Had a nice surprise of free stuff from Marketleverage.com the other day. Here’s a little thank you vid:

So, in total I got

- One hat

- Two t-shirts

- A Flip Video Camera with Tripod and case

- A 2gb USB Pen

So… Class.

Anyway, as I said in the video - I’ve sold this blog now so this is officially my last post here. Thought I’d end on a good note. I will be handing the blog over to the new owner right after this post so please welcome him

I will however be making 15 more posts before I finally leave you… But it will be under a new owner from now.

Thanks to all my readers who have stuck with the blog from the start or anyone who likes the content here.

Nick Sullivan.

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Ooops!

Get well soon DP.

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Always is the case that whenever I’m trying to be productive online / on my computer by doing stuff like trying to; Finish up an old website, add new content, write a post, design a banner… whatever; That I can’t help but immediately get distracted. A lot!

This is a bit frustrating because I tend to start something, complete an iota of it, minimize it for a second then find myself in the same place 4 hours later. It’s a cycle habit that I really need to break.

I’ve got about 8 posts in draft at the moment. Most half finished or just started, this is because I start writing then someone will start a conversation on MSN or I’ll just veer off into a world of disaullisioned, pointless inactivity.

Below I’ve listed the source of 90% of my main distractions when trying to work. Or more presicely, the top 5 distraction sources that result in inactivity on my part. I’ve given each one a distraction rating out of 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.

MSN Messenger

Everybody knows MSN and any type of instant messenger / AIM is very distracting. Unless you’re a complete sociopath.

I don’t chat on MSN that much but if I’m doing work, somebody who starts a conversation almost, provides me with an excuse to not do what I’m focusing on. And for some weird reason even though I rarely talk about anything worth talking about on MSN, I can’t seem to bring myself to sign out!

But, MSN does just get tedious after a little while, I can quite happily just ignore someone whilst doing something very important. I might just stop MSN from starting up when my computer boots up though so that I don’t even think about it and get on with things.

Distraction rating - 4/10.

Google News

Pretty much the only real resource for news you need. Google nicely condense any news worth mentioning into categories and usually only publish interesting news. Unless of course you want real industry specific news, whereby there are better resources for certain topics.

I find Google News a strange distraction though; Even after I’ve read all the news I want to read, I can’t seem to be bothered to avert my eyes from the page, contiously scrolling up and down, reading the same articles, jumping different categories. It’s quite distracting.

Again though, like MSN, there is a limit to it’s distractiveness, after a while you will bore yourself stupid and should be able to stay off the news pages for a while.

Distraction rating - 6/10.

Wikipedia

Now, I’m not being funny, but I can literally waste hours reading various Wikipedia articles. I’m not an avid reader, I like to read interesting articles now and then but I don’t lose my time in blogs or books. But my God, Wikipeida is like a fisherman with a rod, I’m the fish!

I can start reading an article about someone interesting just for the sake of it. Such as… Richard Dawkins for example and then just get sucked in for ages jumping from article to article via links in that 1 article.

I have to commend the creator of Wikipedia, it’s a brilliant idea. Purely brilliant. And when you actually think of the idea itself, like; If somebody told me they were going to make an online encyclopedia which anyone could edit and that it would end up as a serious reputable source of information… I’d think they were an idiot.

On the outset, it just doesn’t sound like it can work since you’d naturally assume that given the amount of ill-informed people, bigots and just plain stupid people in the world, anyone could just sneak in irrelvent, mythical or otherwise silly nonsense into credible articles.

This isn’t the case however. I’m always amazed at how accurate Wikipedia is, it’s truly one of the most useful sites on the Internet. Upon mentioning Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist), Even he said he was shocked at how accurate the articles on evolutionary biology are.

I think the Wikipedia owner(s) have done incredibly well and resisted temptation of advertising yet still managed to make some well deserved cash from donations.

Distraction rating - 8/10.

YouTube

One of the most popular, if not THE most popular (after Google) sites on the Internet. And for good reason.

YouTube was the first real pioneer in online video distribution. It wasn’t the first to actually do it, as many think, but it was the first to fully socially embrace video upload on a mass scale and produce; Essentially, one big gigantic TV.

You now of course have plenty of social video sites such as; DailyMotion, Revver and of course the massively popular BBC iPlayer to name a few. But YouTube is still king.

Like Wikipedia and all good sites intended to keep your attention for longer than 10 minutes, YouTube is very well layed out. Constantly improving and keeping visitors for longer with that one absolutely essential method of ’spider webbing’ content.

This isn’t an official term as far as I’m aware although I’m sure likeminded people have used this metaphor; Basically I just mean linking site content to site content, creating a spider web like effect.

I can be watching a video on YouTube and a certain keyword in the title, description or tags will trigger a different set of videos further down in the related videos, to which I’ll click one of and then a keyword there will trigger another set and so on. It can be quite hard to pull yourself away sometimes.

By the way, I’m not talking about regular YouTuber’s videos. I really couldn’t care less what a person who I don’t know or have any interest in happen to do with their day or what they fed their dog.

Essentially, I’m talking about… copyright videos to be honest. TV Shows, interviews with interesting people… It can all get quite addictive. I think I watched 3 1 hour interviews in a row with Quentin Tarantino before.

YouTube can be obsessively distrative if you’re trying to work but don’t quite know what to do next.

Distraction rating - 9/10.

Google Video

I’ve listed Google Video higher than YouTube on the distraction scale not because it’s more popular, as it isn’t, or that it does a better job at ’spider webbing’ content: It doesn’t. But more to the point of the length of the videos.

YouTube still has a limit, you can only upload videos up to 10 minutes in length. Google Video doesn’t limit this, there’s plenty of videos on there well over an hour long.

Because of this I find it even harder to pull myself away because there’s more interesting videos. And of course because YouTube is owned by Google now, Google Video also incoperates YouTube listed videos as part of results as well as the ones actually hosted on Google Video.

Distraction rating of 10 out of 10!

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Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

This is the third and final part of my How to Run a Good Competition post series.

So far I’ve covered the planning and excution of a good competition. Now let’s discuss the aftermath so to speak.

What is a competition aftermath?

To me, the aftermath of a competition is the most crucial part other than the execution. If you don’t handle the aftermath correctly then you stand to lose basically everyone who subscribed just for the competition.

There are a lot of people who will subscribe purely for the chance to win a prize, some who will because they like your blog / content as well and some who do it based on a bit of both factors.

Problem is, a lot of the time, the people who just subscribe purely for the chance to win a prize often only glance your blog to check for competition updates and pay no attention to content.

This is where good execution comes in too. Because these people will be checking all the time to see if they’ve won, this is your chance to win them over, so make sure your content is on top form during the competition as well.

How to handle a competition aftermath

I’ve only held a few competitions on this blog, I think… 3. All 3 have yeilded some nice results and subscriber increases and I’ve managed to keep… I’d say… 80ish % of all subscribers from competitions. Which I don’t think is too bad as a lot of bloggers tend to lose about 60% of all who subscribe for competition purposes.

Anyway, it’s not rocket science to know what to do to keep those subscibers. Just post, a lot. But you need to be on the top of your game, think out unique posts then differenciate you from the norm to keep the not yet loyal subscibers; Loyal.

Other than this, link to the winner’s sites if they have one. They will appreciate the backlink and are much more likely to stick around as I’m sure that Incoming link in their WP-Admin Dashboard will remind them of you.

That’s pretty much it. Not much else to say on this final side subject.

So, that concludes this post series. How to Run a Good Competition.

As I start to make more posts into series as this blog goes on, I’ll put links up to the individual series to make for nice, accessable, easy read content.

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I’m writing this post due to a recent incident on PayPal which I feel was unfair towards me; The seller.

I recently sold a laptop for £500 ($1,000) to someone online, that person sent me the payment via PayPal and then came and picked up the laptop by hand (locally).

Oblivious to thinking this guy might be a scammer, I didn’t think anything of that as he had already sent me the payment so what did it matter.

Anyway, a few days later I saw a dispute on my PayPal account. This wasn’t raised by the ‘buyer’ supposedly but by PayPal themselves. They obviously have some automated systems to detect fraud etc. Now, the dispute was that they thought the payment itself aka the money may have been stolen; Sent from a stolen credit card on a hacked account to be exact.

Understandably PayPal want proof from the seller to prove the item was sent / handed over. Given that I didn’t sell this via eBay or postage this was impossible for me. What proof could I provide that I handed somebody over a laptop… I think this is a little bias from PayPal. To only accept postage tracking as proof is a bit unfair as there are some things that you cannot provide tracking for. For example; Digital items, I have sold digital items in the past and obviously because this is done online, you cannot provide tracking because you haven’t posted anything. Also pickups as in this case.

I can obviously see it from PayPal’s perspective in that they only cover people who sell with recorded delivery of items and do not cover sellers who do pickups or digital items… so they say although I don’t remember reading that. Anyway, even if that is right, I think their system is flawed. Anybody could just buy something off eBay - go pick it up locally and then raise a claim saying they didn’t get the item. And PayPal saying they will investigate is pointless as the ‘buyer’ will always win in that case because it’s impossible for the seller who sold by hand to provide tracking information.

I think they should really take everything into account. For a start, I have been a PayPal member for well over 2 years so surely hundreds of successful transactions back and forth with no complaints should count for something? That itself proves I am legitimate. So if they believe whoever sent me this payment stole that money; Why not go after him? If they can’t find him, that’s their problem, how was I to know this guy stole the money he sent me via their service.

Despite everything, I lost the case (inevitably) and the unfortunate thing is I had already spent the £500 by the time I saw the dispute. So as a resolution PayPal have reversed the payment and given that I have already handed over the laptop to a buyer which is long gone and spent the £500, I’m £500 in debt thanks to someone elses crime and PayPal’s incompetency.

Why should I be punished because somebody else stole money. A scammer with no track record gets a free laptop and no action against him and I get £500 into debt… that’s justice (NOT). That’s like somebody getting mugged on the street; The mugger getting rewarded and the victim getting charged.

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Here I’ve compiled a list of what I think are probably the best 20 blogs in the Make Money Online niche. A very saturated, flooded and sleazy niche at times. But also a very helpful, insightful and interesting niche at times too.

This list isn’t in any paticular oder of consequence, #1 doesn’t mean ‘the best’ it’s just a top 20.

1. ProBlogger

2. Shoemoney

3. John Cow

4. Zac Johnson

5. The University Kid

6. Winning the Web

7. Tyler Cruz

8. Seth Godin

9. Dosh Dosh

10. The Net Fool

11. John Chow

12. Blogging Tips

13. Self Made Minds

14. Retire at 21

15. 45n5

16. Ian Fernando

17. Slyvisions

18. Mixed Market Arts

19. Internet Babel

20. Daily Blog Tips

With all the Make Money Online blogs being produced every single day, you’re spoilt for choice. But there are only so many that I think are really worth dedicating your time to reading. Of course reading anything will expand and widen your horizon to a degree, but these 20 I believe are the best mix of marketing technique, SEO, SEM, Affiliate Marketing and general Internet Marekting blogs out there.

PS. Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Have been quite busy and also only like to post when I feel like I’ve got something saying that’s worth reading as apposed to forcing posts out for the sake of it. I do have some posts lined up though that should make up for the recent lack of content.

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Please note, these are in no particular order of consequence. I think it’s hard to say that this way is better than that way for everyone because monetization can vary from site to site, service to service and blog to blog.

1. Direct Ad Sales

Even though I did say these aren’t in order… I think, if any, this can generally be considered the number 1 way to monetize not just a blog but any site with good traffic. If you have a lot of quality traffic coming from all sorts of relevant places on the web with perfectly targeted spectators; you can demand a lot of money for private advertising.

It’s this independence that makes private advertising so lucrative, giving you the following advantages:

• No middlemen.
• No rules or restrictions on your part. You place ads, wherever, whenever and however you want.
• Quality control. You decide who advertises, not someone else.

No middlemen of course means you get all the profit. You don’t have to give Google or anyone else a cut at your expense. You also get to pinpoint the advertising as if you have a lot of demand from advertisers then you really can pick and choose. It’s a luxury compared to contextual advertising which can sometimes lead to irrelevant or what you deem inappropriate ads.

2. Paid Reviews

I like the idea of reviewing a product or site for cash. You don’t really have to compromise any quality at all. You can pick and choose from your offers and do the reviews you wish to do. Tell your readers about new, quality, unknown products; sites or online services on the rise and get payed for it.

Doing paid reviews can also improve your writing style and perspective too I think. If you’re in the make money online niche and review what you consider a crappy eBook; not only do you get to flex your ability to write from your own opinion and viewpoint as apposed to copying others, you can also improve your perception of your own projects. When you review somebody Else’s site, product or service, you’re generally much more brutal as it’s not yours. As simple as that.

You don’t mind finding something wrong and blatantly pointing it out when it’s someone else.. Yet when you take a look at your own project, even if others have maybe told you that it’s rubbish, you tend to kid yourself to a degree. Which is sort of OK sometimes as believing in yourself is key to success but don’t confuse arrogance with confidence. They’re very different. I think when you constantly practice ripping other people’s stuff apart with good intent to prompt improvement, you really can start to do this more naturally with your own stuff.

A good paid review is pretty much win win.

3. Affiliate Sales

I think this method of monetization on blogs depends a lot on the niche / target audience. I think, if you’re in the make money online niche and target your content at intermediate Internet marketers then it’s a lot harder to make regular affiliate commissions because Internet marketers do what you do. Therefore, they can distinguish what’s an ad and what’s not but more importantly what’s an affiliate and what not.

Some will even go as far as to liking a product you’ve talked about and wanting to buy it but purposely avoid your link or banner and go find it directly. I know because I’ve done it and I know I can’t be the only one! It’s silly but It’s hard not to do.

If however, you’re in a more popular niche, a niche more in the public consciousness on the web, then it becomes easier because the awareness of the marketing is not raised. It becomes easier when you’re not actually writing about what you’re doing and still trying to pull it off.

Which is why the MMO niche is so hard because if you’re writing on how to make more cash from affiliates with placement and relevance and what not and are simultaneously trying to make money from the affiliates on your blog by getting the same people reading this stuff to click and buy, it’s tough. It’s almost slightly insulting lmao. In fairness though, in this niche, I think the most money is made from dead air as apposed to regular traffic. I think newbies flicking between blogs looking for products tend to get sucked in by attractive banners with attractive proposals and wild earning figures.

Monetization depends a lot on your traffic’s perception of it. But in generic terms I think these 3 methods are generally best for most blogs.

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Joel Comm, supposed, self-proclaimed AdSense guru recently released the 4th edition of his AdSense Secrets eBook series.

With this release he made a big mistake and slightly tricked people into paying for more than they had originally thought they were going to. He is selling the eBook at an impressingly cheap price of $9.95. Did you think there was no catch at that price though? Joel used a negative opt-out marketing technique which automatically had a box ticked for you to subscribe to his monthly newsletter for $29.95 a month.

Supposedly, and I haven’t seen it - the original format / layout made it very hard to spot this option given the 90’s like, vintage, super-long sales letter page with a small option you had to UNTICK to NOT subscribe to this service.

This is pretty sly marketing. Although, no doubt I’m sure Joel made a killing using this old fashioned technique which although not illegal, is very sneaky. The average user usually scrolls down fast to look for the buy it now button, if they’re convinced already that it’s worth buying. In credit to him, this is an option, not a requirement. So, as long a potential buyer did read everything carefully, they would / should of spotted it… it’s just not in most people’s nature to do so. And I’m pretty sure he knew that.

He’s now made a public apology for this ‘mistake’ and accepted it was a bad move on his part. As well as this he’s corrected the issue by clearly setting apart the two options at the bottom of the sales page. I don’t really take the apology as much though as he knew what he was doing and given how rich he is I think it was pretty sleazy to sort of trick people into paying for more than advertised.

To be honest, I’ve always thought his marketing looked sleazy. In the sense that it looks outdated and very 90’s like. Obviously his techniques, or rather, the techniques in which he employs work very well, this doesn’t justify a sleazy marketing move like this. He could of just been totally genuine and used the more modern, preferred method of an opt-in option for an EXTRA service. It shouldn’t of been ticked by default. The technique of having the box ticked by default has been used to negative effect before. Most notably by BearShare when they had the option to set their Google homepage as your default homepage ticked automatically. They had a bad reaction from it, just like anybody who has done it.

I think Joel should of anticipated people would obviously notice and it would invenvitably lead to a backlash. I’m nowhere near as experienced in this game as Joel Comm but even I wouldn’t use this outdated technique. Come on Joel, you’re better than this. I hope. I’m not going to even insult you as my readers by putting an affiliate link to his eBook in this post, buy something else

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I was randomly browsing the most subscribed to YouTube channels last night and just thought how much cash they could make. I know a lot of them do, especially Smosh.

Well, I’m assuming Smosh do anyway. Considering the fact that their channel has had over 12 MILLION views and has a nice banner right at the top of the page linked to their site, which has AdSense on it and a dedicated store full of novelty / brand t-shirts.

Smosh have done extremely well. Especially considering, in my opinion that they’re not really very funny lol. But their new videos are very well made, I’ve only seen a couple but they originally shot to YouTube fame with the infamous Pokemon Theme Tune video (original has been taken down).

I don’t think that all the YouTube ‘celebrities’ maximize the advantages of their YouTube fame for business purposes like Smosh have though. A lot of these guys / gals could really launch some interesting stuff right off the bat, link and talk about it in a new video and receive Instant awareness.

There’s also endless possibilities for branding and novelty items galore. And you may think ‘I wouldn’t buy any of it’ just as I do. But there are plenty of people that are bizarre enough to want it. These guys could make some serious cash

If you haven’t even attempted at probing the YouTube fame factor yet. I’d advise you to give it a go. You don’t have to act like an idiot or an obsessive to be a YouTube celeb or more respectively, have a channel with a lot of subscribers. You can of course build up a huge channel based upon countless TV shows or music videos etc. but I wouldn’t advise this for business purposes as it’s only a matter of time before the copyright holders make a claim against you to get the videos taken down.

On that subject though, of the copyright claims issue. I actually had a large company recently allow me to keep videos up that I’ve uploaded. The videos are all songs from a certain, big music artist and the copyright holders made a claim but gave permission for me to keep the videos up providing that they could advertise on the video pages. All the videos have the URL of my related site in them. So I thought it was pretty cool of the company to let that fly.

I think this is much more sensible on their part as well. As apposed to taking the stand some copyright holders do which is to demand it all be taken down. Which I think is the equivalent of trying to fight a bear with a pillow. They’re absolutely and postively outnumbered on a mass scale. As soon as they take something down, someone else puts it back up. So I’m glad some monster companies are seeing that they pretty much can’t win and the smart thing to do is just to try and make revenue from it by allowing it.

I can understand copyright holders being annoyed about people ripping their content though. I would be annoyed. But, realistically, big, big shows and music artists etc. just need to accept that it’s going to happen and there’s not much they can do about it. Period. As soon as they think of a way to stop it, there’s already been 10 new ways to get it.

Back to the original discussion point. I think you should really have a go at using YouTube to your advantage. They supposedly reckon by 2010 that ‘the Internet will break’ given the excessive bandwidth use of things like YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer straining networks that can’t keep up. Apparently YouTube used as much bandwidth in 2007 as the entire Internet did in 2000! that’s pretty crazy. Plus, like Internet marketing, becoming big on YouTube is getting harder.

Unless you make a complete circus show video and fluke a few million views, it takes a lot of effort. Unless you’re extremely talented at something of course.

I’m not doing too bad with my magic channel. I was doing card magic before Internet marketing, I started at about 11. I have so far only done 17 half ass videos but still managed to get 622 subscribers so far. Note, I haven’t uploaded a video in over 6 months yet the subscribers keep coming.

Just shows if you’re good at something, you will naturally gain exposure. And I’m not being big headed lol but I know I’m good at card magic, a lot better naturally than I am at Internet marketing anyway.

You can check out my mentioned YouTube channel here.

Honestly, the best way to get a lot of subscribers that will keep coming back for more, is to upload something unique. Obviously. But when I say unique, I don’t mean you doing stupid faces, I mean like a talent. If you can sing… sing.

As it happens I can do a lot of card magic so I experimented with that. And found the subscribers to be very instant and I really should get back to growing that, as I’ve just let it dry up and never really put much effort into it. Which is silly as it’s the one thing I’m actually talented at and can challenge a lot in the field of yet I have done little with it.

Anyway, once you get the subscribers and are getting nice instant views when you upload new videos. You can even start placing AdSense ads next to your video. If you have an AdSense account you can now submit videos for consideration in your account, once/if approved, relevant AdSense ads will then be displayed. Pretty nice considering the height of statistical viewing power you can reach overtime.

There really is a lot of cash to be made on and in the name of YouTube. Exploit it’s social awareness, broad age and nationality range and do your best to use it for business advantages… it’s such a lucrative marketing tool if used in the right way.

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Michael Dunlop from Retireat21.com has made a list of the top 30 young bloggers under 21.

I’m ranked #10.

The list has had 24 Diggs already. Front page material? Come on guys, help us hit the front! You know you want to

Here’s the link to the post, just incase you thought I wasn’t going to link to the post. Wow, this is a very long link isn’t it? Surely you’ve clicked it by now…

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