All posts in Make Money

Making Money with Twitter

by Ades on May 1, 2009 in Make Money, Online Advertising, Social Networking with 34 Comments

While twitter is still trying to figure out how to make money, others are already making money with its platform. One such service is Magpie. Magpie is an ad-network for Twitter.

How it works:

In basic terms, you allow them to access your twitter account, and they will tweet relevant ads to your account. You get paid based on your number of followers, the rate of the ads (different category ads have different prices), and the number of clicks on these ads. How exactly they calculate your earnings is obviously known only to them.

You can define the tweet frequency, and for maximum control you can choose to pre-approve each tweet from magpie yourself.

How much you can make?

It depends on the number of your followers. Magpie has a calculator on their website. According to this calculator with my 177 followers, apparently I could make up to 8.61 pounds per month (i know.. that’s very small).

Let’s insert someone’s username who is influential on twitter. And that’s none other than @aplusk or Ashton Kutcher. He has over 1.5 million followers.

So the calculator says he could make over 90 thousands pounds every month! (see screenshot) Wow, that’s a lot!

Summary

So, as you can see, number of followers does matter. On twitter # of followers are like a “unique visitors” in normal websites. The more followers you have the more money you will likely to make when the twitter based publisher networks come out. Therefore, start building your twitter community, grow your twitter’s following. I am quite sure that twitter’s own (and other) “making money models” will rely on the number of followers that one has first. And perhaps this will be combined with the number of clicks that each ad will get.

Whatever it is, you will need to have a healthy twitter community, which is active and will actually follow your tweets. Because I am sure twitter (and other future publisher networks on twitter platform) won’t just pay you for having the most number of followers. Having thousands of zombie followers who do not click on your tweet-links won’t benefit you. Therefore, don’t try to grow your network with those automatic tools that will just fill up your twitter network with dead followers. Most of those followers are actually empty accounts that won’t get updated ever.

Well, Magpie might just have thought a lesson to Twitter on how to monetize their network.

Website: be-a-magpie.com (they should really get that magpie.com!)
Follow me on Twitter: @ades

Checking out EntreCard Ad-Network

by Ades on April 30, 2009 in Make Money, Online Advertising with 13 Comments

As you already know (yes you should check my miniblog) EntreCard is running their own ad-network now.

I did a test run with $25 funds, promoting my color picker software in their Web Development category. Here is the results:

From the results you can see that the CPM rate was $0.4927, and CPC rate was $0.1096. I guess they run a combination of two types. In total I got 50,739 impressions and 228 clicks for my $25 bucks.

My funds were depleted right away within 24 hours, that’s because they do not provide daily limit options.

Here is how campaign creation page looks:

Yeah, it’s dead simple. No daily limits, no campaign type (cpc, cpm) selection. Also at first they did reject my website, I don’t know why, perhaps it was not a blog? But then I see they re-approved it.

Selling your credits

I am sure most of you had EntreCard accounts and perhaps some of you have some credits in their accounts still. If you do, now you can sell them for $1 for every 1000 entrecard credits as announced by EC founder on his tweet.

So, it’s time to make money if you had thousands of credits in your EC account! If you are new, you can always sign up for EC now.

In general I think it’s a good move by EC to open their own ad-network, both for advertisers and bloggers.

Website: http://entrecard.com

PickyDomains – let others pick domains for you

by Ades on April 18, 2009 in Make Money with 26 Comments

This is an interesting business model and a useful tool for those who want ‘outside the box’ ideas for their new websites’ domains.

Let’s say you are launching a new online project and thinking of finding a suitable domain name for it. You have brainstormed yourself and have listed some domain names, but you are unsure if they are creative enough or web2.0 enough. So you think, only if I could use the creativity of the internet users for this task!

PickyDomains is a website that allows you to utilize the internet users’ ideas… It’s not free but for $50 you could land a ‘million dollar domain name’ so to speak. So it works like this, you give $50 to them and wait for suggestions to flow in… once you like particular domain name you chose it to purchase it. All suggested domain names are available domain names, system will automatically check and discard the registered domain names.

And the best part is if you don’t like any of the suggested domain names, you will get back your $50.

Making Money with Picky Domains

If you have creative mind you might want to try making money with Picky Domains. You can sign up as contributor and if your suggested domain name is picked by the buyer, you will get 50% of $50, that is $25 for each accepted domain name.

Website: PickyDomains.com

New publisher program for Asia

by Ades on April 17, 2009 in Make Money with 16 Comments

Performance Network is a new publisher program for Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. It’s developed by Innity Berhad, Malaysian leading online advertising company.

It’s positioned as a premium publisher program and promises to offer highest CPM rates in the region. One of the requirements for the program is websites/blogs must have a minimum of 2,000 page views per day on average to be qualified.

It’s good to see some competition to Nuffnang and Advertlets.

With their banner exchange program you will also be entitled for free advertising in the network, and they have some pretty big sites in their network, like: NST, SinChew, LowYat etc.

So, if you live in one the countries listed above and have a high traffic site/blog, here is a chance for you to maximize your income with this new publisher program.

Website: http://network.innity.com (Good luck to Innity!)

Gold prices to quadruple by 2010, Chris Wood

by Ades on February 24, 2009 in Make Money, News with 16 Comments

Chris Wood is a person who has predicted US Mortgage Crisis back in 2003. He is a managing director and chief strategist of the broking firm CLSA.

His latest prediction is that, by 2010, gold prices will quadruple to $3500 (per ounce) from the current $994 (per once) price. That’s some news!

The collapse of securitization is a much more deflationary situation in the U.S. than anything seen in Japan when the bubble collapsed in the early 1990s…

Gold may be the safest haven for investors as policy makers accelerate responses to the crisis, devaluing currencies versus hard assets such as gold in the process, said Wood. Gold is likely to more than quadruple from the current level of $986 per ounce currently to $3,500 in 2010, he said. Bloomberg

Back in Malaysia, Datuk Husam Musa, Kelantan Exco suggested that Malaysia should convert its reserves from foreign currencies to gold dinar.

“Malaysia can obtain as much as RM162.6 billion ($1 = RM3.6) for this year if the reserves were in the form of gold dinars following the rise in the price of gold globally.

“If we follow the current value, one gold dinar is worth RM518 with the lowest value being one Dirham (RM5),” said the Kelantan State Exco, Datuk Husam Musa in tabling a working paper at the Gold Dinar Seminar 2009 at University Malaysia (UM) here today.

“The price of one gold dinar this year increased 11.07 percent to RM512.20 compared to RM461.15 last year,” he said. Bernama

Should you invest in gold?

According to Chirstopher Wood investing in gold may be “the safest haven for investors”, and many other economists share the same opinion. Here is the graph of gold prices for the last 10-years. Having said that, do your own research and seek professional advice if you are serious about investing in gold.

OnlineProfits.com

by Ades on January 13, 2009 in Make Money, News with 8 Comments

OnlineProfits.com is a new project launched by Daniel Scocco. Unlike other online courses that were launched previously, this one is not only about “blogging”, but it has 21 different topics (see below).

If you are the type that prefers structured learning instead of the self-learning “find here and there” method, then you should check out this project.

Here is the list of the 21 module (each has several lessons inside).

Introduction and Business Principles
Domain Names
Setting Up Your Website
WordPress
Web Design for Entrepreneurs
Business Models
Choosing Your Niche
Blogs
Other Types of Websites
Web Content and Copywriting
Basic SEO
Advanced SEO
Generating Traffic
Social Media
Web Metrics
Selling Advertising
Email Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
PPC (Pay-per-Click)
Landing Pages
Selling Your Products

Fees for the course are at $48 a month for the initial intake (50% off), subsequent intakes will be charged $98/month.

I am not sure how the quality of the lessons will be, but judging from the tutors’ line-up, I would say the content quality should be good. Because those guys definitely know what they are doing and successful in their own fields.

Website URL: http://www.onlineprofits.com

Brian Gardner’s New Project – StudioPress

by Ades on January 2, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money, WP Themes with 28 Comments

Brian Gardner, the person who revolutionized premium wordpress themes by his first project RevolutionTheme, has came up with a new project – StudioPress.com

Since it’s a newly launched project, currently there is only one wp theme available. However, more themes expected to be added very soon. The first theme is for real estate sites.

If it works, don’t fix it

As you all know, RevolutionTheme project had been replaced with R2 (RevolutionTwo), and became Open Source. That meant, as I predicted ~~no more~~ less income for both affiliates and Brian Gardner himself. Brian wanted to change his business model from selling themes to selling support.

Before revolution themes were open source, they were selling like hot cakes. Obviously after they became “free”, no one wanted to pay for the support. Because most bloggers are very familiar with wordpress and most of them wouldn’t need a paid support to customize their themes.

Revolution2 was a huge misstep for Brian (from financial point of view). In order to correct this business decision, he had two choices; to bring back the old revolution themes or to launch a new project. Brian has chosen the second option. And I think that was a wise decision. Otherwise it would have been even more confusing for his existing customers from revolution-1 project. Because they are already confused with the whole discontinuation of revolution-1 project and revolution2/open source thing and how it affects them.

Making Money for Bloggers

StudioPress.com is a great news for bloggers. Because it means “back to making money” for most bloggers. Brian Gardner is a great designer, and his themes are one of the best wp themes on the net. Therefore, I have no doubt that this project will be a success.

His affiliates are paid 25% of the sales, that means if you sell one template worth $79.95 you will get $20.00. And if you sell all-inclusive package ($299.95) then you will get $75.00 of commission.

Are you ready to make money?

URL: StudioPress.com

Make Money with Mahalo Answers

by Ades on December 27, 2008 in Advice to Businesses, Make Money with 18 Comments

Mahalo Answers is the new extension (service) for the “Human powered Search Engine” – Mahalo. The idea is the same like Yahoo! Answers, people post and answer questions. But with Mahalo Answers, you can actually get paid for your answers, that is when your answer is chosen as the best answer.

The amount paid per question is set by the person who asks the question. He can either make it “free” (i.e best answer is not paid) or provide some money for the best answer. It’s up to the questioner to determine the price, minimum amount is $1 and there is no maximum price.

mahalo answers

How do I earn money?

If your answer to a question offering a tip is selected as the best answer, we will deposit the tip into your Mahalo account. All tips are in Mahalo Dollars. Each Mahalo Dollar is currently worth $0.75 when paid out via PayPal. If you answer a direct question offering a tip and the asker doesn’t request a refund, we will deposit the tip into your Mahalo account.

How will I get paid?

Once you earn more than 40 Mahalo Dollars, you can request to be paid via PayPal on your tips settings page. Each Mahalo Dollar is currently worth $0.75 when paid out via PayPal. When you submit your request, we’ll transfer the full balance, or the portion of the balance you choose, to your PayPal account on the 15th of the following month. (source)

There are plenty of categories of topics available on the site. So, if you are good in any one of the topics, you have a pretty good chance of making some money while helping others.

One Advantage

Paid systems such as this, is a good platform for getting speedy and professional answers for your questions. Obviously, the more money you pay, the faster and the more informative answers you will get.

Otherwise, often times in similar free platforms or discussion forums when you post difficult questions which needs some research (and maybe some testing) on the respondent’s part, usually you get only partial answers.

Challenges

One of the challenges for Jason Calacanis (founder) now is to get people on board, and get them to use the system. And perhaps the real challenge will be to persuade them to use the system regularly.

He also needs to make some targeted buzz to attract certain group of professionals who can answer the questions in their own field best. Because, while he sent out email saying that the buzz generation was successful, I don’t think it’s there yet.

It hardly generated any buzz in the blogosphere, at the moment there are exactly 141 results in the Technorati for the keyword “Mahalo Answers“. And currently, the “Blog” section at Mahalo Answers itself (http://www.mahalo.com/answers/blogs) has no questions about blogging; neither free nor paid.

Given the fact that it is relatively easy to generate buzz with these kind of service in the blogosphere, I don’t know why Jason has chosen to concentrate on media tours instead. He could easily capitalize on “make money online” theme with bloggers and internet users in general. Since the system already has its own currency, they could have come up with effective affiliate program to let members refer other people and earn money too.

Summary

Well, let’s hope that it’s just the beginning for Mahalo Anwsers. After all, it’s still in Beta. Good luck to Mahalo team on the project!

P.S Here is what I asked on Mahalo Answers to drive some traffic and awareness to my blog. Got over 100 views on the question and some traffic to the blog, and paid the best answerer $1. Pay attention to Jason Calacanis’ comment on my question ;)

LiqPay – alternative payment system to paypal

by Ades on November 14, 2008 in Links, Make Money with 36 Comments

Recently I had some freelance work done by someone overseas. When I wanted to send him the payment, he didn’t have a paypal account, nor moneybookers account. And he didn’t want to be paid through Western Union since the service charge was too high. So, he suggested that I use a new service called LiqPay. So, use I did! And it went pretty well…

Let me briefly explain how this system works and what were the steps that I went through for sending the money.

About LiqPay (i.e liquid payment, as in electronic payment)

First of all, the LiqPay’s difference from other payment systems is – it’s main mode of authentication for all the transactions (i.e logging in to your account, sending money etc) is through SMS. That’s right, every time there is a transaction, you need to authorize it. And the authorization code is sent through SMS to your mobile phone.

For example, let’s say I want to send you $200. First, I login to my LiqPay accout, then initiate a transfer of $200 to your account. Once the transfer is initiated, the system will send me SMS which will contain the authorization code for this transaction. So, if I am sure and want to confirm the payment, I just enter back this code to the system and authorize the payment. That’s it, now your account should be credited by $200. That’s the whole process for any transaction – authorization code always comes to your mobile phone. This makes it impossible for someone else to use your account. (unless of course he has your SIM card ;)

Registration

Registration is free and doesn’t need any authorization. Registration is done onsite but using your mobile phone. Authorization code will be sent to your mobile phone when registering. Your username will be your mobile phone number.

When you load your account for the first time with your VISA or MasterCard, support team will call you to authenticate the card. They will ask few questions regarding card details, your particulars and the billing address. This is a one time thing and won’t be asked for the subsequent transactions.

Fees/Charges

What makes it attractive is perhaps the low fees that they charge:

For loading your account from your Credit or Debit Card – Free
For sending and receiving money – Free
For withdrawing to your VISA (Credit or Debit Card) – 1.95$ + 1% of the amount transferred.

Conclusion

Basically, everything from registration to sending the money to the freelancer was done within a day. Unlike MoneyBookers which took me more than two weeks to get my account fully functional. LiqPay takes a day because they need to call the card-issuer bank to authenticate the information that you have provided to them. After the first time, subsequent transactions will be processed immediately.

I think I will be using the system some more, especially when people ask me to send money to them through Western Union, or when the amount sent is too large for paypal. Paypal takes around 4% from the transferred amount, + $5 for withdrawal fees. Four percent can be quite big amount when you send large amounts of money.

For LiqPay the only requirement for the payment receiver is that, he/she should have a VISA or MasterCard card, because withdrawals are done to the card.

URL: www.liqpay.com

P.S For Malaysians, I used my al-Rajhi Debit Card for LiqPay and it was accepted.

Discount on Blog Mastermind’s Fees

by Ades on October 10, 2008 in Make Money with 9 Comments

Yaro sent an email saying: “The Aussie dollar is tumbling, which is good if you want to join Blog Mastermind. I’m charging in Australian dollars until Monday, so if want to save yourself about 30% to 40% off, join now.”

If you have been thinking to join Blog Mastermind before, I think it’s a good time to join now. For those who do not know what is Blog Mastermind, it’s a blogging course by Yaro Starak that teaches you how to be a problogger and make money with your blog. The course consists of audio and video lessons.

You can read about it more on this post. It costs $97/month, but with this offer you will be paying around $65/month.

URL: http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/

Amazon’s Contextual Banners

by Ades on August 15, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Make Money with 4 Comments

As you can see to the left, Amazon’s affiliate program now has a contextual side to it. Its banners, half of it will show “Recommended Pages” from your blog.

If you want to see the above banner in action in my blog, just click on any post and go to the bottom of the page.

Where to get the code?

In order to create this widget, login to your Amazon Associates account. Go to link “Build Links/Widgets“. Once you are on that page click on “Page Recommender Widget“.

And this is how the page recommender page looks like:

You can choose different banner sizes, you can customize the text and link colors of your banner. After you have pasted the code into your blog, allow few days (2-4) for Amazon to crawl your pages. After which you will start seeing your recommended pages.

Publisher Program URL: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com

Utilizing your empty slots effectively

by Ades on August 1, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Make Money with 10 Comments

It’s pretty often that you see blogs displaying empty 125×125 ads with “advertise here” text on them. There is no problem displaying such ads, but there is a problem when you display the same banner on all 6 or 8 blocks. Why?

Well, the answer is two-fold:

It affects your branding strategies

It sends wrong message to your potential advertisers. Advertisers will think, if no one is advertising, why should I? There must be something wrong with the blog… since no one is interested to advertise in this blog.
It affects your profitability
I don’t understand why you have to put “advertise here” banner on all 6 slots? For me it’s not even acceptable to put more than one. Putting on single spot is ok, because by doing that you are communicating to your potential advertisers “hey, your banner could be here!”. But putting the same “advertise here” ad on more than one spot is already “not good”.

Because you could have put some other ad on that same spot and make money! Why not put some affiliate banners instead? Why lose the money, at the same time send negative message to your potential advertisers?

Making Money with Affiliate Programs

When I do not have people advertising on my blog, I just put some affiliate banners that can bring me money. For example, the Revolution WordPress Theme banner on the right column brought me $174.95 for the month of July (see screenshot below).

So, does it make sense to have empty slots (even worse having more than one empty slots) on my blog? It doesn’t make any sense! Because I can make money by placing related ads on my blog. Yes related is the keyword. Don’t just put any ads, put something that is related to what you already blog about.

$174.95 is more than what I charge for the slot, I charge $150/month, so this particular ad from Revolution Theme is making pretty good money for me.

You also have to think in this manner: “If someone is willing to pay $150 a month for this spot to advertise on my blog, why I should have it empty? Empty means “zero”. This spot doesn’t deserve a zero money!“.

So, are you using your empty slots effectively? What are the other ways that you make money with your available spots?