Well, a lot of people don’t have the time or skills to make their own banner designs or logos so they either make one that looks like a sixth grader did it or hire someone.  Well, I know of a great place to get your banner designs, headers and logos done for cheap.  Matter of fact, these banner designs are cheaper than anywhere I have seen and on top of that it’s actually great quality too!

If you’re ever in need of a banner design, header or logo done, check out this great banner designs service.  And I heard if you get a large banner, logo or header done, you also get a permanent backlink/ad spot to your site from a PR3 page!

Now who can beat that?

I’m sure a lot of John Chow haters could careless and wouldn’t bother mentioning his name on a single post but chances are in your favor to be ranked on the first page.  Matter of fact, you can probably be ranked #1 for John Chow since his own blog doesn’t appear until the 6th or 7th page.

Of course, to do this you need to know some SEO.  But word around the Blogosphere is if you rank #1, you’ll probably be getting an extra 75-100 unique visitors from search engines.

Hey, that sounds pretty good to me.  Why do you think I’m writing an entire post simply for John Chow?  Give it a try and let me know how well you rank for it!

There are various ways to enter and all of them are pretty easy. The easiest is to go submit one of his posts like his Market Leverage contest post to one of the social bookmarking or media sites. But make sure you comment afterwards.

Other ways like the one I’m about to do is just write a post and answer one of the questions he provided. I’m going to answer: b) If you could date any celebrity, who would it be?

This is a hard choice but I think I would choose Jessica Alba. I know it’s not realistic but hey, if I had to choose now, she would be the one. I mean, she’s beautiful, she seems pretty cool (based on ibeatyou.com stuff) and talented. Well, for the most part.

Go check out the contest, it ends on July 3rd!

So, since Google Pagerank does not equal traffic, then why do so many people stress over it?  I mean, if you don’t have a Pagerank, it’s not like you’re not getting indexed in Google.  Am I not right?  Plus, if you don’t know how to do SEO, then why are you cherishing that number anyways?

Basically, Google Pagerank can help you get traffic, more specifically, search engine traffic, but if you have no idea how to do so, then you shouldn’t worry too much about Pagerank.  If you do, well, that’s a different story.

For instance, there are tons of people who have PR on random sites and they have no idea how they got it.  Yes, I’m one of those people… now.  Why?  Well, one of my poetry blogs which is about 8 months old only has about 15 total posts and I haven’t updated it for months.  Matter of fact, it doesn’t even have that many backlinks at all, yet, it became a PR3.

Again, I have no idea on how I got that PR3, but I know a little bit about SEO so I’m going to be using that to help me rank up in some keywords.

So, what I’m trying to say is: Google does not equal traffic, but it could definitely help if you know how to use that number!

I mentioned on my other blog about Comment Spammers and I had to call out a few people on it. Of course, a couple of those people were actual real life marketers whom have regular blogs and websites like me and you. Though, I find it funny when I receive a message similar to:

“I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.”

Now, I normally wouldn’t have caught that… but since I do manage a couple different blogs, that same exact comment ended up on two blogs. So, he was caught red handed.

More recently, this guy named Roy Phay commented on my blog with:

"Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience! I’m always looking for ways to improve myself and I’m glad to have found your blog. Thank you for sharing with us."

Because I’ve been around for quite sometime, that just looks like a generic spam comment. So, I Googled that and apparently, he’s been leaving TONS of comments with that same exact quote.

Roy Phay will probably never read this because I’m not giving him a backlink but watch out for him, he’s just a generic spammer. And if you don’t believe me, just Google him and I guarantee you’ll see a lot of say comments from him left on other blogs.

I was considering copying and pasting his generic message back to his own site but unfortunately, his site is one of those BS sites in which you just type in your name and e-mail for some crap.

Please don’t be a comment spammer to me because I will put you out there for everyone to be aware of.

For instance, would you sell a permanent ad spot on your blog for $1,000? That may sound lovely because it’s a thousand dollars going into your pocket up front, but what if your site gets so big that you could charge twice that much a month? Now you’re screwed for the remainder of the time your blog is up and running.

Now my other instance is the fact that I do banner designs for a cheap price and I get a decent amount of people requesting them. Yes, it takes time which is probably the most expensive thing you cannot replace. And I have projects that may possibly help me get a LOT more money in the near future.

So, decisions, decisions…

Currently, I’m setting my priorities to make the cash now and balance my time so I can work on my future projects as well. But it’s so hard and I may have to make a decision and settle for only one soon.

What would you do?

When it comes to making money online, most people end up blogging about it.  But if you noticed, most people have been making money online for quite sometime prior to starting their blogs.  They just use their blog as a way to a) discuss the various ways they make money online to potentially help others, b) use it as another source of income (because everyone wants to know the secrets of making easy money online.

But I can guarantee you, it’s not easy, especially when you’re just starting out.  And if you think it is, more than likely, you’re going to be one of those people who fails, abandons their blog and wonder why it never worked for you.

Your blog, especially in the Make Money Online niche, should not be your primary source of income, unless you’re a Problogger, but those are one in a few thousand so odds are, the chances are heavily against you.

If you need ideas, look around, read, be creative, but never settle for one source of income.  I mean, if you have graphic design skills and you work hard, I bet you’re make a 5-figure income each month.  And once people find out that you make that, you’ll get tons of people flowing to your blog and then you get another source of income with selling personal ads or affiliate links.

If you need some ideas, feel free to contact me, I have a bunch that I’m willing to share that has helped me!

Since I started blogging sometime last year, I have built tons of relationships and friendships with other people who have tons of talents, but more importantly, they are willing to help. I used to try to do everything for myself but when it comes down to it, you have to help others to get help yourself.

And no, the A-listers probably won’t help you as much as you think!

But I’ve built my network group who has helped me in more ways than one. I mean, they’ve helped submit my articles to social media and bookmarking sites, helped get my site(s) out there, matter of fact, some of them sent me clients and sponsors/advertisers.

Now, as for the clients, I design cheap banners for people. Wait, I mean, I design banners for a reasonable price, pretty cheap compared to my competition. But a lot of people liked my work that they referred other people to me, and a lot of my blogging friends have done the same.

As for the advertisers, I think they mention me in various posts which attracts people to stop by my blog and if I impress them on sight, they may consider advertising with me.

See, networking can help set a path for you to make money online.

Additionally, when networking, it usually sends you traffic. Traffic = making money. Even if the only thing that is making money for you are PPC ads, then the potential traffic could lead to clicks which in turn, leads to money in your pockets (or bank account).

So, if you think you can make money online just by yourself with no help, yes, it is possible but just image how much more you could make if you had people to help you!

I know commenting is time consuming but isn’t everything else when it comes to promoting and marketing? The only difference is that you’ll be getting targeted traffic based on your comment response(s).

So, how would you even get traffic?

Well, tons of people leave their blog URL in their signature but if you’re leaving a comment on a Wordpress blog, there’s an option to type in your URL. Not only that but a lot of people have Wordpress plugins to help encourage people to comment. Plugins such as Commentluv and Top Commentators will definitely help.

CommentLuv basically takes and displays your latest post as your signature in your comment and Top Commentators basically gives you a backlink on the sidebar/blogroll of that blog (sitewide).

But in addition to that, you’ll definitely get noticed by the blog owner(s) which is always a good thing. I mean, one of these days they’ll stop by your blog and maybe like it enough to give you a backlink in one of their posts.

Backlink = potential traffic.

Last thing I have to mention, though, do not spam comments! And I’m not talking about those ones that get picked up by your spam filters, I’m talking about those automated responses or the copy and paste method like “Oh, great post! It was very informative, keep up the good work!” Believe it or not, a lot of people do this and people get caught and their reputations get diminished.

So do not spam comment! Do it the old fashion way and go and actually read the article and comment if you have something to say about it.

As a blogger, we would love to write review and posts on products and sites to get paid. As an advertiser, they love to pay us to write about their products and sites so they get exposure and backlinks to help with SEO. Well, there’s tons of paid review sites out there now, but in this first paid review edition, we will focus on PayPerPost .

PayPerPost is probably the biggest and most well-known Paid review sites out there now. I mean, we, as bloggers, can all recall Google penalizing PayPerPost users by decreasing or revoking their pagerank. But then again, Pagerank is just a number - who cares?!

But the best thing about PayPerPost is the fact that they are the most established out of all the paid review sites out there. And I believe they’ve been around one of the longest.

Also, because they are so established, they have tons and tons of opportunities from advertisers and sponsors. They range anywhere from $5 to $300 to cover the small blogs to the larger ones.

The thing I like is their referral/affiliate programs. They actually have a few different options for it. The first, pays out a flat rate of $15.00 per sign up and second, then a rate of $7.50 for each person who writes a review about your site.

I particularly like the fact they pay out a very reasonable flat rate rather than a commission. The downfall would be the fact that the bloggers/advertisers have to go through the entire process and complete a paid review before you get paid.

Luckily, my referrals have actually gone through the entire process.

I mean, they’re pretty strict because they cover their tracks well so people don’t abuse the system. But besides your referrals needing to go through the entire cycle, I also don’t like the fact that their approval process takes quite sometime. In addition, they have some tough requirements.

Personally, I have yet to write a paid review from PayPerPost but their affiliate program works pretty well!

So, if you’re looking to make some quick cash by writing a few quick reviews, feel free to check them out!

Stay tuned for the upcoming paid review posts!