Bloggers for Dollars

Bloggers are the rockstars of the information age! With millions of bloggers all over the world even the most obscure and small blogger has the potential to become a rockstar. That's why PostieCon '07's theme is "You're A Rock Star". PostieCon's blog conference aims to educate bloggers on how to build our traffic and readership, and how to use use our notoriety and unique brands to create value and monetize our voices. These are all things I'm definitely interested in learning about.

While that does sound good, this year's PostieCon is not all about money and fame. PostieCon's blog conference is designed to help us become a better bloggers and believe you me, I can use all the help I can get!

PostieCon '07 is being held in Orlando, Florida, USA and I can't help wondering if this is the reason some of the world's biggest bloggers have accepted the invitation to share their knowledge, perspective and experience with the bloggers that will be attending PostieCon this year , hehe. I'm thinking it might be because Orlando is a world renowned entertainment capital, and an all-around fun place to be!

All kidding aside, I think PostieCon's gathering of bloggers from around the world is a terrific idea and I'm toying with the idea of attending myself. If you're interested in finding out more about the blog conference being held June 1 and 2 feel free to browse the PosticCon website. It really does look exciting and I'm not just saying that because this is a sponsored post. I don't have to say anything I don't want to. *big smile*

I got tired of deleting spam everyday so I installed a Captcha plugin (http://drupal.org/project/captcha)... only problem is that there is a bug in the plugin that tells people they got the math problem wrong when all they didn't even try to comment, hehe...

My options are to disable the captcha plugin and continue to delete spam everyday, or leave the plugin enabled and just hope people aren't so annoyed they never ever come back...

Opinions? hehe

It really frustrates me to have any bugs or glitches on my site so I'll probably disable the plugin until the author can get it fixed... *sigh

When I think about the blog ad network Sponsored Reviews, I usually think about it from the paid blogger's perspective. However, there is more than one angle to Sponsored Reviews.

For example, anybody that has tried to build up a website or blog knows the importance of link building. As a new blog author I know how hard it is to get those first few backlinks.

I just read the blog entry 10 Reasons Why Sponsored Reviews are Great for Link Building and I'm like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. (I also think stuff like "now why didn't I think of that", hehe, but that's me all the time with most good ideas other people come up with.)

I'm not going to copy or paraphrase the whole list here but I'll give an example with the number 5 reason which is the potential to build 2nd-tier links. Quoted from the article: "When other bloggers link to your review, the search engines place more value on that page. We call those 2nd-Tier links as they are not links directly to you but rather to other pages linking to you." That makes sense to me.

In case you're wondering, yep, this post itself has been sponsored by Sponsored Reviews. If you're interested in purchasing a review from Bloggers for Dollars feel free to look me up. :)

I'd like an honest opinion. Does this site seem to load slower than other sites for anyone?

Now why didn't I think of this? Popuri.us has set up a one page tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site.

Check out your site's ranking on Google PR, Alexa rank, Technorati, del.icio.us as well as the number of subscribers your site has with feed readers such as Bloglines.

Unfortunately some sites have banned this tool from fetching results due to the immense amount of requests. That's a shame as the tool really looks promising. I know there are other tools such as this out there on the web but I like the clean look of this one and the ease of use. You don't have to click through a series of pages just to get to it.

I hope they get their problems ironed out soon.

There is more than one advantage to being a *gasp* "paid blogger". One of the little known perks is finding cool products and websites that you may have otherwise never found.

Today I found a website chock full of free coupons, online coupons and coupon codes. I've mentioned before that I'm all about saving money. Well, Coupon Chief is all about saving me money too, hehe, so I think we have a match made in heaven here.

Coupon codes from Coupon Chief have come along at just the right time. For example, these BestBuy coupons are right up my alley. I'm in dire need of upgrading my 4 year old computer (can't believe it has been that long since I bought it) and I just love electronics and gadgets and technology. As well as BestBuy coupon codes this page also features BestBuy hot deals and discounts. In the past I've shopped online at BestBuy a LOT and I'm very happy to find these BestBuy coupon codes from Coupon Chief to save myself some money. Yay.

I know there isn't a whole heck of a lot we can do about spam, but there are some things we can do to cut down on some of it. I read about 10 Minute Mail over at Geeky Speaky, one of my favorite sites for geek news and thought it was a terrific idea.

At 10 Minute Mail "you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes."

I have only used this one time but if there is another occasion I'd like a disposable email address I'm glad to know it is available.

I use Akismet to prevent spam... comments like "cash info now" are not going to be approved... keep yer spam to yerself!

Have you ever refinanced your mortgage? My husband and I refinanced our mortgage a few years ago. The one thing I didn't like about the process was having to jump through one hoop after another after another. For the life of me I can't figure out why the broker wouldn't (or couldn't) just tell us up front which information we would need to provide in order to complete the loan.

Maybe the problem wasn't really with the broker, because to be honest, I knew very little at that time about mortgages or mortgage refinancing or any of that. I know a little more about the mortgage business now due to the fact that my son is Vice President of ««« Continue Reading »»»

I re-subscribed to World of Warcraft after promising myself that I was going to kick that habit. *sigh*

Maybe I won't spend as much time in the game as I did in the past now that I'm interested in improving my blogging skills.

Maybe.

But if anyone has noticed my absence and lack of participation the last few days, that's why.

I don't know much about web conferencing software since I don't have a business that would utilize it, but I love to look at the new technology and different ways to communicate on the web. I didn't even know for sure what VoIP stood for until I looked it up, hehe. (It stands for "Voice over Internet Protocol" in case you might be wondering yourself.)

I found a really nice service called MegaMeeting whose website tells you everything you might need to know about web conferencing software plus more. ««« Continue Reading »»»

Okay, I know this is off-topic for this blog but it is important to me and if I can help just one person then it is totally worth it. Plus, this is my blog and I'll chit chat about anything I want to. *grin*

An Ontario-based company is recalling dog and cat food believed to have killed and sickened cats and dogs across the United States. If your pet has eaten any of the recalled food the symptoms include lethargy, vomiting, loss of appetite and no interest in drinking water which are all signs of kidney failure.

If you suspect your pet has eaten some of the tainted food stop feeding the pet and immediately consult a veterinarian for other food options.

You can go to this website to find out if you have purchased any of the tainted products:

http://www.menufoods.com/recall/index.html

I don't see my brand of cat foods on the list and I'm very, very happy about that!

When I bought my computer a few years ago (yes, it is time for an upgrade) I thought I was the cat's meow because I had a HUNDRED gig hard drive! Boy oh boy did I think I was hot stuff then. I thought that was such a big hard drive that it would probably never get filled up.

Wrong! You may have seen me mention a few times that I am an avid fan of MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). I've have played several over the years and every time a new game comes out the space it takes up on a computer is more and more and more. The latest game I installed came on 5 disks and took up 20 gigs of hard drive space. No, I'm not joking, this game was 20 gigs in size. For the first time since I got this computer I had to go through my programs and delete some files before I could install my new game. I didn't even look into portable hard drives as an solution to my problem because I had heard that they were very expensive and big and bulky.

Duh, actually portable hard drives are quite inexpensive.

Pexagon Tech is now offering their Store-It Colors line of Portable USB Hard Drives at an incredibly affordable price. And get this - these portable hard drives come in 5 hot colors, and you can personalize both sides of it for free. Personalize a portable hard drive? Now this I gotta see, hehe.

I bet you think this sounds expensive. Well, you can get 100GB of portable storage, any color (whee, I like colors), with your logo laser engraved on the front and your name on the back for $99. And here is one of the features I like best about purchasing portable hard drives from Pexagon Tech. There is NO setup charge and NO order minimum. Wow. You can't beat that!

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Praise?

Want to sneak in your URL for a back-link? Haha, I bet that one draws you in. *grin*

Spew yer graffiti here.

I don't leave comments on blogs as often as I might like to. The main reason I don't comment is because I try to be polite to the blog owner by not leaving off topic comments. Sometimes I read every post on the front page just to see if I can in some way relate my comment to a given topic. Most of the time I can't.

For instance, I might want to drop by What Ever I Feel Like to say hello and to respond to a comment Amy left on my For the Heck of It blog earlier this evening. In this case a "just passing through" comment would be totally out of place in any of the posts that Amy made today. So instead of leaving an off-topic comment I didn't say anything.

Here is a little trick I've used on most of my sites to engage my readers. It is really easy.

Just create a new page and call it something creative that fits your personality. I'm going to call mine "Graffiti" because, well, I always call my comment page "Graffiti" and old habits die hard. You can simply name your page "Comments" or you can get creative with it. Maybe Amy would call her comment page "Whatever You Feel Like". Get it? hehe

Make sure your page is set up to accept comments and write some text inviting your visitors to leave a comment. I always invite my visitors to "spew", hehe, but that's my personality, you don't have to be so, er, tacky. I've been meaning to set up my graffiti page for a while now but didn't get around to it until now.

Let me know what you think of this idea by leaving a comment to this post, or by golly spew yer graffiti here. *grin*

Yay, I was accepted to become a "postie" for PayPerPost. :)

I've been hanging around their forums for a few months now and have gotten to know quite a few posties. (That's what they call their paid bloggers.) Of course, after I became a postie myself I had to go and nose around their website to try and find out some more information about their outfit.

I found out that PayPerPost will be making a big announcement in the near future but they won't tell anybody what it is yet. I have heard a lot of different rumors on several posties' blogs and some of the guesses so far have been pretty far out there.

To be honest I can't for the life of me even begin to guess what this company has up their sleeve now. I'm hoping it has to do with money. Lots and lots of money for lots and lots of posties. No, wait a minute, PayPerPost already pays lots and lots of money to lots and lots of posties.

Hmmm, now what could it be? Well, if I'm going to guess I might as well guess big! I think the announcement is that PayPerPost is going to be sending their top earner and their bottom earner (that would be me, whee) on an all expense paid cruise around the world. I like that idea. Yeah, I think that is what the big announcement is going to be.

I really like Drupal but lately I've seen some really cool looking Wordpress blogs that are using some really cool plug-ins and widgets. Every time I run across a widget or plug-in for Wordpress that Drupal doesn't offer I become increasingly envious.

When I started my new blog I installed Drupal as usual. But after about a week my Wordpress envy got the better of me so I uninstalled Drupal and installed Wordpress instead. Even though had I used Wordpress for my blogs a year ago (before I switched to Drupal) it is like a whole new learning experience for me. There is good and bad to the learning experience. It is good because I enjoy learning new things but it is bad because sometimes I just want to do what I want to do without spending a lot of time figuring out how to do it. blah. I really hate editing CSS files and templates and I never have to do that with Drupal. Hopefully the switch to Wordpress will be worth it.

A few of the reasons I'm switching back to Wordpress are the new array of plug-ins and widgets and also because I'm lousy when it comes to CSS and/or graphics and Wordpress has thousands of pre-made Wordpress themes to choose from. There are 101 pages at the WP Theme Viewer site and I'm only on page 14. I have a long way to go.

Executive Platform is an online community comprised of thousands of executives in 12 countries that have come together to share the benefits of a brand new resource. The premise is simple - members fill out online surveys on topics relevant to business and in turn accrue Executive Dividends for participating. The dividends can then be redeemed for rewards.

There are 2 ways to redeem dividends. You can choose merchandise ««« Continue Reading »»»

I was reading over at JohnChow.com and found his top 10 blogging mistakes to avoid so I used it as a basis for a little self test. I left off number 10 because we'd hate for his head to get any bigger than it is since he already is the root of all evil. He is running a contest along with 1234Pens.com, a site that makes promotional pens, to win a Nintendo Wii so if you're interested don't hesitate to give him 3 free back-links with nothing in return except for the slim chance to win a gaming system. If I win the gaming system I'll probably fall off my chair, hehe.

Enough of that drivel, here is my little self test based on John's list:

Blogging Mistake #1 - Not Updating
Guilty! I truly believe content is king and I know if I don't write a post or two on a regular basis I might as well just hang it up now. I'm really trying to do better in this area.

Blogging Mistake #2 - Blogging Only For Money
Innocent! I don't really expect to make any money from this blog. If I ever do make money from my blog it will probably be the biggest surprise of my life. No, I'm not doing this entirely for money. I'm doing it because I truly enjoy it, and to prove to my husband that I can. *grin*

Blogging Mistake #3 - Rushing a Post
Innocent! As a matter of fact, I think my biggest mistake is just the opposite. I take so long to make a post it is pathetic. Sometimes I take so long to formulate posts in my head that they never do get written. This leads me back to Mistake #1 - Not Updating.

Blogging Mistake #4 - Not Being Personal
Innocent! I'm an old BBS Sysop from days gone by and running a website is similar in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to interacting with visitors. I believe being personal with your visitors is one of the biggest factors to running a successful blog or website. And you have to let your personality shine through.

Blogging Mistake #5 ««« Continue Reading »»»

I don't know about any of you other small bloggers out there but I have never made one thin dime from Google Adsense. (I registered with them over a year ago and I only have 8 dollars in the kitty, hehe.)

When I got the chance to write a sponsored review for DClick Ads I jumped at the chance for more reasons than the obvious. I'm have been diligently searching for sources of revenue (other than Adsense) for my blog in the past several weeks and it seems DClick Ads has been dropped into my lap at just the right time.

DClick Ads is a service that quickly and easily connects advertisers and publishers (webmasters/bloggers) with one another. As a publisher I'm very interested in the way their service works from the blog owner's point of view so that's what I'll talk about today. What really got my attention is that publishers can set their own pricing per week, per month or at per click rates. I like that idea!

The 3 types of advertisements you can offer are banner ads, standard text link ads, and premium embedded link ads. Payments are made ««« Continue Reading »»»

Snipshot is a photo editor that lets you start editing any photo with one click of a bookmarklet. You can use Snipshot to crop, resize, adjust colors, and automatically enhance you photos within your browser and then save it back to the web.

I tried Snipshot out this morning when I needed to resize a picture for an avatar at a site I recently signed up with. It was much easier than opening my graphics editor, resizing the graphic, saving it to my computer and then uploading it to the web. With Snipshot you can do it all on the web, with the option to save the edited graphic to your computer or save it to the web. Pretty neat.

New with Snipshot is the optional Firefox extension that lets you put Snipshot into you right click menu. Of course I just had to download the FF extension and try it out too, hehe. Now I can edit my graphics quickly and easily by right-clicking the graphic in my browser.

There was a time when I thought everybody in the world had access to broadband internet service except me! In the year 2000 when I moved to this very rural area just outside Tampa, Florida the thought never crossed my mind that I might not be able to sign up with a broadband service. Wrong! It just wasn't offered in my area. I couldn't get cable or DSL and I was even turned down for ISDN. I was on dialup for 5 years until FIOS became available in my area. And on top of all that I was paying between $20 and $25 for my dialup connection. :(

Too bad I didn't have a service like PCDialup available. According to PCDialup.com there are still over 40% of US Internet users using dialup today. Wow. That's a lot of dialup users and I bet they are still paying ten to twenty dollars per month for their service.

If you live in California and are using a dialup internet connection here is some good news - ««« Continue Reading »»»

I applied to Blogsvertise on Sunday and when I woke up Monday morning I had the approval email in my in box. That was pretty cool - less then 24 hours for the approval.

I also submitted my blog to PayPerPost at the same time I applied to Blogsvertise. I have not heard a peep from PayPerPost yet. Their FAQ (or was that in the TOS) says I should hear back from them within 48-72 hours so I might not hear from them until tomorrow at the latest. Of course I'm interested in knowing if I'm going to become a postie but I'm sure they are very busy and might not have time to approve new blogs right now. I do hope I hear from them within the 72 hours as they promise this in their guidelines.

I applied last night to a brand new blog ad network fresh out of beta called Sponsored Reviews. My blog is listed as inactive/rejected but I received an offer to write a review already. This is confusing so I submitted a support ticked to see how I should proceed. Edit: Just got an email (only a few hours later) from Sponsored Reviews that my blog has been approved and I'm free to write reviews. Wow, that's fast customer support!

The four key reasons to join Sponsored Reviews are: ««« Continue Reading »»»

Blogsvertise is another blog advertising service I've been looking into the past few days.

I'm registered with three other paid blogging networks that have their bloggers visit the blog advertising websites everyday and select from a pool of advertisers to write about. Blogsvertise is different in that you don't have to click on their website all day every day just to find an advertiser you are interested in. Instead, your blog(s) are inserted into the assignment queue where you will then be emailed tasks/new assignments to blog about. You may respond to task offers by either accepting or declining them.

After your blog entry is complete, you submit your entry back to Blogsvertise for review and approval. Once approved you will be paid after 30 days for your blog entry via Paypal.

Oh, I guess you'd like to know how much money you'll make. ««« Continue Reading »»»

We fail our way to success.

That is my motivational mantra for today.

We fail our way to success. Learn from my mistakes and move on.

We fail our way to success.

We fail our way to success.

We fail our way to success.

Hehe, I'm starting to feel better already.

I think I fixed everything I had a backlink pointing to... at least I hope so... *big sigh*

This blog is broken until I get a chance to fix it.

Edit: I think it is fixed now. If anyone finds a "page not found error" please let me know by responding to this post.

I got a new module (plugin to you WP people) that let me make bulk changes to existing URL names and will automatically name URL's from now on. This blog really isn't very old and I'm glad I got the module (I had been manually inputting the URL names) but now all of my URL names are changed and when people try to click on any backlinks that are floating around the interweb they are going to get a page not found error. I just want to cry. :(

I'm going to look back at some of my posts and try to remember how they was named before so I can change them back. In the meantime this blog is borked and so am I.

I have never used Blogger for any of my blogs because, well, I don't like it. One of the things I like the least about it is the ugly navbar that is displayed over the top of the blogs.

I always wondered if there was a way to remove the Blogger navbar but didn't think too much about it until I stumbled across Kumiko's Cash Quest. I noticed she is using Blogger but didn't have the Blogger navbar anywhere in sight. After a bit of research (and emailing her, heh) I was directed to her {DEAD LINK!} post where she is kind enough to provide the instructions. She also tells you how to make a 3-column template as well as add a picture to the header.

Regarding removing the navbar Kumiko has this to say:
[quote]Note: Removing the Navbar is possibly against the Blogger Terms of Service. On their site, they state that the Navbar may be removed for those publishing via FTP to their own server. They do not explicitly state that other users can not do it too. Furthermore, the fact that they allow you to edit the HTML of your blog gives the impression that you can display your blog as you wish. But there is no definitive answer. You’ve been warned![/quote]

If you want to give it a whirl yourself, here is the code that is to be placed directly above the #header-wrapper line in the "Edit HTML" section of your blog template:

#navbar-iframe {

}

If you're interested in making money online you might want to drop by Kumiko's Cash Quest and read some of her other articles. Her series runnng now is the "Top 5 Countdown of Essential Sites". These are 5 sites that new bloggers should visit in order to maximize their chances for making money online. I've read the first 4 and now I'm waiting to see which site is number 1 on her list. I know which one it isn't! (mine, hehe)

I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't use Wordpress for this blog as I much prefer the Drupal CMS. I do, however, read a LOT of Wordpress blogs. If I find the blog entry interesting I might even comment.

One thing I can be certain of when I enter a comment on a blog is that I'm going to make a typo. Guaranteed. I don't know why this is. I can read it and spellcheck it and read it again before I hit "submit" and as soon as I view my post there it is - a big dumb typo.

When I visited a friend's blog (Aylee :: bits of who I am to be exact) the other day I was surprised to learn there is an Edit Comments Plugin for Wordpress that will allow visitors to edit their comments. Yay!

Now, how can we get other people to start using this plug-in too? hmmmm...

In the past several weeks there has been a lot of discussion about Alexa in some of the forum communities I frequent, especially the forums of some of the blog ad networks (aff) I visit regularly.

From what I understand Alexa will not even recognize your site unless your visitors are using either the Alexa toolbar for IE or the Search Status extension for Firefox. (There may be other toolbars and extensions also, these are just the ones I know about.)

I'm not comfortable with relying on my visitors to have these tools installed. I want to ensure I'm receiving credit for my traffic by every person that visits my site regardless of whether they have the toolbars or extensions installed. To do this I figured that I'd have to put something on my blog to trigger the transmission of data back to Alexa's site.

That's why I installed an Alexa Site Widget on my blog. I don't know if it is a coincidence or not but I went from 4,080,035 to 1,364,067 in just a few days. If my theory is correct then every visitor to my blog downloads the Alexa site widget when they visit my blog and that is how Alexa receives data on every visitor. (not that there are very many visitors here! hehe)

This is what the widget looks like:

If you want to try it on your site you can get it here. Can't hurt, right?

I think the best way to make money is to save money so I spend a lot of time surfing around the web looking for freebies and websites about freebies. I found one yesterday that I particularly like so I thought I'd share it with you.

Freebies - Best free stuff on the net lives up to it's name! This relatively new blog has a ton of good information about some of the best freebies on the net along with information about gadgets and technology in general. I enjoy reading it and I bet you will too.

I've recently been approved to be an independent reviewer by Loudlaunch. Loudlaunch is a network "designed to help advertisers to spread the word, create a buzz, publicize events, promote products, offer recognition, champion causes, disseminate information, or even just make a statement."

Independent reviewers (bloggers such as myself) can then select campaigns that align with their blog and issue a Micro Press Release (post on their blog) based on the requirements of the advertisers’ campaign. The pay for bloggers is commensurate with the age of the blog along with other factors such as traffic and various page rankings. Suffice to say, I'm on the low end of the pay scale but hopefully that will change in the near future. To be totally honest I was surprised to be accepted since my blog is so new. I'm glad I was accepted though, because so far I really like their service.

I've heard that you almost need to be a rocket surgeon to be a "paid blogger" for some of the other paid-to-blog services, for example PayPerPost. I won't say quite yet why I think PPP is confusing because maybe I'd understand it better if I were actually one of their paid bloggers. My blog definitely doesn't qualify for PPP yet but when it does I'll sign up with them and will then be able to give my opinions first hand.

Bloggers are paid ««« Continue Reading »»»

I'm really beginning to wonder. Of course, I should have asked myself that question before I even began this endeaver. heh

There are some people that will spew all their thoughts out of their mouth (or blog about them) the minute the thought enters their heads. I'm not one of those people. I usually think things over before I open my mouth (usually, but not always! haha) and by the time I get ready to say something the moment has passed so I just *shrug* and move on. Blogging is turning out to be the same as real life. I'm just not a yakity yak yak kind of person.

Only time will tell I suppose. I think I should keep at it for at least another month and then re-evaluate myself and my blog again at that time. So that's what I'm going to do.

Free Fonts

UrbanFonts.com is a new site that offers over 8,000 free fonts and dingbats for download. Did you hear that web designers and bloggers? 8,000 free fonts and dingbats! These 8000 free fonts are not solely for PC's, so whether you use a PC or a Mac I believe you have really hit the jackpot here.

Not only does UrbanFonts offer 8000 free fonts and dingbats but ««« Continue Reading »»»

FREE - Download 5 Chapters from eBook Now

You might think that with my blog description "Monetize your blog!" I would know all there is to know about, um, monetizing a blog. I guess this would be a good time to admit something. I don't know it all. My main focus is to learn what I can about blog revenue and in turn write about the things I learn in hopes that others can gain something along the way also. I'd say the area I know the least about is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, but that is getting ready to change.

The good news for today is that the new book "37 Killer AdWords Secrets Exposed", written by Roger Hall and co-authored by a former Google insider, reveals the insider secrets of the top winning Google Adwords PPC campaigns.

I'm having too much fun with my new blog to stop and read a whole book right now so fortunately an excerpt of this book has been made into a free booklet containing 5 of the 37 Secrets and is ready for download. Topics in this booklet include: ««« Continue Reading »»»