review plugin for wordpress
Nov 03

Rip out your F5 button

Blogs, Doodling, Fire and Forget, Internet Marketing, Mind over Pixels, Moniez, Noobs, RGBhat, WebWriMo challenge, Who? Me?, mAdsense 4 Comments

You need to stop refreshing your stats.

You all agree right?

You need to stop refreshing your stats.

Got it?

No seriously, STOP REFRESHING YOUR STATS.

Part of the shift to the businessman way of thinking means maxing out the “fire and forget” motto. Emphasis on forget, and it literally means forget. Fire up that campaign, make sure it works, all links go where they are supposed to, and then forget about it completely.

Set up that splog farm, make sure all crons fire, all rewrites work etc etc.  Then forget about it completely.

Buy that domain for the great new project you have in mind, set up a slow splog with relevant keywords on it to let it mature, and forget about it completely.

Why do I keep telling you this? Because you have to train yourself to fire and forget. Remember, fire and forget does not mean neglect, it means set everything right, make sure it works, then work on something else without refreshing the stats every 2 minutes. If the visitors come, they will come. If the product sells, it will sell. Keeping an eye on it makes no difference at all.

That is the big trap for newbies with Adsense. Adsense is a great and easy way for noobs to monetize their site, and they sit there and refresh the stats page instead of working on the site to make it more profitable. But, ok, the noobs are noobs, they have a reason for getting excited for making money online. What reason do you have? Is it your first check? Is it your 100$ milestone? Your 1000$?

Oh it is? Then why not spend your time working on the next milestone, instead of watch the first one come towards you slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly.

Here is what being an expert means:

  • You know the lay of the land.
  • You have the techniques mastered.
  • Your experience tells you what works and what doesn’t in different situations.
  • Your guts show you the opportunity.
  • You research the idea.
  • You make the investment.
  • You set up everything the right way.
  • You make sure everything works as it should.
  • You forget about the whole deal.
  • You go to your next project, while casually keeping an eye on the first.

Of course you are not an expert, because then you wouldn’t need to read this. Read the above steps, and fill up whatever aspect of them you are lacking in. Yes, it’s that simple. You don’t know the playground? Learn it. You don’t have the techniques mastered yet? Practice more. No money to invest? Make more! You d… etc etc.
Someone might ask here: “But I can’t leave the first project alone, it needs constant tweaking and monitoring!“

Why oh why my dear friend have I been yelling all this time about the 80/20 rule? Make the project NOT need constant tweaking and monitoring. How? FIGURE IT OUT!
Keywords are: outsourcing, automation, cron scripts, moderators, user contributed, useful tools, viral growth.

Keep on generating assets. As soon as something becomes stable and profitable, let it work and focus on your next project. Don’t try to squeeze out the first project for a few extra cents. Yes, optimize, but learn to recognize when it is time to stop and focus on the next one.

Only if you are an expert on anything will you understand what I am about to say below.

Experts see, evaluate, adjust, squeeze the trigger and walk away before the bullet hits the target. Why? Because they have already seen the bullet hitting the target in their mind. A veteran basketball player turns his back before the ball starts coming down. He knows if he will score or not. The actual physical event of the ball hitting the net is just a confirmation of what he already knows.

An expert plays all scenarios in his mind, the possibilities rush through his thoughts. The techniques are already mastered, it’s the strategy that matters now. He even invents new techniques all the time, his understanding of his craft makes him a pioneer.

An expert is never lucky, he sees that opportunity coming from a mile away and when it approaches in his trap he grabs it hard and rapes it till its dry.

An expert teaches, because through teaching you force your mind to sort through the endless amount of data on your craft, and categorize, analyze, prioritize in order to feed it to the student in manageable chunks. Through the act of teaching he goes through the basics again, and sees them with a wholly different eye, resulting in more skill and experience.

If you really want to become an expert on something, go read the above list again. It is the only guideline you really need.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , ,

Oct 26

3 ways to monetize your blog without banners

Blogs, Doodling, Fire and Forget, Heavy construction, Internet Marketing, Mind over Pixels, Moniez, Noobs, RGBhat, Techniques, mAdsense 7 Comments

Every blogger reaches that dilemma at some point. Do I whore out my site for extra cash, or do I leave it pretty and bannerless and making a hole in my timeline with no benefits?

For affiliates I believe, the choice is much easier. Most of us are in it for the money, so it’s weird for us to see a site without at least an ad. 

Hobbie bloggers/webmasters though, the ones that actually made the internet what it is today, reach that intersection at some point, and hate the idea of flashy ads all over their pretty little snowflake.

Well, I am here today to suggest something radically different. 3 bannerless ways to monetize your blog, here it goes:

What are they? They are automatically selected keywords in your site’s content, which have a double green underline. When the visitor moves the mouse over the link, a banner pops up from it. The banner is discreet, and mostly relevant to the keyword. 

If the mouse is somewhere else, the ads are nowhere to be seen.

I have never seen this technique in any other site, I may even be the only one that uses it. Honestly, I have found this technique working so well, that I just drop the code in every site I make, be it normal or sploggy. A simple, clever, practical fire and forget method, just the way I like it!

How do you make it? Simple.

  1. Signup for AdBrite if you are not already.
  2. Create a new zone. 
  3. Put your site’s info.
  4. Uncheck the other boxes, leave only the inline ads checked.
  5. They give you a small piece of code, and you simply put it between the body tags of your template.
  6. Voila, you are done.

Practically, the links get clicked a lot despite them having small bids. The layout of your site remains untouched and pretty. And you still get some revenue. The inline ads I believe are much better than banners.

Amazon has a similar trick in their program, and I have tried that as well. My opinion is that Amazon’s script is much heavier, producing larger page load times. Also, it does not seem to convert that well, and with AdBrite you get paid per click.

What is that? It’s a very clever business model actually… Basically, SpeakToMe provides a service to you, through which you can give personal, one-on-one consultation, paid by the minute.

It really needs some explaining to understand it because it is so revolutionary. The idea itself is old, it is the same as those phone lines, where the caller is charged by the minute, and the receiver helps him, and gets paid his cut. 

Well, take that tried and tested business model, and put it online.

You have your online presence, your reputation, your audience, your writings etc. And people contact you all the time, asking for your advice and help. 

Well, now you can do the same, while getting paid as a consultant. If your advice is as good as you think it is, you will actually be doing your clients a favor, by giving them a cheap, easily accessible way to rent your time. And since you are getting paid for it, you will be more focused in actually giving them good advice so that you show you are worth their time and money.

On a more practical note, the SpeakToMe service basically gives you a widget that you can easily integrate to your website, for example a page named “Speak to me now”. The installation itself is a simple copy paste after you have signed up. Another benefit is that payment is accepted inside your website, so the visitor never leaves your site.

Do you want to see a demo? You can nag the creator of this service right now! SpeakToMe expert widget demo.

The service is free to signup, easy to use, and they even give a guarantee of 50$ for the first 1000 visitors. Now that is confidence.

SpeakToMe’s cut is 20%, leaving you the remaining 80%. I find it a rather logical percentage for a service. Not much to discuss on that issue.

To avoid any misconceptions on the charges of this service, here is the exact page from their signup page:

SpeakToMe’s service charge
Broadcasting on the Internet to an unlimited audience is expensive. Accordingly, SpeakToMe charges a service fee to experts of 1.5 pennies per minute. 10 hours broadcasting time, in other words, will cost you $9 in future fees generated.

Credit card processing fees of 6%
Client accounts are funded through credit cards, and we pay a 6% processing fee for this service. This 6% is charged to your gross revenues.

SpeakToMe takes a 10% cut of revenues
In addition to the credit card processing fee of 6% and the $0.015 per minute service charge, SpeakToMe takes a cut of 10% of gross revenues. The remainder (over 80% of gross) is paid to the expert. 

If you are an expert on a niche, and your audience would be glad to pay a small amount in exchange for your one-on-one consultation, it is worth at least considering this business plan. It does not fit all businesses, but it can work wonders on others, and remember that the offline version is tried and proven to work amazingly well.

The most discreet way to monetize a blog. TLA needs no introduction, you see their banners all over the blogosphere. I have mentioned this again, but it fits this “bannerless blog” issue as well.

Text link ads can pay as much and even more than banners. The added benefit is that the income is stable, even if you get a sudden traffic drop, the link is still there. Of course, if you do not provide a valuable link spot to the advertisers for a long time you will lose them as well, but there is a much larger time buffer than ppc banners for you to react.

TLA has recently opened their “secret” inlinks marketplace to the public, and in summary, they are now selling like hotcakes for 7$ a pop.

Inlinks are simply handpicked keywords from advertisers, like “texas holdem” or “seo services” for example, that are linked automatically from the TLA plugin to his site.

The links are normal, like any other link on your site, and they are as discreet as it gets.

Of course, you can still review the links and deny any dirty ones, though the ones I have are all quite clean up to now.

So, here they are, 3 ways to monetize your website without any banners whatsoever. Go. Create.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , , , , , , ,

Oct 14

Crazy way to bypass Youtube’s comment spam filters

Can of SPAM, Doodling, Techniques, mAdsense No Comments

˙ʎzɐɹɔ ƃuıʞɔnɟ ǝɹnd puɐ ‘ʇɐǝu ˙sɹǝʇןıɟ ɯɐds sʇı ssɐdʎq ʇɐɥʇ sʇuǝɯɯoɔ ǝqnʇnoʎ ʇsod oʇ ʇı sǝsn ʎnƃ ɐ ‘ʎןʇuǝɹɐddɐ ˙ןooʇ ʎzɐɹɔ pıdnʇs sıɥʇ punoɟ ı

(: ɹǝpunɥʇ s,ǝuoʎuɐ ןɐǝʇs oʇ ʇuɐʍ ʇou op ı ‘ǝɹǝɥ pǝʇsod ʇsɹıɟ sɐʍ ʇı

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

Aug 08

Little trick to sabotage your competition

Cardinal Sin, Techniques, Virtual War, mAdsense No Comments

When this idea came to me, I thought it was too stupid to work. I gave it a shot, and it actually worked.

Here it is. As usual, if a competitor is stupid enough to have adsense on his site, go to your adwords account and make a new image ad site placed to his url.

Put up a blank image, yes, a blank image, and bid high to ensure the top spot. The color of the image should be the same as his background, so if its pink, put pink…

You will have to submit the image ad several times until a bored google employee approves it, but if you did any facebook ads, you are already used to the drill.

What this does is simply negating his adsense income for as long as he does not notice it, since noone clicks the ad. Almost noone, I had 2 clicks and 23k impressions.

Easy? Yes

Stupid? Completely

Does it work? Yup

After ccnp and mcp, a lot of mcdst professionals who are not interested in a comptia certification, instead settle down for ccda.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

May 22

Try something new for a change

Doodling, Internet Marketing, Mind over Pixels, Techniques, mAdsense No Comments

Yesterday I played around with my adwords account. I got billed a shitload of money. As I was ready to pause the campaign, and go to the bank to pay off my overcharged credit card,  I decided to let the campaign roll for a few more hours.

Then I logged on to CJ, and saw that not only did I break even, but I had made a big profit as well.

I cannot tell you yet what I did, as I want to capitalize a bit more on the idea…

Oh, what the hell, the internet is big enough for all of us. Here it is:

  • Go to your CJ account (if you dont have one, get it now)
  • Find a popular (4-5 network traffic) offer, with a small lead payout. 1$-6$, something like that.
  • Get one of your generic name domains, or just buy a .info
  • Make a fast landing page, nothing too fancy, just get some relevant keywords to improve your QS. Point the links to the CJ offer.
  • Go to Adwords, and create a new campaign. Depending on your chosen offer, make the target smaller, or put in the whole world.
  • Create only image ads, and go to the page where you select a pic to upload.
  • Open your CJ offer’s links page, see what banners fit the Adwords sizes. The most common ones are large leaderboard horizontal and vertical, and the 250×250 box. Save the pics on a folder, and upload them one by one to adwords as separate ads.
  • For the keywords, you will need a couple of thousand. Use the adwords keyword tool to generate relevant search phrases and keywords to your campaign. Max the limit.
  • At the campaign settings, choose accelerated campaign performance, and check out of the search network.
  • Bid 0.10 or 0.05 for your ads, and set a daily budget you can afford.

That is all! The image ads will take a few days to get approved, and once they do, they will give you over half a million impressions every day, with hundreds of clicks as well.

As soon as it starts working out for you, you can simply work on the landing page’s QS, import more keywords, change targeting, bid more or less depending on your cashflow, or simply create a new campaign with the same concept.

If it doesnt work, try the same on a different offer. I recommend the small payout lead offers, because they convert easier. A more experienced affiliate could try out the same with a sales offer.

Even in web hosting, these days new web design references are coming up, for various dedicated servers, with companies offering various deals of domain registration as well as website design.

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written by Glowleaf \\ tags: , ,

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