Archives for September 2007

The New Amazon Widgets

September 25, 2007 by Tricia

Hey did you hear that Amazon has created new and easy to use widgets? I love them!

There are several types of Amazon widgets that you can configure for your site so that you can feature various products or product categories in your sidebar or on your pages. It literally takes one minute to set up a new widget for your site.

Amazon announced their new widgets on the 21st of September, but I’d discovered them and had started playing around with them the day before they were publicly released.

You can select colors, the layout and or theme to match your website.

Amazon affiliates will earn referral fees of up to 10% on these new widgets.

There are 6 new widgets – Slideshow, My Favorites, Quick Linker, Wish List, Product Cloud, and the Amazon Unbox Video Previewer.

Go explore the new widgets. They should be easy to find in the left sidebar of your affiliate dashboard.

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Have you monetized your blog?

September 18, 2007 by Tricia

Over the last year I’ve been experimenting with various ways to monetize my websites and blogs. Some affiliate programs have worked well and others have only netted me no more than a few cents! I’m sure you’ve had the same experiences and what works for one website owner might not work for another because it all depends upon our blog category and audience.

I’ve written about some of the programs I’ve tried on this site, WebStyle and of course my main blog Tricia’s Musings either as I’ve added them to one or many sites or after I’d been using them for a while.

I’ve been using Amazon on my main website for a number of years. I can’t remember exactly when Amazon started up it’s affiliate program but I’ve been using since the late 90’s I believe! In those early years I made quite a bit of money with Amazon and it was in fact the only way I monetized my website. These days I still make money with Amazon, but no where near as much as I used to due to changes in the program and I suppose a huge increase in the overall amount of affiliates!

I added the WP-Amazon WordPress plugin to my blogs a couple of months ago, but I’ve yet to really get going with using it. I think I’ve only created two affiliate links within my posts so far! Shame on me. Part of making money with affiliate programs is using them when appropriate. Of course I can still go over my old posts and add some Amazon links to them.

Text Link Ads has also been a very successful program for me. I joined a couple of years ago when I only had one HTML based website. I could never figure out how to get Text link ads to work on that site though! (if anyone can help me with this I’d really appreciate it! I know there’s a way to do it.) So I didn’t earn anything on my account until I got around to starting some blogs in 2006.

Google Adsense has worked out fairly well for me too. I don’t earn anywhere near as much as I think I could be making with the program, but I earn more than enough to get paid every month by Google. Again, I only had Google Adsense on my two websites for the longest time. Then sometime last year I put it on a couple of blogs but not my busiest ones. I’ve now rectified that mistake and I use Google Adsense and the utilize the Adsense Deluxe plugin on all of my blogs.

I only added Google Adsense to my busiest blogs about a month ago and I’ve already almost doubled my income. Hopefully once the Google Media bot fully indexes those sites I’ll really start to do well with Google Adsense. I’m still of course going over old posts and using the Adsense Deluxe plugin to add ad blocks to older posts. I don’t like to use them in my newest posts. Perhaps I’d earn more if I did, but I prefer not to irritate my regular readers with too many ads. Those coming in from search engines to the older posts will get the full extent of the advertising on my sites.

This actually brings up a good point.

When you monetize your sites do you consider how it might appear to your visitors? We’ve all seen sites with far too much advertising and for me it’s a total turn off. Links everywhere, advertising to the full extent, all kinds of different affiliate program banners and so on … I try not to do that. As I’ve just said I’ve been going back to older posts and adding in a bit more advertising, but I still try to keep it as tasteful as possible.

Everyone’s got to find their own balance between developing content, advertising and continuing to build traffic. Too much advertising can make people close your site and never return.

It’s fine to experiment with different affiliate programs. Even trying different badges and products to advertise on your site with each company. Just don’t try everything at once. If you overwhelm your visitors they won’t click on your ads. They’ll just click over to another persons website.

How do you monetize your sites? Do you think you’ve accomplished that fine balance that allows you to successfully monetize your site while keeping your visitors happy?

What programs do you use to monetize your site? I’ll discuss other programs that I’ve been using successfully in future posts.

Proper etiquette when using others photos on your site

September 11, 2007 by Tricia

Earlier today I got a message on Mybloglog account. Someone was contacting me through that social networking site requesting that I add them to one of the blogrolls that I run. I must say that’s not how people usually contact me when they want to be listed on one of the five blogrolls that I run. No, they usually either email me or leave a comment on the specific blogrolls information page.

I decided to visit this persons site and much to my surprise I not only saw posts that looked like they might have once been mine, but had been re-written to some degree, but also, the only photograph on the site was a photo that I’d taken of a car in the streets of Toronto that had been converted into a garden. It’s a very cool picture of a very cool car.

I couldn’t really prove that the person had copied and altered my posts, but I could prove that the blogger had taken my photograph so I decided to leave a message for the blogger on their garden car posts comment section telling them that the photo they were using was mine and that it’s normally considered proper etiquette to either ask a persons permission before using their photography or to at the very least link to the page that the photo was found on.

This person wrote back to me all indignant, stating that they’d found the photo on flicr – yes flicr, not “flickr”. LOL They also told me that if I had a problem I’d have to prove the photo was mine, asked for details about the photo and were it was posted and told me to contact their lawyers who’s email was “sales@” some affiliate related sales website that hasn’t even opened yet.

I wrote back to the person stating that well, yes, I store my photos on Flickr. I stated my account user name and gave them the links to three Flickr photo pages in my account where different angles of the car in question was published. I also gave them links to my website posts where I’d used the photos a year ago. All my photos on Flickr are listed with “All Rights Reserved” on them.

My whole point in contacting this blogger was just to inform them that it’s not nice to just take other peoples work. I know that some people don’t realize they are doing something wrong when they use things they’ve found on the internet. Others are fully aware that it’s wrong and do it anyway.

I realize that posting my photos on a public site of any kind puts them at risk of being stolen or used without permission. Still, I don’t agree with the practice.

Some people think that once somethings posted on a publically accessible site that it’s no longer covered under copyright laws. That’s not true. Anything you create – whether it’s a note on a piece of paper at home or a published article is your copyright as soon as it’s created. It’s your intellectual property.

Unfortunately, once a work is stolen or plagiarized the onus is on the person who originally created the work to prove that it’s there own.

The reason why I’m writing this post today is just to remind you that if you see a photo that you’d like to use on your site, you should make an attempt to contact the person who took the photo. If you can’t reach the person who’s photo you are using at least mention and or link to the site where you found the photo.

Got an old cellphone? Check out CellForCash

September 2, 2007 by Tricia

Have you ever wondered what to do with your old cell phone? I’m sure that there’s a lot of people out there with an old mobile phone or two stored in a drawer some where in their home that they’ve kept simply because they didn’t know what to do with it. Worse, there’s a lot of cell phones in landfills throughout North America possibly leaching toxins such as lead into the soil and eventually into the ground water.

I think it would be great if all cell phone providers, when they come out with their awesome deals on new phones that we must have, would offer rebates on our old phones no matter how old they are or their condition. They don’t though, do they?

That’s where CellForCash.com. They’ve create a program that allows US residents to recycle their old cellphones. Simply visit their site and use their mobile phone manufacture and model search to see if your phone is listed and how much of a rebate you’ll receive from CellForCash. You can then finish filling out your contact information, decide if you want the rebate or if you’d like to donate it to a charity called the 911 Cell Phone Bank which benefits seniors and victims of abuse and then CellForCash will send you a free postage paid box with which you can submit your phone.

Cellforcash.com currently lists over 600 cell phone models that will qualify for rebates. The rebate payout ranges from $4 to $300 or more.

Just think about it. When you use Cellforcash to recycle your cell phone, not only will you be protecting the environment by keeping one more old cell phone out of the landfills, but you can also benefit by receiving some money back for your phone or donating those funds to a worthwhile charity.

You should read the article “Why should I recycle my cell phone?” which explains why recycling cell phones is so important. Did you know that each year more than 140 million cell phones are retired and that not even 5% of those old phones are recycled? Isn’t that a terrible shame?

Did you know that the circuit boards and other components that make up cell phones contain toxic materials such as arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, cobalt, copper, mercury, nickel, and zinc, and brominated flame retardants. As I said earlier all of these chemicals and heavy minerals could leach into the ground waters and eventually effect our drinking water or damage the environment in ways that would eventually have an effect on ourselves and our health.

Old cellphones in decent condition might be used in other markets or countries, or the components and materials within your turned in cell phone might be recovered, recycled and then other industries might use those recycled materials to make new products.

The New Amazon Widgets

Have you monetized your blog?

Got an old cellphone? Check out CellForCash

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