Why use tinyurl when you can use adf.ly?

Get paid to share your links!

Here's a pretty cool service. It allows you to share a link. For example, check out this one. It takes you to our new domain name, which currently houses our portfolio, as well as some side projects. http://adf.ly/463TV

My favorite part about adf.ly, is how much they actually pay. It's very simple to earn money with adf.ly.

The Future:

!--Digest:SKIP

Alright, so my last couple posts were products that I've used and recommend. Now, I'm going to stray away from that style of post for a while. Over the next couple days, I'm going to recommend some free promotion tools and ideas that will be best for starters, and not established businesses.

That's just a little news blip, to let you all know what's coming in the next couple days!


If you're curious, the skip bit is to tell Digest Bot to not repost this on the Digest.

Click Meeting!

Okay, so, if you've been reading ThatBlankMedia blogs for a while, you'd likely know that we recently had a writers conference in Savannah, GA. It was tons of fun, but it was also quite expensive. It allowed us to work together in way never before possible to form a vision of what the company should be in the future, but does that offset the cost?

Not by enough. Meeting in person is great, now we all know each other, but almost as good, is being able to meet whenever with Click Meeting.

ClickMeeting:
Free Trial - No credit card required

We can desktop share, we can all chat, we can do so many great things without having to spend the tons of money to actually travel. And that's why I recommend Click Meeting. It's an excellent tool to get to know your employees. To be able to work together, without having to be physically together. If you run a web business, this is invaluable, as it's impossible without drastic costs to work with your employees.

I would definitely recommend giving the free trial a shot, as it could easily transform your web-business.

Empire avenue confirmation post

{EAV_BLOG_VER:74556e2ddf9eafe5}

If you don't know what this is, you will in the not-so-distant future!

Another tweet program?

Yeah, that's right. There is another tweet program option. Tweet Adder, while absolutely amazing, is pretty pricey. Enter, Social Oomph!

Even has a free version!

Okay I'm not going to lie to you. Tweet Adder can be quite expensive. At $55 for the basic, it's a large investment. Especially for the small net business that it's going to help most. However, Social Oomph has a free version (granted, not as much functionality as the paid version). Now, it doesn't do as much for twitter as Tweet Adder does, but it also works with facebook fan pages, which is what I use it for. 

I would definitely recommend giving the free version a try, it makes using twitter and facebook to grow your website so much easier than trying to get by doing everything manually. 

Never underestimate the ability to schedule tweets. In marketing terms, this is incredibly valuable.

Tweet Adder - Great program.

Great program!

Tweet Adder is amazing. I use it with my corporate projects. I recommend it to all of my clients. It has been one of my biggest industry secrets, but now I'll share it with you.

Now, I'm not going to give you their sales pitch. But, the fact is, it works. It grows your followers, it grows your brand, and it drives you real traffic to your blog or website.

It works in multiple ways. First, you tell the program who your target audience is. It then finds people inside of your target audience, and follows or messages them. Then, it auto-tweets content from your blog/website for you, with links! And, it really does work.

YouSayToo

Typically, I prefer to test out every new potential income source on a blog-by-blog basis, as what works for one blog may not work for another. However, YouSayToo is immune to this standard of mine. This is because of the way it works. YouSayToo is a content rehosting service. Whatever you post, is duplicated to the YouSayToo website, where it is shared with a great number of readers - more than your blog can reach on it's own.

Not only does YouSayToo share the revenue with you from the rehost, but they also send you tons of traffic. I've implemented it on one of my blogs so far, and it's increased traffic dramatically. I really enjoy their service.

Don't you deserve more from your blog?

Guest post from Breaku, on "The List"

Hey guys, I'm Breaku. I write for That Blank Media frequently, but never for the advertising blog.

I'm here to explain what "The List" can do for you and your blog and why you should try to get on it.

"The List" is a list of blogs, currently featuring 71, that are fast loading with both Entrecard and Adgitize on them. If you're a user of either of those systems, then you know how important it is to actually be able to find the blogs that use these systems. If you don't drop your entrecard, you won't receive drops, ergo; lower traffic. If you don't click the adgitize ads, you'll have fewer points hurting your income.

As an experiment, I went one week clicking/dropping on only the blogs on the list. Investing no further time to finish and reach 100 (which, the list will hopefully have those numbers soon).

The results were incredible. My Adgitize earnings went up greatly, those 71 points were excellent, and I was able to break into the Adgitize leaderboards for last month, which earned me a backlink.

Entrecard saw similar results. Not only did I have more credits to advertise with, but many people will return drops! I went from 8th ranked Politics Blog, to 4th ranked that week. The cost to advertise on my blog capped out at over 256 credits, and my cards dropped on me increased by 60%.

Then, just to be sure that it wasn't a fluke, I stopped using the list. My stats sunk. And quickly. I was almost as low as I was before. And I realized how useful this list can actually be.

Getting on the Easy Advertising list is simple. Post a comment here. E-mail my boss. Post a comment on the list itself. But be sure you have both Entrecard and Adgitize, or you're wasting time.

---

Breaku is a regular poster on That Politics Blog, and a Member of That Blank Media.

To leep or not to leep?

Shouldn't be a question if you're a blogger.

Is a great advertising network

I've recently discovered 2leep, and have just started using it as a test on our most popular blog in the network. It's highly customizable, and will help both your earnings and your traffic. For every click your blog generates on a non-monetary link, your blog will receive one in exchange. You then have the option to sell a percent of your displays. Clicks on the monetary links will generate you money. You can use it in unison with any other ad network (even adsense), and the increased traffic will help your bottom line with the other publishers as well.

If you'd like to see what it looks like, check out the latest post@ That Politics Blog. Under the content, before the comments, is their widget.

Advertising with Barcodes?

Scanning this with a smartphone will bring you to my blog!

QR codes are very interesting. They offer a lot of unique opportunities for bloggers and advertisers. QR codes are a perfect way to multiply your advertising. Seeing QR codes always makes people curious, because they're still pretty new. For example, placing a QR codes as my Entrecard 'card', it doubles the potential exposure.

To generate your own QR code, I'd recommend this website, they're great. http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

I'm going to play around with QR codes, and some potential ads using them, and write a more in depth guide as to how to get the most out of your QR codes.

Entrecard related widgets -- a guide!

Rather than just leave my response in the comments section, I've decided to write up a quick guide. Hopefully this will be all inclusive, if it isn't feel free to ask and I'll try to clear things up.
I recently added a new widget to this blog, one that shows the ten most recent Entrecard droppers. It's a neat widget, that allows you to get more out of dropping on this page. Setting it up is rather simple.
First, you need to obtain the RSS feed URL from Entrecard. Depending on the type of widget you'd like to add to your blog, this URL will be in one of two places.
If you want one that shows the most recent droppers, then you're going to look on your dashboard. The URL will be to the right of the card roll that is underneath the main buttons on the Entrecard page. There will be a RSS button (  ). Click it, and get the URL.
If you want one that shows the most frequent droppers, then you're going to look on your statistics page.  Under the tables section, will be a "top droppers" table. Next to that table is yet another RSS button. Grab that URL.
After you have that URL, head over to feedburner. Enter the RSS URL that you got from Entrecard, and burn it.
Once you've burned it, click the publicize tab.
From the publicize tab, click on "BuzzBoost". 
From there, it should be fairly simple. Follow feed burners prompts, and they should present you with some html code to past into a widget box. It should be a simple iframe.

Entrecard widget.

Here's a great way to get more out of dropping on my page. From now on, the ten most recent droppers on this page will be displayed underneath the follow links.

So drop to the left, and look for your blog link to the right!

Profit or fame?

There are many reasons that people blog, but most are looking to gain something.

What are you looking to gain? Would you prefer to be rich or famous? (Both are highly unlikely)

But, what I mean by that is simple. Do you blog for a few dollars here and there, or do you blog to spread your knowledge? Is it possible that you can combine the two? I feel like it is. Blogging purely for profit is boring and pointless. What good is receiving millions of hits if nobody enjoys your content enough to revisit?

Strangest Google search?

Alright, I'm curious. I don't get much search engine traffic on any of our network blogs yet, as we haven't been around very long, but some of the hits from Google that I do get are rather strange. This one is my favorite:

obama but here the


They landed on That Politics Blog, of course.

Are people really that bad at searching?
What's the strangest search hit you've received? Let me know in the comments.

Advertising Networks for Beginning Blogs

There are many advertising networks out there. Which one is best? The short answer, is none of them. Each and every one of them has pros and cons, that you'll have to examine before you use them. I'm always looking for ways to increase profits, and exploring with different advertisers is a great way to do this.




As a new blogger, Entrecard is almost a must have. Entrecard does not use cash. It uses a credit system. You will not make penny, but you will increase your exposure. Entrecard credits allow you to advertise for free, and credits are earned for 'dropping' your virtual card onto other blogs. Many of the readers at That Politics Blog came from entrecard, and a large portion of the traffic over there is from that network.



The only advertising system that gives you points for posting and being active is Adgetize. Everything you do in the Adgetize network is scored into points, these points are then converted into cash at the end of each day. Like Entrecard, you are rewarded for visiting other blogs (though, these blogs pay for their spots) but instead of being rewarded in credits, you are rewarded with points (which again, turn into cash). You also get points for each page view, and each ad view.

Another network that I use is cmf ads. CMF is unique in the products that it sells. Rather than selling displays without guaranteeing clicks, CMF sells clicks, and they're rather cheep. It also allows you to sell your adspace directly to your readers, ad prices you dictate, and pays you to click on some of the other blogs advertisements.

A new one that I've just started using is AdHitz. I don't have much feedback yet, but it's pretty nice. I feel like all of my bases are covered with the previous three, and I don't want to crowd the network with ads as readers don't like being bombarded with advertisements, but I'm experimenting with it.


There are many more networks out there, but these ones are very beginner friendly. I wouldn't recommend using any of these in conjunction with Adsense, as google is rather picky.

Golden rules of Advertising.

If you want to make money online, there are a few things you must remember. You blog or website isn't going to sprout into a full grown money tree overnight.

If you don't have traffic, advertising with you is useless.

There are plenty of ways to build traffic. You could advertise, but do you really want to invest in your money sapling? Nah, not when you're in the budding stages. What you really want to do to build traffic is gain exposure through natural means.

1) Social networks. Have a like button, have a tweet button, maybe even a dig button. Could even go as far as a stumble button. This allows people who like what your site has to offer a way to easily share it, and it reminds them to do so.

2) Build your search engine ranking. Links to your blog, your posts, anything about you, will build your ranking here. Everytime you post (or at least the good ones) tweet it, share it on facebook, Google will notice, and you'll be higher on the search rankings for it.

3) Comment on other blogs (this was my main form of advertising in the super early stages) commenting on other blogs, especially small ones with low traffic, will cause that blogger to take note of you. s/he'll become curious who you are, and check out what you have to offer. Don't be so blunt as to ask for an exchange, but genuinely interested in what he has to say.

4) Forums and other. Answer peoples questions related to your blog topic on forums, or other website (yahoo answers is great for this). Provide the best answer, then tell them they can read more at one of your blog posts and provide a link. You can gain a life-long reader.

Keep in mind, none of those things will directly earn you megabux but the money won't come without the traffic, and traffic won't come without exposure.

Getting added on the list.

The team is hard at work with some programming to automate the process, but currently we've gotta do it manually. But that's perfectly fine, it will allow us to personally choose which blogs are high enough quality to be put on the list. This is a great thing, because while it may cost us some time, it'll save you tons of time during your daily rounds. The easiest way  to do this is to just comment here (or on any post really) and I'll add you manually.

What is this for?

Hey guys, my promotions team quickly grew tired of flying through the internet looking for blogs with both Entrecard and Adgitize to get the drops/clicks we need for the day. So they've put this page together, it's a list of blogs that have both, to make clicking and dropping much easier.