Do the paid surveys exist? Yes, they do. But before getting into the home survey business, you should really look at the company that offers you the service. In fact paid surveys are mostly coming from serious marketing companies working with serious retailers. It is not a “free lunch”, the market and trend research behind every survey covers all the costs and allows big retail companies to plan their sales system based on the latest market trends.

I have researched the companies providing this type of service based on their reliability and reputation and found that only few of them can be used with good level of confidence.

First type – Paid Surveys, where you register on their database (free of charge) and based on the information you enter, you will receive different type of surveys to complete. The interesting point is, more you complete and based on your answers, you will start receiving more and higher paid surveys. Actually this is one of the easiest online money making system around, that doesn’t require you being an Internet or Search engine guru. Try the company below and see how much you can earn.

The variation of direct payment is the point system. When you complete a survey, you receive number of points, something like virtual cash. And you can redeem them online in several shops. But here is the most important bit – you should only deal with companies that offer you real online retailers (like M&S, Argos, Amazon, etc.). I would recommend checking the link below for a reliable survey marketing company with good links to the major UK retailers.

Second, and probably more rare type is a testing sites. Testing sites would offer you instead of completing a survey, to test some type of products or services e.g. a new toaster or perfume or electronic gadget. You might also be offered to test a website for it’s functionality, etc. As you understand all that is work, even if you use a product then the testing, your opinion, etc is something you contribute to the market research and because of that you are being rewarded. In some cases you just keep the product, in others offered some other products from the same retailer. Again the reliability of the company and choice of retailers is very important. Best I could find is just below.

This is for people who want to start earning money on the Net without spending much time (well, even not having much time) to learn the online business models. And it also works.

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1. Industrial Domain Pricing

The problem is usually very simple. From time to time Google gets into “craze”, it is when some advertiser puts good money in and Google starts to feed absolutely irrelevant ads into virtually all advertising channels.

Couple of months ago it was Grupon, that was driving me bananas. Whatever the site about shoes, economics or medicine I was getting this stupid “Eat as much as you want in…” on ALL of them. As a result a click-through rate was zero, site looked ugly and badly designed. Last months it was 123-reg; same thing on the site that I was discussing, let’s say, iPod touch it was another domain advert. What do you think about click rate? Correct, it was zero again.

P.S. The advert is inactive now. Click-through increased immediately.
Today after seeing a drop I did check my ads, this time Adsense decided that I should only advertise watches, whatever the site is about – only watches.

Now, to avoid this you can use option block competitive ads and block all the crazes one by one. This immediately improves your click-through ratio in Adsense.

Related posts:

1. Adsense Alternatives
2. Affiliate Links vs PPC Ads

Well, I am going to correct this sometime in the future, but before I should agree with one statement. Yes, best paying Affiliate Programs are fro the different sector or niche. In fact even very big companies like William Hill can pay you more than 50% (just listen to this, more than half!) of the total money they receive from your referral link. In fact there are two most profitable affiliate programs known – sex and gambling. I am not going to discuss or help with the first one – I strongly dislike sex and especially porn industry (call me old-fashioned if you like!), then second one – gambling should not be omitted.

Responsible gambling is something of an interactive entertainment, and therefore should be included in the Affiliate Programs discussion. At the same time I would recommend to go with well established household names of the industry and this will allow you and your customers to avoid bitter disappointments.

The best gambling affiliate program I have seen is below:

To be honest the revenue share they are offering is amazing. You can get up-to 70% of the revenue from a client which means if your client puts £100 into the game, then £70 is actually yours. Unlike many other industries this revenue is often recurring, and you keep your client for as long as he actively plays. So sign up for the program above (and behind that affiliate program is William Hill, which is good enough by itself) and start promoting.

The only thing, please don’t forget to put “Gamble Responsibly” somewhere in your promotional texts and give links to the counselling services somewhere in your website. This is what I call a responsible affiliate marketing campaign.

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I had a site – Poker School, just for the fun. Now I am going to fill it with articles and posts in games, chaos and probability theories. So watch this new Poker space and it doesn’t matter if you like the game of Poker or not. Ideas will be interesting and unusual – this is a promise.

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1. England vs Germany

And after that: Rubbish! Rubbish! And a full truck-load of Rubbish!

Now, my dear visitor, you did come to the right place, so keep reading.

Why I decided to put this short article in the middle of my Affiliate Marketing tutorial series? Simple, I just checked todays comments blocked by Akismet (hundreds of them actually) and found that many of the visitors are coming from the get-rich-quick sites. Poor things, they believe that I (or anyone else) would let their rubbish links through, as was promised in that “unique tried and tested ebook” they just bought for $29.99 “saving over $1500”. Aren’t they lucky!

Now, I am running some serious Affiliate marketing tutorials here.






I would not tolerate any cr*p like that appearing on my website, I would not like my visitors to believe in all that rubbish. Therefore here we go with few statements for you to consider before buying into flashy ads about “how to make money fast”

• It is possible to make money online, as it is possible to make money offline.
• There is NO much difference in online and offline money making in principle. It is NOT possible to make big money quickly unless you:
  a) Invest good money initially
  b) Invest your time and work.
• Do NOT believe anyone who tells you that he can show you “how to make $2345.00 in just one week”. If he can make that in just one week why is he so desperate to get your $29.99.
• Any quick money with low initial investment can only be based on stealing or fraud and anyone should know the consequences.
• Black hat, yellow hat, any colour hat techniques will simply get your sites banned forever from search engines.
• Internet provides tons of opportunities to make good profit but you can not do it without knowledge, determination and hard work.

And last but not least, when you search for “how to make money fast” and click on a sponsored link or ad from the search engine, be aware that the person who so generously giving you his book (strategy, scheme, etc.) at the “fraction of price” pays Google about $5.00 just for your click.

Thanks for reading!

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1. “Get Rich Fast” or learning the basics

This is not an easy question to answer. Therefore I would run a whole series of articles and this one being just an introduction.

First of all you might try and use both PPC and Affiliate. But this has it’s advantages and disadvantages. For example, let’s assume you are blogging about a product which costs 100 pounds. Many of bloggers that try to monetise do usually start with reviews, product blogging or similar. We will discuss it in more details in the future articles.

Now, before making your decision you should get your calculations right. Here we would only operate with estimates. Product that costs £100 pounds usually gives you commission of £6-£7 per sale.





How much it could give you in Adsense? It is not difficult to check. Search Google for “google keyword tool”. The firs result will take you to a keyword tool itself, where you should type your product name (e.g. iPod), enter captcha (letters that are used to check that the user is actually a human) and click Search. On the top of the results page you will see “Columns”, click on it and select “Estimated Avg. CPC”, where CPC stands for Cost Per Click. Click on Save. Your last column will now show a number (in our case it is now £0.89 but it changes on a daily basis). This number means that Google suggest Advertisers to pay £0.89 to have their ad placed. It doesn’t mean that you will get this amount if someone clicks on the ad, Google should take it’s share first. Therefore if you are estimating your earnings then around £0.40 earning per click would be a realistic estimate.


 

Conclusion: we have estimated our possible profits from single sale at £6 and from single click at £0.40. In my next article we would do some more calculations to get closer to the real-life situation.

To be continued…

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1. SEO Blues Part 2. Links, links, links…
2. Affiliate Marketing – Amazon vs Affiliate Window
3. Adsense Optimizing

Well, this is my short answer: I would not trust a company that wants my name, address and bank details prior to the signup. Sorry, people, I would like to test you before I give so much personal and sensitive information. I would preffer business model implemented by Chitika, even if it doesn’t look as polished as some others.

If company wants to pay you then it is rarely so desperate to get all your payment details prior to the due date.

If it is a mistake, then it can be costly to the Netklix business model. If they want people to check their service then they should at least give an alternative payment rout (e.g. Cheque or PayPal). I am not prejudice against the Netklix whatsoever, the above is simply my initial impression. And it was not in favour of Netklix. Therefore I am not going to test it or try it – sorry.

Your opinion might differ, so it is up to you to decide. My testing for the moment would still be based on Chitika.

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1. Adsense Alternatives
2. Paid Surveys

Well, this is not as easy task as one could think. Google Adsense attracts not only big advertisers but big publishers. Meanwhile being a big company has it’s drawbacks. Also in a world without competition provider starts to dictate: You can’t do this, you can’t do that, you should do only things only this way…” Not nice…

First time I’ve discovered a Big Company Syndrome of Adsense when I needed to contact their support with some small issue. I’ve got an automated reply referring me to their FAQ and Forum… Nice, as if I haven’t checked them beforehand… OK, I have figured out everything myself, just by tweaking some settings but hey, today I have received another email asking to rate the quality of support! What support? OK, let’s leave it…

But from here we can draw Rule No.1: You are pretty safe using Adsense until you run into problems. Support level… hmmm… what support?

Here we go, finding the alternative. First of all forget these networks using links (you have probably noticed double-underlines somewhere else). It doesn’t look good, it’s intrusive, it’s often irrelevant.

After checking few PPC networks I got my eye on Chitika. Their ads look unobtrusive and actually small picture next to the link sort of looks right. You can see Chitika example at the bottom of this page and to sign-up click the image below.

My first impression was not bad at all, quick approval, easy to use dashboard, PayPal option. So I have decided to replace Adsense for this blog by Chitika.

Now let’s do usual pros and cons:

Adsense:
PROS: Well established, lot’s of advertisers, good rates, good content matching, many ad block types, very common look
CONS: virtually no support, very limited payment options, no PayPal, long confirmation-authentication process, very common look

Chitika:
PROS: Quick approval, PayPal option, simple setup and actually a human support
CONS: Less UK ads than Adsense, less ad block options, average content matching.

Conclusion: Adsense is still more powerful, but why not give other networks a try. And if selecting Adsense alternative then Chitika looks good enough.

Related posts:

1. Netklix as an Adsense Alternative
2. Adsense Optimizing
3. Affiliate Marketing – Amazon vs Affiliate Window

I would never vouch for removing any protection, but with iPod “jailbreaking” seems to be the right thing to do. Why? Hmmm…, just think about the main audience of the iPod Touch 4g – early teens. And now when new and shiny device is brought by Santa they did find out that:

• It would not start unless you have iTunes installed and your iPod connected to your PC or Mac. No Linux please, nothing free with Apple, remember.
• When you register you need to put in a credit card details BEFORE you buy anything. Fourteen years old? Credit card? Guess what… “Dad, can you put your credit card please here…” Why? Is Apple making a money-pump. Of course it is, and a nasty one. Kids do not know the value of money, they are made to spend 99p here, 59p there but spend. This is why I think that “jailbreaking” in this case in ethical, simply because the first unethical move came from the company.

Now, I will show a workaround to parents. But hurry, Apple will be quick to patch this gap.

1. Do NOT put any credit card details in iTunes when you teen register’s an iPod Touch, simply press cancel. It will work but will not allow to install even free apps.(Typical Apple)
2. Click on the Apps in iTunes store and select ANY free app, click BUY. Now the Credit Card screen will come out again, but will have an option of no card. Choose that option and complete the registration. This is it, iTunes account will be functional and iPod use will be able to download free apps.
3. Logoff from your kid’s account and create a new one for yourself. Now you can put Credit Card details, because the young one has no access to this account. Finish the configuration and make a note of your login detail.

This is it, now your teen don’t have access to your Credit Card details, but you can award them instantly for good behaviour by logging into your iTunes account and sending them instant iTunes gift certificates to redeem in the iTunes shop. No nasty surprises, no excess credit card bills, environment is fully controlled by you.

P.S. Note to spammers. Look, Akismet already deleted 7,600 spam comments this month only. Do you want to join the club? Stop spamming. Every comment that passes Akismet is still reviewed by me.

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For example, if you have three domains watches.co.uk, rings.co.uk, mobiles.co.uk (Watches, mobiles and rings, hmm…, I wish I had them all, in that case I wouldn’t be typing tutorials now).

First what you should do is to get yourself a web hosting account. I will base this tutorial on my trusty host for many years Site5. And if you want you can sign-up with them using my affiliate link. See, I am not masking it, I am writing a tutorial so if you find it useful and decide to get yourself hosting package, then why not let me earn few pennies, especially if it doesn’t cost you anything.

Where was I? Yes, Site5. I have one of my reseller accounts with them therefore “sold” myself a shared hosting package with 10 addon domain. Shared hosting is what most people get and addon domains is way of hosting many sites on one account with one cPanel (control panel).

When you buy a hosting, you either buy a domain from Site5 or use one of your own domains by changing nameservers. Let’s say we use watches.co.uk as our main domain with username watches. In that case a special folder is created in your root directory

/home/watches/public_html

This is where we are going to upload our Datafeed studio files. After everything is uploaded and installed (I am not going to retype installation instructions here, just read-as-you go or check dfstudio docs), you register your first site in admin menu

watches.co.uk.

TIP. In configurations, if asked about URL, omit the www bit, e.g. enter http://watches.co.uk. There are some glitches if you use www, which are fixable but require more advanced techniques.





Now it is time to upload Datafeeds. Please upload feeds for all your domains, e.g. merchants for watches, rings and mobiles into this single install. To make your watches.co.uk display only watches, edit categories displayed in site menu and un-check ALL, selecting only watch related. You can also create your own dynamic categories and replace merchant’s own, as you find convenient.

Next in your cPanel select Addon domains and configure your next domain, e.g. mobiles.co.uk with a username watches. What would happen, a directory would be created in your root

/home/watches/public_html/mobiles.co.uk

From this stage Martin writes in his Wiki how to configure everything using shell access. But not many average affiliate webmasters would feel comfortable using shell / bash, and not many hosts would be happy giving you full shell / root access by default. Therefore I will show you how to do it WITHOUT shell enabled on your account.

First of all, use File Manger in your cPanel and navigate to

www or public_html

directory in your root folder. Do not touch anything else! In the right-hand pane check the

mobiles.co.uk

folder and click delete button on the top menu. Make sure that only mobiles.co.uk folder is checked, otherwise you might dramatically mess your service.

Now, when the folder is deleted (make sure it’s gone from both public_html and www directories) create a text file in your Notepad and copy the following line there

<?php symlink(‘/home/watches/public_html’, ‘/home/watches/public_html/mobiles.co.uk’); ?>

Don’t forget to replace “watches” and “mobiles” with your own user and domain names.

Save the text file with .php extension e.g. symlink.php and upload into /home/watches/public_html directory. Then point your browser to

http://watches.co.uk/symlink.php

(replace watches by your own domain). If you just see a blank page and no error messages, then the job is most probably done with symbolic link being created.

Log into the amin are in watches.co.uk and add mobiles.co.uk under configure sites option. Select categories required from categories menu or create dynamic ones whichever you find easier. Done! Two different websites running from single install.

Just do the same with your second, third, etc. addon domain.

As you can see, we have avoided using bash and scary terminal windows but still have a working multisite setup. Enjoy!

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