Well everyone, I would first like to apologize for the lack of content, but I believe I have a good explanation for myself. Not only that, but I think the idea I have come up with will be extremely helpful to advertisers, and more importantly to society in general. What I have been so busy constructing is my newest, and I think best idea…

Here is some basic information of how it works. The complete FAQ can be found at http://www.50gforcharity.com/faq.html - The advertisements, however, will be viewed on the homepage: http://www.50gforcharity.com.

Help… Advertise… Win!
Not only will you receive traffic from your advertisement, but 25% of your investment is going to charity. In addition, if you have no desire to donate to charity, there is a chance that you will win $250 on your $20 investment.

How It Works
As advertising space is purchased, there will be different raffles. Here is the quick breakdown:

$1000 advertising revenue
$250 back to a random advertiser
$250 to a select charity

This means that for every 50 advertising blocks sold, one “ticket” if you will, is given per block. Therefore, if you purchase more than one block of advertising, your chances of winning the $250 raffle increase exponentially.

Based on that general information, I think this opportunity is very attractive to any advertiser, whether they want to help charity or not.

Regardless of the traffic you will receive, there is a chance that you will make an instant profit on your advertising investment. Since society is becoming so addicted to instant gratification, meaning everybody wants their results as quickly as possible, this should be a great way to potentially achieve that.

On top of working on setting this up so it works properly, I have also created a brief blog section at 50G for Charity so you can stay updated as to what is going on there. The newest update, today in fact, was the idea that the raffle will be done by video, and posted online for everyone to see. That way there will be no discrepancies about how it was done.

Isn’t Online Cash Flow’s Slogan “Maximize Online Income”?

Yes it is. If you notice, there is only one advertising block that has been purchased (as I am writing this post). The block looks like this:

As I felt this opportunity would eventually provide a substantial amount of traffic, aside from the fact that a portion will be donated to charity and back to the members, I purchased an advertising block.

Not only do I truly believe that this will be a beneficial website, but even if the advertising does not completely sell out, there will be charities that benefit.

There is one thing that has been undetermined yet. That is which charity will be donated to, and when. The current idea is that as these raffles unfold, polls will be placed and the winning charity will be given the donation. This will change each time, of course, so multiple charities will benefit.

And yes, the name 50G for Charity means exactly what you think… $50,000 will be donated to charities, and to add to that, $50,000 will be given to members.

Even if you do not purchase advertising, I encourage you to take a look at the website and I would definitely appreciate any feedback you can give for me. I hope you all have a great weekend, and an even better holiday season!

I wrote a post very similar to this earlier, and had a lot of comments about it and how monetization can be bad. Similarly, I have been reading about, and seeing many blogs that are extremely over-monetized. I decided to revive much of this information to ignite thoughts and comments from my newer readers.

Almost all bloggers want it, and many of these bloggers will do anything they can to get it. Money. However, a large quantity of these people are unsure of what they are doing to their brand and readership when they plaster their blog with advertisements, both within, and around their content. First off, the majority of readers do not find your site because they heard it has a lot of advertisements. People are attracted because they are interested in reading the content you have to offer. Once that becomes diluted, the experience that one should receive from reading your blog becomes far less than it would be if you properly, or even under monetized your blog.

The Obvious Ways

Of course there are ways when advertising becomes extremely annoying. If you have browsed through a number of websites, I can personally guarantee you have seen a few of the following examples.

Overbearing AdSense

The first culprit is the overbearing AdSense ads. You have a layout which is easy on the eyes, but people think their advertisements will have a higher CTR if their advertisements stick out more. Unfortunately, some people actually have advertisements that look like this. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that this is extremely annoying and it makes your experience much more overbearing than it has to be. Personally, when I come across a website with advertisements like these, I wonder why they decided to do something that takes away from the readers experience. After all, isn’t blogging about the production and portrayal of knowledge for your readers? Of course you can still make money, just be smart about it.

Overbearing AdSense, Part 2

Another way which can be equally annoying at times, are those websites that put 2-3 large AdSense blocks within every post. We all understand you want to make money, but when you have to read through the advertisements because you aren’t sure if it is actually what they typed or an advertisement, there is a problem.

Overbearing AdSense, part 3

Similarly, another largely annoying factor is when somebody has their sidebar filled with advertising. Don’t these people understand that the CTR on the skyscraper ads is much lower than that of the others?

The Not So Obvious Ways

I realize with Kontera that you cannot control which words are picked for advertising. However, if your website is not receiving a substantial amount of traffic, there is a good chance this will be extremely annoying. Even if you are getting a lot of traffic, this method can be a large hassle to your readers.

Annoying Kontera

Again, I am sure you have seen blogs like this as well. Not only is it annoying when you hover over each of these words, but if you are trying to click on an outgoing link (making money online in the example to the left), it is definitely more of a hassle than it should be. Granted you may be getting a couple clicks here and there from genuine consumers, but many of the clicks will be accidental and will most likely anger your readership. I don’t know about you, but my goal in blogging is not to turn my readers against me. If you notice that Kontera is linking too many words, turn it off. You might even see your readership increase, and you will probably get a few nice comments from your current readers as well.

What You Should Learn

When you are monetizing your blog, make sure you do so in a moderate fashion. If you implement a new form of advertising and notice a decrease in revenue or readership, make changes. When monetizing, you will most likely be working at improving your CTR. However, try to improve your reader’s experience as well.

If you are having a hard time making money as is, turn off all advertising for awhile and see if your traffic increases. If that happens, then you can slowly re-implement advertising. As you have heard time and time again, do not put all your eggs in one basket.

Again, do not think that because you have 18 different advertisement companies and banner affiliate programs that you are going to make money. In the end it will actually hurt you more than help you.

Personally, I have found it best to slowly implement various advertising sources and see how your readers react. If there is no reaction or a positive one, and you continue to increase earnings, you are doing something correct. However, if you receive a negative reaction, or you start losing money, take a look at what you did and decide what caused these changes, and why.

Have a great week.

I haven’t written an edition of inspirational quotes in awhile, so I figured what better time to do it then right before Thanksgiving. Understandably people celebrate this day different, or not at all, but being that many of the readers are from the United States, I assumed that many will be appreciating this day as well.

For every person who climbs the ladder of success, there are a dozen waiting for the elevator.

The interesting thing about this quote is that it relates to every aspect of life. Whether you notice people in their educational career, their athletic career, or their working career, there are many people who are looking for the easy way out.

Each of us has two ends; a sitting end and a thinking end. Success depends on which end we use.

Again, a very true quote. Personally, I have made some relatively bad choices and have paid for them. It is learning from these situations and making the most of the good choices that will lead to success.

All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today.

As I have said a number of times, success is not something that happens instantly. You need to work hard to achieve it, whether you are looking for financial freedom or happiness. Work hard now and you will reap the benefits in the future.

The surest way to go broke is to sit around and wait for a break.

Of course it is always nice to catch a break, but you need to work hard to achieve your goals. Waiting for something to happen is the key to failure. Be a playmaker, take the “game” into your own hands and make something happen.

People don’t fail, they give up.

Persevere. Whether you are learning about blogging, becoming a car mechanic, or running a business, do not quit. If you work through the difficult times you will be rewarded in the end. A perfect quote to re-illustrate this one is: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you find yourself on hard times, whether it be an overload of work or a shortage of funds, stay strong and do not give up. With that mentality it will be extremely hard for you to fail.

I wish everyone a safe, happy, and healthy Thanksgiving, and hope you enjoy the time off (if you are so fortunate to be able to have time off).

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Of the vast array of potential advertising methods, email marketing is becoming increasingly more popular, and rightfully so. With the implementation of a well maintained database, timely emails, and the creation of good relationships, email marketing can definitely be one of the most valuable tools to you as an internet business person. Whether you are attempting to create exposure for a product, generate leads for a different product, or create sales for an affiliate link, email marketing is quickly becoming the go-to method for any of these.

Why It Is Valuable

As I explained, if you have a well maintained database, the sending of personalized emails becomes child’s play. You can send an email with a person’s name, user name, or anything else you have (of course make these legally purchased contacts), to any number of people, next to instantly. Of course once these numbers start reaching significant 6 figures and higher, this becomes more difficult, but still.

Similarly, as you develop relationships, you can continually market via email and keep your customers knowledgeable and even willing. For example, Amazon does a great job of this and will send emails to their users now and then reminding them of products they might like (based on recent purchases) or of new deals that are being offered. Both of these are great ways to keep your customers interested, and both of these are made extremely easy with a well maintained database.

Likewise, timely emails are definitely a key. If you are marketing for lawnmowers and it is winter season, that is probably not a time when there will be a demand for lawnmowers. To appropriately make the most of this opportunity, you must research current trends, sports, politics, etc and find out what is going on with consumers. After you acquire that information you can more easily identify what consumers are interested in purchasing.

What If…? (As usual, here is a hypothetical example)

Hypothetical Analysis

Send email to 10,000 people (friends, friends of friends, “friends”)
Email reaches 2,000 people (Targeted emails, potential high interest)
If only .05% of these people respond (sign up, purchase)
You just made 10 sales

As I said, your turnover rates can become even higher than that based on the strength of your data.

Also, it is important to realize that the cost of sending out that many emails… next to 0. Depending on your ISP (internet service provider), you may be able to send out unlimited emails each day - in which case, those 10 sales you generated, came at super-profit if you maintain your data well.

Other Methods Of Thinking

As you do business with people over time, it would be a good idea to save their contacts in any form of database. Every person you meet is a potential customer, because when it comes down to it… each and every person on this planet is a customer. Therefore, as you build relationships, let the computer store what your friends and contacts like and enjoy, and base your campaigns on their interests. If you meet someone who is a huge sports fan, and one of your affiliate programs launches a new 523,356 sports channel package, send your friend an email. Chances are they will not be angry, but instead either intrigued, or neutral.

Negative Side Effects

Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to track how effective your email marketing campaigns are due to lag time. If you send out an email to 100,000 people, you may have people sign up for your services over the course of 2, 3, or even 6 months and longer. Because of that, it is difficult to allocate where exactly these customers came from, but this problem occurs with other types of advertising as well.

When Email Marketing Becomes Detrimental

Like many forms of advertising, email marketing can definitely turn into something bad. As everyone knows, spam is not something that we enjoy to receive. However, if you are using this email marketing as a means to contact your friends, or “friends” about potential products or services they would actually like, it may not be viewed as negatively.

The worst is when you engage in types of stealth marketing, or where you try to remain anonymous. Then you are simply bombing out millions or billions of emails to anybody with an email address, and people can become very annoyed by this.

Last Remarks

All in all, I would say that email marketing is very effective if used properly. If you plan to use it like it should be used, then it will be very effective. However, when you decide to use it deceptively, it becomes a burden not only on your targets, but a large waste of your time. Why? Who reads spam mail anymore? Consider that as you work on your campaigns.

Other News

I am thinking of implementing a new theme here at Online Cash Flow. It will hold 2-4 sponsor spots and I will be looking for 125×125 sponsors if anybody may be interested. I am not sure of the prices or when (if soon) this will take place. I guess it depends on the number of sponsors.

Have a great day!

As some people would say, “going viral” is one of the most important things that could happen to a blog or website. If something goes viral, it spreads incredibly fast, and to a large audience. This is tremendously valuable, because if you have an idea or a website and you generate an extreme amount of traffic, the potential for earnings is unlimited. Of course going viral, or any part of the success is very difficult to achieve, but there are a lot of reasons why you should at least attempt to accomplish this. Even if you are not looking to make money, the amount of exposure you can and would generate from doing something like this is phenomenal.

1. The Chain Link Theory

There are different estimations as to the exact number of contacts each person has, but if you excite one person, they are likely to pass your work or ideas onto someone else. I read that in some industries, the average contact for one person, is 50 people. Therefore, if you positively effect one person, it is likely that as many as 50 people will soon hear about it. Of course I like to bring hypothetical examples to the table, but if we associate that throughout 4-5 levels of this, assuming that for each level the number of people who receive this information is cut in half each time, the results are almost unreal. As I said, this is hypothetical, but again, look at the success stories from people who have reached the front page on Digg? Back to the example… If that plays out correctly, in the end you would have just reached your story to an approximate 75,000 people (50 x 25 x 12 x 5). People have power.

2. You Never Know Who You Reach

Similar to the first example, when you achieve this success, you are just trying to get your article known. However, imagine if you write some brilliant content and a very influential person likes it and decides to write about it. Of course, big bloggers stick together so it becomes an instant hit throughout the blogo-sphere, and could turn that hypothetical 75,000 people into a much larger number. Like I said, this is extremely difficult to achieve, and is something I have achieved only on the smallest level, but it is definitely something that all bloggers should strive for.

3. Continuous Stream Of Exposure

Similar to the other reasons, continuous exposure is a definite positive. If you can successfully “go viral” or achieve similar success, you will reap the benefits for some time into the future. As the figures are more significant on the people who have less success to begin with, but because of Digg exposure or something similar, blogs that are less than 6 months old have been sold for upwards of $15,000. Likewise, blogs that have less than 100 RSS subscribers, have seen increases in their counts as large as 1000% because of their viral success. What this means is that it is possible. If you are fortunate enough to reach this level of success, the boundaries are limitless.

Wrap Up

If you scroll to the end of my posts, I generally write a small overview of what was covered. All you need to know here is that people are powerful. If you know people, or if you know people who know people, it will be a lot easier to become successful that if you fly solo. Make friends in your industry and create lasting relationships. You will be rewarded.

I have decided it would be a good day to provide everyone with some supplemental content around the web. As many people know, there is a lot of discussion still going on about Google and how their whole page rank fiasco will turn out. Based on that, there are a few articles directly related to that. Enjoy.

Perfect Letter of Surrender - [Search Engine Guide]
Content Development Strategies - [DoshDosh]
CPC Site Targeting - [UberAffiliate]
Gradual Promotion - [NetBusinessBlog]
Increase Page Rank - [OnlineCashFlow]

I figured I would toss one of my articles in there as well, as I have gotten a few comments about it. Granted they are not surefire ways to dramatically influence your page rank, but every little bit helps, right?

There are a lot of topics I need to inform you about, including but not limited to: affiliate offers, advertising, my new project(s), viral marketing, email marketing, and more. Be patient…

As I have stated a few times, I recently launched a new project called Online Cash Clicks. Online Cash Clicks is a great opportunity for both advertisers and consumers alike, as it is a PTC (paid-to-click) website. However much bad press these sites receive, I have noticed great returns from advertising on similar ventures in the past. What I will explain today, is how affordable banner advertising is on websites like these, and in particular, on Online Cash Clicks. As a teaser, there are currently 4 advertisers that are sharing banner impressions, and each of them has received over 20,000 impressions in less than one month. Sound intriguing?

About Banner Advertising

Like blogs and similar websites, banner advertising is figured on a per month basis. Therefore, if the traffic statistics continue to increase (as they will), the value of these advertisements will increase as well.

How?

Noticeably, Online Cash Clicks has 866 members with an Alexa rank of just over 600k. What that means to you as an advertiser is this: There are PTC sites with upwards of one million members. Therefore, OCC has only the smallest, nearly invisible piece of market penetration. If your advertisement can generate 20,000 impressions over the course of the month with a total of 4 advertisers, and only 800 members, the math is simple. If only 2 people are advertising, your impressions effectively double. The same with members… as that number increases, so does the number of your banner impressions.

Unfortunately for consumers and advertisers, many people fail to realize just how beneficial an advertisement like this can be. Why is that?

A safe assumption to make would be that 95% or more of the people on a PTC site, are interested in making money. Therefore, if you are an affiliate for a company or have referral links to offers, where better to advertise than on a website where almost everybody there wants to find ways to make money? Sounds like a perfect place to advertise to me.

Awesome… How Much Do They Cost?

Despite the assumption that an advertisement like this would be extremely costly, right now you can purchase a banner advertisement over the course of one month, for the price of…

$20

That is not a typo — Twenty dollars. If you find somewhere else to purchase 20,000+ impressions for $20, please let me know.

Disclaimer

I am affiliated with Online Cash Clicks, and in no way can I guarantee these numbers will occur continuously. Similarly, there are no guarantees to the number of advertisers at any given time, but everything I posted above is actual fact. The numbers do not lie, and the membership base ranged from 0-866 (as shown in the image) - Therefore, feel free to make assumptions about the future value of these advertisements, and feel free to purchase advertising at Online Cash Clicks!

Understandably, this notion may sound selfish, but if you were the coach of a team and had a great play, you would definitely not let anybody know until you brought it out. This is almost the same idea, in that you do not want to let other people know your most effective ways you are making money (if they are truly making you a lot of money) until you have gotten what you wanted out of it. For instance, if you find a way to advertise at extremely low rates, and you are converting like crazy, keep it to yourself until somebody else finds this and this market becomes saturated. Then, and only then, is when you should give people tips. I am sure that some people do not feel this way, but if you are honestly interested in making as much money as you can, this is one of the methods you are most likely going to use.

This Is Ridiculous

I would definitely agree in many cases. However, there are certain times when it would be most intelligent to keep this information to yourself. If you are in a market that is doing well, but it is already pretty saturated, you should be able to disclose information to other people without affecting your earnings much. However, if you have penetrated the market (you are among the first to enter) it would be very wise to keep doing what you are doing and try to disclose as little information as possible.

There are numbers of people out there who agree that if they would have only kept their mouth shut, they would have made exponentially more money. Instead, they got trigger happy and had to tell other people how they were making money, and unfortunately, everyone jumped on the bandwagon to get a piece of the pie.

How Can I Tell When To Disclose Information?

This is more of a personal question than anything, but if your earnings are steadily declining and you have not done much, if anything, to change your scheme, then it is probably a time to find a new market. On the other hand, if you feel like being nice and do not want to feel “selfish” by keeping these great ideas to yourself, then feel free to let people know. The only thing that will happen by doing that, is a more diverse market, and you will potentially lose money because of it.

Please do not get me wrong… I am not telling you to bottle up and never explain to anybody how you make money online (after all, that is what I am trying to do for you all), but be intelligent. Like I explained earlier… if you have a trick play coming in during the last minute of the game, would you rather tell the other team so they can prepare, to catch them by surprise?

Catch the market by surprise… milk it for all it’s worth, and then cash out and find a new market. Unfortunately, finding a new market to penetrate is one of the most difficult things to do. If you can though, run with it.

As I wrote a few weeks back about someone declining their prize, I decided to hold another contest to win the banner redesign. As it turns out, Nick from road2graduation.com is the winner. This was a very easy raffle to make, as there was only one entrant! I will let everyone know about the new design and how Nick feels with it.

Congrats Nick.

As some of you may know, Shoemoney and John Chow had a little RSS competition and were competing to see who would achieve the most RSS subscribers over the course of a month. As both of them were trying to implement various prizes to encourage users to subscribe, many people submitted prizes. I, for one, decided to offer a ReviewMe review, and a text link ad in my featured links spot. Well, as the drawings were made, Cindy from Reducing Me was the lucky winner of my review and text advertising. As you will notice, she writes about her weight loss journey and what she does along the way.

As I was researching her website, it was very interesting seeing some of the changes she has made, and the drastic lifestyle change that she is willing to make in order to succeed.

Being a health enthusiast myself, I was very interested in reading about her journey.

Who She Is

Very little navigation brought me to the About page, and I read about who this “Reducing Me” person is.

Hi, My name is Cindy and this is my journey. I found out on August 9, 2007 that I have Type II Diabetes. I decided that I didn’t want to take pills the rest of my life and that I can fix this. How? For starters, I need to lose a lot of weight. Over 100lbs to be honest :shock:. So, on Friday, August 10, 2007 my journey began

After hearing news like that, there are a few different ways people could express themselves. Deciding to work at improving her lifestyle and bettering herself is by far the best choice she could have made. On top of that, she also has a few other things to deal with.

A little more about me? Well I am a 30 something married mother of two who lives in the USA. I work full time in addition to my mother/wife duties. I always joke and say “I’m going to my second job now…Home!”…wait that’s no joke.

The lack of time is one of the oldest excuses in the book as to why people do not exercise. However, it takes anywhere from 20-30 minutes a day, 3+ times per week and you can notice significant changes. Of course you have to be willing to make sacrifices as well, whether it be your total calorie intake, your beverage choice, or your overall diet. However, if you can manage a family, work full time, and still work out… that is very impressive.

How She Is Doing

If you take a look at her progress page, you will notice that not only does she post numerical weight loss values, but she has pictures to prove it.

Anybody can claim to have lost any number of pounds, but when they put up pictures to prove their statements, it becomes meaningful. On top of that, it becomes more important to them to continue on their journey, as people have images to benchmark their progress or lack thereof. Keep up the good work, Cindy!

Advice To Reduce Yourself

One of the posts I enjoyed reading, was when she wrote that “diet doesn’t mean starvation.” I couldn’t agree more with that statement. In fact, you should eat more frequently when you are trying to lose weight so that your body realizes it will always have food and will never go into “conservation” mode. This will effectively keep your metabolism working as quickly as it can.

However, after delving deeper into this article, I noticed something that is definitely a common misconception with more than a handful of people.

Of course one of the biggest things to remember is you have to drink TONS of water. I typically drink 80-100 oz of water a day. It does help flush out your system, makes your skin look and feel better and helps keep you full. I used to drink Diet Pepsi which is still ok because it is diet, but not very good at replenishing your body with water.

Understandably, diet pop may have no sugar or calories, but it still contains phosphates. Essentially, phosphates (in both diet and regular pop), pad fat cells. What that means is that in order to burn fat, your body must now work that much harder because you drank pop.

Another piece of advice I would like to offer, is that she eats a lot of protein throughout the day.

Morning snack: (about 2 hours after breakfast)

Protein of some kind. Turkey breast, 3 oz of tuna, protein bar, protein shake etc.

Snack: (about 2-3 hours after lunch)
Protein again

Dinner:
Chicken breast, steamed veggies, 1/2 cup rice or potatoes or baked beans

Now, don’t get me wrong… I love protein and consume a lot of it. However, fiber and whole grains are much better choices of snacks because they fill you up and will help give you that feeling of being full. I found an article about it here, and it is completely true. Either way, you are making progress and that is what is important.

Take a look at Cindy’s journey, and see the progress she is making. On behalf of the Online Cash Flow community… best of luck Cindy!