Groupon and Living Social are great, but Moolala pays you for daily deals- program reviews

I don't know about you, but I use coupons whenever I can to save money on food, clothes, gas and whatever else anyone will allow me to. I sign up for every emailing list and often use the coupons that are mailed to me to make purchases for dinner, groceries, vitamins, etc. I use Shopkick on my Android phone to acquire points for just visiting stores and looking at products and, most of all, I use the daily deal web sites and Smartphone apps.

The two biggest daily deal programs are Groupon and Living Social. I have no interest in most of what they're offering, but once in a while I'll see a deal I can't pass up. Like Italian dinner for four with two appetizers, four entrees and four drinks for $39 at a restauant near me. Or maybe someone to clean my house for half-price. I'm in.

While Groupon will give you ten bucks for each person you refer, and Living Social will give you your deal for free, the newer kid on the block, Moolala, will pay you every time someone in your matrix buys any of the daily deals.

I signed up for Moolala and sort of forgot about it. I told some friends via Facebook and put a few banner links on some of my web sites, but didn't pay much attention. I was still getting the daily deals from them, so I'd glance at the deal and if I wasn't interested I'd hit delete.

Then one day, I noticed at the top of one of their daily deal email blasts that they listed the number of people in my matrix (you also get paid when friends of friends buy) and how much money I made. Hmmmm.

I highly recommend participating in all of these daily deal programs. Firstly, you may save a lot of money on purchases you would have made anyway, and as a bonus you may earn actual cash or free stuff. So, sign up through the links on this page (see how that works).  Then place banner ads on your web sites and blogs, write about it in your blogs, share it on Facebook and Twitter. You're helping others out, and pocketing some cash.

You ain't gonna get rich quick, but every little bit helps. Diversify.

Alternative revenue streams to Adsense - Bidvertiser review

As I watch my Google traffic and revenue plummet, I am more dilligently trying to find other legitimate advertising revenue streams for my web sites. I don't know what Google has done to affect the referral and organic search aspect of their robot, I just know that whatever they did, it sucks for me.

 

My most visited entertainment oriented web site, Interactive Lunacy, which has had nearly 1.25 million unique visitors since I began tracking it, has seen its traffic go down about 35% and the revenue from that site down more than 60%. If this is the result of changes that Google has made to their engine, I'm not exactly sure how this makes any sense when it's causing Google's Adsense publishers to find ways to replace AdSense ads with other ads. Sure, it may benefits the AdWords paying customers a little, but once you get to the non-paying listings Google will be sending visitors to websites which no longer feature AdSense ads. And that is good, Google people, how?

 

As I searched for other ad publishing options, one that frequently popped up in my searches was BidVertiser. Just because it shows up in Google doesn't mean it's good or even legitimate but it seemed like it was worth giving a try. At least for starters I know that their staff knows how to administer a decent dose of SEO.

 

The sign up and approval process was easy. After signing up, you seem to be approved immediately. I then went to their ad template link and created a 468 x 60 banner ad which I placed on a few of my Interactive Lunacy reasonably trafficked web pages. My CTR (Click Through Ratio) for Adsense Ads, at it's current terrible rate is between 1.5 and 9%. After having Bidvertiser ads on my site for a couple of weeks so far, my CTR is 0%. Not one click yet with a few hundred page views.

 

Although they claim that advertisers bid on your online real estate which should make ads relevant, I see no indication that the Bidvertiser ads running on my pages are in any way related to my content. They all seem to be those deceptive "Download - Play" ads.

 

They also had slide-up ads, which they claimed received a higher CTR, but I didn't see that (obviously, with no clicks at all). Since I find those ads to be very annoying, I disallowed the slide-ups, hoping that I'd get an occasional click. Still...nothing.

 

So, my initial impression of the Bidvertiser program: Primarily Poopy. I will now search for other possible revenue streams to add to the reduced Adsense money. I'll keep you posted.

 

If you want to make money on the internet you need a web site - even a free one like this

There are so many different ways to (allegedly) make money online that I'm sometimes overwhelmed as to which ones to explore. There are dozens of affiliate programs, ad programs, content locking programs, pyramid schemes, ebooks, and the list goes on.

But, there is usually one constant: you need a website that offers something. It could be entertainment and the way to make money is through AdSense ads or funy products from Amazon or other affilliate programs. You could review a particular type of product and have links so the visitors can actually buy them. You might have naked pictures of your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's cousin that people will pay to see. But, ya gots to have a website of some type.

The easiest website to get a "website" is to start a blog like this one. You just jump through a few hoops and you will have a spiffy interface at which you can learn to create page after page after page of content about whatever the hell you're trying to share.

But, ain't nobody coming.

So, you have to promote. And after that, you have to promote. Then you need to go into promotion mode. After which time you get back to promoting.

If you have basic web design skills and html knowledge you are a bit ahead of the game because you can implement your ideas and have more control over the meta content and SEO factors that you have with blogging or free website programs. In that case, have both. That's what I do.

One of my websites which does pretty well in its pretty large niche market is Hooked On Droid. This site basically reviews apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry and other Smartphones. Sometimes I write about what the companies involved are doing, like Google buying Motorola Mobile and such. A little revenue (and I emphasize the "little"). Virtually all of the content can also be found at the Hooked On Droid blog. Both of which are promoted extensively on all of my Twitter accounts including the Hooked On Droid Twitter account.

See what I just did there? I created backlinks from this blog to three of my Hooked On Droid pages. As you know (or should) backlinks are huge.

After you create your website and/or blog, you must spend as much time as possible fine-tuning the page content, meta content, searching for places to list your site, comment in forums and on other blogs, always inclued a link to your site in your signature (sneaky but effective backlink), visit competitors, check out their meta content, ask to be a guest blogger at related blogs, the list goes on and on.

Get started right now! Choose a niche, and if you can't create a website (yet) go make a blog. Get the feel for sharing your passion or idea. Add appropriate, relevant labels (tags) and tell all of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. (If you don't have FB and Twitter accounts you gotta go do that right now too).

You're gonna be busy.

Then, stay tuned, because we'll be looking not only ways to earn money from your website or blog, but also learn about many free programs to check how you're doing (keyword analyzers, meta tag analyzers, viewing backlinks, etc.).

Okay, get to work. And keep me posted.

Can you make money online with adfly and does it affect your Google traffic?

Review of adfly (adf.ly): The url shortening service that pays!

As I am always on the lookout for new ways to generate income from my web sites and blogs, I was intrigued with adfly (http://adf.ly/). They have a number of ways to help publishers make money from their blogs and web sites, and you can even generate revenue from content that isn't even yours.

Shorten url's

The first way to make a little money is to use their url shortening service. In a nutshell, it works pretty much like tiny url and bit.ly in that you can put in a longer web address, and it will shorten it to a more Twitter-friendly address.

Example: I recently put up a comedy spoof page about online dating. Essentially, it's just a little javascript which types in what I want, while you're typing in what you want. (I know, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but just try it and you'll see what I mean.)

So, I took the long url for that page, logged into my adfly account and shortened it. Adfly then gives me a shorter url which, when you visit it, forces you to see an ad for five seconds before you can skip it and go to the page your originally intended. Here is the

adfly url: http://adf.ly/3FolD

The actual page you are being directed to is: http://interactivelunacy.com/FindPartner2.html

Since you do not host the shortened url, the way that you generate money is to promote that address. The most common way that can be done is through your social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). However, since the final destination is a page which I do own, I'm not really comfortable with forcing people to wait five seconds to get to my page, so except for a little testing, I don't think I want to play this game. Actually, the main reason I don't want to engage in this activity is that the amount of money that you make is very small.

However, if you have a gazillion followers on Twitter or a bazillion friends on Facebook, this could generate reasonable extra money for you.




If you own websites
Adfly has two methods to make money if you own your own web site(s):

When you log into your adf.ly account you'll see a link which says: Do you run a website? Click on the link and you'll be taken to a page which will provide you with some javascript code to add in the body of your html. There are two types of ads you can insert: the first is just like the url shortening feature where, when the visitor enters your site's url, they must wait five seconds before they can skip the full page ad. The other is called Top Banner and requires that you change one line of the code so that the featured ad only appears at the top of the screen.

The Top Banner is the least obtrusive ad, and also the worst paying.

I played around with all three of these methods on about ten of my moderately trafficked pages. My traffic on the hosted pages was down, probably because most people are like me. If I get to a page which displays a full page ad that I have to wait to skip, I just hit my back button and get the hell out of there.

On one occasion the full page ad which was displayed required that I click on the advertiser's little javascript annoyance 30 times before I could actually leave the damned ad page. Not acceptable.

The oddest thing, and I don't really know if there is any connection, but as soon as I started adding adfly ads to three of my domains, my overall traffic went down big time. Like five times less traffic. And, consequently, I made a lot less money from my bread and butter Google AdSense ads.

For my purposes I don't think adf.ly is a good additon to my roster of ways to make money with my online endeavors. After using adf.ly on about eight or nine of my pages, I only generated a little over 20 cents. Not to mention (wait, I just mentioned it) that my AdSense revenue also diminished five times.

Nice try adfly, but not for me.

How to generate traffic to your blogs and web sites with Twitter - and make money

I didn't get Twitter right away. I mean I "got" it (as in set up an account), but I didn't really see how it could be a beneficial business tool at first. It just seemed like a way to discover what your friends, family or favorite celebrity had for breakfast.

I sort of get it now.|

What follows is an overview of some of the ways that I use Twitter accounts to build not only Twitter followers but also readers of my blogs and visitors to my web sites.

As is always the case with social networking applications, one of the keys is to not toot your own horn too much. If every Tweet or blog posting is nothing more than links to your own stuff, your followers may get tired of your shameless promotion and Unfollow. (I still break this rule a bit too often, but just mentioning it may help remind me to knock it off.)

If you have multiple interests and more than one blog and/or web site, then you should also have multiple Twitter accounts. Some of my Twitter accounts are related (ie: humor oriented), so I have the additional traffic generating opportunity of Retweeting my own Tweets. More on that in a bit.

So, by way of example, let's start with my http://jokingsmoker.blogspot.com blog. Initially, this blog was to consist of primarily cigar and smoking accessory reviews and information. But, as it turns out, it's the one I use to rant and write whatever is on my mind, so I want to reach more readers than just cigar smokers.

So, my initial Twitter account, which was connected to this blog is http://twitter.com/cigarponderings. Whenever I would write a review of a cigar or smoking accessory I would log into my cigarponderings Twitter account and post a blurb about and a link to the blog. This informed my followers that I posted something new (since I don't see a lot of blog subscribing these days), and also alerted the search engines that my blog had another backlink (which helps improve rankings).

Once this initial process is complete (writing the blog and linking to in from Twitter), it was time to further promote the blog post.

First stop, Facebook.

Since there is a whole community of cigar smokers and afficianados on FB, I make it a point to visit a number of FB groups and post a link to my new blog entry. (Yay! More backlinks.) Of course, this is after I post the same link on my wall.

Then, back to Twitter, where, one by one, I log into my other Twitter accounts and Retweet my twitter post. Since I have a whole bunch of Twitter accounts for all of my varied interests, this does increase (although not dramatically) the interest and traffic to your Twitter account and the blog.

If you follow my Twitter accounts and check out the postings, you'll see that usually each of them Retweets the others.

There is a slight advantage to creating a completely different posting for each of your Twitter accounts (as opposed to Retweeting), but it's much more time consuming to do each one separately. However, if you only have a couple of accounts, this does afford you the ability to add different #hashmarks and @ information at the end of your message so that different Twitterers may find it when searching for different keywords.

Here's an example of a jokingsmoker Twitter post:

"Spitball gun confiscated in algebra class cuz it was a weapon of math disruption. More puns: http://bit.ly/obfKOK @omgthatspunny #punny"

Now, since I have another account (http://twitter.com/comedygary), I have two choices: 1) log into that account and RT (Retweet) the spitball posting, or 2) rewrite the posting with different hashmarks and at signs:

"Spitball gun confiscated in algebra class cuz it was a weapon of math disruption. More puns: http://bit.ly/obfKOK #funny @comedycentral"

You get the idea.

And of course, when you do click on the link to see more puns (on my http://interactivelunacy.com/ web site), you will also see banner ads to some of my other web sites and blogs and maybe visit them as well.

Additonally, if you're lucky enough to attract readers to your Twitter account because they searched for something you posted, this also gives them an opportunity to click on whatever links you may have in your Twitter profile, further promoting your web sites and blogs.

In my case, the main purpose of most of this is to generate readers, traffic and hopefully revenue from visitors clicking on the ads on my pages.

Perhaps just checking out a bunch of my Twitter postings on my Twitter accounts will help it make more sense of this:

http://twitter.com/jokingsmoker
http://twitter.com/cigarponderings
http://twitter.com/comedygary

http://twitter.com/2funnyshow

http://twitter.com/hookedondroid

http://twitter.com/magicexposed

http://twitter.com/getwealthyslow

So, if you haven't yet created a Twitter account, do it now. Even if only to observe and learn. And make sure you search for others with similar interests and follow them. There's a good chance they'll return the favor and follow you.

Then all you have to do is come up with something to say.

How to make money blogging - check list for starting a business online

Back in the days of brick and mortar, in order to start a business you had to have some capital and a line of credit to get things off the ground.  Today, you need a good idea, a computer, some learnable skills, an Internet connection and, most importantly, passion for your project.

For lack of a better phrase, I'm going to call what I'm outlining here a business model. This model, although simple, still requires a lot of work, determination and you have to learn to laugh in the face of disaster when nobody seems to care about your project. Until they do.

The business model is simple: create a blog or web site focusing on a specific topic or product line and then let web surfers know about it through literally thousands of different online marketing methods.

Let's say your idea is to have a blog which covers Alternative Music. The blog may consist of articles that you write reviewing bands, concerts and recordings, as well as gossip you uncover about the musicians themselves. Here is a list of things I think you'll need to spend some time on to get your project off the ground.

1) Secure your domain name or blog.

Even though you probably won't actually be posting anything just yet, spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to call your blog and/or what domain name you want for your web site. Research similar sites and bookmark every one of them for future reference.

As far as a domain name goes, we shall go with "alternativemusicgossip.com" (which is actually available if anyone wishes to grab it and try this very idea). But wait, what if you don't want to purchase a domain name and have a monthly or annual hosting fee? No problem. You can create your "web site" using any of many free blogging sites. Personally, I use Google's blogspot program because I initially figured that placing Google Adsense ads would be much simpler since they own the whole ball of wax. Use the same care in creating your blog name. If you wish to use Google's blogspot, you'll need a Gmail account. I create a new Gmail account for each blog to help keep them separate and that allows you to create different, distinct profiles for each of your blogs.

Once you have your blog set up, play around with it if you wish. Check out different looks. Write a draft of one of your ideas. Start working on your description. Then, move on to step two.

2) Decide how you plan to make money from your blog.

Are you creating a blog to just share information? If so, you'll want to explore affiliate and ad serving networks like Amazon and Google's AdSense. Do you have actual products you want to sell? Then you'll need to set up some sort of shopping cart and some method of accepting payment. There are lots of options out there, but I use PayPal's. It's free (you pay them a little piece only when you sell something) and most people seem to have a PayPal account. Again, do your own research and find a solution that fits you best. Here is a page I created for one of my allegedly funny products which utilizes all three of the above mentioned services: AdSense, Amazon.com and PayPal's shopping cart. If the visitor doesn't want to buy my t-shirt, they may be interested in whatever ad was served up by AdSense or one of the Amazon product ads I have featured on the page.

So, once you have your blog set up (though not yet live), then I suggest getting started on your methods of bringing in money. Get an Adsense account. Get an affiliate account with Amazon. Set up your PayPal account. Then read, read read. They all have great tutorials, FAQ's and forums to help you along.

Another great thing about these specific services is that Google has created widgets embedded right into your blog interface to add Amazon products and Adsense ads with just a couple of clicks. More on that in future postings, but you'll probably figure it out by then.

3) Promote your page.

This is the part that never ends. In the course of trying to let people know about your blog you will find approximated four gazillion ways to get your name out there. A lot of them sound really good, but suck. Some of them are very effective for targeted audiences. The one that I know works for sure is simply minding your SEO (search engine optimization).

The major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing are essentially a robot which searches your pages (and the whole rest of the planet's) looking for the specific words that the web surfer typed in. If those relevant words are somewhere on your page (preferably in the title), your page will be ranked (once it's indexed by the engine). The trick is to manipulate your keywords and descriptions so that yours comes up before your competitors.

Believe me, that ain't easy.

I could spend screen after screen just talking about this topic (and many blogs do), but I'm going to just cover the basics which should help you be on your way to learning and implementing more.

Put on your thinking cap and ask yourself, "What words would I key into a search engine if I were trying to find what it is I'm offering?" Then, search those words and see what comes up. If you find a web site that you particularly like, you can see what additional information they may have hiding in the background by viewing their page source and checking  out their meta tags (way more on this in the future). Just go up to the top of your browser and click on View and then Source (or something similar depending on your browser), and you will be able to see all of the code used to create the web site or blog you are viewing.  You will most likely see meta keywords, title, meta description and alt tags on photos and images. These are all ways that you can add extra frequency of the words that you think are most important in conveying the purpose of your blog or site.

This may seem confusing right now, but it will all fall into place later and who knows, you may just come up with a viral idea that is going to have tens of thousands of people flocking to your page and generating lots of money for you even before you figure it out. That's the exciting thing about this arena. It does happen every day.

For a page like this one, what do I think people may key into search engines to find it? Here are some ideas:

"How can I make money by blogging?"
"How do I start an online business?"
"Can I place ads on my blog?"
"How do I make money with AdSense?"
"How do I create a blog?"
"Make money online."
"Do people make money from blogs?"

See what I did there? I just put all of those keywords right into the body of my blog, making those relevant, descriptive phrases searchable. How did you find this page?

If you are somewhat web savvy, I recommend double-dipping (in a non-spamming way). Create a blog and duplicate the basic content (with different keywords, ads, etc.) with a web site. I do this with Hooked On Droid. Hooked on Droid is a blog/web site which reviews Smartphone apps, primarily for the Android market (although many of the apps are also available for Blackberry and iPhone). Here is the web site link, and here is the blog link. See what I'm sayin' here?

Which reminds me of my next topic (not right now), backlinks. Stay tuned.

Now get to work. And let me know how it's going.

Making money online by selling stuff - your products, services and writing can make you money

Although my online blogs currently do generate income, they weren't the first thing I did online to try to make money. After a bit of a long-winded set up, I'm going to focus on one particular page (my comedy CD page) and discuss the many ways I use that page to diversify my income opportunities.

Before I launched this blog, and a few others, inluding Hooked On Droid and Joking Smoker, I launched some web sites which featured my other passion: comedy. I have been writing and performing stand-up comedy for many years and after hitting comedy clubs across the country for a long time, I found a niche in that arena by performing full stand-up comedy variety shows for private functions and corporate special events.

So, after a number of attempts, my main comedy site (promoting my act, not just funny stuff) is Click On Comedy. This site still remains my main money maker because if a visitor finds this site because he/she is looking to hire an entertainer for an upcoming function and ends up booking me, that's a direct sale from the web site.

Even if the visitor isn't interested in booking my act, they may end up watching some video clips and decide that they'd like to help a struggling comic by purchasing  the CD "As Funny As I Never Was." This affords me another opportunity to generate some income from the site.

Now, let's spend a little time on my CD page so we can examine what's going on there and how it may give you ideas as to how to incorporate your owne niche and ideas to generate traffic and revenue.

The first thing I hope that a visitor will do is order my CD. The CD is available for only $8.00 and a simple click on the Add to Cart button will get the process started. Although there are many shopping cart options out there, I opted to use PayPal, primarily because it's reliable, respected and free. So, without going into all the detail about how to set up a shopping cart on PayPal, I'll just say that if you don't have a PayPal account, get one now. If you need to set up a shopping cart to sell whatever it is you're selling, simply follow their simple instructions. If you have any problems, feel free to email or comment and I'll do my best to assist.

So, if visitors watch some video clips and decide that they want to purchase the CD, I've made a sale. But notice the other possible ways to generate revenue on that page.

That one page has ads to other products and services that I offer, Google ads and banner ads that link to many of my other sites which may then turn into sales of a different nature.

The ad at the top of the page is a link to "The Dirty Joke Show" joke book. I am currently co-producer of the hit Vegas production "The Dirty Show" and the book is a collection of jokes that appear in the really funny show which appears nightly at Hooters Casino Hotel. Again, to purchase the book you simply click on the button and you are taken to a PayPal shopping cart.

So, in addition to having a Google Adsense account which automatically places relevant, targeted ads, I also have ads that link to my own projects. In fact, almost all of the ads at the bottom of that page take you to my other sites and blogs.

The links to my other blogs and sites serve a dual purpose: 1) visitors may go to those pages and click on a product or ad there, and 2) they act as backlinks (which are very important) to some of my other pages. By having multiple web sites and blogs you ca n get a jumpstart on getting backlinks (which are links from other sites to yours, which shows search engines that your pages have interest by other sites and make it more likely for your site to get better rankings). More on backlinks later.

So, there you have it. I know this article is probably a bit different than most of the other articles you may read on how to make money with your blog or web site, but I can assure you that these methods are effective. They take some work, but if you have a passion for your interest it's worth every minute.

Want to get rich on the Internet? Me too!

You're probably here because you searched "how to get rich on the internet" or "how to make money online." If your looking for some get rich quick plan or some pyramid or multi-level marketing scheme, you're in the wrong place. Even though I would love finding such a beast, I don't think it exists.

So instead, I approached this fantastic medium known as the Internet from a more practical standpoint. How can I share what I love, learn how to bring in visitors and make some money by selling products or having ads on my web pages.

I will start with my basic story, then delve into specifics:

In the mid nineties I knew that this new Internet thing was going to catch on, and being a stand up comedian who wanted to be found by comedy clubs as well as booking agents and corporations looking to hire entertainment, I knew I needed a web site. At that time the few people who knew how to write the html code (there really weren't any WYSIWYG software programs yet) charged a fortune. Literally. Then, once they designed your site they charged two to three gazillion dollars to host it on their servers.

It was clear to me that I had to learn how to do it all myself and it wasn't going to be easy because there weren't as many resources out there to teach you how to design and launch a web site. Then I remember thinking, "I'll just Google it. Oh wait. Google doesn't exist yet. In fact, neither does Yahoo!" Dammit all.

So I set out to learn the hard way, and without belaboring how I did that (because it really isn't relevent any more), I finally created a really crappy looking web page (not that my current one is really great or anything) and danced around my living room excited about the future and knowing that my calendar was going to fill up with all of the bookings that would soon be coming my way via the World Wide Web.

One problem. It didn't happen.

Why? Because simply having a web site didn't guarantee that anyone could find it. So the next step was to learn about promoting a web site. This led to learning about meta tags, and Search Engine Optimization, and all the other high learning-curve things that I knew very little about.

To make a short story just a little longer, that web site (well actually it's the second or third carnation of my comedy web site) makes me the most money of all of the web sites and blogs that I now own. And once you find your niche and your audience, I'm confident that you too can make a few bucks from your passion.

Be patient.

Stay passionate.

Read.

Observe.

Work hard.

Please subscribe to this blog and stay tuned. The rest of my story is on it's way.