Friday, January 25, 2008

Blogsvertise.com

I registered for blogsvertise a few weeks ago and still didn't get approved, so I asked a friend, when she got approved, how long did she wait after she registered. She said it took a day or so.
So just before I mailed the admins about my problem, i checked their mail i got after registering. It said I had to write a description about their site before i get approved. Oh my god, how the hell did i miss that?? what in the world was I thinking??
I have no idea....
But anyway, without further ado, the blogsvertise description:

Sow what is blogsvertise.com?
It's basically a paid-to-blog site. Paid to blog sites are sites that pay you to write a review or description of the advertisers site. I've been to quite a lot of these sites but i got rejected by every single one of them. Odd? Not really, my blog is pretty new and doesn't really have a lot of traffic. Usually i get messages like "PageRank too low" or "Your blog has to be at least 90 days old".
This site is different, they are much more friendly to new blogs. If you don't get approved you go on probation. You can still write posts and make money, but you don't get paid as good as the blogs that got accepted. Blogs on probation get tasks that get rejected by other members and they get 2$ per task, while approved members get from 4$ up. It's not really much but it's something!

Other stuff you may wanna know:
You have to post a do-follow link to the site you are reviewing.
You need to write at least 75 words with 2-3 paragraphs.
You get paid in one month after the post has been posted.


So if you're a new blogger this may be your only chance. I really like the attitude to new bloggers. Blogs should be judged by their content not by their age.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The middle finger at widgetbucks!!!!

EDIT: I actually spent an hour and a half writing this =O

So what's wrong with widget bucks?

1st thing:
I had 3 of the big advertising companies on my blog: Adsense, Bidversiter and Widgetbucks (WB). I've been collecting impressions/clicks from them and since WB was the first and only ad i had for a long time, it would be logical that it should make the most money... right? NO.
I got more cash from bidversiter and adsense in a week or two than in the two months I've had WB here. I was very confident that WB would work, but it has let me down completely!
Current results:

impressions | clicks | income
Adsense | 191 | 3 | $0.23 | Proof #1
Bidversiter | 909 | 6 | $1.83 | Proof #2
Widgetbucks | 1057 | 1!! | $0.53 | Proof #3

Please note that i had widgetbucks for the longest (since the start), but Bidversiter has been here only for about two weeks.
Also I would love to use adsense, but they only pay by check and thats a big downfall, so i don't use it (not that i could ever get to 100$ anyway).

---------------------------------------

2nd thing:
They lag!!! People won't sit around and wait for your page to load, unless the really wanna read something. For instance, Entrecard people who are dropping cards, if your site needs more than 5 seconds to fully load, then they'll probably just skip it and go to the next one. Not the much of a problem, but it's another downfall nonetheless.

---------------------------------------

3rd thing:
There are three things i hate the most on the web. Lag, spam and those f*cking bit*ching ads that say something like "THIS IS NOT A JOKE. YOU ARE THE 999,999TH VISITOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! click here to claim" and flash all over the place, sometimes red an jumping around, sometimes flashing, some say stuff like "you got new mail, click here to read" or "get an american green card for free, click here to enter"

Why is this relevant to the topic?
Widgetbucks = those ads
It seems that if you're not from the USA or Canada, the thing you see is that flashy red thing that wants you to click it, cuz "you won the prize"
I had no idea it was like that, until i went on my friends blog, where i saw it... At first I was like "OMG why would you have an ad like that?!?". But she had no idea what I was talking about, she only saw the widget as it should be.

I'm serious, this isn't a joke, I was shocked myself.
PROOF:
My friends site
another one from there


Now this is gonna be FUNNY
On the widget bucks blog, there is an ad and it says "Widgetbucks example" and below it, chances are you're gonna see one of those ads (unless you're from usa/canada):
#1
#2
#3
I guess thats the geographical targeted advertising, they talked about? The 999,999 visitors and bullcrap like that?

------------------------------------------

Last thing:
A new post on their blog says that basically, as of today, NEW MEMBERS won't get the 25$ bonus, only 5% refferal bonus instead of 10% and no more check cashouts, paypal only.
Everyone already registered, won't be affected, but new members will.
(read here)



!!!From now on, this blog doesn't support widgetbucks anymore. *deletes all widgets*!!!

Thursday, January 10, 2008

MMORPG'S and earning

If you're a gamer or even if you're not, you may have come across some web rpg's or other games like that. (I'm sure everyone knows at least one World of warcraft geek :D )
I personally play http://old.thecyberwar.com - a hacker rpg and http://www.theninja-rpg.com/ a naruto rpg.

Every role-playing-game has it's in-game currency like gold, wood or stuff like that. Even though it's sometimes illegal, you can sell these credits for real cash. I earned my first bucks in paypal that way. I'm very good at some games and I'm rich so i can sell that cash for...well... cash.
If you like playing web rpg's this may be a pretty good money earner.


There is also a site that specifies on selling power leveling, gold, gear or even whole accounts on MMORPG's (massive multiplayer online role playing games). (Mainly WoW and guild wars)
http://www.accountol.com is a good example, you select your game then you see some offers, or if you want, you can also search for your favorite class, race, price...

This is a very good money maker, though i don't know how many people buy this stuff, but the prices are very high, some even go above 1,000$ !!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Entrecard.com

I guess since this is the thing that brought me most of my traffic, i should describe it :)

It's not intended to make money, it's only for advertising your blog. It has it's own currency called ECs. You place a small widget on your page and you gain these credits by displaying ads on it. You get paid credits every 24 hours of displaying an ad. To increase the amount of credits you get per ad displayed, you need to get visits from other entercard members who click the "drop yours" button under the widget. By doing that, they get 1 credit and it increases the cost to display an ad on your page, so you get more credits per ad.
Here are my stats at the minute:






It's actually pretty simple and it's a great way to get some traffic to your blog. I can say it's a must have for any serious blogger.

Friday, January 4, 2008

The Easiest Way to Make a Paypal Donate Button

(this article was originally featured at scholarpreneur.com)

Like other people, I had some trouble finding a simple Paypal donate button to put on my blog. After some searching around, I found an easy way to do it myself.

The easiest, safest, and best way to put a Paypal donate button on your Wordpress blog or website is through the Paypal website. Don’t download plugins or widgets with who knows what kind of code in them, when you’re dealing with yours and other’s money.

So how do you do it?
Short guide:

Go to the Paypal Donations Factory. Add the name of your website, pick the button style you want, and click “create button now.” Copy and paste the code given into your blog post or a text widget on your wordpress sidebar.
Long guide:

1. Login to your Paypal account.

2. Click on the Merchant Services tab.

3. Click on the Donate link. It’s under the Create Buttons category.

4. Enter the required information. Donation name/service can be whatever you want, but make it accurate. What they’re asking for is the name of your website or business. You can set a required dollar Amount for your donors to give if you want, but leave it blank if you want to let them set their own amount.

5. Select what you want your button to look like (you can make your image if you want later.)

6. I highly recommend you keep the encryption setting on. This will keep your Paypal information (like your email address) hidden from other people.

7. When you’re done click “Create button now.”

8. The code will be generated and given to you in the first box.

8. Copy all the code in that box and paste it into the html code of your blog or website. If you’re using Wordpress, then you have to click on the “code” tab of the post you’re writing.

9. Click the button on your site to make sure you don’t get any errors.
If you get a “We were unable to decrypt the certificate id” error, your code may have gotten a little messed up after you pasted it. The most likely case is that your blog software or page editor is putting line breaks where they’re not supposed to be. This happened to me. Go back to your button code and look at the very bottom, where it says this:
PKCS7—–
“>

See the quotation mark on the second line? Click in front of it and push backspace to pull that quotation mark up to the previous line, like this:

PKCS7—–”>

Now try it again and see if it takes you to the donation page. Wordpress has a weird way of processing html code. If you already saved your post, you might have to re-paste the code and follow step 9 again.

That’s it! If you want to put this on your Wordpress sidebar, just create a new Text widget, and copy and paste this code into the widget. And boom, there’s your donate button!

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

125x125 ads

I'm testing a new way to get cash from blogs. You have the chance to advertise your site with 125x125 size banners.

These ads appear at the top of the right sidebar on the blog with a maximum of 2 buttons. They are currently priced at $1/week (it was $2/week before). To set up your ad, email your button to " tim @ t-2.net " for approval; once approved you’ll get instructions for sending the payment via PayPal. These ads will NOT have no-follow in them. So this is also a way to improve your PageRank.