Performancing Ads is a new ad network that sets itself apart from all of the others in a lazy yet brilliant way: it exclusively focuses on the sales of 125×125 ad boxes on blogs. Instead of confusing people with such complicated things as 486×60 and CTR and whatnot, all it offers are those cool little square buttons that are the hottest thing on the web since, well, 468×60.

But don’t let my seemingly mocking introduction fool you – the concept really is nice. Most blogs have space for 125×125 ads and lots of people want to sell them, and making a dedicated marketplace for the format is a nice move by Performancing.

SO HOW DOES PERFORMANCING ADS WORK?
After signing up for an account and submitting a blog that you want to display ads on, you install the Performancing Ads plugin and add a piece of code to your blog. The process is fairly straightforward (although installing a plugin takes more work than the far-easier variant of putting javascript/HTML to display the ad) and shouldn’t take too long. You then set a weekly price for each square you add and wait for the money to start flowing in.

Well, kinda. I haven’t had a single booking yet for my test period (only two days, but at four bucks per week it’s a steal compared to my normal pricing) and all of the other sites that I’ve seen using it are filled with the default ads. This would be all fine and dandy if the backup ads actually made me money, though, or if I could at least CHANGE them. Not so. Having useless affiliate ads on my blog is not something I’m partial too, so Performancing needs to get its act together.

Despite this huge shortcoming, Performancing Ads is still worth checking out because it’s the first ad program of it’s kind.

Posted by Max Miroff | 24 Comments »

Posted by Max Miroff | 38 Comments »

Ever wondered how those self-proclaimed internet marketing gurus make hundreds of thousands of dollars and post screenshots of their success? Of course you have – that’s probably one of the main reasons people get into the field of making money online. Now, after careful research and study, I’ve figured out just how they do it. Here’s a screenshot of one of my many successful affiliate accounts:

How did I do it? It was quite simple, actually; just copy/paste the following into your URL bar:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Once you’ve done that, select the fields that you’d like to change for your fake screenshot and type in your “earnings” – no Photoshop required

Props to Phil for the code and idea.

Posted by Max Miroff | 31 Comments »

Thinking of a great keyword, doing research on it, and figuring out just how many searches it gets daily is pretty ugly annoying. The free tools out there, while commendable, aren’t as good as the paid ones, and as for those… well, you have to pay for them.

Enter NicheFree – a blog that does all the work for you.

WHAT IS NICHEFREE?
NicheFree is a fairly new website that gives various niche ideas (complete with a background of the keywords used, how many times they’re searched, and some market predictions) as well as niche marketing tips and resources. It is in the niche-about-niches, much like Blog Badly is a blog about blogging. This could prove successful for the webmaster of the blog, Jerry, because every aspiring online entrepreneur needs a niche and there aren’t many blogs that focus solely on free niche ideas.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Even though it only has three posts at the moment, NicheFree looks very professional for a new blog. It has a spiffy looking theme, nice logo, and a clear idea of what it’s about. Still, a few improvements could be made:

• Create a clear RSS subscription section on the right. Currently, there’s a tiny button on the top right that’s a pain to find – get a noticeable RSS button that takes up more space and perhaps put that above the Youtube video that is currently there. An e-mail subscription option wouldn’t hurt either.
• Remove the “Pages” from the sidebar – it’s redundant. You already list all of your pages in your header.
• Remove the social bookmarking icons. Pretty much no one uses the ones on the blog – if they really want to submit a post, they’ll generally do it manually. Still, if you’re insistent on keeping them, only have one set – there are, again, redundancy issues when you have both there. Make sure that they’re nofollow links as well – if you keep the bottom right ones dofollow, you’ll have 40+ front-page outbound links by the time you hit ten posts.

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT – BUT HOW’S THE CONTENT?
The subject matter of NicheFree is amazingly useful and straightforward. It’s easy to just glance over it and digest these important points:

• the niche he’s talking about
• some background info on the niche
• niche keywords
• monthly searches
• competition

NicheFree’s current format keeps it simple, but some points need to be clarified. For example, what exactly does “***can be a single niche market***” mean? Are the searches displayed daily or monthly? Are competing website the ones bidding on the keyword or the ones trying to rank for the keyword? Some more information could be added as well, like additional resources for the keyword (a link to it’s Google Trends page, for example), to make the posts even more detailed than they already are.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Pros

• Great idea for a blog
• Amazingly useful for webmasters
• Well optimized for SEO at the moment
• Excellent theme
• A general format to each post

Cons

• Needs a better RSS button
• Clarification issues
• Could use more information in it’s posts.

Overall, NicheFree has the potential to be quite a useful source of information for webmasters. The only major problem that I can foresee is that it gets so many readers that the niches become useless right after they are posted because so many people would go after them. No, seriously. I guess Jerry will just have to keep the best for himself.

And he could always share some with me. I did write this entire post about his blog, after all.

Posted by Max Miroff | 12 Comments »

It’s always interesting for me to read the blogs of people my age (14, if you didn’t already know), and Money Makin Guru is no exception. It’s a blog about a twelve year old making money online and all that jazz that comes along with it – SEO, web design, etc. Now, before you go about dismissing that as a “JOHN CHOW CLONEZ!!!11oneoneeleven,” it’s not that bad. Zach’s not a food blogger, for Gods sake!

NOT A CLONE?
Well, for one, Zach’s honest. He doesn’t pretend to get hundreds of thousands of hits and have a truckload of cash. Of course, he wishes he had these things coming in (don’t we all) but he doesn’t lie. Another problem with most MMO blogs is that they are far too vague to get any knowledge out of them. Zach writes in absolutes which take you step by step through his various tips. While the ideas on Money Makin Guru aren’t as innovative or well-written (we’ll get into that later) as some of the advice I’ve read on other blogs, most aren’t generic. I’ve yet to see a “how u maek moneyz with ADSNSE” post on his blog, at least, which makes Money Makin Guru better than all of the MMO blogs that process Shoemoney through their rewriting machine and come out with regurgitated crap.

THEN AGAIN…
One of the things I really hate is when bloggers use their age as a marketing tool. Zach does this as well. Sure, you’re twelve, but is your content any good?

THE ANSWER
One problem plagues Zach that I’ve seen affect most young bloggers – he’s unprofessional. His posts have some grammatical and spelling errors in them (one of his post titles is, “So You Think Your Creative?”) and he often writes very informal, conversational posts that talk about things like which logo design his viewers most like and if this banner ad is better than the other. You’d be hard pressed to find this kind of stuff on Blog Badly, mostly because I think you guys probably don’t care about it – no matter how much you love me – and I find it a bit odd that other bloggers would do this kind of stuff. I would personally just ask a few friends on an instant messenger or Twitter if I needed feedback rather than “wasting” a post. Some refinement in this casual-ness would be a welcome addition to Money Makin Guru.

A FEW MORE COMMENTS

• Currently, Zach brands Money Makin Guru as, well, “Money Makin Guru.” This can be confusing because rather than typing in “moneymakinguru.com” in their browsers, they could type in “moneymakingguru.com.” Money Makin Guru should become Money Makin’ Guru – the apostrophe helps signify that the “g” has been taken off the end.
• The permalink structure on Money Makin Guru isn’t optimized. Zach uses “/%year/%month/%day/%posttitle” instead of “/%postcategory/%posttitle”.
• Money Makin Guru should use the All-In-One SEO program to switch around its titles. Currently, the homepage title is “moneymakinguru.com” – you’re not trying to rank for your website name, right?
• Add an “About” page! Tell your readers about yourself! Seriously, without an “About” page a blogger is no better than a creepy 41 year old that lives in his mom’s basement. That’s not who you are, Zach. Right?

IN SUMMATION…
Refinement is the key word here. Refined posting styles and on-site optimization would do wonders for Money Makin Guru. Zach’s got potential and time, and with some more finesse he can really become what his title implies.

Posted by Max Miroff | 28 Comments »