Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Cashing In on Cyber Retail

When looking for online cash streams don't forget online retailers such as zazzle.com and cafepress.com.

Both these companies allow you to design products and then print them on demand for your customers as they order.

You have no outlay for stock and processing of orders and your sales commissions are automatic.  You can create a store for a product line and leave it alone  to fend for itself or you can maintain it for the long term and drive customers to your store via blogs and other websites.

Commission is generally paid thirty days after a purchase. This allows a customer to return an item that they don't like, for any reason, to zazzle or cafepress.

After the thirty days your account is credited with the commission, which you can set yourself or accept a default setting from both companies.

Another way to gain revenue with zazzle is to become an affiliate who sends customers to other peoples stores. You install a link to a store with your personal code incorporated in the HTML any purchase that that prospective customer makes will then give you up to 15% commission. Plus as you send more traffic you can receive additional bonuses up to 17% all this on top of your own agreed mark-up on your products.

So if a customer goes to your store through your link b8ut doesn't buy your product. Instead they go to another retailers store and purchase you will get the bonus plus commission for directing the customer.

While Amazon's affilliate program is more popular. zazzle.com's affiliate program does give you much higher returns percentage wise and also gives you two extra and well paying ways of earning cash.

I would say try out zazzle.com and see what you think.




Sunday, October 28, 2012

HubPages Going Downhill?

Is HubPages going downhill?

I have to say no. It has changed a lot over the last three years since I first joined.

Some changes have been for the better. The layout of the new designs of hub look far cleaner than the hubs of the old days. Some things are less good. I personally don't like the new profile page layout.

Change happens though and often the reaction of people is to claim that the old thing was better and the new will result in the death of the old readership.

My readership is holding pretty solid. I had a big spike in readership this year as a couple of my mature hubs went through the roof.

My How to make an English Shandy Cold Drink hub added 10,000 readers to my views in just a few weeks. Possibly thanks to a long hot summer.

Don't  write off HubPages just yet. Along with the report of another San Francisco resident Mark Twain, "News of it's demise is greatly exagerated."

Friday, September 21, 2012

Freshen Up Your Hubs

In recent months, I admit to not keeping up with regular hub releases or even blogging. The Web is very much guided by the latest content, like in showbiz you are only as good as your last show and if you drop out of sight because you do not post content or refresh your content by adding new material you drift lower and lower into the realms of obscurity.

Death if you are an online writer looking for views to generate income.

HubPages does offer us an answer to this problem. A Link to the RSS feed of any Blog out there.

A few days ago, bored with sitting around, I tweaked a couple of my Blogs back imto life. My hub views had fallen from over 155 per day to just 32 per day in recent weeks. Pretty poor you'll admit.

Most of my Blogs are linked by RSS Feeds to my various hubs, so for instance this is linked to my Hubs based on HubPages activities, another Blog on my favorite books is linked to Hubs of book reviews.

Well I posted some new Blog posts over the 19th and 20th  September and the feeds kicked in pretty quickly. Thus feeding new content to several hubs at once.

Today, 21st September the hub gviews on my statistics page are rising, A few minutes ago the views for the last 24 hours stood at 69 that is an approximate 120% increase in a few hours.

To the Search Engines the hubs have new content and so worthy of a look. Most of those new views may be search engine spiders but at least the hubs are being viewed and so will possibly climb in the search engine library rankings and appear on results pages.

Building a Blog and linking it back to your Hub by an RSS feed is a simple and effective way of updating several HubPages at one time without incurring a penalty of having duplicate content.

Try it just create a Blogger.com or Wordpress.com account then consider putting your Blog into Technorati.com database for a wider audience.

Then watch your readership grow!


Monday, June 11, 2012

Yahoo Article How I Became a US Citizen

I became a US Citizen in December 2010.  My path to US Citizenship was quite straightforward.

I have heard of the experience taking several years and taking tens of thousands of dollars.

I spent less than $2,000 on my citizenship application and it was completed in less than four months, just fourteen weeks from initial downloading of the paperwork to attending a swearing in ceremony.

To read how I did this My Path to US Citizenship CLICK HERE

Yahoo! Voices Getting Better

Last December, Yahoo! Contributor Network (YCN) changed its name to Yahoo! Voices and instigated a new level of editorial control. Writers could no longer post articles directly but had to submit their work to be examined by a team of editors
Last week I submitted two articles. One on my experience becoming a US citizen the other a summertime poem.

I submitted them both on Sunday June 3, and within 48 hours I was offered a cash payment for my US citizenship article and it was published. The Summertime poem took just 24 hours longer to publish, that on a display payment basis.

Yahoo! Voices seems to be getting its act together. Times for reviewing have been getting faster particularly in the last month. Whether this is due to increased numbers of reviewers or dropping numbers of submitted articles I don't know.

I do know however that it is good news for writers and a vast improvement over the situation six months ago.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

More Promotional Hubs?

Is it just me finding them or are there a growing number of product promotional Hubs appearing?

This last week I have found hubs appearing that have been mere promotional tools for various products. By this I don't mean product reviews. I mean here is a link to this medication or this body product.

I am fearful that if HubPages is seen by marketers as a place to merely post product ads, then this will seriously affect HubPages reputation as a online arena for serious writing.

I would advocate that serious users of HubPages flag this sort of content and move to oust these marketers before they destroy our community.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Who is Spandau Ballet!

This weekend I did a little fun hub.

We can just write so much about making money and pondering the forthcoming Presidential Election.

This Hub was pure fluff, vane of me and meant to show some fun. In my time I have been a "New Romantic", a wild party animal inside with a passion for nice suits and good shoes.

Try a look at this little fun hub.



Spandau Ballet; Bananarama; Rick Astley et al: My Favorite Five Hit Songs of the Eighties

The answer to the shocking question. Spandau Ballet was and is a band from England. Though formed in the late 1970's they were the core band for the "New Rommantic" movement in music.  Famous for their songs 'True' and 'Gold' my choice on the above hub is one of their lesser known song, 'Muscle Bound' but that may be due to the included Video for the song, which is possibly one of the worst song promo videos ever made.