It’s been ages (read: over a month) since I last updated this blog. My apologies, I’ve just been really busy. Anyway, I’ve got topics already lined up so I promise to keep this more updated, especially after I’ve met a couple of people who have told me they’re actually following this blog. What a surprise!

Back in 2009, I’ve been seeing a lot of contests / giveaways online. At first, I ignored them. I’m a li’l paranoid when it comes to online security, you see, so I thought they were a bunch of scams.

If you’re still a non-believer like I was back then, YOU MUST READ ON! I’m starting to sound like one of those ads you’d see at PTC sites.

When did I start getting addicted to joining online contests/promos? Late in 2009, one of the blogs I follow, Yugatech, hosted a Christmas giveaway. I joined and won Php 500 worth of prepaid load.

The realization that winning that prize actually saved me money from buying load made me want to join more online contests. And that’s when I started scouring the web for local and international giveaways that I can join to win gadgets, Paypal cash, etc.

Whoever said that getting anything for FREE isn’t awesome is just crazy. I know a lot of people who are rich and hold high-paying jobs who still love joining contests. Participating in online contests can be a lot of fun and getting freebies is just as exciting.

Making Money Online Through Online Contests

There are tons of online contests where you can win straight cash prizes AND gadgets or items that you can sell or keep for your own use.

Would you believe that ever since I started joining online contests in December 2009, I’ve already won over Php 50,000 worth of prizes?! I might have even won more, but I already lost count. I will share with you all the prizes I’ve won so far in my next post. Keep posted for that!

Now, how exactly can you make money online by joining these online contests? Let me explain that part better through sharing my experiences…

• I’ve hosted 2 blog contests already on Just Another Pixel – Make a Wish and Thirty on 30. In both contests, Paypal cash was a major part of the prizes for the winners.

  
  Most contest hosts have also recognized how much Paypal cash as prizes can draw in more participants so expect to see more Paypal cash giveaways/contests.

• I’ve won two (2) Nokia 5230 cellphones last year. The first one, I won in DJ Mo Twister’s Twitter giveaway. I’ve been using it for months when I won another of the same model from an international contest, by F-Secure. We decided to sell that phone for Php 10,000. Minus the Php 2,000 I paid customs for the shipping of that phone, I got a profit of Php 8,000. So, it’s like I won that amount from that international contest.

  
  You can choose to sell or use the prizes you’ve won. That’s one way of making money through it.

• I’ve always wanted an iPad so when I saw Sulit’s blog contest with that as grand prize, I decided to join. I won. Yes, I got my iPad for FREE. It’s like I won Php 20,000+ cash to buy me that iPad. Cool, huh? One of my friends even won a brand new Mac computer in Sulit’s Christmas card-making contest (shout out to sis Grace!).

  

• Winning gift certificates from my favorite restaurants saves me money. Just like when I won Php 1,500 worth of gift certificates from Pizza Hut. My long-time friends and I have been planning on a get-together. We got to enjoy free pizza and just paid for our booze instead.

  

That’s just a few of the perks of joining online contests. Did I say it’s a lot of fun, especially when you start winning?!

About Contest Alerts Blogs and How Pinay Reviewer Started

In June 2010, I finally decided to start my own contest alerts blog – Pinay Reviewer. It was initially just a review blog, but I decided to transform it to my own contest alerts blog.

Pinay Reviewer was inspired by these blogs that I still follow. They are the other contest alerts blogs that I’m currently subscribed to. Make sure you check them out since promos or contests that I’ve already seen on them, I usually no longer post on Pinay Reviewer.

• Boy Kuripot
• Mukhang Pera
• International Giveaways
• The Products Blog
• Manila Life
• Promo Blitz

Make sure you subscribe through email to all those blogs’ feeds, including Pinay Reviewer’s, so you’ll be updated with the latest promos online and offline.

Aside from the above-mentioned sites, where do I find out about other promos/online contests? Well, I happen to follow hundreds of Facebook pages and I’ve categorized them depending on which ones usually offer promos or online contests to their fans/followers. When I see an ongoing contest / promo, I immediately bookmark it for posting later on Pinay Reviewer.

I also check out what other people in my Facebook network (read: friends list) are doing. There are times I find out about a contest because someone in my network posted a status or shared it on his/her wall. I also see what FB pages they follow / just liked. Stalker much?

How to Make Money Online with InfoLinks Related Tags

I have posted a guide yesterday on how to setup and make money online with InfoLinks on your blogs or website. InfoLinks made it very easy for bloggers to integrate it with our blogs so you can start making money online just as easily.

With InfoLinks Related Tags, they make it more possible for us to increase our earnings through the informational tags that we can insert wherever we want. The Infolinks algorithm will choose the BEST and most relevant keywords to your contents and display them within the Related Tags cloud.

What’s good about using InfoLinks Related Tags is you can insert it ANYWHERE within your blog posts or contents. You have full control. For instance, I want to place the Related Tags below this paragraph.

There! All I have to do is insert the InfoLinks Related Tags script wherever I want, as long as I have already integrated the InfoLinks script for my blog (click here for the guide). Below is the code for the Related Tags:

<input type="hidden" name="IL_RELATED_TAGS" value="1"/>

You can find this script on the Related Tags section when you login to your InfoLinks account, as shown below.

Because you have full control over the placement of the InfoLinks Related Tags script, you can make adjustments whenever you want if you think that the current position of the ads doesn’t bring you that much revenue.

Another reason why I like the InfoLinks Related Tags is its layout or format. They’re not in-text links. It appears as a related tags cloud so most of your readers will be more inclined to check out and click on the links. This will greatly increase my revenue, especially on this blog. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post about InfoLinks, they’re my main source of income on Pinay Online Money Maker.

One thing that I would like to see as an additional feature though is a full look customization option for the InfoLinks Related Tags cloud. I also want to control how it looks, the same way as the regular InfoLinks hyperlinks. For instance, I would like to add a border around the Related Tags cloud or change the colors of the links so I can highlight them within my contents. That way, my readers would easily see the related tags. I believe that if given this option, they would be more inclined to check out the related tags.

I have just recently implemented the InfoLinks Related Tags cloud on this blog and I am really expecting higher revenue. I am now in the process of adding InfoLinks Related Tags on my most popular / most read posts here on Pinay Online Money Maker so I will share with you in the coming days how it affected my overall earnings. I have already implemented in-text ads in my other blogs in the past months and I’ve seen big improvements in my earnings so I know using InfoLinks Related Tags will definitely boost my earnings.

How to Make Money Online with InfoLinks

One of the many ways I make money online nowadays is through InfoLinks, especially with this blog, Pinay Online Money Maker, because I don’t monetize from the traffic this blog gets. Well, except for the referrals I get, InfoLinks is the main source of income on this blog.

If you’re not yet familiar with InfoLinks, they offer a pay per click in-text contextual advertising and the highest revenue share to bloggers or website owners. What happens is once you’ve integrated InfoLinks to your blog or website, they’ll insert text links within your content. Below are some screenshots of the InfoLinks hyperlinks you’ve probably seen on this blog:

When a visitor hovers or places their mouse on top of the InfoLinks hyperlinks, a floating informational bubble / window will open. If the viewer clicks, they’ll be directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn revenue. If the viewer moves their mouse away from the hyperlink, the bubble will disappear.

If you ask me, how InfoLinks work is not at all obtrusive so I don’t think it’ll affect your readers’ experience, especially when they’re just reading your contents. I also set it up in a way that the look of the InfoLinks hyperlinks are different to my blog’s actual links. I’ll be discussing how to do it later on this post so read on.

At the same time as not being obtrusive, InfoLinks is also a great way for you to monetize your blog or your contents because, like in my experience, the ads that show up on my InfoLinks hyperlinks are very relevant to my contents. So, the possibility of a visitor clicking on the ads is way higher, most especially because the links appear within your posts. Your visitors will have a tendency to get interested by the InfoLinks hyperlinks and click on the related ads.

Another thing that I love about InfoLinks is how easy it is to set it up. Let me show you how to do it.

Make sure you’ve read PART I and II of my guide to Paid Review sites:
Introduction to Paid Review Sites – Part 1 of Guide to Paid Review Sites
Paid Review Sites – Tips for More Opportunities & Fast Approval of Posts

This should’ve been Part II, but, I mistakenly posted the last one first. *LOL*

Requirements & Tips on Getting Your Blog Approved

If you’re still interested in making money online through paid posts, here are a few of the general requirements of Paid Review sites that you need to take note of before you sign up.
Make sure you have passed the requirements to ensure that your blog won’t be rejected.

Included in this list are some of my tips to help you get your blog approved as soon as possible.

• Most Paid Review sites require that the blog you submit to them has been online for at least 3 months. There should also be a decent amount of blog posts published over those 3 months. Otherwise, you won’t be approved.Please refer to my reviews and guides for EACH Paid Review sites I’ll be featuring here to learn more on how they work and their requirements. That’ll be part IV.
  
• Your blog posts should be of high quality. If all you’ve been doing is writing about posts published by other bloggers or on other websites, you won’t be approved. They need bloggers who write unique or their own contents and not just copies from other people.Same thing applies if you’ve been publishing paid posts from other Paid Review sites. If most of your contents are paid, you won’t get approved. Trust me, they know when your posts are paid reviews.
• Your blog MUST be indexed by Google or other search engines.
  Otherwise, you won’t be approved.
  Of course, if your blog is not yet indexed, then, the paid posts that you’ll finish won’t be of any value to the advertiser. So, make sure you submit your blog to popular search engines like Google and Yahoo.To submit your blog, click on the links below:
  • Add your blog to Google
  • Submit your blog to Yahoo!
• More traffic or visitors, more chances of getting your blog approved.
  Most Paid Review sites look at your Google PR (PageRank), Alexa ranking or Technorati statisttics. So, try to spend some time building traffic to your blog. You have 3 months, from the time you started your blog up to the time you can start joining Paid Review sites, to do that.Read my guide on how to increase traffic to your blog. I’ll be giving more tips in increasing traffic to your blog after Part IV of this guide so stay tuned!
• Avoid too much visual clutter on your blog.
  Minimize the widgets, images and banners on your blog. This way, your blog loads faster and your blog would look more attractive.
• Minimize the ads on your blog.
  Most advertisers don’t like in-post ads from other ad networks. It’s because their competitors’ links would show up on your post that they paid for. It’ll be unfair to them, so make sure you read the advertiser’s requirements carefully.
• Make sure you have a visible Archives list on your blog.
  Some bloggers prefer a list of categories, topics or labels on their sidebar instead of the Archives or list of actual posts they have published because it’s better to look at. However, advertisers prefer to see an Archives list on the sidebar because they want visitors to see the actual titles of the blog posts you publish since some advertisers want the paid posts’ titles to be related to their website or product.Also, when you have an Archives widget or list on your sidebar, your past blog posts are more likely to be read if the titles can be seen by the readers.

Note: This post may be updated in the future as I think of more tips on how to get your blog approved on Paid Review sites.

Stay tuned for:
Part IV – Reviews of my Highly Recommended Paid Review Sites

My first ever blog contest – Make a Wish – had just ended last week. I decided to start that contest because I’ve been getting decent amount of traffic from Entrecard and Adgitize, and I wanted to convert those random visitors to regular visitors, and even online friends of mine. I was a bit successful with the latter part, but I’m still working on being a friendlier blogger and to meet more bloggers whose posts I’ve been silently following.

My contest was a success and we got a total of 32 entries all in all, which you can all check out here. The links are at the bottom of that post. Winners will be announced on or before May 31st. I believe there were some visitors of this blog, Pinay Online Money Maker, who also joined that contest. I wish you all luck!

One of the prizes that the winners will receive is a month of advertising from Adgitize. This will really help boost your blog’s traffic. However, it’s really up to you on how you can keep those visitors to keep coming back to your blog. If you’re a beginner blogger, I suggest you use the Adgitize network to get to know people. No need to advertise, just be an active blogger. You can still earn money from Adgitize anyway without paying for advertisement. However, you’d earn more if you also advertise.

Here’s my payment proof from Adgitize for the month of April. I wasn’t able to post and click everyday so I only ended up with $15.36. Still, I got my $14 investment back.

(click to zoom)

Check out my other payment proofs from Adgitize.

Check out my guide on how to make money online with Adgitize.