Wednesday, 14 February 2007

Cashcrate

Cashcrate is a PTO program (paid to complete offers).

How it works:
"Companies need consumers to try and review products, services, and websites and are willing to pay money to have them do so. Most of the time you're asked to do this without any compensation, what we do is take the money companies give us for YOUR participation, and give you back up to 75% of it!"

This means completing offers such as a short survey or signing up for a competition. These normally involve filling out a form and giving away your email address. In some offers more information is asked of you, e.g. phone number, address or even your credit card number. It would not be wise to give these away for a few dollars (although members are assured their details are safe) so if you don't feel comfortable with an offer don't complete it.

There are considerably more offers to complete if you live in the USA or Canada. Some offers are available to other countries but not as many.

Referral scheme:
Cashcrate has a referral program where you earn 20% of your direct referrals earnings and 10% of what their referrals make. This is the main method of earning with Cashcrate if you live outside the USA or Canada.

My advice:
It’s not worth signing up unless you live in the USA or Canada and/or are prepared to actively get referrals. Also, create a new email account with Yahoo or Hotmail, which are free and easy to set up. You can then give this email address when completing offers.

You can sign up to Cashcrate here

Sunday, 28 January 2007

Blog Review: John Chow Dot Com

Who is John Chow?

Believe it or not (I didn't at first) John Chow is Canadian. Despite this he knows how to party. Just a few weeks ago he was getting his groove on in Las Vegas. So is he a computer geek or a party animal?

Well, according to him, he is a "dot com mogul". The precise meaning of this is debateable, but terms like 'blogger whore' and 'Google whore' come to mind. Hishomepage, which, despite being jam packed with ads is very informative and clearly laid out.

It will not take much reading of Johnchow.com to realised how much there is for you to learn from the site. He gives out advice freely, with a number of very helpful posts about getting traffic to your site, as well as more recent posts on ideas to maintaining a good, novel site content. He also gives advice about AGLOCO and provides very persuasive arguments to join, which everyone can learn from.

Sometimes the site does feel like it is 'all about the money', what with the Google adsence ads, the AGLOCO updates and his monthly overview of his earnings. However, every now and then he makes a post that wins me back, e.g.Effects of drugs and alcohol on spider webs. He also has categories about his family, and the recent birth of this baby daughter, with a heart-warming photo. The donation of much of his earnings to charity, combined with this, all adds to the 'John Chow effect’, which keeps his site firmly in my bookmarks.

He recently has offered to link to anyone who writes a 200+ word review of his site, which is currently ranked 1320 on technorati. Find out more
here

TreasureTrooper

Treasure Trooper is a PTO program (paid to complete offers).

How it works:

Companies pay TreasureTrooper to display their offer and TreasureTrooper passes on a share of the money to its members who complete the offer; such as a short survey or signing up for a competition. These normally involve filling out a form and giving away your email address. In some offers more information is asked of you, e.g. phone number, address or even your credit card number. It would not be wise to give these away for a few dollars (although members are assured their details are safe) so if you don't feel comfortable with an offer don't complete it.

There are considerably more offers to complete if you live in the USA or Canada. Some offers are available to other countries but not as many.

Referral scheme:
TreasureTrooper has a referral program where you earn 20% of your direct referrals earnings and 5% of what their referrals make. This is the main method of earning with them if you live outside the USA or Canada.

My advice:
It’s not worth signing up unless you live in the USA or Canada and/or are prepared to actively get referrals. Also, create a new email account with Yahoo or Hotmail, which are free and easy to set up. You can then give this email address when completing offers.

Saturday, 27 January 2007

Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads has recently emerged as a major power in blog advertising. Once of it's founders is Darren Rowse, the Problogger. Text link ads "specialize in placing static html links on high quality, high traffic web properties". This means that they only publish on sites that have fairly high traffic and a Google pagerank for 4 or more, the sites Alexa rank is also taken into account. What this results in are high-quality, relevant links. It also has a positive effect on the 'blogosphere' because bloggers strive to be accepted, which requires having a content rich, quality blog.

Advertisers pay a fixed amount for the month per link. Text link ads take 50%and the blogger takes 50%. This means advertisers don't get overwhelmed if there is a sudden increase in traffic to the blog resulting in more clicks on their ad than they can afford (such as a blog post getting Dugg). It also means the blogger knows exactly how much they are going to receive, unlike the rather unpredictable CPC schemes, (Cost per click, e.g. Google Adsense).

There is a flipside to this. Google only updates pagerank every 3 months or so, which means you may have a high-quality, high-traffic site which has a low Google pagerank because Google have not updated it's pagerank yet. It also means that the average blogger is not accepted.

What does this have to do with affiliate programs?
Anyone can become a Text link ad affiliate, whether accepted to sell links or not. For every very accepted member you sign up you receive $25.

To apply for Text link Ads click here. If you are not accepted you can become an affiliate.

Note:
Text link ads can run along any ad system as they are not a contextually served product.

AGLOCO

AGLOCO is the current affiliate program that everyone is talking about. It has spread by viral marketing and appears to be en-route to make a lot of people very wealthy.

How does it work?
If you browse the net using their viewbar for 5 hours per month, they pay you whether or not you have ANY affiliates. You also get paid for when your affiliates use it, and when their affiliates use it. In this way it is possible to make a fair sum of money. However to be successful you must be able to get affiliates, although this is not especially hard because AGLOCO is a name that carries respect and people seem to know isn’t a scam.

1 HOUR OF SURF TIME = 1 AGLOCO SHARE_AGLOCO us owned completely by is members. They are planning to be on the stock market by the end of 2007, which presents its members with an opportunity. Members get 0.25 shares for each hour someone in their network surfs the web with the AGLOCO custom toolbar.

There are therefore 3 possible outcomes:

AGLOCO sinks, and doesn’t grow fast enough, resulting in its members getting their earnings from their browsing using the viewbar, and nothing more.

Or AGLOCO grows like crazy and the IPO is successful, in which case the members shares which they have accumulated may be worth a fortune.

Or AGLOCO grows like crazy and attracts the attention of the big boys like google and yahoo. AGLOCO would then be bought out, like youtube, except the members of AGLOCO will make big money from it.

Unfortunately we do not know which of these 3 scenarios will actually happen. I believe it is worth being a part of.
You can sign up for AGLOCO here.