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

Make your Webhosting Choice!

Just recently I purchased 3 new domain names as well as web hosting for some new make money online projects. As you probably know, there's a ton of different hosting companies you can choose to go with and each has its own unique benefits such asthe size of space you get online, bandwith sizes, number of domains you can host on the account, email accounts, and more. When you start seeing all the various offers for hosting in magazines and online, you begin to realize it's mindblowing just how many of these companies exist. If you don't have word of mouth from someone else, making the hosting decision could be difficult.

A website resource that seems like a great spot to start your search for web hosting is Webhostingchoice.com. This site provides a directory of web hosts as well as educational resources about hosting, to help novices and more experienced bloggers or webmasters. Among the resources are an article on how to identify webhosting scams, as well as an article on Colocation, which is an advanced topic I never knew much about until now. In addition to these informative articles, webhostingchoice.com provides the advanced search feature which is especially helpful because it allows you to specify just what you want in a web hosting choice. You can set the specifics for bandwidth, diskspace, subdomains, FTP, emails and more. You can also type in your maximum monthly payment for web hosting (within reason, because 99 cents won't get you anyt results). A sample search I did with a maximum monthly payment of $9.99 turned up the exact host I chose to go with a few months ago, Hostgator, so I know this resource does what it says. Many people have recommended Hostgator, but after I specified just what I wanted in a webhost, it was the only choice which came up for me. Perfect. In addition to the search, you can look at their various Host directory choices such as best options for Blog hosting, Adult Hosting and E-commerce.

Check out webhostingchoice.com if you're looking for the best web host for your blog or website project. It can save you hours of pulling out your hair while trying to find the best hosting choice for you!

Make Money with Vinefire, Maybe?

Have you joined Vinefire? Members could make anywhere from $10-$100 a day with this new online moneymaker!


So the other night I stumbled onto a new blog that was all about ways to use Squidoo lenses and defending them as a great moneymaking, linkbuilding tools. The blog which is run by PotPieGirl, a Squidoo moneymaker, had some valuable insight and information regarding making profitable lenses that get indexed and ranked in Google. From that blog, I decided to click over to another associated site which talked about building Niche sites with Wordpress, something Internet marketing coach Courtney Tuttle also discusses. From there, I learned about a free web tool I wasn't aware of yet, called CBAnalytics, which helps people rate and compare various Clickbank affiliate products. And from there I learned about an interesting "potential" moneymaker named Vinefire, which I also had never heard of until that night. It's amazing how many things you can learn about in this MMO niche, meaning there's no true experts on all make money online concepts...

So back to Vinefire, it's a "free" member driven content site much like Digg or other sites where you submit site links and vote on popularity of various items. The moneymaking scenario sounds not only tempting but easy and almost "too good to be true". 54 cents for every posted link you visit, 90 cents for every sponsor link you visit, 12 cents for every link you vote on, 4 cents if someone votes up your link, and 50% of the earnings of any friends you refer to Vinefire. As a basic member you can earn up to $10 a day with the site, and there's an option to pay $5 to verify your account which then enables you to earn up to $100 a day. Not too shabby right?

But wait, there's a catch, which will seem like "Agloco deja vu" to many people. Vinefire really wants to pay its members, and intends to, but they can't...yet. They are sitting back and waiting for Vinefire to grow in popularity and when certain site growth metrics have been achieved, they are also expecting to be bought up by a large company. At their forums in their FAQ they mention there is a potential suitor already in line to buy them. From the proceeds of that sale, which Vinefire expects to be valued in the millions, members will finally get paid. Vinefire has set their target payout date of June 1, 2009, not too far away. The interesting thing with that is originally they were planning to pay people in January of 2010. So they moved it up to keep people interested in the prospects. Apparently the villagers had their pitchforks and torches ready when they found out how long it might take to get money from Vinefire.

At the Vinefire forums they also add:

Please don't assume that the payout date has moved to June 1, 2009. It is simply a possibility...if we are able to reach certain growth goals. This includes things such as the number of new members, listing upgrades (Yellow Star, etc.), verified accounts, etc.

Yep, I know what everyone's thinking. Vinefire sounds like another Agloco or Boomertowne just waiting to collapse right underneath all its loyal members. There was a lot of angry people over those two websites and rightfully so. And to be honest, I was thinking the same thing about Vinefire too. It would be a shame to invest a lot of effort in promoting and frequenting that site with one's time only to receive a "Sorry Out of Business" notice one day. But despite that The Monetizer still joined, for the simple reason of testing it out. There's no reason not to get your feet wet with another money opportunity online. But definitely keep the lessons you may have learned from Agloco and Boomertowne in mind. Don't go all out with promotion, because if you do and they fail, it will be a tragic waste of your efforts trying to make money online.

If you're interested in a potential moneymaker, join Vinefire and take their special 10 day challenge...

Update: My account is at the $20 level on Day 2, just for clicking several links..of course, time will tell if that money is delivered...