Mr Beach Bum.com

I was asked to do a review on a site that has a concept I’ve not come across before. Qooforum.com is essentially a forum where you can post about the topics you like, and they share a percentage the Google Adsense revenue generated by your posts with you.

This concept intrigued me so I just had to check it out for myself. It’s free to join and I found a wide range of topics available to discuss with other members. For example, they’ve got threads for news/politics, sports, fashion, investing, computers - you name it! Actually, you can name it. You see the idea here is that you will be the one adding to their threads. As stated in their Frequently Asked Questions, the more threads you create, the more you can make. There is, however, one little catch up front. You must earn the right to create new threads and earn revenue by initially making 50 posts. 

So how do you make money once you are able to post threads? 

Read the rest of this entry »

Those of you who have started your online business, website or blog, know how hard it can be to really get things going in terms of site traffic. SEO is a term that is thrown around a lot. The problem is, you face so much competition and the rules change so frequently that it is nearly impossible to keep up.

Factor in that on top of all of these marketing tricks you have to try, you are still maintaining a website/blog and risk doing more harm than good if you aren’t careful. Wouldn’t it be nice just to focus on building your content and doing your work and have the professionals help you manage your SEO? I know, I know - sounds expensive. But it doesn’t have to be!

Discountclick Online Marketing Service specializes in getting you the traffic you deserve. They offer professional Search Engine Optimization and promotion services at an affordable rate. Their offerings include Professional SEO services, List Management services, and Ad Serving.

The thing I like about Discountclick is that they don’t require you to sign a long term contract like a lot of SEO service agencies do. You are billed monthly and can cancel if at any time you feel that you are not satisfied with their performance. And you may see results in as little as 2 - 4 weeks.

The link popularity campaign services that Discountclick offers are extremely valuable in my opinion. Their staff will add 40-50 one-way and reciprocal links to your website. Now we all know that links to your site from other sites are invaluable. But can you trust that you, on your own, could add 40-50 to your site every month? Do you even have the time for that? I sure don’t!

Check out Discountclick Online Marketing Service today and tell ‘em Mr Beach Bum sent ya!

(This was a paid blog post)

When I was asked to do a review for simpleology.com, I was intrigued by their 7 Day Business Turnaround Kit . After all, the site description reads as follows:

“The 7 Day Business Turnaround Kit is an “intenstive [sic]” course from Simpleology. It makes rapid radical change in your business: stopping the cash bleeding, getting the cash flowing freely, and positioning you for long term strategic improvement to your business. A free 7 day trial is available. “

The claim is that it can show me all of the secrets I need to know to make my “floundering business” succeed. And really, if your business is floundering then the promise of success is a temptation you’d be willing to invest in.

I began reading the claims of Simpleology.com and all of the wonders that they could do for me and my business and eagerly scrolled on…and scrolled…and scrolled…and scrolled…and, you get the idea. There is a quote I’d like to borrow from the site where it says that the author “created a multi-million dollar online business back in the days when nobody took internet marketing seriously.” If that’s the case, he didn’t learn much about internet marketing because the scrolling was making me nauseous.

Once I finally got to some color, there were success stories featured which he referred to as “Space Monkeys.” You know, before they send humans into space, they send monkeys? Hey, I didn’t write it folks! These people were chosen to prove that anyone- no matter what skill level- could do this program. While some had decent looking sites, one had the same long, scrolling format which, in my opinion of course, is unappealing. Another had several bad links and yet another didn’t work at all. Now if you’re a guru at internet marketing, wouldn’t you check your own website to make sure the people you’re touting as your star space monkeys are still working your principles? He only wants you to part with a mere $297 for his vast knowledge so is that really too much to ask?

I don’t mean to pick on the author so much for the way he chose to layout his site. He is, after all, using a very standard format for websites that typically try to sell you an e-book and all of the “bonuses” that they typically include with them. Apparently this strategy works well for many, because there is no shortage of sites like this. I just have to believe that a more legitimate looking website would be just as profitable selling a product such as the 7 Day Business Turnaround Kit. To be fair, there really does seem to be a lot of information packed into this program and some of the tactics presented sound intriguing.

I’m not telling you not to try or buy this program, I’m just saying I wouldn’t based upon the lack of a warm fuzzy that I typically get when I see sites of this nature. Yes, there’s a guarantee and if you’re really that jazzed for new ideas and think after continuously scrolling his site that this is the program for you then by all means get it and be sure to come back and let us all know how you do with it, you space monkey you!

(This was a paid review)

I’ve recently come across a site called Helium. Since I am very new to their site I won’t go into a lot of detail yet but we may make this into a series and revisit in a few weeks or months and see how things go.

 Helium claims to be a place where you can write articles on just about any topic and leverage their traffic and their network to get your articles out into the world. They “pay you” for this privilege by sharing ad revenue with you. I decided to put this to the test. Before I go any further, however, I want everyone to be aware that I am not an affiliate of theirs and in no way make any money off of referrals for Helium. If they have an affiliate program at all, I am not aware of it.

Within about 10 minutes of joining I had written my first article. What I found is that they encourage you to write articles using predefined headlines. By doing this, you actually compete with others who are writing for the same headline and people will rate your article over others. I am assuming at this point that if you are rated higher then your article is more widely publicized and, alas, you will probably see more of their “ad revenue share”.

After writing my first article, under the topic “How to relax after a hard day of work” or something like that, I posted it and quickly watched it make it to a rating of 6 out of 11. Hmm, guess I should try harder. What I don’t understand is that I read the 5 articles in front of mine and they were pretty lame. There must be something I’m missing. Another thing that is kind of odd is that I found no way of directly rating an article. Instead, you have to go to the Rate section of your Helium account where it will show you seemingly random generated articles, side by side, for you to rate.

I pretty much left the account alone for a bit just to see what happens with my article over the course of a day or so. I actually decided to check it out this morning for the heck of it and as of this writing my article is still at a 6 rating. But who cares what my rating is, how much money did I make?

Well, I made 5 cents so far. Yes, it is pretty laughable. But we’re going to give this some time and revisit it again. I am not sure how long it will be before the next post on this but make sure you check back to see how it’s doing. Of course, if you’d rather see for yourself I’d say it’s worth a try. The account is free after all and it never hurts to write some articles and sharpen your skills as a writer, with feedback from an apparently random sampling of Helium members.

For the next post on this series, I promise to try and find out just what it is that Helium does with these articles and if there are any tips and tricks on getting better performance out of your submissions. And hopefully by then I will be able to tell you that I’ve made some decent money.