New Rules at Xomba Lead to My Account Being Suspended!!

At Xomba you can write articles and submit bookmarks and you have the opportunity to earn money from Adsense (60% of the ad impressions are yours). For the bookmarks you have to write more than most sites - 120 words. Recently what I have been doing is for every Squidoo lens I have been building and every article I have written I have submitted a Xomba bookmark. Rather than writing new content I have just copied and pasted a paragraph from my article. This has allowed me to quickly and easily created more backlinks and earn a little money from them at the same time.

However, in the last couple of weeks Xomba have changed their rules in order to make it more of a writing community and improve its standing with the search engines. Specifically, you cannot submit duplicate content, even if it is your own. Also you are now not allowed to link to your own articles and blog posts, or as they say "bookmarks were never meant to be a marketing tool or anything like that; they should be used to share interesting links". Actually the quote is from an e-mail I received telling me that my account was suspended for a breach of these rules. I have had to reply telling them that I agree not to breach these rules in the future and I am waiting for my account to be reinstated. In the meantime, my bookmarks remain live and have still been earning me money.

In the future it would appear that the only I can use Xomba for backlinks and for increasing traffic is to write articles and to include links in the signature. Just when I thought I had found something quick and easy to boost traffic and make a little money, it is taken away.

Save Money on Turbo Tax at The Coupon Album

I don’t know about you but I always like a special offer. The Coupon Album offers plenty of special deals and has loads of vouchers and codes where you can get a discount. As an example, they are offering Turbo Tax coupons where you can get a discount on this popular tax preparation software. When you are working for yourself, such as making money online, it is easy to get into a mess with your tax. Even the most organised of us can start to lose track with income and outgoings, as well as understanding what expenses can be offset against earnings. Keeping track of it all can be a challenge, but failing to do so could land you in serious trouble.

This is where Turbo Tax comes in useful and it means that you spend less time keeping on top of your tax returns and more on your business. There are several different versions of this software which is designed to help you get through your tax returns (only suitable for US residents) step by step and is suitable for both federal and state returns. It also provides tips on tax as well as highlighting anything which may be picked up on audits.

Apart from this there are a huge number of other offers available on The Coupon Album including everything from pet supplies to travel. Some of these deals can offer you a considerable saving on the listed price for many items. The Coupon Album is definitely worth checking out and you can save yourself lots of money.

Monthly Earnings for January 2011

Here is the first earnings report of the new year. All in all it has been a pretty frustrating month having made no Clickbank or Amazon sales at all. Even Adsense has been slow going. I don't know if it's a post Christmas thing or what, but it has pretty depressing really. Here are the figures anyway:

Clickbank: $34.86 (from December's sales)
Squidoo: $1.08
Surveys: $53.22 ($40.32 - Opinium, $12.90 - Pinecone)
Swagbucks: $5

Total: $94.16

I hope things pick up soon. I haven't really decided what to concentrate at the moment and keep flitting from one project to another as not much seems to be working. I clearly need a plan!