could easily click on this page and select from what they may be interested in and continue to return back to that section for more.

Keep the navigation of your blog always in the forefront of your mind. It's an essential part of blog/site design. A reader may unexpectedly show up and not really like the post they just found. It happens. However, what if another blog entry title captures their eye? You may just gain a new fan from implementing a strategic way of attracting their attention elsewhere, causing them to navigate to a new area.

Help John Chow & The Monetizer Win!

The Monetizer already gave major props to John Chow in a previous post, "The Monetizer is a Fan of John Chow". Now it's time for a little more praise, but only because Mr. Chow is offering a bunch of nice prizes if you sign up for his RSS feed and blog about it. The Monetizer loves winning things and getting free stuff.

John Chow is basically in a big RSS competition with fellow blogger, Shoemoney. The contest is to see who can get more RSS subscribers to their blog by the end of this month. Chow is really stepping his game up by offering some great prizes, while Shoemoney seems to be relying on word of mouth and other techniques. So head over and sign up for John Chow's RSS feed, and you can also enter to win the great prizes he's offering!

Of course also make sure to sign up for Monetizer's RSS feed as well :)

Important Lessons: Domain Names & Blog Topics

John Chow has a great recent post called "How to Brand Your Blog". In the blog entry, one of the first points he makes is "Get Your Own Domain Name" and I couldn't agree more. The Monetizer has done several other blogs and has seen some do better than others. Due to not having enough funds, most were built on Blogger or Blogspot. Reason being, blogger was quick, easy and free. However, Mr. Chow makes the great points about the fact that if your blog gets popular and big and you decide to move it, you're gonna lose out on link love and search engine help. In addition, you really can branch out with a domain name. First you have the blog, but then it will offer you the possibilities of adding a forum, or adding other pages to expand upon your blog. There's a lot of websites built using Wordpress blogging platform, it's just hard to tell. They have unique designs and are technically done with Wordpress blog software, because it's easy to make updates to their site material.

Darren Rowse at Problogger also has a recent video in which he discusses "Make Money Blogs". In this video he discusses how the Make Money niche of blogging is very crowded and gets little search engine activity. He also goes on to say most people will do a make money blog after seeing there are people "making money" already. They assume if they're doing it, so can I. It's very true, this is incorrect to assume, and Mr. Rowse suggests why not have a blog about making money in diary format about how you are trying to. Excellent point, and this is what "The Monetizer" blog is all about. An experiment in attempted money making. I can fail and succeed and show you what works along the way and how this is doing. In addition to that, Monetizer does know a thing or two about internet resources.

Back to what both, John Chow and Darren Rowse have said.

1) Get a domain name as early as you possibly can. Try to think up a clever catchy name that is easy for people to type into their browser. Domain names usually cost about $8 per year. You can head to most web hosting companies to get 1 and some will give you the domain free or cheap for your first year, if you buy web hosting.

2) Blog about a topic you'rea ble to blog about. This is strong advice Darren Rowse gives. If you start blogging about making money and it bores or frustrates you after not making money for a while, you're going to quit. However, if you're passionate about something like travel, sports, photography, etc, try blogging about those. It will show more to your readers and help you build the audience/traffic to make that money.

All in all, these 2 above factors are probably two of the biggest things to consider when you're setting up a blog that you want to turn into a successful moneymaker. Plan them well, and then start monetizing :)

The Monetizer is a Fan of John Chow

You may have come here from the blog of the make money online legend himself, "John Chow". Or perhaps you've never heard of this guy until now. In fact, The Monetizer just learned about Mr. Chow this past year, most likely by a random web search that landed on his page. If you asked most random people in the street, who is John Chow, they probably would have no clue. But in terms of the internet and blogosphere he's been highly successful with this make money blogging thing for a while.

So who exactly is this John Chow guy?

John Chow is a self-proclaimed "dot com mogul" and a legend in the make money blogging world. He is the editor in chief of techzone.com, a company which reviews and sells hardware technology. In addition to that, John also blogs about making money online using various advertising techniques on JohnChow.com. He has a large fan base of readers/subscribers as well as a large income generated by his site. He regularly publishes his blog income reports, and in August 07' he had made over $17,000. That's right, let that number sink in, $17,000 from a blog. His blog's current title tag is "I Make Money Online by telling people how Much Money I Make Online". This guy knows what he's doing. He's been featured on the techie TV show "The Lab with Leo Laporte", where he discussed how to monetize your blog. He's been on the radio, mentioned on countlesss websites, blogs and featured in various media stories, such as one by Newsweek. And just recently, he has been featured on the cover of a very popular magazine in China, called Ming Pao. Basically, when Chow blogs, people listen, and usually follow in his ways, or rush out to try the latest concept he has spoke of.

Now this is not all about "ass kissing" by the Monetizer, but more of an acknowledgment towards what this guy has achieved. It's always interesting to read different insights on blogging and monetizing. One thing that is always interesting is that John Chow makes a good share of grammatical mistakes and has posts which deviate from his blog topic of making money online (what he eats, stuff about his new baby, selling bed matresses). However, nobody is perfect and you have to admire what this guy has been able to accomplish. It also speaks large volumes about the concepts of optimization, monetization, and building a brand and audience from your blog. Chow has a large following (about 8,000 or so readers at least) and a large bank account, all thanks to the internet and blogging. It really proves that when you are already getting the traffic and the income, you can pretty much do what you want with your blog or site. Taking it in new directions just might help it achieve greater returns. In fact, Chow is always finding ways to increase the income of his blog, making him a great example to follow.

The Monetizer may mention John Chow or his writings here from time to time. If you aren't familiar with his site already, it's JohnChow.com and it provides a wealth of great info to learn from. It recently was redesigned by a pro blog company (Unique Blog Designs) and has a very stylish and clean look to it. The best thing to do when viewing his site is to not be jealous, not to copycat, but simply learn from the things that he is doing. Take notes of his design, the advertising methods that work for him, the new blog tools he says work well, and even what he eats. Monetizer is not saying to follow everything he does or copy him (even though a Cow has). Try things out for yourself and experiment with ideas that you may come up with based upon his teachings. And maybe just one day, The Monetizer and you will also be "dot com moguls" mentioned in the same breath as John Chow.

Learn from the Best - 5 Blogs to Consider

If your goal is blogging for income, then you have to start somewhere and always be learning what works and doesn't work. The Monetizer is far from an expert and is constantly researching and learning new concepts to use in blogging, promoting and making money online. To stay on top of your game and find new ideas, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of the best bloggers and money makers online today.

Here's 5 blogs in particular that the Monetizer enjoys:

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1) John Chow - A very inspirational online money maker, he blogs about the ways you can make money online and provides his monthly earnings each month on his blog. August 2007 income was over $17,000! He also is nearing the 10,000 mark in terms of subscribers to his blog.

Monetizer enjoys Mr. Chow's posts despite a few grammatical/spelling errors here or there and having to look at pictures of various buffet lunch items. Regardless of that, John Chow is making big bucks from blogging and you should study his ways.

http://www.johnchow.com

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2) John Cow - Parodying the big guy, John Chow, is the Cow. They started a blog which slightly mocks the idea of John Chow but still provides readers ways to make money and profit online. Smart guys, because if someone mistypes Johnchow.com, they just might end up at the Cow's blog.

While some say this is a copycat of John Chow's success it's actually creative and entertaining. Written from the perspective of sarcastic cows making "moo-ney", this blog is highly worth your time. It also features a very clever and catchy brand new blog site design as well as constant mention of contests from the Cow and other sites.

http://www.johncow.com

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3) DoshDosh - A very stylish and useful blog written with all sorts of great information about making money online, blogging, optimization, social media and productivity. It's got the tools and tips you'll need and is presented in very understandable terms. You'll find yourself returning to its easy to understand nature and helpful resources very often.

http://www.doshdosh.com

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4) Problogger - Darren Rowse is another one of the top bloggers along with John Chow. In fact Chow, Rowse and Shoe (below) are considered the "Big 3" in blogging for money. These guys make a ton of money and are "full time bloggers", meaning it's their job to blog and they get a solid income from it.

Learn from Rowse, an expert blogger, and gain his unique insights into how the monetized blog can work for you. Rowse covers things such as setting up your blog, tweaking its design/optimization, gaining readers, as well as trends and ideas on how to be a more productive blogger.

http://www.problogger.net

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5)ShoeMoney - Another great blog about blogging, technology and ways to make money. Bookmark this one, which at times goes into other topics such as Mixed Martial Arts and celebrities. Shoemoney offers unique perspectives on blogging, making money online and many other topics. It also includes a stylish and captivating new design.

You'll find a multitude of great ideas and inspiration from the Shoe!

http://www.shoemoney.com

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Several of the above bloggers have recently undergone "makeovers" for their blogs and some of the design concepts turned out quite nice. Enjoy them, learn from them, and realize there are a TON of blogs out there about Making Money. Each blog will have different perspectives and ideas of just how it's done, so it makes sense to pull knowledge from as many areas as you can. Consider Chow, Cow, Dosh, Rowse & Shoe because they are amongst the cream of the crop in online money making blogs and will present you some great ideas to get yourself going. Bookmark all 5, get their RSS feeds, and be on your way to being up there with the best. Also consider being a frequent commenter on these heavily traveled blogs, as it just may help bring you more readers.

For honorable mention, here's 3 others you may be interested in checking out:

Super Affiliate ZacJohnson - Includes very good commentary on the blogging world and on what trends he believes will work or not work for making money online.

The Blogging Experiment - This is done by another blogger, Ben Cook, looking to build from the ground up, with some great tips and resources. He also has given himself a year to turn his blog from $0 into a full time income.

kottke.org - This is not really a make money online blog, but he makes money online with the blog :)