Jimvesting.com » Make Money Online

The Fool is Working Hard – And We're Launching Another Stimulus Package!

Jim — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:09:50 +0000

After a one-month break that I used to work on a few blogs as a part of the first round of Blogger Stimulus, I’m now back in action and ready to ease more “liquidity” into the system. But I do believe that I completely botched the first round of stimulus by completely ignoring the money-multiplier effect of stimulus packages!

What I did WRONG in the first blogging stimulus package on Jimvesting dot com

The purpose of a truly economic “stimulus package” is to have money flow through the system in as many ways as possible. My first blogging stimulus promised a great new blog with a premium theme to anyone who wanted to sign up for a new web hosting account. The logic here was that if you wanted a blog… you’d need hosting regardless. By signing up under my affiliate link with HostGator, we created a profitable scenario for both of us…. but this wasn’t much of a stimulus because it stopped multiplying through the system right there!

Here’s what blogging stimulus v1 looked like:

Let’s change that… INTRODUCING STIMULUS PACKAGE 2.0!!!

What more can I offer you? How about an incentive to refer members to the blogging program. By creating a tiered system, I’ve found that I can offer THREE people economic benefit from the stimulus package… much better than the original one-way street. Here’s what our stimulus now looks like — and yes, it does ripple through the system much more effectively:

What does this mean for you? That’s right… anyone that refers someone to use Jimvesting’s Blogging Stimulus will now receive $20 INSTANTLY! Am I serious? Yes. Is there a catch? No. Am I going to be operating at a loss? Probably. But hey… the economy needs our help!

How to Get Your Free $20 Per Referral:

Advertise the Official Page for the Blogging Stimulus on your blog
Have your readers mention your blog when they sign up to HostGator through my affiliate link
Get paid $20 every time I track a commission coming from your website!

It’s a simple way to boost your own online income, and help your readers start up their own blogs. This might very well be the best deal I’ve ever offered. People called me crazy after the first blog stimulus package… and I’ve upped the ante even more with this latest promotion. Don’t let this offer expire without taking advantage!

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-Jimvesting

How to Gain Twitter Followers Like CRAZY, for FREE! – Don't Fall for Paid Services!

Jim — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:24:58 +0000

When I first started out on Twitter, I remember being absolutely astounded at the sheer amount of users trying to make you buy products that would supposedly make you “God of Twitter.”

Now, as I have developed my own method for gaining followers, and thus status & power on Twitter, I have seen my account even more preoccupied with Twitter-based profit schemes. It seems that the more affiliate followers I pick up, the more Twitter promoters I am seeing! These programs don’t work, are overpriced, and need to be stopped.

I am so frustrated with the millions of promoters for hundreds of Twitter “miracle systems” out on the internet. :devil: Because of this, I’ve developed a method that works just as well… and is almost fully automated… that you can get without downloading anything, without signing up to any newsletter and without paying!

Why am I doing this for free?
Well, because I’m so darn foolish!

The Method

Let’s start with the basics: getting big on twitter is simply a function of having a lot of people follow you. A great way to get people to follow you? Follow Them! Therefore, you could get a pretty hefty Twitter account simply by following a lot of people and having them follow you back, right?

But what’s the use of having a Twitter account if the people following you simply don’t care? We need to also find a way to track along with people that have similar interests. Since Twitter only allows you to have a certain Follow/Following ratio… you also can’t just follow everyone in a massive push, and then wait for a few thousand to follow back.

With the set of restrictions in place, here’s what I do that works exactly the same way as any program that you can buy for $100 online, and it’s free!

Step One: Register for Twitter
Obviously, to do this method you will need your own Twitter account.

Step Two: Click This Link to Follow My Twitter Account!
Not actually necessary, but definitely would appreciate you doing this if you enjoyed the post.

Step Three: Download “Reload Every” for Mozilla Firefox
Assuming that you use FireFox for your web-browsing, download the above plugin for your browser that will allow you to refresh a certain tab automatically for a set time interval. We’ll explain why in a bit!

Step Four: Use “TwitterMatch” to Follow People with Similar Interests
Okay, this is where it gets a tad confusing. TwitterMatch is actually the demo of a script that TwitterScripts.net wants you to buy. With a fully-functioning demo, there is really no need! Navigate to the website, log-in, and search out a keyword phrase that matches your blogging niche. Then, once the page loads, Right-Click on the page to enable “ReloadEvery” in Firefox to automatically refresh the page ever 5 or 10 seconds. This will run their script again, adding a new list of Twitter accounts to your “following” list! Let it run for as long as you want for each keyword that you want, and then you can even load a new keyword and do it all again.

Step Five: Wait for People to Start Following you Back
It will usually take 3-5 days before everyone who was planning on returning the follow does so. You can continue to repeat Step 4 in the meantime until you reach your initial 2,000 limit… eventually you will break by this limit when you have enough people follow you back. There are also daily limits to deal with, but no paid service would be able to get around it regardless.

Step Six: Clean Out the People Not Following You Back
You don’t want people hanging around in your “following” list not helping you out, so you can selectively delete anyone not reciprocating the love by using a tool called Twitter Karma every week or so.

That’s it! Repeat the following/unfollowing process every now and then, run our helpful automated following script every now and then, and within a month you will be doing as well (if not better!) than any other program out there. I started at less than 300 followers at the beginning of this week, and now that I have developed this method I am up to 700 people following me in just 3 days!

Our next Twitter feature will talk about how you can freshen up your Twitter account to improve your odds of being reciprocal-followed by people that you recruit with this method. Finally, we will round out a three-part series on Twitter domination with a series on programs that can help you earn cash with Twitter. Hope you enjoyed “Jimvesting Twitter Method!”

-Jimvesting

UPCOMING FREEBIE! – Earn $75-$200 Cash Over and Over, with ZERO RISK

Jim — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:41:48 +0000

Good afternoon Jimvesting readers!

I’ve been working on a brand new method to net you $75-$200 (depending on how often you use it) repeatedly with absolutely no potential for loss and no risk. This is something that I have done personally with great success, and I am 100% confident that any one of you can exploit this trick that I have developed over the years and trust completely.

What’s The Catch?!
Well normally, I would sell this book to hundreds of people and then sell my website for another quick collection… but this time I am going to give the book away to my readers FOR FREE! Why? Well, I haven’t been so active lately, so I want the only term for this offer to be that you must be a registered subscriber of our newsletter to get the book.

Keep in mind that you will never see a deal like this, and I know people that are charging you upwards of $100 for books like this that reveal less powerful secrets. I can personally guarantee that anyone who reads this book will be able to make in instant $75… or I will pay YOU $75!

I WILL be moving this offer to a paid promotional the week after I release it here… I’d be a fool not to! However, be advised that anyone who is subscribed via the newsletter (link below) will be on the list to get it for free.

eBook Being Released NEXT SATURDAY
I have the book I am preparing staged to launch next Saturday… and it will only be available for my subscribers. All you need to do to qualify is sign up to the Aweber Newsletter that I have set up. You will receive absolutely no spam, and will get a few updates every now and then from what is happening at Jimvesting.com. It’s completely free too, so you have nothing to lose! Let’s call it my Christmas gift to all of you.

Remember to check back next Saturday to receive your free book… and we will certainly be emailing a unique link to everyone on our email list to let you know where you can go to download the book. We don’t mess around with spammy offers here at Jimvesting, and you can be sure that a simple click on the “Submit” button above will get you a free book with no questions asked and no strings attached.

Have a great weekend… and a happy new year!
-Jimvesting

Secret to Earning MORE from Ad Space – Get Jimvesting's Ad Cost Model FREE!

Jim — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:03:51 +0000

I think that it is fair game to say that most of you reading this post either own a blog now, or would like to own a blog sometime in the near future. It comes as no surprise that many of us, myself included, like to monetize what we have with some advertisements to get some extra cash in our pockets. The average blogger will earn around $200 a month from private ad sales. But no matter how you decide to monetize your blog, it’s important to understand how pricing SHOULD work, so you can maximize your profits!

The most typical forms of blog monetization are through text ads and banner ads, both of which can be located pretty much anywhere on your website. Regardless of the format, what I am going to be talking about will apply as long as you offer your ads paid on some kind of periodic system. For example, maybe you charge your advertisers every month to put a banner up on your site; maybe you instead go by the week, or even semi-annually. Whatever the case, chances are that an ad today, is worth less than an ad tomorrow if you are running a successful blog. This is what we call in economics the “time value of money.”

The Time Value Of Money: So why is a dollar today worth less than a dollar tomorrow? Holding inflation aside, which will naturally cause the value of money to appreciate over time, we assume that you could always invest anything that you own today and make more money into the future! The less time you have to invest, the less money you will have in the long run.

So what am I going to talk to you about today? I’m going to talk about properly valuing your ad real estate using compounding interest rates. This is an important lesson, as you could be losing hundreds of dollars if you don’t keep this in mind when you negotiate.

Don’t Rip Yourself Off!

Just a few days ago I received an order for a text link ad, only the advertiser wanted to buy a text link for an entire year… that’s 12 months worth! While this was great news, ordinarily I would have just asked him to pay for one month at a time. Not wanting to lose such a massive sale, I decided to use a compounded interest chart to map out what the fair cost would be.

A typical blog owner would say that if my current rate per month is $20.00, then 12 months would be $20.00 x 12, or $240. This sounds fair, right? WRONG! If this was your answer, you need to seriously rethink the way you do business. Assuming that you are running a decent blog, your rates will go up over time, correct? Therefore, we need to adjust for this when we work the rates into a 12 month period.

What I have done is create a compounded rate excel file that will take a starting rate (e.g. $20.00) and adjust it up x% for each month, depending on how quickly you predict you will develop your website and increase the value of the advertisement. A small note, this is not the same as adding 60% for 12 months of 5% growth… this is wrong. The way that this works is that we would start at our base price, $20.00, then add 5% for the second month, or a new cost of $21.00. After that, it is a third month at the second month cost plus 5%, or $22.05. This process continues all the way to the 12th month, when each ad spot would cost $34.21 adjusting for that 5% growth we expect.

Think it doesn’t make much of a difference? Think again!

If you had used simple straight-line growth at a constant rate, you would have billed a total of $240 for the ads. However, if you used a 5% growth per month, you would have billed a total of $318.34… that’s a difference of $78.34! This is revenue that you are just giving away if you are going to give an advertiser the same rate into the future.

Jimvesting’s Advertising Cost Model – A FREE Gift to You!

I have developed in Microsoft excel a model that will take two inputs, a base ad price and a rate (specified by you), and generate a 12-month pricing plan… showing you the difference between constant rates and compounded rates. It’s very easy to use, but if you need some help, follow along in the video so that you can see just how to use this powerful model.

DOWNLOAD THE NET FOOL’S ADVERTISING COST MODEL

Remember, you can really use any growth rate that you want, and my 5% is only a sample. Suppose you are a newer blog and you are going to grow tremendously in the first few months… maybe you would like a rate closer to 20% growth? Or suppose you are an old timer who doesn’t increase traffic as much as you should… perhaps you use 2.5% growth? My model can pump out valuations 12 periods into advance, and you can look anywhere in the middle and pick out, let’s say, 8-months of payment if you’d like.

Bottom Line: If you are going to sell ad space to your users, you better make sure that you aren’t ripping yourself off! If somebody asks if they can pay for a year of service… don’t tell them “no!”, tell them that you need to account for 5% growth and show them my model in work… they should easily agree to the terms. Heck, it works for me!

- Jimvesting

MASSIVE Unlocked Potential for $100s Spotted! – Make Money Online With InLinks

Jim — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:29:58 +0000

What if I told you that you could easily be making $100s every day, while at the same time boosting your number of backlinks and increasing your Google search ranking positions… sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I’ve found the way, and this is a true tested method for making it big. Normally, people will horde this secret and make you pay for the information… here we are a bit more open with each other.

We all know how rewarding affiliate marketing tactics can potentially be by now, and I’ve found one heck of a deal that I feel like we can all exploit till they take the offer away. For now, get in while the getting’s good! If you do the following, I can guarantee that you will make at least $50. Period.

The Idea is Formed… The Stage is Set

Once you start thinking like a marketer, ideas like these simply come to you. I’m not saying that I am smarter than your average bear… I just know how to think “greedy.” Well let’s cut to the chase, shall we? It looks like our friends over at Text-Link-Ads released a new advertising platform… and once again over-emphasized the affiliate system for us. How nice of them!

Last time it was with their text-link-ads network, this time it is with the release of InLinks.com. This site is a great idea. This “new” form of advertising allows you to buy up ad slots in the form of text links hidden within actual blog posts. For example, I can pay $15 bucks for a link with the anchor “peanut butter” on a PageRank 3 blog… and it will go put the order in, making the text on a matching blog a link that is built to my specifications.

What initially jumped out at me here is that you get a GUARANTEED $25 for anyone that signs up as an advertiser under you. That’s right… cha-ching! Not only that, but they have an awesome promotion that lets you purchase, as an advertiser, $100 worth in ads for just $1 using the coupon “100free.” So getting people to join is the easiest thing you’ve ever done… it’s a no-brainer! They try to make it a bit harder on you, but it’s nothing we can’t handle… let’s do this step by step.

Step-By-Step Path to Instant Riches

1. Signing Up As An Advertiser
If you are going to join up with the InLinks.com network, why not take advantage of their incredible $100 for $1 deal, eh? Heck, if you need a buck I’ll even PayPal you $1 just because this is so irresistible. Because you need a publisher or advertiser account anyway… let’s set up an advertiser account so we can boost our own ranks while making money. If this isn’t a win-win, I don’t know what is.

Now enter your information for security purposes (you won’t get mailed):

Now just submit your application and confirm that the email you signed up with is yours… and you are ready to go!

2. Buying Up Some “InLinks Futures”
I actually really like the idea behind InLinks.com, and it looks like something that will evade Google for quite some time. Heck, I might even sign up as a publisher later to make some more money. Until then, let’s order some “InLinks.com Futures.” Futures are essentially where you enter a keyword phrase, and as soon as a client publishes a blog post with that term in it, you get the purchase and the text becomes your link!

Assuming you want to get $100 for $1 using the code “100free,” which is what I did, I like to just buy what they call “package 1.” Click the check-box next to that and hit the refresh button to get your link entry fields to appear for your order. Simply put in the keyword phrases you want marketed, a link you want them directed to, and you are good to go!

I feel like this offer is beneficial to new bloggers, and even popular bloggers. Links are links… and when you can nab quality for $1, you take it. Bottom Line.

3. Get Your Affiliate Account Set Up
Assuming you already signed up as an advertisers… you actually have the capabilities to act as an affiliate already as a default! Simply click over to the “Affiliate” tab on the top of your screen, and you will get into the system that generates an extremely well-cloaked version of your affiliate link. What InLinks.com DOESN’T want people doing is getting their referral link out without putting their image out there too. Forget that! Not everyone can spare the ad space, and I’d rather just have a link to give to people any day… right?

What InLinks.com gives you is a javascript code that has one function to encrypt your link, and another to decrypt it once it is on your blog or website. We can get around this simply by copying their code and making our own executable file. Confused? Don’t be.

How-To: Open up “Notepad” on your computer (or another text-editor where you can save as any file type). Paste all of the code in the file and save it as “whatever.php”. Upload the new file somewhere to your server, and hop to that web address in your web browser. Your referral link should be in plain view! I like using the “text link” option instead of the banner for practical reasons.

Alternative: If you don’t want to mess with that, you could also simply upload it like they want you to and copy the actual referral link down when you click on your ad for InLinks.com. You’ll get a code like this: “http://www.inlinks.com/?ref=XXXXXX”

4. Start Marketing Your InLinks Program!
Now that you have your account, you have ads ready to go for more exposure and you have your real referral link to pass around… it’s time to put your best marketing skills to use and make money! I would suggest pushing the program on your blog along with the coupon code I suggested above simply because it is so easy to do. Nobody is going to (or should) pass up that opportunity, and you will make an instant $25 for everyone that takes your advice.

This method is something that I have developed independently, and I feel can be wildly successful. Remember, just as Text-Link-Ads took away their affiliate system, InLinks.com can do the same thing. Because of this, you should jump on the opportunity as it exists! If you liked this article, give me some props by subscribing to my blog, Digging the post or Stumbling the post.

-Jimvesting

Google Keyword SEO: Setting Up A Landing Page for Maximum Exposure

Jim — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:51:24 +0000

Welcome back to part two of my Google Keyword SEO project, right here on theNetFool.com. In case you missed it, in week one we talked about setting up the stage for our keyword domination. By exploring the best keyword phrases available, we can learn how to rank higher for more terms… and bring in more traffic through organic hits. After a bit of brainstorming, it’s time to start phase two of the process… so let’s get started!

Understanding The Reasoning

What we want to do here to maximize the chances that Google gives us a top spot on serach results is make a new post/page in WordPress that is dedicated to search engine optimization. But why on Earth would I want to go through the seemingly unnecessary steps of setting up a dedicated page for this, when I could just as easily direct traffic to my homepage? Google worships accuracy.

Accuracy? What the heck is he talking about, right? When you search for a term in Google, they are processing this keyword phrase through every indexed website on the internet to find the best result. Because of this, Google naturally feels that an actual webpage (as opposed to a website) is a far better resource than a generalized website. They give the “page” a lot more juice than the “site.”

The “Link Bait” Landing Page

I am a firm believer that the most effective way to rank well in Google is to direct targeted keyword traffic toward a landing page that you designate on your blog. Following from this, the most effective landing page, in my opinion, is a “link bait” page. What do I mean by this? Basically, we want to write up a page that is relevant to our targeted phrase that will perform well in social media websites.

What is a link bait page? I actually wrote up a killer guide on link bait pages over the summer, so if you do not understand the concept or simply want to sharpen your skills, I suggest that you check it out. To summarize for the purposes of this article, I like to use lists of “top tens” or “top fives” as an easy template to rank well in social media sites.

In addition to a section about the topic that you are targeting, you should feel free to add in a top section to promote your own website, product or blog. For my landing page, I decided to use a horizontal bar on my page to separate a top “promo” section of my actual blog from the bottom “content” section that has my link bait material. This one-two combo punch is a pretty neat way to provide a linkable section while not missing out on potential revenue.

Setting It All Up

Now that we understand what we are doing, let’s set up a winning landing page that will have us ranking higher than anyone else in Google search engines. As you can see, this has already worked for my other blog “Bullish Bankers,” as we have the #2 slot for the popular keyword “investing ideas.” I am fully intending on exploiting this again for the phrase “make money online,” and feel like I can pull it off.

I feel like it is much better to make a “page” in WordPress, than a “page.” Why? More static. In addition, I would go so far as to modify a custom page template just so you can have a wider content area to deal with. Not sure how to do this? WordPress wrote a nice walkthrough for just this purpose. Don’t forget that you can exclude pages from your menu if you don’t want them to appear when you publish with this neat “Exclude Pages” plugin for your blog.

For Jimvesting’s link bait landing page, I have decided to write about how to make money online called, “Ten Fool-Proof Ways to Make Money Online.” Notice how my targeted term is in the title, and how i have added my targeted phrase again to the page description via All-In-One SEO. By having your phrase in the title and page description, you are going to maximize your ability to rank well in Google. Getting back on track, I wrote about the best ways to make money online because it is a subject that i feel places like Digg and StumbleUpon will eat up once I start to promote it on them. Consider social media when you write your link bait post.

On top of writing about a popular and catchy subject, I have attempted to maximize the effectiveness of this landing page by adding an obvious newsletter subscription option to anyone who sees the page. Along with this is a list of reasons why subscribing is a smart thing to do, and I even offer a free eBook to boot! Offering an option to subscribe to the traffic that comes in could not only maintain a high search ranking, but could increase my RSS subscribers as well!

Bottom Line: The landing page could just be the most effective part of your marketing campaign. Understanding how Google looks at pages versus websites is quite important in determining the best way to attack this problem. Over the next few days, we are going to take a look back on our link bait page and find out how to maximize the value behind it to drive our success.

-Jimvesting

Top 5 Internet Marketing Misunderstandings

Jim — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:05:01 +0000

There are certain misunderstandings about the internet marketing world that I feel you should all be aware of. Setting itself up as kind of an “elitist” group of people, internet marketers are the ones making thousands off of websites, products and other online trades… sometimes even at your expense! But things really aren’t as bad as they appear, and hopefully after reading this you will realize that the barriers to entry are all made of glass.

A lot of marketers are going to make arguments that the following points aren’t true; in fact, they couldn’t be truer. People who tell you that it requires a lot of work, money, effort etc. just to get your bearings are trying to persuade you to stay away from their market. Don’t believe it. The bottom line is that being an internet marketer is a lot easier than you think. You all know that I don’t work as or consider myself an internet marketer, but this is really just a choice I made a while back to limit my exposure to the internet. If I wanted to sit down and make some money, it wouldn’t be very difficult at all to get in the game. Let’s get to the top five incorrect thoughts.

1. You Need a Lot of Money In Order to Make Money
Say what?! Too many people are trapped in the notion that they need to spend to earn. While you certainly can accelerate your earnings with a bit of an investment from the start, I came into the online money making business with literally an empty PayPal account and gradually built it up.

The internet is probably the only place where you can get an entire online business built for under $25 and be successful. I got my start by generating so-called “seed” money, which you can earn through any Get Paid To (GPT) website in a few minutes, and investing that in a domain name. Eventually, I had enough built up to afford nice web hosting, advertising money and the whole lot. This all started from an empty PayPal account!

2. Traffic = Sales
Too many people think that traffic is traffic is traffic… that couldn’t be further from the truth. Unless you are spinning off a website that isn’t even yours and couldn’t care less about where the traffic comes from, you are going to want the visitors that make it to your website to be legitimately interested. Furthermore, having more traffic doesn’t mean you are going to increase your sales. I have seen tons of Pay-Pay-Click and similar marketing plans fail because of poor traffic. In fact, these cases actually involved marketers that shifted away from profitable campaigns in favor of faster traffic… which eventually drained their margins.

Want an example? Say I am starting up a website about planting trees to save the environment (aw, how nice). I’m not going to put money down to target the word “tree” because that could bring me people who want anything from birdhouses to gardening tips… not the environmentalist spin I was going for and not the people who will make me rich. Relevancy in marketing campaigns is more important than you’d think!

3. The Internet Marketing Business is Over-Saturated
Ever feel like someone is trying to close the door on you? Lot’s of successful bloggers or internet marketers tell you that there is no room for you to get in the business. In fact, there is plenty of wiggle room in every niche (yes, even the “make money online” niche). Online business is accelerating at a rate in excess of 20% annually. I feel like the current levels of participation on the internet are only a fraction of what they will be, so get in now… we still aren’t even close to fruition.

Now that more and more marketing companies are coming to the table, it appears that somebody thinks there is potential there. The trend is your friend! If you see more and more internet businesses popping up, namely internet marketing companies, then it is obvious that people see huge gaps to be filled and want a piece of the pie. Why not you too?

4. You Need This Product To Succeed
In all my time online, I have never bought anything over $100 in value that I didn’t say to myself: “hey, this shouldn’t be worth more than $50.” There are literally hundreds of so-called “miracle” programs and products out there that are essentially exploiting our gullible sides into thinking that they will help. You can do anything and everything yourself. Once you get a bit more established, sure, go for it. But if you are a beginner you really don’t need any of the stuff marketers through at you to make money… bottom line.

I’m planning on launching a post soon where I analyze the appropriate value of products that I have tried and paid for personally on the internet. It’s true that if you have the money to spare, certain programs may accelerate your ability to work. However, nobody actually needs the things they recommend… and the help provided is only marginally better than what you can do yourself. For a slight increase in productivity, you probably will be better off without it.

5. You Can Make Hundreds/Thousands in One Day by _____________
One common misconception in ANY online business is that you can make hundreds of dollars, or even a few thousand, in just one day. If anyone tells you that this is possible, you should be a skeptic. Option one is that they have used days in advance to prepare in order to launch their campaign successfully with all the right keywords and niche exposure. Option two is that they are professionals doing this already, and have gradually built up positions that now make them $X dollars every day.

Lesson learned, if you are new to any business… it’s not going to be possible, at least at first, to make that kind of outlandish profit in a day. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the odds of being successful without a professional background in one day’s work are close to none. Taking your time and gradually making your presence known is the best way to fly every time.

Bottom Line: There are many internet marketing misunderstandings, but I have chosen to highlight those that deal with the whole “elitist” point of view. Never say never, but also don’t fall for things that seem too good to be true. Anyone can be an internet marketer by building up gradual positions… put in the work and you’ll succeed!

-Jimvesting

How to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog – Get Your Site Noticed, and Get Paid!

Jim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:22:53 +0000

Many people ask me how I get all these sponsored posts, a sold-out sidebar and 30-day text links all bought up month after month. While it’s important to preach that advertisers will eventually find their way to your blog, you need a killer plan to get the word out and get paid.

I’m going to take you through the best strategies to get immediate bids for your ads, and with any luck you’ll soon have publishers clawing at the gates in order to get a piece of the action. First things first, it’s imperative to have an easy to use ad management system in place. For WordPress, there is simply no alternative to OIO Publisher. It’s the system I use, and it rocks. Everything will be automated, your customers will get free ad reports, and it’s just $37… some of the best money I’ve ever spent on this blog.

How To Lock Up Sponsored Reviews
Most bloggers suggest that the best way to get sponsored reviews from advertisers on a consistent basis is to write great content day after day that gets noticed. I do believe that this is true; however, there is a much more effective method that will almost certainly get you sponsored reviews every time a company runs a campaign… which is practically constant. How do you get sponsored reviews, you ask?
Comment on other sponsored reviews.

A bit counter-intuitive at first, it is actually very smart. Granted, you need a decent blog to be able to accomplish this… but usually anything over 50 subscribers and some solid writing will work. All you need to do is drop a very interested sounding comment on another blog that happens to be promoting for an advertiser in a paid post. What happens here is that advertisers typically launch campaigns where they will buy up 5-10 blog posts at a time. Obviously, they check each one and read through the comments. We can exploit this by commenting on the posts, because the advertisers usually visit the blogs of each commenter for more leads. They see your site sells sponsored posts, you get paid. Nearly 40% of my reviews come from this tactic. It really is that simple!

Of course, in order to get an advertiser to buy a sponsored review from you, you are going to need to have great looking posts, and a few examples of past reviews. I recommend creating a new “Sponsored Posts” category, and putting that on your advertise page so that anyone can see what normal reviews look like. Trying to price your reviews appropriately to control demand? Check out Jimvesting’s Suggested Paid Review Rate Chart!

Fill Up Your Sidebar With Interested 125×125 Advertisers
The blogging standard for advertising is the 125×125 advertisement. Most well-monetized blogs will have these ads placed in a sidebar, or somewhere in the footer of their page. What’s the best way to get your ad slots filled and in high demand? I would have to say that the rates drive demand, and those blogs charging less than the spots are worth are going to have an easier time getting advertisers. You will want to track what each of your advertisements does in terms of cost-per-click (CPC)… which you want at LEAST under 1, the lower the better.

Let’s be honest, if nobody knows that you have ads available, nobody will purchase them! You need a way to get the word out. I’ve been contacted multiple times by people through email saying “hey, I have ads available for $X a month (cheap!) so check out my blog if you are interested” and I usually purchase them if the price is right. You can do the same thing by making a generic but informal-sounding email and switching out the names and websites of bloggers that you follow.

My favorite method to get the word out is to use webmaster forums like Bloggeries or even Digital Point to tell people that you are selling advertising for a limited time at just $X a month. Make it sound like a deal, or maybe even offer some exclusive bundle packages, and you’ll be sure to get bids.

One final tip, try to never leave more than one ad slot available. Even if your demand is not high, you can always fill spots with generic affiliate marketing banners to make some extra money. Making things appear in high demand is sometimes just as good as actually having the traffic to support it. Furthermore, if you make it appear that there is “one spot left!“… you can lure all those impulse buyers in for buying up your slots.

Make An Extra Dime with Text Link Ads
I would have to say that standard text links are the least popular advertising derivatives on the internet. But you shouldn’t throw them out of your ad budget just because they aren’t sexy. You can bet on around $5 a link every month, and if you have 5 links sold out then that’s an extra $25… that’s not chump change! One thing you need to make sure of is that you don’t label them as “paid” or “sponsored” because Google might just put the smack-down on your PageRank. Instead, call them “featured” or “friends.”

How can you score more text link sponsors? I actually had some luck using the Text Link Ads network, which is in the business of reselling links for your blog. My favorite method in generating more sponsors for your text links is just like any banner, telling people about it word-of-mouth over forums. I find that text links are the easiest to sell to random visitors on your blog. Why? More than likely because they are cheap, have good exposure, and offer a great way to boost link-backs on the fly.

Bottom Line: Don’t worry about being a sell out, we all like to make money… and ads can support your blog with money to re-invest for faster growth. There are many types of ads I didn’t mention, but keep in mind that you don’t want to go over the top. Experiment with your ad rates to reach the equilibrium point between supply and demand… and watch your monthly revenue soar!

-Jimvesting