Click programs - why I won't be doing it...

It's your choice but I don't think this is a great way to 'earn'

I see lots of people promoting click programs - I will not be doing that here as I don't really like the way that this type of scheme works. A lot of people regard paid to blog as demeaning, and I am inclined to agree to a point. For me paid to click is one step further... after all, you can't say that you have any real positive input into the process.

What's wrong with it - I have a sneaking suspicion that advertising sales people are selling their schemes by guaranteeing advertisers that they will be exposed to a set number of viewers regardless of the 'quality' of the visitor - The client surely doesn't appreciate that their 'visitors' will be people who are paid to click and view their advert with no interest at all in the 'product'. I don't have any inside information, but put it like this:
Logically why would people pay you to click on adverts or read emails..? Because the advertiser thinks they will get a 'return' from their investment in terms of sales revenue. Does anyone participating in paid email or advert-clicking buy the products??? I suspect not, because they are only there to earn a few cents for opening emails and clicking... They have to get through these without wasting time in order to accumulate enough revenue to make it worth while. Does the advertsing company know this? yep - Does their client know this??? The only conclusion I can reach is that NO they don't otherwise why would they participate?
I realise that my view may not be popular, but there you go - it's out there now, I've said it! Please let me know if you have a different view and especially if you know anything about what keeps paid to read and paid to click schemes going...

Microsoft MGX Conference

For the best accommodation for your stay in Orlando, look no further than the International Plaza Resort and Spa which is not only within walking distance of the convention centre, but is also offering a Microsoft MGX Special Rate .
Relax in the plush surroundings and take advantage of the facilities on offer during your stay. This resort boasts palm-tree-line swimming pools, lagoon with a waterfall feature and two children's pools. You will be able to relax in a hot-tub, play miniature golf and dine in a variety of venues. If you are looking to entertain clients, there are conference and business or even banqueting facilities available. For those who like to be on the go, there is a wide variety of equipment in the spacious fitness suite. As the name suggests the Spa is very popular with guests, here you can be pampered and spoiled with a massage, a facial, a chemical peel or a host of other delights on offer...
The special rates on offer include all the standard facilities of this high standard establishment including free wireless access throughout, complimentary transportation to all the major theme parks and easy access to a host of restaurants and all the famous attractions of International Drive. All this for a special price of $119 per night if you book using the code on the Microsoft MGX Special Rate page.

A blog in a million

Rachel's blog explores all avenues of earning online with honest reviews of the schemes and earnings potential. The blog posts are excellently written, clear, concise and helpful. I have used this blog on many occasions to find out if a scheme is worth pursuing as I hope some people might use my blog for the same reason. Where Rachel and I differ is that I have concentrated on paid to post whereas Rachel has explored a wider spectrum of schemes including paid to read, paid to click and even branched out into online gambling (where you are given the money for your first stake so basically you can't lose).
Turn one pound into one million is information-packed for those that are seriously considering going all out for a supplementary online income. Looking at the blog archive, you see that Rachel started out completing an average of around one post per day, in May this year she managed to complete 75 posts and is up to a phenomenal 141 posts for June already. You are assured of quantity AND quality from this blog, so my recommendation is to mark it as a favourite in Technorati as I have done or get the RSS feed to keep up with the steady stream of sound advice.

Post Code Lottery in NHS (UK)

Follow the link to the original post here: Please Help - An Appeal to UK Residents only

Please find below a message from a fellow UK blogger, if you would like to help, please follow the links to the petition...

I have just had news that a relation has found out that their baby needs treatment for a large birthmark on his face. The parents have just been told that their local Healthcare Trust won't fund laser treatment of the birthmark because they consider it to be cosmetic, not withstanding the fact that nearly every other PCT in the country will treat birthmarks and it is a well established fact that facial disfigurement can have a serious psychological impact.

They've investigated private treatment and not only will it cost tens of thousands of pounds (at least 6 treatments under general anaesthetic) but none of them will treat him till he's 14 years old and for optimal effectiveness it needs doing as soon as possible.

His parents set up a petition on the 10 Downing St site and can be found by clicking here. Would you do me a real favour and put your names to it and pass it on to other folks who may be like-minded?

Thank you so much for your help and support - you have to be a UK resident to be able to sign the petition.

My Fitness Pal - free dieting site

MyFitnessPal is a diet site with a difference - there are no costs involved - it’s FREE! There is a section on foods and their attributes –this section has a database of different foods and can report on fat content, calories etc…

There’s a section on calories used during exercise – again a database of exercises and a place to enter your weight and the duration of the exercise.

A bulletin board so that you can get involved in their community, post comments and questions for like-minded individuals.

I am not one to be that interested in dieting, but out of curiosity I did look to see how many calories I burned playing football last night (680 apparently…) and how many calories were in the chocolate I ate afterwards (1070…ooops). If I was actually on a diet and used the calorie counter, I could have found out that information BEFORE eating the chocolate.

When you register, you can track your diet, your exercise and your weight count to get an overall picture of your progress. They also have a free newsletter you can sign up for which delivers dieting hints and information straight into your inbox.

I am a firm believer that exercise is an important factor in dieting, so was very pleased to see such importance placed on calorie-burning activities.

Reviewback.com

I came across this new website a week or so ago, and it fits with this months Munny4Hunny theme of getting as many links as possible to build up page-rank. This site is a directory of blogs wishing to exchange reviews. It is free to register, and once you are registered you can browse to find like-minded (link-minded?) bloggers or just wait for bloggers to approach you. I registered and, as it happens I have been approached already and am preparing to exchange reviews.
Once you 'accept' the review exchange, it is up to you to sort out terms between yourselves. I had a quick look at the blog of the person who contacted me and noted that they have fewer posts and no PR as yet. As such I thought it fair that they complete a review for me first as I feel my blog 'out-ranks' thiers. I have emailed them this proposal and will wait to see what happens....
Admittedly, results will not be as explosive as some of the viral techniques I have tried, but this method at least is 'organic' and is true to the proper method of gaining Page Rank through back-links.

http://www.reviewback.com

Viral Favicons are here!

How to join the favicon matrix?

Be sure to fill in the three important parts of your viral icon, which is:

• the source of your favicon or ask Linky Love to make one for you,
• the hyperlink to your blog, and
• the alt text which would be used to help the crawlers identify and associate your alt text with your icon.

———Copy and paste the VIRAL-ICONS and instructions below this line———

Instructions:

Important Update - Please read here!

1) Copy and paste the matrix of “Viral Icons” below courtesy of Ilker Yoldas from The Thinking Blog. (to support Ilker’s quest of launching his own Internet Startup with a student budget, please consider subscribing to the Full RSS Feed and enjoy interesting posts in the meantime. "Knowledge grows when shared!").

2) Upload your non-animated favicon (GIF image of size 16×16 pixels) to href="http://www.imageshack.us/">ImageShack, a similar free image hosting server or to your own server provided by your hosting service if you have one.

3) Substitute the Host Icon and one of the “Viral Icons” in the matrix with your ALT text of choice and your blog’s URL. Maximum of 3 specific keywords for the ALT text are best for it to be effective.

4) When you get a ping back from someone that has your icon in one of their “Viral Icons”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Icon’s code (automatically the associated ALT tag will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “Viral Icons” below.

5) Invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Icon:

VIRAL-ICONS

Rules: No Porn Sites, Only 1 icon per person (i.e. don’t hog the ViralIcons!), and please don’t tamper with other people’s ALT tags, URLs or favicons.

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your favicon and the associated code you designate as “Host Icon” here, replacing one of the “Viral Icons” from the matrix above. Feel free to drop a comment here with your blog URL, ALT tags and favicon URL (we don’t mind if it is the same all over the blogosphere).

Optional: Display the “Viral Icons” badge on your sidebar and promote your blog. As more and more bloggers copy and paste the “Viral Icons” from the matrix above, the more backlinks you will have with your ALT text, and in turn the more promotion your blog with get. The sooner you participate, the more link love you will receive!

———Copy and paste the VIRAL-ICONS and instructions above this line———

Blogging Success Challenge!

I was browsing around the web today and I decided that I would like to take up Stephen Walton's challenge. Stephen is suggesting that we post a visual aid on our blog to remind us why we ever got involved in the blogosphere in the first place. My choice, like Brown Barron is family... Also like Brown Barron, I am only going to use a representation of my family...rather than the real thing. This photo represents my family as well as anything else, and it's true, my quest for a little extra money is so that I can give things to my family that we would not be able to afford otherwise.
Your goal might be a specific car or a new house or a thriving business, using elements of the law of attraction, Stephen is inviting us to visualise our goal to concentrate our minds. Taking part in the challenge will mean that you will get link backs for SEO and page-rank so that fits nicely with my plan for this month of gaining page-rank points wherever I can.
Why not take part in the challenge or just take a browse around Stephen's Blog to get an idea of what Blog Success is all about...
Here are the reasons to take up this challenge:

• A chance to engage with readers on a personal level

• Promoting Stephen's Blog and helping him to share success

• Link exchanges for SEO and Technorati/Alexa/Google rankings

• Helping to visualise your own goals

• You could help someone by talking about what is important to you

It's guaranteed linking and you may even drive extra visitors to your site, so take up the challenge and tell us what motivates you to blog.

Oh yeah and...how about this for a mini-banner Stephen - you should be able to tell where the inspiration came from: hope you like it...

Viral favicons

I like the idea of viral linking so much I am planning to get involved in another scheme. I was visiting Linky Love blog today and saw the viral favicon matrix - I had considered starting a viral mini-banner matrix, but I'm not sure I have the time to manage it... I don't have a favicon and being a blogspot blogger I cannot use one as it is intended, but I could use one for the viral favicon scheme and for comments where avatars are used. Linky is being very generous and offering to create one for those that wish to get involved, well I do and I would be very grateful if Linky could take the time to create a favicon for me...
Why not visit Linky Love and add your link

You can ask Linky to make a favicon for you, get link backs and take part in the viral favicon matrix - if you are wondering if viral linking works, just take a look at my Technorati rank ;-)

Merchant Circle Forum

Merchant circle is a service for business-owners, providing resources, pooling knowledge and exchanging information. The Merchant Circle Forum is a space where you can promote your business or communicate with other business owners for your mutual benefit.

For instance I found a thread entitled Innovative ways to promote your business This is a highly informative and extensive well-written post with nine ways to promote your business for free on the internet.

The forum has many such articles and also operates as a directory with many different businesses listing their services. If you are a business-owner or want to get the inside track on how to promote a business or even have a service to offer other business owners, make sure you get yourself onto this forum.

posting in advance blogging tips

See my previous hints and tips on blogging, I think this subject deserves a second post...

I am continuing with the policy of posting in advance - I have a creative half-hour where I am centered on the task in hand and can come up with ideas to post on my blog. I use this time to start posts with just a sentence or two and then save them as a draft - I write quickly using bullet points as reminders and half-finished sentences, then come back to finish them off when I have more time, but am not feeling so creative...
A few pointers then if you do this -

DO remember to adjust the date and time of your post, or they may all appear apparently out-of-sequence on your blog when you press the 'publish' button.

DO make sure that your sketchy notes make sense when you read them back otherwise you might be wasting your time.

DO run a spell-check before you post to make sure that you spotted all the errors you made when you were typing too quick!

In the last two days I must have completed seven or eight posts which will stand me in good stead when I am pushed for time and the creative juices have run dry. It's like you just filled up the tank with fuel to last you for a week or so....

Hot Gossip!

If the latest news about Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake is what floats your boat, then get the latest celebrity gossip over at CelebrityGossip.com
The site is split into three main sections

• Hot - where the hottest stories are placed
• Latest - where the newest stories are to be found
• Celebrity - where there as an extensive list of almost every celebrity that you can imagine

I personally don't have a lot of time for the latest antics of Paris Hilton, but I spent a little while browsing through the Celebrity section which actually reads like a real Who's who... there were people here that I hadn't heard of so I looked them up - such as Jane Goodall, the woman who discovered that chimpanzees use tools! and a Bollywood actress Amisha Patel...

The Celebrity section alone would make a useful reference tool giving a decent amount of factual information about all the featured individuals. If however, you prefer to read the dirt being dragged up on your favourite celebrity or want to read the somewhat unkind commentary provided by the editor, then point your browser in the direction of www.celebritygossip.com and read away to your heart's content. You can register on the site, leave your own comments on the stories and rate them out of 10 - average scores are displayed next to the stories.

June 2007 Update

Visible activity on Munny4Hunny has reduced somewhat, however 'off-page' activity has been a very different story. The aim for this month has been to raise the profile and I have been using Technorati 'Authority' as my measuring stick.
Here are the methods that I have used:

1. A paid-post (not paid by me...) kindly 'donated' by Greg Stratz - this scheme guaranteed a post including links would be posted on a specific number of different blogs
2. The viral tags scheme as devised by Jimmy at Founders Cafe, he adapted Andy Coates original viral matrix idea.
3. Commenting and reviewing a couple of blogs
4. Using a free submission program to get my blog listed on up to 250 directories

Of these methods, the runaway successes have been methods 1 & 2 - I used the viral method on another blog and can report that it gave me about 90 authority points. So far my authority on this blog has risen by 170, so if we assume that the scheme is as effective on one blog as the other, then another 80 points need to be accounted for. I think that scheme 1 probably gave me about 40 or 50 points leaving 30 or so unaccounted for. Some of these will be down to additional links in comments and natural accumulation of ranking points through normal activity.
I have already pointed out that the viral-scheme can hardly be regarded as an 'organic' method of accruing popularity, a view acknowledged by Jimmy himself. I can envisage a filter being devised by Google to counter the effect of this on PR, which is why I have used other methods which should stand me in good stead if such measures are introduced. I have employed one-way links where possible when submitting to directories and will probably not bother with directories that don't have any page-rank of their own. Commenting and reviewing is a more organic method and will gain you authority in the long-run, but can be painstaking as you can't get such rapid results as via the other methods. I don't advocate spam-commenting which I have seen done here and there, generally my commenting attempts to be intelligent(?), meaningful and on-topic...
I will report final results of the popularity pursuit at the end of the month. Suffice to say that once again, my results were far better than my target (I need to set higher goals obviously) - I had hoped to double my Technorati Authority from 23 to 46 - right now I am at 194 on Munny4Hunny so I might well exceed expectations by up to ten-fold by the end of the month.
Due to the activity off-line in this and other projects, the actual paid to post earnings for the blog will be very low for June, but the ultimate aim will be to gain Page-Rank and therefore to be picky about the paid posts I will do in the future.

Free e-cards for pet-lovers

Big Paw Designs have been offering products and services to the pet-loving community for 5 years now, and have just launched their latest service.
Free e-cards are a popular way to send your greetings around the world via email. The people at Big Paw Designs have developed a new service for pet-lovers. Send free e-cards to your pet-loving friends and you can even have your own pets featured in the cards.There are options for humour, breed specific and rescue-pets, upload your own pet-photos and you may earn yourself a shopping coupon code.
Email ecard@bigpawdesigns.com with your pet photos.

mmmTALK.com - the forum

A new forum has launched which aims to discuss all aspects of internet money-making, blogging, SEO and anything else that takes your fancy.
Ask some questions, answer some questions - pick up tips and hints and even have your amazon advertising code appear after your threads...ultimately aiming to have Adsense coding included as well. Click here http://www.mmmtalk.com/forums to browse around, why not register for free and start some threads going.

The future for viral linking

I'm somewhat embarrased to reveal that I've overshot the mark somewhat in getting my Technorati 'Authority' rank raised. Greg Stratz took part in a link project hosted by JaKelDaily - this was a scheme where you could have three URL's posted on numerous blogs with varying PR's. Greg submitted an interview that I did for him, and was kind enough to sacrifice one of his links and use mine instead. My 'Authority' was immediately raised from 23 to 53!! This is a scheme which will be growing under Jasons careful nuturing...

I noted that the ranking was slipping over the next few days, and then I got involved in the Viral Link going on over at Founders Cafe , based on an idea put forward from Andy Coates . This one seems to have immediately boosted me by about 10 authority points and will no doubt build as the idea catches on. The viral links in this matrix are growing daily and need frequent updating, the rankings should really grow as long as everyone hosting the matrix is updating it.


This brings me to question of how Google might treat this type of viral linking in the future.
My measure of popularity is Technorati since it is easy to gauge results, however my real aim is to make the site more favourable to google to gain google page rank (this in turn should open up more paid post opportunities). Whilst these schemes undoubtedly boost rankings now, I am not sure that Google will see this as a natural organic form of validation of a site or blog, so my gut-feeling is that they may change their ranking formulae to take account of it. The upshot of this wil be that bloggers and webmasters will still need to be thinking about 'valid' linking techniques and good content in the long-run if they want to climb the Google rankings. Having said that, you could argue that you are just reproducing a valid mini-directory, but I have a feeling that if you participate in a number of similar schemes with no doubt a high number of the same participants, you could be seen as a link-spammer.

I feel that a lot of the social/community link sites such as Technorati will be happy to allow the schemes to run, so as far as that goes, they will be successful. If gaining Techorati authority is the end, rather than the means to an end, then the viral link will be valuable. My initial feelings are that this is just too easy for Google to 'like' it. What do you think?