Do You Remember the Mylot Fad?
Mylot was a huge blogging fad, it seemed everyone joined and promoted it. It was a great thing for bloggers, because commission was easy. I made about $30 with little effort before my earnings fell off. I still have 30 cents pending.
Mylot was a huge blogging topic about a year ago. Every make money blogger was heavily promoting it as the best new thing. The last time that I wrote an article about Mylot was Feb 2007!
What is Mylot?
For those who don’t know, Mylot is a huge community with 127,478 members. It is basically a souped up forum with a little bit of Yahoo Answers mixed in. You can start any topic, ask a question or just simply make a comment or observation.
For each thread started or reply, you earn money. The money is small and I’m not exactly sure the algorithm. However for popular topics and replies you are essentially paid more. Once you reach $10 you are eligible for payment.
The real money is made with getting a bunch of referrals.
Mylots Referral Program
When you refer someone to Mylot you basically will earn 25% of whatever the person you referred earns.
A great feature is that you get to see how much your referral earns you each month. My referrals are no longer making me any money, I referred them over a year ago!
Promoting your Blog on Mylot
I just had remembered I made a few posts in Mylot and of course left my my URL. Checking my statcounter I noticed a few referrals from Mylot.
The blogging section isn’t very popular at Mylot, but there is tons of opportunity to promote your blog whatever the niche is.
Mike of Mikes Money Making Mission did this in a great way. Mylot was one of his biggest traffic referrals. The best thing is you are basically paid to promote your own site (since you are paid per post).
It does take a bit of effort, but if you are on daily for a few minutes it can be well worth it.
Contest Roundup: April 27th
It’s contest time again. Check out these easy contests, and may the luck be with you…
Traffic Contest at Dat Money
Do you need more visitors for your blog? Don’t miss this new contest from Dat Money and increase your traffic! You have the chance to be reviewed by one of the most popular blogs (BAYB is one of the sponsor!). You can also win free advertising spots. See original post for details. To enter simply subscribe to his RSS feeds, write a post about it on your blog and comment on the blog.
Ends on May 9th.
Cash from Webdiggin
There is a simple contest from WebDiggin. The prize is $25 cash. As always, you have to gain your entries. To do so you can write a post about the contest (with link back to the contest post), subscribe to his RSS feed by mail and leave meaningful comments on the site.
Ends on April 30th.
Free Gift Card
Charity Lynn is giving away a $20 gift card from a various online store. You can also choose the money directly to your Paypal account. All you have to do is write a little post on your blog and leave a comment. Nothing more.
Ends on April 29th.
And don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests, your daily source for the latest, simplest and greatest blog contests around the net!
Blogging’s Best Buys
I’m always looking for a deal online. Yesterday I had to renew a domain with Godaddy, the first thing I did was search for Godaddy coupon codes. Here are some great deals around the internet for your blogging needs.
The Domain
I use Godaddy for all my domain name purchases. I currently have about 5-6 domains registered through there. Each domain I’ve used coupons for. Here are a few I’ve found on the internet that should work for you.
- $6.95 per .COM coupon code: cjc695dom (I personally used this yesterday)
- 10% off your order coupon code cjcsave10
- Take an additional 1$ off ANY purchase! coupon code cjcdeal104
- 20% off your order of $40 or more coupon code boi2 pete2
I’m not sure when any of these expire, but it’s worth a shot trying any of these codes!
The Hosting
I’ve only used Hostmonster for my hosting needs and I have very few complaints. Hostmonster runs for $5.95 per month. They offer
- Unlimited domains
- 5000 email accounts
- PHP + MYSQL + more
- Free domain name
Yeah thats right a free domain name. So basically, I never had to pay for blogaboutyourblog.com
The Plugin
Daily Planet Tech let us know about a coupon code for the OIOPublisher wordpress plugin. Use the coupon code QWERTY-17 and get the plugin for $20, a $17 discount. I personally used this coupon so it does work. However it expires May 5th, so you don’t have much time to use it.
The OIOPublisher plugin is a great thing to have when trying to sell ads directly and monetize your blog. Jim did a great review of OIOPublisher that you can read to give you all the information you need.
Comment Friday for April 25th
What a long week! We are getting ready to go to Las Vegas and hopefully do a contest here at BAYB. May is a huge month for me so I hope we can keep the flow going.
If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.
This past week was earth day and I was really into it. I’ve been even more into recycling as well as more aware of the harm plastic does to the environment. I’ve really tried to “go green”. Have you made any effort? Have you blogged about anything in particular about being green?
Economtricks is about bettering yourself and a variety of topics. Improve your decision making and go green!
Making Enemies on Social Media
I find it pretty silly to make enemies or rivals on the internet. I can understand competition respectively, but arguing, fighting and sabotage online? Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
I’ve Successfully Made Enemies
I found an interesting social media website not too long ago and posted about it. It was called Cybercreeps (it’s no longer in service). It was a place where you could post “creeps” that you found online. I decided to submit my own that left nasty hostile and rude comments on my articles etc.
Not really knowing that they’d actually find this, they began to further attack me. I ended up being the biggest creep on the website with 30+ votes.
Even though I don’t agree I could understand where they were coming from. I was the one labelled a spammer.
Do Bloggers Spam Social Media?
Step outside the box and think about it. By submitting your own content to sites like digg and stumbleupon, are you spamming? In the eyes of people who aren’t webmasters or bloggers, maybe.
I try to only submit content that I think is QUALITY as well as interesting. Articles that I’ve submitted myself have sometime done the best. However, that may not matter to them.
My “enemies” have, in a way, taught me something. Besides not to really try to fight, what I call spammers, just try to cope. Spammers in the eyes of bloggers are very well organized. They have “fought” me pretty good. They have really taught me to watch what you say, pick your words very carefully, and it’s okay to ignore certain comments. You don’t have to address everything. It’s okay to leave it alone.
Results From My Battle
Along with submitting these stumbleupon users to cybercreeps, I also gave them thumbs down. In turn they gave me thumbs down, as well as their ‘friends’ and associates. Now 4 of the latest reviews of me are all negative.
Along with that, my stumbles aren’t as powerful as they once were. With the negative votes that has to have something to do with it. Stumbling my own blog, blogaboutyourblog.com, gives 0 visitors. Not 1 or 2 or 3, a big fat 0.
Along with that several of the posts I’ve submitted to stumble have been moved to weird categories. One post has been moved to HIV.
Have you made any social media enemies?
Getting More Subscribers with Free Promotions
Contests have become a bigger tool for getting more subscribers than I had imagined. Now everyone is throwing huge contests. Giving away $10,000 in prizes is definitely hard to match. I haven’t even tried.
We hosted our first contest nearly a year ago. Yet our last contest was more than 4 months ago. I’d really like to run something for May, it will be a big month for me. With the competition it’s definitely harder than it was to get good participation on contests. However using the Top 20 Contest Blogs you can’t go wrong.
My Latest Promotion Results
I’ve stressed offering incentive to your readers to keep them coming back. Give them a reason to read and subscribe to your blog, beyond the content. Over a month ago, I did just that for my free sample blog. I introduced freebie friday to my readers where I would giveaway my own free samples to email subscribers.
With a little promotion the idea really helped my blog. I announced the promotion March 5th.
- March 5th there were 39 subscribers
- March 8th it was up to 61
- March 24th 83
- Today it stands at 94
That may not be as impressive as some of these bloggers throwing around money and basically buying subscribers. My method has been a bit different, the cost to date out of my pocket has been $0.
The things I am giving away, I received for free. These include keychains, samples, etc, basically whatever I am blogging about anyway. The items haven’t been too big so they have gone in a regular envelope with stamps that I “found”.
It seems however that the promotion has hit the ceiling. It isn’t yielding the results it once did.
Now I can either end the promotion or continue hoping for better results.
What type of FREE promotions have you been able to run on your website or blog?
Celebrating Earth Day
Growing up, Earth day was just another day. Teachers usually lectured not to waste water and recycle cans. It was never really stressed and seemed very, well, unimportant. This year it’s been huge. It’s been Earth day all month long!
On The Earth Day Bandwagon
It seems tons of big companies have jumped on the Earth day (month) bandwagon and have tried to go green. Walmart, Vons/Safeway, and Kroger have all ran promotions and given out free reusable bags.
This year hasn’t focused on saving water or recycling, it’s been more of being eco-friendly all together. A huge focus has been to use less plastic bags. Plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to degrade. I’ve just learned about this so there has to be many people who don’t know that. On my grocery shopping trip yesterday we got nearly 20 plastic bags. The sad thing was that they didn’t even fill up my reusable bag, I didn’t notice until I was at the car.
The other focus has been to reduce usage of plastic water bottles. I have tried to do my part and purchased a reusable bottle. I’m actually drinking out of it as I write this post! In this house we can usually go through a case of water in a week or two. That is way too much.
Earth day may just be another day, but it can make a difference. How have you gone green this month?
I’m Twittering – Are You?
Twitter has become a big topic on the internet. I’ve found that I am not really good with change. Up until a few days ago, I thought twitter was a picture sharing website. I thought it was basically like a Myspace + Photobucket rolled into one. Boy was I wrong.
What is Twitter?
Well twitter is not a picture sharing website. It is more like a huge shoutbox for the entire internet. You can follow different peoples “shouts” and keep informed on what they are up to. People post updates about their new blogposts, daily activities, and what’s on their mind.
Building a large twitter profile can definitely help you promote whatever you want. I generally try to update my twitter with new blogposts and other things.
Within a few days of ‘twittering’ I’ve gotten 18 ‘followers’ while following 62.
Why Twitter?
Twitter is another social service that can become very useful for promoting your blogging, affiliates and websites.
It can also keep your more involved in your fellow bloggers whereabouts and happenings. Just today I discovered Israels Guest Post, RhysWynne’s plans for tonight, and Owens post about socialspark.
Twitter with Me
I know this is probably the millionth post about Twitter, but it’s new to me. Make sure to keep up with my updates and start following me.