JohnCacka.com

For the last couple of years I have scoured the web for information about how to make money online. There were so many scams and so much junk to wade through. This was particularly true of the hype-filled internet marketing community, which I had very little interest in. I will say they have spent some good time researching persuasion however, but logic and my sense of cheapness prevailed. I didn’t buy into any of the scams and courses, but I did learn a few things about SEO, monetization, and about a million other topics. At this point I didn’t know what to do, there were lots of opportunities, but I didn’t really want to do any of them.

Then came John Chow….

JohnChow.com is the single best source of practical information for anybody that wishes to find success online. Notice this goes above and beyond just making money. Sure, he is a dot com mogul, he started TheTechZone.com and has done very well for himself. But if that wasn’t enough, he makes a blog and basically shows you how to do everything he did, is doing, and will be doing. Its not in boring articles day after day, he just writes from the heart and it comes out interesting and packed with info and not much fluff. But if there is fluff, its good fluff, like cotton candy. Yes he makes a lot of money, and yes he spends a lot on dinner at fancy restaurants and yes he takes pictures of it and shows it to all of us hungry readers (beware reading JohnChow.com around lunch or dinner), but he isn’t without a sense of giving back by any means. That is one of the nicest things about his site, he gives.

John talks about everything that he does on his blog. He writes articles about all the types of advertising he is currently using, which ones are making the most, and how he tweaks them. He does monthly traffic and income reviews as well. He talks about how he finds content for the articles, and how to get traffic, how to keep the traffic, how to multiply the traffic, and so much more! JohnChow.com is the single best source of information for beginning publishers like me. He is an inspiration and a practical help. Perhaps I learn the most from his constantly positive outlook, a trait I feel is missing in too many people today. I think this picture best describes John, living life to its fullest with a smile on his face.

Google AdSense is widely considered one of the best and most profitable ad revenue options for starting publishers such as myself. However, one should not just leave it at that and wonder why you aren’t making as much money as other blogs frequently claim. One solution, and just good advice in general is don’t keep all your eggs in the Google basket. While AdSense may be and continue to be your best ad revenue source, it can pay very well to consider five, six, or more revenue sources. Today we’ll be looking at a service that caught my eye called Vizu Answers.

Vizu Answers is interesting because unlike AdSense for example, it does not bring advertisers together with publishers. Rather, it brings market researchers together with publishers, by using polls. After you sign up, they have you set up zones where you can then describe your site and specifically the locations where the polls will be placed. The market researchers can then choose which sites they wish to place their polls on so that they are best targeted. Naturally, the researchers (ie the ones who pay Vizu Answers) get the most control, and the publishers get less input in regard to custom targeting.

Vizu uses a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) based pricing model for pricing the Poll Zones. For example, if you set a CPM rate of $1, it will cost a Client $1 for every 1000 times their Poll is displayed in this Zone. Vizu will take a percentage of the CPM rate you set.

You define a minimum CPM rate for this Zone. Polls will never be sold below this rate; however, Vizu will always try to maximize your rate and will automatically raise it to meet strong demand. If you are unsure about what price to set, Vizu recommends charging about what you earn for an individual ad unit in a similar location.

When there are no paid Polls from Clients to run in this Zone, nothing will be displayed allowing the rest of your content to slide up and take its place.

I signed up and set up a quick zone to do a test with. I chose six keywords for targeting: net, online income, monetization, blog, technology, and business, just to get started with. Then I put in a brief description and chose a quick color scheme for the poll box to help it match this site and clicked submit.On the left side you can see an awful green example of one of their polls. I gladly used their features in making my test poll match this site better than the green atrocity previous mentioned, and still pervading your view. For the time being, I’m doing a test in the sidebar to see how it works and what kind of polls I get targeted. I started the CPM at $1, but as stated in the quote, they will adjust it for me if it gets more agressive. I’m not holding my breath however as I just started this site and I doubt anybody I don’t know has even been to it yet. As of the time of this writing, you can only see a small link that says “Your Market Research Here”. Hopefully that will soon be replaced by a poll that some lucky market researcher gets to put on my site. Details will follow as they come in.

Some of you may remember the internet of 1999, during the dot com days. Compared to today’s internet it was a very different place, they had companies like AllAdvantage, which offered a “viewbar” that would ride underneath your browser window (just above the startbar) that would pay you a certain amount per hour to surf the web. Wait a sec, that’s exactly what Agloco is doing today!

Agloco was founded by some of the original founders of AllAdvantage, but this time there is a twist on it. Instead of offering a set dollar amount per hour, they offer stock shares in the company. In the midst of what many are calling the Dot Com boom 2.0, with sites like youtube selling for 1.65billion, users are wanting a piece of the over-priced action. And Agloco promises that very thing to them, 100% member ownership.

The viewbar is not yet available, it is still in a pre-launch beta where they are gathering referrals. They have set a goal for themselves of 10 million members by July 1, 2007. In mid-December, they said in a release that the viewbar would be released in stages, the earliest within 7-10 weeks, which could place it at the very earliest at the end of January.

The system works with multiple levels, where you get credit for every hour that those under you surf, down to 4 levels deep. Currently you can get a maximum of 5 hours per month and then turn off the bar after that if you’d like. When you sign up you get a member number that you can use to refer other people to the program. My referral link is http://www.agloco.com/r/BBBB1236. I’ll be following up on this as I get referrals and to report whether not I can make any money doing this, stay tuned for more.

What kind of blender can take a rake handle like a woodchipper? How about a bunch of marbles and turn them to dust? Or what about blending an ipod to powder? The people over at Blendtec.com make just such a blender. They have a series of marketing videos at willitblend.com that are pretty fun to watch if you like seeing random household objects turned to dust.

This is my blog. I will be posting on a number of topics generally consisting of the very focused subject matter of whatever I feel like. However I promise to try to make it interesting and into something worth reading.

I am in my mid-twenties, and I use the internet a lot. I play video games, I have a college degree in Game Art and Design. That is video game design and the art required to make the game. For example, I do 3d modeling, texturing, lighting, animation not so much, but you get the idea. Aside from digital sculpture, I like physical sculpting mediums as well, and I also do other types of graphics work and design. I am a boy, I like to destroy. I melt metal. Because I can, and because you need to melt it in order to cast it into pretty shapes. I forge, blacksmithing, and generally enjoy working with my hands. I like making money, and using the internet to do it.

(Note: Just a note on my last name. It is a czech name and is supposed to look like this ‘Čačka.’ The diacritical marks you see are called hačeks (hacheks). I know I know, what language includes the mark IN the very word describing the mark? Its diabolical, its absurd, I love it. The haček just means that the ‘C’ has the English ‘ch’ sound. So its pronounced ‘chach-kuh’. Just wanted to clear that up because its always an issue. )