Attempts to Become an Affiliate Marketer

I have made two attempts to become an affiliate marketer, and so far neither one has gotten to square one.

In April I applied to Pepperjam on the advice of a friend who was having good luck with them. I filled out the application, and sent in the forms. I heard nothing. In September I contacted them and asked if they could at least tell me if my application had been denied. I got an email saying that my question had been received, but I never heard anything from them.

In September, I applied to become an Affiliate with REI, using my blog Get Off The Couch News, I filled out all the forms, and I'm still waiting. I'll need to contact them again soon.

I'm wondering if companies are getting too many requests of this nature, and are simply ignoring applications.

Getting Started with Pepperjam

web ad income Oct 29 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.02 Adgitize $.54 Project Wonderful $.04 Clixsense $.05 My Survey $.10 ______________________ Total: $.75

web ad income Oct 28 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.14 Adgitize $.52 Project Wonderful $.02 Chitika $.08 ______________________ Total: $.76

Swagbuck Award Claim Going Smoothly

Just a quick report that I began the cash-out process for two more $5 PayPal payments from Swagbucks. I learned yesterday that only two awards can be claimed per day. According to their estimate, I can expect to actually receive payment around Nov 10-13.

Swagbucks

web ad income Oct 27 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.26 Adgitize $.52 Project Wonderful $.04 My Survey $1.80 Clixsense $.06 ______________________ Total: $2.68

Shopping for Swagbucks Rewards

I've been a member of Swagbucks for about a year, and have accumulated 462 points, all without having anyone sign up under me or winning any big point awards. So I decided to cash some of them out about a month ago.

Difficulties arose immediately. There was a Visa Debit card offer that was "on sale." I don't remember the points-to-cash ratio for it now, but it was a good deal, so I tried to "Snag It." That's their button that means that you want that item. Nothing doing. I got a message saying that my account was not verified. Now, I'm pretty sure that I had done this long ago when I joined. I try to take care of all those things when I sign up at sites right away, because it's too easy to forget later.

So I clicked the link to resend the verification email. The tricky part was that it also said that it could take up to 48 hours for the verification to arrive. No email. I checked my filter, I watched for the verification. Nothing. Meanwhile, the debit card that I wanted was removed from the list of prizes.

So, today I again looked for an award to cash out. There is currently a sale on PayPal cash- $5 for 70. But, it still said that I hadn't verified my account. Nuts! I clicked the re-send button again, and then it wouldn't even let me click it again. I was beginning to wonder if it was all a scam, except that I know someone who had successfully cashed out an award.

So I hunted for their "Contact Me" page and fired off a message. Again I was warned that it could take up to 48 hours to process. I am pleased to report that about 6 hours later I received a message saying that my account had been manually verified. Horray!

So I ordered one PayPal payment. In order to complete a transaction it must also be verified. I am relieved to report that this email came through immediately, and I completed the order. The next time lag is that it can take 12-15 days for the payment to appear in my account. So, don't expect to cash in Swagbucks for any immediate need.

Finally, I thought I would see if I could "buy" additional $5 PayPal payments. The answer is, yes. However, you can only check out two awards a day. I don't know if that's a calendar day or a 24-hour period. I hope I can cash out some more of my points for cash! I'll report back when I know how long it actually takes to credit my PayPal account.

Swagbucks
See Get Swagbucks - Lotsa Swag

web ad income Oct 26 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.03 Adgitize $.58 Project Wonderful $.03 _____________________ Total: $.64

Self Hosting Sharkbytes Photos

After deciding that Shareapic was no longer a service that I wanted to be associated with, I set out to develop my own photo gallery, with advertisements. I got some encouragement from John at Make Nothing Online, and I have begun what could turn out to be a huge project. But I am very happy to have more control over the advertisements.

Not everything is organized quite like I would like it yet, but I've made a start. Comments and criticisms welcome.

Sharkbytes Photo Gallery

web ad income Oct 25 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.11 Adgitize $.59 Project Wonderful $.02 My Survey $.10 Clixsense $.07 ______________________ Total: $.79

Clarifying CMF Ads Approved Blogs

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I planned to sign up my Get Off The Couch News blog on CMF Ads. They did approve it, but not at first, and an e-conversation with Turnip clarified the issues.

Get Off The Couch News is a daily news report of some event related to quiet, outdoor, muscle-powered recreation in west Michigan. As such, I condense and re-write news articles that appear in newspapers, newsletters, etc. I do use news releases that are issued by various organizations, the Michigan DNR, and other sources. Although I try to be very careful not to plagiarize, CMF felt that there were issues with my use of too much non-original material. Their policy is to not approve article banks.

Turnip and I had some discussion about it, and he agreed in the end that Get Off The Couch News is not strictly an article bank. I write some completely original news reports there as well. (He suggested I do more of that, and I pointed out that while I would love to, it covers half of the lower peninsula of Michigan, I maintain four blogs, and have very little income. Not a very practical idea!) The only items that are copied verbatim are news releases or where I have express permission to do so.

I'm not sure if I will even try to sign up North Country Trail News. It is similar, but with a lot of entries that are submitted by other people, or excerpted from other blogs, newsletters, etc (always with permission). It is my attempt to gather news and use of the trail into one location. But a check of duplicated material in posts would get a lot of hits.

The other issue that I have, with both these blogs, is that I want advertisements that I accept to be somewhat pertinent to their topics. And there aren't very many blogs with outdoor or nature themes. I'm just hopeful that some of them will sign on. I have set the price fairly low, and bought ads on some appropriate blogs. Perhaps they will reciprocate!

So, for anyone wishing to sign a blog up at CMF, perhaps this will help clarify their acceptance policy.

CMF Ads
See Giving CMF Ads a Thumbs-Up

web ad income Oct 24 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.01 Adgitize $.62 Project Wonderful $.03 My Survey $.10 Clixsense $.05 Chitika $.16 Microworkers $.10 ______________________ Total: $.97

Did Your Status Bar Disappear?

Today I learned something the hard way. My status bar on Firefox 3.5.3 was gone, and I didn't know how that had happened. What was worse... on the View menu at the top, Status Bar was checked which meant that it should be showing. Unchecking it had no effect.

It seems that I had accidentally hit the F11 key (one piece of software I have uses F12 for save, so I probably missed and hit F11 by accident hours ago, and just didn't notice that anything had changed.) In Firefox, F11 changes the view to Fullscreen mode. You can also select this from the View menu.

One thing that I can't explain at all is that in Fullscreen mode all the bars at the top of the screen should disappear too, and they didn't this one time. But as a suggestion, if your status bar disappears, and the View menu indicates that it should be showing, try F11.

In Fullscreen you can still navigate from one browser tab to another with Control+Page Up or Down. In this mode all the distractions of the many bars are temporarily hidden to help you focus on the project at hand.

web ad income Oct 23 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.15 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.01 My Survey $.55 Chitika $.01 ______________________ Total: $1.27

Update on Microworkers

I like the idea of Microworkers, but still think that it would be better if it were better moderated. I plan to cash out and not return when I reach the $9.00 threshold; I'm currently at $5.53.

I had not visited for a while, and when I went there a couple of days ago found a list of over 100 potential available jobs. As you can see in the daily report below I made $.89 there. However, that was by very carefully choosing the jobs I was willing to do.

Most of the jobs are to sign up for various services, provide links to sites, click on ads at sites (which is totally against the terms of service with most ad programs), or write articles. If the Microworkers admin thought that my offer of a nickel for stumbling a blog post was too low, I can't imagine why they approved offers that pay $1.50 for writing a 400-word original article, or $.40 for a 250-word article. That is ridiculous.

I'm over halfway to a payout, so I think I'll stick it out even if it takes me a long time to find jobs which I feel are ethical and reasonable. But I wouldn't recommend this as a really viable option to make money.

See Microworkers - Great Concept Needs Better Moderation

web ad income Oct 22 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.22 Adgitize $.57 Project Wonderful $.01 Microworkers $.89 Clixsense $.04 ______________________ Total: $1.73

Forced Flash on the Canon Powershot SX10IS

The Canon Powershot SX10IS will always tell you, when set on auto, when you should use the flash. You can choose to do so or not, by whether you raise the flash cover or not. But what if the camera doesn't think you need it, but you would like to use the flash to eliminate shadows?

The way to accomplish this is by using the same button with which one can turn off the camera sounds. Note that in addition to the little microphone there is a small lightning symbol there too. That symbol usually means something to do with the flash on modern cameras.

First you need to take the camera off of the auto setting. I don't understand what all of those options are yet, but moving the dial clockwise to the face icon for closer shots, and to the mountain icon for long shots will work well enough. Then lift the flash cover and press that button on the top left with the flash and microphone icons. You will see the words "flash auto" appear in the view finder or on the screen. Press the button one more time and it will say "flash on."

You can now take your picture and the flash will be forced to fire. This setting will be overridden when you go back to auto mode.

To see other posts about this camera, enter Canon SX10IS in the search box at the upper left or click on the word camera in the labels below this post.

web ad income Oct 21 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.36 Adgitize $.57 Project Wonderful $.02 My Survey $..05 ______________________ Total: $1.00

Sew Your Own Sheets for Cribs and Toddler Beds

Sewing your own sheets for cribs or toddler beds is incredibly easy and not only saves money but allows you to customize the look for your child’s room.

Be sure to use woven fabric, and pre-wash it to be sure that it is fully shrunk. I like to pre-wash in hot water for maximum shrinkage.

For the fitted sheet, measure the mattress and add 18" (45.5 cm) to each side. For example if your crib/ toddler bed mattress is 29x54 inches (74x137cm), you would need your fabric to be 47x72 inches (119x183 cm).

Hem narrowly or serge all edges. Cut an 8 inch (20 cm) square out of each corner. You can fold the sheet into quarters to cut all corners out together, or do it individually. These corners now need to be seamed to create the fitted “boxes.” Just fold the edges you just cut with right sides together, serge or seam and zig-zag to prevent raveling.

Then cut a piece of 1/4 elastic about 12 inches (30 cm) long. Fold it in half and pin the center at one of the corner seams, on the wrong side of the fabric, but near the hemmed edge. Measure out 12 inches from that seam, still following the hem, and pin the end of the elastic there. Do the same with the other end. Using a zig-zag stitch, set at about 10 stitches per inch, sew the elastic to the hemmed edge, stretching it as you sew to the length of the fabric. When it is sewed correctly, and the elastic is allowed to return to its natural length the corner will pucker in the manner of any fitted sheet. Repeat with the other three corners.

To make a flat sheet, cut the fabric slightly larger, perhaps 20" (51 cm) larger than the mattress. Narrowly hem both long edges and one short edge. Make a wider flat hem on one of the narrow edges for the top edge of the sheet.

This is a fairly easy sewing project. I saved a ton of money when our boys were small!

web ad income Oct 20 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $..05 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.01 My Survey $.10 Clixsense $.07 Chitika $.04 ______________________ Total: $.82

Smart Balance Eliminates Great Product

After my husband's heart attack two years ago, he decided that he wanted to work really hard at changing his diet. We make a lot of our food from scratch anyway, so we looked for ways to adapt recipes to make them more healthy.

One of the products that really helped with this goal was Smart Balance Vegetable Shortening, which we used for baking. It was more expensive than Crisco, at $3.29 for a 3 pound can, but we felt that it was worth it. With 110 calories per T, 12g total fat, 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium, and 350mg Omega-3, it helped make any baked item much more compatible with his daily diet goals.

So when the cans I had in the pantry were gone, I went looking for more in September of this year. There was none to be found. I sent an email to the company, and they did have the courtesy to answer me. But the news was not good. They have discontinued making the shortening. Instead they suggested that we try Earth Balance Shortening (sold in 15 oz blocks of 4 1/2c sticks), which they also make but only sell at natural foods stores. I have no ability to buy this product locally, and I wasn't able to find its price.

Nutrition values for the Earth Balance Shortening (not pictured) are for 1 tablespoon, calories 130, total fat 14g, cholesterol 0mg, sodium 0mg. It is not fortified with Omega-3. This product is suitable for vegan diets (although we are not vegans or even vegetarian).

However, we have tried some recipes with the Smart Balance 50/50 Butter Blend, and it has worked well. Nutritionally it's a mixed bag comparison. The calories in one tablespoon are 100, total fat 11g, cholesterol 15mg, sodium 100mg, and 352mg Omega-3. For people watching sodium and cholesterol these values are pretty bad.

This is one of my pet peeves at the worst! Just when I find a product that works REALLY well for me, it is dropped.

SeeEarth Balance Foods
SeeSmart Balance Foods

web ad income Oct 19 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $..02 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.02 Clixsense $.05 Chitika $.06 ______________________ Total: $.68

Am I the Rookie Blogger of the Year?

Hey, if you really like this blog, give me a vote over at Tycoon Blogger. All you have to do is find my blog in the scroll panel in the right column click the radio button and push Vote at the bottom.

I'll be back later with a "real" post for the day. I'm still a day behind somehow (I can tell because of the daily reports), so I'll use this to get caught up.

web ad income Oct 18 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.56 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.01 Chitika $.07 ______________________ Total: $1.17

More Thoughts About HubSpot Website Grader

Just a few more thoughts about the HubSpot Website Grader. My good friend John at English Wilderness (and several other blogs) used the tool to grade all of his blogs, and got some great scores (see yesterday's comments). I congratulate him, and I'm not jealous, but now I am really curious! I also again ran across the site I first found with the grade of 99%.

One of the things they knocked my blogs down for was having too many pictures. So I didn't really question that, since I really like sharing pictures and I'm not going to stop. I put 1-2 pictures in each post on three of my blogs, and sometimes 4-5 in a post on My Quality Day. But the site that got 99% has lots more images than I do, and John's photo blogs all scored in the 90s, so that can't be my biggest problem.

I also noticed that the other site with 99% is hosted on blogspot, the same as mine. So that can't be taking off too many points.

I think that I should start adding metadata to my posts. Google doesn't use it any more (forthcoming post on that topic), but it can still be valuable for searches.

Well, as I said yesterday... this is one tool to help you analyze your blog or web site. I'd say that any score above 85% is pretty darn good. Of course, for those who seek to make serious money through a web site improving performance is always necessary.

Note a few hours later: Since yesterday I have made sure this site was listed at Technorati, and DMOZ. I added meta tags to the template. So I just ran the score again, and now this blog has dropped to 69% from 81% reported yesterday. This is very strange, and gives me a lot less confidence in this product.

HubSpot Web Site Grader

web ad income Oct 17 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.20 Adgitize $.60 Project Wonderful $.03 Clixsense $.06 Chitika $.06 ______________________ Total: $.95

HubSpot's Website Grader

After seeing this logo on a blog, but with an astonishing grade of 99, I had to check into this.

HubSpot's Website Grader takes just a few minutes to analyze any web site. It then assigns a grade, much like being back in school and having your semester project subjected to the professor's red pencil. The score is returned with a full list of what features were considered, and, better than some professors, tells you how you could make things better.

Broad categories covered are On-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Off-site SEO, Blogosphere (recall that the grader can be used for any web site, not just blogs), the Social Mediasphere, Conversion of Visitors to Leads, and Competitive Intelligence.

If your blog is hosted on a site like blogspot, expect points taken off instantly, since those who want to seriously monetize their sites need their own domain.

One weakness of the system, which is really a weakness of social media in general, is that it gives a points for good rankings in Technorati, Digg, and del.icio.us. None of these sites offer a category that is a good fit for three of my four blogs. (This is really a rant that deserves an entire post, but if one chooses to blog about topics that aren't mainstream, it is extremely difficult to find others with like interests.)

One could argue that some of the means HubSpot uses to measure each category aren't complete or the best. Nevertheless, this is certainly an interesting tool by which to compare your web site to others. It also gives practical and specific suggestions as to how you can improve your score... and theoretically your effectiveness.

The best any of my blogs did was My Quality Day with a score of 87%. Some of the "problems" I may not be able to fix... such as poor categories in social media. I don't have much motivation to move it to it's own domain, but some of the suggestions would be fairly easy to follow.

HubSpot Web Site Grader

web ad income Oct 16 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.02 Adgitize $.52 Project Wonderful $.02 Clixsense $.11 My Survey $.50 ______________________ Total: $1.17

Nature's Crunch Harvest Blend

This is not a paid promotion. I have a very unofficial list of my best product discoveries each year. Of course with foods, this can be very subjective, but I'll tell you why I like this so much, and you can decide if you want to try it.

This great cereal was discovered when I was forced to shop for groceries at an unfamiliar store on my recent hike. The store was a Save-A-Lot, and I was actually looking for granola. They didn't have any, and so I "settled" for this box of Nature's Crunch Harvest Blend cereal. This 16 oz. box cost $2.29. It is a store brand of the Save-A-Lot Foods Company.

It has "honey-frosted corn and wheat flakes with rolled oats and granola clusters." It is a little bit sweeter than I usually like for cereals, but I planned to eat it with yogurt, so it turned out to have a good level of sweetness. I especially liked the way the taste blended with vanilla yogurt. On plain yogurt I did add some almonds and dried cranberries.

Three-fourths cup of this cereal, dry, has 120 calories, 10 of which come from fat. There is no trans fat, and total fat is 1.5 grams. The worst nutritional value is the sodium at 170mg.



This is certainly not as organic as granola would have been. But I was very surprised at how good the product is. I've had flaked store brand cereals that really are flat and tasteless. This one is good enough that I'll probably go out of my way to buy more.

web ad income Oct 15 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.04 Adgitize $.53 Project Wonderful $.03 ______________________ Total: $.60

Just Too Funny

OK, I'm a post behind, and I choose to fill that slot with this video... one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. I know it's way off the topics of this blog, but too bad... it's my blog. Hope you enjoy this!

web ad income Oct 14 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $..04 Adgitize $.51 Project Wonderful $.02 My Survey $7.50 Clixsense $.06 Chitika $.07 Associated Content $2.89 ______________________ Total: $11.03

Reasonable Ad Prices for Blogs

While I was hiking, a poll was running that a few people participated in. The question posed was "Assume that a blog has a Page Rank of 3, an Alexa Rating of about 150,000, and receives 150 pageviews a day from 80 unique visitors. What do you think would be a reasonable price for an ad on that blog?" The choices ranged from "under a dollar a month" to "more than ten dollars a month."

The results of the poll:
2 responses at "under $1 a month,"
1 at $1 a month
1 at $3 a month
3 at $5 a month

I thought this was interesting since I also think that about $5 a month would be a reasonable charge for a blog at that level. However, I did a little subjective research. I found several blogs that offer the chance to buy ads apart from services such as Project Wonderful, Entrecard or Adgitize. The few I found line up from most expensive to least like this:

$20/month - Alexa rank 386,381, Google PR 4
$18/month - Alexa rank 537,347, Google PR 4
$10/month - Alexa rank 52,611, Google PR 3
$5/month - Alexa rank 98,487, Google PR 0
$5/month - Alexa rank 659,666, Google PR 3
$3/month - Alexa rank 656,187, Google PR 3
$3/month - Alexa rank 54,122, Google PR 4

As you can see, this is too small a sample to mean much. You can also see that the values are all over the map.

Of course, in a field as volatile as the blogosphere, the correct answer is "whatever people will pay." Most of the blogs noted above had at least one ad running in their available spaces.

Interesting questions might be:
Which is more meaningful for advertisers to note, the Google PR or the Alexa rank?
Do you think people are more likely to click ads paid directly to a blog rather than through Entrecard or Project Wonderful?
Are you thinking about offering private sale ads on your site?

What is a Reasonable Ad Price on a Blog?

web ad income Oct 13 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $..08 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.02 Chitika $.07 ______________________ Total: $.72

Anniversary Contest at Vanilla Seven

The wonderful photo blog, Vanilla Seven, is celebrating its first blogoversary.

Although I haven't visited as faithfully as I wish, I've been a fan of Vanilla Seven for almost all of that year. I found the site late last fall, and didn't realize then how new it was! I also learned today, from reading the post, that the "seven" may refer to the number of contributors to the blog (although they began with two- perhaps the goal was seven, or perhaps I don't understand what the "seven" means).

That hardly matters. If you enjoy great photos, from a slightly different perspective, this is a good blog to follow. There are nature pictures, but not all. Quite often you will see a theme of some kind revealed through the lens. Somehow, as the rest of us walk through an ordinary day, we see ordinary things. Vanilla Seven may see a lifeguard chair with glowing primary colors, storks dancing through town or two rugby players locked in a duel!

Don't miss their unique view on life.

Vanilla Seven

web ad income October 12 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.14 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.05 My Survey $.05 Clixsense $.04 Chitika $.10 ______________________ Total: $.93

Choosing Which Ads to Display as an Adgitize Publisher

Have you wondered if you could control which ads from Adgitize will display on your blog? Perhaps there are a few ads that you don't care for. Perhaps there are sites that you feel are questionable. Maybe you would like to pick the sites whose ads will always appear on your blog.

Now that Adgitize has over 200 advertisers in the system almost every day it makes a lot more sense to exercise some control over which ads appear on your blog. You can choose to exclude certain ads, or you can choose to display only certain ads if that list is shorter. Here's how!

Once you are signed in at Adgitize, click on "Manage Blogs." You will then see a blue button that says "Reject Ads."



Once you click on that button you will see a list of all advertisers and their banners. You have the option to mark the check box by a few, and then click the blue button that says "Reject Checked Ads." Or you can mark the check box by a few and click the blue button that says "Allow Checked Ads."

You can easily make changes... the directions are given under the blue buttons.

Just as a note, several others have already blogged about this, but Adgitize is making a significant price increase, beginning November 1. Ad prices will jump to $24 a month, which sounds daunting. However, due to the point system by which the funds are distributed, those who click the 50 ads a day will still receive enough compensation to cover the monthly cost of their ads.

Adgitize continues to deliver quality traffic, and real cash payouts. I highly recommend them! Sign up today!

web ad income October 11 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.14 Adgitize $.55 Project Wonderful $.05 Chitika $.16 ______________________ Total: $.90

I Think It's "Goodbye Shareapic"

 
Well, just a few days ago, Shareapic had a major database burp and lost a lot of pictures. This included ALL of mine. Their solution is for the owner to upload them all again. Of course, this will result in different URLs for the pictures, so I would have to go back and change every single link to those pictures.

Coupled with the difficulty in organizing folders, the pop-up ads, and the scantily clad girls (not quite porn), I think that I am all done with them.

John, at English Wilderness, showed me how he is hosting his own pictures, and including ads. I think that I will begin setting up something similar. It will be easier to do (I have no trouble with the coding). I can organize my pictures better, and hopefully will make a few pennies. I was only making about a penny a day at Shareapic.

So I will lose my 50 cents I have banked there. Whoopie-doo. But I've spent a lot of time making that half dollar that I'll never actually have. A lesson learned, I guess.

Shareapic Temporarily Suspends Payments

web ad income October 10 (4 blogs, 2 web sites, writing): Adsense $.11 Adgitize $.61 Project Wonderful $.03 Clixsense $.13 Chitika $.03 ______________________ Total: $.91

 
 

web income Sept actually cashed out (4 blogs, 2 web sites, other writing): Adgitize (income - ad cost) $8.87 Private Ad sales $55.00 Textbroker $39.40 Shared Reviews $45.45 Associated Content $2.58 ______________________ Total: $151.30