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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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!

During a particularily tenacious bout of blogger’s block today, I found myself dropping Entrecards, visiting blogs, on a quest for something interesting… (Commenting on some too, I might add). As I passed 200, I thought - Ok, then. Let’s go for the full 300 today, and see if I can do it before my eyes start flickering in a square sort of way.

The last 100 didn’t fly as easily as the first 200 - even though I was chaindropping by then. (Sorry, folks, but there’s a time for everything!) I got there, though - and now, I can’t drop any more cards today. I’ll just have to bookmark anyone interesting that I come across… I need some lunch now, and perhaps a nice, non - radiating newspaper to get my eyes used to real life again.

- Blush -

Yesterday, I put a Feedburner counter chicklet up on my sidebar. The day before, I figured out how to put up the orange RSS button thingy. And (sort of) understood what it’s for.

I’ve been blogging for a year (Today! Do go to my # 1 blog and congratulate me…) Still, I’ve never really realized the importance of feeds. I’ve not subscribed myself, and not seen the practical side of doing so. I’ve bookmarked sites, and gone back to the ones I like on a regular basis.
So, good people, have your whatnots ready, cos’ you’ll be getting another reader as I do my rounds… I’m about to fuel a new addiction - to my reader!

As I put the counter up yesterday, there were 14 readers. Now, there are 21. I guess people are up for a barn dance!

That’s 50% up… and it calls for a math experiment:
50% increase every day for the rest of January (9days) means there’ll be just over 800 readers there on January 31st!
Wow… at that rate, I’ll be a megamogul by mid-February.

I’ve enabled Pay Per Play on Mother’s Got A Dot Com. I’m possibly the last person in the Blogosphere to have heard of it - it’s being promoted all over, and now here…

Pay Per Play gives your visitors a 5 second audio ad as they enter your site. This means that for every visitor that stays on your site for more than 2 seconds, you get paid.
Being paid for every visitor, without requiring any actions (clicks) from my visitors, is the kind of passive income that appeals to me…
I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss. They also have a referral program, that pays in 3 tiers:

25% of what the advertiser spends on airing their ad on your site, goes to you
5% of what advertisers spend on ads on you referrals’ websites goes to you
5% of what advertisers spend on ads on your referrals’ referrals’ websites goes to you.

You’re paid for 100% of your traffic, and for 100% of your referrals’ traffic!

The official launch date is February 1st - that’s when the ads start airing, and that’s when we start earning.

At some point, they may well close the opportunity to earn from referrals, which is why getting in there before February 1st is probably a very good idea.

I’d like to know what you think.

I don’t mind 5 seconds of audio as I enter a blog or site, but I know that audio irritates a lot of people. Please take a minute to tell me how you feel about it in comments!

I’ve got this post up as a page in my sidebar - I’ll assess the whole adventure around the end of March. I might get a poll from somewhere to post there too. Why I’ve gone into this? It doesn’t cost me anything, I might earn from it, and as long as the ads stay as short as 5 seconds, I believe it’s something most visitors will take in their stride.

If you want in, there are links galore in this post for Pay Per Play <— or you can use this one!

Some of my readers may remember that I did an experiment on driving traffic a while back, with a ppc company called Bux.to. You can read up on the company here, and see what came of the experiment here.
Although I got my money’s worth in a way, all the traffic came in the span of 2 minutes, and was without any interaction whatsoever, so I decided that I’d had my 2 minutes of fun. I’ve not been back there. I guess I could go and click some ads to get my money back, but I doubt that I will.

A few days later, I had a mail from Google Adsense. Their whatnotbot had detected activity on my site that was against their policies, and they wanted to make me aware of that fact. The activity was likely to have been paid for, and they just wanted to remind me of their rules, as well as point me to tools that would enable me to stop such activity, should it have been induced by a third party.
Woops!

I quite easily worked out the activity in question… It won’t happen again. Not because of the email from Adsense, but because the added traffic just wasn’t worthwhile.

Now, to the warning: If you’re relying on Adsense on your blog, don’t use sites like this to pay for traffic. I never thought of it (I don’t have the Adsense rules pasted above my screen), but it was detected very quickly. Sites like bux.to may well be good for driving traffic if your budget is such that it can be done on a regular/consistent basis, and you don’t use Adsense. (The traffic I got seemed very unlikely to click ads or even read blog entries. They stayed their allotted 30 seconds, and off they went to the next ad… Statistically though, if you get 1000s of visitors per day, some are bound to click or read something, I guess).

I won’t put Bux.to down altogether - you can earn some extra cash by clicking ads, and if you refer people, you can earn more. I won’t be paying for traffic again, though!

Here endeth the final post on this experiment…

I’ve tried this out for a little over 2 weeks now, and it works!
Since joining, I’ve had an average of 15 referred visits to this blog per day, and that’s counting the days when I’ve not been active on the site. Now that may not sound like much to some of you, but it is to me.
Some of these visitors have stayed a while, too, having a read here and there, some have even taken the trouble to review my site, which is very nice!
As for me, I’ve come across some very interesting blogs, many of which I will go back and investigate further.

How it works? Well, it’s fairly simple, and your in-site ranking is more or less up to you. Being “active” is what earns your site a more featured spot in your category. “Active” means visiting other sites, participating in the forums, reviewing other sites - even adding sites to your favourites. The more sociable you are, the more traffic you’ll get - both random and intentional.

Those 25-odd extra visitors on an active day do wonders for my morale - I try to do “my bit” as often as I can. if you need a visitor boost - I warmly recommend this one!

You could say it worked. Between 2.46 and 2.48pm yesterday, I had well over 100 (closer to 130) visitors to this site from Bux.to. So - I did get my money’s worth. Kind of. Still, I’m not happy.

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Well, almost. I’ve just discovered a way to get traffic to my site and get paid in the process, so that even if I pay for the traffic, I get my money back with a little effort.

Bux.to will charge you very little for, say 100 clicks on your ad. (That’s what I bought, as an experiment).
I then registered for their PPC program, that pays me to click on their ads. Not much per click, but earning back the money spent shouldn’t take too long. If I manage to refer people to the program, their clicks will earn me as much as my own clicks, so I get my money back even faster. I might even end up earning a bit, or I can plow it back into more advertising. Either way, I win!
At Bux.to, you don’t have to sign up for both, you can choose to advertise without doing any clicking of your own, or you can sign up to be paid per click without advertising yourself - it’s your choice.

Active referrals will earn you as much per click as you earn yourself though, so get the word out…