Ups and downs

I have had one of those 'good news..bad news' weeks this week:

Good News.. I reached payout from Google Adsense for the third time this year and am already three-quarters of the way towards my next payout.
Bad News.. I lifted something far too heavy at work and have suffered chronic pack pain all week.

Good News.. I successfully fitted a 'previously enjoyed' Motherboard and CPU to an old PC, upgrading (just a little project really) from a 300mHz P2 to a 533Mhz Celeron to use as my 'spare'.
Bad News.. I managed to 'blow' the Motherboard on my main PC when fiddling with the RAM. So now I am using my spare as my main PC while it is getting fixed by someone who knows what they are doing!!

Not such a bad week when considering that I will have had a welcome cash injection (even if I have to pay it all out on a new MOBO..), and my back is getting better. Overall Adsense performance seems good at the moment with one of my blogs in particular getting some good PPC results (Hey you CAN make Adsense on a blog!!).
I am also happy that the PC upgrading project went OK, I have not exactly brought my old PC into the 21st Century, but I have brought it through from 1995 to about 1998, and the MOBO only cost me £10 ($20) on eBay including postage... Maybe I will attempt a dual core next time!

Adsense referrals programme to 'retire'

I received an important announcement from Adsense today regarding the 'Adsense referral' programme being terminated, or in their language 'retired'. I have two conflicting views about this:
Firstly I am disappointed because I like the referral scheme, it allows you to select specific graphical adverts in specific niches, you can select the adverts that look right for your website as some adverts have a number of different graphic blocks of varying sizes.
On the other hand, I've had a total of $1 from this programme in around 18 months, so it is not the best of earners for me....
I should probably have tweaked these a bit more than I have to find the best earners, it just remains for me to track these ads down and purge them from my sites... here is the text of the message from Google adsense:

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals programme. We
will be retiring the AdSense Referrals programme during the last
week of August. After that time, AdSense Referrals code will no
longer display ads.

If you currently use referrals, either to promote Google products
or offerings from AdWords advertisers, we encourage that you take
the following steps before the product is retired:

* Remove all referral code from your site(s): Please take a
moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last
week of August, so that you can continue to effectively monetise
your ad space.
* Replace your referral ads with AdSense for content ads: If
you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page,
we recommend replacing referral ad units with standard AFC ad
units. This will minimise the risk of decreased AdSense earnings
when the Referrals programme is retired.
* Run and save all referrals reports to your desktop: All
Referrals reports will no longer be available at the end of
October.

We appreciate your patience during this transition. If you have
additional questions, please visit
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882.
Thank you for your support of AdSense Referrals.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

And now...

Well now, it's Thursday... so no big surprise there then. You may know that the Munny4Hunny experiment was all about paid blogging and whether money could genuinely be made from it. The obvious conclusion is that Yes you can, but lately it has been getting harder. That said, I have just signed up with a new service that has proved quite prolific since I got involved - I will blog about it once I've worked out if they have a referral scheme!! Suffice to say I have made $60 in 9 days with them and and quite happy that this month will yield a healthy balance as a result. That gives me still only a couple of active schemes since some resources seem to have almost dried up. The fluctuations in PR do not help and there appears to have been some movement, but none good that I can work our from what I hear from other bloggers - even John Chow has a PR 3 nowadays, looks like Google have the knives out for him, but I guess that is the best compliment that you could pay a blogger...
My findings have really revealed that if you are prepared to work at it, you could probably make a living doing paid blogging, but this would probably require a lot of hard work on multiple sites. If you ask me would I be able to maintain my current (non-internet) earnings via the internet if I were to lose my job, I would have to say that it would take most of my waking hours to be able to raise that sort of revenue... On the other hand, is it worth 'dabbling' at the current level of operation? then yes as long as it is enjoyable, then why not get paid for simply writing your thoughts and building new sites - and at the same time explore all sorts of avenues for passive earnings (the 'real' goal). Currently I earn about $100 in passive earnings from advertising of one sort or another (not from blogs) and this gives me a basis from which to fund other sites that I might want to build. Eventually, there is no reason why this income cannot grow to substantial levels.
The mission continues...

Google follow-up

Rachel left a comment on my blog post entitled 'Google is the daddy' which I replied to, but my answer started to get so long that I thought I would turn it into a new 'post'...

I agree with you on most of the issues you raised. I am not sure about Googlenet but I know what you mean about them having such a big hold on the Internet. I do think that alexa is trying to compete with their ranking system but it would be great of there was a real competitors

Thanks Rachel
Alexa rankings are all very well, but it's the search engine position that most people are after - traffic monitoring is no doubt a consideration, but PR (I presume) is more complex... PR alone does not get you SERP, but a combination of PR and on-page optimisation - Google could decide tomorrow to use Alexa rankings (which are an indication of traffic) instead of PR - that's the problem for SEO 'experts' the formula keeps changing as trends change and people try new tactics to 'black hat' their way to high SERP. The more you try to 'fool' the system, the more complex the system becomes as it reacts. The problem is that no-one regulates the reaction, Google have only to answer to themselves. Right now I honestly think they do a good job and they are not really exploiting their global domination, but I do also feel that the loopholes are there if there was a change of heart and policy. This is why Monopolies are investigated and surely it can't be too long before Google oversteps the mark and gets broken up into separate entities?
I don't have any insider knowledge about these matters, these are just my observations as an internet user and specifically someone who has used Adwords and Adsense and uses Google search all the time.

Google is the Daddy

Reading through the new Adwords TOS and thinking of the position that Google occupies in the internet 'market' got me thinking again about how the Big G has far too much control in what 'should' be a democratic trading environment.
I don't wish to incur the wrath of Google since they host my blogs and occasionally send me a few dollars (especially since my account is up to about $110 at the moment...), but equally there is a lot of unjustified moaning aimed at Google which maybe we can also address.
The power of Google lies in the domination of Google as a search engine - there can be no doubt that it is the biggest and best, the problems only come when you start looking at all the other pies that Google has it's fingers in and you can't help but think about possible conflict of interests.
I can't see any problem with the social side of Google, Googlemail, Google Groups, Google Calendar and all the other apps that it has are a great idea complementing it's position as the top search engine provider. Adwords are a natural add-on to the search-engine business, we are beginning to get into conflict-of-interest territory now, but I think Google handles it well, with paid search results being easy to spot and the fact that you can get yourself highly listed without paying shows that the system basically works well.
The nitty-gritty of this post is, as you will have guessed, Adsense... How does that fit into the equation and is it fair??
First off, Adsense is the contextual ads that you can show on a website or blog and be paid by Google when the ads are clicked by your visitors. Naturally there are all sorts of rules about traffic exchange which I (now) understand, and obviously overtly encouraging visitors to click on the adverts is a no-no... I do have an issue however with the way an account is shut down. You hear of many instances of an account having amassed a half-decent amount before the account is closed for whatever reason - personally I have not had an account closed, but can see how this might happen to an innocent party who has been targeted by a competitor (for instance). In these cases, Google takes the spoils ie. the contents of the account. It's in the terms I am sure, but terms must be 'fair' for a contract to be valid. Does Google lose out if someone fraudulently clicks on adverts - Well no, because presumably the advertiser still pays Google per click? I am willing to re-think if someone can show me that they refund the advertiser for clicks identified as fraudulent...
So not only does Google have paid links within the search engine results (yet they reduce PR on a website identified as using paid links...), but they can show text adverts on sites that will also presumably show up in search engines too - all of these adverts are paid links. Here then is the dilema: Paid links are a means of making revenue for Google, yet Google (via Pagerank which is part of the hysteresis used to work out SERP - Search Engine Results Position) punishes any site that appears to accept or trade in paid linking. Once the PR of a site has been reduced (many blogs are now operating with a PR of zero...) there is seemingly no question that Google will continue to use that site for continuing to host it's own adverts (Adsense), and apparently in the case of blogger, they take a cut by rotating the adsense code with their own...
Now don't get me wrong, I am really not that concerned as long as I can continue to get my sites ranked with the keywords that I want for free and can make a bit out of Adsense here and there and can have my blogs hosted for free - I think I am getting a good deal especially when you consider all the site-stats and search-engine help that they provide for free. My concern is that here is a potentially huge monopoly that will surely not be able to sustain this hold on the internet in the longer term otherwise we are going to just end up with the Googlenet.

[follow-up post here]

Confused by new Adsense TOS?

Well to be honest, I was kind of keeping my head down about this one, one of those things where you don't have to do it now, so it doesn't get done. Sometimes it's better to give things a shorter deadline if you want to see a difference...
Anyhow, I bit the bullet to day and went to see what it was all about - seems the main crux is that if you want to use Adsense, you will need a publicly viewable privacy policy. Well, I do use Adsense, only a tiny bit on this blog, however I don't want to jeopardise my Adsense earnings elsewhere so I'm, going to place my brand new privacy policy courtesy of Jensense right here:

Privacy Policy for munny4hunny.com

The privacy of our visitors to munny4hunny.com is important to us.

At munny4hunny.com, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use visit munny4hunny.com, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files
As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and Web Beacons
We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on munny4hunny.com to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

May I encourage you to do the same, and don't forget to provide a link so that the Google bots can easily find it...

I'm no pro-blogger, but....

If you are serious about your blog, then you should post everyday.
I don't pretend or even aim to be a pro-blogger, but if I wanted to be, posting every day would be an absolute requirement.
I don't really have a niche theme - but if you want to be found by search engines, then you should gear up your blog for SEO and pick a niche theme.
I don't aim to be picked up by search engines - but I know a few bloggers who use the following tactic:
News, by definition is fresh every day, throwing up new keywords that people will use as search keywords - however quick webmasters are, they can't really use a lot of keyword promotion for a fresh news story, so you have as much chance of your website being thrown up as a search engine result as any other site if you pick on a hot news story for your latest post.
The best way to use these tactics (IMHO) is to combine breaking stories with niche, that way you get a better chance of getting visitors from search results.
I've not tried these tactics myself, though I am toying with the idea of a niche blog on a theme which interests me and may be newsworthy. This means I will be able to search for news on my niche subject and post fresh information and maybe pick up some passing traffic.
The essential element of course, is to have your site monetised so that you have something to show for all your traffic. For this you will need adsense, and depending on your niche, maybe amazon or auction ads up and running to maximise your revenue.
I hope I find time to slip this project in with all my other ones... I would like to try it on a free site and maybe transfer to a domain if the site got the traffic I was hoping for.
Leave me a comment if you have some hints and tips on this subject.....

Affiliates or Adsense?

Unlocking the earnings potential with Affiliates.

You get visitors to your blog and you hope that your targeted adsense will inspire your visitors to click on something that will earn you a few cents. My tip: There is a better way… Affiliates offer a list of potential advertisers with specific products to sell – they want you to post their URL and you can get commission on sales or paid per click depending on the scheme. The beauty of the system is that if your blog is targeted towards a particular market, you can find an advert which suits your demographic, thus ensuring some results.
For example, I saw a really good advertising opportunity for a blog or website which features mobile phones. This advertiser is offering to give away phones so is bound to attract attention! I believe the rewards for this scheme were something like $50 per visitor partaking in the ‘free’ offer. Now, each scheme will have it’s own requirements and reward scheme so it is difficult to discuss specific earnings. I tried this type of specific advertising on a website of my own a few months ago and forgot all about it, out of curiosity I checked back last week and I have personally earned $17.50 (payout at $50). I will be checking more regularly now and selecting some new affiliate programs to get involved with – I hope to be able to report increased earnings next time….
I have been using shareasale.com
And they provide a complete package service where I can browse a variety of offers from a wide range of categories, there are currently over 2000 offers to choose from.

Although I'll happily admit that the link above is a referral link, I genuinely believe that this type of promotion may be a good earning tool for the right type of blog. There are even those who have developed web sites BASED on this type of advertising.

Urbanread - a review

I came across a new passive earning tool for bloggers today. Urbanread supplies code for your website which displays a new items. When your visitor clicks on the news they are directed to an Urbanread page with the news details. There is Google Adsense also included on this news page and the Adsense earnings from this page go into your Adsense account.
Minimum signup requirements are a blog with an Adsense account already in place, you submit your blog and Adsense ID, paste the code into your blog and away you go…even more potential passive earnings.
Once you have registered and activated your account, a single click eliminates the need to paste the code if you are using blogger.com, Urbanread will complete this step for you from within your blogger ‘dashboard’.

90 day count

The end of this month will bring with it an indication of the initial earnings of Munny4Hunny - now don't expect anything spectacular.... It has proved relatively hard to get earnings off the ground, but I am going to include the Mylot earnings as a one-off. I say this because I won't be attempting to earn any more on that particular forum, due to the low 'yield-to-work-rate ratio'...
The real earning potential cannot be accessed straight away as higher-yielding programmes like Payperpost require a blog to be up and running for 90 days - I am at around 64 days and still going strong, I hope I meet the rest of the criteria when the magic day arrives..! At the end of March I will place something in the sidebar indicating amounts earned and amounts actually cashed out. Only Creamaid offers an instant payout, so cashed out earnings can be counted on one hand, actually on two fingers.... I have been back to Creamaid only to find that all the campaigns they are running are fully subscribed - leaving me no chance to boost my earnings today. I have switched advertisers today, though. I noticed that Adsense frequently displayed only adverts for insurance - I have one paid to post entry for insurance, but this is hardly major content on my site, so I decided to dump them and try Bidvertiser - I'll let you know how I get on with them... One BIG advantage is that they will pay you via Paypal and will payout at $10 instead of waiting for the $100 mark to rack up (like at Adsense)

Blogitive

OK, I tried submitting this site to Blogitive, but they said it wasn't popular enough yet. I can see their point, the blog has only recently been started and hasn't been indexed by Google yet. Once the indexing is done, I will try again.
They recommended submitting the site to feedburner, which appears to be a service which uses RSS feed to promote your site. I blindly went along with the suggestion and hope to learn a little more as we go on, so that I can report my findings here. I have submitted both of my blogs to feedburner and will log back into their website another day to see how my blogs are doing and whether I can find out a bit more about how it works, and why I should participate. I was concerned that it might not be approved of by adsense, but I Googled and found out that they have been approved by Adsense for actually inserting adsense into their feeds, so I guess you can consider their service 'Adsense friendly'. I am paranoid about offending Adsense since I discovered (via an email from Google) that using 'Autohits' contravened Adsense rules.