AFFILIATE NOOB

Facebook - Day 2

2009-03-12T20:10:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I made the mistake of paying Facebook's suggested bid of $.60 per click for an offer that had recently expired. Needless to say I didn't get any conversions. I did however burn through my $10 daily limit in a matter of minutes.

Today I took the offer down and launched 2 more campaigns for a program I have been receiving steady payments for. I also adjusted my bid strategy. Rather then pay on the high side of what facebook suggested, I decided I would take the exact opposite route and pay extremely low. My two new campaigns targeted the same audience of roughly 22m viewers. They were also built around the same niche. This time I bid at $.05 per click.

Traffic came in much slower. It took about 6 hours for me to collect 10k impressions, and I only got about 5 clicks. I upped the bids slowly and saw slightly better performance. Increasing from $.05 to $.15 got me about 10 clicks in 2 hours. I upped the bids further to $.25, and suddenly got about 10 clicks in 20 minutes. This is interesting because the suggested bid for that campaign was $.40. Which means bidding at about half still brought in some good traffic.

As of right now I have about 60 clicks for the day, and still havn't earned a penny. Of those 60 only 8 went from my jump page to the merchant's offer. Obviously I should work on my page a little bit. Still, I would have expected atleast 1 of those 8 to sign up based on my experiences with Craigslist. If only I could direct link I might have actually turned a profit today, but this particular merchant doesn't allow that.

I'm starting to get an understanding of what works on Facebook and what doesn't. Due to the fact that you don't bid on keywords, it really doesn't matter what niche you promote. You are going to pay the same per click no matter what. If you want to pay less for clicks and still get traffic, you need to have an ad that people will click on. So promoting a dating site with a picture of an attractive woman will ALLWAYS out perform most other niches.

Also something wierd I noticed was that focusing my targetting to fewer people actually INCREASED the suggested bid! This makes absolutely no sense to me (yet). I could target every single facebook user in existence and pay $.40 for clicks, or I could choose to target only 5,000 facebook users and pay $.80. My understanding was that the whole purpose for targetting narrower groups of people is so you could more personally target them, thus increasing your CTR and lowering the bid needed to get your ads in prime position.

The only rational behind this would be that showing a webhosting ad to 22 million people would cause you to pay for clicks from people who have no interest in buying, but this should be off-set by the reduced overall interest in your ad. I would think that the increase in uninterested clicks would be negligible. Certiantly it shouldn't have enough impact to be worth paying DOUBLE to reduce exposure.

Update: Turns out I actually did make $3 from my new campaigns. 60 clicks became 8 visits to the merchant, which in turn became 3 leads. My jump page sucks. If I improve that I believe I can get 50/60 ratio from the ad to the merchant, which would have earned me about $17 instead of 3. My total payout for these 2 campaigns was $12.50, so if I would have profited $4.50 for the day.

Another issue is that both of these campaigns send traffic to the same merchant, they are just targetting two different groups of people. One of those groups is under age (16 - 17). They do qualify to sign up with my merchant, but they might have trouble finding offers suitable to them once they get there. Guessing that NONE of the clicks I got from this age group earned me anything, then cutting them out of the loop would have earned me $17 and I would have only spent $4.

I'll make the adjustments tonight, and hopfuly tomorrow I'll be reporting some profit!

Facebook first impressions.

2009-03-12T01:53:00.002-04:00

I just started my first PPC campaign today. I decided to go with Facebook for 2 reasons.

The first is that people complain about it. %95 of what you read about their advertising program is negative. People are constantly whining that they can't get their ads approved, or that their conversions suck. It might seem ass backwards to choose an advertising platform for this reason, but think about it for a second. If people are having that much trouble, that means there is less competition. Facebook is extremely strict about what it lets through, so my CPC won't be inflated due to people using fraudulent ad copy.

The second reason is their targeting system. With Facebook you can decide who sees your ads based on their marital status, their education level, and you can display by keywords in their interests. This gives me a lot of room to play. If I'm creative enough I can get dirt cheap clicks AND volume, which is something that can't be had with other advertising platforms.

My first campaign was set up to pay $.60 per click on a $15 payout. My daily spending limit was $10. It took 3 hours for it to go live, and once it did it came back down in about 1 minute due to my reaching my daily limit. In one minute of live time, my ad got 50,000 + impressions and 22 clicks. None of those clicks converted, even though they were well targeted. I believe this is because of the merchant I am promoting, which might actually be paying for something else. Their figures are really bad (at only $1 CPC for both 3 month and 7 day), which suggests that they are shaving.

Regardless I'll give them another day. I lowered my bid down to $.20, which is 1/3 of what facebook suggests. If I'm right then this will give me between 1/3 and 1/30 of the clicks I got before, which is just fine with me. I have a pretty good strategy for making a lot of money with low volume PPC campaigns, but I do need a comfortable ROI of atleast %30 before I can impliment it.

I signed up for 5 more merchants which I think will convert well on face book. 3 of them pay more then $10 per lead. The other 2 don't pay well at all, but like I said if I'm right about how the bid/traffic ratio works on facebook, I can still make a lot of money by bidding low. This is only my first day with them so I'll have to wait and see what happens.

If anyone is interested you can get a $100 facebook credit (for free). Search google for "Visa business facebook credit" (or maybe it's vista business).

Progress report

2009-03-06T00:12:00.003-05:00

Things have been going OK. My commissions have dropped quite a bit due to my struggle with Craigslist. It is a major hassle trying to get around all of their filters. The biggest one being the need for multiple IP addresses, which is something I don't have access to. I know what you are thinking, and the answer is NO. Proxies do not work.

If you look at the image to the right you'll see how much I've earned in the past month. The $50+ days were when I was actually able to make posts. Usually I'll make 20 posts, then do nothing for a few days and do 20 more. This was fine for a while until my IP got PVA banned.

Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have found somebody to post ads for me! They charge $.65 per post, which is well below what a single post is worth to me. My only concern with this guy is that he ends up being a scammer. I've done some research about his website. What I've found is that he thusfar has been unsucessful in aquireing business, though he has allways remained under the same company name. Which tells me that he hasn't ripped anybody off and needed to change names.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see. If I get ripped off, I'm out $22. It's an investment like anything else. I'm not worried about the money. What I am worried about though is my time. As things drag on I find myself becoming progressively lazier. The thought of having to do any actual work kills me. It's becoming a major problem, and it's one that I wouldn't have expected. I'm no stranger to hard work. I've done the 9 - 5 grind for many years, working in factories, laying tiles, building countertops, etc. You would think that a couple of hours on the computer sitting on my ass at home wouldn't be an issue for me.

This might be happening because I don't enjoy my niche. This blog is fun, but not profitable. So the motivation is not there for me to update it constantly. My craigslist campaign is highly profitable, but boring. I have absolutely no interest in what I am promoting. I think the lesson here is to stick to what you enjoy. It's possible to make money with anything if you stick with it. I really would like to have a popular blog about something I enjoy, like video games for example. That will be my next goal after I get this CL thing all wrapped up and on auto-pilot (which should be soon, but who knows.)

On a side note, this blog has just cleared the 1.5M rank in Alexa! Which I guess isn't much to be proud of, since to date I've only received about 450 views here. Check the very bottom of the page to see for yourself.

Getting past Craigslist's spam filter

2009-02-18T17:00:00.007-05:00

It's taken some time to get full approvals, but now I've got the green light to move forward with my campaign. My expectations were high when I first began, but now that I'm no longer direct linking, my conversions have slumped somewhat. I'm still making decent money, but there are always hurdles to over come.

My most recent hurdle is Craigslist's spam filter. I'm able to get around it 100% of the time, but it usually takes about an hour of work to get an ad to stick. After that I'm limited to about 20 posts before I need to find a new IP address. 20 posts is worth about $150 - $300 over the course of 2 weeks before they stop bringing in traffic.

The following is my current strategy to get ads to stick. This still needs quite a bit of improvement, especially if I want to start making more then 20 posts per day.

The first thing you need to do is buy some $1.00 .info domains from godaddy. I've tested runing an auto responder email campaign, and trust me it does not convert as well as placing an actual link on your ads. The problem with linking is that Craigslist will ghost your domain after about 20 posts. The solution is to link people to your .info instead, which automatically redirects to your affiliate website. These .info domains will get ghosted as well, but they more then pay for themselves. I make about $300 for each $1 spent buying a .info.

The next thing you have to do is make sure that each post is unique. Unfortunately this can take a really long time depending on what strategies you use. A lot of people place invisible text on their ads, or will encode random sections of the ad body. I'm sure those strategies work, but it's not what I do.

The way I keep my posts unique is to use the location several times through out the body of the ad. For example:

"Girl looking for nice guy in (insert city here)"

You have to manually put the city there yourself, but if you are clever you can get an auto mouse recorder to cut and paste it in for you. This method is good for about 10 consecutive posts. After that your ads will start getting ghosted again. Once that happens, register a new email address will Gmail (takes about 1 minute to do). Then rewrite your ad. You should be fine just shuffling some things around. Repeat the process for another 10 ads.

Now after having the 20 done, your .info should be ghosted. Which means if you try to do yet another 10, IT WONT WORK!!! You need to use another .info.

Normally I don't do more then 20 per day, because I'm worried about getting my IP address banned. If I do decide to do more then 20, I'll drive out to a local wifi access point with my laptop and start making posts there. There's still quite a few improvements I need to make with this. Ultimately the goal is to be able to make 200+ posts from home in under 2 hours. That would take some better automated software, an IP switcher, phone verified Craigslist accounts, a good dedicated proxy list, etc.

I'm exploring other methods of pushing traffic as well. Something that has piqued my interest lately is Backpage.com's paid ad service. It's worth a look for anyone who frequently posts on craigslist.

Update on the CJ / Craigslist situation

2008-12-16T19:20:00.004-05:00

Just wanted to post a quick update and a recap on the current situation for anyone who is interested following in my footsteps.

I began by posting direct affiliate links on Craigslist. This was pulling a little over $100 per day in commissions with very little effort on my part.
Soon after I received an email from my affiliate telling me that I was in violation of their terms.
I put up a very simple redirect page designed only to act as a buffer between Craigslist and my affiliate.
My affiliate had some problems with this as well, so I took the page down along with every Craigslist post I had made.
I contacted the affiliate in an email asking them specifically what I may and may not do when it comes to Craigslist.
They told me that I am only bared from posting direct links on craigslist, however I can direct traffic to my own website first.
I was then investigated by CJ (my affiliate network). They said that I was in violation of their terms with the direct links.
I responded honestly explaining the situation and asked them if I may promote a fully functional website on Craigslist, which in turn promotes my affiliates.

Their response was as follows:
Kevin Smith:

It's true that you can promote your own site on Craigslist, and on that site you can advertiser links, but you need to make sure that you aren't setting up the site on Craigslist as a redirect straight through to an advertiser. That is the important part to remember when you set up your new site.

What I have learned from this is that Commission Junction does not care where or how you promote your website, so long as it is a fully functioning website and not a mere landing page that does nothing but send traffic straight to your affiliate. Now having full permissions from everyone I can move forward with my plans.

My commissions will be hurt because of this. When I first started I was using my affiliates clients as 'bait' for my traffic. I won't be able to do that any more, which means I will have to promote my website on it's merits alone. I should still be able to clear $100 per day, but it will take more work then before.

My recommendation for anyone that wants to use Craigslist for affiliate marketing: Build your website first. Make it good. I'm talking several pages of original content that is relevant to what you are trying to promote. THEN get affiliates onboard. Once this is done feel free to spam the shit out of Craigslist, but make sure you do it in a way that isn't going to piss anyone off. This means don't make false promises in your advertisements, don't claim to be someone you are not, don't do anything that could possibly make your advertiser look bad.

And most importantly do your research.

Affiliate networks don't like Craigslist

2008-12-02T04:04:00.014-05:00

Let me start by directing your attention to the image at the right.

This is a report showing how much money I've made at Commission Junction in the 5 days that I have been using the service. This was acquired with a minimal amount of effort on my part.

I won't go into detail about how I'm doing it, because that's not what this post is about. This post is about why I'll never actually see that money.

The fact is that the affiliate networks don't like Craigslist. I've spent hours reading the TOS for several of the big players out there. Every one of them explicitly bans you from posting your affiliate links on websites you don't own. Some of them go so far as to call out Craigslist by name. (Commission Junction is one of them).

This wasn't going to stop me however. For I am a true affiliate noob. I didn't know about these rules when I got started, and when I found out, it was already too late. I had over 10 Craigslist posts across the country directing traffic to my affiliate. I wasn't about to let go of all the hard work I had done, so I decided to try and jump through a 'loophole'. If I were to build a landing page to act as a middle man between Craigslist and my affiliate, I would be in the clear.

By this time my account was already showing $150 in commissions. I enlisted the help of a friend to build my page. I knew nothing of FTP or CSS at the time, so his help was invaluable. It took us 4 hours to put together a beautiful landing page. It mirrored my affiliates site (meaning it copied it's 'look and feel'). I wanted it this way so as to keep the viewers from realizing they were traveling across an affiliate link, thus increasing my conversions (sales).

It worked well. The landing page was scaring away only about %20 of my viewers. Of the viewers that got to my affiliates website, a higher percentage of them converted. Ultimately my click / sale ratio had improved. I was getting more $$$ per viewer after the landing page went up.

At this point I was thinking that I had solved my problem, and I could continue business as usual. I threw up a couple of dozen more posts on Craigslist, did some more research, read some more TOS. Then I found something. The TOS of my advertiser clearly states that I am not allowed to use their clients logos on my landing page. My strategy revolved around using my affiliate's clients as bait for the viewers. So naturally I included some of the clients graphics on my landing page to keep things looking legit.

A few hours after discovering the violation I found this in my email:

xxx's represent the affiliate I was using
yyy's represent the affilate's client I was using as bait

Hello Kevin,

I’m contacting you on behalf of xxxxxxxxxx. Earlier today they received a complaint from a contact at yyyyyyyyyy regarding some Craigslist job postings that we tracked back to your CJ account. They were not pleased with several aspects of the ad, including your unauthorized use of their trademark and the fact that you mistakenly refer users to apply at yyyyyyyyyy.com when their actual domain is just yyyyy.com.

To review our program guidelines with you, which we revised last month, xxxxxxxxxx does not allow directlinking from any kind of online posting or ad (including ppc ads) and does not allow unauthorized use of the logos of their employers. You are in clear violation of both of these rules and we ask that you please take down any yyyyyyyyyy's or (logos of any xxxxx company for that matter) and that you stop direct-linking to xxxxx.com from ads in online classifieds.

Please respond to this email to confirm your understanding of these guidelines. If we don’t receive confirmation of your compliance within the week we will be forced to deactivate your account.

If you have any questions please contact me.

Best Regards,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So I pulled ALL of the Craigslist ads, and took down the landing page. I wrote them a response apologizing for the violations and showed my commitment that they would be corrected. I also asked several questions regarding specific details about what I can, and can not do with my promotional methods. Their response to these questions will determine whether I can continue my CL campaign, or if I'm going to have to take it somewhere else.

I also sent a letter to Commission Junction asking that if my advertiser gave me permission to promote a landing page containing their affiliate links on CL, if I would still be bared from doing so.

At the time of this writing I have not heard back yet from either CJ or my affiliate. The emails were only exchanged today. If I get the go ahead from both of them (with heavy restrictions I'd assume) I'll be able to start pulling in huge money. Otherwise, I may just have to do things like everybody else, relying solely on Google Adwords and SEO to get traffic.

I do think it's a bit ridiculous that we aren't allowed to directly market and SELL our affiliates to viewers. I understand their concerns, I really do. I wouldn't want someone trashing my company's good name by spreading spam everywhere either. But I am a firm believer that 'spam' doesn't have to be annoying. When done properly it could benefit all parties involved. I could talk more on that matter, but that's for another blog post, another day.

Learning SEO

2008-11-25T05:52:00.006-05:00

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you have a blog or website, and don't know what SEO is, that's probably the reason why you haven't been getting many viewers. I've known about SEO for a while, but have just recently started doing heavy research on the subject.

You might notice my blog titles for example. All of them are comprised (at least partially) of keywords relevant to the subject matter. Keywords don't necessarily make for great blog titles though. Personally I would rather have witty, interesting, non SEO focused titles that engage the viewer. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, I don't have very many viewers. Sacrifices have to be made.

The title of the blog is apparently pretty important. I was a little worried about mine, 'Affiliate Noob', mainly because I don't think very many people are going to be searching for the word 'noob'. I have read though that as long as at least one word in the title is a keyword, and that keyword matches the theme of your blog, your in good shape.

Now for something I was a little confused about, but recently had cleared up for me. What do you do about your tags? More is better right? So whats to stop me from placing 20,000 tags at the end of every post? From what I understand, the more tags / keywords you have, the better. But they all have to be relevant! If someone were to search google for "learn affiliate marketing" and my blog had nothing but tags relating directly to that subject, I would rank higher then an identical blog with wildly varying keywords.

That's because if you put the tag 'sexy' at the end all your posts, Google with think that your blog is a little bit more about 'sexy' and a little bit less about 'affiliate marketing'.

Finally your copy needs to contain keywords as well. If you can supplement a statement with a relevant keyword and still sound clever, do it. For example: In an earlier paragraph I stated that I would 'rather have witty, interesting, non SEO focused titles that engage the viewer'. My first instinct to describe my blog titles only as witty and interesting. But I saw my oporitunity to inject a keyword and I did it.

One thing that I have not been doing is pushing this blog. There hasn't been much to push until just recently. The single most important factor for getting highly ranked in search engines is how many links are directed toward your website. Every article I have read has stressed this. Comments in forums and on other blogs DO count, so get out there and start whoring your blog.

I have heard it mentioned that who's linking is just as important as how many total links there are. For example: If I were to create a second blog, with 50,000 pages and 50,000 links pointed back to this blog, it probably wouldn't help my rankings much. Because the new blog isn't ranked well with google. Those links have very little value. Whereas if say AOL.com were to post a link to my blog, it would probably help substantially.

Also on the subject of links there seems to be a time factor involved. Several articles have mentioned that the older a link is, the more value it has until it reaches maturity. Which means if you hustle your ass of and get some links out there, you still might have to wait a couple of months before they start having an effect on your page rank.

That's all I know about search engine optimization. I am by no means an expert as I have just started with this. If you are interested, I recommend you read this article on SEO for blogs hosted on Blogger.

Misleading affiliate programs

2008-11-23T21:52:00.004-05:00

So I get kicked in the balls yet again. This time by the mysterious affiliate I was talking about in the previous post. I had sent them a message asking for clarification on the details of what exactly I'd be getting paid for. 3 days later I got this response:

Dear Kevin,

Earnings are only made when a referral signs up for a year term or greater of our professional xxxxxxx package. Credits for those referrals will then be put in queue for verification and can take up to 45 days to be reviewed and credited to your account.

If you need any further assistance please let us know.

What they just said was that I had to get people to sign up for their paid service. Which is understandable. However I had specifically chosen them because they were advertising that they pay for sign ups to their FREE service. There is a graphic under their affiliates page that specifically states "Earn $1 for each person you refer that signs up!"

They had me believing that they had a pay per lead program, which basically means I make money any time someone gives them their personal information and creates a free account.

The professional package that they were talking about pays between $50 - $100, depending on the length of the contract the buyer signs up for. Which is still decent, though not what I was looking for.

This does not come as a shock to me. I fully expected something like this to happen. Money does not come easy. It is frustrating though, sitting here with this million dollar idea and not being able to capitalize on it.

Switching to Affiliate Marketing

2008-11-23T03:09:00.008-05:00

I'm pretty sick of the video production scene. You can spend weeks working on videos, uploading them to paid video sharing sites, whoring them out in the forums, and never see a return for your work. I have amassed almost 150,000 views at Metacafe, but never saw a penny. I really feel like my spirit was broken by that company. Not being one to just give up, I migrated to Revver.

Revver is the complete opposite from the content nazi's that are Metacafe. They give you the freedom to make your video about whatever subject you want, but offer far lower rewards for your views. To low to be worth my time. 5,000 views at Revver earned me just over $1. Assuming I stuck it out, added more videos, and promoted my profile, I still would never see any money as Revver hasn't made any payments to anyone in months.

I started my journey with Metacafe. Months later it ended with Revver. There are other alternatives out there (good ones too), but this whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. I need to be responsible for my own income, and not be at the whim of a single company.

So I've been doing research on various affiliate programs. There are thousands of them out there, but finding one to fit a specific advertising method can be tricky, and many of them are similar to Metacafe in that they do whatever they can to weasle out of actually paying people.

I did come up with a brilliant plan which I will not go into detail about, because it would only take about 20 people doing this to ruin it. I have found a way to direct 3,000 hits per day to a website. My method is residual, though I do have to do couple of hours of work a week to maintain it. The traffic is made up of people that want to get a particular web tool for free. I found an affiliate that matched this purpose, and sent them 150 views in a 12 hour perdiod. I could very easily (with about 8 hours of work) expand the campaign 20 fold.

I'm not going to waste that traffic on a website that doesn't pay though. I've sent them 150 visitors who specifically want to sign up with their free service. I would guess that between %50 and %90 of those visitors will convert, earning me 1 fresh dollar bill every time they do. According to my statistics which I got from the website I am affiliated with, not one single person signed up.

This tells that one of the five following possibilities is true:
1: My affiliate is under reporting the conversions.
2: My traffic is signing up for the wrong free service.
3: There is a delay in the time it takes for my affiliate to report conversions.
4: It was just bad luck that no one I referred signed up.
OR
5: I'm an idiot.

Now the best thing for me to do would be to open up a proxy, and sign up for the offer with a newly created email address. Then I will know for certain what is going on. I will do that eventually, but I should do some more research first.

Now it took about 4 hours to find a post on an unrelated forum about my particular affiliate relating to the problem I am having. I found that this company has a 14 day waiting period before they report conversions! In addition to that, a person not only has to sign up, but also has to be an "active member" for me to get my money. This means that they have to take advantage of "a predetermined number of services" before I get paid.

The good news is that the particular web tool I am whoring works in such a way that the user will constantly have to go back to my affiliate to make more as they are needed. And the location that they are using this tool almost guarantees that this will happen.

The bad news is that the users might have to use other web tools besides just the one, and while some members of my traffic will inevitably do that, I wouldn't guess the numbers being any higher then %1.

If all goes according to plan, I should be able to make between $200 and $1000 per day using my method, for a few years before the market becomes saturated and everybody has already signed up.

I have done alot of searching for other affiliates to suit this purpose, and have found one decent candidate, though they don't pay for the free sign ups. Most of my visitors are stingy and aren't likely to pay for anything. A few of them may, and the higher commission paid by this website (something like $20 per signup) might, offset the difference.

I do have another very similar plan that is allmost identical except it involves the Job Search industry. Commisions for this average about 80 cents per free sign up (which consists of a resume posting). I believe this new spin (I'm sorry for being so vague), would earn money slower. Though it has the advantage in requireing less maintentence. AND there is no chance of my new plan ever saturating the market.

Want more details? You'll have to wait until I find a way to apropriately monetize the information. I know how I should go about it, and it wouldn't be difficult, but I can't guarantee that the affiliates I would use will actually pay me. I have to find reputable companies, and confirm that they pay.
(Edit: I decided to go on ahead and post my affiliate marketing idea anyways)

I do plan on making a website that revolves around affiliate programs. I would like to keep it as honest as possible. My plans are for it to be a one stop shop for all of your money making needs. The website will have sections for different types of earning money. I'm not giving any more details until it's up. From what you have just read it looks like the new site will be identical to a hundred other affiliate peddlers that allready exist. My website will have several features that make it unique though, and I don't want some pro to steal my ideas and beat me to the punchline.

This blog (the one you are on now) will also get a new address but probably won't be changed in any way. The address here (tfeb) was originally for a green energy blog that was in the works. It stood for "The Free Energy Blog". Green energy is something I am extremely interested in, and I would like to someday have something up about it, but right now my biggest concern is getting un-poor.

Video sharing sites that pay

2008-11-23T02:16:00.006-05:00

I need to update what I have said previously of the "big 3" video hosting sites that pay you. Much has changed since I last talked about them as a group. I'll start with the big news.

Revver is defunct. Before you consider posting a video on their website, take a trip over to the forums. You'll see that Revver has not made any payments in months. Members are pissed off. Many people are even having trouble accessing the website at all (myself included).

Not to long ago Revver, along with a few other companies, was purchased by Live Universe. Every one of those companies has stopped making payments. It's not really fair to say this is Revver's fault. But the fact is that they don't pay anymore.

Not to mention that their advertisers are paying squat now. Even if they were paying, videos make on average about 30 cents per thousand views. According to many forum members, there was a time when you could make upward of $5 for that kind of traffic. I won't go into detail about CPM rates here, but ultimately the fault of this is the economy.

Metacafe got nerfed. Previously they paid $5 per thousand views. In an earlier post I called this amount "paltry". And compared with Break's old payment structure, techincally, it was. After doing more research though I have discovered that the figure was actually extrememly high, considering that your video could be about ANYTHING and still make that much.

Things have changed though. Metacafe further tightened their allready extremely scrict terms for video content. Veteran producers are now having trouble getting their videos accepted into the program.

They have also lowered the payment amount. Now they only pay $2 per thousand views. And that's IF your video gets accepted into the program (which it most likely won't).

As if that weren't bad enough, they now only count views originating in the United States. It was stated on their forums that only %30 of Metacafe's traffic is from the USA.

Essentially, producers are getting paid 1/7 of what they were before. Gone are the days when a man could make $100,000 a year producing videos for Metacafe. There will never be another Kipkay.

Break.com pays! Read my previous post for more information.

Youtube has entered the fray. They opened their partner program to the public. Apparently it's fairly easy to get accepted. Alot of Metacafe and Revver refugees have migrated to Youtube, and they speak very highly of it. I have no experience with Youtube's partner program myself, but I have read alot of good things about it.

They use the same payment system as Revver. That means you get paid when viewers click the ads that lay over your videos. The big difference is that youtube's community is HUUUGE! What would have pulled 1,000 views on Revver will get 100,000 views on Youtube. Not to mention that Youtube couldn't give a damn what your video is about. You could post a rickroll of blank screen and you will still get paid for it.

To wrap things up: I believe the "big 3" has become the big 2. I would not recommend that someone new to video production even attempt to make money at Metacafe. SERIOUSLY!!! The pros may have a chance at making some cash, but not your average get rich quick schemer.

Stay away from Revver for now. They might make a comeback in the near future, but for now they don't pay. Don't waste your time.

Break is good for a quick buck. The pros would still benefit by posting videos to Break from an exposure perspective. Videos that don't hit the homepage never clear a few thousand views, but every video that does make it is guaranteed several hundred thousand views, at minimum.

Youtube is probably the best option for everybody, schemers included. They have the largest community and a solid, residual payment system.

Other options include Flixya (which allows you to profit from videos you don't own through Google adsense) and blipTV. BlipTV is like Revver on steroids. I have heard good things about this website, though have yet to check it out for myself.

Break.com pays

2008-11-23T01:23:00.005-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted! Not that it matters much. It's not like I have many readers here anyways.

I have managed to make $400! How did I do it you ask? Well it wasn't easy. Ok maybe it was, depending on your perspective. The first thing I did was create a profile on Break.com. I posted my x-ray tutorial there, and it performed amazingly well. It managed to collect 4,000 + views before it disappeared into the depths of the "recently submitted" category. This is about 4 times higher then your better videos do. Unfortunately I discovered that Break had changed thier terms.

No longer does a video need 20,000 views to advance to the front page. All a video needs is to be approved by the moderators and it's there. So basically your video has to catch their attention, then make them laugh.

Now I for one am not a good video producer. The only reason I got involved with this in the first place was to make money. So I hopped on Photobucket.com looking for a video to steal. The video had to be both funny and interesting, AND I had to be able to verify that it actually belonged to the owner of the account it came from.

It only took about an hour to find the perfect video. I won't describe it because I don't want to be caught. But I will tell you it was the first video (after reviewing dozens) that made me laugh. I did a quick search on Break and Youtube to see if it had been posted anywhere. Not finding it, I submited it to Break.

2 days later I found out it had hit the homepage. My best friend told me about it over the phone. I was excited. That was probably one of the happiest moments I remember having in a long time. Imagine how you would react if you found out you won 10,000 through the lottery. Yeah, maybe I was a bit over excited, but after getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts by Metacafe, and Revver, it was nice to see there was a program out there that actually DID pay.

Now this video was only supposed to be a test to see if Break actually paid. I wasn't about to invest time shooting and editing videos (it's alot of work!) if the program was a scam. I never intended to actually collect. Having money in front of you kinda changes things though, and I needed it bad.

After a few more days I had to contact Break myself to inform them that my video was on the homepage. I think they were hoping that I didn't know about thier payment program. It was the next day before I got an email with all the paperwork included. I filled it out and mailed it back to them via ups. The following friday, I had $400 in my paypal account.

I told my friend that I had been paid, and that he should try it himself. He stole his own video, submitted it, and a few days later it found it's way to the homepage.

Since then I've tried about 10 more videos and none of them made it. It could be that Break had caught on to me, or that both myself and my friend had just gotten lucky. Regardless, I don't think I'll be submiting any more videos that I don't own because I wan't to avoid the possible legal consiquences of doing that. Though it doesn't take much searching to find users on Break who have had dozens of videos on the home page. None of them appear to actually own these videos. Infact in most casses it's obvious. I don't think Break cares.

Should you take the risk? I say go for it, but be smart about it. And don't be greedy. It's when people don't know when to stop that they get caught.

My final vertict on break.com is as follows:
Break is the easiest way to make alot of money online anywhere on the internet. Most families have atleast one video tucked away somewhere that would be worthy of Break's homepage. Though getting multiple videos there legitimately would take a producer with some serious skill and experience in video production.

The downside of Break.com, as I have said in a previous post, was that you only get paid for your videos once. No additional money comes in as your view count rises.
Also there is no sure-fire method of being successful. It doesn't take long to figure out what kind of videos Break wants on it's homepage, but it's still very hit or miss.

About half of the videos that hit the homepage are obviously not owned by the submitter. Things like funny clips from gameshows, great football catches, nascar wrecks, security footage, etc. I believe break does this intentionally so they don't have to pay out as much.

The bottom line though, is that Break.com DOES pay.

Metacafe Sucks

2008-09-03T21:41:00.001-04:00

So the past month I have been screwing around with Metacafe. I was really optimistic at first. I came up with a bunch of great ideas, not only for videos but also for drawing views to those videos.

My biggest idea was to film an X-ray tutroial. Basically showing how to see through clothing with an image editor. It's something that a lot of guys are interested in, and also something that I happen to be very good at. The idea was that I would have this tutorial up, alongside 15 or so time lapse demonstrations of various celebrities getting x-rayed. The tutorial would be clean, the demonstrations would not. They would be posted on every tube site that would allow them, redtube, youtube, fruedtube, pornhub, etc. Each of them linking back to the original tutorial (which I am getting paid for). I am confident that this method WOULD have earned me a lot of money.

However, there are several problems with Metacafe preventing me from doing this. One is their ambiguous terms for the producer rewards program. As the verbiage currently stands, any and all videos posted can be construed in some way to violate those terms. I modified, reshot, and recompiled the video a half dozen times, using a variety of subjects and methods to fit those terms. Each time I made the video impossible to disqualify for the same reason it was disqualified previously.

My latest shot was perfect. It was done on a model taken from a "creative commons" image with no restrictions. (That means I am free to modify, and profit from any work using the image). The model's head was cropped out, so I wouldn't need her permission. She was wearing a bra to avoid the disqualifying 18+ rating. It was perfect. And it was rejected, again.

So I wrote a frustrated but polite email to Metacafe. They responded within 24 hours (which was nice) stating that the video was disqualified because it violated their, "Not a video" terms, which stated basically that:

No slide shows
No music only videos
No fractals
No media other then a video

However in their email they had changed the terms. Now "a series of computer stills" was on the list.

Seems to have been tailor made specifically for me! I checked, and sure enough that was now on the list. I do seriously doubt they added that just for me, unless they got wise to my plan. I did allready have 3 great demonstrations up that were getting alot of views. The screencap and title were both provocative, and it was showing much desired information. I had the potential to get that tutorial into the millions of views. But so what if I did? For each view the tutorial got, there was 100 views to the demonstrations. Metacafe doesn't pay for 18+ material, but they still make money off of it. It would have been good for them.

So I'm a little frustrated with them to say the least. I'm not going to abandon them completely, but I am broadening my horizons. I just started with Break.com today.

Metacafe still does have a lot of potential for me. All I need is a wierd / funny fix to a common problem that everybody has, and I'll make money. Still easy. But I do feel like they have pulled the legs out from under me.

Non-traditional money making ideas

2008-08-05T03:30:00.003-04:00

After a lot of thinking, and a couple of months of research, I've come up with a list of ways I can make money working for myself.

Collecting scrap metal:
Seems like it could be lucrative, except for the fact that I drive a 95 Honda Accord. That limits what I can haul. I have the fear that I'll end up spending more money on gas then I'll actually make from selling the scrap. Iron only goes for a few cents a pound, which means months of collecting (and burning gas), or waiting until I find some huge beam or piping that weighs thousands of pounds, and calling the scrap yard to come pick it up. Most people that do this have pick up trucks or large SUV's at their disposal. I have started collecting allready. I've got about 10 pounds of steel, and 3 pounds of copper, valued at roughly $15.

Buying from Craigslist and selling on Ebay:
If you don't know about Craigslist by now, do some research. It's like a free Ebay where you deal locally without entering personal information. People on Craigslist generally sell for drastically cheaper then what people on Ebay buy for. Money could be made for someone who can afford to take a little risk getting started. I have sold a couple of my own item's on Craigslist, though I'm not having any luck with Ebay. I think the trick to Ebay is to list your expensive item for a dollar, and slapping a big NO RESERVE tag on the auction. A little risky, but most of the successful auctions I have seen have been done in this way.

Paid youtube sites:
Theres a dozen or so youtube style websites out there that pay you for getting alot of views on your videos. I'll cover the big 3 that I know most about, and their advantages.

The first is Break. Break offers $400 for getting a video listed on the front page. The videos that make it are hand selected, but all meet the same criteria. Must have 20,000 views in 30 days, and you must own the rights to the video. At $400, you don't get to keep the rights to your video. Which means it ends with break, and it stops making money. You can opt to take $200 instead, which will allow you to keep the rights to your video. The major advantage of break is how much they pay your for your views. $400 is a lot of money compared to what other sites are offering for 20,000 views. $200 is still quite competitive. The only problem is that your video has no chance to make any more then that. Break only pays you for your video once.

Then there is Metacafe. Metacafe is probably my favorite so far, but we'll see how I feel once I start getting paid. Metacafe offers a paltry $5 for each thousand views, or $100 for 20,000. One quarter of what break pays. However, you get $100 for each additional 20,000 views after that. Which means 1 million views pays $5,000! Generally, your million plus viewed videos on metacafe consist of a hot girl demonstrating how to do a magic trick. I have some good ideas of how I might take advantage of this fact, though I'm not telling until I try them first.

Finally there's Revver. Revver is not nearly as large as Metacafe or break, so don't expect to make any money from the views generated by it's members. Revver pays based on ad-clicks. So someone not only has to view your video, but they also have to click on one of the ads displayed. That is the major disadvantage of the site. The major advantage Revver has over the other two is that you can make money without posting videos. If your skills are in promoting rather then video production then this might be the site for you. If your signed up, you can view a video and copy the address in the box titled "permalink". You then share this address to make money. So, find a couple of really interesting vids, and spread the links on your own blog, 4chan, myspace, whatever. Revver could be a SERIOUS money maker for someone with some production talent, because there aren't that many good videos there now. If you were to produce something awesome, other money hungry loosers will spread your link around hoping to make money off your video. You still get %40 of the total income when this happens, and you have to do no work promoting it yourself. Their system is basically a fully automated viralizing machine.

My pick of the 3 is Metacafe, because it seems to have the most straight forward payment system that offers the highest rewards for a good video, and it also has the largest community with over 15 million members. Of course it isn't smart to just pick one. Use all three, and search Google for more. Theres a few more sites out there that pay.

Today I did some promoting of Revver videos on 4chan without much success. I also posted a link to a cool live action simpsons intro found on Revver at nohomersclub, a Simpsons forum. It has gotten some attention though no profits so far. About a week ago I uploaded a video of a bunny humping a cat to Metacafe, which without any promotion has acquired 1500 views in one week. Not phenomenal by Metacafe's standards, but should still reach the 20,000 mark by the deadline, which is 6 months.

I spent 2 months thinking and researching. I've been actively trying to make money for about 1 week now. So far, my total profits are $0!!! But I am hopeful for what the future will bring.

First, a little back story

2008-08-05T02:52:00.002-04:00

I'm 21 years old, living in a decent apartment paying $650 a month in rent. I have a little over a thousand dollars in credit card debt (not much to most people, but it's a lot to me). I take home about $1600 a month from my job as a delivery boy for a siding distributor. After all is said and done, subtracting the cost of gasoline, car insurance, food, etc., I usually have $200 - $400 in surplus at the end of every month. Though, being 21, that gets pissed away buying shit I don't need, going out to eat, and driving my 20mpg v6 around more then I need to.

I have a passion for finding creative solutions to problems. I've been making video games since I was in the 7th grade. I've recently taken an interest in green energy (probably due to rising gas prices). I'm sure I would do wonderfully as a computer programmer, game designer, engineer, or an inventor if I could only apply myself. I consider myself to be smarter then most people, but, if I were actually smarter, I wouldn't be broke. Money is my problem now. I feel like everything else is just a waste of time when I have this over my head.

And so I've decided to put fourth %100 of my creative ability towards making money, so that one day I will be free. Truly self sufficient, not relying on a larger corporation for my survival. Then I'll be able to pursue the things I'm passionate about. I haven't completely forsaken the idea of going to college. I just know that I do not want to gain success by wasting the next 20 years slaving away for some company.

I'm sure everybody goes through this when they are young. Maybe "growing up" is really just learning to accept the fact that you are going to have to work most of your life. I may have to submit to that eventually, but my inner child is not going down without a fight.