Metro Dude

Yesterday I wrote post about George W Bush making nice with the Sarkozys, actually I thought it was quite a funny post but it didn’t get any comments, and if I look back at all my other posts where I get comments there is a theme that has emerged. Either I’m talking about making money, or some sexy babe.

I guess my readers must only be interested in making money with porn sites, unfortunately I can’t turn my blog into one of those or I’ll get kicked off Entrecard, BlogCatalog, Technorati etc. And that raises a very good question for bloggers who are adults and want to have a bit of adult fun, how to do so without falling foul of the rules?

Looking around at other blogs where the owner writes about making money, frankly they’re mostly a load of rubbish. The two main sources of income they all talk about is paid posts or adsense, and as you can see I don’t have adsense, and I’ve only had one paid post that I got $6 for. I have however sold some EC for $12. I also got $2 for my Scratchback widget.

Those a pretty impressive stats I think for a newbie who doesn’t know how to make money online, yes you read that correctly, $20 in my first two months. I might call myself an Internet money making expert next

Right, so that I don’t waffle too much, and I actually get a few comments, I’m going to take a poke at all those people who take life too seriously. Do you know what, I had someone leave a comment on one of my posts who said I’d burn in hell for putting up all those pictures of cute sexy babes. I’m not into that shite so I deleted his comment, where do people get off trying to censor me on my own blog?

BTW, the incredibly sexy babe in the photo is none other than the wife of France’s President Sarkozy, that is Carla Bruni in her modeling days. You can kinda see why he was attracted to her can’t you?

I’ve just discovered another way to make a bit of spare change from blogging. You’ll remember last week I mentioned my disappointment at not being accepted into a paid posting gig, but this morning I had an email about some Entrecard credits I had lying around.

Well I sold them, 5000 credits for $12, I know it isn’t much and the buyer did say that was cheap but I’m happy I got an extra $12. Now if I work that out according to paid posting, well that’s the equivalent of two paid posts on this blog since my site has no pagerank and is still very new.

I’m charging $6.50 by the way for a paid post of a couple of hundred words, and I’ll even sell a sidebar ad for $10 for the month if anyone wants one, and considering I’m actively working on building my traffic I’d say that’s a good deal.

And in celebration of this new found capitalist streak in me I though today’s images needed to be a motivation image so I hope you all take something away from the message in it.

The goals poster is courtesy of MakesYouLaugh

One of my new online friends introduced me to the concept maybe running a few more websites as a webmaster, a very grand name for a poor peasant like me, but it got me thinking about riches beyond my ken from buying websites or domains as investments.

Now this is really interesting, I mean I never knew that ordinary folk can get rich having websites, I actually thought all the big money making websites were owned by large corporations.

So anyway, being the conscientious investor like I am (cough cough) I’ve been bugging the crap out of a few people and the search engines looking for information to prevent me making a monumental mistake. Especially since one of the domains I’ve been looking at is already registered and I’m going to have to make an offer on it.

Did you know you can get an appraisal on a domain name, I found midflux, a company where you can get a real life legitimate appraisal telling you exactly about the domain you’re looking at buying or have bought, and how much money its worth.

This is the same type of document you’d expect from a realtor if you were interested in a house, or an auctioneer if you were looking at fine art, and I had no idea they existed for domains, but a $2.95 domain appraisal seems worth looking at.

I’m not going to mention the domain I’m interested in, but if you’ve been paying any kind of attention to comments I’ve made on other sites you’ll know its a bit risque, if you take my meaning. I’m sure you’ll agree, taking precautions is even more important in that industry, I mean I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of money on content only to discover the domain is a dud.

I’m giving away some Entrecard Credits (actually 448 to be precise) to the first three people who comment on this post, but let me tell you why I’m doing this first.

Another blogger, actually you probably already know him, its BloggerNoob no less, is holding a contest on his blog for all bloggers to sell themselves and be in the draw to win $10 and the possibility of BloggerNoob paying you to put his advert on your blog.

Now I know $10 doesn’t seem like very much however I have a goal of being able to make a part time income from this very blog and I’ll take advice from anyone who’s already been there and done that and who at least on the face of it seems to have been mildly successful.

So I return to the reason for this post, you see I want that $10, I don’t need it, but I’m hungry to win a contest and since my blog is so new I don’t have any statistics to show how many people look at my blog. Winning this contest will demonstrate to Bloggernoob and all the people who visit his blog why I should be taken seriously.

Let me tell you what I’ve observed, and if you’re an advertiser no doubt you’ll be impressed, hopefully enough to buy a slot on my Scratchback widget, or maybe even leave a comment asking to talk. So, without further ado, this blog was started on the 11th April 2008, very new I’m sure you’ll agree, yet in this time I’ve generated 19 posts including this one, and managed to attract 35 comments and 1 trackback.

Bloggernoob should be impressed by that, but there’s more. I’m also active in Entrecard and I regularly place advertisements on other Entrecarder blogs and my Entrecard activity has resulted in 114 clicks from ads I’ve placed, but more impressively, 1074 clicks from Entrecard to me.

Entrecard has been good to me and I’m trying to learn how to use it properly, this is why my Entrecard widget is a bit further down the page than my scratchback. You see I work hard for my traffic, just like BloggerNoob does, and advertising on Entrecard is cheap, it requires no money just a little effort. And this is one of the reasons I think advertising on my blog is such a great investment. I actively work my traffic but paid advertisers get what they deserve, the top spot.

If I get interest from other advertisers then the Entrecard widget will slowly sink further down. At the moment Entrecard advertisers get a bargain, a low priced blog with the widget above the fold but this can’t last forever.

So with all that effort I’m expending getting traffic you’d think my advertisers wouldn’t need more from me, and yet I still do more. I’m active in the BlogCatalog forums and I regularly visit other BC profiles and their blogs looking for bloggers to befriend. Whenever I can I leave a comment so I’m building up the backlinks to this site and it’s paying off. My blog has 12 pages indexed in Google already.

More than that I don’t think I could have done in my first month, but for my second month I plan to join other social networking sites in my continued efforts to boost traffic. Yet despite this I’ll still be writing my usual humorous drivel, er quality posts, so my advertisers continue to get value for money.

As my final effort to impress BloggerNoob and win his contest I recommend you read one of his recent posts, its about growing a thick skin if you want to make money.

Right, about those Entrecard Credits. All you have to do is be one of the first three people to comment on this post, and make sure you leave the URL for your Entrecard profile page. The first to comment will get 256EC, the second will get 128EC, and the third will get 64EC, that’s it, and thanks for reading, oh, and make sure you check out BloggerNoob’s contest.

New Yorkers are crazy, some idiot just payed £486 for a piece of dino dung he says he’s going to use at trade shows to promote his pooper scooper business. “Poop is big business in the pet industry” said Steve Tsengas, the man obviously knows his stuff if he’s prepared to pay that much for something he could probably get free from any zoo.

I suppose in fairness I should say this particular piece of dino dung was 130 million years old but poop is still poop in my books even if it did come from a dinosaur.

But it had me thinking, he’s a guy who makes money from clrearing away pet poop, and now he’s just paid a record amount for some dino poop, and I betcha his marketing people have a plan. They’re just waiting for the market to realize poop is worth money, then they’re gonna be in a prime position sitting on mountain loads of the stuff. Clever people heh?

So it made me realize I need to buy a few dogs, collect their poop, figure out some way to store it so I don’t have to smell it, maybe I’ll hire a warehouse somewhere, then wait a few years and off load it on eBay to people who think its cool to have poop on the living room shelf.

I don’t know if any of my regular readers have noticed, I’ve got a Scratchback widget in my sidebar which I’m hoping will pay for my hosting so I can keep this wee blog alive and growing.

Here’s how it works, that little widget will stay there all the time, above the fold as those marketing people say, and I’ve set it so it auto-approve 5 links for a whole month and its only a measly US$5 to have your link sitting there proud as punch.

Now you could of course put your own widget on your blog, and then if you manage to encourage a few people to tip you, you’ll get the money in your Paypal account. Seems like a good deal to me and I might even put my link on a couple of my favourite blogs, but anyway I digress, it’s your link I’m after.

So, here’s the sales pitch on why my humble blog would be a great investment for your link. Even though my blog is new, I see I already have a couple of folk who’ve subscribed to my feed so I must be doing something right (I hope), also I’m an active Entrecard dropper and many of the people who drop their cards on me are staying long enough to make a comment which is really nice of them.

I’m also a big fan of BlogCatalog and I’ve been joining in discussions and making a few friends who occasionally stop by to giggle at my literary masterpieces, and on top of that I share the odd thought on other people’s blog.

So, what do you say, $5 for a month to have your link on my blog and I do all the hard work for you getting traffic, writing content, and I’ll throw in a nice bonus, I’ll subscribe to your feed, I’ll friend you or favorite you, and I might even write up a short review of your website although I reserve the right to be a clown when I do it. And to make it easy for you, simply click this link to buy your link.