In our capitalist society, being a greedy bastard isn’t always bad. Money is what runs [insert your country here (unless you're from a communist nation. If so, well, sorry!)]. In fact, renowned economist once said, “Give all of your money to Max Miroff and you will become rich.”

But I digress. Lets go back onto the point of great niches for making money online.

#1 – Get-Paid-To Websites
Blogging about websites with programs that pay users to complete offers is an extraordinary way to make money. That’s because these GPT sites (here’s an example) generally have referral program that get you a percentage of your referral’s, referral’s referral’s, and referral’s referral’s referral’s (are you starting to see a pattern?) earnings. In short, you get residual income (the fancy phrase for “becoming filthy rich”) from other people. This niche is also pretty popular with readers because people are ready to believe anything that involves them getting money online.

#2 – Product Reviews
This niche is profitable in three ways – affiliate sales and getting free products from companies that want their items reviewed. All you have to do is write about the latest cool gadgets or best kitchen spice racks to try and rack up some sales through your affiliate links. If you build up a reputation as a great blogger who has lots of readers, some companies could even send you some free schwag for you to write about as well as pay you to plug in their service or website. Now that’s the good life.

#3 – Make Money Online Blogs
The main reason this niche is profitable is because of all the affiliate programs surrounding it. Much like GPT sites, you can get paid a fraction of what your referral makes. Get your money for nothing (get your chicks for free?). Anyway – don’t you see all those big Make Money Online bloggers showing off their mad earnings? Exactly.

Now fulfill all your blogging dreams of extorting your readers with these amazing niches!

Posted by Max Miroff | 10 Comments »

If your articles suck so much that no one on StumbleUpon wants to thumbs up them you’re just not getting any traffic from StumbleUpon, then you might want to try this little method of getting free thumbs up, reviews, and traffic (hence the title) for your articles. Now I’m not guaranteeing anything (read: no suing is allowed), but this might work for you.

ONTO THE FREE STUMBLEUPON GOODNESS
There are currently three sites in the Google results for this search (This is the secret, btw). Each of these sites offers you three free automated stumbles a day with whatever review you want – a pretty nice sum. All you need to do is spend a few minutes filling in the reviews and a captcha and VOILA! Stumbles for free!

Do I suggest you do this? No.

Will you probably do it anyway? Well, that’s for you to decide (yes)

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »

Too lazy to code another section or add a widget for 125×125 ads? Try these themes that already have them built in! Unlike other theme lists, this one is actually practical if you want to sell ads on your blog.

Simple Red – Download – Preview

Slick Blue – Download – Preview

Black And White – Download – Preview

WP-Polaroid – Download – Preview

True Blue – Download – Preview

WP Premium – Download – Preview

Blue Green Harmony – Download – Preview

UPDATE: For some odd reason, the images might not be displaying. I spent a good ten minutes screenshotting and cropping those babies! Grr!

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »

Homeless people and advertising. Much like the fusion of chocolate and peanut butter to create Reeses candy, this combination (“Dude, you got your homeless person in my advertising”?) may not seem practical at first. Still, have you heard of anyone not liking those creamy, chocolatey, peanut-buttery candies (This message brought to you by Hershey’s)? I didn’t think so.

Think about it this way: it’s a cheap way to get your website out to thousands of people. After all, most hobos live in crowded urban areas with thousands of people passing by them every day. For pure CPM rate, hobos can’t be beat.

WAYS TO GET A HOBO TO ADVERTISE FOR YOU
There are three different ad formats you can try out with homeless people: t-shirts, cardboard signs, and yelling.

T-Shirts
The easiest and cheapest way to get advertising from homeless people is by giving them a t-shirt with your URL and a catchy slogan on it. It’ll cost you about 15-20 bucks per shirt and will still put your brand name in front of people. Commuters are bound to stop and wonder why a homeless person is wearing a nice, clean shirt with a website on it. All you have to do is find a willing hobo and offer them your shirts.

Cardboard Signs
This is slightly more expensive and time-consuming than free t-shirts because you’ll have to pay an ongoing rate and make sure the homeless person is actually using your sign. Just get a sturdy piece of cardboard and make it attractive, then pay a hobo to carry it around.

Yelling
Not recommended – most people will just think the homeless person is crazy for shouting out “GO TO BLOGBADLY DOT COM AND LEARN TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE THE EASY WAY.” It is not recommended.

If anyone would seriously consider doing this (it’s a good idea! I promise!), I’ll be glad to cover it on my blog as well as the traffic effects and reactions. Get out there and advertise with hobos, you lazy bum! After all, who wouldn’t want their brand name associated with homelessness?

Posted by Max Miroff | 18 Comments »

Feeling tired and don’t want to write a “real” post? Is it 11:55 PM and you still haven’t posted for that day (you do know you can just change the time of posting… meh)? Are you simply idea-starved? Then try using any one of these formats to write a post in under twenty minutes!

1. The Top Ten List Post
Additional details below each bullet in this popular social media optimized (SMO) format are optional but generally accepted as necessary. These types of posts can do very well on Digg and StumbleUpon, especially if they have pictures and/or videos. Make sure your post title includes numerous preposterous claims as well as exaggerations. After all, internet marketing isn’t about telling the truth.

2. The Post Apologizing For Not Being Able To Make A Real Post
This post is the ultimate irony – apologizing for not posting in a post. It’s only suggested use is when you’ve stopped caring about quality, but it is also acceptable if you decide that American Idol is more important than your blog (note to self: American Idol Blog? Hm…)

3. The Monthly/Weekly/Daily(?) Compilation Post
Go over your blog statistics in an effort to impress your readers with your mad earnings (~$5) and traffic (6 visits/day). Try to list blog stats for the previous month as well – it makes it seem like you’re improving.

4. The Paid Blog Review Post
It’s an easy job: you get paid to write what you think about a website. You really can’t go wrong. In fact, if you mask it well enough, your readers won’t even realize your blog isn’t remotely about credit card refinancing, mortgage lenders, payday loans, plastic surgery, or financial aid!

5. The “About Me” or “About My Blog” Post
While most blogs have a page on their blog dedicated to this type of post, some decide to write about it as well! This is a fairly simple task because all it involves is talking about yourself.

6. The Link Love Post
Just link to a bunch of different blog posts with short descriptions. Use other people’s content for your own benefit – it’s all the joys of content scraping with practically none of the penalties!
7. The Generic Niche Blog Post
For every niche (except maybe Extreme Mountain Jumproping), there are cliché posts which have been gone over so many times it’s not even worth posting about anymore (except when you REALLY need to write something). In my niche, this could be a post about “making money with Adsense”, for example.

8. The Controversy Post
Print out the faces of ten random bloggers in your niche. Tape them to your wall and throws darts blindfolded at the pictures. Write a post dissing the blogger you chose through this clever scientific process. Remember to include a photo of the aforementioned blogger that you graffiti’d.

9. The Image Post

10. The Off-Topic Post
This is for extreme cases in which all of the above options fail. Just write about your dinner or something – it seems to work for John Chow.

Posted by Max Miroff | 25 Comments »

In the blogging world, it’s important to be concise. After about 500 words, things start to get repetitive (unless you’re some sort of crazy internet marketing guru who has 9,627 ways to increase traffic to your site) and dull. Shorter posts let you show your opinion without boring your readers. In short (pun intended), they are better at conveying a message to viewers and are more interesting to read.

Posted by Max Miroff | 5 Comments »

Forums are great places to spam promote your blog. Take Digital Point, for example. Because the majority of the people there are internet marketing newbies hoping to find someone that will take them by the hand and lead them to online salvation, they’re eager to click any link promising “instant SEO success” and “millions of visitors to your website on under 2.3 seconds.” It doesn’t matter if these claims are true or not – I’m actually pretty sure the people clicking on them know that these are all false claims but they like to pretend. Newsflash (are people still allowed to say this?): instant solutions like that don’t exist.

But lets get off of this tangent and onto forum marketing.

STEP ONE: BUILD TRUST
Lull other forum users into thinking you’re actually a helpful member by posting informative replies to their questions. If you start to promote immediately, you’ll probably get either banned or (even worse) negative reputation

STEP TWO: THE PROMOTION BEGINS
Begin citing your blog as a source for your replies. For example, every time someone asks for a good advertising network I mention Adsdaq (I honestly believe it’s awesome) and inconspiciously include a link to my Adsdaq review. Just like that. Since forum threads can rank highly in search engines, you’ll get indirect organic traffic.

STEP THREE: CREATE A THREAD
Post a discussion on the forum about the topic of one of your recent posts (for example, here’s one I made). Add a link to your post telling users that they’ll get more info there. Since you’re technically not spamming your site, the discussion won’t be deleted. Aren’t loopholes fun?

Just rinse and repeat to get some nice traffic to your blog.

SOME MORE TIPS

• People love controversial topics. Tell people you hate Google and love Answer (you monster!) or that you think content isn’t king.
• Add a link to your blog in your signature in big red font. Telling people it cures cancer is optional.
• Talk about your successes. People will always congratulate you, even if it’s only earning your first dollar. I’m not kidding – it’s kind of sad.

Now go out there and spam some forums promote your blog!

Posted by Max Miroff | 30 Comments »

I’ve got some really sad news for everyone writing great content then expecting people to come and find it without marketing it – it’s not going to happen. In fact, finding a blog with amazing content is already harder than picking out a needle from a haystack (albeit less cliche). Without marketing, it’s nearly impossible.

Think about it – good content is, well, good - but how is anyone going to find it? Randomly typing in your URL? Keep dreaming. Even the best blogs require promotion through Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and the likes. Search engine marketing is vital in this process as well – without optimizing your site and building backlinks, Google and Yahoo won’t even know your site exists.

MARKETING’S VICIOUS REIGN
It’s true that awesome content that is marketed well does better than crap content most of the time, but the key phrase here is most of the time. Through the magic of marketing, even the worst of bloggers can become popular.

Focus on writing amazing, original content but don’t hope on people finding it themselves. Guide them to it like moths to a flickering light and promote very aggressively.

Just try not to get a restraining order.

Posted by Max Miroff | 11 Comments »

Irrelevant pictures like these happen when I can’t find anything on the first page of Google images.

Does joining blog contests that require a post on your blog make you a sellout? I mean, there are all of those great prizes that you can win (in fact, blog contests were my main source of revenue in March [100 dollah! {what does a parenthesis symbol in brackets look like? I'm guessing it's this, but I'm not really sure}]).

THE PROBLEM WITH CONTESTS
Of course, it’s not all fun and games (and winning some mad money and prizes [I really need to use less parentheses]). You don’t always win a blog contest and by the time a winner has been decided, you’ve already done these generic contest entry things:

• Subscribed to their blog (reading their content is optional)
• Dugg/Stumbled the post (isn’t advocating Diggs and Stumbles against ToS? I mean, not that it matters… after all, they don’t need to know about it)
• Wrote a post about their contest/blog (i.e. free sponsored review)
• Commented on their blog post (blog authors are generally to lazy to check what you did themselves)

In fact, it has been scientifically* proven that 95% of blog contests use this specific format.

FINAL THOUGHTS
What do you think of blog contests? Are they the bane of the blogging world, or are they a good way of getting some money and publicity?
Oh, by the way, I myself am entered in a blog competition and it’d be an honor for me to extort your votes. Just check out this post and vote for Blog Badly in the poll so that it can get a new theme. This’ll make Blog Badly easier to enjoy – and thus you’re really helping yourself by helping me win.

*the word scientifically is used loosely here.

Posted by Max Miroff | 10 Comments »

Phew, time sure flies by when you’re having fun blogging. In fact, it seems like just 30 days ago it was a month ago. Think about that statement for a while as I go and share the deepest, darkest secrets of Blog Badly’s growth (It’s alive!) and the expansion of my online empire (Proportionately to the rest of the world: about the size of my desk). Current stats in bold, last months stats (if I bothered to dig them up) in normal.

BLOG BADLY
Pageviews: 12,878 (1,142)
Uniques: 8,973 (762)
Subscribers: 43 (like 3?)
Alexa 3-Month Average: 305,659 (about 800,000)
Alexa Weekly Average:132,000 (???)
Google Pagerank: 3 (3)

I CAN HAS MONEYZ?
Blog Badly Income
The Rubicon Project: $97 ($0)
Winning Collin LaHay’s Contest: $100 (0$)
Other Funky Stuff: $20 (0$)

Miscellaneous Income
Triond: $65 ($15)

Total Income: 282/month, 9.4$/day. 940% increase.

AWARDS N’ STUFF
Most Creative Keyword (Sponsored by Google Analytics): “f6b3173f78c60b2383188f03e5310f85”
Most Popular Post: Top Ten Reasons This List Won’t Be Popular
Best Comment: “LOL thats funny.
so the majority of people who read this blog are Old, make no money and are neither white, black, Asian or Hispanic….
Those are some SOLID stats.”
Random Website I’m More Popular Than According To Alexa: Net Entrepreneur
Random Website I Should Be More Popular Than: Carl Ocab

ANALYSIS TIME
I’m still freaking poor. 9 bucks a day? That’s like working minimum wage for an hour and a half. Still, I suppose it’s adequate… for now. My goals will be to monetize Blog Badly better so that it earns at least 150 dollars in April, get 100 bucks from Triond, and get 100 bucks from other miscellaneous stuff.

Of course, talking about money first makes me seem like that’s all I’m concerned about. In fact, my ego inflates greatly when people read and comment on my work I believe that growing Blog Badly’s reach is, at the moment, more important than money. I’m hoping to break the Alexa top 100k within two weeks so that I can view their fancy graphs every day. Some more subscribers wouldn’t be too shabby either, hint hint.

Posted by Max Miroff | 8 Comments »