Simon’s Notes

The day has finally arrived, and it’s even a little earlier than I expected, Simon’s Money Notes has been approved by PayPerPost. I wrote a review on PayPerPost not long ago, so I will try not to repeat much of the same things here, if you’d like to check out that post go to ‘earn some blogging money with PayPerPost‘. First off, I’d like to acknowledge a mistake I made with the last post, I said that you had to pay half of your review fee to PPP, but what really happens is that the person ordering the post has to pay an extra 10 percent that goes to PPP, so you don’t actually lose anything.

I’ve heard some people say that they’ll wait till their blog meets the PPP criteria before they consider signing up, I think that’s a mistake. I’ve had this blog for almost 3 months now and only today it’s been approved, but I signed up right away and started promoting PPP through my affiliate link.

PayPerPost has a very generous affiliate program. If you refer someone to PPP and their blog gets approved, you will get paid 15 dollars into your account. Another option you have is to use the “get paid to review my post” tool (you can see it at the bottom of my posts), if they sign up, do the review, and get approved you will get half of the referral bonus and they will get the other half, so you’ll be left with 7.50 dollars.

Does it really work? Yes it does. Simon’s Money Notes is still quite a humble blog, but in a very short period of time, and without doing much advertising, I’ve managed to sign up quite a number of people. If all of the blogs that I’ve referred get approved I could be sitting on a potential 90 dollars. Is it worth it to sign up even if my blog doesn’t meet the criteria? Yes it is.

Simon

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Filed under: Make Money Online, Reviews by Simon Rodrigues
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I don’t really recommend pay to click programs as a sole means of making money online, but I do agree that if you pick a few right ones it can be fun and help supplement your online income, especially if you’re able to build a bit of a downline. When I was a bit younger I got obsessed with PTC and PTR programs, I signed up for so many of them and I even paid 10 dollars for one (never pay anything unless you know they pay you), now I’m glad I did that, because I learned quite a lot, not so much which programs were good but mostly which programs to stay clear of. The programs that I’m recommending haven’t paid me yet, but that’s probably because I haven’t yet reached any of the thresholds since I really don’t spend a lot of time on them. The main reason why I’m recommending them is because of the usability and manageability. Anyway, here they are:

• Adbux.org - The thing that I like the most about adbux is the simplicity. Adbux is a very manageable program, all you do is log on to your account once in a while and click on some ads. They will pay you up to 1.5 cents per ad that you click on, and up to 150% of your referrals direct click earnings. You can also earn commissions every time one of your referrals purchases one of their services. I have found this program the easiest to promote, and I would recommend it over AGLOCO. If you have a blog, you could find your downline growing quite fast. I have never posted about adbux on this blog, the only advertising I have is a link on the sidebar and yet my downline has grown, in couple of months, to 13. The payout is also a very manageable 10 dollars. This comes highly recommended by me.
• Bux.to - Bux.to is very similar to adbux, in fact, it would be their direct competitors in my opinion. I did a review of bux.to in one of my earlier posts, and I got a few comments going back and forth between adbux and bux.to followers, some of which I deleted due to spam, so you can see that there is no love lost between these 2 programs (I even got an email from adbux warning me of bux.to, lol). But the important thing for me is that bux.to is also a very enjoyable program to work with, and a lot of users say that they pay. The system is a little diferent to adbux, bux.to pays 1 cent per ad click and 1 cent per ad that your referrals click. Simple, huh? The payout is also 10 dollars. I haven’t been as successful with referrals on bux.to as I have been with adbux.
• AGLOCO - I’m not going to say much here, you can read my AGLOCO update, and my other AGLOCO update to get my general sentiments on this program. I still think that if they get their act together they could be promising, maybe it’s just because I’m not a quitter.
• Clixsense - Clixsense is another program similar to adbux, and bux.to. On the downside, they don’t give you as many ads per day to click on, but it is also quite a manageable program. All ads pay you 1 cent, and you get 10% of your referrals commission and 50% of any services your referrals purchase. Payout is 10 dollars.
• Hits4Pay - I haven’t had much success with these guys. Hits4Pay pays you 2 cents every time you check out one of their advertisers websites, the main problem is that they never have any sites for you to check out. On the upside, they give you a 10 dollar bonus for signing up, but in the few months since I’ve joined them I’ve managed to accumulate an extra 36 cents, that’s pathetic in my opinion.
• Take the Internet Back - If you checked out AGLOCO and were intrigued by the concept, but disappointed at the outcome, you might want to check this program out. Take the Internet Back promises pretty much the same thing as AGLOCO, except that instead of using a surf bar, you read emails. It’s actually quite interesting, 90% of the company’s profit will go to the users, of which 45% will be cash and the other 45% will be used to reinvest in the company. It’s all completely free, and they give you 10 dollars for signing up, but they won’t pay you unless you have to active referrals under you. This one is definitely worth checking out.

There you have it. It wouldn’t hurt to try some of these programs out, especially since they are all completely free to join. If you would like a program to help you organize your PTR and PTC programs, and help with building your downline you might want to check out the marketing pond.

Simon

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Filed under: Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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Who wants a free banner ad for one day on John Chow dot Com? Me, me, pick me. I certainly do, and if you’re like me you’ll want to head on down to eMonetized where Tim Schroeder is giving 4 people the chance to have their very own 125 x 125 banner ad on John Chow’s blog absolutely free. If you doubt me, go on over there and read about the ‘John Chow banner ad contest‘.

That was short, and I like to give you guys value for… I’d like to say money, but I’d never do that to you. Anyway, I’ll just do a short review of eMonetized since it really is a good blog for you guys to check out.

According to Tim’s about page, Tim Schroeder is one of those internet marketers making a 6 figure income that nobody hears about. Tim is the proud owner of Webmaster-Talk.com, but a good percentage of his income also comes from affiliate marketing.

eMonetized is a blog where you can go to learn from a master with over 4 years experience. Some of the topics being covered include affiliate marketing, adsense, adwords, blogging, and internet marketing.

This is one that I will hang around, I’ve already subscribed to the RSS feed, and I’m hoping to learn a lot here. If you’re like me and love learning, then go over there and check it out. Take part in the John Chow competition and who knows, you might get lucky.

Simon

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Filed under: Competitions, Make Money Online, Reviews by Simon Rodrigues
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Lately I’ve been thinking about what a treat it would be to experience the John Chow effect. The only way to properly do that is by ordering a John Chow review. When I started this blog I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t spend any money on my blog until I have made that money from my blog, but I’m getting a little impatient.

So I’ve devised a masterful plan. I’m begging, that’s right, I’m stooping this low. If you feel a little pity or maybe like you want to help a poor desperate soul, don’t resist the urge to chip in. And remember that I need 400 dollars so don’t be shy.

As a little incentive, I’m offering a mini-review to anyone that chips in, however small the contribution. Just leave your details in a comment on this post, and I’ll do the reviews ASAP.

And John Chow, if you read this, be a pal and just go for the whole thing, you know you can afford it.

Thank you all.

Simon

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Filed under: Blah Blah, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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There seems to be a bit of a casual debate going on in the blogosphere about when and how a new blogger should monetize his blog. From my limited experience and perspective as a reader of many blogs, I’ll give my 2 cents.

The Debate
I don’t know if thats the correct term in this case, its a real subtle debate and no one is really lashing out at anyone. But basically most bloggers fall into one of two camps. The first camp believes that a new blogger should not monetize his/her blog until there is a steady amount of traffic flowing through, 500 hits per day seems to be the standard amount of accepted hits. The second camp doesn’t really care when you start monetizing as long as its not obnoxious and obtrusive. There’s a few little added jabs thrown in such as whether programs like adsense are viable monetization options or whether you should only go for private advertising and so on, but those are the general issues.

My Position
I can’t speak as a blogging expert since I haven’t been blogging more than 4 or so months, but I can speak as an avid reader of quite a number of blogs. Let me start by saying that I’ve had a limited amount of ads on this blog since its inception, and unless I really feel that my readers are not liking them I think I’ll keep them. The reason for that is because I’ve never bothered myself with ads on other blogs. I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with them if done correctly. I will never disregard a blog just because of a few adsense ads.

Having said that, I think my position is that its fine to monetize your blog whenever you wish as long as you don’t overdo it. There have been many instances where I have overdone it considerably, but I think I’ve hit a right balance for now. And if you don’t know what that balance is for you then maybe you shouldn’t monetize at all in the beginning.

Hiding Your Ads Can Add Instead Of Detract
I truly believe that if done correctly a few ads can add to your blog instead of detracting. There are a few things that I would suggest if you’re going to use something like adsense on your blog.

1. Don’t go for the bigger ad blocks, its better to have something smaller that won’t scare other’s away.
2. When in doubt take it out.
3. Try to make your ads blend in with the general theme of your blog. So if you have a black background with white writing, match the ad block accordingly.
4. Please avoid putting more than one ad stack on your sidebar.
5. I would recommend not putting stacks at all, I think it looks better when its in the posts. There is a lot of good articles out there explaining how you can do this.
6. Sometimes you’ll find that the ads being displayed are just from google whores. So check out what you’re promoting, but be sure not to click on the ads, just type the URL that you see, then go to your adsense account and block those URL’s. You might see an increase in your revenue and you won’t scare your readers.

Benefits of Not Monetizing
Of course there is benefits to not monetizing also. Besides the obvious benefit of not having ads, the one benefit that I can appreciate the most is that when users click on one your ads they are leaving your site, so by not displaying ads you take away that option.

In Summary
I don’t really think there is a right or wrong in this scenario. I’ve seen many blogs without ads that I enjoyed and I’ve seen many blogs with ads that I’ve enjoyed. I’ve even been know to click an ad or two.

What do you guys think? Does it really bother you when you come to a blog that has some google ads? More importantly, do you think I should take mine off? Please let me know.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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I’m not sure what I did to deserve this but I must of done something because everyday I get a fresh batch of scam emails to contend with. When I say batch I don’t mean one a day I mean a whole batch, on average about 3 or 4 per day ranging from the 1,000,000 dollars lotto I won to the old lady that wants to will me her husbands fortunes.

Its pretty easy to spot a scam email, and for those of you that are wondering, here’s some things you should look out for. Never pay anything, if they ask for money, its a scam. Most emails will be from free email services such as yahoo, these types of emails are very unprofessional and are a clear indication of a scam. If the email asks for all sorts of personal details, don’t give them because its a scam. If the email is offering a large sum of money for no apparent reason, its a scam, don’t feel sorry for the old lady or the war veteran that’s writing it.

If you have any doubts towards the email you’re reading, do some research, a quick search in google will quickly unmask its true intentions.

I have been getting one email though that almost fooled me. It’s from ‘yahoo.com’, and it says that I won a 500 dollar reward for something or other. There’s a few reasons that made this one tempting, firstly its from yahoo so there’s no reason why the email shouldn’t come from yahoo. Also the prize is so low that it seems ridiculous that someone would try to entice people with that amount. But most convincingly when you click the URL it takes you to a genuine looking yahoo page.

Alarm Bells
Then it asks me for money. I can’t access my winnings unless I upgrade to a premium account, it only costs 8.something dollars to upgrade. Ok, I can easily do that, but hang on why are they asking me for money in the first place, don’t they know who is premium and only do the draw with them? So I decide to investigate.

Right away I start to notice a few inconsistencies. The real yahoo.com looks much better and newer than the site I’m directed to. Also they were accepting payments through e-gold, paypal, and stormpay which is very uncharacteristic of a site like yahoo. By now I was pretty suspicious, but then I check the bottom of the page and it says copyright 2005, the real yahoo says copyright 2007.

But perhaps the funniest thing and the thing that really put the last nail on the coffin for me was this headline about something to do with a Clark, an Abdul, and some explicit evidence to an affair. Upon doing a quick google search I find this article talking about the incident, and guess what? Its dated April 28, 2005.

Thank you yahoo, but I think this time, no thank you.

Simon

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Filed under: Blah Blah, Make Money Online, Money and Finances by Simon Rodrigues
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I’m generally quite an avid reader of JohnChow.com and for the most part I agree with his point of view. Yesterday I was a reading a post where he talks about a new blog that he’s thinking of starting as a sort of personal challenge. John wants to start from scratch, without telling anyone about it, and he wants to see how fast he can make it successful. I think this is a great idea as a lot of new bloggers find themselves limited to reading some lengthy and jargon filled posts when they’re starting out, but all they really want is for someone to just show them the way, and once John reveals his blog he will also reveal his steps to success. So thats something to look forward to.

That aside, this is not what this post is about. In the post where John is explaining a bit about his new project, he says that he’s going to pick a somewhat less popular niche but one that he’s familiar with, which is fine, but then he goes on to say that he can’t understand why bloggers would start blogs on something like making money online if they’ve never made a cent. At first glance this might make some sense, even if it isn’t what you want to hear, but I have an objection.

Firstly, I’d like to clarify that I’m not writing this as a personal defense, I think its pretty obvious that my blog is about business & money, and not about making money online, even though I do write about it sometimes. I’m writing as a blogger that maybe has a different opinion to John as to what a blog truly is.

Blog is short for web log. My impression of a log has always been a sort of journal or a place where you record important information, like a ships log, or maybe a personal diet log. So to get straight to the point, if I wanted to make some money online I might consider starting a blog to be able to log my progress, and my experiences and lessons. Does that make sense? A blog is not a place to show off how much you know about something, it is foremost a personal log where you can share your experiences with others.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t blog about something you know, but more importantly you should blog about something that interests you. That, in my opinion is what will attract readers. I enjoy reading established blogs such as JohnChow, Problogger, and Shoemoney, but sometimes I get more satisfaction by reading the little blogs, or maybe the smaller blogs that are starting to have some success, because I can relate more to them.

If you had to be an expert in order to blog, then kiss goodbye to Simon’s Money Notes.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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Simon’s Money Notes has finally earned me my first bit of paypal money. And now I’m not sure what to do with it. There is no doubt that the money will be put back into my online ventures so that they can grow and make me more money. But there is so much available that I don’t really know which would be the better option.

I’ve put together a simple list of different ideas, that require some capital investment, that I could use to help grow my online income. At the moment I’m in no hurry, because the amount of money that I’ve made is not anything that I can work with, so while I wait for my account to grow to 100 dollars at least, you guys can help me pick a plan.

• The obvious choice would be to purchase 1 or more reviews. While this might be the obvious option, I don’t believe its the best. With a budget of 100 dollars I have a choice to purchase 1 review from a highly ranked blog that gets a good amount of traffic, or buy a few reviews from some very lowly blogs. But unless I’m buying from John Chow himself, I don’t see this as a very good investment. I don’t need to pay 100 dollars for a bunch of mediocre links, and paying 100 dollars for 1 link seems like a waste to me, I could be wrong though. One evil way of doing things would be to contact the blogger directly to do the review for you and offer him half the price, this might not bother him as he would have to give half to ‘reviewme’ or ‘payperpost‘ anyway.
• I could buy some text links through text-link-ads. This might not be a bad idea, with 100 dollars I could buy a few links on some quality blogs, I’m thinking links on 3 blogs at 30 dollars per month each. On the other hand I think there are still much better ways.
• If I had a bit more money I could advertise with feedburner. I wouldn’t mind doing this, from what I understand they give you quite a lot of impressions for the amount you pay, but it varies. You have to have 300 dollars at least though for it to be really worth it.
• Buying some AdWords would definitely be an option except I don’t think they accept paypal.
• One of the things I am seriously considering is to buy some referrals for my adbux or bux.to accounts. I would probably opt for bux.to as they seem to be more on the ball than adbux, and for 95 dollars I can buy 100 referrals which could earn me a potential 5 dollars per day, which means that I would have made my 100 dollars back in the first month. Of course I don’t even know if these guys payout yet, since I haven’t reached the threshold, but a lot of people say that they do. The other problem is that there is no guarantee that my purchased referrals will be active.
• I could buy a review campaign. This would probably be better than buying individual reviews. I would get a bunch of one way links this way, but they wouldn’t really be quality links. From blogsvertise I could purchase reviews for as little as 4 dollars per review. So with 100 dollars at 5 dollars per review I could purchase 20 reviews. Not bad if you’re not picky.
• This one is my favorite. Once my account reaches 100 dollars, I’ll do a competition and give the 100 dollars away to the winner. I’m still not sure what the details of the competition will be, but it will generally be something like this. To qualify you have to do a review of my blog with one link to Simon’s Money Notes, and one link to the competition post, then when I have enough reviews (the exact number is still a little hazy, you guys help me decide), I’ll give the money away to whichever blogger I chose. But I’ll have to be fair to everyone, so for doing the review everyone will get a link on my blog for free.

If you have any other suggestions or ideas please let me know. Alternatively if you’d like to exchange links with this blog, or maybe exchange Technorati favorites, we can do that too.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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I don’t know how many of you noticed that at the end of every one of my posts, I’m offering an opportunity to make some money by simply writing a review of that post. I’m a little surprised that nobody has taken up that offer yet. Maybe you’re a little skeptical and maybe you’re wondering what its all about.

How many of you have heard of PayPerPost.com? If you answered yes to that question, wonderful, you can go read something else now. But if you haven’t heard of PayPerPost, you’re missing out, and I’m here to make sure that you get with it.

PayPerPost.com is a site where advertisers can purchase blog reviews for their product or site. And its also a place where you as a blogger can make a little money by posting different reviews for various advertisers. If you want your blog to start earning some serious money, then you have to start doing paid reviews, but if you’re still new to the blogging scene its going to be a bit hard to get advertisers to buy directly from you, and that’s why you need to start looking into programs like PayPerPost.

How To Register
Registering is actually the easiest thing provided you meet their criteria. To qualify as a blogger and do reviews for PayPerPost your blog must meet the following standards:
1. Your blog must be at least 90 days old and have at least 20 entries during those 90 days.
2. Your blog cannot have a post gap of 30 days, so post regularly.
3. Your blog has to be in English, and all posts must be in English.
4. You got to be 18 years old or older.
5. You have to be prepared to disclose your relationship with PayPerPost.

Once your blog meets these criteria, you’re on your way. You can now submit your blog, and if you’re a US citizen, you can also submit your tax information. After thats done you just sit back and wait for your blog to be approved, generally it takes 48-72 hours for blog approval.

Making Money with Reviews
There are two ways that you can make money from writing reviews. The first way is by using PPP direct, and the second is the Marketplace.

PPP direct is a service whereby an advertiser can order a review straight from your blog. Doing things this way has many advantages, the most obvious being that you can set your own price, and it looks cool to have a ‘Hire Me’ banner on your blog. On the downside, its very, very hard for a new blog to get any reviews this way, and when one finally comes in you have to give half of your revenue to PPP, so if you are charging 20 dollars per review you only end up with 10.

The marketplace is a great starting point for any new blogger. Here you can accept offers from many advertisers, so its not dependent on them picking you. Sometimes advertisers place minimum criteria for reviewing blogs, but there are still many offers that a blog with no rank can participate in. This is a great opportunity for you to strut your stuff, if you have a good writing style, then you might find it much easier to get specifically hired in the future. These offers obviously don’t pay as much as if you were setting your own price, but after all, beggars can’t be choosers :)).

Affiliate Program
As any great program out there, PayPerPost has an affiliate program that you can leverage to make even more money. In fact, if you had taken me up on my offer to review one of my posts for cash, you would have had to sign up for PPP and I would make $7.50 by referring you, the good news is that you would’ve made that much also, so its a win win situation. If you sign somebody up without them doing a review you get 15 dollars instead of 7.50 once they get approved. So its a choice between more cash or a little cash and a backlink, I’d go for the latter.

Ok guys, if you haven’t signed up for PayPerPost yet, I really suggest that you do that now. The benefits far outway any excuses you might have. If you want some imidiate results you might want to start by reviewig one of my posts and getting paid for it. You really have nothing to lose.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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There are some bloggers out there that don’t care about making money, but those are few and far between. For most of us, money is not the most important thing, but its at least third on the list. There are many ways to monetize your blog, but in this post I’m going to talk a little bit about Text-Link-Ads.

With Text-Link-Ads you can sell simple, relevant, text adds on your site or blog. It makes the job of finding advertisers much easier for you as they do all the hard work, all you have to do is have a blog, and get approved (which is no small task).

There are a lot of ways to make money from your blog, but as much as some people like to complain about adds on a site, it is still one of the major ways of monetizing your blog. The beauty of Text-Link-Ads is its blending power, I’ve seen many blogs that use this service and none of them look like they’re displaying advertisements. With a label such as ‘Featured Sites’, or something similar, its quite easy to make it look just like a collection of links.

I did mention that it’s no small feat to get approved by Text-Link-Ads, in fact I’ve submitted my blog about 1 month ago and its still not approved. Their criteria is not easy to meet. There is some good news though, even if your blog is not approved you can still have an account, and you can take part in their affiliate program. You might find that you can make more money from the affiliate program than you can by displaying the ads. Text-Link-Ads will pay you 25 dollars for every paying advertiser you refer and for every publisher you refer. So you can relax and promote TLA while you wait for your blog to get approved, and who knows, you might get hooked.

Simon

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Filed under: Blogging, Make Money Online by Simon Rodrigues
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