Desty Online -- Online and Offline Businesses, Online Marketing » Making Money Online

The 2 Questions You Must Ask Before Taking Paid Reviews for Your Blog

Desty — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:25:40 +0000

July’s fixed expenses for the hosting of Desty Online were covered this morning when Bloggerwave paid me for my sponsored review. While I am writing with joy that planned expenses have been met early in the month, along with 10% of the revenue has been invested, I really want to touch on a warning to the many would-be reviewers out there.

There are a host of paid to blog or pay for review sites out there. Check with Dosh Dosh on what paid review sites are available. If you’re just starting out, there won’t be very many opportunities for you. Let me pass on this small piece of advice: DO NOT TAKE EVERY OPPORTUNITY OFFERED TO YOU!!!

There are two hard and fast rules to follow when taking on paid review gigs.

Rule #1 Does the product / service / site mesh with your blog?

Desty Online focuses on two areas of interest in its posts: the set-up and running of businesses, and some Internet marketing. In basic terms, we’re here to help you start your business and to pass on tips about blogging and how to market your blog as we learn them. A sponsored review of Bloggerwave, an advertising site that buys and sells for reviews of products and services, falls into a tip for other bloggers in how to earn some extra income from their blog. I had another opportunity for a paid review through Bloggerwave, but the service had nothing to do with Desty Online and its focus, so I turned it down. If you take every opportunity to do a paid review, no matter what the subject is, you will lose readers. Readers are at your blog because of your brand of information. If you go outside that brand just to get paid to blog, you’ll be perceived to be after the fast buck, and who wants to go to a blog just to read ads.

Rule #2 Does your paid review give any value to the reader or is it just to make some money?

Readers don’t want to read ads; they want to read what you normally write about for free. If you do write a paid review and the subject fits in with your blog’s topic, don’t make the review posting itself an ad. You want to tailor the post to what the product is about, but write the post as if it were one of your normal non-sponsored articles. Tie the product into the article, but don’t make the article about the product.

Having the opportunity to get paid to blog via sponsored reviews is a great gig for the blogger, but the blogger himself has a responsibility to his readers. That responsibility is to not only do reviews that fit in with the blog’s content but mesh the product of the review into a quality post so as to enhance the reader’s experience.

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Save 39% on Blog Mastermind, Limited Time Offer!

Desty — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:05:13 +0000

Blog Mastermind had its product launch last Thursday and it has been a huge success! A mentoring program developed and ran by Yaro Starak, Blog Mastermind brings Yaro’s years of practical experience to the front in helping people learn to optimize their blog in order to make income. Yaro personally teaches techniques he personally uses on his own blog to generate $4000 to $6000 per month.

Yaro shows step-by-step using video and podcasts how to

* Set up and customize your blog
* Build your readership
* And make money

As a start-up blitz, Yaro is offering a limited time offer. Join now and save 39% off for the first month. That’s a $30 savings off of the normal price of $77. This offer is good until end of Thursday June 28 2007.

Check out some of Yaro’s free resources that demonstrate his methods and you’ll see that Blog Mastermind is worth it.

Blog Profits Blueprints — a free report written by Yaro that details strategies and tactics on blogging basics to bring yours up to par. Great for new bloggers and its free!

A look behind the scenes at Blog Mastermind — Yaro recorded this video giving a tour of the Blog Mastermind sites, showing exactly what you get if you join Blog Mastermind.

How I Make Money Blogging Video — Yaro takes you on a tour of his own blog, pointing out techniques he uses to make money.

The Blogspot Case Study Video — Look over Yaro’s shoulder as he reviews a blogspot blog.

Join Blog Mastermind, save 39% off the monthly price, and you won’t be disappointed. I’m not.

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Bloggerwave: An Opportunity for Beginner Bloggers

Desty — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:59:09 +0000

I’ve noticed that several of the generally accepted ways to make money online aren’t really available to those just starting their blogging career. PayPerPost, a site that pays bloggers for product reviews, has a minimum requirement of 90 days and 20 posts. Any blogger worth his salt should be able to crank out 20 quality posts within 30 days, much less 90 days. It’s the wait time for the 90 days that gets to me. It seems so arbitrary. Other opportunities require a minimum amount of traffic per month before being accepted; that I can understand. The advertisers want the most bang for their buck, so requiring that a blog have access to a set amount of customers makes perfect sense.

Where does this leave a beginning blogger? In other industries, its called “paying your dues.” For bloggers its creating quality content, networking, and building repeat traffic.

Enter Bloggerwave.

Bloggerwave is similar to PayPerPost in that it offers a set dollar amount for a posted review, pending approval by the Bloggerwave administration. Bloggerwave is currently in its start-up phase and is working on getting the word out about its services and opportunities. This is where a beginning blogger can come in and has a chance of approval based on the content of his blog alone. This gives a blogger valuable experience in the field of creating a review for income. As your traffic increases and your blog increases in popularity, low tier bloggers will start to seek you out requesting a review. Start your experience now in the review field with Bloggerwave.

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What Type of Income Do You Want From Your Blog?

Desty — Sun, 27 May 2007 02:52:00 +0000

Any income is good income right? How hard do you want to work for your income? How often do you want to work for your income?

There are two basic types of income: linear and residual.

Linear income is income that is based off what work you do, and how much actual work you do. Your normal hourly job where if you don’t work you don’t get paid is the perfect example of linear income. Pay to click (PTC), filling out surveys, reading email is an example of linear income. You get paid once for your work and you have to work again to get paid again.

Residual income is income that comes in from work you do once and continues to roll in even after you’ve moved onto other things. An example of residual income is when an author writes a book. He writes the book once, then gets royalties every time someone buys his book. Here are some more examples of residual income:

Savers earn interest
Songwriters earn royalties on their songs
Network Marketers get residual commissions
Entrepreneurs get business profits
Real Estate Owners get cash-flow profits

As a blogger, you should be working to set-up opportunities for residual income. How you ask? Simple, you post. That’s it, you post. Write about your passions, write about your day, write about anything, just write! Do your research and setup affiliates and link to them in your posts. Don’t write to give an excuse to make a link, write and add links based off opportunities. Quality posts are what brings traffic to your site. If visitors think they’ll just see ads instead of posts they want to read, they won’t come back. Bring the people in because they want to read what you have to say, bring something up in the post that makes them go “hmm, what’s this?” and that’s it. You’ve won half the battle, you got the click.

I go to and post on MyLot because not only do I like to read opinions on issues and will post on something that interests me, but getting paid (cents per post) to do something I would do anyway is just great! I’m glad that I found that site, and I found it on a blog site. That blogger got a referral because they offered something that I wanted and was willing to click on. Bring value to your visitors with every post and not only will they keep coming back, they might see something they like and give you a referral. How many times did you have to post to get that referral? Once.

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Day 2

Desty — Thu, 24 May 2007 04:09:00 +0000

I don’t plan to make a habit of making a day by day play by play, but since I learned something, I thought I’d share.

The day started innocently enough. Was 10 minutes into my commute to work. I work 31 miles away but takes 45 minutes due to traffic. Wife calls me on the cell; she’s having chest pains and her left arm is numb. I turn around and head back, calling the office telling the boss I won’t be in today. Always a chancy thing, calling off for work with them. Anyway, a family friend watches the kids while I rush her to the ER. Her blood pressure was, at worst, 158/111. EKG says nothing, so they give her a nitro pill. After a few hours, they release her, telling her to get with the family Dr.

I take her back home, get the kids, and stay home the rest of the day so she can rest. The kids eventually take a nap, so I start working on my blog and my other online efforts to make some income. Got into the SlashMySearch and see some offers to make money by filling out those surveys online. I figure a buck here and there isn’t something I’d turn down, so I sign up. Big mistake. Supposedly this one service says they’ll pay $1 after you sign up into your paypal. I sign up, check paypal, nada. They offer different surveys for different amounts of money. I select one that pays $30 for Blockbuster. The survey is 1 page long, but to get the cash you have to sign up with Blockbuster’s online service. I wouldn’t have minded, but they wanted my credit card #, and oh heck no, that wasn’t going to happen. During this time, my email starts to get hit with spam like you would not believe.

So the moral of the story? Take a nap like everyone else, don’t sign up for spam.

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1st Night’s Work Part 2

Desty — Thu, 24 May 2007 01:16:00 +0000

After I created my 1st two blog posts, I started creating my affiliate accounts. I’ve never done this before, so I started with several from Kumiko’s Cash Quest blog

Funny story. I started with FriendFinder. It appears to be a good money maker for Kumiko. I thought it was some sort of chat service. I was right, but its more. Its a single’s network. I’m very much married. Needless to say, I don’t plan on doing much with FriendFinder.

I got SlashMySearch setup, but never really had time to do anything with it beyond set it to my home page. I really don’t do much searches at home, more of an at-work type thing, so I’ll set it up at work tomorrow and see how it does.

MyBlogLog doesn’t really make any money, its like a myspace for Blogs. You look at blogs, add the ones you like to your friends and normally the owners of that blog will see that you added them, they usually check you out, and if they like, they add you. It expands from there. Traffic is the name of the game.

MyLot, OMG. Its a huge posting and discussion site about anything and everything. You get paid to respond to posts and to start discussions. And all this time I’ve been doing it for free! Generally, from what I’ve read, what you get paid depends on the quality of the posting. So going on and posting “duh!” on 100 discussions probably won’t get you much. Plus there is a reputation system, so you have been warned.

AdSense from Google. This is the grand-daddy of online ads. Everyone uses it. Supposedly has the most potental. We’ll see.

I’m pumped! I’ve been checking into other affiliates to see what’s out there. I’ll mention new affiliates as they get added.

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