As I predicted yesterday, income numbers have dropped since October, and November. As I saw growth from October to November, I was unable to sustain the same level of growth. I can attribute a few reasons to this, but I expected this drop in income as I did not spend as much time maintaining my blog as I could/should have. Either way, I wrote yesterday about persistence as the key to success, and even if you “fail” to put up better numbers from month to month, keep going at it and you will be rewarded in the end.

The first month I actually recorded online income for this blog was in September, and I was relatively happy with a $631 month. However, in October I recorded an income level of $866, and was very pleased with the drastic improvement. But, that extreme growth rate concluded there… here they are, November’s numbers.

Online Cash Flow: The Numbers

• Affiliate Sales: $350.17
• AdSense: $30.38
• Free Offers: $42.15
• Other: $100
• TOTAL: $522.70

As I said, although my income level was nearly cut in half, that only goes to show that if you do not maintain what you have, it will quickly be lost. I failed to maintain my content level, and traffic suffered. Therefore, so did income. Aside from that, AdSense has been doing a little better, and I have got a few new opportunities off the ground which I hope will prove to be great successes.

I have been meaning to publish a great post on the benefits of developing relationships, whether you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or a general business person. I will get around to finishing that post in the next day or two and post it. I think it will be a great tool to help everyone, including myself.

Have a great day all!

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.

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.

As I have been explaining page rank a little more in the past few weeks, it should become more important to you the value behind these simple numbers. You would be very surprised the amount of exposure you get and the amount of interest advertisers show when you explain that you are page rank 3 instead of page rank 0. Not only does page rank show that you are working to become more well known in the blogosphere, but many times it shows stability and the fact that you have been around for at least a few months. It is the people that steadily increase over time that realize the importance of improvement within this arena.

I wrote a short list of 5 Ways to Increase Google Page Rank, but I would like to expand on that a little bit, and even use some of the tips I will be explaining.

Ways To Increase Page Rank

1. Use Creative Titles - If you have a killer article, but a dud of a title, what you are essentially doing is pushing potential readers away. Be creative and attractive when you are writing your titles. Sometimes this may be extremely difficult, but you want to do your best to make readers want to read your content.
2. Use Lists - Including lists into your posts, or even having a list as the exclusive post is a great way to gain interest. Think about yourself… When I go to a website looking for tips and tricks, I find it much more interesting where they write it out generally speaking and allow me to skim. Lists are easy to generate, and easy to read. Use them!
3. Links To/From Related Websites - This is a great way to not only help fellow bloggers out, but often times you will be helped as well. It is very easy, and can take a matter of seconds. On top of that, other bloggers can provide additional content for your readers.
4. Revitalize Older Posts - If you had an old post that was fairly popular, bring it back to life. Not many readers will remember that you wrote almost the same material before, and some have probably forgotten that you wrote that in the first place. If it was useful then, there is a good chance it is still useful now.
5. Link To Old Posts - This also takes a matter of seconds, and sometimes even helps you generate new ideas for posts. As I wrote yesterday about page rank, it was a great way to incorporate tips to help you increase page rank (see how easy that was!).
6. Create A “Top 10″ List - This does not have to be Top 10, but compile a list of your favorite or most popular posts that you have written. If they are popular, there is generally a good reason why that is. Make this information readily available to everyone, and you should see increased exposure overall. Stay tuned, this may be coming to an OnlineCashFlow.org near you!
7. Join Forums - This may seem annoying, but there are plenty of forums out there that can be extremely helpful to you regardless of your interest. Blogger, webmaster, affiliate marketer, development, gaming. Anything you want, there is a forum for you, and many times there are multiple forums for each niche. Digital Point, Webmaster-Talk, The Webmaster Forums, TechCrunch Forums, VN Boards - All great places to become known.
8. Consistent Content - As I have stressed time and time again, the creation of unique content is extremely important when trying to increase your rankings.

As you may have noticed, implementing these things within your posts can be extremely easy. In fact, within this post, I was able to include at least 4 or 5 of the 8 items within this list. All that means is that you can easily do it, and if you consistently use these great tips, you will see an increase in your page rank as time goes on.

Have a great weekend!

Due to the current state of the internet and blogging community, many people are wondering if this PR thing actually holds any meaning. Personally, I am a firm believer that page rank has a big influence on the value not only of your website or blog, but the amount of money your advertising space is worth. Of course these may seem like obvious reasons to increase page rank, but some people are questioning the reliability of this feature for multiple reasons. Not only were a lot of people’s PR numbers chopped down, but many also question if the future of page rank holds any real meaning.

So… Does PR Matter?

I’m not sure if people are attracted to bigger things (namely numbers, people!), but almost anywhere you look people are willing to pay more for higher PR advertising. First of all, many advertisers are willing to pay a premium for a higher page rank. As the rank gets higher, the cost of advertising does as well, except exponentially.

Not only that, but as I have written about before, there are website value calculators that have a very high weight on page rank as well. Less than a month ago, I wrote about how Online Cash Flow was worth $916 according to the CyberWyre calculator.

Now, a month later and with PR3 instead of PR0, it values Online Cash Flow at nearly $2,600!

I realize this is simply a calculator that places different weights on various components of your statistics, but I believe that page rank is still a viable determinant in advertising and overall blog worth.

If you look at domain sales, you will find that generally speaking, the higher the page rank the more expensive. This is not a coincidence.

With that being said, increasing page rank is something that you should definitely strive to do as a blogger, and if you wish to increase to either your blog or your affiliate links, research before you buy. Do not fall into the common misconception that high page rank is great, unless they have other statistics to backup their claims of greatness.

Interested in ways to increase your page rank? Check back tomorrow…

As I have done at various times in the past, I think writing about other blogger’s posts every now and then is a great way to associate yourself with them, as well as provide your readers with a different scope of content. On top of that, it forces you to read and re-read content that you have read so you can better understand what fellow bloggers are writing about. Fortunately, it is easy to pick out articles that are well written and have useful information, and many times those people have similar experiences to yours.

Here they are… The articles of the week:

Affiliate Marketing Videocast - [UberAffiliate]
Killer AdWords Tips - [Google Lady]
Super Affiliate PPC Guide - [Zac Johnson]
Long Term Saving - [Lewis Empire]
Warren Buffet Secrets - [4EvaYoung]

Side note: There is what I believe a little promotion going on at John Cow. I can’t decide if I like it or if I think it is cheesy. Either way, I bet it is making some money.

I hope everyone has a great week. I should be back tomorrow, and as always, have a great day.

Also, I had a great weekend in terms of RSS subscribers… I finally decided to put my count up as it has reached where I hoped it could.

(It’s not real).

I would have to agree, that is a question that I was asking myself when I began searching the internet for ways to make money online. However, now that I have tested and tried more opportunities than I can count, I can honestly say that not all of them are completely useless. In fact, some of them are extremely beneficial for a variety of reasons. PTC Sites (paid-to-click) are available everywhere. If you were to join only a fraction of the options out there, you would be able to keep yourself busy for the whole day simply clicking advertisements. However, I have been testing and using different sites for nearly the past year, and I have come up with a pretty refined list as to which sites are best and why.

Why Would I Join A PTC Site?

There are different reasons that people join these types of sites, and it depends largely in part on what your goal is. If you are simply trying to make a few extra bucks while you read the news or surf the internet (click the ads and let the timer countdown in the background), then you can join a few of these websites and make some decent spare change. However, some people join these websites to help promote their blogs/websites/offers, and will join to increase exposure to them.

Obviously, there are 2 types of people (basically) on these websites. Advertisers and consumers. Advertisers will pay to have their advertisements shown to these consumers. In some instances, websites will offer consumers the ability to “re-invest” their earnings to advertise.

Most Sites Only Pay 1 Cent Per Click Though

That’s the same mentality I had before I started using these websites. Think about it this way… If you are going to join one site, you might as well join 10 and click them at the same time. Of course it may be a little overbearing to begin, but once you get the hang of it, you are essentially making 10cents per click at that point. On top of that, many sites pay great referral percentage bonuses as well, which only supplement your earnings. In fact, ClixSense pays you 10cents per referral you sign up, on top of additional bonuses as referrals purchase packages.

Nobody Reads These Advertisements

Of course that is the general consensus, but I have actually turned pretty decent CTR (click-through-rates) on many free offers and better yet a couple affiliate offers. There is nothing like making a $35 sale when spending $10 advertising.

I’m Convinced. Where Do I Sign Up?

Depending on what you are looking for, some programs offer better incentives than others.

ClixSense

Online Cash Clicks

Simple Clicker

AdBux

AdverCash

TitanClicks

I would honestly have to say that ClixSense, with the premium membership, is the best bang for your buck. Not only will you have AT LEAST 400 advertisements to view (at least $4/day), but they are viewable each and every day. On top of that, if you wish to re-invest, you can transfer your earnings to credits and advertise.

As I stated earlier, I am the owner and administrator of Online Cash Clicks, and I am trying to build an effective PTC site. It is hard attracting people, especially before they know you are going to pay when they reach the payout, but you must also attract advertisers. Because of that, I will offer anybody who wants to advertise on there 10% off on any advertisement over $5. All you have to do is contact me either here or at Online Cash Clicks, and mention the 10% discount from Online Cash Flow and it will be applied.

It would be unreasonable to claim that you can make a full time income strictly from PTC sites, but it can definitely supplement your income by re-investing the money made to advertise, advertise your own money, and potentially refer members to your affiliate links and offers. Think about it like this… If you buy $30 worth of advertising, you would usually have between 1500-3000 clicks. Now, if you promote an affiliate offer that will generate you $35 per sale, all you need is 1 in 3000 to purchase it and you make a profit. Imagine if only 10 of the 1500 people sign up? Not only would it be a tiny .6% of people, but it would turn into over $300 profit for you!

One thing I have learned when trying to make a lot of money online, is that taking risks (if you are intelligent) generally pay off and reward you significantly. I would suggest trying some of these websites, and even if you do not have $30 to advertise, start with $1 or $5 and check the results. There are so many potential scenarios I could give you to encourage taking action, but they are everywhere. Do your research but make sure to invest intelligently. Doing so will reward you!

After a lot of discussion and many different opinions as to what was going to happen with page rank, it has been updated. Even I was wondering about the return or new update of page rank, but I was not let down. Although some people believe PR status has been diluted because of selling links and everything, I disagree. If you notice, not every active blogger’s page rank increased. In fact, some took a dive, but please do not directly correlate page rank to success.

So, How Did Online Cash Flow Do?

I was very excited to see that the page rank of my blog has gone from 0 to 3! Of course I was expecting a higher rank, but like it stated there was not a 100% chance of that PR4 occurring. Still, I am very happy with the success and growth of this blog.

I checked at a few different sites to make sure, and saw similar results throughout.

What Does A Page Rank Of 3 Mean?

Well, after a little research at www.checkpagerank.com, I noticed a few very interesting things. First of all, John Chow, one of the more influential bloggers in the make money niche, only has a PR4 blog! Problogger is sitting with a great PR6, but there were a few statistics that interested me. A number of blogs that receive substantial traffic, are right around my page rank. Of course I get a decent amount of traffic, but nothing like John Cow or Net Business Blog. Both of those bloggers also have a page rank of 3. Anyways, let’s hope that this PR increase fares well and helps increase traffic and grows the Online Cash Flow community.

Personal Page Rank Opinions

The main reason for the drop in page rank on a number of people’s websites, was because they were selling links. Because of that, a variety of people believed that the page rank status was diluted and would not hold a significant meaning anymore. I disagree with that, and here is why. If you were selling links, your page rank was hacked. If you sold links discreetly or not at all, your page rank increased (if you were taking the proper measures to do so) and I believe that page rank holds more significance now with the threat of decreasing due to selling links. It will be a lot more difficult to increase now unless you are doing it properly or being discreet. Either way, I am excited with the update and hope to see increases in the future.

Did anybody else see changes in their page ranks?

Like the title says, as a blogger you will learn an incredible amount, especially as you begin. Of course you should always continue learning stuff about blogging and how to become better at what you do, but as with most things, there is a very steep learning curve as you start. Not only do you need to know your topic inside and out, but you need to have a post schedule, what you are going to write about, how you are going to interact with the community, whether or not you are going to bias or write opinionated posts, and many other things when thinking about blogging. I got the idea to write about this when I was looking through my previous posts, namely one that was written within the first couple weeks of my blogging career.

Being Extremely Naive

I’m not sure if it was naivety or the lack of knowledge (very similar), but I was very uninformed as to a few features of the blogging world. First of all, I had no idea how the Feedburner chicklet count was updated. As you notice in that post, I write about Feedburner changing the number of subscribers I had. Little did I know, the count reflects the number of people who visited your feed within the last 24 hours, meaning it can fluctuate vastly. However, when you only have 1-2 subscribers, if that one person does not view your feed, there goes 100% of your readers.

I suppose I learned that along the way, and after reading a few bloggers’ posts about their RSS subscriber numbers.

What Can Be Learned?

As a beginner, I would strongly recommend going out there and doing your best. Of course if I was to read a post like the one I wrote a number of months ago now, I would think that person is crazy. However, in the back of my mind I am reminded that I too started there, and there is only one place to go from ground zero: upwards. Taking that into account, it would be extremely beneficial to research about various terms, criteria, protocol, etc. that affect the way blogging (or whatever it is you are doing) should be done. Not only with blogging, but this can go for anything.

Another great example is one related to working out. Maybe people are afraid to go work out in a gym because they feel they will get made fun of for lifting less than some of the “meatheads” out there. However, these “meatheads” did not decide to start lifting one day and throw on all that weight. Of course there will be some people who think they are better than everyone else, but if all of these now elitists had the mindset that everybody starts at the same place (or very similar, depending on your resources) it would be much easier to succeed at what you do.

If you learn one thing from this post, please remember to not be afraid of making mistakes when you are starting out as a blogger. Instead of having the “worried about failing” mindset, try to adapt the “working to succeed” mindset. Keeping that in mind, it will be much easier to work towards a successful blogging career than if you are constantly hindered by the “what if” attitude.