Day 31 We take a look at the Google Adsense Referral Program

Google AdSense have a referral system than can help you to further monetise your site. The four options that are available from my AdSense setup are..

1. Google AdSense - Ad Revenue for publishers
2. Google AdWords - Targeted online advertising
3. FireFox plus Google Toolbar - Improved web browsing
4. Picasa Photo - organization software

Depending on where you are located, more options may also be available to you.

Please note, it is best to check their website for up to date information, below is a summary only of the main points.

Google AdSense
This referral involves you placing an advert or link on your page, that offers the opportunity for visitors to your website to sign up and monetise their website. Once they have earned $100 US through the program, You will be payed $100 US. (They need to do it in under 180 days)

Google AdWords
You can also advertise Google AdWords. If an advertiser that has not advertised with Google before signs up through your referral and spends $100 (within 90 days of signup) your account will be`credited with $20.

FireFox plus Google Toolbar
When a user downloads and installs FireFox (that has not downloaded FireFox before) as per your referral, you will be paid $1-00. Certainly a great way to increase usage for a browser that many of us prefer to Internet Explorer.

Picasso Photo
Picasa is an application that allows you to easily organize and edit your pictures. Picasa also makes advanced editing and picture sharing simple. Visit them here Picasa website. When a user downloads and installs Picasso you will be paid $1-00. Again money for encouraging people to use a great application.

So there you have it, four more ways that you can earn money online, and help promote some cool products at the same time.

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 29 - First tastes of success with Sports Betting in the Million Dollar Experiment Down Under

Both our bets came through over the weekend, hopefully the beginning of a bright future earning additional money via "Smart" Sports Betting.

Houston beat the New York Knicks, and Clistjers won the tennis. In all only a profit of 90 cents however you would need to put your ten dollars in the bank for a year to get that kind of return.

The big question is how often to big upsets happen? If you bet 10 times at odds of 1.10 it only takes one loss to lose any money that you have gained, so it would be interesting to know if for example big upsets happened at least 10% of the time or less often than that.

Also some sports must be bigger risks than others, if for example you are betting on a tennis player and they happened to injure themselves you can easily lose your money. However this is less likely to happen in a team sport.

What are the best safest sports to bet on? It would be interesting to know if there are any statistics anywhere which showed the average percentage of upsets in a particular sport. If anyone knows of such a site please let me know.

Other avenues of income appear to be very quiet at the moment, we are however hoping for a more productive week ahead.

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 27 - Place your Bets, Hang on Tight, its Sports Betting Time!

You may remember last week we had a short sharp welcoming experience to the world of "Sports Betting" (If you missed it you can read it here.)

To cut a long story short we placed a bet against the NZ Knights soccer team, expecting them to lose (like they had for the previous 7 weeks in a row.) however... they of course proceeded to win. Although I hope the Knights win many more times in the future, they can no longer count on any assistance from me. (Sorry guys your on your own!)

Sports Betting is like anything, you try, you make mistakes and if you are smart you learn from your mistakes and only make them once. For us the lessons we learnt were...

1/ Don't bet on soccer, because of the nature of the game, it is easy for it to result in a draw, or a win to the unfavoured team. (As of course happened )
2/ Home advantage - if a team often loses, the time they win will more often than not be in front of a home ground.

With these new found lessons behind us and another week of sport approaching two new bets have been placed. This time we have gone with Tennis and American Basketball.

The tennis bet is...

K Clijsters vs E Dementieva - $5-00 head to head bet on
Clijsters paying $1-08

Following on from our successful betting on NBA Basketball last week we have decided to give it another shot.

The NBA Basketball bet is...

Houston Rockets vs New York Knicks - $5-00 head to head bet on Houston
paying $1-10

We have been extremely conservative this week, making the kind of bets that even a parent would be proud of, in the face of the facts that we must win continually to make this work. Although the returns may be small the chances of winning are high.

This post will be updated with the results as soon as they are available. Please wish us luck!

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 26 - Are frequent Quality Posts better than Daily Posts?

A decision has been made over the last few days, to stop trying to post every single day, and combine a few days events and ideas into a less regular post of more substance.

Have you ever noticed, that a large article, that sits for three or four days, without other articles being continually plonked on top of it seems to develop better feedback from visitors to your site?

Million Dollar Project Update - The Sports Betting Project gets another whirl this weekend, and I am looking for tips from anyone that knows of any "Sure Thing" match ups happening. (Please don't mention the Kiwi Rugby league team or the All Blacks, as much as I support these teams I cannot bet on them, as that is my number 1 rule)

Visitors to this blog, have been providing a few new income ideas, like payperpost and a site that pays for your articles Associated Content however I have been unable to join either at this stage. (Payperpost require a blog at least 90 days old and associated content require you to be a legal US citizen).

Thanks for the ideas Cybercelt and Elizabeth , please keep them coming!

Blog Carnivals, I have always heard they are a good way of advertising your blog, so have joined up on one Martin has instigated, you can read about it on his blog it sounds like a great idea, and its all about submitting money making articles which suits the topic of this blog. If you are interested in submitting an article yourself you can check it out here , thanks Martin for another great idea.

Look forward to hearing any sports tips for the weekend, or any more money making ideas that can be investigated as the Million Dollar Experiment continues...

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 24 - I Hate working 5 Days a Week - Show me the Money!

Are we humans really as smart as we think? For many of us it is the norm to work 9am until 5pm, at least 5 days a week, then some of us work on the weekends and week nights as well!

Why don't we work 3 days a week, do away with the lunch breaks and wasted time, achieve the same amount of work and have a four day weekend.

Going to work appears to be the biggest waste of time there ever was, yet as children we are trained into believing that this is the way we should spend our WHOLE lives. Maybe if we are are lucky we can retire at 65 and have a few fun filled years when our time is finally our own.

We are so tired after working all week that it takes the whole weekend to recover then we go straight back to work. (Intelligent species eh?)

Is it possible that the economy would actually be better off if the average worker worked 3 days a week? ( it would have to be rostered of course)

As I don't think my country or Government is going to do this for me, I have taken matters into my own hands, and now work flat out, trying to make this happen for myself and my family. I don't want to spend my whole life working, would rather spend it playing with my kids, and enjoying what life has to offer.

Will a company employ someone for only 3 days a week? Well its really up to them, if you are good enough at what you do, you should be able to sell it to them.

Imagine actually looking forward to going to work, after a very long weekend every single week...

So how can we make this happen?, well first of all it would help to earn One Million Dollars, (join the experiment) then we can use this money to provide the additional passive income that is required to make up the 2 days work that we will be missing out on, plus a bit extra for that extra spending that you will be doing. You may find that the extra time that you have will allow your creative thinking to return, and many great opportunities will be uncovered.

You are welcome to join me on the journey that I take to achieve this goal, will sheer willpower and the intention to bring one million dollars into ones life be enough?

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into mylife and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Can a Million Dollars be Earned from a Website?

Over the last month several online revenue streams have been evaluated as the Million Dollar Experiment Down Under has progressed. Whenever you are attempting to achieve something like the task that has been set, as things progress it is important to evaluate what has been working, what hasn't and change course accordingly.

The revenue streams that have been focused on to date are primarily..

• Sports Betting
• Google AdSense
• Donations
• Trademe (NZ's Version of Ebay)

The traffic building methods we have tried include

• Blog Explosion type sites
• Swapping Links with other Blogs
• Technorati Tags
• Article Writing
• Commenting on other Blogs

Revenue Stream Analysis

Sports Betting - This did not get off to a great start, and I think that you need to be extremely careful if this type of revenue avenue is to be explored, do not spend to much time or money on it would be my advice to date. However maybe more careful research is required on my part.

Google AdSense - I continue to be impressed with the AdSense model, it has been a reliable source of income for this blog, and although a very minor amount of money is involved it has the potential to exponentially increase along with Blog traffic. I highly recommend Google AdSense as a revenue earning tool. If you want to sign up for AdSense, you can do via the image link to the right. (This link will send you to Google AdSense and list this site as the referrer. When you earn your first 100 $ I will also receive a payment)

Donations - To date I have earned nothing from the donations requested on this site. However that does not mean that they are not worthwhile, it would only take 1 decent donation and that could far outweigh Google Money.

Trademe - Unfortunately have not really had anything worthwhile to sell to date, this is definitely worth more focus going forwards, because it is a great way to make money.

Building Traffic

Blog Explosions - Although I was initially quite keen on the idea behind these, I have changed my mind somewhat. For one thing from what I can gather Google AdSense appears to frown upon them, and also most of the visitors that you would gain from such a program are often not really interested in the content of your site. Still probably worth listing your site with them however, a link is a link. I would however rather get my traffic the old fashioned way, through blood, sweat and tears!

Swapping Links - A number of the visitors to this site come from other sites that have linked to this one, another nice feature of linking to others is that it helps your Techorati Ranking. So remember if you are looking to boost your Technorati Ranking, and don't mind helping me out at the same time, please place a link on your site and let me know via a comment on this blog. I will then place a reciprocal link on this site. Thanks to all the great sites that have linked to me in the past, which has also helped me expand the content of this site by linking to them.

Technorati Tags - I cant really say that I get a lot of traffic from Technorati, however it is important to tag your blog appropriately as this makes it a lot easier for people to find it! Hopefully as the site matures more traffic will be fed from the Technorati Portal.

Article Writing - Writing is what this blog is all about really, I look forward to submitting some of the articles to places like ezinearticles in the future. At this stage I have not submitted any from this particular blog, however have received hits from my other blog via articles so realize that it can be a nice solution in the hunt for long term traffic generation ideas.

Commenting - I have found that commenting on other blogs is a good way to get a return visit and often a return comment as well! Most bloggers are interested in the people that comment and read their blogs, so this method of traffic generation is a great one!

Be sure to check back regularly for updates on our Project, it is turning out to be a very interesting journey!

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Sports Betting Results from Today - And Steve Pavlinas Forum goes live

Well unfortunately for me the NZ Knights ended an 8 match losing streak and beat Queensland today, isnt that always the way? They didnt need a new coach, and heap of new buy in players, all they needed was for me to start betting against them, and suddenly they are a new team!

The Basketball went well for me however, Detroit came through as expected despite a few nervous moments. All up over the two events a loss of NZ $3-10.

I will give it another shot next week and maybe see if I can place 3 bets that cover each other off. e.g although I will bet on the favourites 1 loss will still see me getting my money back.

Steve Pavlina has his forums up and running today, you can check it out and join if you like at http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/ I will mainly be hanging out in the Business & Finance forum. My Forum name is simply Rob, hurry up and register before your name gets taken!

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 21 - The Sports Betting Project Begins

OK so far we have not found a way to make money very quickly, at this rate of $5 every 22 days it is going 12453 Years to make my million, chances are that no matter what advances are made in the next few decades, I will probably not be around to enjoy the money!

So the next phase of our project has been instigated, we could call this Plan B. We are going to bet small amounts on low odds, to try and return a small profit with little risk of losing. The first obstacle that I encountered is the minimum bet, I was planning on making $1 bets on 5 to 10 different Sports events to try and cover the occasional loss that must be expected. However I have found out today that the min bet is $5.

The next obstacle I encountered was a strange one, it appears the NZ Tab website is not IE 7 friendly and I could not view the Sports Categories in the side panel, so I then had to fire up trusty FireFox. However when submitting the bet in FireFox an error kept occurring, so I had to find the bet in FireFox and then submit it in IE.... nothing is ever easy!!

1st Bet NBA Basketball Detroit v Memphis $5-oo on Detroit to win
Return $6.30

2nd Bet Australian Soccer League NZ Knights v Queensland $5-00 Queensland to win
Return $7.40

I am hoping for some first up "Beginners Luck" because as you can see, I have not covered myself if one of the teams loses. I doubt the NZ knights will win, as they only win about once a year but are a little more nervous about the basketball bet, not knowing much about it.

Please let me know of any suggestions you may have, or any worthwhile information as to better ways to carry out this type of betting.

Fingers and toes crossed, for once I will be interested in the soccer results...

Incidentally a tremendous win by the Great Britain League team last night against Australia. Congratulations, I am sure a few punters would have lost out on that one! The look on Willie Masons face was priceless as he tasted yet again the bitter taste of defeat.

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Technorati Tags - What are they and how do they work?

Firstly lets get Technoratis defininition of what exactly a tag is!

Reference: http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

Think of a tag as a simple category name. People can categorize
their posts, photos, and links with any tag that makes sense.

You can tag a post with anything you like, you can even make up a tag! To view blog posts,that have the tag of "million dollar experiment" you can just go to this link http://technorati.com/tag/million%20dollar%20experiment and see them all.

You can view the most popular tags at http://technorati.com/tag/pop I see today the most popular tag is microsoft, followed by Iraq? Two subjects that seem to be forever talked about.

Great thats what a tag is, now how can we use this to make our posts popular and should we bother?

Well the good news for Blogger Beta users like myself is that by adding labels to our Posts, Technorati will automatically pick them up and tag them.

It is certainly worth the small amount of effort because it makes your site easier to find in the blogosphere.

The only downside to this whole process is that because effectively anyone can tag a post as anything, and it does not always mean that the tag is relevant to the content of the post. However readers will quickly get sick of sites that do not appropriately tag their content.

There is also the possibility of confusion, where one person may feel that a tag is relevant and another may not, however it is hard to make everybody happy all of the time.

Now I have to try and figure out what to tag this post with.....

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Day 19 - Article Marketing - Another way to build Website Traffic

Writing articles is a great way to help create traffic to your website. In the past with the JobHunters sites I have submitted articles to Ezine Articles.

They don't pay anything to you for the article, however they do allow you to include quite a bit of self promotion down the bottom of the piece that you submit to them. (It is best not to try and abuse the actual article content, tempting as it may be to fill it full of links to your site, they will simply not allow it to be published.)

I just looked at one of my articles that I published a couple of months ago and 63 people have read it. Each of those readers would have been interested in the topic I was writing about, and they would have seen the links to my sites at the bottom.

If you are interested in reading the articles I wrote a couple of months ago you can view them here.

The articles are checked by humans, and it takes a few days for them to be approved. They have some fairly reasonable standards that must be adhered to, or your article may be rejected until you fix it up.

They also provide logos once you have been approved, that you can display alongside any articles that were published by them.

Certainly a great idea if you are looking to build long term traffic, and quality links to your website.

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!