Do You Need A Custom Domain To Get Traffic?

When you use free services like Blogger.com you can choose to have your blog's URL be hosted as a subdomain on blogspot.com or you can choose to purchase you're own domain. That way your blog's url will look more like money howtoNOTmakemoneyonline.com instead of someblog.blogspot.com.



From what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference in terms of traffic when you have your own domain name or you don't. It seems like more of a vanity issue. I've listed the top 30 Blogger blogs hosted using a blogspot.com subdomain below.



If you're blog starts becoming popular and you want to spend a little on it ou can get cheap domain names for under $7 a year with free WhoisGuard privacy protection for the first year at NameCheap.

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Blogger vs Wordpress

Blogging is a cheap and easy way for people who don't know how to build their own website to start making money online. All you have to be able to do is write interesting articles. Two popular free blogging platforms are Blogger and WordPress.



If you're just starting out and plan to make money blogging you should choose Blogger even though I think WordPress is a more powerful blogging platform.



It seems a little strange to not pick the best tool but I also believe in picking the right tool for the right job. As I'll explain, Blogger is better than WordPress if you're just starting out.

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AdSense Backup Ads Using Amazon Affiliate and Commission Junction

When AdSense does not have advertisers to fill your ad slot it displays a blank space by default which doesn't exactly maximize your revenue potential. A better solution is to display alternate ads. In this post I'll show you how to easily set up your AdSense Backup Ads to display either Commission Junction Smart Zones or Amazon Affiliate ads.



Both Amazon and Commission Junction run large, well respected affiliate programs that can help you earn money from space that would otherwise be left blank. The process is very simple and you only need to know some basic HTML and CSS as well as have the ability to upload files to your website.

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Strangers Won't Help You Get Rich Online!

Jeff Bezos is a founder of Amazon.com who has served as it's chairman and CEO for many years. He has a net worth of $18.4 billion mostly from the Internet.



If ever there was a man that could make a killing on the internet selling eBooks it's this guy! But he's not.



Come to think of it, why aren't Sergey Brin and Larry Page releasing "The Secrets Of Making Money Through Search Engines"!?!?!?



Is Mark Zuckerberg currently working on his "How To Build Wealth Through Social Networking Empires" seminars?



No, but some random guy you've never heard of puts up some money for a late night TV spot or a cheap webpage and you're ready to hand over your credit card number. What's the worst that can happen? You're out a few bucks right? WRONG! You can lose a whole lot more.



Checkout the video Scamworld: 'Get rich quick' schemes mutate into an online monster from theverge.com.



Also take a peek to see what The Salty Droid, who was featured in the video has to say about it here.

Why I Don't Use StatCounter To Track AdSense Clicks

A lot of people have been using services like StatCounter to track AdSense clicks as well as for gathering other information about their website visitors.

StatCounter is the most popular free service that offers the ability to track AdSense, Amazon and other affiliate ad clicks but I don't mean to single them out. I think it's a bad idea in general to give access to information about your site's visitors and what AdSense, Amazon or other affiliate ads your visitors click on. It is something that could potentially reduce your earnings.

Not many things in life are free and it's hard to imagine a company is giving you access to their service and not getting anything out of it. They have servers and bandwidth to pay for as well as salaries for their staff.

StatCounter claims that they make their revenue through advertisements on their website, they do not put ads on your site and you can even have their tracker hidden so it's not visible on your website. But is StatCounter getting more out of the deal?

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Inline Contextual Text Popup Ads with Amazon and Blogger

Google has been making a lot of improvements to their free blogging platform, Blogger.com.

One of these recent changes has been the integration of Blogger with the Amazon Affiliate program.



Now you can easily link your blog with your Amazon Associates tracking id. One of the benefits is you can quickly and easily add affiliate links to products on Amazon.com by using the Amazon Product Finder that is located next to your post editor.

Just type search for the product you want and click to insert a text, image or advanced link+image link which includes pricing information.



This is a lot faster than logging into Amazon's affiliate site, searching for the product, choosing the appropriate tracking id, setting the options to match your site's template then copying and pasting the code. It's even better if you usually add plain image links. In the past you had to download the image and then upload it to blogger. Not anymore!





You can also use your Amazon Associates account and blogger to include contextual inline text pop up ads in your blog posts. When your guest hovers over a link a small pop-up will appear showing the details of the product. Here's how to do it.

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