According to the calendar today, there's approximately 40 shopping days until Christmas day hits us. Even less shopping days if you, your friends or family celebrate any other upcoming holiday. Many of us, the Monetizer included, like to wait until the last minute to buy our gifts for others. Probably the most popular way to get ahead and avoid mall crowds is by using online shopping to make your gift purchases. One way to save a good bit of money while doing your online holiday shopping is through the use of the CouponChief site.
CouponChief.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coupon Chief, Inc. Their main goal is to provide a one stop coupon deal and discount resource for visitors to their website. They also have a strong focus on customer support and providing up to date coupon codes and promotional deals and discounts to you.
CouponChief provides you with a great variety of online shopping coupons to help save some money at many top retailers online. Examples of retailers you can save with include online retailers such as eToys, Best Buy and Kohl's. With the Kohl's coupon you can save 10% off your entire online order. The Best Buy coupons currently offers 15% off on select accessories with select home audio and video products. There's also several Dell coupons available to help you save on that LCD TV you wanted (it's ok to shop for yourself too).
Give CouponChief a look if you're trying to save some money with your online holiday shopping, as we seem to be moving faster and faster to the holidays!
11/14/07
Save Money on Holiday Shopping - CouponChief
11/13/07
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.
11/12/07
Monetizer Makes Money with PayPerPost!
Good news as the Monetizer has officially been approved for payperpost after signing up about a week ago. The main reason I recommend this site is because it's a great opportunity to add another income source to your blog. With PayPerPost you can choose payed blogging opportunities to review and write about various services, sites and products. Once you sign up and have your blog approved, you will be able to log-in and check their bulletin board for any open opportunities to you. These can range in payment from $5 up to $200 or so! Some of the top bloggers featured on the PayPerPost home page have made as much as $18,000 with the program. You may consider adding this to your income sources as well, as it will provide you with new things to write about, all while getting paid!
Please keep in mind some general guidelines if you plan to sign up for PayPerPost. First, you will want to have your blog up and running for a good three months. Also, it's a good idea to have two plus posts or entries per page of your blog. Finally, make sure that you have a very clear and easy-to-find "Archives" section on your blog. The side column is usually a good spot for this. Following these rules and continuing to add quality content to your blog on a regular basis should help you to get approved for the PayPerPost program.
I encourage others to sign up for PayPerPost as it can increase your online money making and provide you with even more topics to blog about. Once you sign up you can take your first easy opportunity, just like this. All you have to do is blog about PayPerPost, then get payed $20. Easy money made!
11/11/07
4 Motivational Lessons from Michael Jordan
Time for some Motivation. The Monetizer was reviewing a favorite DVD recently, "Michael Jordan to the MAX
1) Turn your weaknesses into strengths - Jordan was criticized early in his NBA career as a poor shooter and poor defender. He worked tirelessly and turned these into major strengths. MJ actually became one of the best defenders in the league, and as many of us know he's one great shooter, hitting a lot of game winning shots. Look at the things you don't feel you are doing well to make money online. Is it SEO? Is it your blog's design, or getting more readers? Perhaps its HTML and CSS code you want to learn. Strive to learn all you can in these areas because we can learn so much for free on the internet. There's no excuse not to become smarter when you have a free tool in front of you to learn from.
2) Don't be afraid to try - Jordan turned to baseball after he left basketball. He did this mostly to honor his father, James Jordan who had been tragically murdered. Jordan's father suggested MJ give it a try towards the end of his career. We all know MJ didn't have nearly the same success in this sport, but the message in the Spike Lee/Nike ads was "yeah but he's trying". So the message you can take away here: Don't be afraid to try new moneymaking ideas or ventures. You may fail, but you don't know if you don't try.
3) Use negative emotions to push you - Jordan makes a very good point early in the movie that not making the Varsity basketball team his Junior year of High School really hurt him. It hurt him to the point he lost control of emotions and actually said to himself "I don't ever want to feel this sort of hurt/pain again". And he made sure to put in the work and effort to become the type of player who would never be cut from a team. You can do the same. Use negative comments to drive you to work harder and make your blog better (although some negative comments are just people trying to bring others down). Use the fact you aren't making money like you want to drive you to do what you can to make more. It's a very valuable lesson when put into practice that can really help push you forth to do your best.
4) Make a comeback - You may have left a blog because you felt it was just time to go. It may have been a blog topic you were passionate about, but you left it because it didn't seem to be doing anything for you. However, just like MJ made his grand comeback to basketball, you too can make that comeback to your blog project. The difference is maybe that blog was never a star performer, but then refer to #1 and #3 above, and they make sense. The Monetizer runs several blogs and while they become tiring to maintain, they are still subjects the Monetizer feels passionate about. If you like to write, it's never a problem to make a return to a blog! Put your energy into it using the above 3 strategies and see if you can make it even better!
If you're an NBA or basketball fan, Monetizer highly recommends Michael Jordan to the MAX
, mostly because Michael Jordan is a basketball God and this is one of the best retrospectives of his career. Also, it holds the above keys to motivate you in your life and sticking it into the DVD player just might inspire you!Jordan also fits the similar mold of rap stars who are making mad money. He become a mega brand which is widely recognized and started to expand with more and more products.
Read more about "4 Lessons Rappers Teach Us About Moneymaking".
