BuzzShed - Get $1 per Referral (and $0.30 for watching a video)

I found an interesting little site today. It's called BuzzShed. You sign up for free, tell them some of your interests, and every once in a while, they send you a link to a short video. You watch it, and get paid $0.30. Once you reach $10, you can request a payout via PayPal. I'm not really sure how often they send out videos, though, so I don't know just how long it will take you to reach that $10 threshold.

There is another way to make some money with the site, though, and that is with referrals. You see, for every person that you get to sign up, you get $1. It's real easy to join, and they don't require any personal info like you address. Refer 10 people, and you've reached that $10 payout.

I'll let you know how BuzzShed works for me. In the meantime, sign up here.

Update (2/24/08): Looks like they made a small change to the referral system. You get $1 for the first 5 signups you refer, $.50 for the next 10, and then $0.25 after that. So you need to refer 15 people to reach the payout. Still a pretty good way to make a little money, though, if you can get some people to join.

Make Money with Firefox Downloads

Did you know that Google will pay you to get people to download Firefox with Google Toolbar? It's a pretty good system. The download is free, and you get up to $1 per new Firefox user you refer, based on their location.

You need to have a Google Adsense account to sign up. Then go the referal products section to find the Firefox referral link that you can use to get people to sign up with.

Most people will agree that Firefox is a better browser than Microsoft Internet Explorer. But over half of the visitors to my site use IE. So if you haven't used Firefox yet, why not give it a shot?

Blog Directories

When I first created my blog, one of the first things I did was submit my blog to some blog directories. These are basically just sites that list tons of blogs, usually by topic. I guess you could receive a few visitors this way, but the main purpose of submitting your sites is to get some links pointing back to your blog. This can help get your Pagerank up, and help get you indexed by search engines.

Here are the blog directories that I'm signed up for:



Blog Directory

If you're interested in submitting your blog to some directories, you might want to give some of these a shot. It can't hurt.

By the way...some directories might cost money to join. I'd forget about those. Could they help your pagerank? Eh...Maybe. But it's probably not worth it.

NetAudioAds - Pay Per Play Advertising

Here's an interesting way to make money: NetAudioAds. It's kind of like having Google Adsense ads, except that instead of text ads on your website, audio ads are played out load. Every time someone goes to your site, a 5 second ad is played, and you get paid each time an ad is played. Like Adsense, the ads are related to the content of your site.

They say that ads will probably pay about 1 to 3 cents per listen, as long as the visitor stays on your website for at least 2 seconds.

The site is currently in beta, and says that they will begin paying the first week in February. They also say that they'll pay every week, which I love.

I was a little concerned about this opportunity after I did a quick Google search for 'netaudioads'. There was some pretty negative stuff said, but this post seems to clear things up.

I don't really know how this will turn out, but I think I'll try putting these ads on a few webpages, and let you know the results. If you want to check it out for yourself, click here.

Traffic is Going Up!

It's kind of cool to see the slow increase in traffic that my blog is getting. Back when I first started blogging, I was lucky if I even got one visitor per day. Now I'm consistently getting over 40 unique visits a day! I'm pretty pleased with the traffic I'm getting from Google. About 70% of my traffic now comes from searches. It's good to see that my blog got indexed pretty quickly, and even has some very high listings in Google. As I write this, my post about Linkreferral is the 3rd listing in Google for the search "linkreferral"! Hopefully I'll see my traffic continue to grow.

I think it helps that I try to update pretty frequently, at least a couple times per week. Google knows that I'm active, and checks and indexes my blog pretty often.

I'd be interested to hear about how you found my blog, if you want to leave a comment below.

Commission Junction – A Solid Affiliate Site

After a little research, I've determined that Commission Junction (a site that I mentioned in one of my previous posts) is one of the best sites to sign up for if you're into affiliate marketing, and want to sell real, tangible products. They have a listing of a ton of companies whose products you can promote, ranging from clothing to ringtones to electronics, and everything in between. And these are well know companies, like Old Navy, NewEgg, and Apple. The interface of the website isn't the easiest to use, but it gets the job done. It's easy to find good banners and links for your site. You can see a couple that I added in the sponsored section on the right hand side of my blog.

You first need to submit your website, which they check for quality. If it's accepted, then you can apply to individual merchants (like Apple), and if they accept you, you can add links to their products on your site, and get paid when people purchase them through your link. It's easier than I probably made it sound.

The only thing that I don't like is that they don't pay through PayPal. They do offer direct deposit into your checking account, though, in addition to check. They pay monthly.

If you want to try your hand at affiliate marketing, and are looking for some good, reputable products to promote, then give Commission Junction a look.

Happy New Year!

Hey there everybody, Happy New Year! I'm really excited about this upcoming year, and I've got a few projects and ideas in the works. I'm not a big fan of making resolutions, but I will strive to continue to provide you with helpful information this year. I guess my goal is just to make this blog better than ever, and increase my earnings each month. If there's anything, any topics that you'd like me to check out, research, or blog about, be sure to drop a comment and let me know.