Money from Nothing

Set Up A Fans Leaderboard For Your Facebook Page

2011-12-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

A good way to encourage your fans to engage on your Facebook Page is to set up a Fans Leaderboard. Fans receive points for posting, comments and Likes.

You can get this free application from Booshaka and when you install it, a custom tab called Top Fans is added to your page.

You can view the stats of each fan listed to see how they have participated. The app gives a complete history of the fan’s activity on your page.

To install the app, just go to Booshaka and click the blue Install button. They also have a Top Fans Pro version that rewards the top fans with perks.

Get More Out Of Your Facebook Page By Improving Your EdgeRank

2011-06-21T02:24:00.000-07:00

Do you have a Facebook Page?

You may think that the more 'likers' ('Fans' as they used to be called) you have, the more outreach you have. However, this is not necessarily the case. Facebook has something called Edgerank, which determines how much of your content is actually seen on people's newsfeeds.

There are ways to improve your Edgerank - including posting more photos and videos. Your blog may be on Networked Blogs and each post is automatically posted on your FB Page as well, but you need also to post directly to the Page and in general create greater engagement.

There is a White Paper on the subject, which you can download for free here.

You can also check what the Edgerank for your Page is at EdgeRank Checker here.

How did your Page score? How do you think you can improve it?

Adding A Job Board To Your Blog

2011-06-14T04:27:00.000-07:00

You may not have thought about adding a Job Board to your blog, but it offers two benefits in particular -

It offers something useful to your readers, especially if you have a niche blog.

It can make you some money. You can get paid when people visit sponsored job ads and when employers pay for an ad on the board.

Below are 2 free tools to set up your own Job Board. The good thing is that they will populate the board with available jobs even before you get people paying for ads. You can choose the fields that are relevant to your site and so only those type of job vacancies will appear.

Simply Hired Job-A-Matic

JobThread

I used Simply Hired to set up a Foodies Job Board on my blog Authentic Greek Recipes. You can take a look at it here.

Have any of you installed a job board? What do you think?

New Google +1 Button Available. How To Add It To Blogger

2011-06-02T02:39:00.000-07:00

The new Google +1 Button is now on general release. I've just installed it and you can see it at the top of the posts in this blog now. By clicking on the button, you can recommend the posts to other readers - the short video below shows how it works.

The button is simple enough to install and if you have a Blogger blog, then you can find very quick and simple instructions here.

For detailed information you can also visit Google here.

Have you installed it? What do you think?

Get Paid $50 Just For Signing Up At DomainIt

2011-02-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

Earn cash with your website. $50 signup bonus!

Good news for potential affiliates! DomainIt will pay you $50 when you sign up as an affiliate with them.

DomainIt, which was founded in 1996, provides Domain Names, Web Hosting, E-Mail Services, Design Templates, Web Promotion and other Tools and Resources. The prices are also extremely affordable - up to 74% cheaper than competitors.

And the good news is that you can sign up as an affiliate quickly and easily and get $50 placed in your affiliate account straight away. Your earnings are processed at the end of the following month - so your February earnings will be paid out on April 1st. Payments are made either by PayPal or by check and there's a relatively low payment threshold - $25.

How To Publish And Sell Your Own E-Book

2011-02-19T02:11:00.000-08:00

If you want to publish your own e-book and to sell it yourself, then this can be done relatively easily. And it can be done without spending a cent! I'm going to discuss the process after you have written and prepared your book. You can publish it and sell it through a combination of PayLoadz and Paypal, including getting affiliates to sell for you.

You will need to convert your file into PDF. If you don't have a converter, then a very simple way to do it is to use Open Office. This is a free set of programs - Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database, Formula - and if you use the Text program, you have the option to convert it to PDF.

Go and register at PayLoadz and then go to Create New Product To Sell. Once you have filled in the details, you upload your pdf file and cover image. They will let you have a Buy Now button to place on your selling page and the payments will be done through PayPal. PayLoadz will also give you a code to give to affiliates and then handle the affiliate selling procedure and letting you have reports. Your e-book can also be made available to affiliates on PayLoadz, who are looking for products to sell.

Simple and free!

LOOKING FOR AFFILIATES

Having said all that, I myself am looking for affiliates to sell the following 2 e-books. You may choose either or both, depending on what you feel would be appropriate on your site.

The e-book Greek Vegetarian Recipes sells for $3.50 and affiliates get $1 per sale - a pretty generous percentage!

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate for this book, then just click on this link.

https://www.payloadz.com/affiliates/gen_2.asp?id=1413598&merch_id=81247

The e-book Super Jokes - with over 250 pages of quality jokes - sells for $3 and affiliates again get $1 per sale.

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate for this book, then just click on this link.

https://www.payloadz.com/affiliates/gen_2.asp?id=1412925&merch_id=81247

Chitika Pays Me Every Month

2011-02-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

I've been using Chitika for a while now, but over the last few months I've been receiving payments from them at the end of every month.

Chitika ads are what are called 'behaviourly targetted'. That means that they respond to what people using search engines are looking for. In other words, if you search for hotels, then the ads displayed will be related to that. For this reason you can use them along with AdSense.

So if you get a decent amount of traffic from search engines - and especially from North America - then I would suggest trying it out. There are two particular practical advantages to Chitika. The payout threshold is very low - $10; and they pay through PayPal. If you want to be paid by check, then the threshold is $50. So if your earnings are over $10 for February, then at the end of March the money will be in your PayPal account.

As I said at the beginning, I've been comfortably over the threshold over the last few months and it's nice to see the money in your account at the end of the month!

Definitely worth a try!

Publish Your Book For Free With CreateSpace

2011-02-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

If you want to publish a book to sell on the internet, then CreateSpace is an excellent option. A part of Amazon, CreateSpace will let you publish your book with them for free.

We have just brought out our recipe book with them - Authentic Greek Recipes - and it has already started selling. However, I have to say that if you are doing it for the first time, then perhaps you're going to spend more time getting it together than perhaps should be necessary.

The procedure itself is pretty smooth, but you don't fully know what the procedure is until you actually go through each stage. For that reason I'll give you a brief summary of what you have to do until your book is available for sale - I only wish that CreateSpace gave this summary to new users.

- Obviously you need to have the material you want to publish.
- Choose the size you want your book to be and you can download a formatted template from their Resources section. Use this template to put the material for your book. I find this an excellent resource as you don't need to worry about formatting it with margin sizes etc.
- Once this is ready, convert it into a pdf file. If you have photos, then they need to be at least 300 dpi.
- If you can't or don't want to create your own cover, then there is a selection of cover templates to choose from.
- You have to choose whether you want colour or black and white. Obviously, black and white is going to allow you to set a lower price.
- Once you have your pdf file and cover ready, you submit them for approval. They say that this takes up to 48 hours, but I found that they responded within 12 hours. You will be told if it is acceptable or what problems need to be fixed.
- If you stay with the free option, then your book will only be available from CreateSpace - in other words just direct selling from you. There is a ProPlan, however, which is just under $40 a year, with which you can make it available on Amazon plus they promote it to other sellers and libraries and institutions. You also get a higher royalty with ProPlan.
- However, even if you don't use ProPlan you still have to pay the cost price of the book plus shipping for them to send it to you to approve before it's made available.
- You can electronically approve it once you've seen it. Then you have to choose the price. They give you a minimum to sell on CreateSpace and a higher minimum for it to be available on Amazon.
- On CreateSpace you have the option to create discounts if you want.

That is a brief summary of publishing your own book with them and so far I have been happy with the results. Is there anyone else who has used them? Or anyone thinking about it?

Adgitize Continues To Deliver The Goods

2010-09-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

I've previously posted about Adgitize - and many people already know about it - but I just want to say that I've been with them for just shy of 2 years and have never regretted it. You won't make huge amounts of money here, but it's a steady little earner without really having to do much for it. You also get extra traffic from views of your ad(s).

To get the most out of Adgitize, you really need to be an advertiser - it only costs $14 a month to get displayed across the whole network, and it's possible to get that back through your earnings. Plus the increased traffic - I've been getting around 50-60 visits a day from Adgitize to the 2 blogs I advertise there.

So what do you have to do to make money?

Article Points - you get points if you post on your blog(s). You do this anyway, so there's no extra work involved here.

Click Points - you get points for clicking on the Adgitize ads. I combine this with Entrecard dropping, which I do anyway. Not everyone has an EC widget, but I would say that out of the 50 Adgitize sites I visit every day, only about 5 don't have one. Why do I only visit 50 sites? Because, as an advertiser my points are doubled and I get my maximum 100 from visiting just 50 sites.

Ad Views Points - If you display Adgitize ads on your site, you get points for the number of views of those ads every day.

Page Views Points - As above, but these are points for views of pages that have the ads displayed.

Advertisers Points - This is points for being an advertiser.

So where's the extra work? The only thing 'extra' you have to do is visit some blogs, which you're doing anyway if you're in EC, and even if you aren't, how long does it take to visit 50 blogs and click on them? Especially if you're getting paid for it! I would say it takes me about 30 minutes a day - perhaps longer when I stop to read articles I'm interested in.

But even if you don't want to visit blogs and click on the ads, you're still earning points - and money - from the other categories, it's just that you're losing a potential 20% of your earnings.

You can earn as a publisher, without paying anything, but by becoming an advertiser as well, you not only can get your $14 a month back, but also make more on top of it. I've managed to be in the top 3 of the points leaderboard regularly and, as I said, I've never regretted joining - in fact I would definitely recommend it!

Get A Free Analysis Of Your Blog

2010-08-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

I just found this great site where you can get a free analysis of your blog - SpiderFX-Lite. Their tool spiders your page, analyzes and scores the on-page factors that affect your search engine ranking.

You just type in your URL and your keywords and it produces an online score out of 100. It shows your strengths and weaknesses and scores the following areas -

Search Traffic
Organic Keywords
Google PageRank
Domain Authority
Page Authority
Number of Incoming Links
Social Media Mentions
Top 25 External Links
Keyword Page Density
Heading Summary
Image Summary
Title Tag
Meta Description Tag
Top 3 Anchor Text Terms
Domain Age
Server Info

I got a score of 80 out of 100 for my recipes blog and after making some tweaks based on their comments, I got it up to 85. A really useful tool that not only analyzes quickly, but gives advice.

Have any of you used it? What did you think?

Ipad Auction! - Sponsored Post

2010-07-29T02:54:00.001-07:00

Ipad Auction! - 1.ltroute.com

Wow! Check out this Ipad auction - only 1c per bid! The last one went for 96c!

sponsored like

symposio's profile on MyLikes

Adding A Facebook 'Like' Button To Your Blogger Posts

2010-04-24T04:08:00.000-07:00

Facebook released their new 'Like' button a few days ago. When people anyone who is logged in to Facebook clicks on this, it is displayed on their FB Wall, thus giving exposure to you to their Friends. The code that Facebook provides for the button is aimed at giving you a Like button for your site, but not for individual blog posts, which is what bloggers are more interested in.

Not to fear, however, you can get a code to paste which will place the button on each of your posts. For those of you using Blogger you can visit this post here to find out where to get the code and where to post it. The only problem I can see so far is that it doesn't show the number of people who have 'Liked' your post. However, the Like is automatically posted on their Wall in FB.

Ning No Longer To Be Free

2010-04-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who use the free Ning service, you may or not have heard that the network of social networks that boasted 20 million visitors a month has announced a complete end to free services for its users. Those who pay for premium services will be asked to pay more, and those who are getting their social networks free of charge will be asked to upgrade to a premium service or phase off the Ning platform.

For those of you who want a social network, but don't want to pay for it, you may want to check out the following free alternatives (each also has premium services).

Grou.ps

Spruz

SocialGO

Of these 3, Grou.ps also offers you the possibility to monetize the site with AdSense as part of the free package.

What Time Should You Post On Your Blog?

2010-02-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

Often, writing posts on our blogs is done whenever we have the time or are feeling 'in the mood'. However, usually your posts will not only be read by blog readers - in which case it doesn't really matter at what time you post - but by others on social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter.

Personally, I'm a 'morning person' as far as writing is concerned, but I started to realise that I may be missing a lot of the people that could be reading my posts. Three of my blogs are on Networked Blogs on Facebook, which means that not long after I have posted, it is automatically fed onto FB. But is this the ideal time for it? When will most of my friends be on FB and will my post still be easily visible to them at this time?

The same applies with Twitter. I read somewhere recently that the highest numbers of people are on Twitter at between 11.00 and 14.00 EST. Again, my blog posts are automatically fed to Twitter through Twitterfeed, so I have to wonder, 'Are most of my followers fast asleep when my blog posts are tweeted?'

So, basically I'm rethinking the time that I should post on my blogs in order to get the maximum exposure in social media as well as on the blog itself. I just have to take into consideration the time differences and when I reckon the optimum number of friends and followers are online.

Getting Links To Your Posts From Popular Blogs

2010-01-28T01:31:00.000-08:00

A good way to increase traffic to your blog or to particular posts is to get a link from popular blogs with a lot of readers. Just recently the Problogger blog published a post with 30 Bloggers To Watch In 2010. Readers were then asked to post a similar article on their blog and send the link to Problogger.

I posted 10 Food Bloggers To Watch In 2010 on my Authentic Greek Recipes blog and then posted the link on Problogger. A few days later all the 'To Watch' posts were listed and I got a sudden increase in traffic from it.

Watching out for opportunities like this can be beneficial as popular blogs not only have a large number of readers, but are also considered to be authorities in their field, so links posted there are taken seriously.

Yet another way to get yourself out there and get seen.

10 Sites To Write For Money

2010-01-21T03:26:00.000-08:00

As well as writing on your own blog, there are plenty of opportunities around to write articles for money. I've listed 10 sites below where you can get paid for what you write or you can get in touch with people who are looking for writers.

They're listed in alphabetical order.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

A marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. Based on the idea that there are still many things that human beings can do much more effectively than computers, such as identifying objects in a photo or video, performing data de-duplication, transcribing audio recordings, or researching data details.

Bhokta

Here you can write about anything you want, as long as it isn't copied, and get paid between $1 and $4 depending on the length of the article.

Blogger Jobs

As the name would suggest, a site putting you in touch with people that are looking for writers.

Constant Content

Serving over 10.000 websites by providing them access to almost 30.000 writers, Constant-Content claims to have developed the most comprehensive and quality articles production system on the web. You can either write an article, which becomes available to purchase, or respond to specific requests.

eHow

A chance to write articles on 'How To' do something. Payments are only made to residents of the USA, however.

Freelance Writing Jobs

Again, the name is self-explanatory.

Helium

You can earn cash for contributed work, daily revenue share and writing contests.

Lulu

Lulu is a self-publishing site where you can write your own books and e-books and sell them.

Online Writing Jobs

Displaying available writing jobs.

ProBlogger Job Board

Run by ProBlogger, it lists regularly updated jobs available to bloggers.

MyLikes - Sponsored Post

2010-01-15T04:56:00.001-08:00

MyLikes - www.mylikes.com

I joined when the site was Likaholix (see previous post) and now that it has come out of Beta and become MyLikes it seems that it has improved and become more interesting. I've got a feeling that it will take off in a big way. Great to be in at the beginning!

sponsored like

symposio's profile on MyLikes

Learning From The Pros Again - The Shoemoney System

2010-01-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

I've written in other posts how important I feel it is to continuously learn from those who have been extremely successful online - they've obviously done something right! In that vein, Jeremy Schoemaker is launching his Shoemoney System for those that want to follow it. I have to be honest, basically the only thing I know about Mr. Shoemaker is that he makes a lot of money online and over the last 5 years has really turned around his financial situation.

Anyway, I signed up and look forward to seeing his system and improving my effectiveness online If you want to check it out, it's here. I'd also be interested to hear anyone else's opinion of it.

Making Money From Ads

2010-01-02T03:11:00.000-08:00

One important way of making money from your blog is through Ads on your site. Some of the most popular ways of doing this is through Adgitize,CMF (CMF Ads - 30 day ads starting from $0.01), and Project Wonderful. You can also sell adspace on your site directly.

Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Which of the following brings you the greatest income?

Which of the following brings you the most cash income?(polls)

Clicky - Real Time Web Analytics

2009-12-24T03:40:00.000-08:00

I've been using Google Analytics to monitor my statistics, but I heard about Clicky and decided to give it a go. Whereas with Google you have to wait until the following day, Clicky let's you watch what's happening as it's happening - Real time. You can see details of who's online at this moment, what they're looking at, how they got to the site, their geographical location etc.

You can customise the dashboard to get the statistics you want and I've found it really easy and clear to view what's happening - I have to say I'm impressed. You can sign up with Clicky for free - which is what I've done - though there are Pro programmes with different price levels.

You can use it along with Google Analytics, which is what I'm doing at the moment, to see how it goes, but compared to GA and Sitemeter - which I've also used - Clicky has been giving me the clearest picture of what's happening. Click below to check it out.

Bhokta - Get Paid To Write About Whatever You Want

2009-12-17T03:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve just signed up at Bhokta, a relatively new site which pays you for articles that you write. You can write about anything that you wish, submit it and after it has been reviewed and checked to see that it hasn’t been copied from anywhere else, it’s published and you receive immediate payment via Paypal.

This is one of the things I like about Bhokta – it pays immediately. There is no waiting until the end of the month or until you have reached a minimum amount. The amount you get paid for each article varies from $1 to $4, depending on the number of words and there is a maximum payout of $100 per week.

Apart from the payment, the other advantages are the links generated to your site from Bhokta plus the chance to increase your traffic. You can also write reviews of Bhokta if you have a site with a Google Page Rank – the amount you get paid depends on the PR.

It seems to me that it’s a good opportunity. Compared to writing paid reviews on your blog, perhaps the amount paid is not the same, but this is far outweighed by the fact that you can write about any subject you wish – you are not constrained in any way, plus you can write as many as you wish and don’t have to wait around for a suitable opportunity to come along.

You don’t need to be an expert for your articles to be published, but I would think that it is better to write about subjects that you have a reasonable amount of knowledge about in order to establish some kind of ‘authority’ and gain quality and repeat traffic.

It’s free to join, so do try it. And what does the word Bhokta mean? Well, apparently it means ‘happiness’ or ‘enjoyment’ in Sanskrit – so now you know!

Free Online Forms For Your Site

2009-12-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

I recently needed to have an online form for people to register for next year's cookery classes here and I decided to use EMailMeForm.

It's a free service and offers customizable web forms ( Contact forms, online Questionnaires and Surveys ) and they host it on their server, so it works with any site, regardless of the ability to run scripts. I found it really easy to set up - I'm a non-techie! - and they also use Captcha to block spam.

You set up the fields that you need for your form and then copy the HTML code and paste it onto your site. When people fill it in they don't need to leave the site and they are directed to a page of your choosing which acknowledges that it has been sent and thanks them.

With the one account you can have forms on several sites.

As I said, I found it really easy to set up and ... it's free!

Ciao - Get Paid To Review And Give Advice

2009-12-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

I've just signed up at Ciao. This is a multi-million-strong online community that reviews and rates millions of products and services for the benefit of other consumers. In their own words they "combine unbiased consumer reviews and up-to-date price information from hundreds of online merchants to make it the most comprehensive source of shopping intelligence on the web." Apparently more than 38 million consumers visit the site every month, "making it one of the largest shopping portals in Europe."

The good news is that you can make money by writing advice and reviews of products and services as well as through their referral programme. As I said, I've just signed up, so I'm eager to get started and see how it goes. Is there anyone else who has had experience with them?

Increase Your Traffic With Along For The Ride

2009-11-26T07:08:00.000-08:00

I've just started using Along For The Ride (AFTR). This is an interesting approach to increasing traffic to your site. You'll see the widget on the right sidebar of this blog - if you mouse over it, then after 3 seconds a mini-window opens up with the site of another member of AFTR (this is done on a rotational system).

It's as simple as that. If you have the widget on your site, then the visitor doesn't have to leave it to view the other site, nor do they have to click on anything. Your blog is available in the same way on other members' sites.

I've just had it for a few days, but have already noticed a steady increase in traffic. I'd recommend checking it out here.

Advertise On Money From Nothing

2009-11-24T03:28:00.000-08:00

If you would like to advertise on Money from Nothing please click on the PayPal button and choose the duration of your ad. Send me, in an email attachment, your 125 x 125 image and URL link. Please send to tc2906ma@yahoo.com.

Time Management For Blogging

2009-11-11T01:40:00.000-08:00

I've found time and time again that I need to keep myself organised in order to get the best possible results from blogging. So many times I find myself just saying ' OK, let's do this now' or ' It's about time I did this,' - just drifting without any clear plan, and not trying to make the best use of my time.

No matter how much time we spend blogging - whether it's full time or just whenever we get the time - we need to manage our time properly in order to make the most efficient use of it.

I've taken the 'tasks' that need to be done and divided them into categories and then decided on the amount of time that I need to devote to each. This is something that can't be generalised as it really depends on the amount of time we spend blogging and what weight we want to give to each.

Briefing - This should probably be done at the start of the day.

Checking incoming communications (e-mails, comments etc) and responding to them - some that require more time can be set aside for later on (Socialising & Engaging).
Checking on income streams - ads, affiliate programmes etc.
Checking on other updates such as number of fans on Facebook, poll results etc - this will be different of each of us.

Clicking

Ok, not such a sophisticated term, but this refers to the time I spend clicking ads on Adgitize, which helps generate points to make enough to continue advertising on Adgitize. I combine this with clicking on the Entrecard ads which are on most of the Adgitize ads.

Socialising & Engaging

Responding to comments and messages from the earlier Briefing.
Making comments where appropriate - this can be combined with Clicking (see above).
Visiting and participating in appropriate forums.
Engaging and developing a greater presence in chosen social networks such as Facebook.
Twitter - regularly tweeting and engaging with others. Steadily building up a quality following.

Posting

Yes, let's not forget this! We need to organise ourselves in a way that suits us. Maybe we plan a series of posts in advance. Maybe we take each day as it comes. But, for sure we need to make sure that this is not neglected amongst all the other stuff.

For those that do paid posts / reviews, time needs to be spent on identifying opportunities, applying for them and then writing them.

Research & Development

Keeping up-to-date with latest developments and ideas. By subscribing to sources such Mashable, ProBlogger and TwiTip, a lot of these will come into your inbox every day and you need to set aside time to take a look at these.
Simply looking at what other sites are doing and getting ideas. This can also be combined with Socialising & Engaging (see above).
Regularly looking at your blog(s) and seeing what you are happy with and how you can improve it - such design and layout.
Reviewing income streams - what is working, what isn't working and why not. Any new potential income streams.
Having 'team meetings' with yourself! Perhaps on a weekly basis, sit down and brainstorm - writing down what is going well, what isn't and how you can improve. Planning and then putting those plans into action.

I personally find that this simple analysis of what I need to be doing and then allocating appropriate time slots for each of them has helped to focus me and make better use of my time. Any comments?

Using Facebook Pages To Increase Traffic

2009-10-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've just created a Facebook page for one of my blogs in order to see if I can increase traffic. The page is called Authentic Greek Recipes (see below) and links to my blog of the same name. I'm going to regularly update it with posts from the blog with a photo, brief description and link to the original post.

It's been up for a couple of days now and there are just over 100 fans at the time of writing. The good part is that about 20 of them are people who are not my Friends on Facebook, but have become fans following someone else's suggestion. Obviously, when you set up a Page, the first people to invite are your friends but for it to be successful you need to get them referring other people and thus increase traffic through the links. Already I've seen a sharp increase in traffic from Facebook.

Before you go ahead and set up a page, though, I think you need to know if it's genuinely going to interest people. This is why I did it with Greek recipes - people are into food! I wouldn't do it with this blog, for example, as I don't feel it would be offering something different from any number of other Pages.

There are a large number of niche blogs out there that I think would benefit from having their own Page on Facebook and a resultant increase in traffic. But as I said above, the thing is for it to be attractive enough for people who are not your Friends to become fans.

Authentic Greek Recipes on Facebook

Enhance Your Blog Posts With Apture

2009-10-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

I've just started using Apture. It's a way of adding extra material for your readers without their having to leave the page, making your post richer and more interesting. You'll probably have seen this device on a lot of the online newspapers, where a word or phrase will have a small window that opens with more information, photos or video.

I did use Snap for a short while, but this is different. Snap just gave you a snapshot of a particular link and to be honest I found it annoying and it slowed down the page. Apture is not contextual advertising either, you choose which word or phrase you want to expand on and then you choose exactly what you want to show. You can choose a video, photo, text, link to a specific URL or post within your site and even embed a code. In fact, there are supposedly 50+ sources of multimedia.

To give you an example of a text link, this is some text about blogging from Wikipedia. Add an R to Apture and this is the song you get by Blondie.

What Apture does is make your posts much more interesting for visitors and keeps them on your site for longer. I, personally, wouldn't overload it, but that's a choice for each of us to make.

If you're an Amazon affiliate, you can also make some money in this way. This is an example of a link to a book - Problogger - which, by the way, I have constantly found to be a great source of information.

To start using Apture, you need to download - free - the add-on for your particular blogging platform. You can do that here. Once you've downloaded it, you go to your blog and a small dashboard will open up asking you to sign on. Then you just add the sites you want to use it on - for each site you will be given a code to install on the blog. One thing I would like to mention, you will be given the option to Auto-enhance when you add your blog, I would recommend unclicking this option, in order to have complete control over what links you want.

Take a look at this video tutorial produced by Apture. There are many ways of using Apture that I haven't mentioned, and this will give you a better idea.

Kindle Blogs

2009-10-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, Amazon offered bloggers the chance to have their blogs published for
Kindle. I recently tried it out to see how it would go.

The way it works is that people who have the Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation) can not only read books from Amazon, but also take out a monthly subscription to blogs of their choice to be read on Kindle. There is a 14-day free trial.

You, as publisher get 30% of the subscription, which Amazon determines - either $o.99 or $1.99 per month. If you live in the USA you can receive payment by electronic bank transfer or check, whereas if you live outside the US you only have the check option, with a $50 threshold and $8 fee per check. Unfortunately, they only have the dollar option at the moment - hopefully this will change so that they become like AdSense.

Anyway, despite these disadvantages I decided to give it a go - another potential income stream, after all, without having to do anything extra. I had a think, first of all, about which of my blogs people with Kindle would be more likely to want access to and I decided on my recipe blog and the Daily Joke blog. To be honest, I had more hopes for the latter and this has proved to be correct. I've had a few subscriptions for the Daily Joke blog in the first month, but none yet for the recipe blog.

To get an idea of what the Amazon page for the blogs looks like, you can check out my Daily Joke blog for Kindle here -

And the Authentic Greek Recipes blog here -

To check it out, just go to Kindle Publishing

Using Chitika To Complement AdSense

2009-10-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

I've just started using Chitika Premium on one of my other blogs Authentic Greek Recipes. The initial indications are good and I find it a great complement to AdSense.

Chitika doesn't contravene the AdSense T&C as it works in a different way. It pays per click, but appears only to those who have come to your site via search engines and shows ads that are related to your search terms. This means that you have to have a decent percentage of your visitors coming through search engines, otherwise it's pretty pointless having it. Also, at the moment it is only for visitors from the USA and Canada. So anybody visiting you from outside of that area doesn't even see the ad box.

So if you have what you would consider a decent number of people visiting your site through search engines and from North America, then I would say it's definitely worth your while signing up at Chitika. They approve (or disapprove) your site pretty quickly and if you have other blogs, you don't need to reapply for each of them - they are automatically included in the initial approval.

Once you have done that, then make sure that you get the optimum size and placement of ad box. I have placed it above the blog posts so that it can be seen immediately on 'arrival'.

Earn Indirect Income From Your Blog

2009-10-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

You can earn direct income from your blog - through ads and becoming an affiliate - but it's also possible to make money indirectly. You can sell a product or service through your blog to your readers.

Now, there are many of these that you can choose from, but I'm going to talk about one in particular in this post - lessons. I decided to try it out with one of my other blogs, Authentic Greek Recipes, and all the indications so far are that it is going to be successful. We are going to organise Greek Cookery Lessons here next summer - see the post.

To get an idea if there was any interest in this, I simply put up a poll on the site to get an indication if it was worth proceeding. So far, out of the 165 responses, 51 (31%) have said Yes and 33 (20%) have said that they would seriously consider it. Now, these are not huge numbers but as we plan just to do small, friendly groups it's more than enough for us to go ahead and organise the lessons.

This is the kind of thing several kinds of blogs could consider doing. Apart from cookery blogs, crafts people and photographers immediately spring to mind. How about arranging a holiday for people to come to you for lessons? It's a good way of using the readership that you have built up, who consider you to be an authority on the subject.

To get an indication of the potential interest, you can set up a poll on your blog - I got mine free from PollDaddy. I wrote a post about it and then left the poll up in the top left corner of the site.

Let me know what you think and if it's something that you could do.

Learning From The Pros 2

2009-05-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

This is basically a follow-up to my post about the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. The month-long course run by ProBlogger finished a few days ago and I feel I definitely benefited from it. Some of the points presented I was already aware of, but they helped me focus on learning from them in a clearer and more defined manner.

I have selected 5 particular points that helped me. Obviously I'm not going to just copy here what was said about them, but just mention how I relate to them.

Spend some time on a successful blog in your niche.

When I first started this blog I wrote a post about Learning From Other Blogs, but on this course it defined more clearly how we could learn from the Content, Design, Reader Engagement, Monetisation, Traffic and SEO of a successful blog in whatever our niche is.

Learn From Successful Bloggers.

For this particular lesson we were directed to specific posts from 10 very successful bloggers. Another great way of learning.

Looking at your blog’s statistics/metrics package to see what you can learn from it.

Presumably we all look at our statistics, but this lesson showed us analytically what to look at, why, and what to do with the information. This is something I'm not so familiar with and it was a great help.

Interlinking previously written posts in your archives.

This again was something I wasn't really familiar with. Going to some of your older posts and interlinking between them, thus helping SEO and page views as well as increasing usefulness to your readers. I have been trying more consciously now to create links between posts.

Create a 'sneeze page' for your blog.

I think this is a great idea. Creating a post which includes several links to other posts you have made. One way I found to put this into practice was a post on my Authentic Greek Recipes blog where I created a post - Greek Vegetarian Meal - which put together several recipes previously posted into a recommended full meal. There were links to each of the dishes included in the meal.

All in all, I found it a useful learning opportunity and I need to take as many of these opportunities as possible until I become successful. And even then, I'm sure that the learning never stops.

Creating Your Own Social Network

2009-04-27T03:13:00.000-07:00

In previous posts I talked about finding social networks relevant to your niche to help promote yourself and generate traffic. You can see them here and here.

You can also create your own social network for the same reasons plus you will also increase your own profile. With Ning, it couldn't be easier. First, though, I would recommend that you research what networks already exist similar to what you have in mind.

Is there already saturation? This would mean that it will be very difficult for people to be attracted to your network.

Or do you feel that there is room for your network? Go ahead - it doesn't cost anything. Once it starts to take off, as I said, it will help elevate your profile on the web and bring more traffic to your blog(s) as well as giving you the opportunity to network with similar people or people with similar blog(s).

I myself have just started a network for bloggers over 50. I've called it O Fab!! - Over Fifty And Blogging. Fab is very much a word of the sixties, so the initials suit. It's just going to be a relaxed place and I'm just going to see what interest there is and how it goes. I feel that bloggers over 50 - whether they are doing it for money or just as a hobby - have a certain 'maturity' to offer to the world of blogging!

So, if you are over 50 and blogging, do come and join here. I'm neither technical nor artistic, so I'm not particularly happy with the logo at the moment, but when, hopefully, the membership increases I'm going to see if someone would like to design something better (and get full credit for it on the main page, of course).

Visit O FAB!!

Likaholix

2009-04-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up at Likaholix - a new social network where you can share your likes with other members. This can be anything you have found on the internet - sites, products, books etc. If you have at least 10 likes in a particular category, you become what is called a Tastemaker, which gives more weight to your recommendations.

I've only just recently joined, but it seems like an interesting idea, and was set up by two ex-Google employees. At the moment, joining is by invitation only, so if you're interested I have some invitations (30, I think) if you click here.

Learning From The Pros

2009-04-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

If you want to succeed as a blogger, I think it's extremely important that you try and learn from the experts. The ones who really are successful. So, I enlisted in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which is run by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.

Today is the 5th day and we've been mailed a new task, along with tips, every day. I've found that it has helped me focus on what is important and giving me greater clarity. I'm a great admirer of ProBlogger and purchased his book (co-authored with Chris Garret). To see my review of the book, go to my previous post here.

The 31 Days course is completely free and he is still accepting people onto it, even though it has already started. I would recommend it and the link to sign up is here.

I'm Using TweetDeck Now

2009-04-07T02:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing my foray into the world of Twitter, I've now signed up at TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is a great tool that you can download for free here. It is an application that allows you to monitor information from various social media in a single concise view and currently integrates services from Twitter, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwits and now Facebook. I'm just using it for Twitter at the moment just until I get into the swing of it.

TweetDeck enables you to split your main Twitter feed (All Friends) into columns allowing a broader overview of tweets. It automatically updates and so provides you with an effective and user-friendly dashboard of realtime information.

I've just installed it, so I'm still getting the hang of it but it certainly seems to clear view of friends, tweets and updates.

Has anyone else been using it? What's your experience of it?

My Earnings At Adgitize Have Quadrupled....Without Doing Anything!

2009-04-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

I've posted here before about Adgitize, but I wanted to mention the latest good news. They have changed the payout system so that you can earn more money. This started from April 1st and I wanted to wait and see what difference it would make to my earnings before writing about it. Well, in the first couple of days my daily earnings have quadrupled!

We're not talking huge amounts of money here, but we are talking a steady little earner without really having to do anything for it. Plus traffic from views of your ad(s).

To get the most out of Adgitize, you really need to be an advertiser - it only costs $14 a month to get displayed across the whole network, and you can get more than twice that amount back through your earnings. Plus the increased traffic - I've been getting around 50 visits a day from Adgitize to my Authentic Greek Recipes ad.

So what do you have to do to make money?

Everyone can make up to 500 points a day over 5 categories which have a maximum of 100 points each -

Article Points - you get points if you post on your blog(s).
You do this anyway, so there's no extra work involved here.

Click Points - you get points for clicking on the Adgitize ads.
I combine this with Entrecard dropping, which I do anyway. Not everyone has an EC widget, but I would say that out of the 50 Adgitize sites I visit every day, only about 5 don't have one. Why do I only visit 50 sites? Because, as an advertiser my points are doubled and I get my maximum 100 from visiting just 50 sites.

Ad Views Points - If you display Adgitize ads on your site, you get points for the number of views of those ads every day.

Page Views Points - As above, but these are points for views of pages that have the ads displayed.

Advertisers Points - This is points for being an advertiser.

So where's the extra work? The only thing 'extra' you have to do is visit some blogs, which you're doing anyway if you're in EC, and even if you aren't, how long does it take to visit 50 blogs and click on them? Especially if you're getting paid for it! But even if you don't want to visit blogs and click on the ads, you're still earning points - and money - from the other categories, it's just that you're losing a potential 20% of your earnings.

As I said above, now that the money being paid out has increased, this really is a nice little earner. You can earn as a publisher, without paying anything, but by becoming an advertiser as well, you not only can get your $14 a month back, but also make more on top of it.

I'm All A-Twitter!

2009-04-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't been posting here for quite a while - I had some paid writing work to do which took up most of my time. Anyway, I'm getting back into it and have decided to give Twitter a shot. I signed up for Twitter quite a while ago, but never got into it, but now I'm going to focus a little bit more on it to see if it can help generate steady traffic.

To help things, I've signed up at Twitterfeed, which automatically posts on Twitter from your blog feeds. In this way I'll have a steady stream of posts on Twitter without any effort and I can then add other Tweets at my leisure, so to speak.

I got my button at Twitterbuttons, which I presume everyone on Twitter knows about - they have quite a comprehensive selection to choose from.

Finally, I also signed up at Twittad, where you can have paid ads on your Twitter profile. Based on your number of followers, they work out a price for advertisers to get placed on your profile - my profile's still pretty cheap at the moment - and there is also an Affiliate Programme.

So, let's see how it goes! Feel free to follow me!

By TwitterButtons.com

How To Remove Google Ads You Don't Want

2009-02-16T02:11:00.000-08:00

If you have Google AdSense on your site, sometimes you see ads there that you don't want. Perhaps you don't want your readers to visit those sites or perhaps you don't think they are appropriate. Whatever your reason, it is possible to prevent them from displaying on your page.

Presumably a lot of you already know how to do this, but for those of you who don't, it's quite simple.

First of all, you need to know the URLs of those sites. Now, according to the Terms of Service for AdSense you aren't allowed to click on the ads on your own page to find out. What you have to do is download the AdSense Preview Tool. This can be done very quickly by going here.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Preview Tool, you go to your page and right-click. Google AdSense Preview Tool will now show up on the menu. Click this and you will see a list of ads.

Check the ads you don't want and then click on Show Selected URLs. This will give you the URLs.

Go to your AdSense account and click on AdSense Setup. Then click on Competitive Ad Filter. Under AdSense for Content filters enter the URls of the ads you want blocked and then click Save Changes.

That's it! It may take a few hours for it to take effect, but those ads will no longer appear on your page.

One thing I would like to point out is that after I had downloaded the Preview Tool, it only showed up using Internet Explorer and not with Firefox. This is something I need to check out, but you should be aware of that.

Should You Write Paid Posts?

2009-02-14T02:15:00.000-08:00

When I started blogging, one of the ways I thought I was going to make money was by writing paid posts. There are a lot of bloggers out there who make a regular income - however small it may be - from writing posts about products or services.

Now I'm not so sure. I think it's fine for those that can and want to do it, it's whether I want to do it that I'm not sure about.

Ideally, I would like to write about something that I know and would confidently recommend whether or not I was being paid to do so. It would also need to be relevant to the purpose and content of the blog. I have signed up for most of the middlemen companies that provide opportunities for you to get paid to write about products and services, but quite honestly, I don't feel comfortable about posting about most of the products.

I don't know most of them and I certainly haven't tried them, so how can I write about them? If there was something that I had tried or looked into and I thought it was worth writing about then I would do so, but I don't use diet, pharmaceutical etc products. The other thing is that you get lots of bloggers suddenly blogging about the same things. I remember a short while ago, for example, when so many of the blogs I visited had a picture of a pair of eyeglasses and a write-up about them. How many of them had actually bought a pair of these glasses or at least, knew that they were a good product to recommend?

A while ago I wrote a post about the ProBlogger book. This wasn't a paid post - I will make some money if people buy the book through my post - but I had obtained and read the book and was giving my actual opinion about it.

I know. I know. People are going to say that you are losing a source of regular income if you don't do paid posts, but I feel (and this is just my feeling, I have nothing at all against people who do paid posts - I just won't spend a lot of time reading their posts) that I would prefer to build up a blog in the long run that has the best content that I can produce. This will eventually create a good base of people who are actually interested in your blog.

What do you think?

When Should You Start Trying To Make Money From Your Blog?

2009-02-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

I have been reading comments and advice from successful bloggers, including the ProBlogger book (see my post about the book here) and one thing that seems to come across is that one should spend time in building one's blog's content and traffic before starting to try and make money. I haven't been blogging very long, but I think I'm beginning to see the sense in what they're saying.

I see so many blogs that are new or fairly new and they are trying to incorporate as many methods of making money on their blog as they can. I did the same when I started, because I thought that's what you did. But I didn't know anything about blogging and I've had to learn through experience - by actually doing it.

Knowing what I know now, if I started again, I would focus on creating a blog or blogs that had good content and gradually build up the traffic. Good content attracts readers and keeps them and a lot of posts help with your Search Engine Optimisation, providing a lot of content for the search engines to find. I think I would only have AdSense to start with.

The thing with trying different affiliate programmes is that you need the traffic coming to your blog(s) in order to generate income. If they're not generating income, you don't know if it's because it's a programme that isn't an income generator - for you, at least - or if it's just because you haven't got enough traffic yet. So you don't want to dump it in case it does generate income once you do have good traffic!

However, if you spend time concentrating on building up a good and interesting blog, and get traffic and subscriptions, then you can start to try out affiliate schemes and other income generators and you'll be able to tell whether they are worthwhile or not. In fact, you'll probably have been able to see them in operation in the blogging world before you even have to try them out yourself.

The difficulty is that if you start blogging with the idea that you want to make money from it - however much - then it's very hard to wait for a year or more while you're building your blog, not to have any means of making money from it, save perhaps AdSense, until you have good traffic. But in all honesty, if I started again today, that's what I would do. I feel I need to think of the long term. Blogging is not the key to instant riches, but in the long term it can provide a steady income, the scale of which depends on our effort and perseverance plus the ability to learn.

I would appreciate comments on this based on your own experience.

Sponsoring Contests

2009-01-29T04:47:00.000-08:00

I've decided to be one of the sponsors of a contest, to see if this will help increase exposure and traffic. This is the first time I have done this, so I'll have to wait to see if it is something worth doing. I'm offering 1000 Entrecard credits and a 125 x 125 ad space for a month.

I think this is something I may try more often, but I'll wait to see how it goes this first time. The contest is over at Work At Home Blogging and you get points for writing a blog post about the contest, including all the sponsors; subscribing to the blog's feed; following the blogger on Twitter.

There are a lot of Entrecard credits and ad spaces to be won, so why not check it out. The contest ends on February 27, so I'll post about how successful it was for me as a sponsor after that.

Using Blogger

2009-01-26T04:13:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the name of this blog, the idea is to find and discuss ways of making money without spending anything. To be honest, this was the main reason I chose Blogger as the platform for my blogs.

I am also not at all a techie, so I needed a platform that could do as much as possible for me as easily as possible. I have discovered, however, in my short blogging history, that most successful bloggers are spending some money for hosting and usually using Wordpress. So I thought to myself, "Will I have to change to another platform at some point (and spend some money), in order to become successful?" I wanted to check out Today.com, which more and more people seem to be using, but couldn't sign up as they told me it isn't available in my region.

There are advantages in having your own domain name and being just dot com (net, org or whatever) rather than being blogspot.com, but I thought I'd check out to see if any blogs had become successful while being blogspot.

So I checked with the Technorati Top 100, which gives a pretty fair indication of the most successful/popular blogs at this time. There are in fact 5 blogs there that are using Blogger. Not very many, and in fact if you discount 2 of them - The Official Google Blog and Google Operating System (The Unofficial Google Blog) - there are only 3. 3 out of 100 is not many, but it still shows that it is possible to have a blogspot address and be popular. One of those blogs is in fact at number 15 (at the time of writing) and has had over 210 million visitors - PostSecret.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out. I'm happy with Blogger up to now, but perhaps at some later date when I feel more confident and am more experienced, I will look at the issue again and decide whether to continue with Blogger or have a revamp.

ProBlogger Book Review

2009-01-23T01:23:00.000-08:00

Before Christmas I posted about getting a book on blogging and promised to write a review on it. Well, I got the ProBlogger book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett.

I tried to visualise myself as I had been a few months ago before I started blogging and how helpful this book would have been to me at that time. I think, to be honest, that it is more useful to me now, with several months' blogging experience under my belt, than it would have been then.

What I liked about it was the practical, down to earth attitude of the writers. Underlying everything they wrote there was the clear message that blogging is not a recipe for instant wealth. If you want to make money, then a lot of time and effort is required.

All the relevant information was covered clearly, I found - setting up your blog, writing, income and earning strategies, promotion, networking etc and I found all the chapters were a good consolidation of my own understanding so far, and also gave clear advice about how to continue. The chapter on setting up a blog, though covering all the available platforms available, focussed on Wordpress, which was not so relevant to me as I use Blogger. There is also a chapter on buying and selling blogs, which I found not relevant to me (at this time, anyway!), but it's good that they covered it anyway.

I particularly liked the chapter on Secrets of Successful Blogs, which looked at a variety of blogs of different types which have succeeded and what we can learn from them. The Promotion and Marketing chapter was also useful in that I could compare what I have learnt through my own experience with their own practical tips and advice.

Throughout the book, there are what are called Exercises, which basically give you the chance to take in what has been written and reflect on how you can apply it in your own situation.

To summarise, I would call it a well-written textbook which is most useful for those in their first year or 18 months of blogging. Having had some experience in what works for you and what doesn't, reference to the various chapters can help consolidate what you have learnt and focus you on the best way to go forward.

For those who are about to start blogging, it would be good to read right through the book to get the general picture and then re-read the first chapters on Niche Blogging, Setting Up Your Blog and Blog Writing. Then, once you have started blogging, to continuously refer to the book to get guidance as to how to continue.

The writers are extremely successful bloggers, so we know that what they say has actually worked. I'm definitely glad I got it and have been referring to it frequently.

Sick Of Spam!

2009-01-18T04:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday someone sent a spam comment to all of the posts on this blog! I had to sit down and delete them all.

I know I should have done this earlier, but now all comments have to be moderated before they can appear here and my other blogs. I cannot understand the mentality of someone who would send a long spam comment to all of the posts on a blog!

Take my advice, if you haven't already done so - make sure that comments are moderated on your site.

My Earnings On Adgitize Pay For A Month's Ads!

2009-01-15T05:20:00.000-08:00

I mentioned on a previous post that I won a month's free advertising on Adgitize. Well, I was able to pay for another month's advertising for my blog Authentic Greek Recipes using the income I have made as a member of Adgitize!

I found that I was getting between 50 - 90 clicks daily from the ad and as the number of members increases, so will the exposure, and at $14 a month I think it's a pretty good deal - especially when you're using money you've earned from Adgitize!

As a publisher you get points for ad views and page views of ads on your site, along with points for your blog posts and for the number of times you visit Adgitize ads. On top of this, an advertiser gets extra advertiser points as well as the traffic from their ads. Your monthly points convert into money.

If you refer someone who becomes an advertiser you get $5 plus $1 each month as long as they continue advertising.

So far my experience at Adgitize has been positive and I would definitely recommend it!

Lemonade Award

2009-01-03T04:27:00.000-08:00

I was given the Lemonade Award by Chronicles Of Caelen.

Those who win are to post the award on their blog, give some link love to the person that nominated you and put up their own list of 10 recipients. Don’t forget to post a comment on their blog with a link back to yours, letting them know their blog’s a winner!

I decided to pass on the award to my top 10 Entrecard droppers for December as a way of thanking them for their support.

Thanks again to Chronicles Of Caelen for thinking this blog was noteworthy enough to deserve some lemonade! Her blog is also highly recommended!

A Rose By Name Learns

Earning As An Affiliate

Blogger Rap

Earn Blogger

Of Trends and Aces

Celebrities in Pantyhose and Tights

Learning How To Make Money Online

SFV Blog

The Life of a Mom

John Lottery's Bimonthly Lottery Articles

Using Photosynth To Enhance Your Blog

2008-12-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

I've recently started using Photosynth, which is an application by Microsoft whereby you can create a "cinematic" effect with your flat photos.

The process itself is quite simple - you take lots of photos from all angles of the desired object, landscape etc and then upload them to Photosynth, which sorts them out and creates the 3D image. However, it does take quite a bit of practice to get the right photos and make sure you've covered all the angles. There is a useful tutorial video on the site, but I've found you need to spend time practising.

You can take a look at one of my first efforts on my other blog Corfu Chronicles, where I've posted a view of a Corfu landscape.

Can Photosynth enhance your blog? Well, I think it could be useful to certain types of blogs - nature, travel, art etc - and could perhaps generate more interest in a post than an ordinary flat photo would, but I think it needs to be done sparingly to be more effective. And I'm not sure that I like the Photosynth frame that the image appears in on the post.

The thing is that you need to spend time on it and take a lot of photos. Anything less than about 40 or so (depending on the 'size' of what you're photographing) is really not going to produce a 'synthy' image, as they call it. For the one I did on Corfu Chronicles, I took 115 photos!

So I don't think it's really what you would call a 'blogging tool', though I think that it can enhance certain types of blogs and posts as long as you don't overdo it.

It's fun though!

A Blogger's Christmas Stocking!

2008-12-16T06:21:00.000-08:00

My sister wants to get me something from Amazon for Christmas and she asked me for some ideas. I had a bit of a search and in true blogging spirit - :-) - I came up with the three following books about Blogging! I don't know which of these she will get me - I've left a little room for surprise!

Each of them have the Look Inside facility, so I was able to browse through a few pages of each.

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
The Huffington Post is listed at No. 1 at Technorati, so I guess they know a thing or two about blogging!

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
I have a lot of respect for the authors Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett and am a subscriber to both of their newsletters.

Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers
The title really says it all here. 30 of the world's top bloggers give their own experience and advice. You can see the list of who they are at Amazon, as well as getting a peek at some of the pages.

As I said, I've left it to be a surprise which one I get (maybe I'll get them all!!), though I think I lean towards the Huffington one as the most desirable.

I Won A Month's Free Advertising At Adgitize!

2008-12-10T03:27:00.000-08:00

Following my post about the Adgitize competition to win a month's free advertising, I'm following up to say I was the lucky winner!

I now have a month's free advertising for my blog Authentic Greek Recipes. Already over the last few days I've seen a lot of traffic coming from these ads. I also received my first payment as a publisher for the month of November.

Just a reminder that at Adgitize as a publisher you get points for visiting the other blogs, and for the articles you write on your blog(s). These points are translated into cash at the end of each month. You also get a one-off $5 for each advertiser you refer as well as $1 per month as long as they keep advertising.

As an advertiser you get all of the above plus extra points as an advertiser (again translated into cash at the end of the month) plus, of course, the traffic from your ads - which are very reasonably priced - which I have witnessed first-hand from the visits to my free ad!

Selling Online

2008-12-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

Another way to make money is by selling online. A lot of people are doing very well with this, and I just want to mention a few of the ways - other than eBay - in which you can do this.

If you are talented and make your own handcraft products, then Etsy is probably the best way to showcase and sell them. I've been seeing more and more bloggers who have their own Etsy stores and, quite honestly most of the their products are terrific.

For those who aren't handcrafters, but have artistic and design talent, then perhaps either Cafe Press or Zazzle is the best choice. At these sites there is a wide variety of products available - from clothing to mugs and notebooks - and you choose which ones you want to sell and put your own design on to them. With Cafe Press you also have the option to pay for an upgrade, where you can design a much more attractive store.

If you are not in any way creative (like me!) but you have products to sell, then a couple of sites you might want to take a look at are eCrater and buyitsellit. At these 2 free sites you can buld your own online store with whatever products you want.

Last, but certainly not least, if you are neither creative nor have anything to sell (again, like me!) then there is Zlio.

Zlio allows you to build up to 50 stores and you can choose which market you want to aim at - USA, UK, France or Germany. The idea is to try and choose some kind of a theme for your online store, choose the products you'd like to sell from the merchants affiliated to Zlio and earn commission from the sales. You don't need to worry about the quality of the products, as the merchants include a lot of "heavyweights" - Adidas, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble etc, and there are over 3 million items to choose from. The shipping and delivery is also handled by Zlio, so you don't have to worry about that either.

Now, in addition to the earnings from products you sell, you can also have Google AdSense on your store site. Zlio themselves keep 40% of earnings from there and you keep 60%. There is also a referral programme, where you get 10% of commissions made by people referred by you plus 5% on the second level.

I, myself am looking seriously at Zlio, and need to decide what would be an appropriate theme for the store and whether I have the time and energy to commit to it.

Win 1 Month's Free Advertising at Adgitize

2008-11-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

I published an earlier post about Adgitize. Adgitize has been going for less than a month and has reached 422795 ad views (at the time of writing) - views of the ads that member advertisers have placed on member blogs. You can see the current number of ad views at the bottom of this post.

Now, Adgitize have just announced that they are holding a competition to guess when they will reach 700000 ad views! The person who comes closest will win 1 month's free advertising on Adgitize plus one other person who has participated will be drawn at random to get 1 month's free advertising as well.

To take part in the contest, you need to have signed up at Adgitize - which is free. As I mentioned in previous post, the benefits of joining Adgitize are -

For Bloggers

You get points for your posts on your blogs (which you would have written anyway), for the number of views of Adgitize ads on your blog, for clicking on ads on other members' blogs. Depending on the number of points you have a accumulated, you get a share of the income each month.

You also get $5 for each person who signs up through you and becomes an advertiser, plus $1 per month for as long as they remain advertisers.

For Advertisers

All of the above benefits plus advertising at very, very reasonable rates on an ever-increasing number of blogs, bringing more traffic to your own blog.

It's a very simple system, and you can generate some more money and traffic for your site. I've already made $15 this month.

I would definitely recommend signing up. As I said, it's free. Click on the banner below for more details.

Hey, What Are You Doing Here? All The Gang's Over At SlogBite!

2008-11-18T01:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the post title! I just wanted to post something about the new blog directory SlogBite. It's in pre-launch at the moment, but what makes it different is the fact that it focusses on the participation of the member blogs.

I know that I get a bit tired of directories and networks that don't pay attention to the needs and wants of the bloggers - who are, after all, what makes their business function - and even treating trhem disrespectfully, so I hope there is going to be a trend where bloggers can become more involved in a real way in these networks. SlogBite not only promises that, but is actually building itself up to launch based on the ideas and participation of the blogs.

For those of you on Entrecard, there is a page with all the EC members of SlogBite, to make your dropping a little easier. Come on over! I've seen a lot of good blogs already signed up there.

Superimposing One Image On Another

2008-11-14T03:28:00.000-08:00

I wanted to create an image for my post Money, Money Everywhere And Not A Cent To Spend over at my other blog Corfu Chronicles. The idea I had in my head was to have a picture of lots of banknotes falling through the air and an image superimposed at the bottom of someone who was obviously poor.

Well, I'm neither technically nor creatively inclined (to say the least!) so I found two pieces of free clip art - banknotes falling through the air and a poor person with his empty pockets showing - and then had to find a way of superimposing the one on the other.

Now I know there's lots of software out there, but I wanted something that was free (I am half Scottish, after all!). With Photo Bucket you can do some editing, but you can't superimpose. Well, I found FotoFlexer. It was just the job. It's free - you just need to register - and I was able to use it easily to superimpose the one image on top of the other, making the parts of the top image that I didn't want to show, transparent. I found the short explanatory videos really clear and helpful and it didn't take me long to create the image I wanted.

I love these free tools! They make me feel like such a techie!

I Won $150 from BlogNet Awards!

2008-11-10T04:01:00.000-08:00

Great news! I just won $150 from BlogNet Awards!

Each month they have contests for the best blogs in various categories and they also have a contest for nominating, voting and commenting. The winners in the latter contest are selected randomly, so the more you nominate, vote and/or comment, the more chances you have of winning a cash prize like I did.

For more details, visit the BlogNet Awards site.

Adgitize

2008-11-08T23:05:00.000-08:00

I have just signed up at Adgitize, a brand new blogger's advertiser network that pays real money for their affiliate program. $5 a sale on the initial sale and then $1 per month as long as the advertiser runs an ad. They have a great payout program at only $10.

You can see one of their banners above and a couple of 125 x 125 ads below on the left sidebar.

The thing with this company is that it is brand new. They just started earlier this month, so it's a chance to be part of it right from the beginning. It costs nothing to join and the signup is quick and easy.

They are offering some great rates for those who want to advertise and are offering rebates to advertisers that also act as publishers.

Blogs that want to be publishers get points for the following -

- Adgitize Ad Views on your blog
- Total page views
- Writing any kind of post (one per day ) on your blog. (i.e. what you do anyway)
- Clicking on some of the ads and visiting other members in the network.

These points all translate into money!

Anyway, I've been busy collecting my points and , with the low $10 pay out level, it shouldn't be long before I'm collecting some dosh!

Add Favicon to Blogger

2008-11-04T00:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I've just added a favicon to some of my blogs - and it was easy, peasy! Just as well, really, as I'm such a non-techie! A favicon, in case you don't know, is the little icon that you see next to the URL address at the top of the page (short for Favourite Icon).

I use Blogger, so I can let you know how to do it if you have a Blogger blog.

It is best if the image you want to use is square (mine was 125 x 125). Go to Dynamic Favicon for Blogger and Webmaster, who will convert your image and host it for you. Their service is completely free and you don' t even need to register. At the top of the page there is a box where you can browse and upload the image you want to use. Once you upload it, they convert it and host it and take you to another page, where you can get the code under Host It at IconJ.com: (Direct Link).

Copy the code and go to the Layout page for your blog, go to Edit HTML, Expand Widgets and then scroll down to where you will see -

]] >< /b:skin>

Paste the code immediately after this and before the next line, which is -

< / head >

And that's it! You may need to refresh your blog page before it shows up and I also found that it shows up more quickly on Firefox than IE.

I feel great when I can do something like that so easily!

The Website Owner Zone

2008-10-31T06:14:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Jenny Fletcher from My Greetings To You for recommending this network to me!

It's the Website Owner Zone, and it has gathered over 700 members in less than 2 months- which can't be bad - and, more important, it seems to be active. The membership is made up of website owners - as the name would imply - whether they be blogs or not, who network to help each other become more successful with what they are doing.

The site has a forum and it also has individual groups covering things like Web Traffic, Link Exchanges, Web Design, Affiliates and so on. There are already 90 separate groups.

I haven't had the chance to get really into it yet, but from cruise around the site it seems to be an active and helpful network.

Blog Content and Traffic

2008-10-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been blogging for a few months now and I decided to take some time to take stock. I think it's important to do this regularly - stop and see what you've done, what's gone well, what hasn't gone well and how you can improve.

What I believe is that the 2 most important factors that I need to work on if I am going to make money blogging are Traffic and Content.

Taking content first. I was going to say "quality" content, but that is a very subjective term. I've seen blogs which don't have what I would call quality content and yet are doing very well. The thing is to have what we can perhaps call the "right" content.

Content will help in 2 ways basically - you will get more people coming to your blog plus more subscriptions, and you will attract advertisers, who are the means to generate income. These are not just advertisers who will place an ad on your site, but those who will pay for sponsored posts.

Being able to produce good content is something we really need to think about before we start a blog. The topic of the blog has to be something that we know about and feel comfortable with and also have the motivation or passion, as well as the time, to keep writing about it for a long time!

Traffic will ensure that there are the readers to visit the advertisers' spots and generate income and a high number of visitors will also encourage those advertisers to use your site. Traffic in general is good, but targetted traffic is what we are really looking for.

Search Engine Optimisation is essential and good content will keep the visitors from search engines coming back and will also increase your "authority" in your chosen topic. It is no surprise to me that my best performing blog is Authentic Greek Recipes which aims to establish itself as an authentic and reliable source for good quality, easy Greek recipes that are cooked and eaten in the country by the locals.

I realise that I should be doing more content-wise on my blogs and am now trying to focus on using my time in the optimum way, without neglecting that aspect. I've got a pretty good idea which social networks are worth investing time with and which are not. I don't want to spend too much time trying to identify more and more Affiliate Programmes - it's taking up too much time and energy and has led me to neglect the content of my blogs. I am happy with AdSense, Amazon and Commission Junction basically and now have Kontera working alongside AdSense on Authentic Greek Recipes.

Something else that is taking up a lot of my time is Entrecard dropping. Now, EC is providing me with a lot of traffic - even though most of it is 'drop and run' - plus I get to see a huge variety of blogs. Through EC a lot of people have become genuinely interested in my blogs as have I in theirs. But the thing is, I need to be in a position where I am not relying so heavily on EC and can afford to spend less time dropping and more on writing good content. I also need to redesign my blogs in the not too distant future.

So, I feel like I'm going into the next stage of my blogging 'career' and I must admit I feel pretty excited about it!

Finding Social Networks at Ning

2008-10-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

Following on from my previous post about identifying social networks that are in your niche and which you can join and hopefully gain some more targetted traffic.

Ning has hundreds of thousands of networks of all sizes that have been created by people themselves, using the Ning template and support. I have identified several networks that are appropriate to my blogs there and joined them.

You just need to go to the Ning home page and start searching for popular networks. Unfortunately, your task is not simplified by them being categorised into groups, so it's a bit of a haul going through them - but worth it.

Niche Social Networks and Directories

2008-10-20T02:41:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I mentioned "specialised" social networks. Social Networks and Directories that are focussed on the theme of your blog can be a good source of targetted visitors, as well as providing you with more back links. For example, people who have joined Food & Recipe groups and directories have obviously indicated that they will have some interest in my blog Authentic Greek Recipes.

The way I went about finding these networks and directories is as follows -

Blogs in the same niche
I spent time visiting other blogs in the same niche and noted which topical networks and directories they were members of. I found that Entrecard was a great help here - I could go to the group that I was interested in and then visit the blogs listed in that group.

Interest groups within general networks & directories
Usually, social networks and directories will have groups within them that are focussed on various topics. I joined these groups, where not only could I find other people with similar interests, but could also participate in the group and so promote my blogs.

I have found BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog especially good for this, but there are also the non-blogger networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

Search Engine search
As well as the 2 methods above, I also did a simple search engine search. For the Authentic Greek Recipes site, this involved typing in Food or Recipe Groups or Networks etc. Most of the results that came up, I had already found, but a few others did come up.

Niche networking has the benefit of creating more back links, increasing traffic to your site(s) and also - because it is targetted - has the potential to add to your income stream.

Search Engine and Social Media Traffic

2008-10-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

I was reading a post by one of the top professional bloggers, who was analysing how much of his traffic came from Seme arch Engines and how much from other sources. He divided it up into 4 sources of traffic - Search Engines, Social Media, Other Sites and Direct. His search engine traffic apparently accounts for 33% of the total and he was happy with that.

This made look at the figures for my best performing blog - Authentic Greek Recipes.

Search Engine - 33%
Direct - 14%
Social Media - 50%
Other Sites - 3%

I'm fairly happy with those percentages, but what I need to do is increase the actual numbers. In other words, the total that they are a percentage of!!

I've been gradually learning more and more about Search Engine Optimisation and have been focussing mainly on the SEO Book and Wordtracker to help me.

With social media, I have found that there is what I would call "general" and "specialised" social networks. Specialised social networks are those that are to do specifically with the theme of your blog - in this case, food and recipes. I try as much as possible to join networks that are related to my blogs, as that will bring visitors who are actually interested in what you are writing about (hopefully!). More visitors who are interested in your content brings potentially more revenue.

Entrecard, which I would call a general social network, brings by far my most referral traffic. This is great, because it helps boost your rankings, but Entrecard also exposes you to other blogs who not only want to drop on you to gain credits, but are also actually interested in the content.

So, as I said, I'm happy with the percentages, but I need to increase the actual numbers. An integral part of this, I feel, is producing the kind of content that people will want to keep coming back for.

A combination of all these factors will eventually produce the goods - content, search engine optimisation and keeping myself exposed to the various social media.

My First Blogging Award!

2008-10-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

Yay! I got my first blogging award! Thanks to The Work From Home Mother for the award. You've got a great blog too!

I now have to pass on the award to other bloggers that I love.For those of you I list below you can put this little logo on your blog. Be sure to link back to the person who gave you the reward and pass it on to 7 other bloggers who you follow or love to read on occasion. Once you have completed that list, go to their blogs and post a comment telling them that they have received the award.

And now for my picks..

Making An Extra Money

Learning How To Make Money Online

The Daily WebLog

Great Little Gadget from The Daily Blog

2008-10-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

Do you see the gadget on the right sidebar where it says CHECK OUT THESE BLOGS? It's a neat little gadget that's been produced by The Daily Weblog.

Very simply, you go along to The Daily Weblog, submit the site(s) you want to be included, then click on Add to Blog in order to get the code to upload it onto your blog.

The gadget randomly displays the blogs that have been submitted on all the sites where it has been placed and generates traffic to your site. It won't bring floods of traffic, but in the few`days I've had it on my blogs, I've had more visitors from it than from several other schemes and directories that claim to generate traffic for you.

The image is nice and large, as you can see, and you can also click on the little button to the right to randomly go through other blogs.

Nice little idea! Kudos!

Can You Write?

2008-10-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

Apart from blogging, another way to make money online is by writing. If you have the ability to write clearly and well and have knowledge about particular topics, then there are a variety of ways you can use this to make money.

Helium

At Helium you can write articles, enter writing contests and apply for writing jobs that you can find in the Marketplace. Helium also pays you 5% commission on the earnings of writers that you have invited.

Lulu

Here you can publish and sell your books or e-books, as well as calendars, posters and a variety of other materials.

Blogger Jobs

A site which lists lots of writing jobs available to bloggers.

Freelance Writing Jobs

A great blog with all kinds of information and advice about writing.

Writer's Weekly

Lots of tips and information about freelance jobs.

Search Engine Optimisation

2008-10-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

I've been really trying to get a handle on Search Engine Optimisation, as I'm not at all a techie and yet I know it's SEO that's going to get the people who are searching for the information that you can provide to come to your site - targetted traffic, in other words - and who are going to be the ones who will generate income.

A while a go I posted about the excellent SEO Book, which I downloaded and which has been a tremendous resource. I have now also discovered SeoChat, which is another resource that I've started to use. It has Chat Forums, where there are a lot of authoritative posts and articles, and a section with SEO Tools. I've been spending quite a bit of time there using the tools to find out the status of my sited and what I can do to improve it.

You can check what spiders see on your site, for example, when they are crawling the internet, you can optimise your keywords, and there are many, many other useful tools.

I feel almost like I've gone back to college, but I know that it's all information and know-how that's absolutely necessary for me to start generating the kind of traffic to my sites that's going to bring in the money!

Get Free Backlinks from the Top Directories

2008-10-08T03:31:00.001-07:00

Following my previous post about getting backlinks - Get Free Backlinks, I'd just like to follow up with another site I found which lists the top 50 directories which allow you to submit your site(s) for free.

It's Free Web Submission and they will automatically submit your site(s) to 20 of the directories, though you have to do the submissions to the others manually. It lists the directories clearly and puts their Page Rank nect to them so that you can see which ones you want to submit to.

I don't honestly think that very much actual traffic comes from directories, but having the backlinks helps to increase your own ranking in the search engines, which in turn brings the traffic that you are looking for.

Getting Paid to Search the Internet

2008-09-28T03:12:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post recently about using Homepages to search the internet and getting paid. Well, to be honest, I didn't really use it that much after I signed up. But then I started thinking about it and said to myself, "Why not?"

I search on the internet every day, anyway, so why not get some money while I'm doing it? I realised that the only real question is, "Is it a good search engine?"

Well, I started using it and found that using the Yahoo! search engine that Homepages uses, the results were as good as any other engine. So, why not use it?

You're not going to make a fortune, OK, but you're not doing any extra work and getting some money in the meantime. And if you get referrals, then it can become quite a useful little sum.

How much can you make? Well, I'll take the example they give on their website -

If you make an average of 5 searches per day - which is quite a conservative estimate actually - then you make just £1.50 per month and £18.25 per year. However, if you have 10 referrals, who in turn have 10 referrals, who also have 10 referrals (3 levels under you), and each of them makes an average of 5 searches, then you will be making about £48 per month or £584 per year.

The amounts are in British pounds, as the company is based in the UK.

This not a huge sum, obviously, but the essence of the matter as far as I see it, is that it's all extra cash for something you do anyway. You're not putting in any extra effort at all to get it.

So, I now use it regularly every day.

Convinced?

OK, then sign up for Homepages!! It's free, anyway!

Promote Your Blog by Creating Your Own Widget

2008-09-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

I have just created my own widget for one of my blogs Authentic Greek Recipes - you can see it near the bottom of the left sidebar. This contains the recent posts, along with photos from the blog, and I created it really easily at Widgetbox.

I have placed it on each of my blogs to help bring more traffic to Authentic Greek Recipes. The good thing at Widgetbox is that you can also make your widget a Facebook application, and then invite friends on Facebook. Once you have at least 5 who accept, you can register it in the Facebook Application Directory.

Widgetbox also has its own network, with various Channels, or categories. I have joined the Food group, and this can increase your traffic in 2 ways. Through visitors to the Network Channel itself and also, each member has a Channel widget on their blog with yours on it, so visitors to all these blogs can visit yours from there.

Neat!

Win $15 to your Paypal Account

2008-09-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a chance to win $15 in a competition at the Youth Ministry Ideas blog.

All you have to do is blog about the competition post and then leave a comment. This is another of the Win it Wednesday competitions that are held at the Youth Ministry Ideas blog every ....Wednesday!

Good Luck!

Increase Your AdSense Revenue

2008-09-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

The keywords that are used by Google in their Adsense programme have different values, which means that people clicking on some ads will generate more cash for you than on others. So if you can find out which keywords have a greater value, then you can use those that are relevant to your content to help get better returns.

Googlest.com have produced a 13 page document with the Top Paying Google Adsense Keywords which is available to download for only $5.

This is a great aid for those using Adsense, but obviously only keywords that are related to what your blog is about and can be naturally integrated should be used.

You may notice that I have added a new widget on the left sidebar, which is regularly updated with AdSense Tips to help optimise your use of AdSense on your site.

Doubling Your Entrecard Drops in Almost the Same Time

2008-09-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

I've recently found a way to double the number of Entrecards I drop on in the same amount of time. This is not just by having a list of the sites with Entrecard that open quickly and dropping on them every day.

What I do is that I go to my Drops Inbox and click on a site there, then when it is open I drop on their card and then click on the site that is advertised on their EC widget. I close the first site - in the meantime, the second is opening up - and go to the next site in the Drops Inbox. While this is opening up, I drop on the site from the first widget, drop on it and close it. This process is repeated for each one.

In this way, you take advantage of the time it takes to close one window and open another to drop on another EC card. As I say, it practically doubles the number of drops in the same amount of time.

As well as saving time and increasing the number of EC credits I get, it also ensures that I am visiting a much wider variety of blogs.

When I am EC dropping, I like to stop and look at blogs that interest me. There are blogs that I know and like, and if they have a new post, I stop and read it. If it is a new blog (to me), I will often take a good look at what they are writing and also how their blog is designed and what they are doing that could be of benefit to my blogs.

Perhaps lots of people on Entrecard are already using this method of dropping and I've just cottoned on to it, but I thought I'd like to share it anyway.

SEO Book

2008-09-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

If you're not an expert - and I'm certainly not - then you need to try and get as much help as you can. I've been wanting to try and work on my search engine optimisation to get increase targetted traffic to my blogs and I downloaded the SEO Book for free.

I'm really starting to get a handle on it now - they provide tools for keyword suggestions and research amongst others and there are free tips, as well as search engine optimisation learning guides and video. After I joined, they also followed up with e-mails about Keywords, Strategy and Link building.

I also found the blog on their site to be especially useful - I've been learning a lot about Tags and Linking!

There is a lot to learn in order to become successful, but thankfully there experts out there - like the authors of SEO Book - to help us.

How Many Blogs Should You Have?

2008-09-13T04:28:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading a post on someone's blog. I can't remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect that if you have more than one blog when you are beginning, then that's a recipe for failure.

I think I would only agree with that if you don't have the time. If you have a full-time job and you blog only in your spare time, then, yes, I don't think you'll have much time to maintain more than one blog at the required standard.

However, if you have the time and if you want to start making money at some point, then I think you should definitely have more than one blog.

The basic thing that you need to see is whether the subject of each blog is something which you can quite comfortably write about continuously for the long-term. I just started a few months ago, and I looked at what there was that I could blog about. I didn't really think about what niche I should get into - pretty much all the niches have been covered as far as I can see, and even if there are some not fully covered, could I comfortably blog about them?

So I decided what I could blog about long-term - even permanently, if necessary - and started.

I have 6 blogs at the moment and there are 2 main reasons for this -
- There is minimal income going to be coming in to begin with, so at least multiply this to make it something more worthwhile.
- I didn't know which of the blogs would be successful, so it's a kind of trial to find out what went well and to build on it.

My Authentic Greek Recipes blog was set up because my wife is an expert cook and we live in Greece. There are loads of cooking blogs out there, but it's something we know about and can develop. I tend to focus more on everyday recipes from here in the country, rather than more"classic" ones. The advantage of this blog is that there are lots of food communities, where you can find targetted traffic, and even in Entrecard with its "flash" traffic, there are many bloggers who are also genuinely interested in the subject.

The blog has just been given a Google Page Rank 3 after a few months and traffic from search engines is about 40% of total traffic.

I live in Corfu, so it was logical to blog about it in some way. I am well-informed about real estate and hotels on the island, so I set up 2 blogs - Corfu Property and Corfu Holiday Accommodation - which are basically information blogs. The positive side of these blogs blogs is that when targetted traffic builds up, the AdSense ads especially are completely geared to what they are looking for. The down side is that they are not really suitable vehicles for PPP type sponsored posts - though my intention is to create sponsored posts and ads directly from local sources once the traffic is up to acceptable levels.

I created Corfu Chronicles to allow myself the "license", if you like, to write about just anything I wanted - whether it be about Corfu itself or something else I'd like to talk about. I felt it was important that I had this kind of outlet.

Daily Joke is really there just to see how it goes.

The last blog I set up was this one - Money From Nothing. I needed the outlet to write about making money online and also a means of getting my own share of the income from the huge community of money-making bloggers out there.

At the moment, I'm trying to think about anything else that I could comfortably blog about, to increase and develop my "stable". If and when I come up with anything, I'll be sure to let you know!

Get Free Back Links

2008-09-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

I've just started using SubmitterBot to submit my blogs for free to directories and get back links.

SubmitterBot is what they term a semi-automatic directory submission tool. You just register for free and then add the URLs you want to submit. When you press Start Submitting, you are presented with each of the 446 directories one at a time, you decide whether you want to submit to it or not, then choose the category and submit your site.

It's semi-automatic because you choose which of the directories you want, along with the category in each one. They say it should take about 30 minutes to do it for each of your sites, but I found it actually took a little bit longer - but maybe that was just me.

It's free and it creates new links, so I'm hoping that it's going to be another tool to build up back links, Page Rank and traffic.

Answer Questions and Bring Visitors to your Site

2008-09-03T03:20:00.000-07:00

I have just signed up for Yahoo Answers. Here you can gradually establish yourself as an expert in your field by answering questions that people post and direct them to your blog(s). I'm going to be focussing on questions about Greek cooking, to bring traffic to my blog Authentic Greek Recipes and on Corfu and Greece, which will bring them to my blogs Corfu Property, Corfu Chronicles and Corfu Holiday Accommodation.

I'll see how it goes and post about the results later.

Earn Money whilst Searching the Internet

2008-09-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

I've just signed up at Homepages, where you can make money whilst searching the web. You just use Homepages to make your normal searches and you get paid for each search. It is powered by Yahoo, so you don't need to worry about the quality of the search results.

In addition to making money from your own searches, you can also make income from referrals. You get a percentage from the searches that your referrals make for up to 3 levels of referrals.

Sign up for free, and get paid to do what you do anyway.

Traffic! Traffic! Traffic! Part 1

2008-08-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

It goes without saying that in order to make money from your blog(s), you need to have people visiting. Now, to maximise income, this really needs to be targetted visitors - people who are actually interested in the content of your site. However, even "untargetted" visitors will help, as they increase the amount of incoming traffic and links, which will raise your positioning in the search engines, which in turn , will bring the targetted visitors.

From what I have learnt, either through personal experience or from other more experienced bloggers, the following are some important ways of increasing traffic. I have called this Part 1 as I will be posting later with more ways.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
This is really the first thing we need to do when we set up a blog. As well as setting myself up on Google and Yahoo, I also used Submit Express , which lists you on a whole lot of Search Engines, as well as having a free Meta Tag generator, which you can use.

Backlinks
Getting incoming links, especially from high-ranking sites, will increase your standing with the search engines, which will again increase your targetted traffic. I have found Backlink Builder a useful tool, where you can just type in your keywords and they will produce a whole list of sites where you can get related backlinks.

Directories
These also create backlinks to your site - sometimes reciprocal, sometimes one-way. You can see some blog directories at the bottom right of this blog. BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog are a combination of directory and social network and can be really helpful in generating traffic to your blog(s).

Another site I found useful is Free Website Directory List where you can find web directories by Page Rank and apply to get listed on them. Remember, the higher the Page Rank of the site you have an incoming link from, the higher the ranking of your own site goes.

Reciprocal Links
It is preferrable to get one-way links for the serch engines to rank you higher, but even if you have reciprocal links, that still means that your blog is listed on other people's sites and visitors to their site will have the chance to come to yours.

Obviously, it is better to have these links with sites whose content is related to yours, and the higher the Page Rank and number of visitors they have, the better.

Commenting
By commenting on other people's posts, you create more links back to your site, as well as getting exposure to visitors to the other sites. Commenting on sites that are Do Follow is better and one way to find them is to go to Google Image Search and type in U Comment I Follow. From the results of the search, you can choose which sites you want to visit and it is obviously better to comment on posts that are related to your blog. No spamming, though!

Social Networks
Joining social networks increases your exposure and so you can promote your blog(s). As well as general social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, it is especially fruitful to join networks that are related to the content of your blog. Remember - targetted visitors!

Part 2 to follow...

Feeling Lucky?

2008-08-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

ClixSense have just added another way that you can make some money. They have just started what they call ClixGrid.

This is basically a grid where you can click anywhere you want up to 20 times per day if you are a free member and 50 times a day if you are a Premium member. You have a chance to win between $0.01 - $5 perday. Basically it's something similar to getting 20 free scratchcards every day!

So now there are 3 ways you can make money from ClixSense, which I have gathered is one of the most reputable Paid to Click companies.

1. Click on ads every day
2. Referrals
3. ClixGrid

The most lucrative of these three is getting a downline of referrals.

Feeling lucky? Join ClixSense and click on ClixGrid every day, as well as getting paid to click on ads and make referrals.

RevResponse

2008-08-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've just started using RevResponse as an affiliate. This is a little bit different from other affiliate companies in that you can make money by letting your readers have FREE content that is relevant and of value to them.

With RevResponse, you can have a widget on your site that contains newsletters, business resources, analysts' reports and downloads that are free for your visitors. You can arrange that the selection on view is relevant to what you feel your readers would be interested in. The free offers are popular with professionals across a range of industries, and you’ll receive commissions on qualified requests from your international traffic as well as your U.S. visitors.

For example, a couple of magazines that qualified readers may like to subscribe to for FREE are:

Website Magazine
Until now, there has not been a magazine that caters exclusively to the business of running a website. Website Magazine has tapped premier talent in the Internet industry for our content and each and every issue will contain practical advice and insights for website owners.

eWeek
eWeek is the essential technology information source for builders of e-business. Through a combination of news, analysis and evaluation, it guides readers in making the best technology decisions for their enterprise. Focusing on e-commerce, communications and Internet-based architecture, eWeek enables readers to successfully evaluate, deploy and leverage new technology solutions for competitive advantage.

Learning from Other Blogs

2008-08-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

In one of my previous posts, I talked about Learning from the Masters - in other words, from those who are highly successful at blogging and making money online.

We can also learn a lot from other bloggers in general. I spend a lot of my time - as I'm still fresh to this online world - looking at other people's blogs, usually as I am Entrecard dropping on them. By the way, if you don't know what Entrecard is, then I would highly recommend joining - it's a great way to get a lot of traffic to your blog. I'll talk more about it in another post, but in the meantime, you can just click on Get One on the Featureed Blog at the top right-hand corner.

This is basically market research, and there are several ways in which we can learn from others.

Design and Appearance
Check out the design of their blog and see how you feel about it as a visitor. Is it attractive? Is it clear? Would you like to stay there and read it, or just skip on to another blog? Now, put yourself in the position of a visitor to your blog and see how it would seem to them. I think most serious bloggers spend quite a bit of their time making adjustments to the appearance, so that it can become more "enticing" and less unattractive.

Functionality
Bearing in mind that we want to make money, what are these other blogs doing well that will make as many people as possible click on the ads, join the referral programmes or whatever else will provide them with income?

Widgets
Especially if you are relatively new to blogging, you can check out the widgets that others have and get ideas about what would be appropriate to your blog.

Affiliate Programmes
Again, if you're fairly new to blogging, you can gather information from others as to what affiliate programmes are out there. Pay especial attention to those blogs that are in the same niche or category as yours, as this will help you in deciding which would be most appropriate to you.

Blog Directories and Communities
Once again, pay especial attention to blogs in your niche, and see what directories and communities they are part of. By also joining these, you can substantially increase traffic to your site, and in the case of communities that are specifically for your subject (e.g. Recipes), this can be targetted traffic.

To sum up, I feel we need to be constantly observant as to what is going on and continuously learning from each other, so as to be able to improve what we are doing and consequently increase our earnings.

We need to be especially aware of what blogs in the same niche as us are doing, and primarily those who have a high Page Rank and lots of visitors. What are they doing right? Can we learn from them and be as successful - if not more so - as them?

Get Paid for Life with PerformancingAds

2008-08-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

PerformancingAds allows publishers - site owners - to utilise a fully automated self-serve ad system and get paid at the end of the month in which they've earned the money. You can also earn money or credits that will drive traffic to your site and which you can use to have your own ad displayed on other sites.

Make Money With PerformancingAds

Advertisers can promote their products on high quality sites as well as across entire blog networks.

Targeted Blog Advertising With PerformancingAds

There's a great affiliate programme as well, which gives you $10 for each new publisher or advertiser you refer PLUS 5% on all advertiser spending for life!

Definitely sounds worth checking out!

Become an Affiliate

2008-08-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

One of the main income streams for most, if not all, money-making blogs is Affiliate Marketing. This basically means that you make a commission by selling other companies' products or services and/or refer people to join as affiliates.

There are a lot of companies out there offering affiliate opportunities, and personally I feel it is too much just to fill up your blog with all, or even most of them. I think it's important to be selective and choose those that you feel would be most suited to your readership. Most companies also give you the option to select products in line with the content of your site.

I'm still at the stage of trying out these companies at my various blogs, to see which ones I should stick with. I can imagine myself at some point in the future, eventually settling down with the most productive.

Some recommendations to become an affiliate are the following -

Amazon

DealDotCom

PayDotCom

Make Money With PerformancingAds

shareasale.com

ShoppingAds

Text Link Ads

Top 10 Entrecard Droppers for July

2008-08-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

The following blogs were the Top 10 visitors from Entrecard to this blog for July. I'd just like to extend a special thanks to them and encourage the rest of you to pay them a visit.

PipeB Web Hosting

Alluricious Blog

Goof Blogger

Life With Roxxymetal

Make Money Online

The Sports Dollar

Pembrokeshire Directory

Certification of Telecommunication Devices in Indonesia

Wise Women of the West

Patsy's Words of Wisdom

Getting Paid to Post

2008-07-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Another way of making money from your blog is by being paid to write a post about a specific company, product or service.

For obvious reasons, advertisers won't pay someone who has only just started blogging, and the various intermediary companies who bring together the advertisers and bloggers - or publishers, as they are referred to - usually have an approval system before you are given the opportunity to write sponsored posts.

Usually, they will want the blog to be 2 or 3 months old at least and with a minimum number of total posts and/or monthly posts.

Once you do start writing the paid posts, then I think it's important to maintain the overall quality of the blog by writing about products that are in keeping with the content of the site, and also don't detract from your regular posts. This will, in the long run, produce better results both for yourself and for the sponsors.

Here are some sites where you can apply to write sponsored posts or reviews.

BLOGTOPROFIT

Bloggerwave

Blogsvertise

Pay per Post

PayU2Blog

Review Me

Smorty

Sponsored Reviews

AdSense Makes Sense

2008-07-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I mentioned Google AdSense. This can be a regular and sometimes very good source of income for bloggers.

When you put AdSense on your blog, the ads that appear are automatically related to the context of what is written on the site (Contextual Ads), to make it more likely that visitors will want to click on them and thus generate money for you.

Google are very strict, however, in their Terms of Service and there are 3 points in particular that you would do well to be absolutely clear about, otherwise you run the risk of having your account terminated.

First of all, you can't have any other ads that are also contextual ads. If you want to sign up with another company as well, make sure that this won't be in violation of Google's Terms of Service. You can usually check in the FAQ of the other company to see if they can run alongside other ads but, if in doubt, as someone who is not yet an expert, my policy is to be safe and not do it.

Secondly, you are not allowed to encourage anyone to click on the ads, and finally, you can't click on them yourself.

Now, as far as optimisation of Google Ads is concerned, I think there are 2 main factors. The first is the actual design and placement of them. When you are placing the ads on your site, you can design the colour, size and type that you feel would be most effective. You can however, only have up to a certain number of units on the page - at the moment it is 3.

The second and, I feel, much more important factor is traffic. In other words, the number of people visiting your site. This is actually just common sense - if you don't have people looking at your site, how can they look at the ads?

And not simply traffic, but what is called targetted traffic. Not just people dropping by your site, but people who are actually interested in what is written there. Again, just common sense really.

So, this can help us focus on getting targetted traffic in order to increase our income stream. I will be talking about ways of increasing traffic in another post.

Blogging for Money

2008-07-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that blogging is the main way to make any decent sort of money from the internet. The people that I see on the internet making money are the bloggers whose blog or blogs give them several channels of income.

When I first started reading up about blogging, the first or one of the first things that everyone was saying was to blog about something you know and preferrably care about. I definitely agree with this, because if you are going to keep up a blog, then you are going to have to care enough about it to keep posting regularly, and if you know the subject then obviously you're going to be posting about issues that are within your experience.

There is quite a lot of talk about finding your niche. However, there are so many blogs out there about so many different issues, that I feel you would be hard put to find something that hasn't been covered. So, basically I believe that you should just blog about something you are confident that you can keep going with, and automatically you will bring your own angle to it.

The ways of making money from your blog or blogs are basically as follows -

Contextual Ads: The best known of these is Google AdSense. These are ads placed on your blogs that automatically adjust to the context, so that they are relevant to what people are reading. The amount you get paid depends on the number of times people click on them.

Sponsored Posts: Many advertisers pay bloggers to write posts about their products or services.

Becoming an Affiliate: In other words, you have ads or links on your blog and get paid commission on the sales, leads or referrals that come through them.

Direct Advertising: People or companies pay you to place an ad on your blog.

Direct Selling: You sell your own products or services through your blog.

To me these are the main income generators from your blog and I will be writing separate posts about my experiences with all of them.

Finally, I just want to mention the blogging platform that I have chosen - Blogger. The two main reasons for this are firstly that it is free and secondly I can put Google Ads on it, from which I derive income.

Learning from the masters

2008-07-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

The word "apprentice" implies that there is a master or masters. This also applies to working online.

To learn from people who have professional experience and are able to give serious and responsible advice and tips I have tried to find the best in the field. For general money-making I have found Dosh Dosh to have comprehensive and wide-ranging advice, and I use it as a constant point of reference.

More specifically for blogging, I have ProBlogger and John Chow as points of reference. I subscribe to both of these sites as I think it's important, as in any other business, to keep up with stories and advice about what's happening in the world of blogging.

Aside from these 3, I'm trying to learn and pick up things just by looking at whatever I find in other blogs and social networks. I look to see how successful someone is and then just try and understand what they are doing and learn from that, whilst adapting it to my needs and situation. I'm not going to get into that in this post, but will go through stuff that I have learnt and found to be useful in later posts.

What I'm really trying to say here is that we need to find those who are experienced and successful and learn from them. That's one of the wonderful things about the internet - it's possible to find so much information and advice.

Paid to Click

2008-07-11T03:10:00.000-07:00

Another way to make money without any expense is with the Pay to Click programmes. When you sign up with one of these programmes, you are given some sites to click on for 30 seconds and you are paid - usually $0.01 per click. Now this is going to make me a fortune, even clicking every day, but you can generate referrals and get percentages from their clicks.

I have read that a lot of these programmes are not so reputable and that people have had problems in getting paid, but there is one that generally seems to get good reviews - ClickSense. I've signed up for it and set aside some time every day for "casual clicking". You can sign up easily here -

Social Networking for Money

2008-07-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

Even if you don't have a website or blog, you can join social networks on the internet and make money. There are many networks you can join, but the with the two I am going to mention in this post you can actually make money from participating.

The first is Yuwie -

Another site that has recently gone online is ZenZuu. I've just joined this, so I don't know yet how things will go, but again the revenue is shared among members and getting referrals is going to be the best way to make some decent amounts of money. They also have listings of business opportunities. Signing up is easy and free -

With both these networks the real money is to be made through referrals. As the levels of referrals below you increase, the amount you earn increases geometrically. Perhaps one good way to get a targetted market for referrals is to refer people from Yuwie (which has a much larger membership) to ZenZuu.