Can’t Get Rich

So you’ve all probably heard about the Top Affiliate Challenge. Personally, I don’t know anything about it beyond what I’ve heard on Wickedfire, and the dominant opinion seems to be that it sucks and is uninteresting. So, I’ve decided to do something more interesting.

I’ve been thinking about having some sort of contest on this site. The idea came to me the other day when I found you could get $250 in Facebook advertising for free. That reminded me that you can also get around $100 or so for free with Microsoft Adcenter, and another $50 with Yahoo search marketing. That got me thinking: How much could someone make using only free advertising coupons? I’m seriously interested in finding out.

So, yeah. I’d like to have month-long contest. I’ll obviously have to dig up all of those coupon codes, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The only problem I’m seeing right now is prizes. I’m really not in a position to be throwing around XBox 360s and Amazon gift certificates. If anybody out there would like to help sponsor my contest, let me know. I can promise a bunch of free backlinks (the rules would require entrants to post a complete list of prizes on their site, which includes a backlink to your site).

If there’s enough interest (and sponsors), I’ll work out the specific rules soon.

Edit: When I said ‘help sponsor the contest’, I didn’t mean gift cards and game consoles only.  If you’d like to donate an ad spot on your site, or $5 via paypal, that’d be appreciated just as much.

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A million kudos to Jared for bringing this to my attention.

There’s this guy.  He seems to know a thing or two about Facebook advertising.  He also seems to know where to find coupon codes: There are four listed on his site right now, totaling to $250.  That’s a lot of free clicks.  If you’ve ever wanted to try advertising on Facebook, but haven’t wanted to pay up, now’s your chance.

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Ok, I took down my previous post because I was incredibly pissed off when I wrote it.  The guy who grabbed my LP is just a noob, and noobs make mistakes.  That being said, I guess I’ll get off his back about it.

You know what I found the most disappointing about that whole thing though?  It wasn’t the theft of my landing page, it was the people who leapt in to justify it.

“Everybody steals landing pages.”

It’s just 1s and 0s, right?  Victimless crime, right?  Well, what about the people who make their living off of web page design?  They’re losing business.

“It’s ok because he’s a newbie.  He doesn’t have money to spend on landing pages.”

You know what?  I’m new at this too.  The guy who stole my LP actually spent more on his campaign than I did.  Why is it that he deserves a free LP when I had to pay for mine?

“It’s just part of the business.”

That’s incredibly disheartening, and it really destroys any incentive for me to try to be original.  Why put forth any effort to be creative/unique?  Just find what works and steal it.

Oh well

That campaign is over, so I guess there’s no point in worrying about it.  It’s a shame though:  Three more leads and I would have gotten my first $1,000+ check.

BIG F’N EDIT: My affiliate manager contacted me and let me know that I had 3 uncredited leads, which were just added.  In other words, last month I made over $1,000 with Advaliant.  First $1k+ month ever.

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As some of you may have noticed by now, I have trouble finishing things that I’ve started. Thanks to my ever-changing schedule, I tend to let my projects accumulate dust. I thought I’d compile a short list and share it with you all today:

User-driven image rating sites

I started with a little site called Rate My Betta (I like Bettas). Did some advertising on relevant forums, got about a dozen users and a couple dozen pictures, and then kinda forgot about it. That site has received 8 visits in the last month.

Coupon site

What was I thinking? Breaking into the coupon site niche is nigh-impossible. You have to compete with sites that have been around for over a decade and span multiple niches. In any case, I created a site for Dell coupons, updated it daily for a week or two, and got bored.

The worst network on the net

Remember when I said I’d create 1,000 autoblogs and see what happened? Well, I got to 25 and found better uses for my time. I did get my first takedown threat the other day though.

Actual SEO

The modest amount of success I’ve had online has come from PPC, so a few months ago I decided to create a site that used only SEO to get it’s traffic. This site flat out failed. I picked an offer and built an entire site around it. I found a couple dozen articles, threw in some adsense code and an eBay auction feed, and called it a day. I learned a few valuable lessons from that experiment, the most important one being that Google doesn’t like duplicate content.

eBay niche stores

Last month I wanted to slowly build an empire of niche stores. That empire stopped at two. Together, they’ve made me something like $27, so maybe I should have kept going. That being said, both sites have the exact same layout which, well, sucks. That project is the first on my list to pursue, if I ever get around to it.

Gaming blog

Yes, I actually tried to make a gaming blog. Fell apart when I ran out of things to complain about.  That, and I really don’t have the budget to stay on top of new releases.

Oh well

For every 5 projects I put on hold, I have one that’s actually working.  I’ll just keep plugging away until I find something that works.

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I’m going to be putting up 20-30 of these around campus today, so expect a picture-heavy post in the near future.  These flyers will serve two purposes:

1. Get the word out about my new, Purdue-themed free blog hosting service.  You may be wondering why I created a free blog hosting service.  Well, each blog will have access to 15 or so themes (so far), and each one of those themes has a few Adsense blocks on it.  Adsense blocks with my publisher ID.  There are 36,000 students on this campus, and if even 0.5% of them sign up, I’ll have a lot of free content being created.  See where I’m going with this?
2. Encourage people to sign up for that Vista Print business card offer, which incidentally pays me $12 per lead.

I’ll be placing them primarily in the Engineering and Management buildings.  If that works out, I’ll place some in other areas around campus as well.  We’ll see how this works out.

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