Money making without cost.

Its been a while since my last post. You know what it's like one thing after another.
During this time I have been designing websites and building lists etc.
Recently I came across 2 totally free to join websites which pay affiliate commissions.

The first is http://www.geostring.com 
This company is created by the clixsense team.
As clixsense is a trusted PTC site there is no reason to distrust Geostring.
The basic Idea behind Geostring is you get $10 free to join then you recieve $0.01 for every referral 10 levels deep. Doesn't sound a lot but it soon adds up.
Why not check out their calculator to see what you can earn.

So why do they give you free money ?
Each week they send you a stats report, inside that report is a sponsored ad.
Thats it one sponsor ad a week, no start up cost so what you got to lose ?

The second one I joined is a networking site that pays you.
Do you remember Yuwie ?
This is a step up from that in that they pay you more.

Basically you upload photos, links, documents or blogs and each time their viewed you get paid.
They receive income from advertisers and you receive income from them.

http://www.redgage.com
Join for free and start uploading content, join in the community to get more visitors.

Hope you all enjoy these free income opportunities.

Bonfire night.

Bonfire night has been and gone
But thoughts of it still linger.
I held a banger in my hand
Has anyone seen my finger.

 Yes bonfire night has been and gone with a bit of a washout.
A lot of people braved the cold rainy weather to go watch a pile of rubbish burning and send a few hundred quid up in smoke through their fireworks.

Many left it until tonight or tomorrow to light their bonfires waiting for the weekend and hoping the weather turns.
Not a chance.
I hate being near an unorganised bonfire or fireworks display, I am not scrooge but have seen incidents around unorganised displays.

If your wanting to see a bonfire and fireworks display pay a few quid to go to an organised one and stay safe.

Not only will it reduce the chance of an injury you can save loads of money on fireworks.

Looking for backlinks ?

 I spend a certain amount of time each day hunting down backlinks.
A lot of these backlinks comes from blogs.

Why chase these backlinks when you can get them coming to you.
I just found Blogclicker which is like a surfer site exclusively for bloggers.

As well as earning credits for looking through blogs I get to find plenty of blogs relating to one of the niches for my websites.
I actually get surfing credits for something I do anyway.
The credits I earn are used to get visitors to my blogs.

Searching for blogs to post comments on and gain backlinks has never been so easy.

Trekpay Genius or Scam ?

I came across Trekpay while looking around the internet. After having a little look around I decided to check it out and see what it could do.

They have 2 sides to them, the first a Paid to click site the second is an advertising network.

The advertising is rather expensive. They have 2 options available, the first being a standard visitor. Unlike most online advertising your website is shown as a full site and not within a frame. The disadvantage of this is the visitors can load your page and close it within seconds whereas most traffic generators have a 20-30 second timer. This works out at $0.02 per visitor, most are about $0.01 per visitor.
The second advertising is for people who have third party advertising like adsense. Each visitor is expected to click a third party link on your website. This brings the cost up to $0.06 per visitor.
This sounds great but in reality as your website is opened without a frame there is no way to monitor the visitors or their actions.

I tried this out on a small investment of 100 visitors for $6.
Most advertising will pay a lot more than $0.06 per click so this seems fantastic.
Unfortunately 100 visitors yielded 11% actually clicking ads on my site, 11 clicks for $6 is not a great click through rate.
This was a small investment to calculate the amount of revenue that could be earned/lost on this program.

I also looked at the Paid to click program, at $0.02 per visitor as standard and $0.06 per visitor clicking on third party ads you would expect a good PTC payout.
They work slightly differently than most PTC, you get points for each click you make then your points gets changed to cash each week.
Each standard visitor is worth 1 point and a third party advertiser is worth 3 points.
After the first week I had over 200 points gathered, at a 50 % payout that should be at least $2 in my account. I actually recieved $0.40 for my week of clicking.

I know they pay on a downline but for the many who do not have a downline they are earning a fortune. I earned $0.40 and they earned $3.60 which is a good earner.

I am not saying they are a scam but they need a revision on both their payouts and their advertising. Especially their advertising for third parties where I only had a 11% clickthrough rate.

Wordpress blog gone again.

 Just over a week ago my wordpress blog was hijacked, it was a total pain having to reinstall it all and get it back up and running.
Well I woke up this morning and bang it's gone again.
I had no access to to my control panel either.
After tirelessly trying to get into my control panel to get my site up and running I decided to wipe it out through my hosting account and totally do away with wordpress.

Now I have to rebuild my site and all it's content from scratch.
As I am now doing this through a standard website rather than wordpress it's going to take me a while.
This means all the backlinking and promotion I have done to help increase my google and alexa ranking has been useless. My website will be losing it's credibility until I have time to build it and get it back online.

I am never using wordpress again, I will concentrate my efforts on building websites instead.

Domain Parking, Is it worth it ?

 As I have a few websites I began looking into the possibility domain parking.
It does sound like a set it and forget it system but I never believe all I read.
After some research I found various reasons why not to leave my domains in the hands of the domain parking companies.

Unless you have tons of traffic to your site they are virtually useless. You are not really allowed to generate visitors through normal standards, the visitors must be generic either through directly typing in your URL or through a google search.
The problem is as the parked site only contains some ads it's not likely to stay at the top of the search engines for long. There is also the fact that click through rates tends to be really low.
If you think about it when you do a search and click on a web link if a list of ads appeared in front of you what would you do ?
Press the back button and click on the next link related to my search.

If you have thousands of domains all making you a couple of dollars a month then you can be making good money. But before you go registering thousands of websites and parking them remember it actually costs $10 to $15 per site per year.

Your best off putting in a little work yourself and build your own websites.
A simple wordpress blog is simple to build and monetize, you don't even have to add that many posts yourself you can plug it into a program like Free Traffic System 
This system will add blogs to your post on autopilot.
If you set up a blog about anything and give it numerous categories you should have blog postings on a constant basis. You can set the main page as a sticky post which means this is the main page people will see when they enter your website.

Monetization of this website is easy, you can add affiliate links anywhere you like.
You can even place ads in the sidebar, theres plenty of companies available.
Adsense is googles cost per click service, place their ads on your site and get paid every time one of the ads is clicked.
Bidvertiser is an alternative to google.
Adbrite gives you both cost per click ads as well as cost per thousand banners and ads. You can get paid for all your visitors by adding their ads to your site.
Etology is an ad site where you can set your advertising revenue. If you have a site with a large volume of traffic then you can set a price for ads to appear for daily or weekly.
I also use PayDotCom which is similar to Clickbank

You will build a much bigger revenue by building and promoting your own website.
Once you have one set up and running you can quite easily set up a second and third and as many as you want. Plug them into the Free Traffic System and you will give the search engines all the juice they need to rank your website and send that traffic to you free of charge.

Bux To Nowhere.

A couple of years ago when I was reasonably new to affiliate marketing and building an online income I came across an article. This article explained how to build an income using PTC sites.
The article was convincing, all I had to do was sign up view some ads and build a downline.
$0.01 per click plus $0.005 per referral click, does not sound much but if you have a large number of referrals it adds up well.

Out comes the calculator. If there are 30 ads per day then I recieve $0.15 per referral. If I have 100 referrals then I earn $15 per a day. What about 200 referrals or even 500. Then I just repeat the process with another PTC site.

Sounds like easy money to me.
I did join a few Bux To sites (why are they all called BUX ?) and surfed each day. I built a downline, most of who clicked no ads at all.
Finally I reached a $10 payout level and requested payout, I waited and waited for the payout to happen but nothing.

OK I am a lot wiser when it comes to online affiliate marketing these days. I have made a lot of mistakes which have lost me money, I learnt from these mistakes till eventually realising the easiest ways to earn money online.

A few days ago I saw a banner ad on a website advertising the Bux site I had requested a payout from. Out of curiosity I decided to log in and see.
My payment is still pending audit after almost 2 years

There is no such thing as easy money, no matter how easy an ofer seems there is always a catch. Do not waste your time or money on income opportunities that lead to nowhere.
If it sounds too good to be true then it is.
These days I stick to income plans that are solid and reliable.
My website Affiliate Genius Has some good programs and guides to help you build your income.
Don't fall for a load of hype get into a system that works.

Wordpress Blog Hijacked.

 Woke up this morning with the idea of tidying up my websites and gaining a few more backlinks.
What I ended up doing was totally rebuilding my wordpress website due to an attack.

I was not really happy with my wordpress theme, It did not really match my site content so I went in search of a suitable theme. After not really getting anywhere through wordpress designs I decided to do a google search and found a few suitable replacements.
I loaded one up and tweaked it to suit my layout and design, when I was happy with all the changes off I went to do a bit more backlinking.

A couple of hours later I went to log into my site and nothing, I could not even get logged in to my admin panel to disable the theme.

I ended up having to go through my hosting's C-panel and delete my whole website.
Then I reinstalled wordpress and settled for a theme that was suitable, not the one I really wanted but I had no option due to the lack of trust in alternative themes.

The majority of wordpress themes out there are totally honest and all they want is thelink back to their website. Unfortunately there are a few unscrupulous developers using the lure of free themes to hack your website.

Be very careful when installing any free template or theme as it does not take long for your website to be taken over by these web thieves.

Now I have my site back up why not give me your comment on design, layout etc. Remember this was redesigned during what was supposed to be a lazy Sunday afternnon.
Art Deco Antiques
Please keep your comments open and honest, greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

Google is King

Love it or hate it Google is king.

Google is either loved or hated, a bit like marmite.
There is no getting away from it you cannot live without it.
People say there are hundreds of search engines out their but any body who has a website checks their google page ranking.

No matter if you are number 1 in MSN or Yahoo the making of any website is it's position in google.
The google business applications like analytics, reader and keyword tools mean you need not pay for programs who offer similar services. Some of these services can cost $50 to $150 so getting them for free is a big bonus.

We all hate googles quick decisions to ban websites it thinks are not playing by the rules. It's choices seem somewhat random and it's as tight as hell. Even a simple sniff that your doing something wrong your out, no second chances.
Even the adwords part of google bans you at the drop of a hat. We all think so what there's plenty of advertising programs out there but once you start using them you realise that the PPC you recieve from adwords is probably about 3 times as much as from any other program.

If your setting up a website then just check googles terms and conditions to ensure you do not violate any of them. If you do your delisted and your website is just a name with no value whatsoever.

The 13 year old Devil.

 The number 13 has long been known as the number of the devil.

When your child hits 13 you soon realize the truth, They are no longer your child but the son of satan.
With boys it starts with the nod and the grunt, girls just argue about everything you say.

We have a boy just turned 13 and suddenly no matter what we say we are wrong.
Good Morning tends to get a grunt.

Suddenly bedtime is for babies he should be allowe to stay up till he feels like it.
His clothes are not good enough, he wants a new wardrobe worth thousands.
The term "Everybody Else" suddenly comes into every sentence.
When you say to be in by nine he suddenly wants to be in by ten "cause everybody else is"

Slamming doors and shouting "it's not fair" is their favourite past time.

The only saviour during the next 10 years is when they want something.
This is your time to enjoy peace and tranquility.

Once they reach about 25 they become amicable once again, conversations can become normal once again.

If your about to start a family then enjoy the first 12 years beyond them is hell on earth.

We like it Free.

 On my travels around the internet I often find free advice, downloads, E-books etc.
Most of this stuff is not free, simply because you are giving your email address for the information you recieve. I have several email accounts just for this purpose, if I am downloading anything that says free then I use a gmail, yahoo or hotmail account. Unfortunately hotmail tends not to like mail from a lot of these companies so gmail tends to be my preferred choice.
Here are a few free products I have come across that you may find useful.

Online Business Kit
This is a nice informative kit that shows you some basics about earning money online. The kit is courtesy of internet millionaire Shawn Casey. In the kit he shows you some of the secrets that made him an online millionaire.

I have a gift for you
This is a free 46 minute audio guide  which guides you through the ways to harness the power of the internet. Just for downloading and listening to this audio message you can also enter their free prize draw to win a laptop computer. Worth a look.

Free access to wholesale products
This site gives you free access to wholesale suppliers. If your looking to earn an income from ebay or other online auction sites then take a look. You can find some pretty useful products for sale at wholesale prices.

Zwinky
This is a fun free tool available to the US.
Download the toolbar for free and turn yourself into a 3D cartoon.
This is great for adding to your profiles on blogs or social network sites.

Free is good but remember nothing is FREE. You will recieve E-mails trying to sell you other products or updates to the original program. Use an alternative Email to your main one for any website offer you sign up for.

More making cash with Twitter.

 A few days ago I posted a blog about making cash using Twitter.
Since then I have been doing a lot of research, as an affiliate marketer I am looking at automating processes to save me time and money. At the same time I do not want to be spending a load of money on products, I will however pay for a product that has value to me.

One thing to remember about making money with twitter is that the more followers you have the more money your likely to make.
After going through a lot of different websites and strategies I decided to post a couple of things I found out through my research.

First I found GF Faster  which I joined as a free member, the basics of this are similar to viral marketing where you refer 4 who refer 4 etc. It is totally free to join so just sign up and and promote your link and pretty soon your followeres begin to grow virally.
The great thing about this website is the free bonuses you get, they are supposedly valued at about $10,000.
They are actually quite good, unlike most sites that regurgetate crappy ebooks. The bonus materials are actually a massive list of downloadable webinars on every aspect of affiliate marketing.

These are some awesome bonuses for free, I have listened to a few of them as the list is big it will take a long time to get through them. Just start by picking the most appropriate titles.

www.tweetadder.com  , This system gives you a free download where you can start to build your twitter followers and much more direct from your desktop. The free version allows you 250 followers most of who will return the favour and follow you back. It's worth downloading just for the quick turnaround of 250 followers.
If you want to upgrade it's going to cost you, $55 for a single user licence. If you have more than one Twitter account you can buy more licences at discount rates.

Use a Twitter account to earn money, simply use the tactics above to build your followers.
Then go to my other blog Simple Income Builder  to find programs that pay you to tweet their ads to your followers.

The Smoking Ban.

 I am a smoker and have been for years despite this I do partly agree with the smoking ban.
Unfortunately the whole affair has been handled extremely badly.

As a parent I agree any area where children go like restaurants and public houses should be smoke free. On the other hand if there is a seperate room where smokers can go smoking should be allowed.

My main problem with the smoking ban is that whenever I take my kids anywhere we have to fight through a group of smokers huddled around the door area to get to our destination.
This is obviously more harmful to my children than a pub having a smoking room.
The ban should include no smoking in the entrance way to a building so we no longer have to fight our way through the smoke.
Once the government stops treating smokers like lepers the better, yes I know they end up spending more on medical expenses of smokers. Where do you think that money comes from ? Exactly we pay a lot of taxes on cigs. If everyone was to stop smoking where would all that money be claimed from ? You would end up paying more taxes to compensate.

While I am on the subject of treating smokers like lepers. Why ?
If I was a drug addict or alcaholic the government would gladly give me extra money. What do these people give back ?
The goverment should think before it acts.

Is Tube Feeding a Sin ?

 I have a 4 year old girl who is fed through a nasogastric tube.
A Nasogastric tube is a tube inserted through the nose which goes down through the esophegus and into the stomach. This tube is her lifeline, all the nutrients she needs is given to her via this tube.

We try to treat the family with a sense of normality and do everything a normal family do, the tube is not something that holds us back. We go out for meals like any normal family and take our girls feed with us, yes she has her feed as we have our dinner.

The looks we get during our dinner can sometimes be hilarious, people trying not to look or appearing to try not to look. I know it can look funny and peopledo not understand what the tube is for but I would just prefer people to ask than just stare.

As our daughter has medical needs we began cruising as our holiday, this makes it easier for us as the amount of medication and feeding apparatus it is impossible for us to fly. We alsoneed to ensure that all the feeding and medical apparatus needs to be carried on as we cannot trust anyone with this equipment just in case.
As we cruise regularly my wife often looks at forums on different cruises, she was appalled by a comment left on one forum where a userleft this comment " We arranged for an early seating for lunch, when we arrived the first evening we were embarased when a child was fed via a tube through their nose. We were lucky enough to rearrange our seating time to the later sitting to avoid any further embarrassment"

Although this was not our child being talked about it brought a shiver to our spine. Our child is now an embarrassment just for having medical needs ?

We are used to the strange looks but to have a child called an embarrassment is totally annoying.
Our child is normal, she needs special care and attention but this does not make her an embarrassment. She is a beautiful girl who brings countless joy to our life.
If you cannot handle this then YOU are the embarrassment.

If you see a family with a child who has special needs no matter what they are then either go on your merry way without staring or speak to the parents/child. They will usually be happy to explain the problem and chat to you.
If you are embarrassed by anyone who has special needs then it is you who has a problem not them.

Simple income builder.

 As you may know I like things that are easy, especially when it comes to making money.
I have been a user of twitter for a while but just found a website that pays you to tweet.
If you have a twitter account then make money from it, It does need to be 4 months old with a minimum of 200 followers but again that is quite easy to achieve.

Firstly join www.tweetpenguin.com  this is a simple follow me follow you type program that is free.
Once you reach 200 followers sign up at these websites, all are free.
www.sponsoredtweets.com
www.twittad.com
www.revtwt.com


Advertisers are looking to pay you to tweet their products to all your followers.
Best bit is you get to automate it so after sign up you virtually sit back and wait for advertisers to tweet their own products through your account.
I like the easy life.

2 valuable pieces of software.

I am always looking for ways to simplify my business building.
Recently I started using www.freetrafficsystem.com  as I mentioned in an earlier post. This system helps build one way backlinks for me with just a little effort.

Recently I found 2 new pieces of software to help build my backlinks.
Both are from www.glocksoft.com  and both have free versions available for you to try out.

The first is Fast Directory Submitter, this software asks you for some information like name, web address, email etc. Once you have input that its a simple matter of pressing submit then all you have to do is type in the captcha code for each directory. They are not just a bunch of FFA directories around 10 to 20 % of them have a PR ranking. The free version offers listings in 150 directories the paid version has 2882 directories available. This software will build your backlinks in no time at all.

The second piece of software is the Fast Blog Finder. This software lets you put in a keyword, hit search and the free version brings back 50 blogs. These will all be listed with PR rankings as well as if the blog has nofollow tags. All you have to do is click on the blog you want and add a comment.

These two pieces of software will help build your backlinks in no time at all. Beats spending hours searching the internet for backlinking opportunities.
Try the free versions now at www.glocksoft.com

Big issue for Big issue.

 As I walk up the main street in the city centre I hear the familiar sound " big issue please"
The sound of one of the local big issue sellers is probably a familiar sound in most city centre's these days.
As I walk past I look at them and say " No thankyou" , I am greeted with a smile and a "thankyou" as I walk by.

The thing is that big issue sellers are PEOPLE, they have suffered in their lives through a variety of problems. Yes alcahol and drugs are often a contribution but also child abuse and neglect are a major factor of people living on the streets.
Big Issue sellers are these people realising their lives need to be changed and reaching out for help, your help.

They are rarely more annoying than that shop assistant who walks up to you saying "can I help you with anything".
So why is it that the majority of people treat them like scum.
I have seen people cross the road to avoid them, WHY. The big issue sellers are polite and all you need to say is "no thankyou" and your guaranteed a "thankyou" in reply.

Lets just offer a little bit of respect to people who are trying to get their lives back in order, you don't have to buy their wares just speak to them like a person not something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

Careful in Italy

 When in Italy earlier this year I was dumbfounded by some of the laws out there.
Me and my family decided to take a trip to the leaning tower of Pisa.
We booked a tour as we were not familiar with the area and thought that having a tour guide would give us some good information about the history of the area and the tower itself.

As we alighted the coach we were bombarded with street sellers trying to ply their wares on the unsuspecting tourists. Fake sunglasses, watches and handbags were among the main items we were trying to be sold.
Luckily we had been informed of one of the most ridiculous laws on the planet.

It was perfectly legal for a street seller to sell us a fake Gucci handbag for around 100 Euros.
But it was illegal for us to actually buy one.

If you are found buying one of these handbags you stand to get a fine of around 1000 Euros.
So you end up paying 1100 Euros for a fake handbag that you could probably have bought an original for around 650 Euros.

Don't get caught out when travelling abroad, check out the local laws.

Annoying Utility Reps.

 Door to door salesmen are annoying, they always seem to turn up when your doing something.

I had some utility reps around the other night trying to promote how great their company is and how much money they can save me.
Of course I like to sve money where I can but one thing I do hold dear is the level of service I recieve from any company I purchase from.
I will namedrop here, I use Virgin Media and have done for 6 years. They have given a good service with almost no problems with any of their services and I believe they are competitively priced.
When a problem has occurred they have ensured the situation was put right in a friendly manner and have kept their promises.

I explained this to the reps who arrived at the door and explained as I was happy with my present company I was uninterested in switching. "But we can save you £200 a year" a statement I presumed not to be entirely true, they always go off on some stupid algorythm that I don't even think they understand to show you how you can save.
Again I said " No thanks my present company offered value and service I am completely happy with"

Then comes what I consider an insult, seeing my little girl playing in the room the next line of so called salesmanship comes.
" Surely you would prefer to spend all the money you save on the kids, you can buy a lot with £200 "
F*** O**,   Sorry but how annoying. Do it look like my child is starving ?   Does it look like she has nothing to play with ?  Do we look like we are living in squallow ?

With that the door is closed, ready and waiting for the next rep to offer me hundreds of pounds in savings.

6 Months of Christmas.

Yes it's that time again, the countdown has begun.
Really it starts on boxing day with the hamper companies offering a way of saving money for next christmas.

But the real countdown starts around June with signs going up around pubs and restaraunts, Book now for christmas.
Then of course once fathers day is over the card shops have nothing else to display so along come shelves full of christmas cards.

The supermarkets want their piece of the action so take it one step further and all the christmas decorations are on show for all to see, and the cheap advent calendars take up a whole isle.

Toy shops quickly getting on board with their displays and offers "SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS" or the ever popular "£20 DOWN AND RECIEVE IT IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS".

When will it end ?
Christmas is one day of the year and people are acting as though the shops are going to run out of christmas cards.
It's not a drought where we have to stock up on water, it's cheap tacky christmas cards that go directly into the bin as soon as christmas is over.

The commercialisation of christmas lessens the enjoyment for me, it's about my kids having a good time.

Do me a favour, stop buying all the cheap crap. Tell your friends and family your not sending cards this year, tell your kids that the useless little piece of chocolate they recieve for 25 days will be replaced by a nice big bar on the 25th day.
Once you have done this work out how much you have saved and pass it on to your local childrens charity, or a charity that means something to you.

Ask all your friends to do this as well and feel good in the knowledge you really have given the gift of life to so many sick people who really need your support.

I am an avid supporter of  http://www.barnardos.org.uk/  and  http://www.foreverangels.org/ 
Give the gift of life this christmas.