Wayne Liew Dot Com

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Sponsored reviews, paid reviews and paid posts is a popular way to make money blogging. In fact, it is the easiest way for bloggers to make good money from blogging as in the last few years, the launching of sites like PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews and Review Me has popularized sponsored reviews writing as a blog monetization method.

However, not many are making fortunes from this type of blog monetization method because of the various problems that sponsored reviews writing can bring about. Last week, I got my first direct sponsored review request from SEO Meter and the below is the testimonial I received after the review is being published.

Wayne did a great job reviewing our site. First of all, his review was well phrased for the target audience (i.e., bloggers) and that makes the sponsored review much more effective.

Overall, the review was quite thorough and extensive. I’ll be happy to come back to his blog to order more reviews.

From the testimonial, I am glad that I have completed a good sponsored review.

Make Money Writing Sponsored Reviews Problems

Inability to find advertisers

Photo by: Ryan McD

You have a great blog, with great traffic but for some reasons, you are not being approached by advertisers requesting for a paid review. You think that your blog is bad enough and it may be the reason why you are lacking interested advertisers. You continue building your blog but still, advertisers don’t show up.

Continue reading 12 Sponsored Reviews Blog Monetization Tips

Recently, with the launch of Nufflets and GrabMyAds (both are local (Malaysian)ad networks), I have seen more and more Malaysian blogs endorsing to more ad networks.

Photo by laughlin

Such act is causing more harm than benefits to you and your blog. You might be following the trend or you just want to try them out. First of all, do you know that you have more than 70 ad networks out there (not taking into account for recent launches) waiting for you to join?

Read along and you will find out why I don’t recommend you to endorse ads from every ad networks out there.

6 Reasons Not to Join All Ad Networks

Tracking and Optimization Take Time

When you start to blog, content creation right down to marketing your blog take a lot of time. When you want to earn a lot from ad networks, you will start to track their performance on your blog and optimize elements such as ad placement for better performance.

Photo by kaerast

Don’t you think you will earn better with one ad network which you fully focus on the optimization rather than spreading your efforts all over? It is for sure than it will kills your productivity and also optimization cannot be done properly. In the end, nothing good was accomplished.

Be Selfless, Put Yourself at First

One mistake I have seen bloggers did was to eat up the promise by some ad networks. Every new ad network promises great earning opportunities and varieties of ads but they always say they need your help. Wait a minute, is your blog doing very good that you have the time to help them instead of your blog?

Wake up, that is their company and if they don’t do well, it is their problem. Thus, DON’T HELP THEM! When they started a blog advertising company, they should plan out how to attract sign ups and gain publicity. Good companies will eventually survived the cold shoulder but if you unluckily "helped" a weak advertising company that failed, you might end up wasting all your efforts, regretting the fact that you are working for them more than for your blog.

Reaching Cash Out Limit Faster

All ad networks have their own cash out limit. If you are earning $100 over 10 ad networks and all their cash out limit is set at $50, you can’t feel the cash in your pocket because you just can’t cash out! Focusing and optimizing on only two or three ad networks will help you reach the cash out limit faster.

Photo by jenn_jenn

This might not seem to be a problem for those who have the though, "We will eventually get the money sooner or later" but let me tell you this, feeling the cold hard cash earned by your efforts in your hands is a great motivation to push you in blogging. The longer it is for you to get the cash, the higher the chances of you giving up blogging.

Risk on New Startups

I have experienced this once with the "sounds great" Advert-Revenue. Once this money maker failed, I learned my lesson. New startups always face problems such as payment throttle, lack of advertisers, admin panel bugs, and even bad customer support.

Why you want to go through tough times with a startup company? I am sure there are more established ones out there waiting for you to try out. They have been proven their earning capabilities and have improved over time compared to new startups.

Every Blog is Different

Some bloggers tried out an ad network because they are following the trend or their friends asked them to. After knowing what your blog is covering and the availability of ad placement on your blog, only you yourself know what is the best ad network for your blog.

Some ads might look good and work pretty well on certain blogs but when applied to your blog, they are not as good as you have seen on others. With this in mind, don’t always follow the trend. Only sign up for ad networks that you think will make money for you.

Your Blog is Becoming an Ad Board

Some bloggers is getting hyped up about signing up onto various ad networks and placing ad panels on their blog without noticing that their blogs is becoming more and more like an advertisement board. Every space is being used. You will see ads between posts, on the header, at the footer and for some creative-minded bloggers, right at the side of the comment editor.

Photo by miss pupik

Please do keep in mind that if your blog (does not need to be a spam blog) seems to be or becoming a spam blog by new readers and existing readers, they will click the X button on top before they even read any text.

Appropriate Amount of Ad Networks to Participate

My instinct tells me that this question will be asked by some so I am answering it here now.

If you have this question in mind, always answer the following questions or follow the steps:

• How many spaces that your blog allows for ad panels?
• What will be the response of your readers upon increase or decrease of ad panels in your blog?
• What is the performance of current ad panels?
• Are you nearing the cash out limit for participated ad networks?
• Always provide a space for new ad network experiment but always experiment one ad network at a time.

Last but not least, don’t go for only one ad network after reading this blogging tips. The consequences of getting banned by that one ad network is equally bad to having more than 10 ad panels from different ad networks on your blog.

Why Ad Networks Should Not Blast Me for This Post?

First of all, I am not that influential.

Secondly, don’t you think it is a must for companies and business of all kinds to try their best to impress the market? Getting endorsement from authority bloggers, giving out cash upon sign ups and holding activities are some ideas which have worked successfully for some ad networks.

Blog advertisement networks need bloggers for their success. Bloggers are their resources and they should fight for it, just like bloggers trying to impress our readers.

Feedback on Participation in Ad Networks

How many ad networks that you have joined? When you look at your blog, how many ad networks is your blog endorsing? Do you think that you should always support a new ad network? What are your considerations before joining and adding another ad panel from a different ad network onto your blog?

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I am cutting down one of my money maker used on Wayne Liew Dot Com again. This time, it will be the turn for inline contextual advertising platform, Kontera, which is also known as ContentLink by some.

Some readers of mine might have noticed that I have dumped local ad network, Advertlets because of some common reasons which most of the people out there have voiced out. This time round will be Kontera. I guess Kontera has violated my guide, 5 Considerations Before Placing An Ad Panel but specific reasons which helped me in making this decision are as follows.

• Irrelevant ads

  

  I am starting to find Kontera ads becoming more and more irrelevant. Although they boast contextual ad display, I am starting to find that their technology highlights my keyword but giving me the wrong ads, which most of them are by consumer goods sellers such as Shopping.com. “Windows Live Messenger” has been highlighted but the ads popping out clearly showing that it will bring me to a site selling window frames!

• Design spoiler
  What I am against Kontera is that these extra “links” might spoil your site by making it having too much of links. The numbers can be controlled but the ads might clogged up in just one paragraph rather than being spread out and adding those exclusion codes might be an extra chore if you want to manage them.

  Also, you will not have the chance to modify their bubbles popping out. You might have a red themed site like Wayne Liew Dot Com but although the links can be red, the bubble can’t (it will still be orange).



• Slow loading
  My site has been complained of slow loading by some Malaysian readers. This site is being hosted in the United States and I am always hoping to cut down the loading time. Removing slow loading ads can be the best choice. Kontera still have the average loading speed but it was the sudden lag during the load that prompts me for doing this.
• Readability
  This has been the problem which all former Kontera publishers might have faced during their feat with Kontera. The bubble ad popping out will block a number of text if there is a mouse-over on the links. It might kill off a reader’s interest to continue reading your post if it has many traps like this.
• Bad performance
  The purpose of a money maker is to make money for me. Kontera may be a great money maker for some bloggers but I had a miserable experience with it. I have been with Kontera for such a long time but I have only earned $5++, which you might be earning with one paid post a day.

There are a few more reasons which prompts me to make this decision but these reasons have nothing to do with Kontera. Read on to know what had caused me to be brave enough to ditch two money makers on this blog.

Direct ad sales

I have made my first private ad sales and I would like to welcome Submit Comfort, which will be the first direct ad sponsor for Wayne Liew Dot Com. They are a good service for you to try out if you would like to save some time on the tedious work like directory submissions and social marketing. The prices are reasonable and I can say that they will be very willing to listen and understand what are your needs.

Direct ad sales will not be my major income but still it is earning much better than Kontera ads. If you would like to sponsor or to have your ads on Wayne Liew Dot Com, hop over to my Advertise page for more information.

Ad free aim
I always have the dream of having an ad free blog so that my readers can really focus on what am I writing. Call me a whore or whatever but I have the belief that a blog is always about the contents. Getting my blog ad free will also give out the impression that I am not blogging solely for money.

Is Kontera really so bad?

I would say it depends on what site you will be placing their ads. Shopping sites or tech sites will do very well with them since their ads are revolving about consumer products. Also, if your blog has high traffic and your readers will come to your blog no matter how hard it will get to read your articles, you should try Kontera, I am sure you will get high click throughs as well.

Gathering Your Thoughts
What do you think about Kontera ads? Have you tried them out or will you try them out in the future? If you have been using it, how has it performed for you? Do you have other advertising platforms to be recommended for others?

Do you remember what I wrote about a new advertisement platform, Advert-Revenue? Well, this is an announcement to tell that Advert-Revenue is nothing but over!

I tried to access the site after such a long time since I didn’t get a reply from the administrator about pop-up ads on Wayne Liew Dot Com. My browser is looking for the site but in the end, a “Server Not Found” message popped up in front of me.

I was dumbfounded but not for long. Why? This is because I always have bad luck with ad panels advertisement platforms. First, I have Google Adsense team which banned me for invalid clicks, then Adbrite confiscating all my previous earnings due to spam bots (I don’t know why they want to harm me), Advert-Revenue which is now closed and for other advertising platforms, I don’t really earn well with them.

For all those who signed up after reading my post, Advert Revenue - New Money Maker Review, I am sorry for that rather good review. That is a review which is done voluntarily because I think the platform has a great idea for webmasters to make money. I am wrong and they went wind up, or do they?

A summary about the good and bad of Advert-Revenue will be compiled by me below.

Positives

• They pay well. This is the best of them because they only offer targeted ads on your site according to the channel that you had previously chose.
• They do pay. Advert-Revenue proved themselves that they are not a scam because Advert-Revenue does pay.
• It is new. When something is new and unique on the Internet, it tends to get more clicks than usual. People are curious of who host the ad panels and wanted to know what actually are the sites behind the advertising links. More clicks = More earnings!

Negatives

• Bad layout. You can’t have an excuse such as you are new to the market for a terrible layout. You can log on to Advert-Revenue but you can’t log out. The design of the site and administration panel for publishers is equally bad.
• Ad panel attraction. The text of the ads is small compared to the fonts of my site and other advertising platforms. I also had customized my CSS file of my theme to highlight the headlines of my ads.
• Lousy support. Out of three mails I have sent to their support, I only get one reply. Also, although they showed me a live support section when I signed up, the section never gets online. You will also need to personally write to them through your e-mail client rather than send them a message through a contact form like what you can do on Wayne Liew Dot Com.
• Respect of publishers. They made a mistake when they allow pop-ups to automatically shoot out at my readers without my permission. This is totally unacceptable by me as I am a pop-up on blogs hater!
• I didn’t get paid. Yes, the minimum payout amount is at $25 but I didn’t even reach that amount before I removed their ad panels because of pop-ups.

Conclusion
I don’t think I should be saying much about this service. It is closed now and I don’t think it will be back. Even if it managed to get back, will you sign up to an advertising platform which is down for two weeks or more?

They might already have your earnings database gone! What do you think about this service based on what I wrote? Have you participated in Advert-Revenue but have a different idea of what I am commenting above?

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ScratchBack is a new platform which can make money for a webmaster or a blogger. You can easily make money when your visitors buy a text link or banner link in your ScratchBack widget. Although the platform is putting emphasis on a “tipping” system, I see this as another form of advertising alternative for bloggers and a money making opportunity for fellow bloggers as well.

10 Must Know Stuffs of ScratchBack

• You can set your own price for a link or a banner for them to appear on the widget.
• Both text links and banner links are allowed to appear in your TopSpots widget.
• Advertisers will not know how long their text links and banner links will appear in the widget, which is pre-set by the publisher.
• ScratchBack will only pay you 90% of your earnings after deducting PayPal fees in the current BETA stage. For example, if you earned $100 from it, the PayPal fees are $3, you will be earning 90% of $97.
• Publishers will have the rights to delete your ads without notice and earn the money you have paid. This is because when you pay for the link, you are tipping the publisher, not for displaying your links.
• You can pay them to customize your widget according to your likings which is stated here but since it is now in the BETA stage, this service will be provided free of charge!
• It will not make your blog go against Google TOS as the links are inside a javascript and parsed with “nofollow” tags.
• The payment cycle of ScratchBack is 30 days and the minimum payout amount is $25 which is quite low.
• They don’t need details other than your PayPal e-mail address which is the only payment options that they offer currently.
• They don’t offer referrals programme.

Why this deserves a try on your blog?

Low Payout Rates
Some of you must be earning very hard through advertising platforms like Adbrite and Google Adsense since it is hard to you to reach the minimum payout amount. With a minimum payout amount of just $25, you can easily reach it by writing contents that are a little better than before.

Advertising Opportunity
Although the platform is saying that this is not an advertising service, I still see advertisers looking at it as another advertising method since there will be not many people will pay just to support you. I know there might be some but not many will donate for nothing.

Low Prices
The placing of the links can change whenever the publisher decides to reset the widget or there are a lot of links coming in. Apart from this, Page Rank can’t be given through the widget and maybe this is what that causes the low price for a link. Regular readers can simply have their links set up for just $1!

Fast Load
Compared to WidgetBucks, their widget loads superbly fast although the widget is attracting. If you want a fast loading site and you have WidgetBucks on it, you should definitely try ScratchBack out.

Various Colour Schemes
They have a few widget template of different colours for you to choose from which will bring you to a conclusion on whether to place the widget on your blog or not. Also, you may utilized the free customization service offered only now during their BETA stage which you might include your avatar or logo into the widget.

Although I still see blogs that don’t get their TopSpots filled up, I still think that it deserves a try.

Why should you tip me now?

Support Me, Tip Me
You are reading my articles. If you think it is great, don’t buy me a beer because I am under-age! Instead, get yourself a link through the widget. A win-win situation for everyone!

Low Prices, Wide Coverage
I am offering a spot in my widget for $1 per link! This is very cheap if you look at my Advertise page which other methods is way too expensive. On the Advertise page itself, you can also see my stats and I think the spots will definitely be worth it.

Visibility of Links
The widget is right above the fold of my blog. Readers will noticed about your links at first glance! If you are finding difficulty to compete with all the great commentators of mine, get yourself a link on this widget to get a share of my traffic.

Get My Attention
I do care about every readers who leave their footprints on my blog. If you buy a link through ScratchBack, I might just scratch your back to look for some good contents in your blog for me to link to next time. I can guarantee you about this.

Tip Me!
Can you help me to fill up all those empty spaces please? Don’t worry that there will be not enough space. If 4 of the spaces are sold out, I will add in more so start tipping me now with just $1 per link! Come on, you can set off the $1 by writing just a paid post. Don’t make me feel upset with the widget because of the sarcastic image below.

What do you think about this new tipping platform? Will you try it on your blog? Do you think people will actually tipped you for your contents or just for the links? One last question, will you tip me?

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When we go to a blog and if we are greeted by a large amount of ads, we leave! Is it the amount all alone that matters? If you are thinking of whether to add in an ad panel into your blog or not, this is an article for you.

Relevance
This is the first thing that I will look at before I decide whether a new ad network is suitable for by blog. This is really important, earnings-wise and readability-wise. Although sometimes you can get some random click that might be from curious readers, misclicks and even click loves, the earnings you will get with a targeted ads will be much more higher. Removing irrelevant ads will open up more spaces for ads which are relevant and at the same time,your click through rate and earnings can be optimised.

Many asked me to try out Widget Bucks which is consumer electronics and other consumer items-related on Wayne Liew Dot Com which is consumer electronics and other consumer items related but I won’t. Wayne Liew Dot Com is on blogging and Widget Bucks definitely won’t get the attention and will remain in my readers’ blindspot. Instead, I have signed up for Advert-Revenue which has been running on my blog for 3 full days and I have already earned $5 with it! The relevant ads by them on money making and sometimes, guides for webmasters surely helps.

Placement
Another considerations that I will make is where I will place the panel. This step is to search for a place that will bring you maximum click throughs but at the same time, the ad panel will not irritate your readers. Popular ad placing spots are headers, sidebars and the space between the post and comments but still you will need to evaluate things properly. Don’t just try to place your ad panels above the fold.

If you continue to scroll down on Wayne Liew Dot Com, you will find that upon reaching the bottom, you can see another ad panel. That little ad panel is not useless. The bottom part of Wayne Liew Dot Com still have contents and that panel will certainly be seen and sometimes clicked. Also, I don’t stuff all my ads into my sidebar all the way to the bottom.

Design
When I plan to put in an ad panel, I will make sure the colours and if it is a banner, the design will suit perfectly into my theme. This is an important psychology factor. If a visitor enters your site and it is the ad panels like those flashy “You Have Just Won 1 Million” banners that stand out from others, for sure he/she will have the false impression that your site contains a lot of ads. I have a one for all solution for you if you want to have the chance to fit ad panels or banners of various colours, especially dynamic banner ads from Advertlets or Tribal Fusion into your blog.

First, head over to Techcruch and look at their sidebar. The banners in their sidebars are formed of different colours but why is it that it seems well to you? It is because of the white background. A white background can fit things in well. This is why when I first started Wayne Liew Dot Com, I chose a theme which offers me a primary colour and a white background, just like what Techcruch has.

Amount
This is a common thing. Abundance of ads will make all your placement and design efforts nothing. You might have placed all the ads in the right place but having too much of it will give out the message that you want to make money rather than sharing information. I know many ad networks like Advert-Revenue wanted their panels to appear above the fold but when this kind of situations come to you, you can choose one out of them and discard the another.

The optimum amount of ads for me is that an ad panel is being shown every 1024×960 fold of the site. This means wherever my visitors go, they will only see one ad, nothing more and nothing less. This can actually make you fit in a lot of panels into your blog. You didn’t realise this because bloggers always wanted to stuff their ads high or right at the bottom of their site (I don’t know why).

Performance

After you have chosen what ad network is right for your blog. Optimise, put it in and don’t remove it until you cash out. If it is not performing well, even you have done all of the evaluation aspects I have shared above, optimize it more by switching the ad positions, change the colour if it is a text ad and so on. Remember, don’t remove it if you had really evaluate the network well and you have put in a lot of effort to monetize your blog with the network. This is explained thoroughly in “If You Don’t Hit Your Minimum Payment Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later” written by Hyder.

Share With Me
What other things that you will consider when deciding whether to place an ad panel into your blog or not? Are you satisfied with the amount of ads and the placement of ad panels at Wayne Liew Dot Com? Tell me about your thoughts on what I’ve written above. Until the next post, happy money making with your ad panels!

Today, I would like to introduce you a new money maker for your blog, Advert Revenue. I registered with them because I am facing a major problem with my Adbrite ads, which is similar to this, but this time, it is the spam bot’s fault!

Advert Revenue is a new player in the market, which will be competing with the great Google Adsense, Bidvertiser and Adbrite. One new thing about Advert Revenue is that the ads offered on your sites will depend on which channel that your site belongs in rather than being using the contextual ad technology like Google Adsense.

My first impression of the site is that the design the design is a bit disorganized. After a few minutes spent on exploring the site, I roughly get the idea of how the site works. Your earnings will most probably be CPM-based ($1 fixed CPM rate) which I see is quite good for a site a high traffic but low click through rate on ads.

Updated: Ginn Wei provided me with the heads up that Advert Revenue is no longer paying on a CPM basis. However, they are paying based on the quality of your traffic.

Upon being approved by Advert Revenue, you will be given three choices of ads, it will be the banner ads, paid to promote links and a pop under code. I noticed that their banner ad code only offers horizontal ones which had stopped me from placing it on Wayne Liew Dot Com but rest assured, I have raised a ticket asking them to provide a vertical banner ad code as soon as possible. Also, they required that their ad codes must be placed on the top half of a site.

I am not earning anything with them yet but they do offer your earnings to be paid through PayPal or E-Gold, which will be up to you again on choosing the ideal payment method. Although I haven’t test it on Wayne Liew Dot Com, I am sure that the click through and ads displayed will be very relevant to a site because of the categorization of ads according to the category your site belongs in.

Upon signing up, they will have an invitation for you to join their forum to give them feedback and for you to seek any assistance if you face any problems. Also, they offer live support but as always, due to the time difference, I haven’t seen their support in an online status.

Will you sign up for this one? If you have no other choices like me or your other ad platforms are not performing well, you may just sign up to Advert Revenue. I forgot to tell you that you will make $5 for every active referrals. Try it out now and tell me what you think of it.

Many asked me why didn’t I have a Google Adsense ad panel here, I guessed it was time for me to make a confession. The date I got banned by the super money maker, Google Adsense was last year, when I started out blogging as a 16 years old kid. At that time, I don’t know how superior Google is and I got caught up with seeing my earnings blasted to over $20 a day, by clicking on my ads (I know it’s stupid, this is why I warned people through “Don’t Click On Your Own Ads”. I violated two of their term and conditions, not being 18 and invalid clicks.

At that time, after I got banned, I didn’t do anything as I haven’t wake up from my sweet dreams that Google Adsense is really a great income source for some until I started to go a little bit deeper into blogging. With my old blogspot blog, I tried to blog for traffic and do a few search engine optimisation work onto that blog but all and all, not having a Google Adsense account amputated my blogging income. Now, I am here with my own domain and I am serious about blogging. The deepest regrets is that my visitors can’t make any Google Adwords users pay because I am banned by Google Adsense!

I am now having a more targeted content and I even received an e-mail from Kontera which says that my site is showing some highly-paid keywords (with no one clicking ). This is like a knife which penetrates my heart as there’s no other advertising platforms which have a contextual technology as good as Google Adsense.

But actually, I don’t feel that bad after all because of the following reasons:

Continue reading Post-Google Adsense Ban Confessions

I came across an article of Aunty Lilian which she talks about the recent drop of her Google Adsense earnings. She also highlighted that some spam blogs are making money coolly from the Internet using Google Adsense and her rantings continue on how Google’s reactions on her reports about such sites.

If you are a self-hosted Wordpress blogger, I am sure you have seen many of these backlinks got trapped by the Akismet Spam Filter which is pre-installed in our Wordpress blogs. DON’T DE-SPAM IT! This is really a spam. If you don’t believe me, try give that spam post a visit. I have an example for you below.

I wrote an article about flirty Internet experts and immediately after the article went live, I got this linkback from a site called Blogs Feed World (they are evil, no links for them). Look at what they have did!

I am sure many of you have seen this before right? What are these actually and how these spammers had managed to do it? I don’t know whether you believe in this or not but this is actually a way of making money by blogging!

Continue reading Money Making By Splogging

I always tell people making money online is easy but how easy is that? Let me tell you my own experience which makes what am I today. I started blogging with nothing but a free host, the famous Blogger (I still love it). I kept on blogging on it, tried different search engine optimization methods and many monetization ways. One thing that I couldn’t forget is how I got to know paid posts or more widely known as sponsored posts. I am a lucky boy, I don’t know how I became friends with Google and my blog got a PR5 last time.

With a PR5 blog, you know what I can do? I can make myself money enough to host a blog myself. Is this a small number? Definitely not. I am now making MYR2000+ per month (only MYR500 lower than an accountant’s starting pay), which is equivalent to USD583 per month and for a college kid with nothing to do but blogging, this is a lot! There are many Malaysians out there earning up to MYR10,000+ from paid posts like Aunty Lilian and gang, which I admire.

My reason to self-host my blog is to get respect from everyone, including advertisers. Advertisers is so picky nowadays until they say have the trend of arrogantly highlighting “You don’t own a domain? Get lost!”. I wonder why they don’t like free host. My self-made explanation is that advertisers want to know if you are serious about blogging, if you are serious about it, get yourself a domain. Those with free domain feel like flaming me right? Wait, then what are the reasons advertisers don’t like free-hosted blogs?

Continue reading Paid Posts - My Main Income Source