New Header Graphic

What do you think of my new header, I knocked it up yesterday? I know it's pretty basic, but I'm no graphic designer. Let me know what you think, is there anything I can do with to make it more interesting?

Tags: headers, graphics

Blog Showoff

Yesterday I submitted my blog to Blog Showoff a new blog directory recently started and I've already had a couple of referrals. Blog Showoff has also become the first advertiser to buy an Adbrite link from me. New directories can usually be a good place to list your blog as you can quite often get in at the top.

Oh well Monday tomorrow and I've got the week off work, I will be spending some time with the family so there may not be that many posts, but I will try and fit a few in.

Tags: blog showoff, blog directory, adbrite

Week 5 Results

Here are my results for week 5 of my quest.

Visitor Stats Last 7 Days

Page Views: 710 Up 160
Unique Visitors: 513 Up 141
Returning Visitors: 113 Up 27

Top 5 Referrees:

Blogger Forum: 45
Blog Explosion: 38
Reddit: 35
Blog Soldiers: 34
Digg: 23

I also had 39 direct visitors, meaning they came from another source other than a website or blog, such as a bookmark or a feed.

Earnings

Free Fivers: £6.67 No Change
Google AdSense: $5.49 (approx. £2.92) No Change
Ciao: £5.34 Up £0.65
Valued Opinions: £2.50 No Change
Global Test Market: 130 Market Points = $8.90 (approx. £4.78) No Change
Test & Vote: 11840 Points = approx. £2.50 No Change
Adbrite: $0.42 (approx. £0.22) Up £0.05
Blogvertise: $12.50 (approx. £6.62) Up £3.96
Money4Blogs: £50.00 No Change
Commission Junction: £0.00 No Change

Grand Total: £81.55 Up £4.66

Another slow week, I haven't been doing many surveys over the last couple of weeks as I've been concentrating on this blog promoting it and writing articles. This is the first week I haven't made any money from adsense, this is because I've been moving things around and trying different things. I've moved the adsense ads down to make room for the Adbrite ads as I think in the short term Adbrite has the potential to earn more money than adsense, I think once I'm getting more visitors then this will probably change. I'm going to keep experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't, once I have some answers I will let you know.

Tags: blog, results, money, adsense, google, earnings, adbrite

Commission Junction & Adbrite - More Ways to Make Money on the Internet Part 2

The other day I started telling you about the 2 new money programs I had signed up to starting with Commision Junction, today I'm going to tell you about the 2nd program.

Adbrite

Adbrite is a text link ad service, where you can choose how much to charge for a link on a per day, per week or per month basis. After signing up for a publisher account all you have to do is decide how many links you want to display and how much you want to charge, then copy and paste a small snippet of HTML code to your template that will handle ad serving, billing and sales. While you're waiting for an advertiser to purchase a link you can choose to display network ads which you are paid per click at a price defined by Adbrite. As well as text links you can also choose to have interstitials, which displays a full page ad when your site is first opened. Adbrite also offer a referral program with buttons like the one below, to allow others to signup and you get a share of the profits made by the referee.




The level of reporting you get is not as comprehensive as Commission Junctions but there is less work for you to do, just add the code and wait for advertisers to request a link which you have to approve.

Advantages

• Easy to setup
• You can set your own price
• Shows network ads if no advertisers buy your links
• A large selection of advertisers

Disadvantages

• Very basic control panel and reports
• Network ads pay very little
• Like all ad schemes you need a lot of traffic to get a good asking price for your links.

Conclusion

So far I've had no takers for my links, I think this is due to my still reasonably low daily visitor count. The network ads that are currently being shown are getting clicks but aren't really earning very much, less than a dollar in the last week or so. Like I've said in previous posts the only way to make money from any ad scheme is to have a lot of traffic to your site. I'm confident that within the next couple of weeks I will start to get offers as my traffic has been steadily increasing from week to week. Overall I think the Adbrite program is a good one even though I'm not making much money at the moment, but I do think it has the potential to earn, I just have to keep working on promoting my site.

If this article has in any way persuaded you to to signup with Adbrite please use the button above, so that we can both benefit. If you do come back and let me know how you get on, with this and Commission Junction.

Wishing you all the best of luck.
Martin

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Tags: affiliate marketing, commision junction, advertising, adverts, adbrite

Digg It! - Give Bloggers the Recognition they Deserve

When next you're roaming the blogosphere and you find an article or post that you really like, if it has a "Digg This!" icon or link make sure you click it, because the more diggs the article gets the more people get to read it. Start giving bloggers the recognition they deserve by digging their posts, if we all start doing this now maybe someday you'll get the recognition you deserve. Visit digg.com now and get a "Digg This!" button on your blog and let more people see your articles and posts.

Please note I am in no way affiliated with digg.com and I am posting this in effort to get myself and others noticed.

Thanks for reading.

Adverisement: Make Money Online


Tags: digg, digg.com

New Tenant

Please visit my new tenant Kelly Hoffart's photo blog Full Metal Photographer by clicking on the thumbnail in the sidebar. Once there you will see some wonderful photographs.

Tags: rent my blog, new tenant, photo blog

DiscountClick Online Marketing Services

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DiscountClick's clients include these well known companies Philips Lighting, JK Design and Stevens Institute.

Commission Junction & Adbrite - More Ways to Make Money on the Internet Part 1

Just over a week ago I signed myself up for 2 more programs that have the potential to make me good money. This is the first article of 2 I will be writing on these programs.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction was the first of the 2 programs I signed up to, this an Affiliate Marketing program, where you get paid per sale or lead rather than per click.

How it works

Once you've signed up and your blog or website has been accepted, you can search for advertisers you want to display on your site. You can search for advertisers in a number of ways, by category, by keyword search and by advertiser name. Each advertiser offers a different value for a sale/lead, some offer a percentage of the sale value and some a fixed value per sale/lead. Once you've found an advertiser whose product you want to advertise, you have to apply to the program, some will accept you staight away while others will manually verify your sites suitability and either accept or deny you. When you've been accepted by a program you can then choose the the ads you wish to display, each advertiser has a wide selection of creative that you can choose, from text only links to button banners to full banners. When you've chosen the ads you can then get the code to add to your template, you are also able to create smartzones that you can add differnet ads to so that you can have a rotation of ads.

Advantages

• Professional site
• Plenty of reports for tracking how well each of your advertisers ads are doing
• Potential for making large earning if you get good sales
• A large selection of advertisers and products to advertise

Disadvantages

• A sale must be made before make any money, 100 people can click on an ad but unless someone actually makes a purchase you won't get any money
• You need a lot of traffic to make money from this

Conclusion

I'm really excited about this program, I really do think it has good potential, no sales have been made as yet so I haven't made any money so far. I think though that if I can increase my traffic enough I will start to see a return, we shall see.

Look out for part 2 tomorrow.

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Tags: affiliate marketing, commision junction, advertising, adverts

Syndicate your Blog with RSS and Feedburner

Syndicating your blog via a feed is a great way of allowing your readers to be automatically notified of new posts without them having to keep checking your site. If you don't know what a feed is or how to publish one, then read on for further information.

What is a feed?

A feed a is a new method for easily distributing online content, two types of feed are RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication and Atom. RSS and Atom are based on XML, a widely used standard for textual information exchange between applications on the Internet. Feeds can be viewed as plain text files, but they're really designed to be viewed in a reader.

How are feeds read?

If you want to browse and subscribe to feeds, there are many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications, also known as “news aggregators”. There are lots of free readers available, a search for "Feed reader" or "Feed aggregator" at popular search sites will yield many results. A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. If you prefer, you can use an online, web-based service to track and manage feeds. Online services give you the advantage of being able to access your feed updates anywhere you can find a web browser.

How do I publish my own feed?

If you are using blogging software such as Blogger (like me) then you are most likely already publishing a feed, without even realizing it. Blogger for example can automatically create the file atom.xml (you will need to check your Blogger settings to see if this feature is turned on), this is your feed.

What's Feedburner then?

Feedburner's services allow publishers who already have a feed to expand on the features provided by the basic feed.

Feedburner offers the following services:

1. Feedburner allows your readers to easily subscribe to your feed no matter what reader they are using, subscribe via email and display how many subscribers you have on your blog itself.
2. By burning your feed it will be properly formatted for all directories and readers and give you the option of adding additional functionality to the feed.
3. You can analyse your traffic to see how many subscribers you have and where they are coming from and what readers they are using.

How much does it cost?

It's free, although you can upgrade your account to get even more functionality, but the free account offers more than enough for most peoples needs.

Are there other companies offering the same or similar services?

Yes there are, Feedburner is just the one that I use, if you perform a search on feed burners I'm sure you will find many more.

Tags: feedburner, feed, rss, atom, syndication

reddit.com can Increase your Traffic

Yesterday I submitted a couple of my articles from this blog 6 Top Tips for Increasing Traffic to your Blog and Blog Explosion - Quick Credits to reddit.com and within a couple of hours I'd had 17 unique visitors referred from them. My writing isn't that great so you can imagine a good writer with really good articles on their blog could increase their traffic considerably.

How it works

You need to register to be able to submit an article, but registration couldn't be simpler go to reddit.com click on the register link in the top right hand corner, enter a username and password and click the "create account" button, that's it your done. Submitting an article is just as easy, click on the submit link also in the top right hand corner, enter the permalink url to your article, then enter the verification letters and click submit. Now that was easy. You should start getting new visitors straight away and if your articles are good (unlike mine) then visitors will give your articles positive marks which keeps them at the top of the list for longer. If you have a really good article it can stay on the first page for a long time giving you an excellent boost in traffic.

Go on start submitting your articles today and see those visitors flood in.

Tags: reddit.com, increase traffic, articles

C & C Monday

It's Monday once again, the weekend is over and it's time to click and comment, today I have visited and commented on the following blogs:

Bold Contemplations
The Great Blog Review
Winsome Gunning Art Walk
New York Nitty-Gritty

If you don't know what this is all about see my previous post about it here.

Tags: click, comment, monday, increase, visitors, rent blog

Week 4 Results

It's the end of week 4 already and it's that time again to look at my results for the week, this time I'm including my visitor stats as well.

Visitor Stats Last 7 Days

Page Views: 550
Unique Visitors: 372
Returning Visitors: 86

Top 5 Referrees:

Blog Explosion: 28
Blogger Forum: 21
Digg: 14
Technorati: 12
Mike's Money Making Mission: 11

Earnings

Free Fivers: £6.67 No Change
Google AdSense: $5.49 (approx. £2.92) Up £0.66
Ciao: £4.69 Up £0.04
Valued Opinions: £2.50 No Change
Global Test Market: 130 Market Points = $8.90 (approx. £4.78) Up £1.31
Test & Vote: 11840 Points = approx. £2.50 No Change
Adbrite: $0.32 (approx. £0.17) New
Blogvertise: $5 (approx. £2.66) New
Money4Blogs: £50.00 One-off
Commission Junction: £0.00 New

Grand Total: £76.89 Up £53.53

This week has been better but only because of an offer of £50 to include a link on all three of my blogs to an insurance web site. I've had a good increase in visitors to my blog this week, so I'm very pleased about that. Over the next week I'm going to continue to promote this blog and hopefully icrease my traffic further.

thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Tags: blog, results, money, adsense, google, earnings

6 Top Tips for Increasing Traffic to your Blog

Although I'm not getting 1000's of visitors a day my traffic has been steadily increasing over the past 4 weeks. These are my tips for what has been working for me, if you disagree or think I've missed something out let me know by leaving a comment.

1. Join Traffic Exchange Programs

Traffic exchange programs such as Blog Explosion and Blog Soldiers can get you lots if traffic very quickly, especially when you first sign up as they usually give you free credits to start with. The problem with this sort of program is that although you're getting lots of traffic you can't really be sure any of the people browsing your site are actually reading your content and not just browsing to get credits for their own traffic. But saying that even if you only get 1 regular reader out of every 100 visitors that's good going.

Warning Adsense Users: Do not use these traffic exchanges if you have adsense ads on your blog as Google may close your account.

2. Submit Your Blog To New Directories

I have submitted my blog to probably over 20 directories and the ones I get the most traffic from are the new directories with only a few links such as http://rhyswynne.co.uk/toplist/ where I'm currently in the Top 10. Bloggers seem to be very quick to find new directories so if you get in there early your blog will be at the top of the list when new bloggers come to join.

3. Exchange Links With Other Blogs

A lot of my traffic comes from other blogs that have either added me to their Blog Roll because they like my site or because we have exchanged links. Try and find blogs that are similar to yours and where there can be a mutual benefit for exchanging links. I've recently exchanged links with Mike who also has a blog about trying to make money on the internet and I have received quite a number of referrals from his blog. Also when exchanging links like this try writing a post about them pointing visitors in their direction, they might do the same for you. The other advantage to exchanging links with other blog is that the more blogs that link to you the higher your Technorati ranking (see the next tip).

4. Use Technorati Tags In All Your Posts

Technorati is a great resource for finding interesting posts in blogs and the best way of doing that is by searching for tags. Tags are like keywords, so that when you do a search in Technorati it looks for these tags in individual posts. Click here to find out how to tag your posts. Tagging your posts has the added advantage that, if your posts can be easily found people can link to you and as mentioned in the last tip the more links to your blog you have the higher your ranking in Technorati is, which again makes your blog even more visible.

5. Join Forums And Contribute

I've mentioned this before in other post but joining and being part of a blogging forum is a great source of traffic. There are a lot of good blogging forums out there two of my faourites are Blogger Forum and Blogger Talk but there are lots more. When joing a forum bear in mind that you are joing a community and it's not enough to just write a post with a link to your blog and say look at this, you need to become a part of the community. By all means put a link in your signature, but write meaningful and useful posts, reply to other posts with helpful comments, above all DO NOT SPAM.

6. Visit Other Blogs And Comment

Try to actively read lots of blogs and leave meaningful comments, just like the forum tip, don't just leave useless comments like "Nice blog", try to be constructive. By leaving meaningful comments you let the owner of the blog know that you've been there and read what has been written and they might in turn visit your blog and leave a comment.

Well those are my tips I hope they're useful, let me know what you think.

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Tags: tips, increase traffic, blog

Visit My Renter

Please pay a visit to my new renter Bold Contemplations by clicking the thumbnail on the left sidebar and while your there maybe even leave a comment.

Cheers

Tags: rent my blog, blog exploaion

Calling all Lurkers

Text borrowed from JohnTP.com
Idea from Internet Marketing Fool

I get around 60 visitors a day and I still get comments only from a few. Now's your chance to shine and show yourself. Gather up some courage to say hello.

Tell me a bit about yourself- who you are, where you're from, what you do, what you like the most and what you would like to see on this site. This can also encourage me to post more frequently.

This will also help you to get to know some of the other lurkers and will even give you a few hits to your site if you have one.

For those of you who do not know what a lurker is, let me help by saying that a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a blog or other interactive system like chat room or forum , but rarely participates by contributing their comments.

Comments from all visitors are welcome.

Tags: blog comments

Advantage Processors

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So, if you're wanting to sell online and you want to be able to accept credit cards maybe Advantage Processors' sales team can help.

Visitor Statistics

It's always important when promoting a website or blog to have statistics of visitors, so you know what is and isn't working. I use StatCounter for my stats, but there are many others to choose from. StatCounter is very easy to setup, just register, then copy and paste the provided code into your template and it starts logging your visitor stats straight away.

My Stats

Total Page Loads: 1,371
Total Unique Visitors: 827
First Time Visitors: 611
Returning Visitors: 216

Visitors recently came from

Blog Soldiers: 26
MSN Search: 9
Mike's Money Making Mission: 6
Blog Explosion: 6
Caylynns's Contemplations: 4
Technorati: 3
Google Search: 2
Blog Top Sites: 2
Digg: 2

I haven't been as active on the forums this last week so I would normally have more traffic coming from them. You may have noticed that there are hardly any directories on this list and I have submitted my blog to over 20 of them. I'm not sure if anyone actually uses directories to find blogs, I think they're there just there to increase the number of backlinks.

Conclusion

Apart from traffic exchange programs, the best source of visitors is other blogs, so cultivating good relationships with other bloggers and exchanging links is a good idea. Going back to traffic exchange programs, although they do provide you with a good amount of traffic, although visits from Blog Explosion has seemed to have slowed down recently, I can't vouch for whether these visitors are reading my blog or just clicking through.

Thanks for reading

Tags: statcounter, blog explosion, traffic, statistics, blog soldiers, visitors,

C & C Monday

It's Monday again, so today I visited and commented on the following blogs:

http://www.womendiary.net
http://caylynn.blogspot.com
http://ghostworksonline.net
http://onemanbandwidth.com/wordpress
http://menjiness.blogspot.com

Not many today, I've been busy doing other things, I will do better next week.

If you don't know what this is all about see my previous post about it here.

Tags: click, comment, monday, increase, visitors, rent blog

Advertise here for only $1 per day

Yes thats right people you can you can have you text link ad on my sidebar on all my pages for only $1 per day yes you heard me right $1 per day, please hurry as there are only 2 spots to fill.

Click here to place your ad.

Please note: I'm only joking about hurrying, I'm not expecting anybody to take this offer up.

Tags: adbrite, ad, advertise here

Week 3 Results

It's the end of week 3 so it's time to look at my results for the week again.

Free Fivers: £6.67 No Change
Google AdSense: $4.21 (approx. £2.26) Up £0.47
Ciao: £4.65 Up £2.08
Valued Opinions: £2.50 No Change
Global Test Market: 130 Market Points = $8.90 (approx. £4.78) Up £1.31
Test & Vote: 11840 Points = approx. £2.50 No Change

Grand Total: £23.36 Up £3.86

This week was worse than last week despite the increased number of visitors I've been getting. It's disappointing, but I've got some new ideas that I have only just put into practise that will hopefully bring in more revenues. I'll let you know what these are in my next post. Here's hopeing that next week gets a bit better.

See ya.

Tags: blog, results, money, adsense, google, earnings

Link Exchange

I'm currently looking to exchange links with blogs on a similar subject ie making money on the internet, anyone interested please leave me a comment with the title of your blog and the url.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Martin

Tags: link exchange

Honourable Mention

I'd like to quickly point you all in the direction of Building My Empire, a blog similar to mine with some good informative posts. Please make sure you drop by.

New Tenant

This weeks new tenant is Women Lifestyle, Fashion, Health, Beauty and Personality, please make sure you drop by and maybe even leave a comment.

Tags: rent my blog, blog explosion

Blog Explosion - Quick Credits

I was just posting a comment on The Amazing 30 Dollar Project about Blog Explosion and how you can make some quick credits, when I thought it might be a good idea to post it here as a tip.

Quick Credits

The normal method of earning credits on Blog Explosion is to surf member sites and for this you get a ratio of 1:4, this means for every 4 member sites you surf you get 1 credit. This means to get 20 visitors to your site you need to visit 40 other members sites, that's quite a lot of surfing. A quicker way to get credits is to vote on Battle of the Blogs this is how it works:

Once a challenge has been accepted 15 other members vote for both blogs.The person with the most votes wins the challenge and gets 70% of the total credits wagered. The 15 members who have voted on who is the best blog splits the remaining 30% of the total credits wagered.

If you only vote on the battles where the total wager is a minimum of 100 this gives you a ratio of 1:1, you're getting 1 credit for each blog you visit, this 4x better than just surfing. The total wager can be a maximum of 400 credits, which means you get 8 credits for visiting 2 blogs that's a ratio of 4:1 , 16x better than surfing alone. So my advice is watch out for the big wagers and vote on them, the return is a lot greater.

I hope this was useful, if so please post a comment and let me know.

Cheers

Tags: blog explosion, increase traffic

15 Common Mistakes by Google Adsense Publishers that Violate Terms of Service

I found this article today whilst having a browse and thought it may be useful if you are using or thinking of using adsense, it pays to be careful.

Tags: adsense, google, mistake, tips

I've Become A Blog Whore

Today I signed-up with blogwhore.net, this site claims to try and bring advertisers directly to bloggers. As this is a new site I'm not expecting too much, but you never know, it's a good idea. I'm just waiting for my listing to be approved, once this happens I will let you know what happens.

Tags: blog, whore, advertisers, list

Click & Comment Monday

On Mondays, Cat has been promoting Click & Comment Day. I am also posting this to remind you how important it is to comment on other blogs. It truly DOES increase your readership and you most often gain regulars that will visit your blog day after day.

What I encourage is for you to click my renter. Then, you comment on the blog and click their renter or someone on their blogroll. Then you comment on that blog and click their renter or someone on their blogroll. Do this for as many blogs as you can. Sometimes they go full circle, and you end up at the originating blog, then just look up a blog in the blogroll and start the cycle again.

So, let’s get started! Comment here and I'll either add your name and link to my post or use an auto-link program and let you add your own.

I really encourage you to do this at least to 5 comments if you have ANY time at all. It will give you the joy of sharing a few of your opinions on posts and bring you future readers.

Thanks and enjoy Click & Comment Day by visting this page and adding it to your blog!

Are you posting Click & Comment on your blog? Add your name to the list with a link to your blog and I’ll come visit. If you do this you not only gain links but new blog-friends as well.

Enjoy! I’m going to try to do this each Monday. Why not start your week off right?

Tags: click, comment, monday, increase, visitors, rent blog

The Big Blog Index

This is a fledgling Blog Index, with my blog being one of the first to be added. The Big Blog Index is a reciprocal link index with reviews of the blogs that are added. I'd just like to wish salempc all the best with his new venture and I hope it is successful, please visit and submit your blog.

See ya later.


Tags: blog index

Blogging 102: Make Yourself Known / Increase Traffic

I've previously written about how I've tried to increase traffic to this site and on my travels through the blogosphere I came across this article on just that subject. I'm going to try some of the suggestions myself and hopefuly increase my own traffic, you try it too and let me know what works for you.

Tags