The Winner of 777 EC's is...

Drumroll please..We have a winner in the first ever contest here at The Monetizer blog. This is the contest to giveaway 777 Entrecard credits to one lucky winner. And the winner is...

Laura Williams Musings!

Congrats to Laura, you'll be hearing from me to receive your 777 credits with Entrecard!

Thanks to all otherwho hentered! Here's some link love for those of you I could provide links for! If you're listed below without a link and want a link to your blog, just drop me a line here, or contact me: monetizer[at]myway[dot]com


SEO Rob - Increase Online Traffic
C-Squared
Evelester - DillyDesigns.com
Zoran
Jaklang
Laura Williams' Musings
indoconsoles
br3adman (clint) - PromoMaker
asif - Youth Cocktail
sarah rebecca - This is Not My Bag of Sunshine
emiliana - Bizpreneur Blog

(If your name/link is not listed above and you entered, please contact)

Congrats again to Laura, don't spend all those 777 EC's in one place! (Well actually you will have to spend them through EntreCard)

(Note: The first winner drawn didn't seem to have Entrecard or a real blog entry...So a winner was drawn randomly for a second time at MathGoodies.com)

Monetize with Net Audio Ads

To all money makers you have just today and tomorrow to sign up for the innovative new advertising program from PayPerPlay. With this new program you don't need to get clicks to make money from your website or blog. Instead you will insert code to serve up audio ads from Net Audio Ads and will be payed for the times your ads play. The audio ads are relevant and play for 5 seconds, meaning this program gives you a 100% conversion rate for site visitors. It can't get much easier than that to profit from your blog or site!

Signing up to become an affiliate before February 1, 2008 is especially imperative. PayPerPlay will not be offering its free affiliate program after this date, so make sure to take advantage of it in the next few days. After February 1, the program will only offer money in a "host only" capacity, meaning you can only profit from placing ads on your site and not from referring new members.

There's three tiers by which the Net Audio Ads affiliate program will pay you:

Tier 1 - Get paid for ads on your site. And/or

Tier 2 - Get paid on ads served on the websites of those that you personally refer, and

Tier 3: Get paid on ads served on the websites of those that your direct referrals refer.

Don't let a money making opportunity slip away in the coming days. Become an affiliate with Net Audio Ads prior to February 1, 2008 so you can start to really monetize your website or blog!

Should You Game Entrecard?

I like Entrecard and what it can do to help a blog out, but I'm a bit perplexed over one aspect. The Monetizer is trying to figure out why bloggers will spend an entire day trying to game Entrecard. I've recommended the widget and still continue to recommend it to bloggers. I recently helped a friend who was looking to get his blog going and Entrtecard was one of the first things I had him sign up for and set up. He was impressed at how fast his stats have risen, and I explained it's the EC card droppers. It's a nice traffic boost for a blog and a good free advertising method. But you've also probably noticed there's blogs on EC that cost way too many credits for a day spot on them. I respect all bloggers doing their thing and trying to get noticed. It's really too bad for those people that are forking out tons of credits for overpriced blog ad space. It really forces you to do your research or just gamble on an ad spot. That said, there is the possibility that you can spend 20 credits and get a better deal than 350 would with some blogs.

My recommendation to those that are trying to game Entrecard is that you're really wasting time and efforts by doing that. I'm not saying don't use Entrecard or that it doesn't help. But shoot to get your blog into the search engines if you want to realize more traffic and increase monetization. Once you start finding keywords to target and start getting traffic to those posts, you'll feel much better and won't be working as hard afterwards. Wouldn't you rather be able to make money off things like Adsense while sleeping, instead of spending your day trying to get into the "Most Popular" section on Entrecard?

With that said, why game Entrecard when you can easily enter the "Hit 777 EC's With the Monetizer" contest here? You'll spend minimal time and effort to win 777 credits which can help advertise your blog all over the place!

EC Contest, BloggingZoom, Chow & Sex Sells!

For those who haven't entered yet, the "Hit 777 EC's with the Monetizer" contest is still running! A lucky winner will be chosen February 1st. There's been enough entrants so far to provide the prize, but there's still under a week left to get your shot at hitting it big! Check out the contest details here and get entered so you can do some clever advertising with EntreCard!

Unfortunate news was provided by Courtney Tuttle that Blogging Zoom was hacked a few days ago. It appears the site is back up and running now and has a very stylish Web 2.0 look to it. If you aren't registered yet, please head over and check out BloggingZoom. It's a great site to promote your content and network with other bloggers!

On a side note I've noticed recently that John Chow definitely realizes the importance of "sex sells". He has several recent posts about booth babes including an interesting video showing the power of his camera's Zoom feature. Gary Conn has an article discussing how female bloggers definitely have an advantage these days due to the whole sex appeal aspect. Check out Gary's article titled "Female Bloggers, Search Engine Marketing and Sex". I've always told female friends they need to start blogging!

A final rant is that the Monetizer has noticed tons of conflicting theories around the blogosphere. Do this, do that. You can't do this, you won't make money, etc etc. Some bloggers talk about not revealing your strategies and ideas online, because it's not in your best interest. Others say there aren't enough blogs saying "how to make money" or what to do. I say take all advice you get from blogs online with a grain of salt. Remember that blogs aren't exactly newspapers, and even newspapers have been known to sensationalize and skew stories. It's hard to call any blogger an authority per se, because there's some people who've achieved greater successes, but still others who provide great, useful ideas. Learn all you can and experiment on your own, sometimes you can come up with winning ideas that way!

(Note: Make sure to sign up for Ximmy.com if you haven't yet. It's a great place to share content URL's and vote, similar to Digg.com. However, this site pays for your time and effort!)