Making Your Articles Work Harder #1 - Using Document Sharing Sites

Submitting articles to article directories is a great way to gain back links to your website, blog, Squidoo lens, etc., but once you have put time and effort into writing your article shouldn't you get as much value out of them as you can? You can submit your article to multiple directories of course, but what I want to discuss here is using document sharing sites. The best known of these are Scribd and Docstoc which are the two I use most. Docstoc also has a revenue sharing element using Adsense which is nice bonus. There are also a number of others out there that are worth trying but I only have limited experience of those.

First of all, what is a document sharing site? Well it is simply a site where you can upload a document. Usually they can take a number of formats, but PDF is the most common - you can use Word if you prefer, but your document will not look as professional and you run the risk of someone downloading your document and editing it for their own purposes.

You can convert your articles to PDF format by using Open Office which can be downloaded for free. Open Office is similar to Microsoft Office and includes a word processor very similar to Word, with the important distinction that it allows you to convert your documents into PDF at the click of a button. During this process, make sure that you include links to your site - unlike article directories you can put your links wherever you like, so you could put one in the body of the article and another in the footer. Also, you can put in affiliate links. If you want to you can spruce up your article with some pictures as well, but this is not essential.

All you have to do now is upload your document to Scribd and/or Docstoc. Simply register with the sites, click the upload button and follow the instructions.

Unlike submissions to article directories this will not help your site get found in the search engines. So why do it? Well it is simply another way of helping people find you - what you are aiming for is for people to download your document, perhaps share with others and then click on the links to visit your site. It is very quick and easy to do, so well worth the effort.

Does your personality define the car you drive? - Sponsored Post

When I saw the question "what kind of 'ride' are you" this is not what I was expecting...

Making Money From Your Social Networks with My Likes

In a bid to try and find more ways of making some money from Twitter I stumbled across MyLikes. This works by giving you short ads that you can tweet - this is done directly from the MyLikes website rather from Twitter itself. You then receive a small payment every time the ad is clicked on. To boost the chances of receiving clicks you can also connect your profiles from various other social networks including Blogger, Posterous, Facebook, YouTube, FriendFeed and Tumblr. By connecting these your ad will automatically post to each of these networks (although you can decide which ones you wish to post to).

However, you should be aware that you are not paid for ads that are clicked on via Facebook. So, why connect your Facebook profile? Well, some advertisers insist that you do for opportunities to be open to you.

There will be some people who will be uneasy about having advertising links in their Twitter stream and on social networks. However, the ads are clearly marked as such so you are being completely transparent. You should not expect to make loads of money from it, but for a few minutes at a time I think it is worth giving a try.

Join MyLikes here

Monthly Earnings for March 2011

This past month a rather strange pattern has emerged: I have put a lot of time and effort into making Clickbank and Amazon affiliate sales and made just two Amazon sales, but I have put almost no effort into selling advertising on my other blog and yet this has been my main source of revenue. The lack of Clickbank sales is starting to irritate me - I have made none at all so far this year and this is longest period I have ever gone since I started this in earnest without a single sale.

The direct advertising sales is an interesting trend though - this is not something that I have gone out to get, various people have approached me. So it has been a matter of taking these opportunities as they arise. I have sold several advertising slots for the coming year now, so I need to make a spreadsheet or something so I can keep track these, making sure that I follow these up when they expire.

Here are the totals:

Direct advertising sales: $223.33
Surveys: $6.67 (Pinecone)
Squidoo: $2.83

Total = $232.83

Pretty decent total, but I don't feel that I can rely on direct advertising sales as a main revenue stream, so I need my affiliate sales to pick up.