The Media Supermarket

I enjoy writing, I love to learn, Web 2.0 stuff is just irresistable, and it’s great to be able to make money out of all this.
So I’ve decided to learn everything there is to learn, reach out as close as possible (to people) and earn some bucks:)
It’s been a while since I’ve been learning about the basics, trying many things, facing a lot of frustration, and feeling the exhilaration that comes with this great medium.
Last week, I bought “Six Figure Blogging” a course by Darren Rowse and Andy Wibbels. I am seriously considering exploring all the related materials there is to learn and implement.
I’m half way through, and had some important things considered and changed in this site. It seems promising, more interesting and fun.
I’ll share my thoughts on the course when I finish and implement it.
What’s next?
Joel Comm’s “What Google Didn’t Teach You About Making Money With AdSense”. Lots of great resources come with it; a one-month free entrance to the coaching club, some exclusive downloads and software. Didn’t read it yet, but it seems really advanced and fun to read.

I made it clear to myself from the beginning that this will be a business blog, with a commercial side to it. At the same time, it is not intended solely for selling products and services. I really enjoy writing and sharing my experiences and thoughts with people. Since the main topics discussed here are related to business, I might as well apply them and gain some experience in making money through this new medium.
It’s been a bit more than a quarter since this blog has started, and I want to participate in Shai Coggins’ $100 challenge, to share the results and experience.
I’m using a variety of techniques and revenue streams to monetize the blog. Right now, I’m in the stage of experimenting with different methods, and looking for the best way to utilize each.
Monetization efforts range from totally passive income techniques, to techniques that get offline connections and result in business transactions. Therefore, I’ll group my methods to three groups: passive income, cost-per-action methods, and marketing methods that bring prospective clients.

Passive Income:The type of program that rewards me whenever a user clicks on an ad, without me having to convince the reader of anything, hence the name.

• Google Adsense:The ad system that pays bloggers for each click a user clicks on any of their ads. All I have to do is find how out to attract (and keep) visitors, and hopefully they will find the ads relevant for them, click on them, to result in money paid for me.
• Bidvertiser: The same system, but with a different network of adverisers.
• Kontera: Also pays per click, but in a different way. Their ads are the highlighted and underlined with double orange line. They also depend on context. If you hover over any of these orange link, a box with information appears. I get paid if you click on them. I just discovered they have new really cool formats, ranging from simple text, to pictures, video and flash. I’m going to start testing them.
  $0.78 was generated so far from these systems.

Cost per action (sale) systems: The ones that reward me if and only if the reader takes a certain type of action, buying a product for example. They are also called affiliate programs.

• Toolbars: Halfway between passive income and CPA, are toolbars. I create the toolbars, and hope to promote them as much as possible. I am rewarded the more people download and use them. I have already made my first $100 through Conduit, but it’s only redeemable when I reach the $250 level. Agloco is another system, where everyone who installs it gets to share the profits. This toolbar is supposed be released sometime during March ‘07.
• Auction Ads: These are eBay auctions featured on my site. I get to keep the profit made out of the sales if one of my readers makes a purchase through my blog.
• Text Link Ads: It’s an affiliate program, where if you sign up through my site and get accepted, I am rewarded.

Cost per (my) action: Programs that pay me for an action on my side, for example writing a post and / or linking to a certain site. PayPerPost and Blogsvertise are the two systems I am working with right now. I am still experimenting with these two systems, and already wrote two posts, one for each. I’m supposed to be paid $15 for these two posts. Blogitive is another similar system for which I applied. I was asked to make some changes, which I did, and hope for acceptance soon.

Marketing for prospective clients: I’m working on promoting my toolbars, The Middle East Media Guide, Mediadisk, and my services as a copywriter and translator. I got an offer to work with Textappeal, a company that works on providing advertisers with messages translated while taking into consideration the cultural implications of the target audience. More importantly, this blog was responsible for getting me an offer to work with the biggest Arab online community, which I gladly accepted:)

This is how my first quarter looked like. I think the results are great, and got me to really unexpected places and people, which I would never have found. My financial goals are mugh higher than this, and I’m constantly looking for more ways of providing value and quality content. More important to me, is growing, learning, and connecting with more and more people of similar interests.

PayPerPost, the service that links advertiser with bloggers, is announcing some new stuff in the coming weeks, or maybe more.
While trying to guess what it is exactly they will be offering, several options came up.
One of their current projects is developing a new badge for their new affiliate program. This is done through a vote for around forty different affiliate badges. It’s cool to have the community of their users participate in collectively deciding which badge is to be used.
Although an affiliate program does exist to attract new bloggers, there might be some changes on this program since they are remaking the badges.
Still, although that is the obvious and logical option in my mind, I have a feeling that there is something bigger.
I expect the timing of this new thing to be at the beginning of next June. The perfect timing to announce the new stuff, would be during their Postiecon. The opportunity to blog about this new stuff of theirs is available up to the 25th of April. After that, search engines will need three to four weeks to index all these posts, with some more time to create some great buzz. By the beginning of June, some good buzz will have been created, and it will be perfect to make the announcement during the Posties event.
I hope they diversify their offering instead of just upgrading their existing stuff. It would be great if they make a feature that can increase my site’s traffic.
What I really like about PPP, is that we get paid for our writing, and not just for having a banner ad. Of course you have to have a high PageRank and a good Alexa rank for the high paying opportunities. I also enjoy researching relevant and cool products on the Web, and I like sharing it with others. Stay tuned for PPP’s new stuff. 

A very creative and descriptive name for a service I recently got to know about. I also signed up and look forward to participate in their program. It is a program that pays bloggers to post their ideas about advertisers’ products or sites. 
What was really interesting and different about them, is that they don’t have rigid rules for discussing the featured products.

“You do not have to necessarily endorse the advertiser’s website products or services, just mention them in your blog. You can relate to in your own life, review the site, compliment or even complain about it, it is entirely up to you.”

But their strategy seems to be based on links, since they require no less than three links pointing to the website reviewed, which is mainly aimed at generating traffic, and more importantly improve the rank of that site. I read on the JustMakeMoneyOnline Blog that they are also promoting a new innovative advertising service for bloggers based on video ads.
It’s very easy to register for this service, and they alert bloggers for the available tasks in which they can participate.

When I go on selling advertisements, the traditional way, I have to get to know the client, talk to them, really understand them and convince them of the value of my offering. After that comes the long procedure (fight) over where to place the ad or how long it would be etc.
With contextualized ad systems, things seem to be just the opposite; I’m getting to know about the advertiser, through which I’m generating income, through my publication (blog), and after they publish the ads that I placed wherever I wanted!
This is how I got to know about several sites, blogs, services and people, one of which is John Chow.
The interesting thing, is that since advertising is contextual, and it is related to what I’m writing, the ads that show are usually interesting to me. Never mind about my visitors!
His ad caught my attention through several key words, like “your blog is a money maker”, and “I’ll show you how 100% free”.
He seems to really understand to the concept of giving in order to take, and has his own witty way of implementing it.
One of the ways he is using, is posting an ad on a certain blog, only to cheer the blogger and telling him to “keep up the good work”. How can you not wonder what the advertiser wants by just cheering up someone?! He only has the url of his blog under the cheer, and does not ask you to take action, not even click.
Apparently this not only caused readers to click and talk about it, the targeted blogger would reply with another Adsense ad as a reply for that ad. Here is a post showing interestig dialogs. Thanks JohnTP.
John’s post analyzing his incomefrom his blog was very instructive and gave me an idea about the different income streams available and how each can be used. I must have overestimated Google’s Adsense program. I look forward to sharing such results from my blog!
His latest strategy, which I fell for… (rose up to??) was to give links to bloggers who review his blog. For me, I thought it would be great to get some traffic from John, but I had to put something useful (I hope) about his blog. Therefore, I was forced to read more and more, to get to know him better, which is what his whole strategy is about. He got himself a new reader, and some links.
The memory of one of my college teachers,  Bob Schemel, just came to my mind when he asked us what was the thing that is equal for all human beings and no matter who you are, how much money you had, you are still an equal with all other people…
His answer? Time!
I had to agree, because come to think about it, we all have twenty four hours a day, and although smarter people might achieve more in less time, and might know how to collaborate, or purely use others to “save” time, we all have our deadlines, we need to be in a certain place at a certain time.
With the new available technologies, all this is collapsing. Time and space restrictions are collapsing. The quality of this post, for example, does not have anything to do with submitting it on time. There is no time limit for submitting it. So I “took” my time and wrote it at my convenience. You, in turn are reading it at your convenience and it can potentially be read any time in the future.
If this was a newspaper article, I would have had to submit it today, would have been paid to write it once, and anyone who wants to read it has only today, and maybe tomorrow to read it, then they’ll have to look in garbage can!
From an advertising point of view this article would have generated some income for the newspaper only once and that’s it.
In the case of this (and any other) post, whenever it is read, there will be some ads on the side or featured products to sell. It can therefore generate a theoretically unlimited amount of income for the blogger.   

Seems to me that time is no longer money, at least it is less so, than it used to be. Now, money is generated by the quality of your work, which is rewarded by more and more links (votes) from other people. These people don’t know (or care) when you wrote it, they care if it is useful or interesting.

So, if you want to make some cash, go out and get some links, because links are money! 

I have been keen on getting to know the secrets and tricks of improving my online business, which is no more than two weeks old!, and bumped into several different resources.One of the main ones, was
Joel Comm, and his tips on getting the best out of
Adsense.
For four consecutive days, I have received daily personalized emails, giving me tips on how to maximize the use of this program. Since I use Wordpress for this blog, there were two plugins to be used, the first is the
Adsense plugin, by Phil Hord and the other more advanced one is
Adsense Deluxe, by
Acmetech. It took me a while to get them in place, and I still wasn’t able to install the normal Adsense plugin.
Adsense Deluxe is really cool! It allows you to get post ads whenever you want. Like this: (removed)
You just type the right tag, and Google gets you the ad right where you want it.
A far greater resource was getting me a Silver membership for the
surefirewealth site. There are tons and tons of internet marketing, software, contextualized advertising and many other useful information, and in different forms. Ebooks, videos, audios, and downloads. I’m just starting!
There was also another useful report, “The New Age Work at Home” that you can get by
clicking here, and getting to know great stuff about online business. Try it!
I’m falling in love with technology for the first time in my life! It’s just beautiful what you can do with it…