Mother’s Got A Dot Com

Two days ago, just about 22 months after I started blogging, I reached $50 on Adsense. Half the minimum payout… Give me another 22 months, and I’ll get my first check in October 2010.

Wonderful prospects. Maybe I’ll save up my other blog income, buy a trip to las vegas nevada, and just go crazy. You know, spend it all at once…

I did get a cheque the other day though. If you’ve noticed the Savvy Source widget/quiz thing in my sidebar - it paid off, and I got my first ever bona fide US dollar cheque for $44,16. The widget has been up for 3 months or so. The campaign is over now, but they’re working on finding a new sponsor, so I’m hopeful…

Do I give up on Adsense? No way. I’ll stick it out - don’t want to lose my 50 bucks. They will turn into 100 bucks - eventually. I hope.

I think I’ve found my niche. Not for this one - no one in their right mind would call this a niche blog. No - for my relatively brand new Norwegian one, that I’ve named the equivalent of Work With A Blog, where I’ve approached the subject of Working At Home.

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I do. And I’ve just found a huge, virtual department store where I can find everything under the sun, and get cash back for shopping. What’s more, I get cash back from your shopping too, if I refer you to them…

eBay shopping? Get cash back on every purchase. Best Buy? Target? Babies’R Us? Walmart? The same goes for shopping there, and with hundreds of other retailers. Shop, refer others or both, and collect your savings and commissions in your PayPal account every month.

Big Crumbs  makes sense because merchants only pay when they make a sale. There’s no members fee, no hidden costs, which is why merchants like the service too. If you’re selling on eBay, you really should have a look at this site - they’ll help your eBay store or eBay items gain visibility, and they’ll be seen by a targeted audience that’s got the added cash back incentive.

The money merchants pay Big Crumbs for sending you their way when you shop with them is used to pay you and the person who referred you (if applicable).
There are two types of membership: Savers get a very good cash back on their own shopping, as well as referrals commissions on the shopping of their direct referrals. Earners get a smaller, but competitive cash back on their own shopping, but earn commissions on their referrals shopping as well as the shopping of their referrals referrals - for 5 generations. See? The name makes sense too. Enough crumbs, and you’ll soon have a whole bakery…

There’s no spam, no nonsense, and as I see it, everyone wins. The Big Crumbs site looks good too - you’ll easily find all the info you need, whether you’re a shopper, referrer, seller or all three combined.

I’ll be joining today - did I mention that it’s 100% free? It will be another chapter in my “make extra cash online” saga. At the very least, I’ll be getting cash back on my Christmas shopping this year, so I win…

Update: I tried to join. All excited… It turns out they’re only accepting members from Australia, Canada, Ireland,USA and the UK at this point. I’m soooo disappointed! I’ve sent them a ticket, reminding them that Norway is on the map (and on eBay), but we shall see. In the meantime, those of you who are residents of the above mentioned countries: check this out! I hope to be joining you soon.

Multiple Streams Of Passive Income… Doesn’t that sound great? It’s a concept I learned about quite early in my “blogging career” - in fact I read about it before I started blogging. Wherever I looked, these streams were described as not only streams or trickles, but as rivers of cash flowing into the open arms of people doing nothing…

I guess we all know that’s not true. It’s certainly not true in my case. There is a trickle, and a very small part of that is passive (ads, paid links), but most of what I make online is from paid posts. (i.e. work).

Spending time online has connected me with another form of freelance work though - Mystery Shopping. I came across the term on various US sites, and decided to Google it in Norwegian, to see if anything was going over here. It was! I found a couple of companies, sent applications, and was accepted. I’ve done a couple of assignments for one of them, and I’ve got 4 lined up for August so far. It’s fun, it gets me out of the house, and it’s quite well paid for the amount of work you do. Another trickle.

The other day, I got an email from another MS company I’ve been accepted by, but not done any work for yet, and that’s based in Germany. They were looking for proof readers in Norwegian/English, which is just up my alley. I’ve made enquiries, and it looks promising. All I have to do is find time for a 2 - hour training session by phone, which is proving to be quite a challenge… Must ally myself with one of the older kids - the young’uns must be kept out of the way for the duration! Yet another trickle - maybe.

So - I’ve got a few streams of income lined up. None of them passive, but I never expected that.

It’s that time of the month again, and here’s an overview of how my 2 blogs are doing…

For some obscure reason, my blogspot blog, that has become something of a step-child (and I’m using that term metaphorically, people, since I’ve got two step-children…) when it comes to content, rank, updating and traffic, was restored to a PR 2 some time in March. Frankly, I find that quite ridiculous, but it has resulted in more opps from PPP. Not interesting enough to accept, but at least they’re there… I’m not very optimistic (and not too bothered) about how long I’ll be allowed to keep the rank this time.
Mother’s Home! has an Alexa rank of close to 700K, its’ Technorati standing isn’t exactly improving, and it’s not very well visited. To be honest, I mostly do paid posts on it these days. Go figure.

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Some of my posts are sponsored, and so are some of my in-post links. Many blog advertisers these days require that you don’t disclose the posts’ sponsored status within the post, and that may rise some ethical issues.

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I once predicted that I’d reach the $100 payout limit from Google Adsense sometime around Christmas 2008. I’ll have to eat my words. At the rate it’s going, I’ll be lucky if I get there by Christmas 2010…

Adsense is by far the largest operator in the internet ad business. There are copycats - I call them that because they look more or less exactly the same, and although their program policies may vary from Google, I doubt they’ll get you more clicks. I could be wrong - I frequently am - but I’ll stick with Adsense, for now, anyway.

Why bother? At $2 - 5 per month, why indeed… I think it’s the gambler in me. About once a week, I check my stats. More often than not, there’s either a big fat zero there, or if I’m in luck, 11 cents. Once in a while, though… Once in a very long while, the stats will show $2, $4 or even $5… That’s when I think: NOW! Things are moving, finally… I’m wrong, of course. Next week, I’m back on zero. Or 11 cents.

It’s the only gambling I do. Granted, the adrenaline rush is… limited. It’s all the rush I need, and it costs me nothing. The thought lingers though: Maybe next time. One day, maybe I’ll hit gold. So I keep the ads up, and I sometimes remember to add them to my posts, notably the Read more… posts (the number you’re allowed per page is limited).

Maybe a little more commitment to tweaking (is that the word?) Adsense ads would bring more clicks, but I’m a certified scatterbrain, and likely to remain so. My spur-of-the-moment style of posting means that I frequently edit in the ads once the post has been up for a day or two…

As for the other ads on this blog - they’re all part of the same experience. Is it possible to earn real money in affiliate marketing if you don’t have a niche blog? The answer so far is no. I am, of course, speaking for myself here. People don’t come here to buy anything, and I don’t blame them. I’d be hard put to sell ice tea in Sahara. People come here to read my incredibly insightful posts about all and sundry. Actually, they don’t do that either… These days, they come to drop their Entrecards, and they’re very welcome!

Google Adsense and me… we’ll just plod on together. I’ll buy myself something nice for Christmas in 2 -3 years time…

Oh, yes, must remember…

- I created my own online store… It took all of 10 minutes. (You can do it in 5, but you need to stock it up, too!)

It’s free, there are hundreds of items from many categories to sell, and whether you want to specialize in kids’ clothes, jewelry or books, or have a bit of a mishmash, the site is easy to use. Why choose, by the way? You can have up to 20 stores to your name! There are several templates to choose from, or you can customize one to suit your tastes.

I haven’t looked too much at commissions on “my” items yet, but you can get up to 10% on items sold. Some items pay per click, as well. You don’t package or bill or send anything, by the way.

What else? Oh, yes - Come and have a look at mine!
Did I say it’s a free service? Give it a whirl, and see what your online store at Zlio.com could look like…

This is not a whine…

I knew I was going to get slapped again, but not that it would happen so soon… Some time during the last couple of days, Google googled me, and must have found me sadly lacking, coz’ here I sit stand before you, a big fat zero stamped all over my face - again.
Turnip Of Power/Social Networking (whose blog/site everyone should read, by the way) told me so after I did a post on Izea (PPP). I know… I just found it too ridiculous that Google should bother with little old me. Now that I’ve seen it happen a second time, I probably have to believe it… It’s still ridiculous, though.

I don’t know what triggered it this time - I had all the PPP badges up when I was oh, so graciously given the PR3 - just under 4 weeks ago… I’ve avoided the “sponsored by” code up until very recently - maybe that’s what did it.

Do I care? On one level, yes. With PR being so widely recognized as it is, it will have some effect. What peeves me more is that PPP, the root of the problem, still uses PR as a parameter in their system. Get on with your RealRank, people! Educate your customers as well as your posties! No point in RealRanking blogs if PR is still both A and Z… (And why are there still PR5 blogs out there doing PPP? - what do they do that I don’t???)

On the other hand, my traffic is increasing, my Technorati authority is on the up, and my Alexa rank is getting better every week. That’s what matters. So, there will be no PPP opps - I’ll have to consider if I want to keep doing them, anyway. I don’t want to give in, but PR is Googles’ baby, they’ll do what they want with it, however ridiculous. It’s one or the other, it seems.

Oh, bother it! I enjoy blogging, and I’m sure I’ll find other ways to make those few extra bucks each month. PR or no PR, I’m the same, my blogging buddies are the same, and with Entrecard, I’m getting to “know” more of them too. Some people even say that blogging gets better with less paid posts - fancy that, hahaha!

Pay Per Play are on the go! They’re still in testing mode, but they’re sending out 100 000 audio ads per day already, some of which I’ve had - AND I’ve got money in my account to show for it! Not much as of yet, but as their official launching date was February 1st, I’m not exactly expecting the moon and stars. The first earnings are in, though, and I’m excited to see what comes next.

Part of the reason why they’re not fully active yet is that they want to get rid of p.o.r.n , hate and crime sites in their system before serving ads full scale. So - their spider is scouring member sites, getting rid of the non-serious and dubious ones. 51 000 p.o.r.n sites were removed during the last spider run… I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind waiting a week or so to get rid of those.

Pay Per Play is easily set up (just a snippet of code in your template), it pays in 3 tiers, and the audio ads are only 5 seconds, which should be bearable for most people. I’m amazed that no one has thought of this before, and I’m excited about being part of it.

Getting paid on 100% of my website traffic, no clicks necessary, that’ll do for me!

It’s free, of course, and there’s still room for you - so go there, read up, and get your code installed today!