ShoppingAds Account Shutdown!

Well friends, I'm sorry to report that popular make money online program, ShoppingAds has closed several accounts, including The Monetizer's. Earlier this morning I received the following email, which some readers here may also have received:

Hello,

In the final hour of evaluation, it has been determined by eBay and ShoppingAds that your account must be deactivated. We know that many of you have been working back and forth with us to try and improve the situation, and we thank you kindly for your efforts. Unfortunately, as warned (that there were no guarantees), we had to take this course of action.

We thank you for your partnership up through this point and wish you the best of luck.

We are in the process of making an aggressive case on your behalf to eBay of having you paid for February’s earnings, and will let you know as soon as we hear back. If you will be paid it will occur on April 1st, 2009.

As for our ads- we strongly suggest that you take down our ad code IMMEDIATELY as you will no longer be paid for hosting them.

Thank you,

ShoppingAds.

Well this is unfortunate, because I do have some money sitting in the account, so hopefully things are resolved and I'll receive that payment on April Fool's day (ha ha). But as always, this is why having a backup earning/ad plan helps. Luckily The Monetizer joined eBay Partner network several months ago, and their terms are much more favorable. Payments come quicker and with less of a minimum earning amount required.



I strongly urge people who got the ShoppingAds account shutdown notice above to switch their ShoppingAds ads to eBay Partner Network ads. Just make sure to match the same style, color and size from your old ShoppingAds to your new eBay Partner style ads so that things don't look too off. You can do this by logging into your eBay Partner Network account, then go to the top menu for Tools, then Widgets (graphic above). Go to the first toolbox widget, "Editor Kit", select "eBay US" (or your appropriate program) and then click "Go". Alternately, you can choose the other widget "Custom Banner" which is in Beta, to create eBay product flash banners for your websites or blogs.

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer

Real Estate Deal: $350,000 Miami Condo for $100!

With the economy just barely treading water, the current real estate market offers some real bargain prices, but there's a current deal that offers a beautiful piece of property for just one Benjamin Franklin. A couple in Miami has decided to give away their Miami condo property via a raffle with tickets costing just $100 a pop. Sound too good to be true? Well there's a great reason for the raffle. Tim Sureth, a 42 year old Army vet, and his wife Diane Thorne are holding the raffle on behalf of Veterans Retreat, a charity group they started which allows wounded veterans to go on fishing trips.

The $350,000 Miami Beach condominium is a spectacular piece of property which includes a pool, courtyard and bay view (Tim's also throwing in a local boxing club membership). It overlooks Biscayne Bay and Star Island, which just so happens to overlook Shaquille O'Neal's house. Other celebs said to be living in that area include Madonna. Tim and Diane had originally planned to sell the property several years ago, but then the market tanked. Now they have decided the proceeds from their raffle can pay the mortgage and help wounded vets all at once. The plan is to use the sale money to buy a retreat in the Florida Keys where wounded vets can fish near and relax at.

Worried about taxes? Tim and Diane have agreed to pay all taxes and maintenance fees through the end of 2009. The catch to their contest is 5,000 or more tickets must be sold. If less than 5,000 are sold, the couple will split the total sales money 50/50 with the winner. Either way, not a bad return on your hundred dollar raffle ticket.

Raffle tickets can be bought at Paypal through the Veteran's Retreat Website.

(Story Source: NYDailyNews.com)

2 Rookie Google Adsense Mistakes to Avoid

So many of the Make Money Online bloggers like to talk about making money with Google Adsense, whether it be how they are planning to purchase a house with their checks someday, or how they're struggling to even earn the minimum for their first check. Some say it's the only way to truly make decent money online, while others will denounce it. You'll even read claims by some that Adsense isn't worth setting up, implementing, testing and re-testing until you get it right. I respectfully dissent.

There are people earning decent amounts and better on a monthly basis from the Google Adsense program, The Monetizer included, and you can be one also. You've seen the infamous checks of bigwigs like Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemaker.com) and Markus Frind (Plentyoffish.com). While my checks aren't near that size, they are good part-time income from one of my recommended money making sources. When I first started out, I was a rookie with Adsense, and to a degree I still consider myself learning the ropes, but I am earning a decent amount. I won't lie as we all know making money usually takes some work or effort, and when it's coming from a publicly traded company like Google, you better believe they don't want to just give it away. That's where Smartpricing comes in, and my understanding is it's to basically protect the people buying ads on Google, so that they are getting "worthwhile clicks from potential buyers" rather than social media clicks or untargeted traffic clicks.

This past weekend The Monetizer decided to undertake a project based on several posts I read about "Google Adsense Smartpricing". In essence, there's been strong suggestions made that you should seriously consider removing Adsense from any site or blog where you're not getting a 2% click rate or higher. Some even suggest it should be 3% or higher, or else remove the Google Adsense ads from that particular page or site. I've had one blog site in particular which has had tons of traffic, but in recent months I saw per click amounts really plummet. Despite that, I've had other sites which had high clicks, making me question if I was smartpriced or not. I decided better safe than sorry, and why risk it happening if it hasn't?

One mistake I made was putting Adsense in too many places, that is on too many blogs and sites. Some topics just don't pay well for Adsense, so why have a site generating pennies, especially if it's not getting clicks? When you start out, your goal is always to make as much as you can, but don't get overzealous and put Adsense everywhere. Testing is good, but overdoing it can cause a headache later. In my case, I made this mistake and was using a free web host just to bypass buying hosting. That lead me to having a lot of html pages I uploaded, each with Adsense ads in them. You can imagine the work it takes to undo that mistake!

The second mistake I've made was I didn't track every single Adsense unit, ad or search box used. I realized now that I had placed a search box somewhere which is generating money and clicks, but didn't track it at all. When you've got a lot of sites and blogs with Google search on them, not knowing which is your top earner can be devastating, even if it's still bringing the money! From the get go, make sure you've put some specific identifying titles on each ad you use on your sites, so you can track each one's effectiveness.

So over this past weekend I ran an advanced report on my Adsense account, and took a look at the overall stats by channels for the past 2 years. Then I began the arduous task of removing Adsense from various pages where the CTR% was below 2%. I've fixed many pages, and if I notice my Adsense income shoot back up, I'll know I've discovered the culprit and hopefully fixed the problem. My goal was to see Adsense earnings continually increase, not hit a lull as I kept doing more work. As I wait to see if click rates increase, I will continue to remove the ads on sites which have low percents, and suggest that anyone else feeling this smart pricing effect do the same. Taking precaution now can help you on your way to those nice monthly income checks from Adsense that other bloggers blog to you about.

One final word: I read an interesting free e-book PDF this past weekend, which made a good point saying you should master one monetization method fully before moving on to mastering the next method. While it's ok to add in some other affiliate offers or ads on your site(s), consider making mastery of Adsense a priority if you truly want to earn those monthly checks from the Big G..

Recommended reading:

How To Get Worthless Adsense Clicks by Courtney Tuttle

Is Adsense Smart Pricing Killing Your Earnings? by Grizzly

Joel Comm's Twitter Power - Follow the Leader?

Once again one of the gurus of internet money making, Joel Comm, has released a book about you guessed it, making money on the internet. This time however, Joel has intelligently tapped into the Twitter craze with a book appropriately titled "Twitter Power". While I've yet to read the book cover to cover, from scanning the Amazon.com free preview "Surprise Me" sections and Table of Contents, it looks like a valuable asset. For some of us that is...

One thing I always recommend here at The Monetizer Blog is reading, but doing it as cheaply as possible. It's the best way to learn or research a subject you're interested. Others might tell you "no buy this special report or 100 page e-book, it's better". Many of the special reports and e-books that cost money are made up of information that's already floating around for free. You can find blogs about every subject, and while they aren't always expert opinion, you can gain all sorts of ideas. Libraries are free, unless you're late in returning books. It's good to be able to access just about any info you want these days for little money. Plenty of people have written about Twitter and Darren Rowse of Problogger has even created a site offering tips from himself and other Twitterers, called www.twitip.com.

Chapters of Twitter Power Include:

* An Introduction to the Social Media Landscape
* Getting Started the Right Way on Twitter
* Building a Following on Twitter
* The Art of the Tweet
* Leveraging Twitter for Team Communication
* Using Twitter to Drive Behavior

When it comes to Twitter, Joel covers the things that many bloggers are already talking about, such as making a professional looking background for your Twitter profile, linking to your blog or site on the profile, how to make your About Me memorable or descriptive in few words, and more about how to make Tweets that help you in marketing. Chapter 10 just by looking at the Table of Contents, may be a valuable resource but it lists out each of the various Third Party Twitter Tools you can use. Joel may offer insight into their uses or helpfulness, but you can also gain this through visiting the respective sites. Again, Joel is smart to capitalize off these topics by putting all the "ideas floating around" into book form and you've got to respect his business sense in profiting from the popular internet topic. It's always possible there are some "golden nuggets of info" in his book that make the book worth its current cover price, but I believe this book will be more valuable to those who are new to Twitter or businesses looking to gain an edge there. The rest of us have read these ideas on multiple blogs from John Chow to Problogger. So for the average Twitterer, we may already have the Power Joel is describing, without reading his book.

Follow the Monetizer at Twitter

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time is currently available at Amazon.com