TIME's Top 10 Everything Lists of 2008

(image source: TIME.com)

The December 22nd issue of TIME magazine features a look at the "Top 10 Everything of 2008" through a series of lists. These include everything from "Top 10 Breakups" to "Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs" and "Top 10 Movies". The cover even had a Top 10 Buzzwords of 2008 which included "Tweet", a word many Twitterers know well. These lists can be a blogger's dream come true, providing you with some trending topics to blog about, if you haven't already this past year. Some of the topics may continue to be hot in 2009 and beyond, providing you niche material. Here's a few of TIME's Top 10 lists of note:

Top 10 Discoveries in 2008:

1. Snow on Mars
2. Mystery insect in London
3. Fetus in a man
4. Melamine in Chinese Milk
5. Virgin-born shark
6. iPhone "kill switch"
7. Seven human feet, washed up on Pacific Northwest coast
8. Red Sox jersey in Yankees Stadium concrete
9. Marijuana in 2,700 year old Chinese tomb
10. Lost Beatles interview from 1964

Top 10 Gadgets in 2008:

1. Optoma Pico PK101
2. Mitsubishi LaserVue 65 inch HDTV
3. Apple iPhone 3G
4. Nikon D90 Digital Camera
5. foxL Bluetooth Portable Speaker
6. Seinheiser MX W1 Wireless Headphones
7. Flip Video MinoHD
8. Kindle by Amazon
9. Roku Netflix Box
10. Sony Playstation Home for PS3

In case you're wondering, gadget #1, the Optoma Pico PK101 is described as the type of gadget James Bond might carry. It's a projector that plugs into your iPhone or iPod and projects video/movies onto a flat surface up to 8 feet away. Pretty nifty, with a price tag of $399, but only available for pre-orders right now. TIME believes the Roku Netflix box which streams movies to TV may replace DVD at some point in the future, and Amazon's Kindle may be taking the place of good ol' fashioned books.

10 Coolest iPhone Apps:

1. Pandora Radio
2. AroundMe
3. AP Mobile News Network
4. Ocarina
5. Wikipanion
6. Adrenaline Pool Lite
7. Instapaper
8. NetNewsWire
9. iTalk
10. Fake Calls

Top 10 Movies 2008

1. WALL-E
2. Synecdoche, New York
3. My Winnipeg
4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
5. My Winnipeg
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7. Slumdog Millionaire
8. Iron Man
9. Speed Racer
10. Encounters at the End of the World

The Monetizer needs to interject on the movies list. Where in the world is "The Dark Knight"??! The Batman Begins sequel was a smash hit at the Box office, and received acclaim for its story and acting, especially that of Heath Ledger as The Joker. It definitely was the superior superhero flick when compared to Iron Man.

You get the idea from the lists above, these make for great blog post titles and subject material for blogs to make money online. Possibly a new niche for interesting iPhone apps or the Sony Playstation Home, a virtual world that comes for Free with the PS3? The sky's the limit as we head into 2009, and millions more blogs are in the making!

2 New Moneymakers - Testing in Progress

Hello make money online fans! The Monetizer has been busy updating other blogs to try to increase their earning power. I recently started tinkering with two other money making programs you may or may not have heard of. One is Chitika, a program that serves mini-mall style product ads or in text ads. The other is Rocket Profit, which has a slew of great affiliate offers you can promote for cash.

While I'm no expert on either program, I can fill you in on the basics. Chitika offers several types of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads with great features. Their latest they are promoting are the Premium - PPC Ad Units which will display only to search engine traffic on your blog or website, and also are fully compatible to place with Adsense on your site. The search traffic feature is nice, because that way your regular subscribers won't be pestered by annoying ads above your blog posts or site, only search traffic gets them. Chitika offers 4 other types of ads in addition to premium. There's Linx ads which are similar to Kontera, where certain words or phrases in your text are underlined. If users click those, that generates PPC income for you! Chitika's other choices are Graphic ads, eMiniMalls and Multiple Product Units (MPU's). Minimum payout is $50 with Chitkita, and from what I've heard the click through rates are great and the amount per click is also pretty nice. Check out Chitkia here.

Rocket Profit has some great potential as well. This affiliate program offers 100's of ads ranging from email, cell phone or zip code captures to lead/profile sign-ups. Some offers pay $2 just for someone submitting their cell phone number, zip code, or email address. Other offers are for leads such as $30 for purchasing various software or subscriptions. The minimum amount you have to earn with Rocket Profit is just $25. They provide you with your own account manager via phone, email and AIM for customer support. As mentioned have a lot of great banner, email and text type links you can use. It is my belief that when you apply to RocketProfit you'll need a dot com website, so keep this in mind. That's not to say you can't try with a Blogger blog though! I'll provide a more in depth on both of these programs as I become more familiar with them. Check out Rocket Profit here.

Hope everyone's having a great 2008 Holiday season!

Get Help from Web Hosting Geeks!

The following post is a sponsored review. If you're part of the make money online niche, or just about any other niche, and want to present a professional site to the world, finding a good is key web host. It's been hammered into our heads by all the top bloggers as one of the first steps to take in branding yourself and finding online success. A site called Web Hosting Geeks has been providing hosting reviews, ratings and awards since back in 2004, so they are here to help you sort through the numerous options you face when trying to find a good host.

Webhostinggeeks.com provides a comprehensive look at the best of the best web hosts around including their various awards for top hosting services. These include categories like "Best Host for Email", "Best Host for Blogs" and the overall "Top 10 Best Web Hosts of 2008". Surprisingly, #1 was not GoDaddy or Hostgator, but instead Immotion which for $8.95 a month gives unlimited space, unlimited traffic loads, a free domain name, and the ability to host up to 6 domains on that one account. There are several hosting options on their list that The Monetizer will seriously consider, as they allow unlimited domains and give a free domain with the deal. Amazingly Hostgator was not there despite many bloggers liking their services. My preferred host right now, GoDaddy, was farther down the list but still made the Top 10. Web Hosting Geeks also provides a great selection of articles on their site related to hosting. Eager online entrepreneurs may want to check out the "How to Make Money with Web Hosting" article.

What's great about webhostinggeeks.com is you can read reviews of each of their hosting providers from customers using that host service. This way you can get a feel for the types of problems customers may be facing with the host company and how good their tech support is. A deal for hosting may look good initially but you may find customers complaining there's never any customer support, or their site is down often. You may want to stay away from a host company of this nature. There's a review of Bluehost that you can check out at webhostinggeeks.com to get an idea. Each review provides rankings for price, tech support, user-friendliness, reliability and about 5 other categories important to anyone using web hosting services. Then you can read through individual customer testimonials or complaints regarding the service to see if it's adequate for you.

With the limitless number of web hosting companies in service these days, it will pay off not just in terms of money but in terms of the success of your site. Do your homework and let the Web Hosting Geeks help ease the process!

eBay Frustrations List & Policing

Chris Crum at WebProNews.com has put together his "Top 10 Frustrations for eBay Sellers" List. Coming in at #1 is Management, which is CEO John Donahoe, a man many are calling for a resignation from. Also on the list are things such as the lack of profitability, Paypal issues, technical glitches and buyer issues.

Crum's full list of eBay frustrations:

1. Management
2. Feedback Policy
3. Small Businesses Get Shut Out
4. Lack of Communication
5. Payment Policies
6. Fees/Lack of Profitability
7. Unwarranted Account Suspensions
8. The Buyers Themselves
9. Glitches
10. Lack of Innovation

Read the full WebProNews article here.

In my experience with eBay so far, the Buyer issue has been the only issue I can say has caused frustrations. Lately it seems there are a lot of "practice bidders" or people who create fake accounts in order to just try eBay out. Perhaps they just joined to make money off one of those "Get Paid to" sites, where you need to join eBay and place 1 bid. In addition to that, there are always those dishonest souls who try to get items for free, claiming major damage during shipping or that they never received it. eBay is built on a community of honest buyers and sellers, but they will need to address this as they continue doing business online. My suggestion that new accounts must make a refundable deposit to eBay of $10, and their first bid can't go over that. It may seem ridiculous, but it'd be a great way to prevent those fake new accounts from being made.

As for profit, that hasn't really been an issue, as sellers just need to be creative and innovate more. Finding trash to sell as treasure from garage sales, Goodwills and consignment shops is a skill anyone can develop. With eBay selling, it will really be all about the idea of survival of the fittest. Adapt and expand your business as eBay changes its model. Crum mentions that there are alternatives to eBay too, such as Amazon, Wigix, SeeAuctions and Shopify.

The Monetizer also suggests everyone sign up for the Ebay Partner Network. I can't guarantee everyone will get approved, but the money you can make with this program has very nice potential. More on that in a future blog post...

There's another article at WebProNews discussing eBay and how Congress plans to police it (as well as Craigslist and other sites), by secretly investigating any sellers they suspect are selling stolen goods. The sellers won't be informed they are being watched/investigated. This stems from a bunch of Victoria Secret bra sales, where the bras were sold on eBay for $25, but usually fetched up from $40 to $80. In summation of the article, if the bills pass, anybody who claims to suspect a seller of illegal activity can file a police report, present it to the retail/marketplace provider and then the provider must shutdown the seller. Some commentors on the article are comparing this to the famous novel called 1984 in which the government is playing Big Brother, watching our every move.

Read Congress to Make eBay a Rat