Money News - My Financial History I\\\'m just an average online gamer trying to make a living online. Check out some of the things I try to make some extra money on the internet.

Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Visitors Out: Total Visitors Out: 9 0 1082 1082

World of Warcraft For Russians
2007-12-10 18:06:25
Well good news for all the Russians that are currently playing on European or west coast US servers. World of Warcraft is coming to your home town. Blizzard just released a press located here announces the fifth translated version of the game.Now why is it the the French are involved with this again? First the Van Damme commercial, and now the Russian version press release? Will the Lich King expansion come out for the French first too? What gives Blizzard, I shall fart in your general direction for not even letting putting that info up on the US Wacraft site.Anyways in other WoW News for the US. The first week of contests winners for Warcraft's 3 year anniversary was announced here. ...
Warcraft 

I Won a Contest From Dax Desai
2007-12-09 11:31:43
Well I won my first contest ever! I didn't win first place, but I got third for a prize of 25 Entrecard credits to use for advertising. My thanks goes out to Dax for holding the contest, and letting me get some more credits to place ads on Entrecard. Also it looks like he's also in the running for the Bloggers Choice Awards under the business blog category. As a thank you please go vote for Dax, and well don't forget to vote for me too.For those of you guys who haven't signed up for Entrecard yet. You should go ahead, and do so now for some nice traffic. Why? Entrecard is holding a contest as well for 2 Free 125 x 125 ad spaces on their blog for a whole month. And all you have to do is write a post about what kind of traffic results you are receiving from them.What kind of traffic have I received from Entrecard so far? This is a pic from my analytics counter. So far I've received 107 visitors from Entrecard over the course of 5 days after joining it. Note this is just traffi ...
Contest 

Does Starting Out Small Mean You'll Never Grow to be Great?
2007-12-08 02:51:21
I was surfing the net, and stumbled across this page on Doshdosh about a CashCrate Review. With the check Maki got a whopping $5.28(picture is still hosted on a free image server). This got me thinking that everyone who starts out needs to start from somewhere. Back in 2006, it seems like Maki was doing quite a bit of reviews on Get-Paid-To websites, until moving onto the internet marketing niche which seems to be more of the focus nowadays.What's the point of this post, your probably asking. I was just looking for a little bit of inspiration I guess. Knowing that another person who is currently successful in gathering a large audience also started out by doing programs like CashCrate is always enlightening. Especially if the first CashCrate check I got was bigger. It just means that I need to work harder, try out more programs, and find new things to do.Its also good to know that people can change around or maybe change the focus of what their blog's talk about over the course ...

Get Free Traffic From EntreCard
2007-12-07 02:11:28
Well I first heard about this program from Shoemoney's post a while back when I was off visiting Mexico, and I promptly forgot about it. Recently there has been a few posts up about it which reminded me that I was looking to install the widget back then. So I went ahead and put the widget up on Monday. If you already use Entrecard feel free to drop off your card. I'm kind of bummed that Shoemoney already took it off his site though, but other high traffic sites like Problogger, and John Chow still have it on their sites.Here is a quick 30 second YouTube video from Shoemoney about the program:Its pretty easy to sign up for it, and the widget is javascript so you won't have to worry about Google getting on your case.Now the first thing that needs to be done after you get your widget up is to go out can drop your Entrecard off to other people with the widget. The Entrecard website has a nice little directory to browse through. This way you can gain credits by dropping off your card t ...
Traffic 

Still Here in Maui, Though Thoroughly Drenched
2007-12-06 22:03:57
Yep I'm still here. I haven't been able to log on since yesterday since the power went out for most of the day due to heavy rain, and wind. While it wasn't as bad as some other parts of Maui, some people in my neighborhood down the street got flooded like this pic from the Maui News. Note, this is after it dried out as their home got flooded only a few feet away from my house. ...
Maui 

ScratchBack - Tip The Blogger, Get a Link Back
2007-12-04 20:16:16
Back at the beginning of October after I read a TechCrunch article about it, I had put up a widget on my side back called Scratchback. Since at the time I was preparing for my Cozumel trip, I had completely forgotten to write up a post about it. Better late than never I guess eh?What is Scratchback?Its an online tipping system that gives back to the tippers by allowing a publisher to “give back” links or images in return.Isn't selling links bad? Won't I get penalized by Google?Notably, the system has been approved by Google (they checked) as every link is “nofollow” and the widgets are built in javascript; this is a product that provides an alternative advertising model that won’t see publishers punished in future Google crackdowns.What kind of templates are available?There are quite a few different colors, but it seems like you can't customize them fully by setting your own bgcolor.Does it cost me anything to sign-up?No it doesn't, and you can actually make some money i ...
Blogger  Link 

Blogger Choice Awards Nominations
2007-12-04 18:04:32
Its one more month till 2008, and the Blogger's Choice Awards are starting up their nominations. The 2007 winners are announced here. If you know of a good blog that you think should win, use this page to nominate someone. If you are already nominated you can get one of these nifty little badges for your site, as well as a nice free PR 6 link back to your blog. There are different categories that you can enter, and it seems like you can enter in more than one category at once, so if your site is a humor/celebrity blog you can get nominated for both. Now while some people have no qualms about people nominating themselves. It might seem weird to others so if you have a blog that you want nominated, drop me a note in my comments, and I'll volunteer to nominate your sites for you. Don't worry, it seems like many of last year's winners were nominated by themselves. Oh yea, don't forget to vote for me too, I'm currently at #11 out of the three thousand entrants so far for Best Blog Ab ...
Awards  Blogger 

WhyPark Update - Paying $100 For Templates
2007-12-03 21:14:03
Some news from the WhyPark Creator Craig this month. Also if you are a website developer here is an opportunity for you too. We Want to Buy Your Templates A common request from WhyPark users is "add more templates!" We are planning on continually adding more templates, but would like to reach out to our user base first. If you've developed or would like to develop new templates for WhyPark and we think your template will be a good fit for other WhyPark users, we'll pay you $100 for each template we use. To submit your template for consideration, please do the following: Reply to this message or email craig @ whypark.net with the links to your custom templates in action on WhyPark Your template must be unique that you developed and have the right to use and sell (you will be required to sign a short release form) We are looking for templates that can be used across a wide variety of domains and subjects.If your template is accepted, we will pay you $100 by PayPal and will add your t ...
Templates 

Activision Blizzard Merger Announced
2007-12-02 23:14:44
Well there was a post up on Slashdot about Blizzard and Activision merging so is this good news? Activision has a big presence in console platforms from games like, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and do first person shooters such as Call of Duty 4, Doom 3, and Quake 4. Blizzard is carrying titles like Diable II, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft. Here is Activision Blizzards official press release.What do I hope comes out of this?What about a World of Warcraft for console games that operates in similar fashion to Final Fantasy XI. How about a Starcraft Universe that has first person shooter like Quake, but on a massive online server. Now that would be different, and interesting.Call of Duty 4Tony Hawk Proving GroundGuitar Hero 3Starcraft 2 All pictures from Activision Blizzard multimedia section. ...
Merger 

Sparter CEO Dan Kelly Interview
2007-11-30 23:11:40
Sparter doesn't usually put up blog posts so when this one came through I thought it was an interesting read. Its an interview of CEO Dan Kelly of Sparter done by Usable Markets Alex Kirtland.Some interesting information from the interview for me was these points from Dan Kelly:Globally there is a 2 billion dollar per year business for digital items in all the online games, from World of Warcraft to Maple Story, mainly centered on games in the Korean, North American and European markets.Imagine that, a whole economy worth 2 billion dollars that could basically be erased if someone formatted each game company's hard drive.A typical seller makes enough to play World of Warcraft for free - about $200 a year - but some make a lot more than that.I chuckled at this one since I find making gold fairly easily. Why would someone just make a few hundred, and leave? I guess the answer to that is that I know a lot of people who stop playing wow, and just sell off their gold/characters never to ...
Interview 

WoW Season 3 Brings Great Gold News
2007-11-29 05:00:28
Today and yesterday was a good day for many people in World of Warcraft. While people were hoarding arena points to get their new Season 3 pvp gear. The smart ones were hoarding materials to sell for today. Here's the WoW Professions thread in which some people claim to have made up to 58k gold. Many Miners, Jewelcrafters, Enchanters and even some Tailors/Leatherworkers were marking up their goods. While I thought I did well cashing in at 1,600 gold today, I guess I was beat by those people who prepared in advance for this. I apparently didn't follow my own WoW Auction House Gold Tips regarding preparing for Tuesdays. Don't mind the Earned/hr part of the screen shot since I only logged in to check my mail so not very accurate on that part. Also my Titan Bar money mod is a little screwed up ever since Patch 2.3 came out, and I haven't bothered to fix it since I only look at it when I log in/out.Anyways I want to know if anyone of you readers were able to cash in on this last updat ...
Gold  News  Wow 

Contest - Would You Do With $25?
2007-11-28 21:06:42
$25 dollars doesn't do much now a days. It can't get you a pizza delivered to your house in Maui. It can't buy you a full tank of gas (unless your driving a moped). So why am I asking this question? Shai at JMMO is running a contest for $25. So this post is my entry ticket to the contest. By the way if you haven't read my free blog traffic tips, you'll find that holding contests are a great linkbaiting method to gain back links as well as exposure for your blog.Anyways back to the subject matter on what I would do with $25. Since my blog is still rather new, I would use it to gather some exposure. What would be the best way to get some exposure for $25 though. I could:Purchase a link for this websiteWith all the Google Page Rank penalties being sent out recently about paid links though I don't think I'll go with this one. Also sidebar or sponsored posts don't really do great for traffic unless its from a very high traffic source anyways. I wouldn't be able to purchase a good ...
Contest 

RssHugger Some Lovin For Your Feed
2007-11-27 07:20:28
Last month I mentioned that I was going to try to add myself to more directories to generate visitors for this blog. On my list was to submit my blog to directories which bring me back to the subject of this post. RssHugger. What is RssHugger? Lets take a look at their about page."rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader."Why should I join now?Its FREE now, previously rssHugger was a pay to join directory. (you may still join by paying $20 if you wish to skip the write a post about rssHugger part of application, and receive a manual review).What are the benefits to me as a blogger?Raise awareness of your blog Send tons of visitors to your blog Share traffic with the community Be part of a viral/b ...
Feed 

Cyber Monday Myth or Now Internet Genre?
2007-11-26 23:43:41
Happy Cyber Monday to you all. What is it? In 2005 Shop.org coined a new marketing phrase called "Cyber Monday", based on some data in 2004 about the Monday following "Black Friday" being the biggest online shopping day of the year. Shortly afterwards, and after some actual research they found that it in fact didn't measure up to the hype. The term came under some harsh criticism, and even Rob Hoff posted a retraction of sorts to his article in Business Week. However as most advertiser's know there is no such thing as bad advertising, and many people follow the ideology of bad press is better than no press. Fast forward another year to 2006. Again more people downplayed the term Cyber Monday. However with each article posted, each comment created the term spread throughout the internet. Shop.org persisted in marketing the term as well as their website CyberMonday.com was launched. Even though many people said that the day was just hype, there were still a few companies that re ...
Internet 

World of Warcraft Gold Tip for The Poor Leatherworker
2007-11-24 21:47:30
So you wanna be a leatherworker in World of Warcraft? This isn't the guide for you then, the leatherworker power-leveling guide is located here along with all the other professions. This quick tip is for those poor leatherworkers who finally got the nice shiny Epic leather gear. Now the only problem is once you made your gear what else can I do with the skill? I know, I can sell various armor kits to make money like that expensive Nethercobra Leg Armor! I'm sorry to say it'll be a slow going process for you unless your running heroics day in and out for those Primal Nethers.Well this quick tip won't make you rich fast, but it can put an extra 50-100g a day for a few minutes work.Here is what you'll need:Minimum LW Skill: 325 (yep fund your 300-375 training with this)About 100g to start off if you have no materials.Skinning - Not required, but usefulAuctioneer - Not required, but makes things go a lot faster. Check my post on Auctioneer Guide.First thing first - check for your com ...
Gold  Warcraft 

Update For World of Warcraft Tip For Leatherworkers
2007-11-24 21:46:20
I just wanted to update my free tips for the poor WoW leatherworker post. Seems like there are many people wanting to know more about a particular product called Heavy Knothide Armor Kit that was released with the recent WoW patch 2.3.Heavy Knothide Armor KitWhat is it?Permanently increase the Stamina of an item worn on the head, chest, shoulders, legs, hands or feet by 10. Only usable on items level 60 and above.Where can Leatherworkers learn it?In Lower City Shattrah, from the Master Leatherworking Trainer Damari at location 67, 67(The southeast part of the city map near the exit into Terrokar Forest.Who makes it?Leatherworkers with 350 or greater skill.What does it take to make one?It takes three Heavy Knothide Leathers.How many skills ups can I get from it?Heavy Knothide Armor kits are Yellow from 350-354, Green 355-364, and go Grey at 365.Can I make gold selling it?Definitely, I make more gold selling these than selling the Heavy Knothide Leather on the auction house by themselv ...
Warcraft 

Happy Birthday World of Warcraft! 3 Years Old
2007-11-24 19:42:11
Yup the title says it all, Happy Birthday World of Warcraft. WoW is celebrating the third year after its North American launch. During that three year period Blizzard has somehow managed to accumulate more than 9 million subscribers world wide. Very impressive numbers so in thanks they are holding a sweepstakes to give out some prizes.Sweepstakes terms rules are posted here, and yes you need to be 18 or over to qualify as well as being in the United States (sorry Florida you don't qualify either). You will be entered automatically as long as your account was in active, and in good standing before November 19th, 2007.Now the good stuff - Prizes!During the week of November 26, we'll award 10 J!nx gift certificates valued at $100.00 each. During the week of December 3, we'll give away 20 sets of four World of Warcraft action figures. During the week of December 10, we'll provide 5 lucky players with an Apple iPod Touch and a two-year World of Warcraft subscription.Good luck to everyo ...
Birthday  Happy Birthday  Warcraft 

Mr. T Hacks World of Warcraft
2007-11-23 19:46:40
I just have to say why a bloody night elf. He should have rerolled horde. Anyways this is just one of the recent commercials for their popular World of Warcraft games with the catch phrase, "What's your game?".The other celebrity that was used was William Shatner playing a Tauren Shaman. I don't know, I would have cast him as a Draenai Paladin or something. I mean he was wearing Jedi robes in the commercial. Both commercials can be found here in the World of Warcraft movies download section.Personally I'm waiting on the next commercial which is supposed to use Verne Troyer the Mini-Me from Austin Powers. ...
Warcraft 

What Type of Salesperson Are You?
2007-11-22 05:24:37
Its nice to be home after a trip out of the country, even if it was only for a brief period of time. I learned quite a bit visiting the tourist town of Cozumel. The atmosphere, and weather is almost identical to that of Maui where I live. Nice cool breeze, beautiful water, sunshine, and even the slight drizzles in the morning. The people were a little different. Back here on Maui we don't have very many shop owners out on the street hawking their wares. The idea of haggling over a price also isn't something that we're not really used to.It struck me then that there were a lot different types of people about in the streets, and I couldn't help but to start grouping them into categories while dodging them in the side streets.The go getters - These were the almost too friendly salesperson that would always walk up to each, and every passerby with a smile, and warm welcome. Announcing clearly what they had in the stores for sale, or what were the unique items that were available he ...

And Away We Go - I'll Be Back
2007-11-08 20:39:12
I head out to Texas, and Mexico today so I won't be posting anything for a little while. I will be back home before Thanksgiving though so stop on by or subscribe to my feed so you know when I'm back. Have a safe and happy Veteran's day weekend while I'm out.While I'm not trying to sound like a certain governor, I have just to say it. "I'll be back". ...

Tag Your It - 7 Things About Me Meme
2007-11-07 23:43:13
Just when I thought I had everything ready for my trip I get tagged by a meme from Shai @ Just Make Money Online. Well if its one thing I can resist its games so here we go, and the game name is "7 Things About Me That You Might not Know". I haven't done one of these before, and I'm a little late on sending out some link love this month so I'll mix the two together! Ha the lazy game-a-holic procrastinator still wins! I also need to make a mental note to add meme to the list of things to do to increase traffic to your website. Also just because your blog is - for business only, doesn't mean that you can't change it topic around a little to fit the blog like Shai did in her meme. I don't have a very descriptive about me section so maybe this info will fill in some gaps for some people.7 Things About Me That You Might not Know - Well here goes nothing.I play video games ALOT - While you probably know that I play video games, you don't know to what extent I do so. Xfire keeps track ...

October Income Totals - Happy Halloween
2007-10-31 22:02:47
Well first off I would like to say Happy Halloween to all of you. May you have a safe Trick or Treating. Without much further ado here are my totals for the month of October, and I think I did a little bit better this month. Which by the way marks Money News's 2 month Anniversary.October Totals - $199.29Sparter - $133.65ClickBank - $49.32CashCrate - $11.38Adsense - $4.94 (blog/Whypark test combined)Well I guess I did a lot better than last month, but I didn't hit my goal of 20k gold like I was planning to. Mainly due to lack of diligence since I was tired after coming home from my job, and not logging into WoW to check the Auction House. I was only able to hit 14k gold before I decided to sell some off before the commission rates jumped in November. Also to get some extra spending money since Sparter will start paying out bi-monthly instead of nightly starting November. It looks like that there are many people cashing out now as the prices for WoW gold has dropped another $10/1k to $4 ...
Halloween  Income 

Show Me the Moola - Play Free Games For Cash
2007-10-31 16:52:57
Of all the things I didn't need to get addicted to. I really didn't need another browser game to play. Now I'm sitting here writing a post about the game , and waiting to hear the ding of the opponent ready chime. What is this semi-addicting cash game I'm toting about? Its called Moola. With a giant tower of prize money reminiscent of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Grand Prize is roughly $10,000,000, and is free to play.The game is currently in its beta form with the only way to play is to get an invite. Invites are easy enough to get though as you can go to the Moola forums, and request an invite. Members can also refer a limited amount of people over a period of time. I was going to release more information about the game here, but reading their terms and conditions I found that I may not do so. So you'll just have to take my word for it about how addicting the game is. =)If you would like to receive an invite to Moola you can follow the link below. Also if you do sign up ...
Cash  Games 

My CashCrate Check Arrived - And My Camera Broke
2007-10-29 06:49:30
It seems like lately every time I have good news, I also have bad news to share. I should rename my blog the yin/yang effect or something. Anyways my first check from CashCrate has just arrived so I WAS going to take a picture of it. Until I found out that my camera no longer works. So I'm sending a picture that I took from my camera phone, which btw is also on its last leg.I'll just be borrowing the camera from work to take a full size picture of the check next time. The total check amount was for 20.25, which was about the same as the total on my September Earnings. I guess this will going towards my buying another @%!% camera fund. Anyways if your new to CashCrate, you can check out my other CashCrate review posts. ...
Broke  Camera  Check 

Whypark Page Rank Update - PR3 In 2 Months
2007-10-27 05:40:50
Go figure, I post an update about my Whypark site, and Google decides to update page ranks today as well. The Whypark test site I'm using made PR3, and comparison my blog only hit PR2. I personally don't care either way, but many ad networks only work with sites with a minimum page rank value still so have a parked domain with page rank just means more revenue options.In my previous post I also mentioned that I was only getting about 1 visitor a month to the Whypark site. This just goes to show you that page rank value has no value or connection to actual website traffic. ...
Page Rank 

Whypark Review Day 45 - Sluggish Month So Far
2007-10-27 01:38:31
Today is about a month and a half after Google indexed my Whypark site. Here's easy links to the previous posts:Whypark Review & Trial Day 1Whypark Review Day 15Whypark Review Day 19Whypark Review Day 30According to Google's Webmaster tools I have about 1500 pages indexed. Traffic to the site this month has been relatively slow, about 1 visitor/day at the moment. Overall from the site itself I've made a little less than $5.00 so far from Adsense. It did help a little bit that I added an Adsense Video as part of a Business news video page. It makes having the plain article site have a little more color, esp. I've been thinking instead of just the video page link, that none of the visitors seem to notice, I should just add the video unit to all article pages. I have a lot to learn about ad placement still. Lately there seems to be more, and more templates that are similar to Whypark. However the downside to them is that you have to have a host company which usually incurs a m ...
Review 

Need Blog Traffic? Heres 15 Free Tips to Get It
2007-10-26 00:50:53
While Content is still king when it comes to getting traffic. If you don't tell anyone about your content no one will ever find out to spread the word about it. It is a not so little known secret that bringing in traffic ultimately results in readers, and sales. So these are a few methods that I am using or plan to use for my site to get more traffic.Submit to Search Engines - Its free, and it can bring in a hefty amount of traffic. Google & Yahoo are two major ones, if your site isn't indexed submit to them here and here. The best thing about search engine traffic is that it is targeted traffic, meaning the people who come from this method is looking for what you got to read, show or sell. Optimize your site for these search engines by using your keywordsSubmit to Directories - While a good directory can send you traffic, getting links via this method builds up your backlinks, which eventually push up your rankings in searches. Higher ranking in searches means more traffic ...
Blog  Blog Traffic  Tips  Traffic 

Cashcrate Revisited - Getting Paid Again
2007-10-24 05:28:56
About a month ago I wrote up a review on CashCrate, and followed it up with a payout report a few days later. Well I'm pleased to announce that I was finally able to reach payout again this month. Due to soo many people going on vacation at my full time job, I've had to scale back the time for doing alot of these offers so when CashCrate sends me a check next month it won't be as large. This month will only be about $10.60 so far, bring my CashCrate total to $30.65 so far.I have to be honest though I wasn't intending on completing any offers this month due to work load, but as I had received an e-mail from CashCrate notifying me that one of my referrals had reached payout. Thus entitling me to a $3.00 bonus, along with earning 20% of their earnings. So when I logged into my account I already had $5.00+ sitting there without me doing a thing($3.00 bonus + 20% of $10 = $5.00). Well this made it really easy to do a few offers to get that extra $5.00, and whammo here I am with ano ...

Yieldbuild to Help Adsense Users Increase Their Earnings
2007-10-24 00:41:34
Techcrunch recently posted an article about a new program that is still in beta called YieldBuild. What is it exactly? Its a computer algorithm to "automatically optimize your site’s ad spots with the most profitable combination of ad layout, style, and network". Also the program isn't just for Adsense users, but includes people who advertise via Yahoo Publisher Network, and Ebay adContext accounts as well.How does this relate to me making money online? Basically its the lazy man's advertising network, and needless to say an idea that I absolutely love. This program itself would give bloggers or other webmasters, who are still new to advertising placements, the ability to monetize their sites better. It also allows webmasters who don't update their layouts often a little change of scenery in ad placements. The idea is that as your readers get used to your ad placements, your ad revenue goes down as they learn to skip over your ads without reading them anymore. With changing o ...
Adsense  Earnings  Help 

Bye Bye BlogRush - No Hits For You
2007-10-20 21:12:11
So after accumulating a bit of credits on Blogrush, and only getting maybe 2 hits in return I'll be taking down the widget shortly. I even made them a complementary going away present with my 2nd grade MS paint skills.Here's the latest word about Blogrush's update from the Blogrush Blog:UPDATE: Tuesday, October 16th: We’re experiencing a delay with some minor server issues. We are working on them and will start releasing Phase 2 piece-by-piece very soon. Thanks for your patience.So long, and thank you for all the fish. (from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy if you didn't catch that.) ...
Hits