Does PayperPost care more about the link than a post’s content?
Posted on May 27, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz | Leave a Comment
I have only made a few sponsored posts using Payperpost on other blogs so far. However, in just making a few posts, I get the impression that Payperpost emphasizes the inbound link to their site over the content of the post. I’d like to find how if others agree with my thoughts. In my experience with Payperpost, their opportunity instructions are not very clear and often contradict each other. I have heard from many bloggers that getting a post approved on its first submittal is difficult even if you follow the directions clearly.
For example, the advertiser’s text description often has specific instructions or optional instructions which contradict Payperpost’s directions elsewhere in the opportunity. Here is an example of text from one advertiser. “We would appreciate you also adding an optional link to the main page listed below in the required link area. The more variation we get for the link text, the better.” According to Payperpost, you must use the advertising’s companies coded link without any modifications, but this advertiser wants more variations and says the link is optional. It’s obvious that this advertiser would like a variation of different inbound links rather than one single repeated text link. So who do you try to satisfy? I’ve found that you will get your post approved 100% if you follow PPP’s directions, however is that what you really want? Don’t you want to give the advertiser, your end customer, what they wanted?
In addition, giving your advertisers more than they asked for is also rejected. I try to provide a good, in-depth post about the opportunity. It’s only natural that an in-depth post can contain additional pertinent links just through normal writing. In a post I made, I used the required text link in my post but I also included several other links to pertinent deeper pages of the advertiser that completely flowed with my discussion. These additional links were considered incorrectly formatted and the post was rejected. Therefore, in I removed them all.
I think that these are just growing pains that Payperpost is experiencing. I think that their reviewers should read their advertisers description and understand what the advertiser wants instead of flying through the approval process by going through a checklist.
As a blogger, you have to decide which directions to follow and hope that you were right. This can be very frustrating as most bloggers are making these posts strictly for cash. Having posts rejected repeatly just wastes our time. Sometimes it is not worth the $5 to $15 to write a single post and to revise it many times due to poor direction on Payperpost’s part.
Creating a great post = massive inbound links
Posted on May 24, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz | 3 Comments
Commenting on other blogs is a great way for bloggers to market their blog and generate traffic and comments. On our post on using comments to create inbound links and increase site ranking talks about using the Top Commentators plug-in to your advantage. While it is certainly easy to go to other blogs and make comments, this is a very time consuming activity. You must actively comment weekly or even daily to keep your blog up on the top commentators list. One just cannot continue to do this just to keep their inbound links active. While I do believe that this strategy is great at the start of a blog, it cannot be an ongoing strategy.
The great thing about the mass commenting campaign is that I browsed about 100 blogs. I have bookmarked about 35 that I liked and will continue visiting daily. The owners of these blogs have in turn visited this blog and left comments.
The most efficient use of time to get inbound links is to create a great post. A great post will provide you will permanent inbound links from bloggers discussing it or linking it from their blog. One great post can generate hundreds of incoming links. One example that comes to mind is Paula’s post about the Top 50 blogger salaries. This post has been linked into and reposted like crazy. (Paula, here’s another link to your post) That one post had over 18,000 page views in 3 days.
If you are trying to get more links to increase your Technorati authority, Google PR or Alexa rank, you don’t need to spend money buying links, just use your mind, sit down and write a great post. Just think of how much your one great post can help you make more money. Boosting all your rankings equals more money from selling ad space and Text-links-Ads, the ability to charge more for Review Me, the ability to write more expensive Payperposts… The list goes on. You won’t believe the return on your investment.
Understanding sneaky mortgage clauses: Adjustable rate mortgages
Posted on May 23, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Mortgages | 1 Comment
Buying a home for the first time is already stressful enough. By the time you have found your dream home and gone through the offer, counter-offer, acceptance, inspection, loan approval and final walk through, you just want the process to be done. You just want to move into your new home and relax.
The first time that you go to sign the loan documents it can be overwhelming. This isn’t aided by the fact that the title schedules a bunch of closings a day so they try to get you in and out as quickly as possible. With all that pressure, many buyers do not read their loan documents. I’ve heard them muffle, “Uh-oh he’s a reader.” which means that they will be there a while. It is YOUR money, you take as much time and ask as many questions as you want. Who cares if it takes you 3 hours to sign them all. You will be the person regretting it years later if you sign something you don’t understand.
What I would specifically like to address in this is how Adjustable Rate Mortgages are worded quite intelligently (for the mortgage company). Take a look at the text below on an adjustable mortgage. Let’s pretend that your interest rate is 6% right now, how high can the mortgage adjust to during the first adjustment? (click image to enlarge if you can’t read it)
The answer is 12%.
If you read it quickly, you’d think that the cap for each adjustment is 2%. Many homeowners end up expecting their mortgage to go from 6% to 8%. Come time for the first adjustment and they get their new statement with a 10,11 or 12% rate!
When you take time to read it again more carefully, it says that “the interest rate I am required to pay at the first Change Date will not be greater then 12% or less than 2.25%.” It says nothing about a 2% adjustment cap! Only “Thereafter, my interest rate with never be increased or decrease… by more than 2%.” So the first adjustment is not capped, but subsequent ones are. What good is that 2% limit once your mortgage hits 12%? It’s good for the mortgage company because now your rate can only drop by a maximum of 2%. This means that the earliest it will take for your loan to come back down to 6% is 3 years! What a great deal.
Here is an example of a mortgage that has a first adjustment cap. This mortgage has an initial rate of 9.00%. It’s adjustment cap on the first Change Date is 0.75%. It’s just written differently using 9.75% and 8.25% as the limits instead of say it’s 0.75%. Thereafter, it has a 1.5% adjustment cap for its lifetime.
Bottom line, read your documents carefully. Take your time at the signing table!
The financial goal of this blog
Posted on May 19, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz | 4 Comments
This blog was created using $5.99 for 1 year of domain registration. It is being hosted by an existing hosting package for our other sites. The goal of this site is generate income and to use that income to produce additional income.
For example, $5 made from adsense will be used to pay for a $5 text link later on. Hopefully, a well placed text link will generate a return greater than $5 and the cycle continues. In order for us to spend this money, we must earn it first. That means that if we want to pay $30 for a ReviewMe review, we need to make $30 online with this site.
The approach that 2brosblogging will use is marketing by using free tools, our brains and the man’s (Google) system. We will not spend any additional money on this site out of pocket.
Too often, I see bloggers use monetary tools to market their new blog. Tools like adwords, paid reviews and paid links are an easy straight forward way of marketing. Throwing money at a problem is an easy way to deal with it. However, there is no learning by simply spending money. By understanding how the guts of the blogging world work and bootstrapping this site at $0. Once you understand the internal workings, you will be able to spend your dollars more wisely.
Making money online: How this blog is different
Posted on May 18, 2007 by Max
Filed Under Internet Biz | 1 Comment
There are many websites and blogs on how to make money online. However, this blog will go through each step chronologically as its strategy appears on this blog.
Once a post about making money online is made on this blog, it will be implemented and tracked. Readers can follow the progress of this blog and implement our ideas on their own blogs.
For example, the post from May 13th on using Mybloglog to increase traffic talked about five different strategies to increase traffic.
- Avatar picture
- Mybloglog text
- About text
- Creating folder called “Blogs with Mybloglog avatars” and visit them daily
After the post is made, we will implement the strategies talked in the post. You will suddenly see the 2BrosBlogging Mybloglog avatar everywhere because we are doing exactly what we post about.
You will never see a strategy implemented prior to a post about it. We will let you know what we plan on doing and then we will do it a few days later. Therefore, you can follow along and we can measure each strategy’s effectiveness with our traffic data.
Increasing your site traffic and ranking through commenting
Posted on May 17, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz | 15 Comments
We all know that commenting is a great way to great traffic to your site. In my post about using Mybloglog to increase traffic I talked about setting up your Mybloglog profile and avatar to aid in attracting clicks. The next step is to begin posting comments on other sites.
Not all comments on blogs are created equal. There are many ways that your comment, other than its content, will help draw traffic to your blog.
Some blogs attach your Mybloglog avatar to your comment. This gives you additional exposure and another visual link on the page. So making a comment on a blog with this feature gives you an additional benefit. To the left is an example of a blog with avatars pictured on its comments. Notice the image on the left where dotinfodomain is using the “hot girl” avatar.
Most blogs use the nofollow attribute on their comments to prevent comment spamming for links. However, some blogs are comment link friendly so your comments will count as an inbound link to your blog.
To check if a blog uses the nofollow attribute you can view the source once you’re on a page with the comments. If you look at the source code you will see something like this: <cite>Comment by <a href=’http://www.testtest.com’ rel=’external nofollow’>test</a>
Another way that many bloggers are getting inbound links is through a feature called “Top Commenters.” Blogs use this feature to encourage comment by listing the people who comment the most frequently on their blog. Many top commenter links do not have the nofollow attribute attached to it. Therefore, a link on a blog’s Top Commenters will count as an inbound link. This is a great way to get inbound links from high PR sites. There are many high PR sites which have few commenters. It may only take 2-3 comments a week or even month to remain on there.
The image on the left was captured from a PR3 site. On this site, comments have a nofollow attribute, however the Top Commentators do not. It takes 2 comments to get your link on this blog.
I created a folder in my favorites called “High PR blogs with low top commenters” and I favorite any blog that meets these criteria and have only comment nofollow but not in top commenter links.
You should be able to supercharge your inbound links using this method very quickly. Happy linking!
Using Mybloglog to increase traffic
Posted on May 13, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz | 6 Comments
On my post about increasing traffic to your blog, I mentioned using Mybloglog. The unique thing about Mybloglog is that when you are signed in and you visit a blog, your icon or avatar shows up on that person’s page. You automatically get a visual link added to the blog. So how do you take advantage of this?
Since this is a visual link, you should choose an image that is eye catching. It should make other readers want to click the picture and come to your Mybloglog profile page.
To the left is an example that I pulled from a random site. There are 10 links shown. None of them really look inviting. A casual reader will probably just look past it. Notice that most of them are just pictures of a face and that most are male. One method that some bloggers use to attract male visitors is to use a good looking female face on your avatar. Guys will click it out of curiousity.
Also if you mouse over just the picture, the name of visitor pops up in a small text bar. Here is your second chance to capture a reader.
If the text reveals something interesting, chances are that the reader will give you a click. So choose your Mybloglog name carefully.
Now that you’ve got a new reader to visit your page, you’ve got to make them visit your blog. Because Mybloglog profile layout pages cannot be modified, there is not too much that you can do to change what is seen. Your new reader will see what blogs your author and have a small screen shot of it.
Mybloglog has recently added Twitter to its profile page. By joining Twitter, you can add a short phrase directly under your profile. This is the only way you can get in a short catchy phrase on your profile near the top.
Below the fold is room for you to enter more information about yourself on your profile. You should something written here, even if it’s the same thing as your “About” page on your blog.
Once you have developed a good Mybloglog avatar, name and profile, all you need to do is visit a ton of sites which have the Mybloglog avatars showing the recently visited. Remember, if you want to make money from your blog you must treat your blog as a business. Businesses have processes that they go through everyday.
Every time you come across a blog that shows the avatar, you should bookmark it. I recommend creating a folder named “Blogs with Mybloglog avatars” and compiling a huge list of blogs. Then, at least once a day, visit each blog to get your avatar shown. After all, you need to get your inbound links out there! BTW, while you’re at it you might as well toss in a comment or two… but that’s a post for a later day.
The Government Wants You to Become Rich Using Real Estate
Posted on May 13, 2007 by Max
Filed Under Real Estate | Leave a Comment
In my opinion, there is no quicker, easier or safer way to build wealth than through real estate. In fact, the laws of this land are written heavily in your favor to purchase real estate, user real estate to lower your income taxes, and to keep most or all your investment gains. The same can’t be said of any other investment vehicle.
Buying Property
Boy, is it easy to qualify for a home loan. Would you loan a stranger $250K? Banks do it all the time. The hardest part of getting a conventional loan is the down payment, but banks will even loan you the down payment! There are many programs out there geared towards first time homeowners that can get you into a property. They can’t wait to hand over their money. So take it.
Owning Property
Homeowners can deduct interest on mortgages and property taxes on their primary residences. On investment properties, government forces owners to depreciate residential property over 27.5 years, even though in reality the property is appreciating. So that means if the rent minus all expenses puts real money into your pocket year after year, your taxes can legally show a loss. For example, a condo which cost $275K is depreciated at $10K per year. Let’s say that every month, the positive cash flow from that property is $500, or $6K income for the year. But because the property “depreciated” $10K, my loss on the books is $4K, and consequently, my taxable income is reduced by $4K.
Selling Property
Homeowners can keep capital gains tax-free (up to $500,000 for married couples filing jointly or $250,000 for singles), provided that the home was the primary residence of record for at least two of the prior five years. The exclusion can be taken every two years. On investment properties, Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code allows owners to roll the gain from the sale of the old property to a new property without paying tax, provided that the new property is equal or greater in value to the old property and all of the proceeds from the sale of the old property are invested into the new property.
So with all these benefits, if you aren’t into real estate, you should ask yourself why.
Blogging vs. Real Estate
Posted on May 9, 2007 by Neo
Filed Under Internet Biz, Real Estate | Leave a Comment
Are you kidding? Is this even a real comparison? Ok, I admit that it’s a huge stretch, but as both a real estate investor and a blogger sometimes I wonder which one I should spend more time working on.
Alot of beginning real estate investors buy investments that yield negative cashflow betting on appreciation to make their investment worthwhile. Many are happy that they just breakeven on a month to month basis. In fact, cashflow $100 to $200 per month is considered a great investment by some.
If you consider the effort and capital required to squeak out a mere $100 per month it makes you wonder if you should just put all that effort into a blog. After all, I contend that making $100/mo blogging ($3.33/day) is a very achievable goal within a month.
When purchasing a property an investor would put thousands of dollars down, pay closings costs, advertise the property, getting a renter, collect rents, etc… in order to make $100/mo positive cashflow.
As a blogger, start up costs are virtually nil. It takes about 3 minutes to get into this business. Your main asset here is your brain power. You are in total control of this business and your operating costs are just your time and brain thoughts.
The return on a particular post can be calculated as Steve Pavlina did in his post here. If you look at John Chow’s blog, you’ll see how his income increased almost exponentially. With just your brain, you can increase the income from your blog very quickly.
With real estate, on a single family home you cannot increase your cashflow significantly. You have to rely on market conditions and there is alot more risk than blogging.
I’m not saying that you should invest in blogging rather than real estate. However, I do believe that a person who is looking to gain some semi-passive income in the form of a few hundred dollars a month should looking into blogging. Blogging is virtually no risk and is truly a work from home job. Everyone has a hobby or passion that they can write about. There are readers and advertisers for every topic.
The Two Sides of Stupidity
Posted on May 8, 2007 by Max
Filed Under Real Estate, Mortgages | Leave a Comment
Of course, everyone would rather be smart than stupid. But not everyone can be so fortunate.
Stupidity affects your income, for sure. Someone lacking in brain cells is more likely to be an average or poor performer at work, which ultimately means less money in the paycheck compared to his or her cerebrally gifted counterparts. This is compounded as years go by and the spread gets wider and wider.
But the financial damages do not stop there. Not only does stupidity hurt the revenue side of the equation, it also affects the expense side. Case in point – a friend of mine was purchasing a home and locked in his interest rate at 6.00%. By the time closing rolled around, interest rates dipped to 5.75%. His mortgage broker told him that if he wanted to get the lower market rate, he would have to pay some $400. My friend declined. Dumb.
The 5.75% interest rate made an approximately $50 per month difference in his 30 year fixed mortgage payment. He would have broke even on his $400 in eight months (excluding time value of money). His stupidity has been costing him $50 per month ever since that fateful day, when he failed to think through his actions. Five years later, he is in that same house, with the same mortgage, with the same 6.00% interest rate.
Another example is an ex-girlfriend, who would never be confused with a rocket scientist. She had amassed some $20K in debt for her matriculation. And never consolidated those loans! Now, for those who have never had the pleasure in borrowing money for school, student loans are awarded per semester, so by the time you graduate, you have multiple loans, each with a different interest rate depending on what the market rate was when you borrowed. The government allows you to consolidate your student loans once at ridiculously low statutory rates. For instance, my rate is 1.88%. But not everyone can be so fortunate.
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