Urbanread - a review

I came across a new passive earning tool for bloggers today. Urbanread supplies code for your website which displays a new items. When your visitor clicks on the news they are directed to an Urbanread page with the news details. There is Google Adsense also included on this news page and the Adsense earnings from this page go into your Adsense account.
Minimum signup requirements are a blog with an Adsense account already in place, you submit your blog and Adsense ID, paste the code into your blog and away you go…even more potential passive earnings.
Once you have registered and activated your account, a single click eliminates the need to paste the code if you are using blogger.com, Urbanread will complete this step for you from within your blogger ‘dashboard’.

Pass the Pen Game

Here's something new, a community building exercise from Matt Jones. Matt received a John Chow pen along with some other goodies and wants to send it around the world. I now have the pen (see photograph) and am looking for the next person to pass it on to...
Read the instructions below and take a look at Matts' blog. If you want to take part, email me with your details.




1. The first person to comment on this post requesting that the pen be sent to them will be sent the pen! To be sent the pen you must have a blog and be a fan of John Chow. You must comment so everyone else can see, but email your:
Name:
Address: (remember to include your country!)
PostCode:
Blog address:
to the current pen holder so they can send the pen to you, and to Matt: mattjones@affiliatescamguide.com (Matt started the game)

2. When you receive the pen, take a photo of it and smack it on your blog! Copy and Paste this exact list of instructions on your blog (numbers 1-4), with Matts email address included.

3. Shoot Matt a quick email including a link to your post. He will then write a follow up post, including your site your name and your county, and we will be able to see where the pen has been! If you copy it to the current ‘pen-holder’ they may follow up on the story as well.

4. Matt will then continue to write a follow up post for every person the pen visits, until we have a list of different countries where the pen has been! If you took part in The official John Chow Fans - Pass the Pen Game feel free to write a follow up post as well about where the pen has been.
What’s the point?Firstly you will get several links from Matt, because each follow up post He writes will include you. That is not really the aim of the game though, it is community building and is a bit of fun. Who knows where the pen will end up! You may think there is a risk here, after all someone could ruin the fun and just keep hold of the pen. This would result in bad press for them and it's hardly worth anything, its a biro!

So who wants to play Pass the pen?

Too tired to blog!

I am aware that I have not blogged as often as I would have liked lately. It just seems like life is so busy. I have been away working for a couple of days (my ‘real’ work) and plan to do some work on my website although I have no idea when I can make time to do it. There are plenty of tasks lining up and time seems so short. While I was away, the ‘John Chow’ pen arrived – I am taking part in the ‘pass the pen’ game of which, more later….this will no doubt, be the subject of the very next post.
I have more ‘paid to blog’ avenues to explore and report on, so I am going to have to do some serious investigation on that front. I also have more reviews to get done for OurBlogReview. Right now I need to sleep, but am waiting for the soccer highlights on the TV, oh well, as the old saying goes ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead!’

The Prize Blog

Everybody likes free competitions, and ThePrizeBlog searches the internet to bring them to you. The problem with competitions on TV or in a magazine or on TV is that you have to send a text or post your answer which costs money and takes time.

ThePrizeBlog searches free prize competitions for you so you don’t have to even leave your seat… These competitions are in the main for US applicants, and you will have to record your full contact details for most of the competitions.

The site has a neat layout and is easy to follow. You don’t have to wade through personal observations, this blog is just geared towards competitions. The site includes all the elements of a website, (contact details, FAQ, hints and tips etc..) there are even some free tools to help you with your competition entries. If you are US based and you like free stuff, give it a whirl…

Bad Language?

I left a comment on Rob’s TheHotDogTruck blog the other day, and it started a thread of thought which has led to this post. Now Rob is American and I am British, and making contact across continents is good for everyone and the internet is the best way to do it (if you can’t afford to become a frequent flyer). There is a ‘but’ here though…similar though our culture and language is, there are some vital differences. This got me round to thinking about a discussion I had in MyLot with a multi-lingual Italian (Luigi) – He was asking about slang expressions and the one I used on Rob’s blog is a brilliant example.
I told Rob he should name his new Hot Dog, the “Mutts’ Nuts”. OK it rhymes, but what’s the story…Now I am not completely sure I have got all the facts straight and it MAY be just a popular myth, but the story is certainly worth telling:
Some years ago, the makers or Meccano or Lego or some such toy, introduced a special set called the ‘Boxed Deluxe’. Now some wag with a penchant for Spoonerisms (prof Spooner was the guy who used to get his mords wuddled up) starting calling it the Dog’s Bollocks (apologies for the crudity to those who understand it - Bollocks is a quaint British expression meaning testicles…). Boxed Deluxe.... to Doxed Beluxe...to Dogs Bollocks, you get the idea?? From then on the Dogs Bollocks began to be used to indicate that something was top of the range…
More recently the phrase has transformed into the less crude Mutts (Dogs) Nuts (another quaint expression for testicles). So now you may know something new, for the British readers, the origin of a much-loved expression – for the non-British a unique insight into the living English language (and no doubt surprise regarding just how many quaint expressions the British can come up with to describe their genitals).
Apologies all round, I really am not given to publishing crudeness, but I hope you agree that the story justifies the use of bad language. So to Rob, I was trying to indicate that your Hot dog was indeed a top of the range item (Oh no...do I have to now go and find out where 'top of the range' came from...??)
Oh I remember the rest of the story now…. The OTHER boxed set that came out the same time as the Boxed deluxe, was the BOXED STANDARD – this then got mutated into the expression we now use to indicate something very ordinary and not at all special: BOG STANDARD…..

90 day count

The end of this month will bring with it an indication of the initial earnings of Munny4Hunny - now don't expect anything spectacular.... It has proved relatively hard to get earnings off the ground, but I am going to include the Mylot earnings as a one-off. I say this because I won't be attempting to earn any more on that particular forum, due to the low 'yield-to-work-rate ratio'...
The real earning potential cannot be accessed straight away as higher-yielding programmes like Payperpost require a blog to be up and running for 90 days - I am at around 64 days and still going strong, I hope I meet the rest of the criteria when the magic day arrives..! At the end of March I will place something in the sidebar indicating amounts earned and amounts actually cashed out. Only Creamaid offers an instant payout, so cashed out earnings can be counted on one hand, actually on two fingers.... I have been back to Creamaid only to find that all the campaigns they are running are fully subscribed - leaving me no chance to boost my earnings today. I have switched advertisers today, though. I noticed that Adsense frequently displayed only adverts for insurance - I have one paid to post entry for insurance, but this is hardly major content on my site, so I decided to dump them and try Bidvertiser - I'll let you know how I get on with them... One BIG advantage is that they will pay you via Paypal and will payout at $10 instead of waiting for the $100 mark to rack up (like at Adsense)

TheHotDogTruck.com

Every so often you come across a site that you want to share with everyone, well today it was The Hot Dog Truck… Rob owns a Hot Dog Truck and loves to talk about Hot Dogs… This is not his only subject matter though, interspersed with the Hot Dog Data are general observations all written in Robs distinctive style. Please pay this blog a visit to cheer up your day… Why not leave a comment (Oh, and if you’re a Yankees supporter – err… don’t bother…)

Is it possible to make money online?

When I first saw this question in a forum, it was actually phrased more like ‘Can I make lots of money online?’, and I guess the important question for a lot of people is ‘Can I make a living’, or more often: ‘Can I make a decent second income?’. My first reaction to the question of whether there was money simply waiting to be made online was ‘Surely not!’ I went on to say that if you wanted to make decent amounts online, you would have to really work hard at it. In the main, I think that this answer still stands up, but I am coming to the conclusion (I am one of those who has to see it work, before I will advocate it..) that actually there IS money to be made, and PAID TO BLOG is one of those opportunities. If you live in a place where the USD is very strong currency, and incomes are relatively low, then you probably can make a relatively decent income online, and if you live in the West, you may be able to make a small second income without devoting ALL your spare time…
I retain the view that if you want to make a legitimate living online, you will probably need to put at least as much effort into it as you would in a regular job, and I suspect that in reality, you would have to work harder. The upside is that if you do the groundwork, you may be able to establish a base that provides an income from less effort as you get better at it. The reality is though, if you have that sort of energy, you will be spurred on to achieve more and if spending more time with the kids was the plan, you might be better off with a 9 to 5.
How is the money made then? Simply by making a website that is very attractive to a lot of internet users and cashing in on it’s popularity… It IS that simple, but getting to the pinnacle of popularity is very hard work and you really need to know how the internet really works. In the recent past a site (at least in the UK) offering mobile phone (cell-phone) ring-tones would be the type of thing that would attract a lot of attention for example. At the moment, a blog well-placed in the blogging community can achieve phenomenal traffic – and can be put together for free!
How do you make money from your traffic? Tip: It’s all about advertising – there are several schemes on the internet that will offer you cash for hosting their adverts (Google Adsense, Ad-brite etc…), and there are schemes who will pay you fixed amounts for you to write an entry in your blog which promotes or at least mentions their product or service - this is PAID TO BLOG (payperpost, blogsvertise, creamaid etc...). One other legitimate way to raise revenue that may be worth considering once your site is up and running, is the selling of ‘e-books’. There are loads of e-books out on the web, these are basically home-produced documents in electronic format. If you have some good ideas that you think might be useful to someone, you can write it up on your PC in MS WORD, convert it into an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) document and offer it for sale again and again and again…The easiest way to do this would be through a pay-pal account accessed directly from your website, you can charge whatever you think the market will allow or you could offer them for sale or auction on e-bay.
Getting your site to be popular is the Holy Grail of internet activity, proving to be a moving target as Google and other search engines develop their search-bots to constantly prevent you from developing a formula which guarantees popularity. The best way remains developing networks and gathering ‘votes’ in the form of visitors and links to your site – all very time-consuming, but once you have it, the opportunities for your ‘non-active’ money-spinners (ie. stuff that doesn’t actually take you any time or effort to speak of) such as advertising revenue and e-book sales takes off…
In conclusion then – Can you make big bucks online? Yes if you are prepared to put the effort in – the majority of us will make do with the ‘pocket money’ earnings that are far easier to achieve.

John Chow

What can you write about John Chow that hasn’t already been written? Probably nothing as he has been actively encouraging bloggers to link to and review his blog since December 2006 in return for a valuable reciprocal link from his highly-rated blog. As I write, the 400th link is looming and at a rate of probably more than 200 words per review, I make that at least 80,000 words of review written this year…
As you browse around the blogging community, particularly if you are looking to make money online, references to this blog will bob to the surface left right and centre. John has lots of great ideas and tips for helping you to make money online, promoting your blog and getting the most out of money-making schemes. He is in the enviable position of being able to actually make a living from his internet activities alone, and I figure he’s not the only one who wants to achieve that!
John intersperses posts with entertaining YouTube videos, so there is always something to look at even if you are just looking to be amused. There is lots of interesting stuff on cars and fine dining etc. I was particularly intrigued with the lobster dish:

Update of paid to blog activity

It has taken a little longer than anticipated, but Munny 4 Hunny is finally doing what it should ie. earning (small amounts of) money from paid-to-post programmes. Currently money has been earned from MyLot, Blogsvertise and Creamaid. At the end of this month I will post details of actual earnings and proposed earnings (drawing a distinction between cash amounts I have ‘qualified’ for and actual cash paid into an account).
I am using the following principles:

To pursue the best available earnings from paid to blog programmes
I will not pay for any services (including web-hosting) therefore any revenue can be considered ‘profit’
I will not promote anything that is morally questionable

I don’t really expect to make anything other than ‘pocket money’ from these schemes, but all rewards will be recorded here so that the reader can judge for themselves. I won’t be posting ‘evidence’ of payment in the form of extracts of spreadsheets etc.. I have seen some questionable use of this type of ‘evidence’ and don’t wish to be associated with this practice – If you don’t believe my posts, I have no axe to grind, so it makes no difference to me – I may post the odd referral, but ‘paid to blog’ and honest reporting of activity in this field will remain the mainstay and focus of this blog site.

Creamaid - paid to blog service

The latest scheme I have tried out is Creamaid, this scheme differs from most other paid to blog programmes. Their ‘offers’ are called ‘conversations’, and you take part in a conversation by locating one in a blog, or visiting their homepage. It is remarkably simple to take part in this scheme with no necessity to have your blog approved. Payouts are on the low side, you get paid a small ‘royalty’ when your post is accepted, but earnings increase if another blogger participates in the conversation through your post (a bit like a referral). You can choose the conversations you want to take part in from the Creamaid home page, but I noted that some that appeared to be available turned out to be closed on further investigation.
On the plus side, this scheme is surely the fastest payer on the internet! - money was in my paypal account within hours… One last feature was that on the post that I completed , the advertiser left a personal message of thanks as a comment – Personally, I thought that was a really nice touch.

Winzy ‘Deal or no Deal’ – a review

Winzy is an entirely free site that makes money through sponsored search engine results. Sign up, use their search engine and take part in the competitions to win some great prizes. They have launched a new promotion called Deal or no Deal, a ‘just for fun’ game designed to demonstrate the fun you can have with Winzy.
You can play the ‘Deal or no Deal’ game and sign up for the Winzy search engine by following the links here or visiting http://www.winzy.com/deal-or-no-deal.html
Winzy.com have given away thousands of prizes already including ipods, Wii’s, Xboxes, gift certificates and cash – don’t miss out. Try out the just for fun game, then follow the links to find out how you can start to win prizes.

AGLOCO - a review

It is a fact that revenue is always earned by someone, somewhere, when YOU browse the internet. What AGLOCO propose is that they can return some of that cash to YOU for browsing and searching. Question: What is required? Answer: A very quick sign-up and a download of the AGLOCO Viewbar software. Question: How do I earn? Answer: By using the search facility, Responding to adverts, Online transactions, and basically just doing what you would normally do online anyway!!

Blogsvertise update

I logged on to my blogsvertise account to find that another 'offer' from blogsvertise arrived yesterday, I duly submitted my post and had it accepted (post on dating site below). This one should yeild $4 in the fullness of time (ie. in a month), my first payment from blogvertise is due on 7th April - marking the first fruits of Munny 4 Hunny...

JustSayHi - a review

Better than Yahoo Personals ? That's the claim, you decide! - it's Free Free Free and you can't say fairer than that... I am not that familiar with other dating sites, but my first impression of JustSayHi.com is that it is really easy to use, and oh yeah, and it's free...
Simply use the drop-down menus to select your desired date profile and you are taken straight to the 60 second sign-up page (which I am willing to guess only takes about a minute to complete!). Navigation is simple on this well-thought out site.
Newest members have profiles displayed on the homepage complete with photos and a short comment along with an indication of whether they are currently online or not. You can click on the profiles to learn more whether you are registered or not, so you can browse before you sign up. Having said that, it's free to sign up - no credit card details required so why don't you pay JustSayHi.com a visit today.

JA KEL DAILY DOT COM

Jason has an engaging style that makes you want to read his posts from beginning to end. He is frank and realistic about his aims to make money and blog achievements (apart from the Ferrari on the header!). His style is compelling and he deals with his subject matter in an intelligent manner – I wish I had more time, but I’ve got four more reviews to complete! Jason also does speed reviews for blog sites, on an exchange basis. I would thoroughly recommend a visit to this site to see what Jason is all about.

http://jakeldaily.com/

Making Money..

There are plenty of websites dedicated to making money online and most of them can teach you something you didn't know. I came across this one today: How to earn money blogging . Daryls' blog is well-constructed, evidence of the fact that this is one of a number of sites that he hosts.

This is a very active, busy site with lots of interactive linking to blogging communities and other similar blogs (like this one). Why not pay it a visit and see for yourself.

I will be posting a number of blog site reviews on munny4hunny fairly shortly, so please come back for more information on sites worth visiting (actually I can't guarantee at this point they they WILL be worth visiting, so come back to find out if they were!!)

Blogsvertise - paid to blog

At last! Accepted by a paid-to-blog programme and first one posted… I saw that a fellow-blogger had posted about ‘blogsvertise’. I visited their website at:
http://www.blogsvertise.com and can state that everything was very simple. I registered and submitted my site for assessment. I had a confirmation email, then visited the site a few days later and logged in to discover that my blog was acceptable – first hurdle then. I was not sure what should happen next and thought maybe I would receive instructions vie email. I had no subsequent emails, so I logged back into the site out of curiosity and clicked here and there until I discovered that there was an ‘offer’ sitting there to blog about an insurance company – second hurdle cleared. I submitted about 180 words including three URL links in three paragraphs (see below). I then went to my blogsvertise account and accepted the offer, submitting my blog to see whether my post would be acceptable. I checked back a couple of hours later to see that the ‘offer’ had gone, and when I chose ‘offers accepted ‘ from a menu, the insurance offer popped up, thus showing my post had been successful and I was up and running with my first $5 in the kitty – third hurdle cleared...
I have to say the entire process was very easy once I could see how my account page on the blogsvertise website worked. I haven’t worked out how or when payment will actually take place or how long it will be before I get another ‘offer’, but watch this space….

Insuranceportalonline.com – a review

Insurance is a necessary evil, and in the modern world, insurance underpins everything we do. Most insurers now offer a service to cover all your needs from one provider. One such can be found at: http://www.insuranceportalonline.com . I have long been of the opinion that brokers offer better deals than the big insurance companies, and now the world-wide-web has plenty of brokers offering across-the-board solutions.

Insuranceportalonline have developed their website at: http://www.insuranceportalonline.com in a way that makes it easy to apply for a quote. There are three basic areas of insurance on offer: Life insurance, Auto insurance and Home insurance, three large buttons guide you to the relevant quote application pages. You are taken step-by-step through the application process - nothing could be simpler. The life insurance section is particularly easy to use with minimal amount of information needing to be entered to get a list of insurance providers and premiums.

Insuranceportalonline are a small company operating throughout the United States and promising the lowest rates on all types of insurance. Why not give them a try at: http://www.insuranceportalonline.com

Review your Blog

Tip: It seems like there is still stuff to write about even while I am waiting to start the paid to blog programs. I wandered across a blog the other day which offers to review your blog and offers reciprocal links. Now if you read the stuff on http://www.livewyre.blogspot.com about reciprocal links you will know how valuable they are...
Take a trip to http://ourblogreview.com to register your blog by email, and you can join the list to have your blog reviewed for free. Of course, in the spirit of reciprocal links, you will place a link back to Ourblogreview on your own blog - Eveyone's a winner!! The founder of the site is Greg Stratz, you can visit his site at: http://gregstratz.blogspot.com , Greg is looking to make money on the internet, and I guess if you are here, you are too...!
Of course if you want a link from this blog and are willing to reciprocate, please email me: jay.bee@iname.com