Besting Adwords

Blogging is a Career

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:12 GMT

Two in the last few months, I was paid $200 ($130 after commision) to write a 200 word post. This was done thru SponsoredReviews. I rarely actually write PayPerPost blog entries, as I'm already too busy, but it seems to me that this could easily be a career. There are dozens of opportunities from SponsoredReviews that I could take advantage of daily. Add ReviewMe. Add PayPerPost. I don't see how you could make less than $50,000 per year, by simply blogging all day. Now, it's not actually that easy.

First, you have to create several blog and keep them active for 3 months before you can consider writing paid reviews. This can be easily done while you maintain your 9-to-5 salary. After 3-4 months, then you can start writing one PayPerPost per day for a month or more. Eventually you build up your blogging salary and decided whether or not you need the 9-to-5 hassle. Six months to retirement. Or semi-retirement. Blogging isn't a real job.

http://www.sponsoredreviews.com/

Chitika CPM $0

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:02:05 GMT

My Chitika CPM for the last 3 days has hit $0 CPM with zero clicks. I use it only for alternate ads when AdSense won't give me one, but that's still 10,000 per day. No revenues? No clicks? Really?! I still haven't found another worthy alternate, so I'm in no rush to change anything. I'm consider putting ads for my other websites, like www.hellosanta.org.

http://chitika.com/mm_overview.php?refid=randymorin

PayPal followup

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:39:45 GMT

I got a response from PayPal regarding the problems I've been having. They responded that since I sell virtual goods, I'm not covered under their seller protection plan. Huh?! AKA? If you buy any virtual goods via PayPal, then you need only dispute the charge and you get your money back. WTF? Hello Google Payments. I'm outta here. The worst part? Paypal fined me 20 dollars beyond the refunded amount and won't even tell me why the user is disputing the charge.

PayPal Liability

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:33:49 GMT

This month, I ran into a situation that blows a hole in the PayPal model. A user bought a subscription to one of my websites (3 months at $10 per month). Of course, PayPal gets a $1.77 of the $30 paid. After the months, the user files a charge back with their credit card company for $20. PayPal charges me back the $20, but gives me back $1.18 in service charges. And now, they want me to prove that I provided the service thru tracking information. I sent them an email exchange between the user and told them the user refuses to respond to my emails asking them why the charge back. PayPal then charges me an additional $20 fee without providing any reason. Now I'm $10.59 in the negative on this subscription.

So basically, if you provide an online service with PayPal and not a product that can be tracked, then all your users can simply file chargebacks and you have a major liability. Not only do you have to pay back for the service, but you get charged an additional fee and end up owing 200% more than you made. The worst part is that neither PayPal nor the user will give me a reason for the chargeback. I was tasked with proving it wasn't an unauthorized transaction. Isn't this PayPal's job? They took the transaction. They accepted the money from the credit card company. If it wasn't authorized, then isn't PayPal the problem?

Removing PSAs?

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:20:18 GMT

Of late, my Talk-Sports website has been displaying more and more AdSense PSAs. At first, there was so few of them that I didn't bother adding an alternate ad. But, as time went on, I encountered more and more of them and decided that is was finally time to do something about it. I added alternate code to replace the PSAs with Chitika ads. The Chitika alternates are paying me about $0.03 CPM. Horrible! Another disappointment with Chitika. At this point, I'm not sure what else to try. Too many disappointments.

http://chitika.com/

AdWords Keyword Insertion

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:49:06 GMT

A few days ago, I found AdWords Keyword Insertion. I've been looking for something like this for quite awhile. It may be a great way of increasing your click-thru-rate on your ads. I'm gonna test it out.

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=74996

BlogAds Still Really Sucks!

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:40:06 GMT

For the last while, I've been removing BlogAds ad units from my website. I've had numerous problems. Today, I got a new order on an ad unit that I thought was abandoned. The order was for a unit that use to get 2 million impressions per month. It turns out, there was one spot where I didn't remove it which was getting 3000 impressions per month. Kinda of weird. I'll take the money, but the advertiser is crazy.

I also noticed today that BlogAds still hasn't fixed horrible bugs that I reported six months ago and make it very difficult for advertisers to buy ads. Try using their website with Internet Explorer. Horribly aweful experience!

http://www.blogads.com/

Voxant Ups and Downs

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:21:17 GMT

Of late, Voxant Newroom has been my best advertising program. On the other hand, I've had my problems. This week, I got my funds via PayPal. It's really hard to give up on these guys when they are paying well. It's quite a battle. Am I ready to put up with occasional problems on my website for the additional funds? I guess I am! It's quite a battle I'm having internally.

http://www.thenewsroom.com/