It’s looking as if it won’t take 2 years to accumulate the next cheque – I won’t be resting on my laurels, so to speak.
(What sort of expression is that? Anyone tried to rest on laurels? They’re hard, and the tips of the leaves are prickly… They smell nice, though. Saves on the lavender.)

I thought to take a photo of the thing, (the cheque, not the laurels) but all the moguls have done it – it’s just so… last week…

This is money I’ve earnt while I’ve slept, by the way. If you do the maths, it becomes evident that sleeping is bad business.

Anyway. I’ve obviously decided to give them a whirl at some point, so, now that I’ve relocated them, I thought I might as well follow it up.

First, a thorough look at their website. The layout is pleasing, and fairly new (they updated it in December), and the site is easy to figure out. They have a blog as well, and it’s actually an interesting read. There are great tips on paid and unpaid blogging there, articles on the economy from a blogger/advertiser viewpoint, an extensive “how to” section, and more.

I blog because I enjoy it, and i also enjoy earning a buck or 5 on paid posts. English being my second language, I find it challenging to write product reviews, website reviews and other paid postings in English. It keeps my brain active… The fact that it also lines my Paypal account can only be seen as a bonus.

Blog marketing gets up some people’s noses, I know. It’s never irritated me, and I think it’s here to stay. If a blog post interests me, I’ll read it, whether it promotes and links to a site that sells garden gnomes or not. If it’s interesting enough, I might even click on the garden gnome. We bloggers have our little bits of real estate on the ‘net, and as long as advertisers think they get their money’s worth, they’ll be willing to hire our “spots”. I’m quite willing to promote Paying Post, as a new blog marketing site that may be good to me. I hope it will.

There’s room for more bloggers over there, if you’re interested. There’s room for advertisers too.

Tradedoubler is a company that lets you display affiliate links and banners for the UK market. They partner with well known brand names. I use it on my Norwegian blog (they cater to the Norwegian market too, go figure), and I’ve done quite well there. They give you real-time stats, and getting started is easy.
Maybe your blog is based in the US, but you get a lot of traffic from the UK? Then Tradedoubler might be for you too…

Getting where? To my very first Google Adsense payout, that’s where! Stay tuned for a stunning photo of me and check in… what ‘ll it be.. March?

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.

As some of you may have managed to tweak out of my scribbles, I’ve now got 3 WAH jobs, not including blogging, which I’ll continue to call a hobby.
The jobs include Mystery Shopping (I’ve joined a second MS company too, that are quite big on Mystery Calling and service checks by email, so make that 4 jobs soon!), proof reading and translation.
Although WAH is a big market in Norway too, it’s also full of scammers and spammers, and people are getting quite sick of that – as well they should.
Add to that the MLM companies that many feel are ripping them off because let’s face it – we’re not all the great salesperson one needs to be to make it in MLM – and you’ve got a lot of people who just need to find out if there are genuine possibilities out there.

They also need to be told that a $5 “miracle e-book” just isn’t going to do it for them in 15 minutes. If that gravy-train ever existed (which I doubt), it’s long gone now.

Anyway – my ramblings with a purpose have hit a nerve, albeit a very small nerve (Norway is, at best, a niche market…), and I’ve had some search engine (Google) traffic for some related keywords.
This is where I’m going to be totally honest with you. Have I targeted those keywords, or even researched them? No. They emerged all by themselves, as the topics in the posts startet to take shape.

Another side effect is that the Adsense-ads have geared themselves towards the same keywords, and I guess it’s a fact of life that people will click on what interests them. So if I can interest you in a mini-statistics from Adsense:
I’ve earned 5 times as much so far in November on Adsense as I did in the whole of October, which means 5 times as many clicks on ads. That is in the whole of my “network” of blogs (how presumtuous is that…). The difference is the new blog, and the fact that it’s finding its voice.

Oh, and my October earnings were all of 51 cents. You do the maths for November. So it’s not as if I’ve found myself a genuine gravy-train or anything…

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.

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.

This blog, however, is slowly approaching 100K on Alexa, it’s got a Top 10K badge on Technorati, and has been gaining 1500 visitors per month since December. This month, I almost reached 5000, which is an all time high…
I’m not going to say that any great content of mine is the reason for this. Not at all. It’s purely because of my Entrecard membership. Although many Entrecarders drop their cards and run, some will stay and read a post or two. 20% of my visitors view more than one page, and 20% of 5000 is more than 50% of 500!

‘Nuff on traffic. I have one resolve there though – I’ll be better at responding to comments. Come back and kick my b***!

Earnings… $4,50 on Adsense – right on schedule for a first payment in December 2009! As for other sources of passive income – Project Wonderful isn’t all that wonderful, but the ads on my sidebar brought in $2,90 last month.
Pay per Play – I know I promised an update in March, but there’s been nothing to report. I’ve made 17 cents in total from them, about 1 cent per 4 ads served on my site. I know, some of you find them obnoctious, but the odds of actually hearing one on this blog have been minimal!!! I’ll give them a little more time, but I might remove them if the overall concensus on audio ads gets any more negative…
Any other passive income streams? Oh, yes, I’ve got a couple of permanent links for Linkworth. I could use some more of those – they make me $13 per month as of right now.

The overall income this month was $227,38, and most of it came from writing reviews. I even did one for Loudlaunch, a company I’ve been associated with for about a year, but never done business with before. Perhaps they’ve got their act together. PayU2Blog have been consistent in their assignments, and I’ve done a few for most of the others too.

All in all, not too bad. I’m not setting myself any fixed goals – things (real life, Google) have a tendency to get in the way of those.
I’m hoping the positive visitors’ trend continues, and I can see that there’s a huge potential somewhere in passive blog income. I just have to find it.

I blog ‘cos I like it.

( Links to most of the sites mentioned here can be found under “resources” in my far right sidebar…)

I have no problems with not disclosing within the post, because unless I have a very good reason to rave about a site or product, I won’t.
I usually don’t rave anyway – I give my opinion, if called for, but mostly, I try to be neutral, while informing the reader about the site or product. Granted, I won’t accept to do a review of a site or product I hate, I wouldn’t want to accept payment for a slagging. I’d rather be neutral and informative, if I can.

Whether I found the site I’m reviewing through random surfing or via a ppp company is irrelevant, as long as I give my honest opinion.

Some of my in-post links don’t require a review, and I think those are by far the most fun to do. The challenge, for me, is to come up with an anecdote or a snippet from my own life, and get the keyword into the post in context. The anecdotes and life experiences I use in those are always genuine, and it sometimes takes a twisted mind to make them work. If I’m stumped, I’d rather do a post talking about how stumped I am, than write a “review” about something I can’t relate to.

I have acquired a somewhat liberal approach to the matter – for one, I don’t think that my readers are stupid. I’m quite confident that they’re capable of spotting sponsored posts and links, if they’re at all bothered. No one is coercing anyone into clicking on anything, and if what they read is genuinely “me”, it shouldn’t make any difference whether the link is sponsored or not.

I know that some blog readers find sponsored posts a pain in the backside. I quite enjoy a well written one, and I’m always curious to see what other bloggers have come up with for keyword that I’ve done too. I like doing it, and I enjoy the creative side… The puritans among the web surfers might tell me to channel my creativity towards something more worth while, but this is quite all right at the moment, thank you.

As for the ethical side of things… I get umpteen unsollicited offers by e-mail every day to market products that promise
1. a major penis enlargement or
2. large sums of money for doing nothing.
Now that, to me, is questionable, and something the people in the back row are making huge amouts of money on. Which is, of course, what sells, since the products themselves are worthless.

Google, the great moral guru in the sky, allows anyone and their mother to publish ads for “make money online and be a millionaire within 15 minutes” scams, but slaps small bloggers who sell an actual commodity from their blogs – links, reviews and advertising space. I recognize their right to do so, but the morals and logic escape me…

Digressions aside – I will continue doing sponsored posts, whenever I can. Apart from being fun, it also pays my phone and web hosting bills, and I’d love it to pay for electricity too, sometime in the future.
Oh, and if anyone comes over a get-rich-quick scheme that doesn’t involve selling get-rich-quick schemes, please let me know. I might write a review. For nothing.