Archive for the 'Make Money Online' Category

Attention all mommy bloggers (and other bloggers too)! SocialSpark is here at last. I did promise in my previous post that I was going to talk about another way you can find money making opportunities for your blog.  Well, I was talking about SocialSpark. So what is SocialSpark? Lets see, the best way I can describe it is SocialSpark is like a cross between a blog advertising site like PayPerPost, a statistics and analytics calculator site like Site Meter or IzeaRank and a social networking site like Blog Catalog. Everything rolled into one. Its a social networking site for bloggers and advertisers. Fantastic! I love it. Now I don’t have to click or monitor several sites when one site does it all.I’ve just signed up so I’m still feeling my way around but I like what I see so far. Here’s what I like about it.

• when you click on an opp you are interested in, you will see the recent visitors to the opp, people who have taken the opp, recent posts for the opp (including the number of words - so much detail!) as well as the best post to date (Ooh! I love a challenge and must try to get to the best post to date page.). It also shows the number of opps the advertiser has created. You can also leave your comment for the opp. One click on the advertiser’s link will bring you to the advertiser’s profile with even more details.
• on the other hand the blogger’s profile page will show you the blogger’s profile, the blogger’s blogs (and most bloggers have a few these days) and the blogger’s network of friends. You can also leave comments or vote for the blogger just like most social networking sites. However, clicking on the blogger’s blog links will give  you much more detailed information like the blog’s RealRank and Alexa Rank (no Google pagerank here), pageviews, visitors, detailed demographics in numbers and graphs.  You can also view summaries of the latest blog posts from the blogger. All these are extremely useful information for an advertiser. Its very transparent all out in the open. I would also advise you to make your numbers public (if you have previously made it private) in IzeaRanks because advertisers like to see numbers
• On the home page you can browse blogs or browse opportunites, if you like to interact, you can go to the community tab and browse users, participate in the Izea boards, read the Izea blog or watch RockStartUp
• Under your account tab, you can manage your finances, manage your public profile or your blogs and view your messages from your friends, advertisers or customer love
• The opps use no follow links and there is complete disclosure like what you see at the bottom of this post
• There is a bonus payment for best posts for certain opps. This is great because bloggers will be motivated to write better posts to qualify for the bonus as well as get extra traffic from being linked as best post for the opp

Here is a preview of how your profile will look like at SocialSpark. Nice?

Credit for Image: I am sure that the good folks at Izea won’t mind that I took their screenshot for this

Now for some of my grouses so far. You have to wait in Q for opps and once available you only have 12 hours to complete it. 12 hours is too short for bloggers who are not in the same time zone as SocialSparks. I am afraid that if I get the opp reserved for me in the morning SocialSparks time (at night my time) and I only find out about it the next morning (my time), I would have missed the 12 hours deadline. Another thing, I managed to reserve the opp at a certain price but it keeps on fluctuating higher and lower on a demand and supply basis I presume. Thats very frustrating when I manage to get it at a much lower price. But these are minor grouses which I believe will be ironed out. Afterall, they just came out of Alpha and is in Beta now. I was an Alpha tester but only for a day. Haha.

My major grouse is now I will be stuck in front of the PC for many more hours each day monitoring my SocialSpark activities. Help!

Note: Opp = Opportunity to write a sponsored post for an advertiser

BTW, there are three kinds of Opps in SocialSpark.

1. The regular Sponsored Posts
2. Blog Sponsorships ie advertisers sponsoring your blogs on a day to day basis
3. Sparks - Free Opps. You don’t get paid for this but they may count as interim posts. Anyone can create a Spark. You can create a spark to create a buzz for your own blog and leave a “bloguback” to all bloggers who take up your opp. Its like tit for tat. I rub your back, you rub me back. In this case I buzz you and you buzz me back. Everyone benefits from this blog pimping for each other. And if the spark comes from an advertiser, no problem if you don’t get paid, it’ll give you more blogging ideas for blog posts

I’m really long winded here and thats because I’m really just so excited about this new platform for bloggers to network with advertisers but I won’t keep you any longer.  Mommies, Daddies and everyone else, why not go register and find out for yourself what SocialSpark is all about?

“It only takes a spark to get a fire going.”

Saya hanya seekor Pelanduk, lagi pun Pelanduk betina pula, jadi apabila Gajah (Google) sama Gajah (PPP etc) berjuang, saya pun mati lah di tengah-tengah. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Kesiannya Pelanduk betina ni. Literally translated, this Malay idiom means that when Elephants wage war against each other, Deers die in the midst.

Enuf said. Thats my view of the World Wide Web World War going on right now. Google the big brother on the internet, in its action to slap all sites with paid links by taking away their PR has declared war. In response, PPP is charging on ahead with its first frontline defense, ie. RealRank and later on SocialSpark, come January.

Amidst this great war, the poor “Pelanduk” (Deer=Small time blogger trying to earn some moolahs) dies a quick death (if you surrender) or a slow death (due to lack of jobs). Take your pick. Neither sounds like a good choice. Even if you choose to sit back and do nothing but watch the war (as I have chosen to do), there is still the dark cloud of King Google removing you completely from its index handing over your head. (Horror of horrors!) Then you are kaput for good.

Well, my PR is gone now and I’ve just got my RealRank so now I sit back and see what’ll happen next. Will PPP be able to convince advertisers that RealRank is the real thing? Will Google take the next step that is feared by all ie removal of sites with paid links from its index? Will I get more jobs, assignments, campaigns or whatever it is you want to call it again?

Izea has this to say about its RealRank.

“Your numbers may change from increased participation and competition, however your numbers aren’t going to change because we decide we don’t like the content on your blog or the ad units you are serving from a competitor.”

Taking a stab at Google perhaps?

We don’t really know what Google’s real intention is. Are they really trying to maintain their search relevancy or are they just taking out ad units served by competitors? Maybe both but dear Google you are hurting a lot of real people like my goodself here. I work really hard at trying to become a WAHM from a SAHM (meaning housewife trying to earn some little pocket money to supplement her one income family). I work really hard at keeping my blog content fresh and original. Even my paid links content are original, fresh and new. That deserves a good PR.

If you want to go after sites, go after those that have nothing accept paid links within their content. Go after the content stealers, those that steal my blog posts just as soon as it is published. Those are the ones with duplicate postings that hurt your search engine results with duplicate content and are nothing but spam. But who am I to say anything. I am just a small “pelanduk betina” and you are the big “Gajah” so I just sit here and blog as usual and wait for things to improve or die a slow death.

BTW, my RealRank for my blogs is around 1-2k. These numbers will change daily as it is calculated daily. What does this mean? At the moment RealRank is open only to PPP registered users but it will be open to the public eventually. So if 50,000 PPP users have real rank installed, that means I am doing fine but if say only 3,000 has RealRank then I am somewhere near the bottom, something like that. What is your RealRank?

Sometime ago I read in 5xmom’s blog about why do you blog ie whether its for yourself, for the glory or for the money. I can’t remember which blog post was that or what she said exactly but it was something to that effect. That lady churns out blog posts, one after another, like a factory production unit, I don’t know how she does it.

Anyway, that got me thinking about where I’ve been and where I am in my blogging. When I first started blogging, I blogged for myself. It started out as my personal online diary. I blogged about myself for myself. In it, I wrote things I wanted to remember and I included useful links that I could easily search for when I needed it instead of stuffing them all in my favourites folder.

After a while, I started having readers who left comments on my blog. Having readers changed my writing style a little. I was no longer blogging solely for myself but for an audience. I started blogging for the glory of it. Its nice to have a growing base of readership and to have people dropping by leaving you comments. Nice, fun and quite ego boosting too if I may say so.

Then for those of us who began to monetize our blogs, we started blogging for the money and we no longer cared about the glory. Hahaha. Ok. Ok. We still cared about the glory but when you blog for money you lose some of the glory. Some glory but not all. You have to be careful how you manage your blog so that its still you.

After a time, you start to become bored with writing for the money so you start writing for yourself again. Thats what happened to me. I’ve come one full circle. I’m back to writing for myself again. Writing about the things and people I love, the things I observe etc, I also write a little bit for the glory and some for the money.

This way, blogging is 3 times more fun then when I first started. What about you? Which stage of the blogging life cycle are you at? For some good fun and a good laugh, you can read this - Lifecycle of Bloggers. I am sure that most bloggers can identify with it. I believe that Once a Blogger, Always a Blogger and sometimes one blog is not enough to feed the addiction.

A Reader’s Toolbox: Nowadays, blogging is trendier than making a website because, you don’t need web development courses and blogging is possible without any script based web design layout . Though making a personal website too is no more difficult with the help of free website templates that include css templates as well as flash templates.

Boo Hoo Hoo. I just turned down USD65 worth of work. Thats about RM220. Can go shopping in Robinsons with that. I was so happy to open my mailbox and see the offers this morning but then….

I was supposed to write about online casino and online gambling but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t believe in gambling because I think it causes problems for families. Many gamblers can become addicted to gambling. Its even easier to become addicted when it comes with the privacy of being online.

Waahhh. I could easily have submitted this very post and put in the link to the online gaming site and earn it but……….. Sob. Sob.

Nevermind, to comfort myself, I shall go and write more of my own posts and look for other work.   

Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of starting another blog. I don’t have the time but I can still dream, can’t I? Now, what shall the blog be about? Shall it be a food blog (nyah I’m a so-so cook), a finance blog (I could get hubby to give some input), a beauty blog (I’m not very beautiful, so errr… hahaha), a Marketing Blog (I’m not a marketing person, I’m too straight), a hobby blog, a household tips blog, a review blog or…..

Please excuse me for dreaming but having blogs and collecting blogs is an irresistable hobby. After you’ve been blogging for a while, you will realise that one blog is not enough. Its so exciting to start new blogs and build your cyber real estate. Besides, the lure of $$$ is hard to resist. Once you’ve got a winning formula, duplicating it is easier than when you first started.

Anyway, the reason why I’m dreaming about a new blog is because I only have one dot.com (this one) and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to fill all the advertiser orders in it. I have to turn down many offers to write. Although this blog is newer than my Parenting Blog, has less readers, page load etc, its doing better in Alexa rankings and is definitely preferred by advertisers. So here I sit dreaming of another dot.com to grow and nurture. Now, if only I had the time………

It happened to me again this morning. I didn’t have to press “accept” to have the amount credited into my account. I wonder if this is just temporary or a new thing. If it is, it’ll be good, no need to keep on pressing “accept” for each and every transaction.

Anyway the good folks at Paypal has replied to me. This is what they said.

Hello, I will be happy to assist you with your question
regarding your PayPal account.

Understand you concern about the two transaction.

By checking your PayPal account information, I found that the two
payments have been instant credit in your PayPal balance on Oct. 1,
2007. You do not need to accept them manually Please log in your PayPal
account for the double check. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
PayPal, an eBay Company

So those who also had the same trouble can rest assured that your account is not being played around with by anyone with unauthorised access.

This morning when I logged into my Paypal account to accept my payments I was surprised to see that out of the several payments from various sources that I received today, some showed the status of “complete” even though I hadn’t pressed the accept button yet. So I immediately wrote to support.

However as I was accepting my first payment, upon completion, I saw that the rest turned into the “complete” status even though I hadn’t accepted them yet. So I had to write another email to support.

I read that Malaysians can now receive Adsense payments via direct transfer to our bank accounts and Paypal payments with the  use of debit/credit cards with some local banks. That is great news. As usual, I will wait for the big big tai kor and tai soh to carry out their transactions before I try out. Hehe.

Anyway, back to Paypal, has anyone had this problem before? I wonder if there is a bug in the system or there is unauthorised use of my account. What a lousy way to start a day.

Independent Note: Several web hosting services, especially the popular ones like ix web hosting offer the personalized accounts for the webmasters where they can take or receive payments. It’s good to read webhosting reviews of powweb or other hosting companies before you decide for the best web hosting service that provides a personalized account service or at least a pay pal support.

This post is for those who write sponsored posts and have to maintain several blogs.

Now that you’ve started writing paid posts and maintaining several blogs to maximise your earnings potential, you’ve got to work really hard to maintain those blogs. Your regular visitors are not going to read each and every one of your blogs even if they love you. So how do you make your visitors stay longer? Regular as well as Search Engine Visitors? You link to your own blogs, thats how. (Another reason why you would want to link to your own blogs is to benefit from your own page rankings).

I just discovered that  you can use the Google Reader sharing tool to do this. I read that its a good idea to subscribe to your own blog rss feeds to be indexed or found by the top 3 search engines ie Google, MSN and Yahoo and thats what I’ve done.

After subscribing to my own feed using Google Reader, I can select or deselect recent blog posts from my blogs and share them. I can put a clip of my shared items anywhere I like on my blog. I’ve put them at the end of single posts as well as on my sidebar. You can check out the end of this post if you’re reading this single post or the end of my sidebar if you are on my homepage. (You can check out my Parenting Times blog or Mothering Times blog for more examples.) Visitors can click on any of the post headings that interests them and be directed to my other blogs or they can click “read more” and be directed to a url with all of my shared items there. You can see posts from all of my blogs listed there. There is even an rss feed for my shared items.

You can choose from a number of colored formats you like for your clip. I chose none so it blends seemlessly into my blogs in terms of size and color. You can share anything, not just your blog posts. You can share any link that you like with your friends or relatives by emailing them the url to your shared items or placing them on your blog the way I did.

I simply love Google. I use quite a number of tools in my Google Account. I have Gmail, Blogger and Google Reader. I also use Webmaster Tools and Analytics to monitor my stats. I like the Query Stats in Webmaster Tools. It shows me my top search queries and my average top position on Google search result pages. I subscribe to Google Alerts and I have a personalised iGoogle page. I am using the Beach Theme for my iGoogle and I love it. The sun rises and sets on my desktop according to my time.

This is what I do when I don’t write paid posts. I fiddle around on my blog to see how I can improve it.

Independent Note: A superb business web hosting always considers the traffic aspect of the website. Renowned companies like linux shared hosting or lunarpages do their best to facilitate the webmasters by providing several free webmaster tools. If you’ve taken the services of a cheap hosting server , then it’s preferable to use Google webmaster tools. The yahoo hosting tools are good, too but Google tools are easier to use for beginners.

I have been writing sponsored posts for some time now. I consider it my job. Its a job I love because ….

• I love to write
• I am my own boss
• I earn without leaving my home
• I discover and learn about new things all the time
• I feel a warm sense of achievement and pride or a good feeling overall when I’ve written a good piece
• I improve my writing skills (the more I write the better I become with practise)

Just like anyone else, I have my own views about writing paid posts but I don’t think I’ve penned it down before so I shall. Here’s my Top 11 dos and dont’s if you aspire to become a professional sponsored post writer.

1. Treat it professionally and not just something you do on the side. I take writing paid posts very seriously. I always read the advertisers’ requirements, visit their websites and try to write a good review to match those requirements based on the information available on the site.
2. Do your homework. Do some research like visiting similar sites or checking up some terms used. Do a google search to find out what comes up tops for certain keywords. In other words, do your homework before you write your review. Give it lots of thought and research.
3. Write a professional “press release”. Don’t bluff. To me a good review is like writing a press release on behalf of your client the advertiser. Its a review of the product or service available at their site. Don’t bluff by endorsing a product you’ve never even used before by saying “I’ve used it and its really wonderful.” Thats unethical and unprofessional. Just say “This site has this product that ….”  To me, a good review is like writing a professional press release.
4. Never ever copy and paste. Not from the advertiser’s site and certainly not from competitor’s sites or other paid post writer’s sites.
5. Don’t apologise for writing paid posts. I’ve seen these too many times. Many bloggers apologise for writing paid posts. Sometimes they say “Please bear with me. Once I start a new blog, I won’t flood it with paid posts.” And when they start a new blog, they once again flood it with paid posts. To me apologising means you don’t believe in what you do. You think that paid posts are terrible for a blog but you do it anyway for the money. I believe in what I do. I believe that its not easy to write a sponsored post. You have to maintain your blog well, make sure you fill it up with good content so that you achieve higher rankings. You need to manage your time well because it can be time consumming and encroach on your personal life and time. You need to do your homework as what I’ve mentioned above. To me your blog is like a cyber real estate. Its really nice to grow it and turn it into something worthwhile but its not easy to do that. It requires WORK. Once you have done all that WORK (and its a continuous process), I don’t see whats so bad or wrong to write posts for advertisers who wish to pay you to write a review for them. Its a win win situation. Advertisers benefit from your link (the higher your rankings the more worthwhile your link is), the traffic and channeling of search engine results towards their pages and they don’t mind paying you for that. The blogger benefits by being paid and the satisfaction that comes from writing a good post.
6. Don’t be arrogant. This is the opposite of 5 above. Some writers say to their readers. “This is my blog. I can do whatever I like with it and if you don’t like the fact that I write paid posts, you can leave!”
7. Don’t be blinded by money. It can be very tempting to write as many posts as you can squeeze in because the more you write the more you earn. Try not to. Sometimes you have to turn down an offer because its something you just can’t write about. Its something totally alien to you and something you don’t believe in. You won’t be able to write a good post that way.
8. Don’t violate Terms of Service (TOS). Most sponsored posts intermediaries have some TOS. Usually they require your blog to have a certain percentage of your own original postings. Some bloggers violate this by writing paid posts for several companies back to back so they can earn more. If you do this, you earn more at first but in the long run your blog loses its worth. Regular readers will leave when they have nothing to read accept sponsored posts and advertisers don’t like it either so why do it? While on the subject of TOS, I have another thing to comment. Some TOS requires that you have your own original posts in between the paid posts and many bloggers like to say “I am writing this filler post….” Even if you are writing a filler post, do so quietly, you don’t have to announce it to the world. It looks very unprofessional and I am sure advertisers won’t be impressed. Speaking about TOS, I must share a story. Recently, I unintentionally violated a TOS of writing more than my limit of posts allowed. (Yes, that can happen). I wasted a lot of time (both support’s and my own) trying to do everything I could to prevent my post from being rejected. My advice? Don’t! Rules are rules. Even if you have violated them by accident and you are penalised for it, Accept the decision and move on.
9. Don’t write a quick or half hearted post just for the money. Its quick money to write a quickie. Write some stuff and slot in the keyword that the advertiser wants ie. “Wham Bam” and move on to the next. The quality of your posts will suffer. Its better to have a few good quality postings and let your blog speak for itself so that you receive more and better orders rather than a lot of poor quality posts written in a hurry.
10. Anyone can write a sponsored post but not everyone can write a good sponsored post. This one comes with practise I suppose. You require certain writing skills to write a professional review. You need to relate it with your own experience, write for a special audience ie think about the readers when you write. You can’t write it the same way as you write your own blog or online journal. Its got to be in a different writing style. And always use proper English and check your spelling and sentences.
11. Use Pictures. I like to use pictures because they speak louder than words. Besides it gives my blog more color and character plus I don’t have to worry about picture copyright when I use advertiser’s pictures and they would be pleased too.

I think the many professional sponsored post writers out there will agree with what I have written and for those who are thinking of becoming one, I hope this post was useful to you. Happy writing everyone! 

Independent thought: When writing sponsored posts for the purpose of online advertising, one should have sufficient internet marketing information. Because when it comes to internet marketing, the terms frequently used for search advertising , have to be used. Sponsored post writing is partially like a press release or email marketing.

I read on the PPP blog this morning this blog post: Increase the Quality of your Bog. Here’s an exerpt from that post:

My first thought was to pick a few blogs at random but given the previous post it appears people are too sensitive for that. Instead I will open it up to all of you. Who wants to step up and get some constructive feedback?

Post your blog address in the comments and I will take a look at it from an advertisers point of view. I will review it, give my honest feedback (no holds barred) and post it to this blog for all to learn from. You can take my advice or leave it. I have certainly gained a lot from all of your feedback, this is how we get better together.

I’m game. I immediately posted my blog url to get some feedback. I’m shaking in my knees in fear but I’m ready for some feedback. I think feedback is good. Feedback will help you improve. I’m nervous but this is a good chance to receive some feedback.

PPP posties, if you wish to receive feedback too, go and post your blog url in the comment section of that blog post.

I’m only worried the response will be so overwhelming that they won’t have enough time to give feedback on all. Lol!