Now just how does that work for heavens sake because it drives me insane – I check and recheck the Linksys router and all the little green lights are lit as they should be and yet STILL I sit there un-logged in! normally I would have a little more patience but right now I am in the middle of blogging for the kids xmas presents and have a stack of assignments building up which need publishing. Obviously I am logged in right now but had a terrible time this morning with the connection and thought I would never get anything done today – oh, forgot to mention too – I finally got that job at Tesco and can be found stacking shelves in the cold food section twice a week. Well, it’s money – but such a long way from owning a hotel in the south of France…

I like my money there when I want it so I have applied for Paypal’s debit card – it has a chip and Visa symbol so you can use it online. I’m a bit nervous about the clause stating if the underwriting bank, RBS, goes under the card and any funds in it will be lost, but right now I am confident that RBS will be solvent for a while yet.

Actually, I intend to load the card with funds only when I need them so I wont have it sitting topped up with too much for too long a period of time.

I do a lot of online shopping so it will serve it’s purpose and I can get at my cash as soon as it hits my paypal account. I would recommend it to people who do paid blogging – the application only takes five minutes.

A while back I wrote suggesting a number of these sites for those of you who were looking to get started on making some money from your blogs; all of them are well known by bloggers but they all differ and I have found that some are worth the time and other’s really are not…

I signed up with BlogtoProfit last year and received a batch of assignments to complete; they came in a spreadsheet format back then. I completed them and got paid pretty quickly. But that was it…no more tasks sent out.

Just recently I noticed they have a whole new look to their site so I signed up again and duly received three tasks. Completed them and should be paid soon – I have no doubt that they are on the level in that respect. But I have a feeling those three tasks will be ‘it’ for about another year. They seem to send you initial signing up jobs and then…nothing.

Oh well, but I would be interested to know what other bloggers experiences have been with regards to this company.

Now, back at the beginning we talked about setting up your own blog; choosing a domain, settling on a theme, finding a host, making the time to write. Then we talked about the opportunities to start earning money through writing on your own blog…so now, several months later…how’s it going ??

By now you should have some PR; you should have some readership and even comments; you’ve settled into your stride and I will bet anything that your blog and your writing style have evolved even over the past few months. Look back over those first posts…are you saying the same thing now as then…or have you taken on a whole new direction?  chances are the latter. The more we write the better we write – never forget that.    

Now about the money side of things. It is time you got yourself into gear and start earning some money. The best place by far to kick off that new career is with SocialSpark so get on over there now and get yourself signed up. Don’t forget the newsletter either…that will be one important way to stay up to date with everything that is happening. You will get the chance to put your writing style to work; you will make new contacts, increase your traffic…and make money. Make money. That’s what it’s all about. And having fun too of course…

Take a deep breath and follow the link…start building that empire now !

Bloggerwave are a European-based company offering bloggers to chance to earn cash with great assignments which are not only easy to write up but cover a range of categories which should slot nicely into your blogging theme.  It is easy to sign up and you can usually start earning cash straightaway.

This is a great company which is really taking off and particularly suits bloggers in and around Europe – they are certainly giving the other companies a run for their money.

So, how’s it going?

By now you should be well along in your blogging ( I even got my sister involved in doing this ) and so it is time to start getting paid for doing this – if you haven’t done so already.

There are a good number of blog advertising sites around and I am signed up with several – you will note some paid posts on this site from time to time – and so far, with one or two exceptions, I am pretty happy with the rewards. I’m not going to be a millionaire by any means but the cash has been steadily banking up and has financed birthdays and some nice purchases along the way, as well as some of the usual bills.

Here are some companies worth signing up with; I have chosen them as their registration process is simple and they pay up with no hassles. Keep in mind though that your blog will be accepted more readily if you have a nice layout, good spelling/grammar ( we covered this earlier on ) and no links to any porn/gambling sites.

* Sponsored Reviews  – You bid a price for the Opps you want to do. They contact you if you get them. Good company.

* Pay Per Post - Very popular but have had their issues recently. You must post with do-follows and really need a decent Google page rank to get a good choice of Opps. Avoid those Opps with a ’sponsored by’ button as Google tracks these and slaps your PR. Can be very lucrative work though.

* Social Spark - The new IZEA venture (who also run PPP). Exciting in some ways but yet to prove themselves. You get loads of chances to increase your links and get some jobs as well. Friendly company – good for starters too.

* Smorty - easy for starters to sign up. No issues with them at all but not a get-rich-quick company.

* PayU2Blog - Am happy enough with them. Easy jobs – paid every two weeks. Most tasks are $5.00 for 60 words which anyone can handle but you have to avoid your posts being too spammy. They send you a group of Opps each week – anywhere from 5 to 7 opps at a time and you have a time limit to submit them. Regular cash.

* LoudLaunch - Great company with good Opps but they take several months to approve a blog; they are ‘choosy’ about the blogs they accept so make sure your content is good.

These companies are all based in the US but accept bloggers from all over the world; their sign up process is easy and takes about 3-5 days to be approved. Should they reject your blog they usually give you a reason and allow you to correct any issue and resubmit your blog.  Here’s some companies which I have had experience with but don’t recommend too highly for beginners:

* Review Me - As for Loud Launch; choosy and quite sporadic with the assignments. I’ve been with them for 8 months and have received no Opps at all.

* Blogsvertise – Not enough work from them to rate too highly but they pay up quickly enough. They insist on do-follows in their Opps.

* Bloggerwave – a company that we had high hopes for as it is Europe based. Very little work from them but a great concept if they could only expand more. More like a challenge to PPP but it hasn’t happened as yet.

* SnapBomb - A new company but it is not for me. I have posted for them on two occasions and nothing since. They don’t pay out for a ridiculous ninety days !

* BuyBlogReviews - I do not understand their format at all. Have placed several bids for Opps months ago and heard nothing since. I’d like to hear from anyone who has received an Opp from this company.

So there you go; go and get signed up and pay particular attention to their Terms of Service. They pay you on an average of between 2 weeks to 30 days depending on the company – and you will need a PayPal account. Just the basic one to start out with will do.

Have you noticed how so many financial sites take themselves rather too seriously; Investor Blogger adopts a cool and casual approach to investing, money and making money in general. As someone who tries to do the same thing (ahem) I found myself taking a more detailed look than I usually do. One article that is covered recently is one that many of you will find more than relevant – Pay Per Post & Social Spark. I think this issue has received more mileage than any other in recent months and is one that I suspect will not go away in the near future. As I am involved in a way I found myself agreeing with the article and there are a lot of points to make you think if you blog for money yourself.

Another article that grabbed my attention was regarding a post about the software Journyx; this is a product I was thinking about for our own business – a relative of mine markets her own timesheet software so I was feeling rather obliged to give her’s a gamble. Problem is the boss was hung up on Journyx; not anymore though thanks to the info I gleaned from this post. I’m adding this blog to my feedburner as while I write about similar things I’d like to be keep informed as well.

Spelling/Grammar…

I just had to start with this, the reason? I just deplore bad spelling and poor grammar. I have looked at some great looking blogs but when I’ve started to read the articles felt really disappointed.  If you are going to blog in english then use correct english! okay, if your grammar is not quite up to scratch then you will not be an isolated case, but please get the spelling correct. There’s nothing worse than badly spelt words that are easily found in the dictionary. Bear in mind that many advertisers will refuse to pay for spelling/grammar mistakes now; also, your readership will suffer – no-one wants to read poorly written articles. It gives the impression that you really do not care about what you are doing.

Research…

When you are writing a sponsored post about a particular item/service put some effort into doing a little research before you write. You want your readers to believe what they are reading and more importantly you need to show the people paying you that you at least know what you are talking about. If you have accepted an assignment to write about an item/service  that is a little out of your field of knowledge then do some googling and don’t try to say too much otherwise you will just be talking drivel. Having said that, I have at times myself written some rather creative drivel – it’s all down to developing your style.

Be creative!…

Those words speak for themselves. We all have some imagination and there are many ways in which you can say the one thing, but mind you do not repeat yourself over and over. I recently read an obviously sponsored post on a well ranking blog and in just one paragraph the writer said ‘you must visit this site’…’you really must visit this site’…’so why don’t you visit this site?’ . Get the idea ? once was enough. Another tip when writing a paid post is to heed the advertiser’s requirements…do they want a positive or neutral opinion, or are they giving you full rein to say whatever you like? Remember, do not be too negative (unless the advertiser asks for such, but it is very rare) and whilst promoting their product or service don’t write in a style that screams I am being PAID to write this!!  As I said write creatively in the style you would use as if you were writing one of your own articles – make it all blend in and look as natural as possible.

At this point, if you’ve chosen a hosting service that supports your preferred blog software (we use Wordpress) then it can be as easy as logging into the hosting control panel and clicking install. Well, not quite so easy but almost. The key thing is that your hosting service offers Fantastico which is a piece of software that you can use to install all kinds of things.

As you’ll gather from the title, this is usually the easy option for installation and we’ll go through that here using Wordpress software as an example:

1. login to your hosting account and go to the control panel;
2. select Fantastico;
3. select Wordpress (or whatever blogging software you’d like to use);
4. select New Installation;
5. select Install on domain and choose your domain from the list (which should only have one entry on it if this is your first blog);
6. you can select Install in directory but if the domain is only for your blog then I wouldn’t bother;
7. select Admin access data and enter a username and password
8. Base configuration should already be filled in but you can add a nickname for your admin account if you like (it’s simpler if it’s the same as the administrator username you used in step 7). Check your e-mail address. You can change the sitename and description later.
9. I would leave the e-mail account configuration blank for now but you need to put something in the password field.
10. Click on Install Wordpress
11. Note the MySQL username (you can change this later).
12. Click on Finish installation

And that’s it. You can login to your new blog at www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin using the admin account and password that you entered in step 7.

It’s actually not much more difficult to do without Fantastico but it’s a lot slower and we’ll cover that next time.