This is my first review of another blog, hopefully the first of many. I'm straying from my regular post topics to offer some insight to whoever the heck reads this about the website that inspired me to start sharing my opinions with the internet.
John chow dot com is the grandaddy of the make money online websites, with new content every day as well as news and other tidbits that might interest the John Chow readerbase, John Chow dot com truely is a site you can add to your Firefox Bookmarks toolbar folder and click on every day.
I first became interested in John Chow's site when I started getting into the whole Agloco craze. John has an extensive archive of posts recounting his successes with Agloco, at this point in time he has over 13,000 referrals in his extended network! As I continued to read his site, my interest in money making schemes on the internet grew from the desire to make a quick buck to potentially making the internet work for me in the long run.
The best thing about John Chow dot com versus the thousands of other blogs on the net is that he's the real deal. His blog weighs in at a lofty PR6 (not being sarcastic, that's incredible by my standards), he is the longtime webmaster of one of the most popular IT sites on the internet (TheTechZone), and constantly posts about interesting stops during his travels. Clearly he is not strapped for cash!
One of the better features for fledgling bloggers, affiliate marketers, or website developers like myself is the make money tab on the top of his site. This tab brings you to a page listing a huge conglomeration of various sites and services that John has used to build his site to where it is today. For example, the first link on his page, Kontera, is a site that normally scoffs at sites with under 500,000 hits a month, but you can potentially get in based on your sites content exclusively through John Chow dot com.
Last but not least, John Chow dot com offers a pseudo-link exchange program where you write a review of his blog, and he will post a link to your site. An opportunity to get a link from such a high traffic site for a site that gets mere hundreds of hits (or less) per day is an absolute deliverance! To all my regulars (the few of you, I know you're there!), I highly suggest taking advantage of this opportunity while he still has the patience to read all the ridiculous reviews (like this one for example) that come in with regards to his offer!
Well, hopefully this post hasn't been a snore, I'll be back with reviewing TrafficSwarm and Cashcrate in the upcoming week, so stay tuned!
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Technorati Favorites Exchange
Another blogger named Maki, author of the DoshDosh blog has come up with an awesome idea to both improve a blog's Technorati ranking, but also to increase the links to your blog as indexed by Google and other search engines! If you have a blog that you would like to get some extra traffic/pagerank to, do the following:
1) Exchange Favorites
Add this blog to your favorites by clicking here or by clicking the add favorites button on the sidebar! Once I notice you have added my blog to your favorites, I will favorite your blog as well!
2) Link to this blog post and recieve a linkback yourself!
Link to this post on this blog and I will link back to you once the link is noted on Technorati!
3) Help out a Friend
A sweet blog named Earn Money Blogging referred me to this program, please be sure to favorite and link to his site as well!
Be sure to visit other sites that I have linked to below (in the future) to increase the number of link-backs you receive!
1) Exchange Favorites
Add this blog to your favorites by clicking here or by clicking the add favorites button on the sidebar! Once I notice you have added my blog to your favorites, I will favorite your blog as well!
2) Link to this blog post and recieve a linkback yourself!
Link to this post on this blog and I will link back to you once the link is noted on Technorati!
3) Help out a Friend
A sweet blog named Earn Money Blogging referred me to this program, please be sure to favorite and link to his site as well!
Be sure to visit other sites that I have linked to below (in the future) to increase the number of link-backs you receive!
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Adbux, You mean pennies are actually worth something?
Today I have decided to share my opinion with you on Adbux, a website in a category that I haven't discussed yet, called paid to click.
Paid to what? Paid to click, or PTC websites as they are called, offer a user a minuscule amount of money to click on a paid link to an advertiser's website, stay on that site for a certain amount of time, without opening up multiple links at a time. Thus, paid to click.
What about Adbux? Adbux is very similar to the basic model of PTC sites, but there are several things I like about it:
1) Clean website design, easy to navigate.
2) Low Payout: $10 by Paypal.
3) Decent pay: $0.01 per click.
4) 100% referral earnings! Everytime your referral clicks a link, you and they each get $0.01 .
Not too shabby I'd say. It appears that Adbux is pretty legitimate, as the news section is full of the sitemaster complaining about how much he has to pay people. Quiet dipshit, you're making a killing. He claims that one member is making over $70 per day. Wow, I'd like to meet this guy. Does he have his referral link tattooed to his forehead? To be serious, he probably just has a high traffic site, but still! Wow, that's over $2000 a month if his referrals don't get bored! If I were him I wouldn't even click the stupid links anymore.
Anyway, I am in the process of an advertising experiment having to do with my Adbux referral link, and I'll update you guys on that in about a week's time!
My verdict on Adbux:
GOLD STAR!!! Aren't you proud? JOIN NOW!
Paid to what? Paid to click, or PTC websites as they are called, offer a user a minuscule amount of money to click on a paid link to an advertiser's website, stay on that site for a certain amount of time, without opening up multiple links at a time. Thus, paid to click.
What about Adbux? Adbux is very similar to the basic model of PTC sites, but there are several things I like about it:
1) Clean website design, easy to navigate.
2) Low Payout: $10 by Paypal.
3) Decent pay: $0.01 per click.
4) 100% referral earnings! Everytime your referral clicks a link, you and they each get $0.01 .
Not too shabby I'd say. It appears that Adbux is pretty legitimate, as the news section is full of the sitemaster complaining about how much he has to pay people. Quiet dipshit, you're making a killing. He claims that one member is making over $70 per day. Wow, I'd like to meet this guy. Does he have his referral link tattooed to his forehead? To be serious, he probably just has a high traffic site, but still! Wow, that's over $2000 a month if his referrals don't get bored! If I were him I wouldn't even click the stupid links anymore.
Anyway, I am in the process of an advertising experiment having to do with my Adbux referral link, and I'll update you guys on that in about a week's time!
My verdict on Adbux:
GOLD STAR!!! Aren't you proud? JOIN NOW!
Friday, April 27, 2007
Agloco -- Get Paid to Surf the Net... Again!
This time I'm reviewing a company named Agloco, a new paid-to-surf site that has the whole internet peeing their pants, and sort of the reason I started my blog! Agloco, as I mentioned, pays you to surf the internet, or at least they say they will, and uses the pyramid-esque method of referral incentive-based advertising. The program works by using software they call the viewbar, which they claim should be released by the end of April. The company was launched many months ago by members of the Alladvantage in hopes of reclaiming their previous internet glory (glory until their company tanked).
There has been a lot of controversy on the internet about Agloco since its inception, as immediately after its discovery all sorts of douchebags decided to start blogging and promoting and buying google adwords and doing all sorts of stuff to start racking up those referrals! As I mentioned, Agloco uses referral incentive-based advertising; the company doesn't have to advertise, the users do! In return, Agloco gives you portions of the profit pie according to how much your referrals earn as well. Therefore, there is a big incentive to start racking up those referrals, so I guess that's why the company launched more than six months before they had even released software! Searching google for the term "agloco" yields a motherlode of people shelling out money and abusing the Google pagerank system to get their referral numbers to go up! Check it out! (Click the Image to Enlarge, or Google it Yourself!)
Well, now that I've proven something that we already knew (people are greedy fuckers), let's move on.
How does it work? Well, from the way the site describes it, you put a little viewbar thingy, on the bottom of your screen which displays advertisements and has a search window available for use. Then, you surf the web for up to 5 hours a month, and Agloco compensates you with cash and "stock shares". I don't know about the latter, but they say that they'll pay you. Free money for doing something you already do, that sounds good.
I've signed up for Agloco. I even have a referral link! Have I bought google adwords and plugged it into every signature of every forum I belong to? Nah, but I will provide my link on this blog to anyone generous enough to use it, assuming they actually ever release the viewbar and become a paying company, but that's another matter...
Everyone on the internet was extremely excited to hear about Agloco, that is until some negative Nancy posted THIS article on his blog, titled "What Everyone Ought to Know about Agloco." I'm not going to dispute his claims, but I do have to say one thing about the entire article. Who cares greaseface? It's not like Agloco is selling you anything, so why not give it a try? With a little prudence, the worst case scenario is a little bit of your basic contact information gets out on the net. My question is, whose hasn't? I'm sure mine has! The only people who really stand to lose if this fails are the dipshits who bought the advertisements looking to make their magical internet numbers go up (referrals), and I don't really care if they give Google a couple hundred bucks. Google is alright in my book.
Before my nose gets completely brown, I must say, I'm a bit skeptical too. They keep giving dates for the viewbar, those dates never happen. Wasn't the viewbar originally supposed to be out in February or March? Yeah, their most recent deadline, April 15th (at the latest) sure didn't pan out. They speak of a team in Shanghai in their company blog. Have we seen any proof of this? Nah. If Agloco comes out with their viewbar and all is in order, I will eat my words. I actually expect them to, because Alladvantage was a stand up company (while it lasted).
My recommendation? Join Agloco, you have absolutely nothing to lose. Start getting some referrals in line, too. When (assuming it is) Agloco's viewbar is released, you'll be happy you had a jump start!
The Verdict:
Give it a try, even though I am a little skeptical.
There has been a lot of controversy on the internet about Agloco since its inception, as immediately after its discovery all sorts of douchebags decided to start blogging and promoting and buying google adwords and doing all sorts of stuff to start racking up those referrals! As I mentioned, Agloco uses referral incentive-based advertising; the company doesn't have to advertise, the users do! In return, Agloco gives you portions of the profit pie according to how much your referrals earn as well. Therefore, there is a big incentive to start racking up those referrals, so I guess that's why the company launched more than six months before they had even released software! Searching google for the term "agloco" yields a motherlode of people shelling out money and abusing the Google pagerank system to get their referral numbers to go up! Check it out! (Click the Image to Enlarge, or Google it Yourself!)
Well, now that I've proven something that we already knew (people are greedy fuckers), let's move on.
How does it work? Well, from the way the site describes it, you put a little viewbar thingy, on the bottom of your screen which displays advertisements and has a search window available for use. Then, you surf the web for up to 5 hours a month, and Agloco compensates you with cash and "stock shares". I don't know about the latter, but they say that they'll pay you. Free money for doing something you already do, that sounds good.
I've signed up for Agloco. I even have a referral link! Have I bought google adwords and plugged it into every signature of every forum I belong to? Nah, but I will provide my link on this blog to anyone generous enough to use it, assuming they actually ever release the viewbar and become a paying company, but that's another matter...
Everyone on the internet was extremely excited to hear about Agloco, that is until some negative Nancy posted THIS article on his blog, titled "What Everyone Ought to Know about Agloco." I'm not going to dispute his claims, but I do have to say one thing about the entire article. Who cares greaseface? It's not like Agloco is selling you anything, so why not give it a try? With a little prudence, the worst case scenario is a little bit of your basic contact information gets out on the net. My question is, whose hasn't? I'm sure mine has! The only people who really stand to lose if this fails are the dipshits who bought the advertisements looking to make their magical internet numbers go up (referrals), and I don't really care if they give Google a couple hundred bucks. Google is alright in my book.
Before my nose gets completely brown, I must say, I'm a bit skeptical too. They keep giving dates for the viewbar, those dates never happen. Wasn't the viewbar originally supposed to be out in February or March? Yeah, their most recent deadline, April 15th (at the latest) sure didn't pan out. They speak of a team in Shanghai in their company blog. Have we seen any proof of this? Nah. If Agloco comes out with their viewbar and all is in order, I will eat my words. I actually expect them to, because Alladvantage was a stand up company (while it lasted).
My recommendation? Join Agloco, you have absolutely nothing to lose. Start getting some referrals in line, too. When (assuming it is) Agloco's viewbar is released, you'll be happy you had a jump start!
The Verdict:
Give it a try, even though I am a little skeptical.
Free Traffic Bar-- Better Than InstantBuzz!
Today I'm going to look at FreeTrafficBar. FreeTrafficBar is a website with goals extremely similar to InstantBuzz, in that it is free to join, and you put a new toolbar on your browser that displays one line text ads from users like yourself. The advertisement on the bar changes every time you visit a webpage with a new URL, or any new section of a website with a new URL. It should be noted that when you change tabs on Firefox, it shows you a new ad and gives you a "point". The points that you earn are converted at a 4:1 ratio (for a basic free user) into displaying your own advertisement in the FreeTrafficBar system. 4 ads viewed on your computer means 1 ad displayed on someone else's computer somewhere else on the internet! Compared to InstantBuzz's 20:1 ratio, this seems fantastic!
The FreeTrafficBar toolbar is fairly unobtrusive and looks like this in your browser window:
Not bad, right? Well, time to examine the process of creating ads, uploading them to the bar, and finally their clickthrough.
Process and Uploading: The process of creating an ad is very simple. You simply click on the FTB Info tab on your toolbar, drop down to Toolbar Ads, and it will open up a new window to prompt you to create an ad. After creating your ad, which has few restrictions compared to InstantBuzz (the only restriction is 65 characters), your ad will not be active until it is approved by the site administrator, which only takes about a day. All in all, a great experience!
Clickthrough Examined: I went to examine my clickthrough data for my first advertisement which I created to promote my Agloco referral link, and the results were as follows:
Impressions: 2996
Clicks: 1 (What the hell!?)
OUCH! That's terrible. FreeToolBar isn't looking too great, even with its superior viewed:displayed ads ratio. However, for the sake of giving it a second chance, I decided to create a new ad that promoted this blog, since I could always use a little more traffic than the 30 hits a day I get right now. After a couple days of scant internet use, my results were as follows:
Impressions: 155 (I said scant internet use.)
Clicks: 2 (!!!!)
Not bad! More clicks than my Agloco referral link, in more than 1/10th the impressions! This is working much better! I'll update you guys on my results for this promotion as I continue to use it, as the results have been promising so far.
FreeTrafficBar does offer a multi-tiered referral system, as well as multiple levels of premium subscriptions that reward the user with better ratios for advertisements viewed:displayed, as well as a flat bonus number of impressions per month. If my clickthrough ratio continues to be good and blog gets a lot more hits, I'll be sure to subscribe, because it seems to be a decent deal! However, even if you have no referrals and want to remain a free member, I would actually recommend FreeTrafficBar. It ain't bad.
The verdict:
Thumbs up yo
The FreeTrafficBar toolbar is fairly unobtrusive and looks like this in your browser window:
Not bad, right? Well, time to examine the process of creating ads, uploading them to the bar, and finally their clickthrough.
Process and Uploading: The process of creating an ad is very simple. You simply click on the FTB Info tab on your toolbar, drop down to Toolbar Ads, and it will open up a new window to prompt you to create an ad. After creating your ad, which has few restrictions compared to InstantBuzz (the only restriction is 65 characters), your ad will not be active until it is approved by the site administrator, which only takes about a day. All in all, a great experience!
Clickthrough Examined: I went to examine my clickthrough data for my first advertisement which I created to promote my Agloco referral link, and the results were as follows:
Impressions: 2996
Clicks: 1 (What the hell!?)
OUCH! That's terrible. FreeToolBar isn't looking too great, even with its superior viewed:displayed ads ratio. However, for the sake of giving it a second chance, I decided to create a new ad that promoted this blog, since I could always use a little more traffic than the 30 hits a day I get right now. After a couple days of scant internet use, my results were as follows:
Impressions: 155 (I said scant internet use.)
Clicks: 2 (!!!!)
Not bad! More clicks than my Agloco referral link, in more than 1/10th the impressions! This is working much better! I'll update you guys on my results for this promotion as I continue to use it, as the results have been promising so far.
FreeTrafficBar does offer a multi-tiered referral system, as well as multiple levels of premium subscriptions that reward the user with better ratios for advertisements viewed:displayed, as well as a flat bonus number of impressions per month. If my clickthrough ratio continues to be good and blog gets a lot more hits, I'll be sure to subscribe, because it seems to be a decent deal! However, even if you have no referrals and want to remain a free member, I would actually recommend FreeTrafficBar. It ain't bad.
The verdict:
Thumbs up yo
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Instant Buzz-- More Like Instant Nothing
InstantBuzz advertises the following on their site:
"Instant Buzz - Drops a Metric Ton of Traffic on Your Web Site"
Cool beans! It's free, and it drops METRIC TONS of traffic on my site. "Man, I better try this!" I figure, so off I go signing up! InstantBuzz works by using an ad bar on your browser (both IE and Firefox are supported) that changes advertisements every time you go to a new web page. Sounds good. What they don't tell you before you sign up is that you have to visit 20 pages to get your one line of text advertising shown once!
The bar is not that large or obtrusive, it is below, as seen on Internet Explorer.
Not bad, not bad. So, I surf for about a month and a half with the thing after making a generic advertisement like "Make Money Surfing the Web With Agloco!" or whatever. I am sure that if I find some other way to make a catchy advertisement then I'd get a few more clicks, but according to InstantBuzz thousands of people would be seeing this! I was about to rake in the traffic to my Agloco referral URL! I check my Agloco referrals page, and WOAH, I have gotten... no new referrals. Excellent, sounded too good to be true. Now to check up on my stats for my advertisement after working hard surfing for a month.
Oh boy. Out of 1700 people who looked at this, NONE clicked on my ad? I guess everyone else has just been trained to ignore the little bar on their screen, just like I have. Is InstantBuzz an honest service? Yes, I absolutely believe that it is. Is there a potential to get a lot of traffic from it? Yes, if you make a better advertisement, buy their premium membership so you can add colors to your ads, and refer a gajillion people to get extra ad impressions, I guess. But for someone trying to break into the business of INTERNET RICHES, I would not recommend this.
My Rating of InstantBuzz is as follows:
Crying Baby. Maybe I was a little generous...
"Instant Buzz - Drops a Metric Ton of Traffic on Your Web Site"
Cool beans! It's free, and it drops METRIC TONS of traffic on my site. "Man, I better try this!" I figure, so off I go signing up! InstantBuzz works by using an ad bar on your browser (both IE and Firefox are supported) that changes advertisements every time you go to a new web page. Sounds good. What they don't tell you before you sign up is that you have to visit 20 pages to get your one line of text advertising shown once!
The bar is not that large or obtrusive, it is below, as seen on Internet Explorer.
Not bad, not bad. So, I surf for about a month and a half with the thing after making a generic advertisement like "Make Money Surfing the Web With Agloco!" or whatever. I am sure that if I find some other way to make a catchy advertisement then I'd get a few more clicks, but according to InstantBuzz thousands of people would be seeing this! I was about to rake in the traffic to my Agloco referral URL! I check my Agloco referrals page, and WOAH, I have gotten... no new referrals. Excellent, sounded too good to be true. Now to check up on my stats for my advertisement after working hard surfing for a month.
Oh boy. Out of 1700 people who looked at this, NONE clicked on my ad? I guess everyone else has just been trained to ignore the little bar on their screen, just like I have. Is InstantBuzz an honest service? Yes, I absolutely believe that it is. Is there a potential to get a lot of traffic from it? Yes, if you make a better advertisement, buy their premium membership so you can add colors to your ads, and refer a gajillion people to get extra ad impressions, I guess. But for someone trying to break into the business of INTERNET RICHES, I would not recommend this.
My Rating of InstantBuzz is as follows:
Crying Baby. Maybe I was a little generous...
Thursday, March 22, 2007
FIRST POST LOL
Welcome to my new blog! I'm trying to do something a little different here, so bare with me as the writing style may change a bit over time.
I'm not going to lie: my goal for creating this blog is to obtain referrals from those who chance upon this page. However, in the process, I am aiming to educate and entertain you. I started with Agloco with the aim of being the lone member, surfing his 5 hours and month and being happy with the 2 bucks or whatever pittance they decide to pay me. However, recently my ambitions gotten the best of me, and I'm going to try various traffic exchange and other promotion websites in order to get some referrals, and thus, more money.
I am going to share with you (the internet, wow, personal huh?) the process of trying to acquire Agloco referrals for NOTHING. That's right. I'm not going to become a pro member of GETMORETRAFFIC.com or any bull like that. If it's not free, at this point, I'm not going to try it. If it works, and I get referrals, I'll let you know. If it sucks, I will not hesitate to lambaste and take a huge dump on any site as I see fit. Hopefully you can learn from my journey. It's possible, right?
In other news, I have disovered a great site called SimplyLinking.com which makes link exchange easy! Sign up today.
I'm not going to lie: my goal for creating this blog is to obtain referrals from those who chance upon this page. However, in the process, I am aiming to educate and entertain you. I started with Agloco with the aim of being the lone member, surfing his 5 hours and month and being happy with the 2 bucks or whatever pittance they decide to pay me. However, recently my ambitions gotten the best of me, and I'm going to try various traffic exchange and other promotion websites in order to get some referrals, and thus, more money.
I am going to share with you (the internet, wow, personal huh?) the process of trying to acquire Agloco referrals for NOTHING. That's right. I'm not going to become a pro member of GETMORETRAFFIC.com or any bull like that. If it's not free, at this point, I'm not going to try it. If it works, and I get referrals, I'll let you know. If it sucks, I will not hesitate to lambaste and take a huge dump on any site as I see fit. Hopefully you can learn from my journey. It's possible, right?
In other news, I have disovered a great site called SimplyLinking.com which makes link exchange easy! Sign up today.
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