However, with Google Adsense making it easy for anyone with a blog or website to put ads on a page has this led to ad blindness by website searchers and consequently less click through rates.  

And even though evidence shows that people are clicking through on the merchant ads, often there is little in the way of conversion once they reach the merchant site.

We have been discussing whether or not to enter the arena of Pay Per Click advertising but it is not a cheap exercise.  The bidding on Keywords is quite competitive and the price on keywords has now become relatively expensive for what the returns might be.

 There has been a lot of talk about click through fraud which is another reason why Pay Per Click advertising needs to be carefully considered before rushing in and spending hard earned dollars.  

There are a number of other ways to advertise on your site and video advertising is seen on an ever growing number of sites.   Maybe this is a better option.

We would certainly like to hear from others who have are are thinking of delving into Pay Per Click. 

One way to make some money is to get paid to blog.  And this is where Smorty comes in.

We have been approved by Smorty to take up opportunities to write about various advertisers and receive payment for doing so.

Posts generally take between 5 and 20 minutes to write so its not like I am taking a big chunk out of my daily routine.  And the best thing is I am getting paid to do what I like best - which of course is blogging.

Once the blog post has been approved by an administrator from Smorty, payments are made on a weekly basis straight into my Paypal account.

The whole process couldn’t be easier. So if you have a blog that is indexed in Google and Yahoo, is over 3 months old then why not join up and start earning.  There are a few more standard criteria that must be meet but they are the general ones on racial, adult content etc.

Smorty are not only looking for bloggers who are interested in getting paid for blogging but they are also interested in hearing from advertisers who would like to have their advertising campaigns promoted out to bloggers with appropriate blogs, for their opinions on the product, website etc.  Blog advertising is a powerful tool in todays internet marketplace.

So go on head over to Smorty now, sign up and start getting paid for blogging today.

While we were talking I introduced her to the world of blogging and making money from home.  She had never heard of blogging and she is not alone in this.  Hardly anyone I meet, including family on my recent trip to NZ, know about blogging and when you consider that there are around 98 million blogs on the internet and the number is growing daily, I find it incredible that people haven’t stumbled upon the term somewhere.

But then when I mentioned it to my husband he pointed out that he and our immediate family only know about blogging because I am so involved in it along with the affiliate marketing side of having an online work from home business.

Paula and I have been working with our various blogs for a little while now and realised the potential for making money from this medium in the early days. 

Of all the people that I have told about blogging, and I mention to anyone willing to listen, only one has taken up the challenge and that is my daughter Varinina.  My granddaughter Demelza started a blog but teenage angst has gotten in the way of her progression with it. 

Now we all know that it takes time to build up a blog that people want to read and keep coming back to, so it has to have something to offer that is interesting and/or informative.  The content needs to be well written and easy to read. 

If the blog is about a product such as our area rugs  or lingerie blogs then you are able to add Google and merchant ads that relate to your product and this will generate an income for you.  It won’t make you an overnight millionaire but as your online traffic increases you should be able to make a nice little income.

The next biggest single thing you need to do is get traffic into your site, so you will need to promote your blog to sites like www.spicypage.com, www.mybloglog.com, and any other number of blog directories and communities that can easily be found on the web by typing ‘blog directories’ or ‘blog communities’ into the search engine.

So we now know that:

• the content needs to be well written
• place Google ads on the page
• place merchant ads on the page
• actively promote your blog to get traffic

Blogging is not only a way to produce an income, it is fun especially when you are writing about things that interest you. Once you join a blog community and start to read other peoples blogs you will find some are personal diaries, some are humourous, some topic specific and most make great reading.  Sometimes you will come across something that clashes with your beliefs, simply move on, do not get involved in silly name calling or online arguments, remember to respect other peoples point of view, they have a right to their opinions as much as you do.

It won’t be long and my two dogs will pick up on the chatter and run outside and scare them all off but for the moment they are too content playing inside and making a mess of my carpet with dirty paw prints.

Now there is silence…and the chattering has stopped. Who knows what has silenced them - maybe the grandaddy of sparrows has had enough and told all the youngins to quieten down. Or maybe they are discussing where to head off to next. Who really cares.. I am just having fun watching and enjoying the fact that I am at home, working from my computer…just loving life!

I chose the Dofollow plugin as it seemed the quickest and easiest and it turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought. Just download the file and copy the extracted folder to your wp-content/plugins folder and then activate the plugin in your Wordpress admin panel. That’s it! - too easy!

Now if you have gotten to this point and have no idea what the ‘nofollow’ tag is then you deserve a medal for sitting through all this geek speak. Nofollow is an attribute that is added to the code in a link and what it does is tell the search engines not to follow the link. So in other words, if you have left a Comment on this blog and added your website link then if the nofollow tag was applied the search engines would not follow the link through to your website. Basically it was introduced to stop the spread of spam on the internet.

We believe that if someone leaves a comment that is worthwhile and provides value then they deserve a unobstructed link back to their website so we have removed the nofollow tag on all comments.

We have set our Comments options to ensure that no comment goes live unless it is approved by us so we will see how all this goes. Bear in mind that leaving comments like “great post”, “cool” and so on will not be approved.  Also comments that are obviously used word for word on multiple websites will be deleted. We have already received some of these and although we have approved a couple it is not likely that any new ones will be approved.

We definitely love comments so if you have something constructive to say then let us know.

My grandmother is an internet success, and spends her free time enjoying the pleasures of working to her own schedule. She loves the laid back attitude she can finally take advantage of after over 20 years in the public sector.

Being at home and starting her own internet business has improved her temperament immensely, and her inner and outer wellbeing and health have increased. She now sparkles with a relaxed energy and beauty.

My mom is a work from home mom as well. She enjoys working from home for the simple benefits of the wellbeing of her family. She is home to greet my sibling’s everyday, and she takes a keen interest in their lives and personalities that other mothers might miss.

My mother can tell by looking at her little people if they have had a good or bad day - whether they ate all their lunch, got detention or an award. She knows when they are tired and hungry, or overactive and hungry, but most of the time she knows when they are happy and hungry.

Every night my mom makes a healthy home made dinner, and every morning after breakfast she sends the little ones to school with a smile and a packed lunch full of home made goodies.

During daylight hours my mother is an internet fiend. She blogs and complete surveys, she writes internet articles and sends email like there is no tomorrow. When she completes her daily techno “job” she attends to her other areas of expertise. She cleans her house, bakes yummy food (which she almost always lets me try first) and she still has time to call me, spend time with me and show the same amount of love and care with me, an adult, as she does with her smaller children.

The women in my family are smart and strong and independent. In my spare time I read their blogs and do my best not to be lazy and do nothing during the day while I am at home, and go to work at night.

I love to see pictures on their blogs and I remember the stories and anecdotes they post with humour and widescreen colour and surround sound memories. Working from home has improved the lives of my mother and her mother. Everyone should enjoy the freedoms these women enjoy because once in while all women need a good massage and brilliant manicure.

Paula followed Googles instructions in putting in the redirect to the new domain.  So I merrily went on submitting the posts for which we were eligible under the PR 3 for Pay Per Post. We thought misguidedly that the PR would transfer over to the new domain name.  Wrong - Just Loving Life remained as it was and the old blogspot URL went to zero.

So the question here is, did Google penalize our site for duplicate content since we had both the blogspot and the Just Loving Life domain name running concurrently? If so then Google really needs to do something about it since they have so kindly provided the option for blogspot owners to use their own domain name. At the very least Google should advise users on what they should do to reduce the duplicate content issue.

Since the duplicate content issue was a concern we transferred the blog to Wordpress and trashed the old Blogspot blog. Of course now we have been rejected for the last 6 posts done under that blog name in Pay Per Post.  Fair enough as we no longer have that page rank.  I am only writing this for those Blogger blogs that are thinking of getting a domain name.  Just be careful as you may lose your pagerank. And if you are going to change do it sooner rather than later.  

Why I became a blogger, why I like blogging, why I don’t like blogging

I love blogging. I was introduced to blogging by my mother who is a seasoned writer, traveler and all-round consumer. Her blogs are about shopping and traveling and movie reviews and crazy happenings in the world.

Mum and her best friend are delving right into the ‘webs’ belly’ and reaping the benefits of running an online business and community connections that are still only a mystery to me as I’m fairly new to blogging.

I began with a blog at Blogger.com. But there are lots of other places to start including Wordpress.com

By joining communities at mybloglog.com and Spicypage, you get to read the blogs of others who like the same things as you do.

Becoming a member of other communities and posting comments on other blogs, posting discussions in forums, joining groups and branching out into an exiting web of over 96 million other bloggers from all over the world, you can really discover how amazing the internet is.

I use my blog to tell my friends what I am doing and what life is like in a new city. It is cheaper to have an online diary or blog than to write letters or phone everyone, so I keep up with news about family members and their friends and anyone can read it.

(more…)

If you have a work from home success story, know a bit about Affiliate Marketing, have experienced the world of paid surveys or are making money with your blog then we would like to hear from you.

We also like articles relating to self improvement, positive thinking or the law of attraction but they must relate in some way to working from home.

We will happily link back to your blog or website in the article.

So if you ready to add a work from home story please head over to our Submit Article page to read our submission guidelines.

Now if you have a blog there are a number of ways to get paid to blog. One of the reasons that I really got focussed on blogging was because of Pay Per Post.

This is where a ‘Postie” or blogger gets paid to blog about a product, someone’s blog, website or whatever else an advertiser is wanting to promote. The opportunity will stipulate what the advertiser requires in the post, such as how many words, what page rank the postie’s blog must have, if any, the minimum number of words, any pictures that must be included.

Once your blog post has been reviewed by both Pay Per Post and the advertiser to ensure that you have followed the requirements, it will be approved. It takes a few weeks for the payment to be made into your PayPal account. You are allowed to take 2 opportunities per day.

Your blog needs to have a minimum of 20 posts before you submit it to PPP for approval to become one of their posties.

There are a number of conditions and these are designed to protect the integrity of PPP and ensure that both advertisers and bloggers receive the best deal possible.