MyBlogLog is having a contest where the community that grows the most from November 8th to November 30th will win. You must enter the contest to be eligible. I think this is a great idea for MyBlogLog and it has given me a reason to display the widget again. So far our community has grown by 6, which puts us in a tie for 49th place.

The Prizes

I was disappointed to see there is only one grand prize, no runner up. However the prize is valued at 2600$ so it definitely is nice. The prize package includes:

• 1 year Pro-subscription to MyBlogLog
• 500$ worth of search clicks on Yahoo!
• 1 year premium membership to SEOmoz
• A complete redesign from Designsbyrs
• 1 year subscription to Yaro Blog Mastermind
• “Featured Community” during December
• Invitation to SOBCon 2008

Quit a load of prizes. The current first place person has +85 members since the contest started. A few people are even running contests right now to grow their MyBlogLog Communities which is also a great idea.

Help us out by joining our community. If you are entered I’d be happy to join yours. Good luck!

Just a quick post following on from my last one about making money with Voxant.

It appears that there is difficulties running Voxant videos if your blog is on WordPress, which is the case with BAYB.

I tried to show a sample video in my previous post but it messed things up after a while. The video played fine when I first published the post and also 10 minutes later. Unfortunately after an unknown period following this something happens and the video goes wrong.

What I would say is that Voxant seems to work elsewhere just fine – on Blogger etc.

Okay, that’s it!

Good luck,
Mike
Mike’s Money Making Mission
Celebrity Insider – Photos & News

As I haven’t written a post for BAYB for quite a while I thought I’d do this one on a money making program that I joined recently, well on the 21st of September to be precise.

The opportunity is Voxant Newsroom. What I can say straight away is that I have received a payment from them so feel confident now to mention it to other bloggers. You can see a copy of my cheque here. In the six and a bit weeks since joining I have made $338.36.

Okay, so what is it all about?

Voxant provides content to include within your posts. These consist of images, photos and videos. Personally I would avoid the images and photos as they are too dominated by adverts.

I have made my money from their videos – don’t worry they aren’t blue or anything like that! The videos come under various categories and therefore, with a bit of luck, there should be something suitable for your niche. Categories include: U.S., Local and World News, Business, Politics, Health, Sci-Tech, Entertainment, Sports, Life and Odd. It’s a decent range and there are sub-categories as well, though it must be said that it is weighted in favour of the USA.

Obviously you put the videos on your blog (using the provided code) and get paid for doing so.

The crunch is what do you get paid?

This is where you either say: ‘Is that all?’ or ‘That’s not bad’ considering how much traffic your blog has.

For a video it’s $4 per 1000 plays and a video story is $3 per 1000 plays. Now note this is ‘plays’. In other words your visitor has to click and watch the video. However, there is another way – which I am using, though not on all of my blogs.

There is a choice to have the videos on ‘auto-play’. In other words they switch on when anyone goes to your blog. This way every impression is a play.

As I said, I do this on some of my blogs only, where I don’t think this will cause a problem or mass revolt. Oh yes, nearly forgot, there is no money to be made by referring others to the program – so writing this won’t benefit me if you join. But there can be a viral effect if you are lucky and have the right videos at the right time.

On each video you place on your blog there is a clear embed button. This is to tempt others to also run the video and, if they do, you get some commission per 1000 plays (or part of).

So, in brief, that’s Voxant!

Good luck, Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission

TGIF. Recovering after an intense game of softball. I haven’t done that much running in a while. I’ve been wanting to do a little more, to try to get ahead, but I’ve been having some annoying computer trouble I can’t seem to get rid of. Might be time for a new computer.

Each friday we usually give one lucky person a free blogroll spot for a week, however last week we didn’t get that done. This time we will definitely be featuring a new blog. Want your free link? Get noticed, go above and beyond commenting.

I’ve been neglecting the movie theater and haven’t been able to see anything new. However with our blockbuster total access I can keep up with new releases. In the past two days we’ve seen Ratatouille and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Both were good in their own way, I’d have to give the edge to the Rat.

What’s the last good movie you’ve seen?

When blogs sell banner advertising, many of them offer space for banners with the dimensions 125×125. I am terrible with graphics so I set out to look for the graphic designer bloggers. After outrageous price quotes just for a simple banner (someone told me 200$) I gave up.

A Graphic Artist in our Own Backyard

I was on Garry Conn’s blog and noticed his right sidebar. There is a huge banner for Me and My Drum that looks pretty awesome. Definitely check it out. I quickly contacted Mark to see if he would make a banner for me. Within a few days he had three different ones to chose from. I’m going with number two.

I’m not sure what Mark is charging, but if your looking for some graphic work, you should definitely contact him.

Where to Advertise

As I mentioned there are a lot of sites that are offering banner space. My first test for our new banner is going to be Blogging Truths. For only 6$ per month, might as well give them a shot to impress me.

We also offer a 125×125 spot on the right sidebar. For the first person interested I will let the spot go for only 20$ for the first month.

Does your blog offer banner advertising? Plug yourself in our comments section along with the price, maybe you’ll find yourself with a few sales.

Everyone seems to be fascinated with the recent blog sales that have been going on. I say give the people what they want. I’ve written several posts about blogs sales, featuring the sale of Blogging Fingers. On that post Jamy at Seakopitiam.com said:

“Cannot agree more : ‘I’m sure if you divide $6 000 by the number of hours he spent on the development of his blog, you’d find out that this amount is a miserable salary.’
Worst than the minimum wages working in McDonalds.”

That got me thinking, does McDonalds really pay better than blogging?

To find that out was pretty simple and I’ve taken Blogging Fingers as the example. Matt started blogging on July 2nd until the end of October.

Having a full-time time 9-5 Monday through Friday job starting July 2nd until October 31st I broke down how many hours per month someone would work. I then combined all of the hours and got 704 total hours. If you multiple that by the minimum wage in California (7.50$) you’d only make 5,280$ and that does not include the taxes that they take.

I’m sure Matt put in a lot less than 40 hours a week and has made approximately 6,380$ from his blog. This does not include the leisure of working for home. Taking a day off if you feel like it, or calling in a sick day… to yourself. Not everyone can make 6,000$ in a few months, but in this case, blogging prevails.

Blogging cannot be compared to McDonalds in my point of view. I’d much rather be blogging than working on my feet in a paper hat. In this case by blogging you can make you more money than a 40 hour a week McDonalds job.

What would McDonalds do if all of their workers turned into bloggers?!

Blog sales have definitely picked up, I covered the sale of Blogging Fingers. We have yet to see the takeover, it’s supposed to happen in the next week. Matt is looking to stay on as an author to post, which I think is very important for the future success and face of the blog.

So far the sale has been pretty smooth, however if you are looking to BUY a blog, there are a few things you need to know.

Subscribers are Important

People subscribe to a blog because they like it. If you buy a blog and change the idea, theme, and direction you may lose loyal rss feed readers. You are buying a blog because it is already established, don’t go starting over.

Comments are Vital

This is a personal experience of mine. I talked to the former owner of Sitefever quite a bit before it was sold. After it was sold twice, I left several comments that went unanswered. There isn’t much more than bothers me than being ignored, and it was more than once. I unsubscribed from the blog and never went back (until I decided to write this article!).

Don’t Be a Jerk

If anything you want to be too nice after you purchase a blog. Your audience will be skeptical of you already, don’t give them any reason to stop reading. There WILL be some disconnection, you can expect that.

Take Sitefever for example again, it looks like everything went wrong here. They are no longer displaying their RSS feed count, however just a few days ago it was at about half of what it was when they bought the blog. It also appears they managed to chase away former advertisers (me included) and their advertising blocks are empty.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a bad transfer?

Fred commented on a former post “The new owner should study the sitefever transfer very closely. A great example of what not to do.”

The way one person has built a blog, may not be the same style you will. That will come into effect at some point. People don’t necessarily like change.

When you are buying a blog and it has success, think of how you are NOT going to change it. Maybe you too will have success.