“Blogger Spotlight” Saturday

This weeks “Blogger Spotlight” series is a bit different from the past weeks.  Instead of a typical question and answer interview, I wanted to link you to a recent interview that I was a part of on another blog.

I am a Famous Blogger!

Well according to Hesham from Zebida.com I am.  Hesham started a new site a month ago called NewMediaBloggers.com, which is a social media site for bloggers in the MMO niche.  As part of his site, he is creating a 100 member club called, “The Famous Bloggers Club.”  I was interviewed recently as a member of this club and thought I would share the interview with you as well as intorducing you to this cool site..

Here is the interview ————> Famous Blogger Tycoon Blogger Interview

pay you to blog sites that I use

Many of you noticed that I threw in a paid post a couple of days back.  I have done this a couple of times over the last month or so as I have been stepping up my blog monetization strategy.  When I first started this blog 7 months ago I told myself that the first full year I would focus on promoting my blog and would then focus on making money with my blog.  Due to my blog rank of pr 3 and my latest month Alexa ranking being under 40,000, I have decided to start monetizing earlier than I planned.  My strategy includes adsense, direct ads, affiliates, selling services as well as selling sponsored content.  I have written some sponsored content that I have brokered directly mostly with people approaching me and I have also utilized several services as well.  Here are the 3 services that I have had luck with and would recommend giving a try.

ReviewMe.com- Some people have asked me which service I used to write the post about the Wall Street Journal.  That was through ReviewMe.  I was contacted directly by the website owner through the marketplace and was offered $50 to write a 200 word post.  For me that was a no brainer, I will take $50 for 5 minutes worth of work any day of the week.  I have also written several other posts from this service, all over $25.  I have found that this service pays the best out of the three I have been trying out.

Social Spark- I have used Social Spark and have mixed feelings about this service.  They have the best website and user interface but that should not be confused with being the best service.  The amount of blog post opportunities seems to be very small.  I have also noticed that the amount payed to bloggers is relatively low.  Last month I wrote two posts for this service both were around $15 or so.  The marketplace consists of a lot of pay per click and affiliate opportunities.  A related site (same parent company) is Pay Per Post.  I have heard good things about this service but I have not tried it yet.  If you want to check that out, go ahead and click on the banner ad at the top of this post.  If you do, I get paid 26 cents …this is a pay per click banner ad that I am trying out from Social Spark.

Sponsored Reviews- This is a new site that I signed up for last month and I have not written any posts yet.  There seems to be a decent amount of opportunities.  This site works differently, you search through the advertisers and then you actually place a bid on the opportunity and they let you know if you are accepted.  The down side to this service is that they take a big chunk of money from the blogger.  For example if a advertiser is paying $20, you only get $12 and some change.   That really sucks and is a major reason why I like ReviewMe the best.  When they say $50, they pay you $50.

There you have it, the three sites I am using at the moment.  I will be sure to continue to write reviews as I try out new sites.

Some of you have asked if I am worried about losing my page rank..  My thought is, what good is having a high page rank if you can’t make money from it.

What do you guys think?  Have you used any of these sites or any others?  Do you think it is a bad idea overall to write sponsored content?

Wall Street Journal Discount

Sometimes saving money is just as good as making money.  I know that before I buy anything online, I will do a search and see if there are any coupons or discount codes that I can find.

The following site review is sponsored content from the Wall Street Journal Subscription Discount site:

The Wall Street Journal is the world renowned newspaper for anyone that is interested in business and finance and excellence in journalism.  They offer subscriptions for the print and online versions.  Before you consider buying a subscription, you should check out the WSJPrimeRate.us site.  This site offers a wealth of information about the publication and it’s history.  Most importantly this site serves as a hub where you can go and get the absolute best prices on online and print subscriptions.  If you make a purchase through a link on their site site you can enjoy savings of between 75 and 80 percent. As an even further incentive they are offering a special promotion where you can get four weeks free if you sign up for both the print and online editions.  This site is updated regularly and they are sure to always have the best deals for purchasing the Wall Street Journal.

How to Improve your Alexa Ranking

I am pretty happy today as this is the first time my blog has cracked the 50,000 mark for an Alexa ranking.  It took me a little over 7 months to reach this milestone.  I beat my goal by 5 months and that makes me happy

I know there is a lot of debate over the value of Alexa ranking.  I believe that it is very important if you are looking to monetize your blog.  It is not the only thing that advertisers look for but it is one of the biggest factors in determining the value for an ad or link on your blog.

The Alexa formula is based on the number of vistors that visit your site and the number of page views.  Of course, only those with the Alexa toolbar count as votes.  It is kind of like the Nielsen ratings are for television.  Sounds pretty simple right, increase the number of visits and the number of pages they view and your Alexa ranking will increase, right? Yes, this is true but there are some other things you can do to boost your Alexa ranking.  Here are some ideas.

• Install the Alexa toolbar.  If you have not yet installed the toolbar, do it now, it only takes a minute and every time you visit your site you will be helping your Alexa rank.
• Encourage your blog readers to download the Alexa toolbar.  Just like I did just now! The more regular readers that you have that have the toolbar installed the better your ratings.
• Attract other webmasters to your blog.  You should try to write blog posts about blogging and other topics that would be interesting to webmasters as these are the people that will be most likely to have the toolbar installed.  Even if you have a mommy blog or personal blog, you can sprinkle in some blogging posts to get the tech savvy visitors to stop by.
• Become active in webmaster forums.  I am sure you notice a theme now, the more webmasters you get to your blog the better your Alexa ranking.  Join forums like Digital Point and Bloggeries and be sure to include your blog link in your signature.  These sites also allow you to add an rss feed to your profile that will display your latest feed.
• Entrecard and Adgitize- These are two great ways to get get visits from people with the Alexa toolbar.  I recommend that you advertise on Adgitize, it is only $14 a month and you can make that money back and then some. For more info on Adgitize, you can click this link —>



What do you do to improve your Alexa ranking?

“Blogger Spotlight” with Blogging Boy

This week I am doing something a little different with the blogger spotlight series.  I am interviewing Blogging Boy, he is one of the webs youngest blogger at 10 years old.  Although not a famous blogger (yet), he is a real cool kid!!  (Hint: he is my son)

This is also the first video post of all time here on Tycoon Blogger…Enjoy!