Not Another Make Money Online Blog

Google Pagerank Update: Still Worthless But How’d You Do?

It looks like there was yet another Google Pagerank update and I’m sure you have been reading new blog posts, comments and whatever else discussing how each site did. Well, it looks like “Not Another Make Money Online Blog” ended up going from PR1 to PR2. Honestly, I didn’t do anything and for some reason it went up.

So, how did I end up going up in Pagerank when I did absolutely nothing different? Matter of fact, I haven’t been posting as often and I seemed to have turned away quite a few of my readers. So, how in the hell did I do even less and manage to go up in Pagerank? Actually, that just proves Google Pagerank doesn’t mean much.

If you need to know, my Google organic traffic hasn’t gone up, I checked some of my placements on certain keywords and nothing drastic changed either. Matter of fact, if you’re in the MMO niche, you should check out TheNetFool’s Latest PR Update of the Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs.

I didn’t make it on that site simply because my little site isn’t anywhere near the top 100. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the top 1,000! Anyways, Jim put together his “Fair Value” analysis of it and it seems pretty interesting. I agree with most of it with a few exceptions but you guys should check it out.

Anyways, how did you guys do with Google’s worthless number that they give you to determine how “important” your website is?

TheUniversityKid.com Is Up For Sale! New Blog Owners Have Tough Shoes to Fill

It’s a shame to see but it looks like one of the blogs I go to regularly, Theuniversitykid.com is up for sale. It’s just sad to see another great blog being sold to someone else that probably won’t live up to the original owner’s knowledge and style.

I have followed quite a few blogs over the time I have been blogging and there have been a lot of blogs I stopped going to since it was sold to a new owner(s). Don’t get me wrong, I gave the new owner(s) plenty of chances to do what they do to keep me around but when it comes down to it, I just don’t feel like they’re unique enough.

No disrespect to the new owners but a majority of them just do things that are pretty generic in my eyes. And I think they try a little too hard.

The couple of blogs I used to follow and don’t due to new ownership:

Johncow.com – The new owner definitely knows his stuff about making money online and he holds killer contests but the old owner had that extra kick to his posts. Things that were controversial and entertaining, always made me laugh and he also had some helpful tips.

The new owner is still good but it just doesn’t have that same entertainment appeal I liked from before.

Bloggin-Ads.com – I almost feel as though this blog took a step back with their posts. It feels like I’m reading posts that would be on blogs that were just created and from someone that probably shouldn’t be in the MMO niche.

No offense but the blog posts doesn’t have that character appeal that the old blog owner carried.

TheUniversityKid.com – Who’s going to be the new owner? Well, whoever it was, they have some big shoes to fill. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to give them a chance but it’s hard living up to someone elses’ expectations.

And I don’t mean to sound like I’m bashing new blog owners, I’m just saying it’s not exactly the type of stuff I expected after the change. It shouldn’t be either because everyone has their own style, own vision, own way of running their site.

But tell me it’s not hard comparing it to the former owner?

Basically, what I’m saying are new owners usually have large shoes to fill and it sucks when you expect one thing and don’t get it.

Anyways, Theuniversitykid.com will be missed and hopefully the new blog owner knows what he is doing, steps up to the plate and hopefully doesn’t choke under pressure.

And if you happen to read this and go buy TUK, let Jason know that AnotherMMOblog.com referred you!

BuyBlogReviews.com Sucks as a Paid Review Site

If you are a blogger who writes paid reviews, I just hope you’re not the type to sign up for as many paid review sites as you possibly can. And quite honestly, I would try to stay away from BuyBlogReviews.com because they to be arguably the worst one out there.

So, I’m sure you guys are aware of paid reviews sites, right? There are tons of them out there and I have tried out tons of them before. Just incase you needed additional sources for paid review sites, below is a quick list of all of the ones I have tried out:

PayPerPost
SponsoredReviews
Smorty
BuyBlogReviews
LinkWorth

Out of all the ones I have tried out, BuyBlogReviews.com is the worst for several reasons. First, they have the lowest paid reviews available as most of them range in the single-digit area and the most I’ve seen was probably $50 but they required ridiculous stats for your site (Alexa under 1,000 and stuff like that).

They also have a affiliate program that is pretty bad. Essentially, you get 15% of the total money spend on the first transaction of an advertiser or a blogger. Sounds pretty damn good, huh?

Wrong!

Since most of the reviews that are offered are the site range in the single-digit area, 15% of that is chump change. For instance, there are some offers that pay you $1.00… and 15% of a dollar is $0.15 which is close to nothing if you ask me.

Wait, that’s not even the worst part. Apparently, they don’t even pay for your affiliate commission! I’m dead serious and I contacted them twice regarding this and still nothing was resolved.

The first time I contacted them, they simply told me that they were having issues and the payment would be sent over on the next pay cycle. Of course, I took their word for it and after 2-3 pay cycles, I still never received anything in my Paypal account.

I contacted them again explaining in details what happened including their own response and still, nothing. They simply told me the same thing you mentioned in the first e-mail in which I replied they already told me that and nothing happened.

Now four or five months later… still, nothing. Of course I decided to stop going to them because they were simply a bad middleman paid review site. I know the commission was probably like $5-$10 or whatever but shouldn’t I still get paid for it?

So, have you ever had any bad experiences with paid review sites? If so, what happened to you? All I know is, I would NOT recommend BuyBlogReviews to anyone!

You Are Overcharging For Ad Spots!

For recently, I considered purchasing 125×125 spots on various blogs but decided against it (with the exception of a few sites). But when I was lurking around, I noticed that a lot of people charge WAY too much for their ad spots. I hope you guys aren’t one of them!

A while back, I wrote about “Things People Overlook with Advertise Pages” and that just adds to how much people know about selling ad space on their blog.

I don’t want to put anyone on blast but there are tons of people that don’t even include their stats for their site on their advertise page which is not good for them but worse for advertisers.

But let’s get to those people that overcharge from their ad spots. There are some people who just came up with some random price for their ad spots. Honestly, I can’t understand how they came up with the figure they did.

Let me give you an example without putting any sites on the spot. I know (or visited a site) someone that charges $50/month for a 125×125 ad spot. I went to there advertise page and it doesn’t display any of the sites stats but rather just BS for as to why people should advertise with them.

What makes it worse is the fact that they have a “10 day money back guarantee” but they retain $20 for advertising for the 10 days and refund the remaining portion of $30.

First of all, that defeats the purpose of money back guarantee because you’re still charging the advertiser. Secondly, if I did my math correctly, you are charging too much for 10 days anyways. See the math below if you don’t believe me:

$50 / 30 days (one month) = $1.67/day

$1.67/day x 10 days = $16.67

Just looking over this site, this blogger barely has 100 subscribers so I doubt his traffic isn’t that high. Unless he is an Entrecard addict and submits to all social bookmarking sites for traffic. And even if he did, we all know people aren’t interested in that for traffic anyways.

I have seen cheaper ad spots for blogs that have 500+ or even 1,500+ subscribers with an average of 200-500 daily uniques a day. Who in the right mind would advertise with them?

Wait, it gets worse. Well, kind of. None of their ad spots are even above the fold!

So, on top of the overcharged ad spots, the stats that are not displayed, the fake money back guarantee, the ad spots aren’t even above the fold?! What kind of business is this guy running?

Personally, I think that blogger is just another person who will fail in the MMO niche and then question why they couldn’t make $10/month.

Sorry for this rant, but there are just some people who try to make a quick buck by overcharging and simply ripping their advertisers off. But if their advertisers are dumb enough to purchase it, I don’t know who is worse.

By the way, I think I charge way too less for my ad spots.

Your Website Load Time SUCKS!

Have you ever wanted to visit one of your favorite blogs but their site loading time is just so horrible it turns you off? Well, it happens way too much for some of the blogs I go to and if it turns me off, I’m sure it turns a lot of other people off.

I’m an RSS Feed subsccriber to a bunch of blogs and I love reading their posts via my reader or even e-mail. But sometimes I want to comment to show my interest but when I try to click through it takes FOREVER for the site to load up.

There’s a few reasons why this may happen. It could be due to the tons of plugins they have installed, too many images trying to load up at once, they have a crappy hosting server, etc.

Whatever it is, they may want to find an alternate to it because this may be a cause to why their comments or even daily visitors are down.

There are tons of tools that you can use to check your website loading time to see if it’s good or not. If you want to try one of the website loading tools out, you can check it out here to see if everything is just fine.