Penny Auctions are Genius!

Not so much for it’s users though. Also referred to as a bidding fee auction, penny auctions involve users placing a small incremental bid (a penny) to raise the price of a specific item. The last user to place a bid before time runs out wins the item at the set price. I’m sure you’ve seen websites like Madbid advertised, where someone wins a mini cooper for only 800 pounds or an iPhone 4 for just 50 pounds. Although it sounds too good to be true, there are genuine people out there walking away with a 20 quid plasma, but how can a website afford to give these products away for such little cash?

I first heard about Madbid through a friend. Although there are lots of other popular penny auction websites around, Madbid have taken centre stage with television advertisement campaigns and reviews from popular magazines and tabloids. I’ve read some articles about them being a scam so I decided to check it out for myself. As soon as you visit the website, the current auctions are displayed on the homepage so you can see just how cheap products are going for. I’ve just been on then to find an iPhone 4 with a current bid of 26 pence! That’s enough reason for anyone to create an account and start bidding but before you do, be aware of the rules. To bid on an item, you simply raise the price by one penny, and if the time expires without anyone else bidding, you win! But bidding isn’t free. This is where Madbid actually make a profit. You have to buy credits to bid with. Cheap products like an alarm clock may only require 4 credits to make a bid, whereas televisions cost around 6 credits to make a bid. And this isn’t just your initial bid, but every single one you make on the product.

Here’s the numbers:

I’ve just seen an iPhone 4 previously sell for just over 50 quid so we’ll use that for an example. Let’s assume the cost to increase the bid by a penny is 6 credits, and that the cost of each credit is 10p.

This means that every time a user chooses to increase the bid, it costs them 60p. (6 multiplied by 10)

So to reach £50 from a zero starting price, that requires 5,000 bids. (50 multiplied by 0.01)

So the cost of all the bids equal 3,000. (5,000 multiplied by 0.60)

This means from the bidding alone, the website has earned £3,000 from one product worth roughly £500. Plus the extra £50 from the winning bidder! So, as you can tell, it’s genius!

In conclusion, technically it’s not a scam at all. Expensive items are won by people for really small prices, just like it says on the tin. Although the cost of bidding should be stated clearly on the website. So if you are planning to use a website like Madbid or My Little Bird, be sure to understand the rules and actual cost of bidding, and be prepared to face the possibility of losing lots of your hard earned cash.

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Number 4. Make Money from Surveys.

Number four of my 101 ways to make money online. To read the other 100 ways to earn money on the internet click here!

What is a survey? Basically a survey is a method for collecting information from a sample of people about something in particular, which can proove useful for market research. I’ll be honest with you, this was the first way I ever earned a penny from the internet, unless you count the millions of US Dollars that are trapped in an overseas bank account waiting for me to transfer, well that’s what Mr Zango’s emails keep informing me about. Anyway, it sounds like a smart idea; you answer some boring questions and give away some personal details and in return you get some extra cash in your pocket. Although, by ‘boring’ I mean ‘really boring’ and by ‘some personal details’ I mean ‘absolutely everything’ and by ‘extra cash’ I mean ‘five pence’. Yeah you can earn some money from it, but is it really worth your time? If your answer is Yes, or if you’re unemployed with nothing better to do with your time, then please carry on reading!

Here’s how it works. You sign up to a website like CashCrate or Opinion Outpost. You’ll most likely be paid by cheque so if they ask for an address, be sure to put your real one. Be careful though, any sites asking for your credit card details or telling you that you need to pay a sum first are most likely scam websites and should be avoided completely. Once you’re signed up, they’ll email you when a survey is available, and all you do is click the link and fill it in. A lot of sites also offer online focus groups, where you'll get paid a lot more for your time and input.

Sounds simple enough but there are a few drawbacks. First, even though they’ve emailed you about a survey opportunity, you may not actually qualify for it. The questionnaire might be about photocopiers, and if the first question is ‘Do you own a photocopier’ and you choose ‘No’ then more than likely, you will not be allowed to finish the survey. Also, even if you do reach the end of a survey (which could take like half an hour!) you most likely won’t be able to withdraw the cash you’ve made straight away. Either you’ll have to wait till you accumulate a set price (£10 or £20) or you’ll get paid in redeemable points, for instance you can cash out with 100 points and each point is worth 10p etc.

The key to actually making any money from this is by signing up to as many of these websites as possible. Say the average site offers you a few opportunities a month, of which you are only eligible for one, that’s only 12 per year. So by signing up to say 50, you’ll greatly increase the frequency of surveys. Also be warned, by signing up to loads, you may start receiving bucket-loads of spam, so I’d recommend setting up a separate email address for this! There are people out there who work online answering surveys and earn some decent money.

Check out this list of websites to get you started. If you live in the UK like me though, a lot of these websites may not be available to you. Good luck sir or madam.

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Improving your blog: Top Commenters

Including a Top Commenters form on your blog is a great way to benefit your readers and your own blog too. People are likely to comment more often if there is a chance for them to have a permanent backlink on your homepage. You might even be lucky enough to have a commenter include a link to your own blog as well on their homepage. It's a great way to help promote your blog and other, perhaps new, blogs with quality content but unknown to the blogosphere.

Add your own Top Commenters form

Visit bloggerplugins.org and click the 'add to blogger' button, you can choose between the latest 500 or 5000 comments, depending on how popular your are. I went for 500...

Next, simply add the URL of your blog, ie. http://www.myblogiscrap.com, and your name. Adding your name prevents you appearing in the list which, if you actually connect with your readers, should be pretty high up! Once done, the widget will be added to your desired blog. You can then adjust it's position by going to Blogger > Design > Page Elements. Have fun you beautiful people.

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Number 3. Make Money from Facebook.

Number three of my 101 ways to make money online. To read the other 100 ways to earn money on the internet click here!

Facebook has over 500 million users and gets around 20 billion views per day. That’s the kind of figures one can only dream about! But alas, you can still use Facebook to earn yourself some extra cash. With so many members, Facebook can be a powerful tool to market just about anything. Creating pages and groups for products/apps has never been so easy and here’s how you can use these features to benefit yourself.

To create a page, first you’ll want to login and go to this page. Here you can create a page for a band, company, place, product etc. Setting up a page to promote your product is the first step. Getting people to that page is the next step. I’m sure you’ve come across those pages where you have to ‘like’ it to gain access to the information on offer? Well, why not try that yourself? It doesn’t have to be serious, most people on Facebook are looking for something entertaining which they can share with their friends. You can also post links to your page/website/affiliate links on other popular pages!

Another way to increase your income through Facebook is by creating an app. Have you ever created a flash game? By submitting your game, or any app, to Facebook you can increase your chances of more views and plays.

You can also use Facebook to advertise your website. More views from Facebook means more potential earnings. If you’ve already got Facebook, try sharing your website, or even affiliate links to your friends. You can also read this post, which talks about maxing out your friends to 5000!

If you’ve got any other ways or ideas about how Facebook can boost your income, feel free to share below!

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Number 2. Make money from Affiliate Marketing.

Number two of my 101 ways to make money online. To read the other 100 ways to earn money on the internet click here!

Affiliate marketing. Let’s face it, you hear about it everywhere but are you sure about what it actually involves? Affiliate marketing is the process of referring consumers to a particular product and earning a commission of the sale price if they choose to purchase it. That’s basically it, when I first heard the term I thought it involved some confusing long-winded process so you might be surprised as to how easy it sounds. But of course, it’s not really that easy! You need to drive people to that product which is just as hard as driving people to a website or blog.

You make money from affiliate marketing by giving people a customized URL to the product, so if they purchase it the seller knows and you receive a percentage commission. It could be from anywhere up to around 50%. But hey, 50% of something’s better than 100% of nothing right? Remember, you only get paid if someone buys the product, not for them just clicking the link!

Now you’re thinking where to place this link? If you’ve already got a website or blog, perhaps include the link in a banner on the top of your page or in one of your sidebars. Make sure the product is related to the topic of your site, otherwise readers are obviously less likely to click it. You don’t just have to advertise it on your website, you can include your link anywhere, and link to as many different affiliate products you want to! Try posting the link on a social network like Facebook or including it in the signature of your email. Or you can create a website just to advertise this product, by using search engine optimization and keyword tools, people can find this page just by searching in a search engine.

Now to get started, I’d recommend using a website like ClickBank, where you can search through thousands of products offered by different sellers to promote. This cuts out the middleman of finding vendors yourself!

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Number 1. Make money from Blogging

Number one of my 101 ways to make money online. To read the other 100 ways to earn money on the internet click here!

An increasing number of people have begun blogging with the hopes of an increased pay check at the end of the month, or just as a way to share their opinions with the world. Nowadays you can set up a blog completely for free using blogging platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad etc. although if you’re determined to earn some money, I’d suggest purchasing your own domain which can be as little as a few bucks. These sites can still host your blog for free, or you can purchase web hosting for another small fee which gives you total freedom and endless design ideas for a blog with the help of WordPress. You can read more about setting up your first blog here.

Monetizing a blog is the easy part, actually getting people to your blog is the hard part. I’ve written a small article on generating traffic here. Basically, you want people to come back to blog after they’ve read a post. Recurring visitors are much more crucial than random views. The bottom line of finding recurring visitors is by posting interesting content often and of high quality. They all don’t have to be really long, I average about 500 words normally! You can also use blog directories, search engines and social networking to gather more viewers.

Once your traffic is flowing, monetizing the blog doesn’t really require too much effort. Google AdSense is the first place you should visit, where you get paid for every click. When you register, you just have to copy and paste the code for different advert sizes/colours (which you can customize) anywhere on your blog. In fact, if you use Blogger, all you have to do is click the ‘Monetize’ tab, enable AdSense, choose where you want the ads to display and voila! You can also advertise ad space to anyone for a set price per month, where the amount of clicks doesn’t change the price. Alternating between these two types of adverts can really increase your income. Different colour ads or their location could make you more money, so play around with their positioning to see if you benefit!

If you fancy a change of scene, you can always sell your blog to make some extra cash and begin a new one, although I’d recommend advertising your new blog on your old one for a while. May as well make use of all the readers you gained! Well, this is the basics to earn money blogging, obviously it’s not as easy as I’ve made out, but with time and patience you should see some worthwhile results, good luck!

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Turn your gamercard into a widget!

Alright, I admit it, I'm a PS3 owner, but here's a way for you Xbox dorks to display your gamercard as a widget. Go to your Design tab > Page Elements, and add a new gadget. Choose HTML/Javascript and copy and paste the following code:

<iframe src="http://gamercard.xbox.com/YOURAWESOMEGAMERTAG.card"
frameborder="0" height="140" scrolling="no"
width="204"></iframe>

Remember to change 'YOURAWESOMEGAMERTAG' to your own gamertag, unless it actually is 'YOURAWESOMEGAMERTAG' in which case, you're weird. Save your changes and voila! Happy gaming.

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Displaying 'Postable' Javascript

For the past week I've been having trouble trying to find a way to post javascript in a post as code so it can be copied, instead of posting it to just show the outcome.

This website allows you to input your code, press refresh and receive a 'postable' version of the code!

Now, to display it in a separate box so it stands out from the text, edit your HTML and search for ]]></b:skin> by pressing ctrl+F. Right ABOVE that line copy and paste the following code:

pre{background:#efefef;border:1px solid #A6B0BF;
font-size:100%;line-height:100%;overflow:auto;
padding:10px;color:#000000 }pre:hover 
{border:1px solid #efefef;}code 
{font-size:120%;text-align:left;margin:0;padding:0;
color: #000000;}.clear { clear:both;overflow:hidden;}

This code can be edited to change the colour/size/background etc. of the box and it's contents! Now whenever you want to put your 'postable' javascript inside a box (just like the one above), put your 'postable' code between the tags, <pre> and </pre>! If you have an easier way to display javascript as text, please share!

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Naked domains are sexy

A naked domain is a web address without the ' www' part at the beginning. Naked domains are quicker to type in and should still redirect the user to the particular website. Today I noticed that my naked domain wasn't redirecting to my blog at all, in fact it's been sending people to PixelInternet, the company who I bought this domain from. I've just updated a few DNS settings to hopefully solve this problem, so make sure to check your own! If you run in to any trouble, especially if Blogger hosts your site, check out this guide, courtesy of Google! You can also try this site if you're having no luck.

If your naked domain redirects to your website, everything's peachy and you've got nothing to worry about! So sit back and enjoy this video which has absolutely nothing to do with naked domains whatsoever.

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Who actually clicks adverts? And why?

Your blog about the infamous 'Gary from Autoglass' has finally got the recognition it deserves so you’ve decided to slap some AdSense around, waiting for people to click them and make you millions. It all seems great in theory but I just can’t help asking myself; who the hell clicks them?

As a regular internet user, I’ll browse Google most days and go about updating my blog, checking Facebook, looking for music, watching videos. I can spend up to half my day surfing the web but of all the web pages I must circulate, the chances of clicking an advertisement are pretty slim, even those that are relevant to me, i.e. playing poker online or enlarging something downstairs. Just kidding, downstairs is large enough. But seriously, I just automatically associate 99% of adverts on the web with spam hence why I avoid clicking them. Given that many websites earn their income from adverts, there must definitely be hordes of people out there clicking them. It’s not normally me and, after asking a few of them, it’s not my friends either. So who are these people?

Fair enough if the adverts are legitimate, displaying a well-known brand name or product, like Apple or Windows. But the majority of adverts on the web look like crap. I mean, how many single mums out there discover techniques to make your teeth whiter or $500 dollar-a-day systems?! To me, these adverts come across as inadequate and poor quality yet people out there must be clicking on them!

The most likely chance of me clicking an advert is probably down to contextual advertising, i.e. when the adverts are linked to the article I’m reading, or adverts based on my browsing history. Then again, interactive adverts can be appealing to anyone. I’m sure we’ve all shot 5 ducks with a pellet gun to win an iPod, right? Even though we get roped in to playing a stupid, ridiculously-easy flash game, surely everyone can realise the page they get linked to is most likely not going to give them a free iPod or Nintendo Wii? I do really hate it when that annoying Frat Boy wins, though.

In my opinion, people who own websites are less likely to click adverts because they have knowledge about advertisement campaigns etc. And the reason other people are more likely to click ads could be because:

• They are extremely relevant to the reason they are visiting your blog/website.

• They don’t know that they’re ads.

• They think that there’s something in it for them, for free.

• They recognise a brand name and trust its reliability.

• Shooting ducks with a pellet gun is fun.

• They’ve been tricked into clicking it.

• The ad reminds them about something they were searching for last week for example; this could be the case with specific Google adverts that are based on the user’s browsing history.

If you’ve got any other ideas why one might click an advertisement, feel free to share! Anyway I’ve just found a single mum who’s found the best way to cure hangovers, only a hundred quid!

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Important things to consider when redesigning your blog/website.

So after returning from Greece last week with a clear head and fresh ideas, I decided my first goal was to redesign my blog. After previously using a customised ‘simple’ template by Blogger, I started jumping round the web trying to find some inspiration, when I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as I first thought. A successful blog design needs to be original, attractive, easy to navigate and easy to share content.

Deciding on a layout can be difficult, mainly choosing the amount of columns. One column can look fantastic on a minimalistic blog but lacks space for sharing content, adverts etc., whereas four columns can look overwhelming and off-putting to visitors. There are a few websites offering free Blogger templates, many which are lacking in a specific category or have subtle flaws, but there are a few fantastic designs floating about. I’ve decided to customise a template with sections I like from other templates, using a three column base.

Choosing a colour palette isn’t necessary but it speeds up the process instead of guessing which colours to use. You can upload a photo to degraeve.com, which will give you a custom colour palette based on the image.

Ask yourself a question, what’s the first thing a user notices when they visit your page? Is it your overwhelming ad campaign? Your awe-inspiring logo design? Or perhaps that giant picture of Lindsay Lohan naked? In my opinion, I think the first thing a user needs to see is either your logo or a sample of your best work. This is where a Featured Content area comes in handy. I’ve decided to use a flash slideshow, displaying a few featured posts which best represent the quality and perhaps the newer material on my blog.

Now for advertisements, which are a whole other story. Previously I had just slapped some AdSense code anywhere on my blog without giving it a second thought. Changing your ad placement, content and aesthetics could greatly increase your potential earnings. This heat map, provided by Google, shows an example of the best places to display your advertisements. Although a lot of websites I’ve visited tend to display adverts in the right hand column, I’ve decided to take Google’s advice and place them primarily in my left sidebar. I’ve also decided to split my header in two. The left side will display my logo while the right side is free for advertising space.

I’ve decided to blend any text ads with my Blogger template so the links look just like all the others on my blog. Some users tend to do the opposite, making their adverts stand out as much as possible in order to get more clicks, but I think that just makes the webpage ugly. As for content, there’s no point advertising cheese on a blog about being lactose intolerant, so choose wisely. I’m using contextual ads by Google currently, so I don’t have to worry about choosing content because it’s automatic!

Now there’s all the small things we have to take care of. Adding share buttons like Digg and Del.ic.ous can increase your chances of increased traffic, changing the favicon (webpage icon) makes your blog look more professional, or adding a search bar. Another easy feature to add is a Hello Bar (check the top of my blog) which displays text or links in a small drop down box at the top of your website. Normally you have to wait a few days to use it but I’ve got a few invitations in my account, so drop me a comment if you want one!

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