Qassia is Dead! Long Live Qondio! - With Even Better Revenue Sharing

The revenue sharing site, Qassia, has been going through some changes recently. Most notably its name - it is now Qondio. Why the name change? Well who knows! I have reviewed Qassia previously, but just to remind you what it is about, it is (yet another) site where you can add your own content and you can earn from a share of the advertising revenue generated by your content.

It has a slightly different look about it now - the rather dodgy washed out pink has been replaced with a rather more tasteful olive green. As a result the site just looks that much better.

The real change though is in the revenue sharing model. It has always been the case that 100% of the revenue generated by the ads on your Intels (the name they give for your content pages) and on your profile page is yours. However, now you can specify which ads you want to display - so you are not limited to Adsense, you can put in the codes for whatever ad network you like! Setting it up is a little bit fiddly to begin with (it is all done via uniQlicks) but once this is done you don't need to touch it again. The only downside is that you can't seem specify different ads for different Intels - or not as far as I can tell anyway. So you will need to find ads that work with any content rather then being content specific.

So far I have only briefly dabbled with Qondio, but with these changes I definitely intend to put more effort into creating more Intels and hopefully making some money from them!

Squidoo Alternatives #9 - Infobarrel

With the changes in Squidoo's policies this seems like a good time to have another look at what alternatives are out there. I signed up with Infobarrel several months ago, but never got around to doing anything with it. So, mostly with a view to getting more links to various projects I thought I would look at it again. The site allows you submit your own content (it has to be original content) in one of four formats:

1. Blank article template - basically a blank page to fill as you like
2. Video article - page that contains a video. This can contain several videos
3. How-to article - step-by-step article describing how to do something (much like e-How)
4. Review Article - review of product, service, movie, etc.

If you are stuck for something to write about there is a long list available of suggested titles, although it has to be said that some of these are quite obscure.

The money making aspect of Infobarrel is from Adsense and Ebay's partner program - basically 75% of the impressions are yours.

You can include include links within your articles and it would appear that these links are do-follow, so valuable for promoting your website, blog, etc.

But...... you cannot include affiliate links within your articles. Or that is how I read the terms of service anyway. This is what is says:

"........InfoBarrel will remove from the Materials any links that link/refer to advertisements or any other content of promotional/advertising nature. "

This obviously limits its usefulness in terms of internet marketing - it may provide useful links into a Squidoo lens, or to a niche site, but no opportunity to directly market products.

Overall, I like Infobarrel. It has a good look to it and the templates give a range of options, and the "How-to" template is a particularly good one for quickly writing a structured article. I am intending to use it more to gain more links to my blogs and maybe to some of my Squidoo lenses, and to niche sites when I get to the stage of constructing them. And, of course, to boost my Adsense and Ebay Partner income!

Here is the definitive list of alternatives to Squidoo.

Internet Marketing in a Recession

With few signs of the current recession coming to an immediate end, inevitably sales to internet marketers will be hit. But does this mean that we should shut up shop and wait for things to get better? Or do we just carry on as if nothing has changed?

Market trends show that people are still spending money, but instead consumers are more interested in getting back to living a more basic and frugal lifestyle and, ironically, are willing to spend money to help them achieve this. People are also looking to decrease their impact upon the environment, whether this should be reducing their energy usage (and cost) or through buying products that are more environmentally friendly.

Clearly then, there are opportunities here for the savvy internet marketer to capitalize on these changing trends. So in order to maintain sales there needs to be a change of emphasis.

A further trend is in relation to those people who suddenly find themselves out of work and looking for ways to generate an income. The make money online niche is severely overcrowded already, so to try and gain a foothold here is somewhat challenging. However, there are various other work from home type niches and product that have less competition and could meet the needs of people in this situation.

So, the recession doesn’t mean the end of internet marketing. It means that you need to adapt.

Interestingly, I heard the other day that the sales of champagne are on the increase! I have no idea what that means.....

Total Earnings for June

Earnings for June have been a little disappointing, mainly because I have been focusing on the longer term rather than grabbing quick cash. Here are the figures (only including money I have actually received):

Surveys - £20 (Home of Research)
Blogsvertise - £5.94
Squidoo - £0.61
Ebay - £16.62

Total = £43.17 (or $70.55)

Not great really. I don't expect July to be too much better as the kind of activity I am focusing on should gradually increase income over time and unlikely to produce quick results.