1200 and counting

I have just posted my 1200th post on Munny4Hunny which seems like quite a lot even in 5 years. This is the most prolific of my blogs, so no surprise that it has many more posts than my others, still 1200 is quite a lot... Things have changed over the years, and in the main, potential earnings have slowed down.
Paid posting has changed since the days when Pay Per Post were the 'Daddy' and hours were spent trawling for opportunities on a daily basis to find the 'fattest' opps. Google has responded especially to viral linking which enabled bloggers to 'game' technorati links. Inevitably, like the dot-com's, the bubble burst but we have not been left completely without opps.

It used to be quite acceptable to mention the paid to blog companies alongside the paid posts, but with paid posting becoming increasingly twitchy about upsetting Google, this is no longer encouraged - making it diffcult to discuss paid blogging on a blog that actually includes paid posts.

There remains the question over whether Google should be so picky about paid posting when it has it's own 'Adsense' scheme for companies to advertise themselves on web-sites and blogs, but that's an argument I have examined a few times, and I'm not one of the 'Google bashers'who believes they are harbingers of evil, but I do beleive their stance is somewhat contradtictory and slightly monopolistic. Nevertheless I continue to be paid for Adsense and other adverts, so I continue to be happy for everything to carry on as it is... They also own blogspot and allow us to use it for free, so it's all good...

What consitutes a good paid post?

It's all very well seeing paid posts as a means to generating income, but how can we generate income through paid posting, and do a worthwhile job of it too?
Today I am going to share some rules, and some hints (after all I have been doing this for three years now, I should either be getting good at it, or thinking about jacking it in!).

1. Rule number one is to read the requirements carefully, if it says three links, use three links. If you should be using anchor links, then make sure the anchors and the links are exactly as stated.
2. Rule number two is to write well, use good grammar and make sure you use a spell-check, you can get away with lousy posts in some cases because they are only looking for a link, but you will stand a better chance of being offered 'work' if you can demonstrate that you do a good job.
3. In a lot of cases, you don't need to even promote the product or service, they are only looking for an anchor link, you are free to express yourself so keep it real... There are some occasions when you will struggle to come up with an angle, but give it some thought and eventually you will probably come up with something that works and hopefully doesn't look out of place on your blog.
4. Use pictures where you can as long as the advertiser does not mind, in most cases, they will encourage you to use graphics and logos from their own website, as long as you are using your own words.

If you feel a bit of a cheat writing posts like this, then I came to terms with it this way: A paid blogger is like an actor doing a commercial voice-over, you are just giving life to someone else's sentiments, and you should do it in the best way that you can.

Can you earn anything with a Blog?

It's a question that I see often, from both complete novices and also from those who have been blogging for a while but not thought about how to start monetising a blog. I just answered a question like this on a forum and that prompted me to think about monetisation.
I came up with three basic ways of monetising a blog:
1) Paid posts - the main focus of Munny4Hunny.com - the reason I started the blog was that I heard that you could make money with paid blogging and I wanted to find out if this were possible. Suffice to say that it is, although the online world has changed sufficiently for it to be less profitable now. Even after the peak of paid blogging, there is still a reasonable amount to be made, enough to buy yourself the odd treat from eBay...
2) Contextual adverts - Adsense is the king of contextual ads, but it could take a very long time to reach payout. In order to be successful with Adsense, you need several sites all displaying relevant adverts that you visitors are likely to click. To make people click, your ads need to be closely related to your content, ie. the ad content must be attractive to your visitors. To make money, you ideally need to be in a niche with a high CPC (cost per click) rate. If you get the combination right, you may reach payout on a monthly basis, but you will probably need several sites to do this.
3) Affilitates - like contextual adverts, these need to be closely related to the subject of your blog or site. Your ideal affiliate will fulfill the needs of many of your visitors. Most affiliates are selling a product, so ideally, this needs to be a product that your visitors will desire - some will play per click, but most pay commission per sale - and it can take a long time to come to fruition, nevertheless when it does, you tend to get a great return for very little effort.

Once your monetisation is in place, you will need to promote your blog - a subject which bears clarification (although I am sure I have addressed it any times before), but I will save my pearls of wisdom in this department for another post....

Paid to blog strategies

With paid to blog schemes changing so quickly, several separate strategies are required to make the most out of paid blogging.
On the one hand quality niche blogs are required to pick up the lucrative higher-paying posts, but it doesn't pay to be too high-brow about your paid posting. If you are setting out to be a paid blogger, then it may well pay to have blogs which can take non-niche type posts for you to top up your earnings. Although it may be satisfying to pick up the occasional higher fee, there are 'bread and butter' opportunities in the paid blogging world which can help to keep the dollars rolling in.
Even if you only get a small amount for a quick undemanding paid post, being able to post several a day means that you will often make more from short 60-word posts than you can from higher paying opportunities which demand 200 or 300 words and which carry all sorts of conditions.

Keep you options open and don't discard lower-paying services if they offer an easy way to pick up extra dollars even if it means distinguishing between your blogs that are going to be 'specalised' and which ones are going to be more 'generalised'.

Your mobile number as an email address

Where your phone number and email address are the same

The people at RedInbox are launching a new idea to combine email addresses and mobile numbers. They are offering a free service to mobile owners comprising a '@redinbox.co.uk' email address that forwards to an existing email account. The email address will be your mobile phone number, making it easier to pass on contact information to friends, family and colleagues. You could simply hand people a card like this:
Both your mobile number AND a valid email address included in one simple line....neat!

Turning your photographs into art

In the age of digital photography, all of us have the opportunity to hone our photographic skills without having to spend a stack of money having films developed and processed. Producing the perfect image is within reach of all amateur photographers. That said, actually printing the images themselves for display is an art in itself and that’s where 'learn to dream' can offer a service. Learn to dream offer a quality printing service for the images that you have taken on your own camera, not just on standard glossy photography paper, but a host of exciting media that you wouldn’t be able to produce at home.

Learn to dream can also transform your photos onto canvas, textured art paper, acrylic blocks, silver finish, parallex or lusion – jump to the website to find out more about these finishes and techniques guaranteed to make your own artwork stand out from the crowd.

If you’re not sure what effect will work for your picture, they also offer a consultation service to ensure that your finished product meets or even exceeds your expectations. In my view, there are a number of reasons for using a service like this. A wedding present, house warming or significant birthday present, or even if you are planning to redecorate and would like to add a personal touch – maybe a favourite holiday snap or much-loved pet.

The website itself is easy to navigate and very well put together with good descriptions for each product choice and some examples for you to peruse. I recently took a family photo that I think would look good as an acrylic block, though I would really like to have it wall-mounted. Using my own printer, I can only manage A4 size, but for a truly stunning visual effect, A0 size (over a metre high) in canvas would be just amazing if only I had the room to mount it…

Shopping Cart solution

One of the things I discovered very soon after developing my own website, was that it is very difficult to be the marketing man, the webmaster, the site designer and planner all at the same time, never mind doing any ‘work’ as such.

In my experience anything that appears to be a bit ‘tricky’ just doesn’t get done, one of those tricky tasks would be setting up your site for e-commerce.

If you have been thinking about having a shopping cart on your website, then you don’t have to worry about coding and security if you employ the services of Ashop shopping cart software to do all the tricky stuff for you. No knowledge of HTML or coding is required, and you can pay for the service on an affordable monthly basis.

Not only will you get the front-end shopping cart, but also full sales reporting and marketing tools included in the package. Ashop even host the shopping cart on their own servers with full back-up and guaranteed uptime.

I was particularly taken with the video tutorials that can be seen on their website, they also have some demo websites that you can browse through to see how your site might look. Full technical telephone support is included and the software will even integrate with all major banks and courier services covering every angle and giving you complete peace of mind.

Stainless Steel Cabinets from the Car Guy

I was browsing a friends blog the other day when I came across an article about products from Car Guy Garage - this site has the coolest stainless steel cabinets I have ever seen, I honestly spent about 15 minutes browsing through the pictures and imagining where I could use these cabinets if I had some.
The obvious home for these would be in a nice big garage (if I had one) and they would certainly look the part in a professional garage. When I started thinking about the possible uses, it struck me that you could make a very hard-wearing kitchen from these products, and how fantastic would they look in your home office, or even in a really avant garde boardroom where you wanted to make a statement. I have to admit that we are basically talking 'boys toys' here and it might take some persuading to get anyone else in the house to agree with me, but we can dream and drool can't we??
The one I have posted at the top here is called 'diamond plate garage cabinet' and looks just incredible, but then how about the one below for an office environment? This is high quality heavy-gauge equipment too, not the sort of thing that will wear out in a hurry. So if you buy some, make sure you really like it, because I don't think it's a short-term investment....
One other touch I thought was really nice, is that they have a range of light switch covers and socket outlet covers to make the steel cabinets. Pay Car Guy Garage a visit and let your imagination run wild...

Portable DVD player

One of the newer innovations for in-car entertainment has been the introduction of the portable DVD player. In the days of video, it would have been unthinkable to watch a movie on a long car journey – such luxuries were reserved for long-haul flights!

Nowadays it is not unusual to find that you are travelling alongside a car on the motorway where the occupants of the rear seats are watching a movie or cartoon or some such visual entertainment. On night-time journeys, it is now quite common to see flickering screens from all directions emitting from various vehicles fitted with in-car entertainment. Of course the entertainment is not limited to passive viewing, as there are many interactive and educational DVD’s that can be watched on a portable DVD system. Similarly, the entertainment is not limited to in-car as such a system could be used in a caravan, holiday home or picnic.

These systems though originally expensive, like any technology, have now reached ‘affordable’ status for many people – one such system is the portable 10 inch DVD player on offer from Digitalframez. Typically, such units include rechargeable batteries, connections for your car battery and remote control.

Paid to blog at SMORTY.COM

Visitors to this blog will probably be familiar with the concept of paid to blog services. There are a range of different companies that offer opportunities to bloggers for payment to post about a specific topic. The topics can range from a dating service to a travel website, a piece of software or anything that their advertisers request.
The best opportunities are those that fall within the general topics which are usually covered by your blog. For example, a blog that is aimed at new technology may choose topics such as new cell phones, PC games, or any other gadget that might have a blogging opportunity. Other blogs may post on a variety of topics without specific focus, opportunities are available for either type of blog.
One of the newer services available is a website called Smorty.com, it usually offers opportunities from about $6, bloggers are paid to write opinion posts with links back to advertisers sites.
If you are new to the paid to blog community or are looking for a new source of paid to blog opportunities, sign up with Smorty and maximise your earning-potential for blog advertising.

A New Focus

Well, the plan was to move on from doing paid posts as a PR2 blogger, get a new improved pagerank to experience paid blogging at a higher level.... Google had different ideas and dropped me a pagerank!! to PR1. I am guessing the phenomenal success of the viral linking flagged me up on the radar as a non-organic linker. I was not sure how to react to this set-back for a while, but I have found that there are still PPP opps for me, and I seem to be lucky enough to land some of them now.... So the new quest will be to experience paid blogging with PR1.
I have the 'values' of a PR3 paid-post blogger in that I won't jump at a $5 opp, I won't do gambling, 'enhancement' surgery or even dating sites any more - let's see what there is out there for a PR1 blogger with a sense of pride more befitting of a blogger above his lowly station!

Clearing Vacancies At Bedford Uni

University of Bedfordshire - Clearing 2007
From Thursday August 16th until the 21st of September 2007 the University of Bedfordshire will be recruiting students onto their array of courses via the Clearing process. The Clearing process is used by students who did not attain the grades for their first-choice university courses, and by those who have applied after offers have been made. Clearing 2007 begins after results have been received and time is of the essence as this new University is experiencing vastly increased demand in applications this year.
The University of Bedfordshire’s Clearing team will be on standby to offer support and advice to get you onto a course that’s right for you.
The University has 34 departments offering a wide range of courses as diverse as Performance Arts, Study of crime, Sports & exercise, Business School, Computing and Accountancy & Finance among them.

A recent £60m redevelopment programme enables students at the Luton and Bedford campuses to take advantage of prestigious state-of-the-art facilities.


The UCAS Institution Code for the University of Bedfordshire is B22.

Jobs search engine launch

New jobs search engine launched today.
JumptoJobs.co.uk the search engine for jobs utilises pay per click technology in a search engine for recruiters looking for that perfect employee.
The service will be open to HR departments and recruitment agencies alike, each recruiter will be able to manage their own budget and will only be paying for results (either for clicks or per application). A perfect platform for recruiters and job-seekers alike.

Press Release:

JumptoJobs.co.uk

JumptoJobs.co.uk today announced the launch of their innovative search engine for jobs. Their system allows job-boards, recruitment agencies and corporate HR departments to easily deliver very targeted jobseeker traffic to their websites.

The system requires no administration from the recruiter’s because the jobs are indexed from their current location on the internet, JumptoJobs.co.uk simply makes it possible for jobseekers to find the jobs more quickly and easily.

Recruiters have the option to pay per click or pay per application. In each case they can guarantee that they are only paying for results delivered. This removes the risk element usually associated with recruitment advertising where recruiters have to pay for the advertising whether applications are delivered or not.

Pay per click and pay per application are revolutionising recruitment advertising in the same way that they have revolutionised many other types of online advertising through Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other major online advertising media.

JumpToJobs.co.uk’s fanatical account management team will do all of the technical work for the recruiter and absolutely no technical expertise are required to use the system. Comprehensive statistical reports are frequently emailed to the recruiter so that they can easily monitor the success of their campaigns.

Emailed Job alerts and RSS feeds allow Jobseekers to monitor a large number of recruitment websites for all new jobs that match their criteria. This system also offers recruiters an additional advertising opportunity.

www.jumptojobs.co.uk

JumptoJobs.co.uk is a new product by saongroup.com. saongroup.com have more than 10 years experience in online recruitment. The group has job boards in UK, Ireland, China, The Middle East, The Caribbean and India.

www.saongroup.com

Introducing....'Dr G'

Allen Gustafson, MD is an Orthopaedic Surgeon Specializing in Total Joint Replacement

Dr. Gustafson developed his passion for orthopedic medicine while serving in the United States Air Force, and has since become a respected and world-renowned expert in total joint replacement (TJR) and reconstruction.

Dr. Gustafson whilst renowned for his experience, skill, and accomplishments in
knee replacement and reconstruction, is known as "Dr. G" by his staff and patients. He is best known to his patients for his caring style and sense of humor. He prides himself on getting to know every patient personally so that he can fully understand their individual needs.
The Gustafson Orthopaedic Facility provides:

• Thorough evaluation and accurate diagnosis of joint pain

• Effective treatment recommendations

• Patient education resources

• Expert surgical intervention, if needed

• A complete recovery program

Dr. Gustafson specializes in joint replacement and the web site is full of information about this type of surgery, along with other related information including down-loadable information about Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis.

July 2007 earnings

Paid posts were remarkable only by their absence this month - why was that?
Well, PPP opps were few and far between, the juicy ones are being snapped up too quickly at PR2 level. The opps that were available just didn't appeal to me - maybe I am getting picky?
I'm no longer prepared to do a dating advert for $5, so my standards must have risen, however my Paypal balance hasn't. Actually, it has ($70.69) but mostly through payments coming through for last months work... I did a couple of surveys and gained a few cents from advertising. The total earned this month was just $28.26 - shocking in comparison to my May total of $187, and even lower than the $62.28 I earned in June. I am really waiting for a better pagerank for better PPP opps - today I took a look at the kind of opps I could do if I had a better pagerank, and I think I could be motivated to partake in more paid posts if this dream is realised...roll on the new pagerank. I need to rise out of the ranks of the PR2 bloggers - no disrespect...
I wonder if I could make more by taking part in competitions, hopefully this month I will find out!

Microsoft MGX Conference

For the best accommodation for your stay in Orlando, look no further than the International Plaza Resort and Spa which is not only within walking distance of the convention centre, but is also offering a Microsoft MGX Special Rate .
Relax in the plush surroundings and take advantage of the facilities on offer during your stay. This resort boasts palm-tree-line swimming pools, lagoon with a waterfall feature and two children's pools. You will be able to relax in a hot-tub, play miniature golf and dine in a variety of venues. If you are looking to entertain clients, there are conference and business or even banqueting facilities available. For those who like to be on the go, there is a wide variety of equipment in the spacious fitness suite. As the name suggests the Spa is very popular with guests, here you can be pampered and spoiled with a massage, a facial, a chemical peel or a host of other delights on offer...
The special rates on offer include all the standard facilities of this high standard establishment including free wireless access throughout, complimentary transportation to all the major theme parks and easy access to a host of restaurants and all the famous attractions of International Drive. All this for a special price of $119 per night if you book using the code on the Microsoft MGX Special Rate page.

My Fitness Pal - free dieting site

MyFitnessPal is a diet site with a difference - there are no costs involved - it’s FREE! There is a section on foods and their attributes –this section has a database of different foods and can report on fat content, calories etc…

There’s a section on calories used during exercise – again a database of exercises and a place to enter your weight and the duration of the exercise.

A bulletin board so that you can get involved in their community, post comments and questions for like-minded individuals.

I am not one to be that interested in dieting, but out of curiosity I did look to see how many calories I burned playing football last night (680 apparently…) and how many calories were in the chocolate I ate afterwards (1070…ooops). If I was actually on a diet and used the calorie counter, I could have found out that information BEFORE eating the chocolate.

When you register, you can track your diet, your exercise and your weight count to get an overall picture of your progress. They also have a free newsletter you can sign up for which delivers dieting hints and information straight into your inbox.

I am a firm believer that exercise is an important factor in dieting, so was very pleased to see such importance placed on calorie-burning activities.

Hot Gossip!

If the latest news about Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake is what floats your boat, then get the latest celebrity gossip over at CelebrityGossip.com
The site is split into three main sections

• Hot - where the hottest stories are placed
• Latest - where the newest stories are to be found
• Celebrity - where there as an extensive list of almost every celebrity that you can imagine

I personally don't have a lot of time for the latest antics of Paris Hilton, but I spent a little while browsing through the Celebrity section which actually reads like a real Who's who... there were people here that I hadn't heard of so I looked them up - such as Jane Goodall, the woman who discovered that chimpanzees use tools! and a Bollywood actress Amisha Patel...

The Celebrity section alone would make a useful reference tool giving a decent amount of factual information about all the featured individuals. If however, you prefer to read the dirt being dragged up on your favourite celebrity or want to read the somewhat unkind commentary provided by the editor, then point your browser in the direction of www.celebritygossip.com and read away to your heart's content. You can register on the site, leave your own comments on the stories and rate them out of 10 - average scores are displayed next to the stories.

Free e-cards for pet-lovers

Big Paw Designs have been offering products and services to the pet-loving community for 5 years now, and have just launched their latest service.
Free e-cards are a popular way to send your greetings around the world via email. The people at Big Paw Designs have developed a new service for pet-lovers. Send free e-cards to your pet-loving friends and you can even have your own pets featured in the cards.There are options for humour, breed specific and rescue-pets, upload your own pet-photos and you may earn yourself a shopping coupon code.
Email ecard@bigpawdesigns.com with your pet photos.

Digital photo frames from Digitalframez.com

The digital photo frame is here… and will revolutionise the way we view digital imaging in the future.
The photography market has changed out of all recognition in the last decade or so, with the prevalence of digital imaging, camera-phones and associated technology. There have been many advances in photo technology over the years since the introduction of the first ever camera, but none quite so revolutionary as the digitisation of the market. Who, even a few years ago, would have thought that you would be able to stroll around with your digital camera or camera-phone, take hundreds of pictures in one go, and then in minutes, have them displayed on a digital frame on your desk or wall. With almost every household having a digital imaging device, digital picture frames from DigitalFramez.com make a great gift and are the perfect way to display your favourite digital images and movies.