BlogRush: Get Free Traffic, Make BlogRush Money?

Over the past few days, I have seen many posts raving and ranting about the release of BlogRush and how great the service is and why it will send a lot of traffic to your site. Since so many blogs have been posting on what the new network is, I will simply blog on what’s been going on with BlogRush and it’s new members. I’ve setup this blog with the service, but was unable to add the widget to the right side of the page since it’s dimensions are larger than the space I have available. I do have the widget running on another site and have seen some traffic running through the exchange. Traffic means everything to a blog, and free traffic is even better… but we all know nothing is free, especially when it’s online! The program just went live and many bloggers have their own opinions on the new service, which I will highlight below.

I first came across John Chow blogging on BlogRush, with his "Increase Your Blog Traffic with BlogRush". Through John Chow I first learned about the program and actually watched the video he had on the site. The program looked pretty cool and reminded me a bit of LinkExchange back in the day… but with a 2.0 twist. After watching the video, I then signed up to the network.

This morning I came across a post from Shoemoney on "How to Get 45,000 Impressions a Day from BlogRush". This was quite an interesting read as Jeremy goes on to offer up his own impressions earned through the network, to anyone that signs up to BlogRush through his blog. I’m sure he will build a massive base of members under him, but not even Jeremy himself is sure how profitable they will be in the long run.

Lastly, I came across Jim Kukral’s post "John Reese & Blogrush Want To Resell Your Data" this morning. It looks like we finally have some negative publicity against BlogRush. Jim’s previous post before this one also touched on the topic of "Don’t Waste Your Time With Blogrush, It Won’t Work For Your Blog". The main take away from Jim’s blog, was when he went into detail on BlogRush’s privacy policy.

After John’s post on BlogRush making money, John Reese himself came to make a comment on the post. You can read the full comments on Jim’s Blog. To sum it up, John Reese says they won’t be mining data and selling to others, while Jim responds with a modest post saying he still doesn’t think BlogRush will be that beneficial to other bloggers and that John Reese’s track record shows he is in it for the money. I guess only time will tell on this one.

While BlogRush is still new and less than three days old (launching date), there will be a lot of speculation on the programs performance and how "BlogRush" itself will generate money (if it ever plans to). I personally don’t have any opinions on the programs so far as it’s quite new and I haven’t been able to look at any of my initial site stats yet. However, I would love to see something like this work as it will continue to help small and large bloggers grow their presence online. How can BlogRush become the next big thing in blog promotion and what would you like to see from the network? Have you been running BlogRush (or will you), if so what are your feelings on the network?

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Gambling at Caesars Casino

Yesterday Reena and I were off to another fun filled adventure to Atlantic City. Before leaving, we headed back to my old house to pick up my mustang since the Hummer is a killer on gas and it won’t fit in the Resorts parking lot! After backing out of the drive way, I noticed the back tire was nearly flat and the front tire wasn’t looking too healthy either, so we decided to take the Hummer. It’s so much more fun to drive in anyway!

On the way down, I called my casino host at Resorts and asked if there were any other parking garages at the Resorts casino since the Hummer would not fit in their regular garage. To my surprise, my casino host told me the Resorts had just fired him! This guy was one of the best and the main reason why I went to the results, he always took care of me, comp’d my dinners and always called for new promotions going on. Even though he was recently fired, he told me to talk to vale and to let me park in the executive parking lot. I then told my host to call me as soon as he knew what casino he would be working at next. Since Resorts just fired a good friend of mine, we decided to go to Ceasars instead… not to mention the Hummer would fit in their garage fine.

Once arriving we played craps for a bit, ended up about $300… then walked over to Wild Wild West at Ballys and played a few slots. We then went back to Caesars to play some blackjack and it was horrible! Reena and I kept getting 19s and 20s, and the dealing kept matching or pulling one card higher. This happened for about 6 hands in a row, then we hit craps again for a couple throws… at this point we were now down $1200! Blackjack really killed us.

Quite disappointed with the recent gameplay, we went to the comp machine and grabbed a ticket to get dinner at the buffet. It really wasn’t that great of food, but we got to relax and get away from the games a bit. After dinner we headed downstairs again and I went to another craps table and started with a new $1200 in chips. This time I would play the dark side and play the DON’T, hoping everyone sevens out and won’t hit their point. Basically everyone did that and no one hit their point for six turns…. then it was my turn to throw. I switched over to the PASS LINE and ended up throwing for about a half an hour and hit four points. After I finally sevened out, we played a bit more and eventually left the table up $1350… which put us ahead for the night!

At the end of the day it was a pretty good trip. It’s quite unfortunate that results had to fire my awesome casino host, I’m hoping he gets a job at a casino where I might actually stay the night! Resorts is offering me free leather jackets, free luggage and a free toaster oven over the next two weeks, so I might head down and pick them up. Otherwise, I probably won’t head back to Resorts unless they are offering an incentive… I could pretty much write a whole new blog just based off what’s happen with Resorts.

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Where Did All The Good Affiliate Programs Go?

Recently my good friend Jim Kukral made a video expressing his concern and annoyance with affiliate networks on the "BIG" networks, such as Commission Junction and Linkshare. Jim wanted to promote an offer through BestBuy, which is run through Commission Junction. Unfortunately CJ likes to automatically delete accounts once they go inactive for a couple months. The happened to Jim’s account, so he had to make a new one. Once signing up again, he had to apply to the BestBuy affiliate program and had to wait four days to get a response back… and the response was, "your application was not approved".

I can relate to how Jim feels and I have experienced the same thing several times over. I have not used Commission Junction or Linkshare for nearly three years now because I hate the way their networks are setup. Back when I first was starting out running my own affiliate programs, I had several merchant accounts on CJ and one master affiliate account. Through CJ I had paid out several hundreds of thousands over the course of around two years. In addition to paying out a ton in commissions, I was also earning a ton too. My affiliate account had earnings in the six figure range… but apparently that didn’t matter to CJ. Once I stopped using that affiliate account for a few months, it was deactivated. I contacted CJ and they told me to create a new account. So what about all my data and awesome stats!?.. they didn’t care, it was now lost.

Several years later and I have experienced the same thing multiple times. I find a new offer that is through CJ that I want to check out, then I post a few links here and there, then log in a few months later and my account is deactivated again. I think my latest account with them is my fifth.

So last night I was setting up my new office room and it has a lot of furniture in it from Bombay Company. I decided to check out the site and saw they have an affiliate program, through LinkShare. I really wanted to join the program since I would promote the offer and also buy some furniture through the site as well. It’s been a while since I logged into my LinkShare account, but it was nice to see they didn’t delete my account like CJ does. I logged in, found the offer and and applied. I also added ZacJohnson.com as a new site to my profile, thinking any affiliate program would obviously see my site and how it says "Super Affiliate" and would easily accept the application.

This morning I received a response from Bombay Company’s affiliate manager, and (not) to my surprise, they have denied my account, stating my web site was one of the following: Inability to access Web site, Web site not yet live, Traffic levels too low, Inappropriate material on site. I assume they did find relevant content, as none of the above apply. It’s a shame to have affiliate management in place that would deny a site which states it’s a "Super Affiliate", and has a previous post showing $10k in earnings with another network.

In Jim’s video he talked about how he just wanted to go to BestBuy and other large companies directly. I completely agree, but unfortunately most site and companies do not have the management or knowledge to do so… so they pay too much and outsource to larger networks and miss out on possible opportunities to work with big players like Jim and myself, just because they don’t know better, or provide better and more personal support. The moral of this is posting is that no matter how big or small your branding name or company is, you can always improve your affiliate management and support. As for other large affiliate networks out there, I’m sure deleting accounts saves you some costs on data storage, but deleting accounts of big earning affiliates is just ridiculous. I’ve been in this game long enough to understand how things should be run and so many companies out there are way under par.

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$10,000 in Earnings with NeverBlueAds

I’ve been an affiliate with NeverBlueAds for quite a while now, but I had stopped using their network for quite a long period of time. It was nothing personal or against the network, I was simply running offers elsewhere. It wasn’t till I met up with my friend and VP of Affiliate Marketing at NeverBlueAds, Jordan at AdTech and we talked about setting a few campaigns again. Once I got back home, I set up a few links on my network of sites and the rest is history. April was my first month of generating revenue with them and I ended up with $1950 in earnings… five months later and several updates later, I am now pleased to announce I passed the five figure mark with NeverBlueAds in August, ending the month with $10,818 in earnings.

Keep in mind, I did not go from having nothing to making $1950 in that first month. I had a network of web sites to run offers on, but there has been plenty of testing and monetization along the way. Anyone can have a high traffic site and throw offers up on them and make a few bucks, but continually increasing your earnings is the skill to master. Even with the summer slow down, I was able to continually increase earnings with NeverBlue Ads. Some easy steps to improve monetization on your sites are, using blue text links, change advertisement placements through your sites, test hot zones and see where people are clicking. Another tip that will almost always improve your numbers is to USE BLUE TEXT LINKS instead of AD BANNERS. People want content, not advertisements. Blend in affiliate offers with your site content and your clicks and conversions will soar!

Earnings from April through July were mainly all from general site traffic across my network of sites. It wasn’t til the end of July that I started to play around in the ppc market. PPC is definitely what helped push me over the $10k mark in August. Just like placing advertisements on a web site, PPC is all about monetization, but can be even more risky as you are backing ad dollars behind every click. NeverBlueAds has an awesome variation of ads to test in the ppc market.

While I’ve been super busy over the past two weeks moving into my new place, I have had a few ppc campaigns on auto-run. It’s a lot of fun to see your commissions increase daily, while on auto-pilot, but my credit cards are also getting billed on autopilot! Be sure to set limit campaigns and keep an eye on your campaign results, a few bad days of low conversions or overspending, can kill your profits for the month. Take a look at some of the new offers on NeverBlueAds and test how the PPC market performs for you.

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