Looking for ways to monetize my blogs, I joined many money making and affiliate programs like WidgetBucks. WidgetBucks looks very promising and as a bonus, new members are awarded with $25 for signing up. Nice! I was so excited about WidgetBucks that I failed to read their FAQs.

Today, I stumbled upon a post at 100% Batangueno which made me visit WidgetBucks blog to check the information posted and it’s verified. WidgetBucks, per their advertisers request, will not pay for any clicks made through a WidgetBucks widget from a non-US or non-Canada blog and that is how I understand it. To be specific, read below:

What are the non-paying countries or regions?

We are finding that advertisers are not willing to buy traffic from Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Egypt, and Romania. Rates for other countries, such as Taiwan, parts of the Middle East, parts of S. America, and other regions earn under $0.10 CPM. It’s really important to mention this is an advertiser decision regarding the value of that traffic, NOT WidgetBucks’ decision. We repeat: this is an advertiser decision regarding the value of that traffic, NOT WidgetBucks’ decision. I emphasize this because publishers, for whatever reason, will undoubtedly and incorrectly draw the conclusion it is solely WidgetBucks’ decision.

So, if you are in any of those countries mentioned then any clicks from your WidgetBucks widget won’t award you with anything. If you are an Adsense or AdBrite member then it’s more profitable to replace all your WidgetBucks widget with them because you’ll not only be paid per thousand of impressions but for clicks too.

The blog post at WidgetBucks blog didn’t mention anything about referrals so it is safe to assume that we will be paid for referring new members to them. As for me, I am going to replace all my WidgetBucks widgets with AdBrite (or AdSense for my other blogs) and keep WidgetBucks for referral, until of course they too stop paying members from outside the US and Canada for referring new members but until that time comes, I will keep those WidgetBucks buttons on my blogs.

Being new to blogging, I am just learning the ins and outs of blogging and one interesting subject in blogging is Blog Contest. I’m not totally new to this blogging technique to gain traffic and popularity but since I wasn’t yet blogging before I did not take any interest in it until now.

I also thought that prizes should be in monetary form like Blog About Blog’s Christmas Contest where you’ll get a chance of winning $100 USD courtesy of their sponsor NeverBlueAds.

But I was wrong, I learned that anything of value to your visitors or audience can be made into a prize in a contest. For example, at Chinoyray.com and Kabalyero.com their prizes are not in US Dollars but in Linden Dollars which is the in-world currency of Second Life and it is very valuable to Second Life residents. Not only that,I’ve also seen blogs that use Entrecard Credits as prize.

There are various kinds of Blog Contest from Top Commentators to Guess the Picture but what’s important is that your visitors are having fun and at the same time getting some value from their contributions and loyalty.

Just received an e-mail from AGLOCO informing members that the program will be discontinued due to lack of revenue from advertisers.

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com.

We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

AGLOCO Development Team

I guess those active with AGLOCO felt cheated when they got this e-mail. Why shouldn’t they? AGLOCO promised that members will earn from their program but they failed to deliver. Me? I’m not sour about it, simply because I never spent anytime with it. Yes, I downloaded and installed the toolbar but did I used it? Maybe a couple of times and that was it.

AGLOCO’s concept is still very interesting and maybe, in the not so near future, another company might pick up where AGLOCO left off and this time make it work.

It’s funny because instead of owning the internet, AGLOCO got owned! LOL!

Recently, I signed up with SponsoredReviews.com and the first thing I noticed after submitting a blog is that they don’t have pagerank in their list of metrics used to gauge a website or blog’s value. They use Technorati, Alexa and Link Popularity. There is no Pagerank.

Does this mean that advertisers doesn’t need to rely on Pagerank all the time? Does it also mean that bloggers doesn’t really need Pagerank to earn from blogging? I guess for advertisers, if Google continues to penalize bloggers by dropping pagerank then using pagerank as a gauge or metric would be useless, right? Hmmm… I guess it depends on the advertiser. If the advertiser is in it for pagerank then pagerank would be important but if the advertiser is in it for traffic and promotion then pagerank wouldn’t be important because a site can have a low pagerank but still have a high traffic rate. For bloggers, not relying on pagerank means a continuous steady flow of income from blogging but they’ll have to do a lot of extra work to get traffic in specially those blogs that get their traffic from Google.

Well, if SponsoredReviews.com doesn’t rely on pagerank but instead uses alternatives like Alexa, Technorati and Link Popularity then I guess other paid-2-blog sites can drop pagerank and use alternatives too. Once these sites stop using pagerank as a metric then I guess Google will stop (hopefully) targeting them.

This is what I’ve noticed with SponsoredReviews.com when I submitted a blog. They could be using pagerank in their evaluation of blogs behind the scenes but on the front end they clearly didn’t indicate it so I’ll safely assume that they are not using it all.

Do you own a blog? If you do then did you know that you can make money from blogging about things that interest you? Yes you can through a program or service called paid to blog. Websites that offer this service seeks bloggers to blog about their advertiser’s product, service, business or website and they pay bloggers to do it.

Here are some of these get paid to blog sites:

• PayPerPost - Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required.
• Smorty - Make money from your blog by writing opinion articles about available advertiser campaigns. Opportunities are sent directly to your personal admin panel and email account.
  Turn your daily blog updates into money. Between 5 and 20 minutes of writing sends money directly to your PayPal account after posts are approved. Apply with multiple blogs to write more opinions and receive more payments. Get paid to blog weekly
• ReviewMe - Bloggers get paid to review products and services on your site. You control what you review.
• BloggingAds - Paying bloggers money to advertise on their blog sites.
• Blogitive - Earn money with every posting. Get paid weekly via Paypal. No advertising required, just your opinions. Only post the stories that interest you. Create multiple blogs to earn more. Does not conflict with ad campaigns on your site
• SponsoredReview - Earn cash by writing honest reviews about our advertiser’s products and services. Write reviews in your own tone and style, and gear them to your audience’s interest.

Bookmark this page! This list will be updated!

Update: The Lord of the Internet, Google, is currently waging a massive war against these paid-to-blog programs. Blogs that are found or reported to Lord Google are being stripped down of their pagerank rendering these blogs valueless in terms of link value.

Did you know that you can make real money from Second Life? Linden Dollars, Second Life’s in-world currency, can be converted back to US Dollars and be withdrawn via check or PayPal.

There are many ways of making money or Linden Dollars in Second Life but here are 2 sites/blogs that features easy ways of making money in Second Life.

• Earn Linden Dollars by Kabalyero
• Free Lindens by ChinoyRay

If you are looking for a job in Second Life then visit Second Life Jobs. Job openings from all over are posted daily. If camping is your thing then check out Second Life Camping for a list of camping spots for you to camp on.

By the way, Second Life is a virtual world imagined and created by it’s residents but owned entirely by Linden Labs.

Anyway, the first step to making money with Second Life is by registering with Second Life, downloading the game client and experiencing Second Life. Just remember that Second Life is not your typical online game. To learn more about Second Life, visit the official website at http://www.secondlife.com.