2008 August | Online Earning | Webthesurfi Rugs Webdesign

Archive for August, 2008

Today is the Last Day to Enter for a Chance to Win a Nintendo Wii

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

I just wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day to enter for a chance to win a Nintendo Wii. Or if you’re trying to get a few extra entries to better your chance(s).

I have added an extra way to enter as well as increase the entry points for subscribing via e-mail and blogging about the contest. But you have to remember to comment on the blog post for your e-mail entry to officially count.

Now I know a lot of people didn’t want to the Nintendo Wii so they didn’t enter. I will also toss in a 125×125 ad spot on this blog for one month. Also, I’ll be giving away two text links ads for a month on this blog as well as iBlogtoBlog.com so you guys can get some link juices of the PR3 and PR2.

I decided to add that because giving away one single prize sucks. I figured having four winners is better than one.

Also, remember that the winner(s) have to claim their prizes by contacting me. If you do not contact me, your prize will be forfeited to the next random winner.

The contest is officially over today at midnight Eastern time.

Good luck!

All My Wordpress Blogs Had Internal Server Errors… But Why?

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

Some of you guys may have noticed that my blog was down sometime last night. I don’t know how long it was down but I noticed it around midnight (eastern time) and it seemed to affect every single one of my blogs that are self-hosted Wordpress blogs.

If you came to this site, you probably received a message similar to the one below:

“Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@datmoney.com and inform
them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that
may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error
log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while
trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.”

Of course my initial reaction was to contact my hosting company regarding this. I have no idea what was wrong but all of a sudden when I woke up this morning, everything seemed to be back to normal.

I received an e-mail back within a couple hours from my hosting company and it seemed I looked like a complete nutcase because they told me that everything seemed fine and all my sites worked.

So, IndoContest e-mailed me directly informing me they were seeing the same error message. First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time out to do that, definitely appreciate it. Indo also suggested that this happened because it seems that I run 25 process at a time. And I guess this happened to Indo before and someone tried to hack their blog.

Was someone trying to hack my blog(s) as well?

The weird part about this whole thing was the fact that I have some static html sites on my hosting server and those seemed to appear just fine without any Internet Server Errors so that just tells me it was strictly anything that was Wordpress related.

Now, I was pretty upset at this fact especially since I have a few blogs that I run that I don’t tell people about. Of course, if they saw the Internal Server Error message, then they probably figured out who runs that blog. Eh, it was bound to happen but I’m still going to try to play it off like it wasn’t me.

So, was someone in fact trying to hack my blogs? Was someone trying to jack my affiliate links to direct to theirs? Has this happened to anyone else before?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. I want to get to the bottom of all of this.

5 Reasons Why I Won’t Sponsor Your Contest

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

It seems that people are contacting me more and more to become a sponsor in their upcoming contests. Now, I don’t mind sponsoring an ad spot (on one of my many blogs), text link, and a custom made banner design or whatever, but more and more people are asking and I only have a certain amount I can give away. So, I’m going to pick and choose who I sponsor.

Below are some reasons why I won’t sponsor your contest:

1. Not asking me personally and sending me a generic spam-type message. Again, I’m getting more and more requests to sponsor people’s contests so if you’re not going to even address me then you probably won’t even get a response back.

Not to sound like an ass or anything but you came to me to get a sponsor for your contest not the other way around. And if you look at any posts, it says my name right there. So when I receive a message like:

“To whom it may concern (or hi):

My name is XYZ of this site. My site is growing very fast and receiving XXX amount of visitors daily.

I am looking for sponsors for my contest that would be willing to contribute XYZ prizes.

If you are interested, please reply to me before this particular date.

Best,
Their name”

90%-95% of the time this message is either a copy and paste method or a bot. If you were to take 2 seconds to replace “to whom it may concern (or hi)” to “Jay” then I might have fell for your trick.

Though, sometimes it’s even worse. There are people who put “Dear Webmaster or Blog Owner” and you obviously know what that answer is going to be.

2. No benefits for sponsors, no rewards… literally. If there are no benefits for me, as the potential sponsor, then there is no real point in me sponsoring, is there? Yeah I can be a good person and donate XYZ prizes but when it comes down to it, shouldn’t sponsors get some sort of reward in return?

When people approach me, one of my questions will be “how will sponsors benefit for your contest?” And if people don’t have an answer or not a good enough one, then more than likely I’ll pass.

Most people make it a requirement for contestants to write a blog post and include links to all the sponsors. See, that’s fine with me. We all love backlinks.

On the other hand, people use their daily traffic and RSS Feed count as a valid reward. Don’t get me wrong, having 500+ unique visitors daily is good and all but when you have 50+ sponsors, that traffic means absolutely nothing to me anymore. Not many will search through every single contestants’ site, trust me.

3. You’re really, really pushy and annoying about it. Just like anyone else, I’m pretty busy so if I don’t get a chance to e-mail you back on the same day you sent me a message then be patient. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t hurt to send me a follow-up message but sending me a few within a couple days is annoying.

Honestly, if you don’t get a reply back within a few days about sponsoring your contest, you probably fall under one of these reasons I’m listing now. Again, don’t mean to sound like an ass but please take a hint.

4. You have no readers or traffic. I remember when I asked people to sponsor my contest before, a few big names asked me how my traffic was and RSS Feed count, well, now I know where they’re coming from. Again, this should really go under #2 because this isn’t going to give the sponsors much benefit.

If a blog has 3 subscribers and gets 10 visitors daily, there’s no point in someone sponsoring a laptop or a big prize, is there? What’s worse, there are people who ask me to sponsor and their blogs have been around for a few months and they still have 3 subscribers. That just tells me this person isn’t too good at marketing themselves so marketing a contest should almost be out the question as well.

5. I just don’t like you. Yup, I said it. If I don’t like you, there has to be a pretty good reason behind it. For instance, if you were an ass to me when I was just starting out and all of a sudden you come around asking me for help, do you think I should help? Let me ask, would you?

Probably not. If they would’ve helped me when I first started then there should be no problem. I love networking and I’m always up for helping people out when I have time but if you were or are rude, disrespectful, etc then you shouldn’t even talk to me let alone ask me to sponsor your contest.

But then again, it was probably a spam-type message from your bot in the first place.

If you fall under any of these categories, I probably won’t sponsor anything and more than likely I’m not the only one.

And if you don’t fall into one of these categories, then you should be good. Just let me know and I’ll consider it. Though, you also have to remember I do get a handful of requests sporadically so if I say no, more than likely I have nothing worthy or sponsoring at the time.

Oh, and speaking of contests, my Nintendo Wii contest ends this Friday ! So, go enter, I added a few additional ways of entering and added additional points for certain ways of entering.

Wii Contest Reminder (and Updates): One Week Left to Enter

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

If you haven’t entered for a chance to win a Nintendo Wii yet, you still have one week left to enter.

Honestly, I haven’t promoted this contest like I normally do with others and since I made it a little harder to enter I haven’t gotten as many contestants. Quite frankly, I did that on purpose as a minor experiment which I will mention sometime after the contest.

In addition, I’m going to increase the entry points on e-mail subscribers and people who wrote blog posts on the contest. I was having a discussion with a few bloggers and they’re right, I made those entry points too low. So, I will be increasing e-mail subscribers from 1 to 3 entries and blogging about the contest from 2 to 5 entries.

But please keep in mind, if you are already an e-mail subscriber you need to comment on the blog post to confirm you are an active e-mail subscriber. And please comment with the same e-mail you subscribed with.

I don’t know how many people have checked the contest post lately but I recently added an additional way to enter. All you have to do is sign up through my affiliate link for SWATcash and you get an easy 10 entries.

If you guys don’t know what SWATcash is, I will probably write a future post on the benefits of it.

But I’ve been pretty busy lately as well because I went a little crazy on purchasing domain names and building niche sites for those. I think I probably bought close to 10 domain names within the past week, week and a half.

And let’s say, after doing my keyword research, buying domains and building these niche sites, I see why people won’t give up their URL’s for their landing pages. I’ll save that for a later post though.

Anyways, if you haven’t entered my contest for a chance to win a Nintendo Wii , I would suggest doing so. And if you don’t want a Nintendo Wii, well, you don’t want a Nintendo Wii.

Give Some Incentives to Get E-mail Subscribers and Keep Them!

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

If you have not entered my Market Leverage contest to win a Nintendo Wii , feel free to check out the contest post. Some say it’s hard to enter but I say it’s as easy as subscribing via e-mail or posting about it on your blog.

If you’re looking to get more RSS Feed e-mail subscribers , you may want to give some sort of incentive for people. I mean, unless you have incredible unique content then it should be easier. But sometimes even incredible unique content just isn’t enough.

Before you guys jump to conclusion, when I say “give an incentive” I don’t mean holding a contest and giving away prizes. We should all know that’s only a temporary method of getting e-mail subscribers because a bunch will just unsubscribe soon after the contest ends.

But again, if you have incredible unique content that blows readers’ minds away then I’m sure a majority of them will stay subscribed for quite sometime. Or you can give them additional incentives to stay subscribed. Keep reading…

As you know, I said “Search Engine Traffic = More RSS Feed Subscribers” and I stand by that. Of course, you need to know how to entice those visitors just like any other reader or visitor that stumbles across your blog.

Since I wrote that post, I have gained six e-mail subscribers on average each day and it’s usually hard to get e-mail subscribers regularly. Now I know you guys are thinking it was from my current contest but no, you’re wrong! For those who are subscribed via e-mail that wanted to enter my contest, they needed to officially comment for their entry to count .

Of course, I’m sure there are tons of people who simply don’t read the rules!

Anyways, instead of going over the same points that I made in my previous post, just go here to read it. In this post, I’m going to focus on how to actually keep your e-mail subscribers from staying subscribed.

Now most people use contests as a way to initially get subscribers, unfortunately, there are a bunch who will unsubscribe shortly after the contest… unless you give them incentives! (Geez, what have I have been saying this entire post?)

Here are a few quick tips to keep your e-mail subscribers subscribed that seem to work for me as well as others:

- Offer eBooks – this method is a great way to increase your RSS Feed subscribers as well as keep them. I mean, if they’re willing to subscribe to get the eBook, I bet they’re stay subscribed. Plus, if they’re impressed by your eBook (which is saying a lot) then they want more information that you would be supplying from your blog.

- Offer Free Advertising, Blog Reviews – People love to win things and with this method, you don’t have to do much. Just offer to write blog reviews or give an ad spot on your blog to a random e-mail subscriber each day, week, month, whatever. That way every single person would stay subscribed. This is definitely a great way to keep e-mail subscribers, plus, I noticed some people start commenting more as well!

- Offer anything worthy of giving away that does not require you paying – Like I mentioned above, free advertising, blog reviews don’t require any money spent from your pockets. You can even offer Entrecard credits, personal consoling, etc.

- Offer great content – A lot of people tend to overlook this but great content is one of the essential parts of keeping a reader around. Of course, offering incentives can be good but you won’t officially know if they’re sticking around simply for the incentives or the content.

- Entice with your content – in addition to having great content, make sure you entice them to come back for more. For instance, you can start a blog post series like I did when I wrote “Search engine traffic = More money and more RSS Subscribers” in which I covered only the RSS Feeds part and enticed people on the making money aspect . So, if they really wanted to know about the making money aspect , they would have to check back (or stay subscribed).

Now I know this may not work for every niche but it should . Personally, I know a few people who have gained hundreds, if not, thousands of e-mail subscribers from doing the simple steps above.

The end of long tail traffic?

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Blogging tips, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

Well I’m not surprised that most of my traffic are from long tail keywords. My blogs don’t exactly have the ‘presence’ of blogs with higher authority on the same keyword, being my blogs are most if not all under the age of 2 years

I have concerns recently as Google is planning to debut their “Suggest” feature on their search engine page. This new feature has been on beta mode for years now and will provides you a list of suggestive keywords as you start to key in what you’re looking for

Of course its a great feature, as search results numbers are included and you’re most likely be suggested with popular keywords to which will lead to the pages you’re looking for

But it dawns as a not so great news to bloggers like me who depends on long tail traffic. This is so, as this new feature will direct the users; that I hugely depend on for my daily profits and Google will instead nudge these traffic away from me, to the more lucrative AdWords queries

So those with financial means to compete at AdWords for these top AdWords queries stands to benefit and bloggers like me will again need to find ways and means around this new challenge

I foresee the days of ‘long tail keywords’ gone and all of us Internet marketers competing for a more competitive ‘medium tail keywords’

google, suggest

Post from: Sha Money Maker

Guest Posting

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Blogging tips, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

I’ve never really done a guest posting on this blog
Well I’m opening any invitation out there who wants to blog here

The reason I’ll be away for three weeks soon
And I don’t know I’m able to update daily as usual

So this is a great opportunity for me and you of course

Well I’ll go ahead with the plan if there’s good response
Or you’ll have to settle for timestamp posting when I’m away

Contact Me

guest, posting

Post from: Sha Money Maker

Google Ad Manager Public Launch

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Blogging tips, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

Remember my old post back in March of “Google Ad Manager“? Well Google has released it from ‘invitation only’ to ‘public’ usage. The potential is that you’ve the ability to autopilot your ads management and that’s really cool!

With its large inventory of advertisers readily available in its database, this would directly means more money earned with lesser effort. I’m kicking it off with my own trial now, I’ll report it in future updates

If you’ve an AdSense account, that’s all you need to sign-up or get started. In short “Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory”

Sign-Up to Google Ad Manager

google, ad, manager

Post from: Sha Money Maker

Ensure a ‘trouble-free’ money making environment

Aug 31, 2008 Blog, Blogging, Blogging tips, Earning Blog, Make money in blogging, Money blog, Money making mission

Aside from doing my usual stuff online for money making ways such as improving & creating landing pages, signing up to new affiliate programs, optimizing my blogs and such, I also do the necessary ‘maintenance’ of my PC and data backups

Trust me, you’ll need to do this as it will give you a peace of mind, plus a trouble-free-time when you’re on your important ‘working’ time making money online

I’ve an old PC compared to the new ones that seems to come out every 3-4 months. I’m on a Windows XP, running on Pentium 4, still using old programs like Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver 8, and Office 2003 but so far no issues

No viruses attack *touch wood* so far these few years, despite not having a anti-virus program, nor a PC meltdown *touch wood again* for the longest time

I do have a firewall but its expiration date is over, haha. Now its running on freeware mode. So with none or little downtime, I’ve more time to focus on my MMO efforts and I attribute it to my usual PC maintenance. Here’s what I usually do and uses

(more…)

pc, maintenance

Post from: Sha Money Maker