The Richest Real & Fictional Celebs

A friend and I had an interesting conversation the other day. She was discussing the concept that Ty Pennington of "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" might be included on the Forbe's richest celebrity list, due to all his advertising deals and his show. That prompted The Monetizer to try to guess at who was #1 without seeing the list. My guess was the big O, Oprah Winfrey, pretty easy choice. Oprah tops the list and makes a payroll of $260 million!

Here's your Top 20 Richest Celebs:

1. Oprah Winfrey
2. Tiger Woods
3. Madonna
4. Rolling Stones
5. Brad Pitt
6. Johnny Depp
7. Elton John
8. Tom Cruise
9. Jay-Z
10. Steven Spielberg
11. Tom Hanks
12. Grey's Anatomy Cast
13. Howard Stern
14. Angelina Jolie
15. David Beckham
16. Phil Mickelson
17. David Letterman
18. Bon Jovi
19. Donald Trump
20. Celine Dion

What's most interesting is to consider: what makes someone a celebrity? Because if it's just by being famous and known all over, Warren Buffet would easily be at the top of this list, and probably deserves to be! Buffet's famous, owns a company and is very well known for being rich! You see Trump on the list, and it makes you wonder... Also interesting to consider is that athletes such as Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, make paltry salaries of 30 million compared to bigger names on the list! Maybe athletes really are underpayed? Ok, maybe not..

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Forbes has another interesting list, The Forbes Fictional 15:

1. Scrooge McDuck
2. Ming The Merciless
3. Richie Rich
4. Mom
5. Jed Clampett
6. C. Montgomery Burns
7. Carter Pewterschmidt
8. Bruce Wayne
9. Thurston Howell III
10. Tony Stark
11. Fake Steve Jobs
12. Gomez Addams
13. Willy Wonka
14. Lucius Malfoy
15. Princess Peach

To make this list the characters needed to be a fictional creation, starring in a specific work or series, and must be known fictionally for being wealthy. As you can see the Walt Disney character Scrooge takes the top spot here. In case you aren't in the know, "Mom" refers to the mom from Futurama, Carter Pewterschmidt is a poker partner of Michael Eisner and Bill Gates (on Family Guy) and Lucius Malfoy is a patriarch of an ancient wizard family from the Harry Potter stories. Princess Peach is from the popular Super Mario world, and she is heiress to the Mushroom Kingdom (the legal sort).

What can we learn from this? It pays to be a fictional character, or at least the creator of one! Don't expect a "Forbes Top 100 Who Wish they Were Rich" list anytime, because I think there'd be a huge 1 way tie!

Make Money with Commission Junction!

The Monetizer already belongs to Clickbank, an affiliate program which features e-books, downloadable software and various registration based programs. You earn large commissions based on people going through the link you supply and buying or signing up for the product/service. I saw the drawbacks were that people could request refunds (meaning you lose the money you make), and also that they had some strange rules on when and how to receive a payment.

Well I have to admit I held off on really investigating another affiliate program, Commission Junction. With all the programs Monetizer already participates in, it was just an afterthought. Boy was I wrong in not looking into this one sooner! Commission Junction offers 100's of legitimate companies and advertisers who are looking to pay you for promoting them or their products. You can be payed for two things via the extensive list of advertisers and companies:

(Above: Just a few of the MANY companies CJ lets you promote for $!)

1)Leads - In many instances you can earn from a company just for someone signing up for a free service. For example there's the Screensavers.com:
Free Screensavers and Wallpaper!
promotion. Just for someone downloading either of these, you would earn 80 cents. But that's just a small example. RealNetworks offers $15 per each person you refer to download their free 14 week trial music player. Some companies such as lenders, and banking institutions offer even more for signups! Not a bad deal at all! And there's plenty of these opportunities, so you're bound to find something that fits your blog or site.

2)Sales Commissions - There's all sorts of advertisers, from Citibank to NBC to Apple to WWE. They each offer various commission rates (from about 1 or 2% on up), based on you referring people to their sites and those people buying merchandise. There's plenty of companies too as mentioned before, so you will find something appropriate to your topic or niche.

Bonus Incentives: There's also bonus incentives which vary by company or program. For example if you generate over $1000 in sales for a program you're promoting, they will raise your percent commission rate (say from 5% to 10%) and so forth. So each program varies in how you can profit from them, but there's plenty of opportunity!


(Above: A view of some CJ product selections for the GameFly promotion)

Commission Junction is free to join and provides great monetization ideas. To get started, you will need to sign up with Commission Junction and provide the usual details (name, address, SS#, checking info for auto deposit of payments, etc). Once you're accepted into CJ you can add your websites or blog URL's along with their descriptions. This will allow you to pick and choose where you advertise which products (depending on how many sites you own). After this, it's time to search for the products and services you'd like to promote! Type in a keyword related to your blog or site niche and let CJ provide you with all the resulting offers and programs you can apply for. Remember, you'll need to apply for any program you choose individually, and some may not accept you instantly.

Once you're approved for an advertiser you can Create Links. These come in the forms of all types such as 125x125 buttons, 468x60 banners, the 728 length banners and text links. CJ also allows you to generate code in HTML or Java for your site, encrpyt your links and more. It's a nice interface and seems like yet another great Money Maker!

The reason I'm kicking myself about now is that they have so many products available that are related to other blogs the Monetizer authors. Knowing this months ago would have given a nice additional revenue stream. So learn from my hindsight, and sign up with them ASAP to help monetize your own site. Trust the Monetizer, if you type a keyword term there, you will most likely find a compay that fits that topic which you can promote on your site.

I feel anyone looking to Monetize a blog or website in almost any niche can truly benefit from using Commission Junction. The minimum payout is $25 to receive a check or auto-deposit. So head over, sign up, and start selecting products and companies to make money from!

Comment Headache Ends for Bloggers!

Rejoice Blogger and Blogspot users and commentors everywhere! Blogger officially announced on its own Blog yesterday that comments can now be left by just about anyone using OpenID.

I've seen many people ranting and raving about the complexity of commenting on Blogspot blogs, and the Monetizer agrees. It seemed to differ from Blogger blog to blog, most likely due to which version they were on (the Classic or New). Well, Livejournal, AOL Journal, Wordpress and other users can now express their opinions on Blogger blogs, which means there is harmony in the blogosphere!

To use this feature with your Blogger blog, you'll need to have the "Who Can Comment" field set to "Anyone". It's probably a good idea to do so, because comments are great for your blog in terms of feedback and additional discussion. You can read more about this exciting new development here at Blogger.

The Monetizer now welcomes bloggers from all over to leave comments as you please..

The Death of Agloco

Let's all have a moment of silence for Agloco as a legit moneymaker or company.

I joined Agloco about a year ago, I believe thanks to the advice of Adsense legend, Joel Comm. I don't blame him for this and luckily I didn't work my butt off to promote sign-ups or have the viewbar running. John Chow reported the Agloco death on his site via an email he received from them. Agloco was probably dead for a while, but that email confirmed things for us. Here's the final stats for Monetizer's Agloco campaign (sigh of relief):



Lesson here is don't give false hope or promises if you're trying to be a successful business venture online. Yes failures happen, but anything this Agloco company or group pushes in the future will be a tough sell.