Adf.ly Strategy

One of the sites that is currently generating passive income is AdFly.  AdFly is a link shortening sites, where you can chose to add adverts before you links (or not) and also offers 20% of referral income.  It is truly one the easiest passive earners on the web, but one I've under-utilised... until now.

I have built an AdFly strategy and placed this in the tabbed banner above.  It explains one of many ways you can use this site to earn money and is worth checking out.

Links, Affiliates, Banners and Referrals

Today I'm going guide you through a few of the terms that often used on blogs and websites like this, and how you can profit from using them.


Links

"Links" are ways of getting from one website to another through a simple mouse click (or from one part of a website to another part). But why would you want to link to somebody else's site? The answer is simply because you might be able to profit from send people their. Some sites will pay you for sending traffic their way, others for people performing actions once there (like buying something). People know that you are the one who has sent the traffic to their site because you would have used an "affiliate link".

Affiliates
Affiliate links are links that contain a unique id for you (or your site).  When someone clicks on a link of this type you will be associated with that person and their actions.  Some sites will put information in cookies to make sure that even if they don't do anything for a few days the "affiliate" will get the benefit.  And the benefit of being an affiliate is usually money.

Some sites run their own affiliate programme and others outsource this work to companies like Commission Junction.

Banners
One of the best places to have your affiliate links are inside banners (like the one below).  Banners can come in many shapes and sizes and are usually made available in a variety of designs, so you should pick the one that best fits your blog or website.

Banners are also very useful thinks to place inside your signatures for any relevant forums.  This also means the more you blog the better more you affiliate link will to available for others to click on.

Referrals
Referrals are the people you have sent to a site and have signed up to that site.  The vast majority of referrals are automatically associated with you because they have used your affiliate link. Sometimes you get a one-time payment from a referral signing up to a site, other times this person is associated with you for a duration of time (or indefinitely) and you get paid more the more they do on a site (this is how Paid to Click sites usually work).

So my advice to you is to use affiliate links and banners when are where you can to get referrals and earn passive income.

Does Time = Money?

The old belief is that time equals money: the more time and effort you put into something the more successful and profitable it will be.

When I first started to compose this blog post I instantly started to thing about "passive income", which is when you do little (or even nothing) but earn automatically.  I've discussed a few passive income options available to internet earners, and if you click here you'll see those posts.  But the majority of passive income streams are built on the hard work and time you put into a project beforehand.  For example, a passive income stream generated through the work your referrals might be doing on a site meant you had to spend a great amount of time building that referral base.  Alternatively you might have to spend time updating a website, writing a blog, sending out newsletters or posting urls to direct traffic to your site.

So it might seem that I agree with "time = money", but I don't!

There are sites out there which require you to spend ages completing tasks and clicking links for very small amounts.  Often these sites workout to be paying only $1.00-$0.50 per hour!  However, there is no skill involved.  Some sites can be paying you $4.00-$6.00 per hour, but these require good quality reviews to be completed, so a level of skill is required.

Clearly time does not equal money, but time plus skill equals money.  Therefore, when looking to earn on the internet you should use the skills you have.  If you can write well then writing reviews will be much more profitable you than clicking advertisements.

If you want to go down the passive income route, don't be disheartened if you don't see much money in the early stages as it will take time to build up your stream (and eventually river).  Have a strategy and stick to it.  Set targets and work on improving what you do, analysing both what did right and what you did wrong.

If you are not going down the passive income route the ultimate trick is to work out the quickest way you can earn money online - it's different for everyone so don't go wasting time where you won't make money.

My Average Day

I have an email asking me what my average day was like - how much time I spend earning on the web and what my income was.  I've decided the best way to answer that is by recording my day and tallying up at the end, so here goes...

9.00am-9.30am - Time for a coffee!  I turn on the computer and head straight over to Inbox Dollars.  My first 5 searched of the day will be found through this site, which will earn me $0.06.  The site I search for is  Slice the Pie!  And over the next 30 minutes I drink my coffee and listen to music - posting reviews as I listen.  I posted 8 reviews and made $1.89.

9.30am-10.00am - I look at my Adf.ly account and my AdSense, noting that I made $0.21 and $0.89, respectively, before turning my attention to the boring part of the morning... my Paid To Click sites.  I have 6 of these on the go at the moment (2 because of the PTC Experiment) and the rest being tested for a review on the blog. NeoBux made me about $0.50 with referrals (in the last 24 hours) and the rest which includes the likes of ClixSense, PTCBox and BuxP have probably made only $0.25, with varying numbers of personal and referral clicks. It takes 30 minutes to get through this lot, partly because I have an increasing number of referrals to manage.

10.00am-4.00pm - It's time to do what I get paid for and go to work.  I'll complete this post later!  Still to do: forums, more music reviews, and surveys.

4.00pm-4.45pm - I decide to check out e-rewards, Valued Opinions and NPolls find a couple of surveys.  Surveys are one of the most profitable ways to make money on the internet and in 1 hour I have made £1.50 on Valued Opinions, $0.20 on NPolls  and the equivalent of $2 on e-rewards.  Usually if I can't find surveys on these sites there are others I will check out.

4.45pm-5.30pm - This is the last stint on me earning on the internet for the day and I spend it on Slice the Pie, earning a further $2.51, but also seeing that my referrals have been busy and added a further $0.38 to that sum.

In total today:

• Adverts = $1.10
• PTCs = $0.75
• Surveys = $4.20
• Music reviewing = $4.40

Grand total = $10.45 for 2.5 hours work, though there are other days when this can be higher this seems average, bringing in $70-75 per week (quite a nice 2nd income earned for the time most people send on Facebook).

Paid Link Shortening Websites

Link shortening websites are sites where you take a URL shorten it through their system and share with others.  The difference between a link shortening website like Tiny URL and Ad Fly is that whilst Tiny URL takes you directly to a website like Ad Fly re-directs you to a banner, advert or survey first.

The banner option puts a advert at the top of the page that you can remove if you want - click here to see what one looks like.  The advert option gives a countdown (usually 5 seconds) that you have to watch before you can skip it - click here to see what one looks like.  The survey option means that there has to be a survey completed before you can get to the link.  Typically you earn a lot more for sites re-directed through surveys, though less people are willing to participate.

I'm currently trailing a couple of paid link shortening websites and there are some stark differences between them.  Let's start with the good one (good - so far),.

AdFly

Positives:

• Easy to use
• Good reputation
• Established
• Does not use surveys
• Choice of banner or advert for each link
• You can create plain re-directs
• Pays 20% on referrals
• Large community with useful forum
• Low cash out amount ($5)

Negatives:

• Pays very little per click-through
• Statistics breakdown isn't very detailed

We are still trialling AdFly and will report back on whether they pay or not.  Check out the certified sites page and blog for future updates.  But for every good site there are many bad ones.

Bee4 (www.bee4.biz)

Positives

• Active admin
• High payouts
• Active forum

Negatives

• Small community
• Rude admin who removes posts he doesn't agree with on the forum
• Was unable to generate a penny of money after having a number of surveys completed
• Uses surveys ONLY

In short avoid Bee4.biz, they are the first site to make it on to our "uncertified list".  If you want to make passive income this way, use AdFly or an equally reputable company.

Slice the Pie Introduces Referrals!

I went on to Slice the Pie today, to listen to some good music... and get paid for it! For those who've never visited this site, go now. You listen to music, write your opinion whilst it plays and get paid between $0.07 and $0.35 for your write-up (depending on the standard of your review). It's that simple.

But even better than that, I saw they are now offering referrals. Slice the Pie is a UK-based company that has been around for a few years. They pay quickly, have good admin and despite changing the site a few times have never had problems attracting new reviewers and keeping old ones - so this is a bit of a shock... but a pleasant one.

Their referral program means that you get 10% earnings from all the reviews done by your referrals.  This passive income stream, in my mind, makes Slice the Pie one of the best earning sites on the web.

AdSense

Well in creating this blog one of the first things I did was "monetise" the page.  Monetise the word Google uses for placing ads on the screen, in the hope that people click on the ads - and in fact they are simple urls which take you to a website, so google ads can often be great ways of navigating around the web on a set topic.

So, what do you get paid... well with Google AdSense this can vary quite widely from a few pence for a click to over a pound.  It is the company being linked through the ad who sets this price, but they can't be too stingy with their cash because AdSense users can block ad providers if they don't pay enough.

The trick with monetising is to make the ads fit your site, so that they don't become an inconvenience.  I have a number of sites and blogs, earning vastly different amounts.  For example, one site I have is called Instant Scores, which allows users to see live scores and league tables.  The larger AdSense ad is on the right-hand side, and the smaller ones placed to break up the text.

The type of blog or website you have is very important when looking to monetise a site.  Informative blogs and places of obtaining updated information often make the most money, so look to produce content that fits this remit.  Build your blog with advertising in mind, rather than an after thought and play with the layout to optimise the number of clicks you get.

AdSense used to have a referral programme but doesn't anymore - meaning you only earn for clicks on ads you get on your blog or website, but beware.  You can't encourage people to click your ads and you can't do it yourself.  If this happens you can lose all the money you've earned.

When you get to £10, you can have AdSense send you a cheque or transfer the money into your account.  AdSense can be used as the only advertiser on your site or as one of many.

I'm sure I'll come back to AdSense (and the alternatives) in the future, so I'll leave this for now and report how my AdSense earning mount up for this page.