Weekly Income Report - 2

Advertiser Networks vs. New Blogs

A small new blog applying at giant advertiser networks. It’s really a tale of David and Goliath. Although David’s chances in this match-up are far slimmer than in the original.

Advertiser Networks

There are several advertiser networks that will match advertisers to publishers (bloggers and other people with websites). They have the advantage that they have a bigger mass than the average blog on the internet and are able to publish advertisements to a much larger audience than a single blog can do.

They are the middle men. Now the term middle men may bring up all kinds of negative feelings, but that’s not necessary. Sure they get take a (large) cut of the advertisers paycheck, but they do provide the service of finding advertisers. Or of advertisers finding them, but that’s kind of like the same thing. Advertisers will not find you if you’re a small new blog, like Scraping Pennies is right now.

Signing up as a new blog

Last night I tried to sign-up for three rather well known advertiser networks:

Text Link Ads
Text Link Ads sells text links in several forms and shapes. As links in a sidebar, beneath a single post, in RSS feeds, or even within the content of a post. Google isn’t particularly fond of them, but advertisers are. So for Making Money Online it’s an interesting alternative.

Signing up was easy. The account was set up in a matter of minutes, but that doesn’t mean you’re taken into the inventory of publishers automatically. TLA reviews the submissions (mostly automatic I assume), and it didn’t take long (less than 24 hours) for the rejection to hit my mailbox. As a consolation I’m enrolled into the affiliate program. Yay! I’ve got a banner now.

ReviewMe
ReviewMe is a site that pays you for writing blog posts with reviews about blogs, products, books, services and more. You’ve got the liberty to choose what you review, so you can review the things you like and discard what you don’t. That is…if you’re allowed into the program

They let me fill in all the forms, and declined my application automatically and instantly. Not enough traffic and inbound links (that’s not surprising). “Try again in a few months.” Okay, that’s not nice! I understand it of course, but please let people check their eligibility before they fill out the forms! Or wait 24 hours before telling them like TLA does. That at least gives the appearance that you gave it some thought.

And why is there no affiliate program?

Kontera Content Links
Kontera provides a system that scans your content live to find words that they have advertisers for. If they find these keywords, they turn them into recognizable links. Hover over the links and a small pop-up appears with the site or product from the advertiser. If visitors click on the link inside that pop-up, you’ll get a share of the revenue.

Signing up here was easy as well. But they warn you beforehand that you need to comply with some (not so stringent) program terms. Again, I’m not admitted into the program instantly. They need to review my application. Oh boy. No answer yet, but I can guess what it will be.

UPDATE (2008-05-13): I actually got approved into the program. That was highly unexpected, but a nice surprise nevertheless!

The giants win…for now anyway

I did not expect that I would excite the advertiser networks with my new unknown, but soon to be very famous blog. I mean, they probably get a lot of applications like this on a daily basis.

The reason I applied for the networks so early was to report the experiences here. When you’re starting out as a new blog and you intend to monetize, you should focus on getting traffic and links. This little experiment just showed you why.

No traffic and no links, and they drop you like a brick. So it’s time to create some buzz around Scraping Pennies!

Why The $200 Budget to Start With?

You might be wondering why I chose to start with a $200 budget, instead of starting from scratch with no budget at all, without a penny to scrape with in the first place. Well, there’s three reasons why I chose to start with a budget (and damn good ones too).

1. Commitment

The fact that I put in money is a token of commitment. If I quit, I’m at a loss. A tangible loss. $200 is an amount big enough to do some nice things with, and as such is big enough to make it a loss I can feel. After all I could’ve bought an Apple iPod nano 8GB, or six seasons of the series 24 on DVD, or the first three seasons of Lost and $100 change. Or I could’ve treated my wife and myself to a very luxurious day at a Spa-resort, including hot stone massages. Get the picture?

That $200 makes things more real, and make sure that I take this experiment serious. It makes sure that the psychology of investing money is helping me to succeed, or at the least to persist.

2. Brand and Web Presence Continuity

The budget enables me to build a brand and have continuity in web presence from day 1. Having my own domain with affordable hosting simply costs money. But because the blog remains in the same address from day one, every link you get stays in place. There’s a lasting presence on the web, and every effort you put in building the brand adds to the value of the brand.

And a strong brand and a strong web presence increases the likelihood of getting a nice price for your blog, in case you decide to sell it one day. Of course, that’s totally out of the question for Scraping Pennies for now. We’re just starting, but it’s good to know that every effort adds to the total value of the brand.

Of course there are free domains and free hosting, they’re widely available even. But they either show ads that don’t earn YOU money but them (the hosts), have terrible performance (and most of the times both!) and generally have a very amateuristic image. And as soon as you start to get serious, you want to move to your own domain and start building your web presence from there (again).

3. Kick-Starting The Earnings Curve

Making Money Online is not new, there are more blogs about it. And there are many systems and tools that you can use to earn money. Some are free, but a lot of them are not. Having the $200 budget makes sure that I can decide on buying a tool or entering a program, that can help me earn money faster. But the budget is tight enough to make sure I take deliberate decisions, instead of impulsive ones.

The $200 budget will help to skip the pennies stages of the Earning Curve as soon as possible and speed ahead to the dollars stage of the curve. After all, my intention with Scraping Pennies is not to scrape pennies I intend to get past that stage, and by disclosing everything it’s going to be an interesting case study on how making money online is done.

Weekly Income Report - 1

Every week on Sunday I will report on the performance of this blog. Target is to give full transparency on money and hours spent and money earned. DO ask questions if things are not clear.

Key Performance Indicators

Earn / Burn rate (this week):	$ 6.73 / hour
Earn / Burn rate (cumulative):	$ 6.73 / hour
Cumulative result:	- $18.51

Money spent

• Domain registration (GoDaddy): $10.19
• Hosting May Deluxe Plan (GoDaddy): $8.32

Total spent: $18.51

Money earned

Nothing.

Hours spent

• Technical: 2.5 hours
  • Domain registration
  • Setting up hosting
  • WordPress configuration
  • Feedburner integration
  • Google Analytics integration
• Creating Content: 0.25 hours

Total hours: 2.75 hours

Budget status

Balance (start):	$200.00
Cash In:	$ 0
Cash Out:	$ 18.51
Balance (end):	$ 181.49

Welcome to Scraping Pennies

Welcome to Scraping Pennies!

Chances are that you’re reading this post, even before the launch of this blog. In that case you’re reading in an RSS reader, and have subscribed even before the official launch. Wow!

So to give you a sneak preview of what you can expect from Scraping Pennies, I’m going to share a part of the upcoming about-page with you guys and gals.

So tell us, what’s Scraping Pennies?

The name Scraping Pennies means “to be poor; to earn very little money”. And face it, a lot of bloggers are doing just that. Earning very little money. And if it would be the only source of income, yeah we would know the meaning of poor! We would be scraping pennies to make ends meet.

Scraping Pennies, the blog, is an experiment. But not a casual experiment, it’s serious business. The concept is to start with a tight budget of $200. The goal is to get to a four figure monthly income as soon as possible, and beyond. And what’s going to be remarkable is that I will give FULL TRANSPARENCY.

That’s right: Full Transparency.

I’ll give an overview every week on Sunday with:

• Money spent in full detail (how much, on what, why)
• Money earned in full detail (how much, from what source)
• Hours spent (how many, on what, why)
• Income per hour - weekly
• Income per hour - cumulative
• Balance statement (how much is left / did I make from the $200)

And more, if that’s needed to give full transparency.

I’ll write about strategies, about the various methods of making money online and more. You’ll also be part of my frustrations (I know they’ll be there), my failures and mistakes (they’ll be there too) but you’ll also be part of my successes and the times I just got lucky. I hope that the latter two are more frequent than the first two of course.

This blog will launch on May 14. The budget is too tight to start with give-aways. But if you’re among the first 50 to comment on this post, I will make it worth your while when this blog takes off.