Just received $10 cashout from Project Wonderful, thank you!

Yesterday when I logged into my Project Wonderful account, I noticed that I have accumulated enough funds to cash out or withdraw (the minimum amount before withdrawal is permitted is $10). Each withdrawal are charged $1 regardless of the amount withdrawn, I guess this is fair for the company, especially after the introduction of PayPal fee lately.

Project Wonderful is a good opportunity to make money for small publishers and also to gain exposure for advertisers who run a tight budget. Project Wonderful is a advertising network which automates the task of buying and selling ad spaces at their marketplace. Its unique system is based on auction of ad spaces, i.e. whoever bids the highest will get the ad space. You can start advertising for as low as FREE (due to default minimal bid value being set to $0.00 to promote initial bidding) to several cents a day up to the amount you are comfortable to pay for the ad space (the highest bid amount I have seen is about $45).

I think Project Wonderful is offering an advertising alternative which has not been made available before. There is no weekly or monthly commitment, you only bid for a particular day which you can cancel anytime. It also allows advertisers to display their ads on multiple sites at cheap rather than pool all their resources on a single site which may or may not bring desired traffic or attention. On the other hand, small advertisers benefit by being able to try out the efficacy of a campaign on a high traffic publisher site without being tied down for long term.

Other advantages/benefits offered by Project Wonderful:

• easy to set up for publishers (select the ad types you want, copy and paste the code into your site)
• payment by PayPal (minimum amount to cash out is $10 with $1 withdrawal fee)
• no fixed payment dates (you can withdraw anytime, unlimited times per month provided have minimum cash out amount)
• detailed statistics and reporting system (with export to spreadsheet capability!)
• easy to use and effective marketplace (https://www.projectwonderful.com/adsearch.php)
• multiple ad sizes supported

It took me quite a while to accumulate $10 with Project Wonderful because I was only serving their ads here on this blog, which is not very popular to be honest. However now having received payment from them, I can trust them, throw caution to the wind and use them on more websites. I look forward to having a pleasant time as a publisher with Project Wonderful.


P.S. At this moment I am also experimenting with Adgitize, will report back about my experience later on. Do you have experience with any of these advertising networks? Do share your experience with us.

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Infolinks Q&A Review

Today I would like to share with you a review about Infolinks, an "In-Text (Contextual) Advertising" company. It acts as the middle person between advertisers and publishers (blog and website owners). Advertisement relevant to a publisher's content (hence CONTEXTUAL) is effortlessly integrated within the text, taking up no extra real estate space on publisher's site.

This review will be in the form of questions and answers (Q&A), because it is a format which I would like to try out on this blog. Questions will be denoted by 'Q' while answers by 'A'. My answers are in bold for emphasis.

Q: How did you hear about Infolinks?
A: Honestly, Infolinks is not as famous as Google Adsense or Yahoo! Publisher Network but I have no doubt that it is catching up with them, while establishing itself as the leader in "in-text" advertising. I have heard and seen its ads 6-8 months after I started blogging and I joined them as publisher about half a year later.

Q: How fast was the integration and configuration of the ads?
A: Very fast, publisher only needs to copy and paste the Javascript code provided into their web templates. There is also minimal configuration needed. I am positive that any web users who could use Facebook can integrate and configure the ads effortlessly.

Q: Did you receive good support?
A: I have only approached the support team once to enquire whether I am allowed to share (show) my earnings screen shot with other web users. The support team responded promptly within a few hours and was very helpful and patient, even making the extra effort to refer to their administration before getting back to me.Such level of support is satisfactory enough for me. I am glad I do not have to approach them for problems regarding the advertisements, so far.

Q: How happy are you with the earnings?
A: I am quite satisfied with my earnings so far. The click through rate (CTR) and effective cost per thousand impression (eCPM) that I received are comparable to industry standard (meaning the ads are relevant for my web visitors and the ads clicked also give fair earnings). Figures and screen shot will be shown here once I get Infolinks' permission.

Q: Did you get paid on time?
A: Unfortunately I have not reached the minimum payment threshold of $100. However, I have no doubt that Infolinks will pay its publishers on time (within 45 days of the end of the payment period which would be each month as long as the balance is above or equal $100, as stated in its FAQ).

Q: What do you think of Infolinks as a company and its approach towards its publishers?
A: I would like to believe that Infolinks consider both the advertisers and publishers as its priorities and that one of its main aims is to help us earn better money and provide us with pleasant advertising/publishing From my observation, it is a people friendly company, it keeps us updated about the network's progress, activity and promotion and encourage us to interact with it, making us feel like a part of a big family. Its website of the month and Double with a Bubble contest (see video at the end of review) are testimony of its efforts to provide us with a better experience. Other publishers seem to echo my sentiments as well.

Q: Would you recommend Infolinks to other publishers? What are the advantages of serving Infolinks' Contextual ads?
A: Yes, I would highly recommend Infolinks to other website and blog owners. The are many advantages: Firstly, it is user friendly and beginners can begin making money almost as soon as they are registered. Other advertisements such as Google Adsense requires more configuration and optimization to earn a healthy income for publishers. Secondly, big and small, local and even international publishers are wanted by Infolinks and will (usually) be approved quite quickly (again contrast that with Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network). Thirdly, it is the highest paying in text advertising solution (quote), while it gives us the highest paying ads against minimal site space, it also allows its ads to be served together with Google Adsense and other forms of advertisement (Google Adsense also approves of being served together with Infolinks).

Q: What are the improvements that you wish to see at Infolinks?
A: I hope its report can be more detailed, showing the CTR of each page as well as eCPM of each keywords and keyphrases. One of these days, I also hope Infolinks can expand beyond in text and conceptual advertising, bringing in other forms of advertisements such as widgetized ads (like Chitika, Amazon, etc.) and ad boxes (similar to Adbrite, Bidvertiser, Adsense) although that may not be the company direction.

Q: Is there anything new that you learn about Infolinks while preparing this review?
A: Actually yes, I just found out that Infolinks can process payment via Prepaid Mastercard® (powered by Payoneer) which I already own. That is definitely good news for me as I have another option to receive money from Infolinks.

Q: Any last words to say to Infolinks?
A: Yes. Happy New Year 2010 and congratulations for standing strong and being the industry leader of online in text advertising. Don't lose your identity as you grow bigger and always take care of your publishers (and advertisers) the way you are doing now. They made you what you are now and they will decide what you will be in the future. I am glad and proud to be a part of the family. Thank you!

Let's see how the family party together (Double with a Bubble contest)

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Adsense for Domains

Just received a heads up from Rohaizad.com regarding Adsense for Domains is now open for registration for Malaysian publishers.

I have more than 5 domains lying around, not earning me any money and is certainly a liability when the time comes to renew their registrations.

As you may have already heard, some internet marketers make money online through domain parking. In simple terms, it means that they allow some domain parking companies to serve advertisements on their domains, revenue from the advertisements is shared between the domain parking companies and the domain owner (also known as the advertisement publisher).

It may sound easy to make money this way, but usually the domain parking companies will only accept publishers who have 100 or more good keyword domains into their programs. I personally feel that this policy is ridiculous.

Now, through Adsense for Domains, any domain owner can make money from their unused domains by parking them under Google Adsense program. The steps are pretty simple too, log in into your Adsense account, select Adsense Setup tab, then select Adsense for Domains link, accept the agreement, park your domains and start checking for your earnings.

Unfortunately, not all domains are suitable to park and earn money from, the domains should have good keywords that are frequently searched for and already have some organic traffic to them. Once you have parked your domain with domain parking companies including Google, you are not allowed to promote the domains further or drawing unnatural visits to them as that would influence your earnings from the advertisements served.

I would probably discuss about what domains are suitable for domain parking, what are the usual domain parking companies and what are the rules to observe if you wish to earn money from domain parking if there is enough interest in this topics.

For now, I have tried to use Adsense for Domains with 1 of my domains which receive satisfactory organic traffic and type in traffic daily. I shall keep you posted about my earnings (hopefully at least a few cents per day).

Do you have any parked domains? Are you making good money from them? Would you try Adsense for Domains?

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Buy OIOpublisher Cheap Until End of January 2009

OIOpublisher is among the most useful plugins I have ever used with WordPress. It is not a free plugin though, it is a retail plugin designed to help one to manage advertisers, display advertisements, sell anything one could possibly think of, accept payments and make money.

If you prefer an official definition from the creator, here it is:

What is OIOpublisher?

OIOpublisher is an ad platform with a focus on performance, control and ease of use. Serve advertising on your blog or website and keep 100% of the revenue you bring in.

Let's see the full features list of OIOpublisher.

What OIO can offer you
* OIO can be used as a standalone platform, or as a Wordpress plugin
* sell text ads, banner ads, in-content ads and paid reviews
* sell custom items; from custom ads to digital downloads
* entirely automated; purchases and epxirations all handled automatically
* your own ad server; javascript output lets you display ads on any website
* break ads into zones; display ads easily over multiple sites
* click and impression tracking; weekly ad reports emailed to advertisers
* no empty ad slots; show your own default ads until slots are purchased
* ad status management; approve / reject / expire / renew / validate ads
* setup your own affiliate program; reward people for selling your ads
* easily extend functionality; modules let developers go further
* integrated marketplace; let us help you advertise your ads
(OIO here refers to the plugin itself, OIOpublisher and the OIO forums and marketplace)

There are many more features that are being developed with the ad platform right now such as multiple ad durations support, ad coupon codes capability and CPA / CPC pricing options. As a buyer, you are entitled to upgrade for life for all new versions of OIOpublisher. I think in the next few updates, OIOpublisher will emerge as a complete ad platform, you don't need to depend on any advertising networks anymore, you can run your own CPC campaigns.

Right now, the ad platform can be run independently of WordPress, it just need to be used on a web server supporting PHP and MySQL. I can even install it on any WordPress, it will be my own personal ad platform/server, allowing me to sell ads on my blog here at Blogger and accept ad payments on my behalf, even while I am sleeping!

The marketplace is also very unique. Any site running OIOpublisher will be listed in the marketplace, where daily impressions, CTR and other information about the site will be available. You can select any sites under a particular niche/category with suitable traffic for you to purchase your ad space from.

The usual price of OIOpublisher is $47. It is a one time-fee, you can use it on as many domains as you wished and you get all future updates of OIOpublisher for free.

Now you can get it for only $25 - this special price is only valid until end of January 2009. Click on the button below to purchase and use the coupon code Jan90-25.

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$25 Bonus Cash from Kontera

Kontera is a PPC Ad Network which has brought good profits to many publishers (people who serve their ads).

It's a shame that I have not joined Kontera, until now...

What tempted me? The $25 Bonus Cash, of course! There are of course terms and conditions to follow to be eligible for this bonus.

If you are interested to redeem this $25 Bonus Cash, you have to join Kontera through the link in their blog post announcing the bonus cash. Then as a publisher, once you earned $75 with Kontera, they will round your balance to $100 (the minimum payout amount), so don't panic if you don't see the bonus in your account immediately.

There is no time limit imposed for you to reach the $75 and earn the bonus cash, the bonus is basically yours as long as you could earn another $75 in your lifetime as a publisher with Kontera (pending further announcement and changes, who knows what happens in the future, right?).

The last condition - to be eligible for this bonus cash, you have to sign up by 15th January 2009, there are still 2-3 days to do that. So don't miss out this great chance!

As a Kontera publisher you’ll benefit from:
• Quick and easy integration;
• Higher CTR & revenues;
• Adsense compatible ads;
• Multiple payment possibilities.

The ads served by Kontera are mostly in the form of ContentLinks, where certain words in your blog post will be turned into PPC Ads, you earn only when people click on that text link (like on my blog posts now, but I am currently serving Infolinks In-Text Advertisement, will probably introduce it on another post).

I wonder if it is safe to serve Kontera ads and Infolinks ads together. Also, I'll have to verify that Kontera ads are compatible with Adsense ads. Will surely keep you all updated ;)

Join Kontera now as a publisher if you have not and lock in the $25 cash bonus

Are you making money with Kontera? Please share with us your experience and your earnings report with Kontera, if you have done any such posts. Thank you!

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The Motive Network Now Powered by Advent 2.0

As a non-US citizen, it is not easy to be accepted into any any advertising network (especially those affiliate network). Most advertising networks would require their publishers to have a decent-looking website before approving them as members while others would conduct a 1-to-1 interview on the phone to find out how their publishers intend to "sell" their affiliate products or services.

By chance, I stumbled upon Motive Interactive. It is an advertising network specialising in CPA offers but other monetizing options for publishers are available too, including CPM, CPL, etc.

Some advertising networks do not provide support to their publishers whatsoever, they just give out some codes and expect publishers to do the rest, there is no stats tracking, no stats report, no direct affiliate manager and feedbacks between publishers and advertisers. The same cannot be said of Motive Interactive. At first I was reluctant to apply as a publisher but after corresponding with Motive Interactive's support staff, he convinced me to join, elaborating that their network is different and he even showed me a preview of their new Advent 2.0 platform.

The Motive Network will be powered by Advent 2.0. Advent 2.0 is specially created to cater to increasing demands of advertising industry and it is highly scalable and adaptable should any unforeseen changes in the future arise to maintain its competitive edge.

The key features differentiating Advent 2.0 from other networks' platforms are:

• it provides ad serving and impression tracking capabilities (beneficial to publishers and advertisers alike).
• the data model, code model and system processes are designed by industry experts with years of experience building high volume performance advertising and lead generation networks.
• it contains advanced features other platforms do not have - multiple payout support which includes commission based sales, individual publisher and advertiser allocations and lead routing to multiple advertisers and buyers.
• it has real time and batched lead processing as well as very flexible and powerful data
  handling and validation capabilities.
• it has a clean, streamlined user interface that empowers publishers to get to the offers, creative, statistics and campaign information they need quickly.
• publishers have access to tools to measure important campaign performance metrics across all time periods, campaigns and payouts in multiple perspectives including 'effective' perspectives like eCPM and eCPL.
• it has simple, but powerful filtering capabilities for offers, campaigns and performance statistics.

Even when my affiliate manager was 'selling' the platform to me, I was in doubt despite learning about the efficiency of the Advent 2.0 system. Realizing the shortcomings of words, Motive Interactive decided to come up with the following 'preview' video of the system.

Well, a picture paints a thousand words and a video paints a thousand pictures. Hence I am convinced that The Motive Network might just be the affiliate network which might help me make money and I am now looking for best offers in the Motive Network to promote. Once I make some money from Motive Interactive, I shall share my promotion methods here, hopefully people who decide to use my methods would sign up as my referral to enable me to benefit from some referral earnings.

Motive Interactive's referral earnings program is 5.5% lifetimes referral earnings. This payout is among the highest in the industry. The referred publisher must continue to generate commissions without a lapse of twelve (12) calendar months in order for the referrer to continue receiving the 5.5% commission from that publisher each month.

By the way, before ending this review, my affiliate manager informed me that Motive Interactive is now actively seeking for top affiliate marketers, especially those who could generate publisher commissions higher than $10,000 per month. To encourage those internet marketers to try out the new Advent v2.0 system, the following reward system is devised.

Rewards are paid each month based upon a publisher's commissions for the previous month. The reward payout starts at 1% then increases to 2% the higher the tier. The current payout tiers for the rewards program are as follows:
Top affiliate marketers out there, you'd do well with $10,000-$25,000 rewards, not to mention the commissions already in your pocket if you could sell so much of Motive Interactive's affiliate products, they would love you so much!

So, I'll be taking off to see what offers could I promote soon. Thank you to my affiliate manager, Luke, you have already opened my eyes to the possibilities eventhough I have not earned much from affiliate network, yet.

Click here to join as one of the publishers of Motive Interactive

Have you joined any advertising (affiliate) network as a publisher or advertiser? Are you satisfied with the service? What do you think about Motive Interactive's new Advent 2.0 system?

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Entrecard, Where to?

I guess this is a pretty stale news by now but I still would like to talk about the recent Entrecard and its economy makeover.

On 29th September, I received an email from Entrecard. Apparently it is having an overhaul of its economy and redefining the value of its credits as well as setting some rules on what is allowed and what is not when it comes to credit transfers. Here's a quote from the email I received from Entrecard management:

1. Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00. You can buy them here: http://entrecard.com/r/buy_credits
   
2. More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki, here: http://entrecard.com/docs/doku.php?id=advertising
   
3. Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms.
4. Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week. Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs.
5. Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1).
6. Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it's there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot.
7. No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons.
8. Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We'll communicate more details nearer the time.

I don't see eye to eye to this new rules set by Entrecard, many original Entrecard users are not happy either when many changes were made in regards to its economy several months ago. I would like to respond to each points presented above (the number corresponds to the number of the points found in the email sent by Entrecard):

1. Buy credits for less (1000 for $6)? I think the Entrecard management has been oblivious to the fact that 10,000 EC were selling as low as $1. No doubt we can buy from Entrecard but their price IS not low.
2. No comment here, just that publisher would be earning very little EC from now on.
3. Nice, so now there is total monopoly when it comes to sales of EC. However, I think some users would ignore the warning and continue to sell EC from underground.
4. I actually welcome this new rule. From now on there will be less worthless contest offering thousands of EC which does not worth much anyway!
   
5. Entrecard gets EC each time an advertiser buys ad from a publisher, they also impose tax on EC transfer. The EC will go directly into their account to be resold for $6 every 1000EC. Perhaps this is enough to pay for server fee?
6. No comment, maybe it is the logical rule to impose?
7. Many people will be affected when coupons are no longer allowed, people who run contests and other people who offer EC for visitors who participate in their events.
8. Shops are closed, many interesting items will also be pulled. Gone are the days when 1000EC can be sold for $10 and when 7000EC could buy you a year of Linux hosting. Wonder when the shops are opened again, will it be as good as it were.

Entrecard has been on the decline for quite some time now (I hope I don't get into trouble with the management for saying this) but I guess necessary steps are undertaken to help revive its glory. However, with the gigantic amount of EC still floating in the market, I think it will take quite a long time before the economy is steadied and Entrecard Credits will be a valuable commodity again.

Don't worry Entrecard, I have been with you for 9 months now. I hope to still be around to see you regain your glory, hopefully sooner rather than later :)

What do you think about the recent Entrecard makeover? Has it affected you? How? What is the ideal way to run Entrecard and regulate the use and value of its credits?

Coming up next: BobbyT will be discussing about Entrecard's partnership with OIO Publisher :)

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Why I don't make money from Advertlets!

No, the title is not a question, and this is certainly not a ranting post, rambling on about why Advertlets is a bad advertising network, so on and so forth.

I repeat, I have no intention of bad-mouthing Advertlets. Instead the title of the post is a statement, a shockingly electrifying statement after I discovered the possible reason why I am not making good money off Advertlets advertising network.

If you are even remotely interested to join this advertising network and make some decent money off it (sorry to foreign bloggers, I think this advertising network currently accepts only Malaysian and Singaporean bloggers) or you yourself are not making good money off this network, then please read on.

Let's look at how much money I have been making from Advertlets since joining them in February 2008.

Click on the image to enlarge but in case you cannot see the amount of money I earned, it is RM0.642 and that is the total since February 2008, that amount is about $0.20. In between February and now, I have dropped the Advertlets ads on my blog for 2 to 3 months because I was discouraged by the low earnings. It is even less than what I am earning from My Search Funds (now known as homepages friends).

I began thinking that it was weird that I do not receive a single advertiser since signing up with Advertlets. Then when I visited the support section of Advertlets site, I found this:

Question: Do I need to have at least 50 demographic poll submissions to get advertising on my blog?

Answer:Nope. Nada. No. The demographics submissions has always been more of a recommendation than a requirement - however, you will not be eligible for ALL advertising opportunities available IF your demographics submissions are NOT filled in.

Generally, the more demographics submissions you have the higher your chances. Some advertisers like to use demographics to determine which blogs they should advertise on, especially if its a product/service that applies to one gender. However, some would like to reach a larger audience, with some targeting options (eg, as long as they are Malaysians).

Please read the bold text of the answer part. Now I know what is the use of the poll code given by Advertlets. Apparently, if we have a complete demographics submissions profile (minimum 50), we have a higher chance to be selected by advertisers to run their campaigns. I will be blogging about the types of campaigns advertisers could run through Advertlets in another post. The answer above seems to imply that bloggers who have not completed 50 demographic submissions will not have their profiles available for network wide advertisers to choose from. It is sort of you are an invisible publisher with Advertlets, where they do not list you in their internal list of publishers to be chosen by advertisers.

Duh! No wonder I don't get a single advertiser yet, going to work on that...

I have not inserted the poll code into my blog template yet, but now that I know the importance of demographics submissions, I proceeded to add it immediately. You can see the widget (or gadget?) on my sidebar under the title "Help Me Get Advertisers".

If you have some time to spare or appreciate knowing about the importance of demographics submissions from this post, kindly help me fill in my demographic submissions. If you did that, and would like me to return a favor by submitting YOUR demographic submissions (even if you are in nuffnang network :) ) or commenting on your blog post or dropping on your EntreCard widgets, do leave a comment here please.

Thank you to anyone who read up to this point. Hope we all have a better chance to make money now, have a nice day by the way :)

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