Does Starting Out Small Mean You’ll Never Grow to be Great?

I was surfing the net, and stumbled across this page on Doshdosh about a CashCrate Review. With the check Maki got a whopping $5.28(picture is still hosted on a free image server). This got me thinking that everyone who starts out needs to start from somewhere. Back in 2006, it seems like Maki was doing quite a bit of reviews on Get-Paid-To websites, until moving onto the internet marketing niche which seems to be more of the focus nowadays.

What’s the point of this post, your probably asking. I was just looking for a little bit of inspiration I guess. Knowing that another person who is currently successful in gathering a large audience also started out by doing programs like CashCrate is always enlightening. Especially if the first CashCrate check I got was bigger. It just means that I need to work harder, try out more programs, and find new things to do.

Its also good to know that people can change around or maybe change the focus of what their blog’s talk about over the course of time. Its nice to know that blogs or the topic of blogs can evolve at the same time that the writer grows and matures. Sometimes for worse, but most of the time for the better. Who knows what I’ll be writing about a year from today. Will I still be logged into World of Warcraft making gold to sell? Will my blog still be about me making money online?

Are you a blogger that is just starting out? What plans do you have a year from now? What inspires you or what makes you keep going?

Popularity: 1% [?]

ScratchBack – Tip The Blogger, Get a Link Back

Back at the beginning of October after I read a TechCrunch article about it, I had put up a widget on my side back called Scratchback. Since at the time I was preparing for my Cozumel trip, I had completely forgotten to write up a post about it. Better late than never I guess eh?

What is Scratchback?

Its an online tipping system that gives back to the tippers by allowing a publisher to “give back” links or images in return.

Isn’t selling links bad? Won’t I get penalized by Google?

Notably, the system has been approved by Google (they checked) as every link is “nofollow” and the widgets are built in javascript; this is a product that provides an alternative advertising model that won’t see publishers punished in future Google crackdowns.

What kind of templates are available?

There are quite a few different colors, but it seems like you can’t customize them fully by setting your own bgcolor.

Does it cost me anything to sign-up?

No it doesn’t, and you can actually make some money if someone gives you a tip.

Do I have to let someones link on my site if I don’t like the contents?

You are under no obligation to show or approve any listing you find questionable for ANY reason. There are no refunds either. Your readers are tipping you for your efforts.

How Do I Get Paid?

Payments for earnings are ONLY paid through PayPal. If you don’t have a valid, working PayPal account, you shouldn’t use Scratchback as a publisher because you won’t ever get paid. In the future we may add alternative payment methods so stayed tuned. Payments are made at the end of a thirty-day cycle. It can take up to 15 days to remit payment to your PayPal account at the end of each cycle. Publishers must earn at least $25 to initiate payment.
Note: Current payout is set at $10 according to this updated post.

How Much Do I Charge For My Top Spot?

Totally up to you (minimum $1.00). We suggest you set your pricing for tips based on your own perceived value of your website or blog. Mine is currently set at a bargain price of $1 until it fills up. I’ll raise the price after the 10 slots are filled.

Does ScratchBack charge a fee or commission?

Yes, after Paypal fees they collect 10%, and give you 90% of the tip now. This is a lot better than the 50% they first opened up the program. The change was noted here in this post.

Okay I signed up for Scratchback how can I let people know I have the widget?

There is a blog post here that you can comment on. There is also a Scratchback user directory which has free listing.

I hope that takes care of any questions regarding Scratchback. Did I do a good job? You could always Scratch my back. =) Like I said earlier, for a limited time I will put tip cost at $1.00 until it fills up, after that I’ll think about raising the tip jar.

Popularity: 1% [?]

WhyPark Update – Paying $100 For Templates

Some news from the WhyPark Creator Craig this month. Also if you are a website developer here is an opportunity for you too.

We Want to Buy Your Templates

A common request from WhyPark users is “add more templates!” We are planning on continually adding more templates, but would like to reach out to our user base first. If you’ve developed or would like to develop new templates for WhyPark and we think your template will be a good fit for other WhyPark users, we’ll pay you $100 for each template we use. To submit your template for consideration, please do the following:

Reply to this message or email craig @ whypark.net with the links to your custom templates in action on WhyPark

Your template must be unique that you developed and have the right to use and sell (you will be required to sign a short release form)

We are looking for templates that can be used across a wide variety of domains and subjects.

If your template is accepted, we will pay you $100 by PayPal and will add your template to our gallery for all users to use and enjoy!

Server Improvements

We are constantly monitoring our servers for uptime and capacity. We are in the process of making several upgrades to our network for improved server capacity and to help display your sites quicker and more reliably. We will send you an email notice if there is any planned downtime related to these upgrades.

Upcoming Additions

We have a number of new projects in the works right now and plan on releasing a number of new features in the first months of 2008. Watch for integrated statistics, tools to help import and manage your domains, shared revenue opportunities, and subscription and managed services.
Quick WhyPark Tip

The best performing WhyPark sites tend to be niche sites with focused keywords. Rather than using very general terms to get a large number of articles on your site, try using more focused, niche terms. The result will be a smaller site, but very focused on one theme. This will help search engines and visitors see your site as an authority on the subject.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Sparter CEO Dan Kelly Interview

Sparter doesn’t usually put up blog posts so when this one came through I thought it was an interesting read. Its an interview of CEO Dan Kelly of Sparter done by Usable Markets Alex Kirtland.

Some interesting information from the interview for me was these points from Dan Kelly:

Globally there is a 2 billion dollar per year business for digital items in all the online games, from World of Warcraft to Maple Story, mainly centered on games in the Korean, North American and European markets.

Imagine that, a whole economy worth 2 billion dollars that could basically be erased if someone formatted each game company’s hard drive.

A typical seller makes enough to play World of Warcraft for free – about $200 a year – but some make a lot more than that.

I chuckled at this one since I find making gold fairly easily. Why would someone just make a few hundred, and leave? I guess the answer to that is that I know a lot of people who stop playing wow, and just sell off their gold/characters never to come back to the game again.

Some guilds in WoW, for example, only want to raid. They prefer to buy the gold they need and focus their time — 20-50 hours per week — on the parts of the game they love most. This is not a bad thing.

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess. I remember raiding with a not so full guild, and we were always hurting for certain classes or consumables. While hard core role players hate people who just buy a lvl 70 character or buy gold just to get mounts or gear instead of instancing. There are times when those people just shut up just to have that extra player or character around. This way the whole guild can experience end game raids, and get further ahead. The 20-50 hours a week raiding adds up, and when you have to farm for repair costs or consumables you either have to play WoW full time, make a lot of gold efficiently, or straight up buy gold to stay ahead in progress.

We think that online communities will continue to grow at very attractive rates. As they get bigger, more people will want to trade. And the secondary markets will have to be there because otherwise they’re absence will hold back the growth of the primary markets.

The black market for gold in World of Warcraft or currency in other games will always exist as long as it takes a certain amount of time required to maintain a character. The key is the time required to acquire those items. There’s no black market currency for games like Dota, Team Fortress, Counterstrike since all players start out equal with items being reset at each session. However once you start involving time or ranks a market will appear to sell that service to save you time. Even if one were to try, and stop a virtual black market. They would just find another way to sell the services without getting caught.

Popularity: 1% [?]

October Income Totals – Happy Halloween

Well first off I would like to say Happy Halloween to all of you. May you have a safe Trick or Treating. Without much further ado here are my totals for the month of October, and I think I did a little bit better this month. Which by the way marks Money News’s 2 month Anniversary.

October Totals – $199.29
Sparter – $133.65
ClickBank – $49.32
CashCrate – $11.38
Adsense – $4.94 (blog/Whypark test combined)

Well I guess I did a lot better than last month, but I didn’t hit my goal of 20k gold like I was planning to. Mainly due to lack of diligence since I was tired after coming home from my job, and not logging into WoW to check the Auction House. I was only able to hit 14k gold before I decided to sell some off before the commission rates jumped in November. Also to get some extra spending money since Sparter will start paying out bi-monthly instead of nightly starting November. It looks like that there are many people cashing out now as the prices for WoW gold has dropped another $10/1k to $40/1k now.

My Adsense figures only show the totals of this blog due to Google’s channel reports being screwed up mid month right when I had a spike of visitors from Slashdot about the Bill Gates Denied Visa to Nigeria article.

I’ll be expecting my November totals to be lower however since I’ll be taking a vacation for a few weeks. Yes, I’ll be leaving my beautiful island of Maui to visit some friends out in Texas, and then onto Mexico. Anyone live down on Cozumel that I can come visit while I’m down there? Maybe hijack your computer so I can check my e-mail? Maybe install WoW so I can check my auctions? =)