Not only is blogging easy, but it is also powerful. One person with a blog can really do anything. Whether it’s promoting a great product, but also (maybe more importantly) criticize a product or company.

I first realized this when I had a dispute with Neverblue. I had commissions removed without any notification or explanation. After several phone calls and no ground covered I blogged about it. After blogging it if you search the term “neverblueads” my posts ranks really well.

Not too long after I received a call from a head affiliate manager from Neverblue. The end result was a full refund of the missing commissions.

Yesterday I saw another example of the power of blogging.

StudioPress

Kim from Accidental Mommies wrote a great blog post titled Are Premium WordPress Themes Worth It? In the post she did mini interviews with other bloggers about what they expect from themes, the benefits, and support.

I’ve personally never paid for a WordPress theme. I think with so many great free themes out there that you can simply customize it the way you want. If the theme doesn’t work with your website you can simply find another one, no need to worry about.

Some bloggers who are new to WordPress do prefer to go with the premium themes because they usually do offer the support with installation and set-up.

In the article Kim wrote about Miss Blondie who had recently done just that. On her switch from Blogger to WordPress she purchased the Allure WordPress theme from StudioPress at  $59.99. To make a long story short the support was really bad and the “unlimited” theme support ended up costing an additional $60. There are also comments of other problems with StudioPress not being what they promised.

The Result

After the article was published Brian Gardner (SEO of Studio Press) commented on the blog post apologizing. The comment did seem sincere as he was obviously making the effort to right anything that went wrong, which is great in my opinion. Why do business with any company with bad customer service?

Brian did in fact refund Miss Blondie the full amount (and then some). She was also giving a free upgrade giving her access to use all of the StudioPress themes instead of just the one she paid for. I can’t imagine a better result for this problem.

I think it was great of Brian to act quickly, and hopefully showed what type of business he is running and that he does care about his customers.

If you’ve got a problem, blog it!

There are many ways on how to make money online. One way that almost all bloggers (regardless of their niche) use to make money is through advertisement i.e. they allow people to advertise on their blog. The advertisers can either be other bloggers or companies that want to market their products. They can advertise on your blog in the form of a blog post, banner or text link. With these different ways of selling ads on your blog, how can you find these advertisers if you are looking for how to make money online?

You can find advertisers by joining

1. A Contextual Advertising Company:- These are companies that tries to match the content of your blog with an ad. These companies would require you to install a code on your blog. They pay you per click i.e you make a certain amount of money anytime someone clicks on your ad. The best way to increase your revenues from this site is to optimize your site for search engine so that you can achieve high ranking on them. You can read some SEO tips for your blog at 10 quick blogging tips.

2. A Review Company:- You would be required to write a blog post review about a website or a product. Depending on the advertisers requirements, the review is usually from 50 words to 400 words. If you can write more, the advertisers would like it, but that doesn’t mean you would get more compensation. Google frowns on this type of blog post because they feel that the advertiser is trying to game them, or manipulate readers to think that you like the product. Google wants you to disclose that the blog post is a paid review. You make more from these companies if your blog has a high page rank and receives a decent amount of traffic.

3. A Text Selling Company:- Joining this companies could be risky for your page rank because you are required to install a code in your blog theme. I think Google bots would be able to track the text code you installed. If you can build a lot of sites that can have PR 3 and above, you would make money from this type of companies because if one site loses its page rank, you would have another one to put into the system.

4. Webmaster Forums:- You have to be aggressively looking for advertisers if you are using webmaster forums. When you are in the forums, visit the section for link sale and send the people that want to buy link private messages with your blog stats (such as traffic, page rank etc) available. This would enable the advertisers to decide if he/she should or should not advertise on your blog.

About Author

Dalirin is a blogger that like blogging about how to make money on the internet. He believes that a blogger needs to work hard to be able to make money with google.

Logical Media is one of my favorite affiliate networks. I have had some great affiliate managers and they have great offers to promote for my freebie niche sites. You can find out a little more with my Logical Media Review. Anyways, the point of that was that they have a new service out and it’s called ReadySite.

What is ReadySite?

ReadySite is basically a widget that you can put on your website. It automatically updates with new information for your readers to use. You can create widgets for Free Samples, “Fun and Wacky”, Healthy Deals, Surveys, and Sweepstakes.

Each time your readers complete one of the things you can earn money. It’s perfect for my free samples websites, all I have to do is put up the widget on the sidebar that automatically updates with new freebies and free samples.

The payouts range from 10-20 cents to $24, depends on the offer.

ReadySite Review

What’s great about it of course is the ease. It takes about 30 seconds to create a widget. You get to pick what color you want, the size, how many offers you want to display, and of course the category. So far I’ve been able to make about $6 just by putting it on a page on my freebie sites. Now that I’ve added it into the sidebar of Its All Free Online, I hope to see that increase.

There are a few things wrong though that I’d definitely like to see change.

First of all, you can’t see the amount that each offer is worth per lead. The only way I can see how much each thing is if it actually converts, then divide the conversions by the total.

Secondly, on the actual widget it says “powered by ReadySite” but it does not generate my referral link. Therefore anyone that signs up from my widget isn’t credited to my account.

Great Referral Program

However, besides the fact of the actual widget, just like Logical Media’s referral program, they have a great set-up. You earn 5% commission on every affiliate you refer.

On top of that ReadySite offers a $25 bonus for signing up, it adds on to your first payout. A free $25 to your readers + 5% of their commission leaves no reason not to promote ReadySite.

ReadySite – Make Money!

Website Magazine is “the magazine for website success”. In the May 2009 issue they have articles like “Traffic without Digg or Stumbleupon” and article marketing. However, the most eye catching for me was Top 50 Affiliate Networks ranking.

So Who’s Number 1?

In the rankings they didn’t rank Google’s Affiliate Network or Amazon, which seems fair enough. The #1 rank was ClickBooth. I’ve never really been a fan of ClickBooth and I’ve had the most trouble with them. Not the company, just trying to figure it out. I think it’s #1 mostly because it’s easiest to set-up your own affiliate program with them, I know many bloggers use it for that reason.

Seeing the list there are so many companies I don’t use and haven’t heard of. OurFreeStuff.net, Copeac, XY7, and RevenueLoop round out the rest of the top 5, with Copeac being the only one I’m a member of. I haven’t liked Copeac much at all, from affiliate managers not emailing me back, to the lack of good offers.

The rest of the networks I use, Linkshare, HydraNetwork, MarketLeverage, PepperjamNetwork, and Logical Media were all ranked. The only one missing was Neverblue, which I was surprised was left off the list. You can read my reviews of each network by clicking on their name.

Find out how your favorite affiliate network ranked.

Free Website Magazine

I breezed through the magazine (it was only 50 pages with quite a few ads) but there is substance to it. On top of that it was free. Get your free subscription by just following that link and filling out the information. Valid for new subscribers only, in the US.

As I join the top 50 affiliate networks I’m not a member of I will be posting reviews as well. As you wait for those here are some great affiliate networks to join:

Linkshare
HydraNetwork
MarketLeverage
PepperjamNetwork
Logical Media

I’ve never really had a big earner with ShoppingAds, I could generate clicks, but very rarely got high paying clicks. Using the ShoppingAds network I’ve been able to make about $250, but most of that has been through referring people to the network. Now that my account has been banned “Due to little or no earnings”, I will no longer receive those referral fees.

Last Payment

I’ve always had problems receiving my payments at ShoppingAds for some reason. I’ve had to go through support, and after that doesn’t work I’ve had to track down emails for someone a bit ‘higher up’ to finally get my payments.

Now, after my account was “banned” I immediately sent emails to support (no answer) to see about receiving my final payment which was $83.59.

With some emails back and forth a very nice person, Eliana Rosenblatt, from ShoppingAds contacted me back, stating she could give me $69.80. This was because that was how much I earned through the last payment period. I did receive the money, and am happy for it…

However I still feel cheated. After referring several people to their network who are obviously making decent money, I am apparently no longer going to be compensated for that.

From the last payment I’ve received, my referrals have now earned me $26.00. Earning me nearly $20 a month, if that holds true that’s close to $240 less a year I will earn due to ShoppingAds, plus possibly more if I chose to continue to promote their program.

If you have this problem with ShoppingAds, make sure to contact them to receive your final compensation.

As I mentioned before, I am giving Social Spark a Shot. So far it’s been okay, but I ran into a problem with displaying Google Adsense in my post. One of my blog is heavily monetized with Google Adsense, with it set to run within blog posts. With Social Spark or PPP you are not allowed to have any other form of advertising within your post. So, after doing a search I found a great way to remove Google Adsense on only certain posts.

Removing Google Adsense Within Posts

Instead of removing the entire Adsense code, you can just modify it so you can display adsense within certain posts.

Go to your single.php file within your theme and find your Google Adsense code. Then use a div tag like this:

<div id=”nogoogleads”>

Google Adsense Code

</div>

After that simply save your single.php file. This is the first step to a simple process.

To have Google Adsense not show in your posts then while your writing your blog post add the code:

<style>#nogoogleads {display:none !important;}</style>

You can always use plugins for this, but I have it set up with a Google Adsense ready theme so it wouldn’t really work with what I’m going for.

Thanks to ThumLog for their great post on this great technique.

A lot of successful blogs have more than one author. Most of the ‘famous’ bloggers I doubt rarely even blog themselves anymore and often open up to guest posters. Just like here at Blog About Your Blog, we’ve never had just one author. BloggersBase has taken that idea and ran with it.

BloggersBase Review

“BloggersBase is a citizen journalism magazine powered by YOU!”

The layout looks great and diving into this website I think it is a great concept. You the blogger rate, publish, and view the articles you want to read on a variety of topics.

You can earn money by being a top blogger as well as referring bloggers to the site. You can of course build links to your own sites in the posts you submit. Of course, you can also read great articles by bloggers.

However, in my opinion, the system is complex and a little difficult to understand, especially if you’re not familiar with a blog like this. Terms like Nuggets and Goldmine are thrown around. Even after reading what they mean I am still slightly confused. I could imagine others having the same problems and not trying at all. Basically you have to ‘prove yourself’ as a blogger before you hit the front pages.  As a newcomer, you can post in any blog that you want a contender post, in a location which is a little out of the way and not very visible. Such a post is denoted a “Nugget”, marked with a golden-nugget icon to indicate its potential and its residence is called the blog’s Goldmine.

So instead, the process needs to be a bit more simple. Instead of all of these terms and a long list of how the site works it really can be easier. Similar sites to BloggersBase just promote the articles through the website based on votes. A certain amount of votes can get you to the front page, just like any social network.

BloggersBase is still young and appears to only be a month or two old. I imagine they will find out what works best for them as well as their bloggers. They have the set-up, the quality, and the incentive for bloggers to blog.

Rewards and Referrals

I’m big on incentive especially when blogging on other sites. Whether it’s compensation, or link building, Bloggers Base has both.

The top two bloggers in a certain ‘timeslot’ (I think it’s a week) earn money. First place receives $40, while second place receives $10. On the BloggersBase blog, they announced their top blogger amabaie, won two weeks in a row, cashing in a cool $80. Not bad for a few articles. (amabaie is at it again winning first place and second a few times, bringing his total to $150)

The other way to earn money is to refer bloggers to BloggersBase. Each time one of your referrals earns money you will get a bonus as well. They don’t exactly say how much you will get which is unfortunate and definitely needs to be added. After you earn $20 or more you can cash out with Paypal.

Update: Since this review was published BloggersBase has went ahead and updated their referral payouts. You will be awarded exactly the same money prizes as your referred users do, up to 3 wins per user. So if they person you refer wins as a top blogger, you get the same amount they do.

BloggersBase Verdict

I think BloggersBase has a really good idea and set-up. After this review I may just submit a few articles and see how it goes. Take a look and leave me a comment on what you think of the website.

Join BloggersBase