Comment Friday was a little different this week. I asked our readers “How would you spend 400$ advertising your blog?” I definitely received some interesting responses.

The most interesting definitely has to go to Rhyswynne. He said

“I would pay nude models to paint their urls over their breasts, and post the photos on the internet. You may think it is a stupid idea, but it WOULD work.”

It may work, however that’s not exactly the kind of attention I am trying to get for BAYB.

We also had quite a few responses where people would spend that money on offline advertising. Tobsy mentioned he would fix up an old car, put advertising on it, and give it away. Pretty generous, but I’m not sure how well that would work. Lee and Derek also mentioned offline advertising such as hats, shirts and mugs to give away.

Personally I think I will be spending money promoting BAYB by just by purchasing blog reviews and trying to build backlinks to our site. If you are offering a deal and would like to write about our site please use the contact form.

Thanks for everyones responses. For this weeks blog of the week I am putting Blog Me Famous as the blog. I will be reviewing the blog within the week and I definitely recommend taking a stop by their blog.

As websites seem to be made by the minute, web hosting has become a huge business. Host Arcadia is trying to take advantage of just that.

What’s Most Important

For many websites, they are just like a business. If they aren’t seen, they can’t earn money, grow, or really have any value. That is why reliable web hosting is important.

So You’re New?

Host Arcadia wants webmasters to know that their best quality is low starting rates for beginners. For only 3$ per month you can get 500 MegaBytes of Space with Cpanel and Fantastico. The only downside I can see is you can add on 10 domains, but I’d prefer unlimited. Blog about your Blog is hosted on a smaller (and cheaper) hosting plan, because we don’t need anything big and expensive. Soon I hope we will though.

Shared and Reseller Plans

I have to admit I don’t know much about these, however I do know that Host Arcadia is offering them pretty cheap. Shared Hosting starts as low as 3$ per month, and the reseller plans at 6$ per month. I paid two years worth just to get 6$ per month for our hosting!

Affiliate Program

As I’ve mentioned there are tons of websites being created as I type this post. I’ve read many bloggers are earning nice affiliate dollars by promoting and selling templates. However, before you buy templates you need somewhere to host your website or blog. I’m not a member, but Host Arcadia’s affiliate program may be one to look into. As a bonus, you get 5$ just for signing up!

This week I want to do something a little different for Comment Friday.

I am going to ask a question and the best answers will be made into a blog post, and I will give out links from there.

If you don’t have an answer, please still leave us a comment, or just jump in the discussion, I hope I can involve everyone.

If you had 400$ to spend on advertising your blog, what would you do? LinkRain has already answered the question, and made a great post.

What would you do with the 400$?

Please note there are no affiliate links within this post*

In my article, Make Money Online with Surveys, I mentioned SurveySpot was a legit survey website to earn money on. My girlfriend, Emma, has been an active member on the website for several months now. As she has remained active, she gets money surveys almost daily, sometimes 5!

Minimum Payout is Only 5 Dollars

On many websites like surveyspot the payout can be anywhere from 50-100$ which you could possibly never earn. At surveyspot the minimum payout is 5 dollars, which is an amount you could earn in one survey. Once you cashout, your check should arrive to you within a month.

We’ve Been Paid

Several times actually. You can notice as time has gone by Emma is actually earning more money than she did. It took her about 2 months in between her first payments to reach 28$. She now gets about 30$ every 2-3 weeks.

Staying Active = More Money

The more surveys you take, it seems the more they give you. We have received special offer surveys which we never received at the beginning. The two most recent was a survey sent in the mail, and completed online with a payout of 15$. Also, we received a product review of “Wet Ones Wipes” where we received a free container of it, as well as a cash survey.

There are Prizes to be Won

Even if you don’t take a money survey, you can take free surveys. These surveys give you “entries” in drawings. They draw for prizes like gadgets and cash, as well as gift cards and big rewards!

No Purcase Necessary

You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t have to give them money to start or anything like that. As you can see from the screenshot above Emma has earned 177$ in about 6 months with 18$ more on the way. That brings the total to almost 200$ just for taking quick and easy surveys.

Are you going to start earning money with surveys?

Do you sell advertising on your blog? Do design logos? Do offer blog hosting? Do you sell anything blog related? If you answered yes to any of these, then you might be interested in a marketplace that has been built just for bloggers!

DoshSale.com has just been launched and is the marketplace for bloggers. Buy and sell everything blog related including:

• Advertising – links, banners etc
• Design Services
• Templates, Themes
• Blog Hosting
• Domains
• Sponsored Reviews
• Content
• Stock Photos
• Lots Lots More!

Use the coupon code “free06” to list for free! Coupon expires in a weeks time. Usually it costs $0.50 to add listing so use the code while you still can! This a great way to expand your blogs reach and I highly recommend you check it out.

To see more content like this and download free ebooks, software and templates, visit my blog at BloggingDosh.com

That’s right, I decided last night to install the Mozilla email client Thunderbird for reasons that I can’t fully explain or understand myself. I asked the question over at QYDJ is it stupid to abandon Outlook when I have a fully licensed copy already bundled on my PC? Am I just making life more difficult purely because I’m drawn to the ethos of the Mozilla people. I completely moved over to Firefox ages ago (god has it been years already??) and it is my browser of choice. There are fewer and fewer pages that don’t work within it and when I’m developing I generally find I’m designing in it and fixing problems in IE.

Is my choice of browser and email client reflective of me as a person?

I’m not a rebel by any stretch of the term, at least I don’t see myself that way. Some time back when free time existed and dinosaurs roamed the earth my wife and I went to see an artist that she really liked. The problem was that because this artist is a little more refined I guess than the local pub (although don’t get me wrong she would’ve kicked ass in a less sophisticated setting!) it was held where they show the opera and theater etc. Because of this people who subscribed to the arts calender were included in the tickets etc.

The venue was ok, not great for this artist but comfortable enough and the artists were extraordinary. No the real problem were the suits. All of these people desperately trying to out dress each other and drown everyone in their expensive perfumes and aftershaves.

Ummm.

We were there to see a gig. I mean really? Evening gowns and black tie?

Now I, realizing that the venue would be a little more sophisticated thought I’d dress myself up a touch and wear a shirt with a collar and *gasp* buttons. After spending several hours being looked down upon I realized that I was not embarrassed about not dressing up enough but more that I wasn’t wearing my Punisher t-shirt under a suit jacket with some splash graphic across the arm. I was angry with myself for even in the slightest thinking about what I should wear to such a place when I knew that jeans and t-shirt were more appropriate even if everyone else didn’t think so.

What this says to me is that in the browser wars and spilling over into the software apps wars I don’t want to always go with the expensive name brand product just because it is expensive or that I in fact own it. I own plenty of formal wear but choose not to wear it the way society may dictate. I own outlook but it’s so vanilla, and I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to use it but I’m not interested, I am interested in this alternative that may be rougher around the edges or it may even just do everything that outlook does. It’s different. Maybe I’m just bored with outlook? I don’t hate Microsoft at all, I have my issues with them and how they do business but there’s no way I would swap my windows for linux (mind you I haven’t upgraded to vista yet so we’ll have to see).

So have any of you used Thunderbird because I would love to hear others thoughts on if it works well or is worth swapping over completely (my archives and a couple of my accounts are still in outlook pending the results of the experiment).

God now I’m thinking about open office…..

Pay Per Click vs Affiliate Marketing

Making money online can be achieved commonly by participating in PPC programs such as Google Adsense as well as AFF programs such as Commission Junction. Both types of programs are very effective; however, problems may arise when you combine both…

Making money online is challenging, fun and very rewarding. I spend a lot of time writing about blogging tips that help bloggers make money online on my own personal site. But from time to time I really like to break away from my site and make guest appearances on other successful blogs. I enjoy reaching out to readers in other communities and niche blogs other than my own. It’s a great way to help even more people and also pick up a few new readers to my own site. And to be honest, that is one of the most rewarding things you get from BAYB. You can help your fellow bloggers out by publishing great content and get rewarded with a little bit of free advertising, backlinks and some extra traffic.

Are you money hungry?

If you are one of the few hundred blogs that I visit often, then that answer must be yes! And that is great! I encourage people to try to make money online by blogging. There is nothing wrong with that at all. But there is a right way and a wrong way when going about this. Additionally, there is a smart way and a *not so smart way too…

This article isn’t going to be long and drawn out. I am quickly learning that people like articles that jump to the point. I want to carry a point across to you that may help you in your venture of making money online. It is something I learned about a year ago and I want to pass it down to you.

Pay Per Click vs Affiliate Marketing

Well, this isn’t really a competition or a fight to see which method of generating money online works best. They both are excellent ways towards making money online. Where problems surface is when bloggers use both at the same time. My advise to you is to choose one or the other because running both types of programs on the same pages can actually cost you money in the long run.

If you have a blog that promotes Amazon dot Com products and you are trying to make commission based sales by writing posts about products being offered in Amazon.com but also display Google Adsense ads at the same time… you could be throwing away money because you are sending your customers to other sites to buy the same product you are trying to sell. Granted, you do get paid for the clicks. But if you are trying to sell a $1000 dollar computer through the Amazon Associates program or the Commission Junction program and your potential customer clicks on a Google Adsense ad, you don’t make the commission based sale. What you get, if you are lucky, is about a dollar for the click compared to the $25 to $50 dollars you would have made if you got the customer to make the purchase through your affiliate link.

The Pros and Cons of PPC vs AFF

You really should choose one or the other. Both have benefits as well as some disadvantages.

With PPC you don’t make that BIG SALE!!!! But you are guaranteed a constant flow of money coming in… sort of like having a drippy faucet.

With AFF you don’t have the security of having a steady flow of money coming in… but eventually you are going to land a sale and score some dough.

However when you run both PPC and AFF on the same site at the same time, you can tend to over extend your resources and spread your money out too thin. The common effects of doing this is NOT MAKING THE MINIMUM money needed to get your regular monthly payout.

Choosing to put forth focus on one program will also help you stay focused on improving your successes with the program. Bloggers can sometimes get overwhelmed with the available money making resources available. And if you keep things simple, and run with one program per site, you may find that you actually start to make more money than you ever did before. At least that is happening for me. I run quite a few different sites. Some sites take advantage of the Google Adsense program and other take advantage of the Amazon Associates and Commission Junction type programs.

Good luck and I wish you continued success with making money online by blogging.