Make Money with CyberMonday Shopping Deals!

Yep, it's just about that time again folks. You might be familiar with those ads on TV with a male voice joyfully singing "it's the most wonderful time, of the year!". However, the current economy just might be casting a dark cloud and raining on many people's Christmases & Holiday shopping. The Monetizer is far from Mr. Grinch though, so to put a positive spin on things, you can still make money online with this. CyberMonday is considered the official "day after Thanksgiving for online shopping". According to CyberMonday.com, the online shopping day falls on December 1, 2008, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving. This day was set in anticipation of all those people back to work or home after the holiday who decide to shop online.

It's an understatement for me to say that people are cutting back this year, due to the economy, but we all know many people still want to give gifts and still save money. Some homes/offices may decide to do Secret Santas for their families or works in the interest of not having to buy everyone a gift. One area people are less likely to do away with completely is in giving gifts to their children, or possibly a significant other. This gives you a great way to capitalize on some online sales. Of course, this is the sort of niche site or blog to set up months ahead of time, but now you can begin to add in various merchants with affiliates to your blog mix. You can see just some of the CyberMonday participants in the image below to get an idea of how you might them into your blog content.



Many online retailers are simply offering free shipping, and with good cause. People would rather not fight with crowds or wait in lines, or go through the hassle of finding a parking spot at the malls. Some retailers such as Home Depot, Sierra Trading Post & Office Depot are offering percent or cash off discounts to online shoppers. So there's bound to be some sort of affiliate related to your blog or website material that you can promote on your blog for CyberMonday. Start now, because being accepted by affiliates can take a few days (sometimes longer).

Also consider that Amazon Associates works well around the holidays. The great thing with their associate/affiliate program is you just need visitors to click on a link, and buy something from Amazon within so many days. No matter what item(s) they purchase, you'll receive commission. Consider setting up Gift Wishlist posts on your blog or creative gift ideas related to your niche, then use the Amazon links (using the code they give you) as the item titles. eBay Partner Networks and ShoppingAds are two other programs to tinker with on your site as people look for great deals online.

So while the economy looks bleak, turn it into a great opportunity, as consumer interest and deal shoppers just might help you make extra money this holiday season!

The Monetizer recommends CommissionJunction and/or Linkshare.com for affiliate programs in addition to Amazon Associates. Find out more about these and other programs at Monetizer's Recommended Moneymakers!

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.

Make Money with a PayPerView Blog?

An interesting new development in blogging to make money has come about. As of last week, well-known make money online blogger, Garry Conn, is charging $1.00 to read certain articles on his blog. The reasoning behind Conn's charges was layed out on his Important Update post:

The level of quality in the articles I write on this blog, I strongly feel are of great value. With that said, I truly enjoy writing them and I truly enjoy helping you find success with making money online.

In light of that, I would like to start receiving a small compensation for the time I invest into writing and publishing my articles on my blog. Starting today, I will be making a change to my blog. Many of the future articles that I publish on my blog will provide a snippet. In order to read the full article, you are invited to process a $1.00 payment via Paypal.com. Once that payment is processed, you will be automatically redirected to the full article. From there you can view it, print it or even bookmark it for later use.

All's fair in love & making money online right? There will be some who object to PPV blogs, but it's their prerogative to choose not to pay for it. I consider this similar to the idea of Howard Stern. If you object to his material don't listen to him or buy satellite radio. All in all, I wish Garry Conn success with his latest venture, but I won't be charging people for my advice and ideas......yet :)

The Monetizer also wants to direct your attention to several blogs I check out regularly, and surprise, surprise, they don't include John Chow or Problogger...No disrespect to John or Darren, but these blogs are the ones to read if you really want to get more traffic to your blog and increase your passive income (through Adsense or affiliate programs, or whatever you please):

Blogging Zombie
SEO Zombie
Internet Marketing School - Courtney Tuttle
Make Money Online for Beginners - Grizzly
The Keyword Academy - also by Courtney Tuttle

Keep those five blogs bookmarked (with The Monetizer), read their posts backwards and forwards, and make sure you practice their suggested techniques until your head's ready to explode! These guys definitely know their stuff.