ZillionBits-Its about number$ and te<h^0!0gy

A couple of months ago I asked polled readers about their Chitika eMiniMalls earnings to

find out what the average earnings were and what percentage of earnings they were

losing to auditing. A completely unscientific poll (I had to scrub the data to

remove duplicate/multiple votes) but here are the results.

Average Earnings

So how much money do Chitika publishers make, before auditing, on a monthly

basis?

• Less than $10: 4%
• $10 to $20: 14%
• $20 to $50: 14%
• $50 to $100: 9%
• $100 to $250: 12%
• $250 to $500: 18%
• $500 or more: 29%

I’m constantly intrigued by the clever ideas I see and hear about that people are using for viral marketing and linkbait. While it’s only loosely related to affiliate marketing, the concept of linkbait and starting an “Idea Virus” is definitely one that can be used to generate affiliate and/or advertising income on the Internet. I’m posting a list of example linkbait and viral marketing successes here to help people get their own ideas flowing.

1. All My Life For Sale - This was originally just a guy named John Freyer who decided to sell literally everything he owned on eBay. Now it’s a website, a hardcover book, and a piece of performance art that’s on display at multiple museums.

2. One Red Paperclip - Kyle MacDonald posted an offer on CraigsList to trade a red paperclip for something “bigger and better”. Since then he has traded up 14 times, and just finished a trade to get a house. According to the Sitemeter on his website, he’s receiving close to 200,000 visits to his website daily. If you assume that he’s earning an average of $1 CPM for those Google Adsense ads he’s got running on the site, then he’s earning $6k per month just from that advertising. (And that $1 figure is a total wild guess on my part - it would be much more or much less than that.) Read the rest of this entry »

Today we continue our series on creating an AdSense-friendly blog using WordPress. Please read Part 1 before continuing.

WordPress Installation Made Easy

After you’ve decided on your blog name, gotten the domain and setup the hosting, it’s time to actually create your blog. WordPress is written in the programming language called PHP and requires a database as well, with MySQL being the preferred (and default) choice. Advanced users can install WordPress using the detailed WordPress installation instructions on the WordPress site.

Or, if you’re lazy like I am, you can simply use cPanel and Fantastico, assuming of course you chose a hosting service that supports both. Let me walk you through a typical deployment using those tools.

Create Your Blog Home

Before you run Fantastico, you have to decide where your blog is going to be located. Is it going to be at the root of your site (www.mydomain.com), a folder within your site (www.mydomain.com/blog) or a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com)? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I mentioned using a WordPress blog that shows postings in chronological order as a way to quickly create a mini-site. I thought I’d back it up a little, though, and start by discussing what it takes to create the perfect “AdSense-ready” WordPress blog. (Much of what I say in this series applies to other blogging platforms, but everything is written specifically for and about WordPress.)

Why WordPress?

First, let’s talk about why we’re using WordPress in the first place. WordPress is the first choice for many bloggers because it’s:

• Free
• Well-supported
• Customizable
• Extensible using plugins
• Free (did I say that already?)

There are other free blogging solutions available, Blogger being the most obvious, but for ultimate flexibility it’s hard to beat WordPress. (Note that this blog you’re reading is not running WordPress, for geeky reasons, but I run other WordPress-hosted blogs like Mortgage Guide…) Read the rest of this entry »