Making money online may seem easy when other bloggers talk about it but there is one thing that all bloggers will agree upon, and that is diversifying your income. This means that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In the sense that you should explore many different ways that you can earn money online. One such way, which has recently become popular is through affiliate marketing.

There are a lot of good companies out there and I’ve talked about a few of them before but there’s another one that I had forgot to mention and thats T3Leads. You may have seen them featured on some other blogs and now its their time to shine on EnkayBlog, so lets take a look.

Background Information
T3Leads is an affiliate marketing company located in California. Their affiliate program directly cooperates with large networks of banks and other financial institutions to bring to its affiliates, a wide variety of ads to promote. These include anything from payday loans, auto insurance to mortgage loans and more. They have a very unique auction system in place that helps maximize profits for the affiliates.

Usability/Support
The idea of an affiliate system is that it should be easy to use not only by experienced affiliate marketers but also new affiliate markets. The sign up process for T3Leads didn’t take but 5 minutes and it was quite simple. If you ever find yourself stuck or pondering on something for a while then you can always find the contact page to get in touch with their friendly customer support who are ready to answer any and all types of questions. They can also help you with technical problems. One of the good things that I liked was that their contact page had phone numbers, email addresses, ICQ user names as well as AIM and Yahoo screen names. This makes contact with a customer support agent that much easier and accessible. They even have a great forum over at http://forum.t3leads.com that you can use in case you have any questions. Below is a screenshot of their contact page.

Interface
The user interface on the main page can be seen below. Its a bit graphically challenged and sometimes its not all in English but aside from that, its not that hard to navigate. The menu is located at the top and its a drop down menu so navigation is not an issue even if you are new to affiliate marketing. I would suggest that adding a bit of color and better language functionality would help them reach out to a lot of new affiliate marketers as well. On the plus side, they provide their users with lots of high quality promo tools that are constantly refreshed by their creative team to maximize performance.

Offers
They have lots of great offers that are seperated by public and private websites which are websites that are owned by people like you and I. They guarantee the highest conversion rates in the industry ranging from 1:6 to 1:9 in terms of ratio. Those are some pretty impressive numbers. Furthermore, they do not resell generated leads. Their leads help maximize the profits for its affiliates. They pay for each customer sent to them after the customer responds to your offers for qualified products and services. Here is how the offer page looks and as you can see im viewing the Public websites page.

Payment
T3Leads gives you several options for payment. The minimum payout is $100 based on the option you chose and you have several options to choose from. There is ePassporte, Company Check, Bank Wire Transfer, WebMoney, Paypal or Fethard. Some of them have a commission percentage which is subtracted from your payout but there are a few such as check and Fethard that don’t have any additional fees. Here is the payment screen below.

Final Thoughts
So, In conclusion I’d say that T3Leads seems to be doing a good job. They have some good offers, great support system in place and they have several payment options. Their user interface could use a little help in terms of navigation but aside from that they have it all figured out. If you haven’t tried them out yet, now is your chance to do so – Sign up!

Design
Overall, I like the design on the blog but I do suggest that what is missing is some branding. Yes, the theme has been slightly customized but I would like to see what I call, a “differentiating factor” or something that sets this blog apart from others that use the same theme. This can probably be done with a customized header. The colors work well and the RSS Subcriber button is also placed in an appropriate place which is good.

There was an issue that I saw and even though I fall under the same category, I noticed that Abhijeet has a few too many ads on the website. I counted the ad blocks and came up with 6 total ad blocks and I am including a marked image to show that.

Another thing that I really missed was an About page. I can relate Abhijeet with LifeIsColourful.com but I was hoping I could get a little more information about the man behind the blog and things such as where he is from, what he does currently and things of that nature.

The thing that I really liked was the way he integrated MyAvatars into his comments. The image is displayed and then besides it is a dialogue box with the comment in it. I have had so many issues trying to get mine to work properly but that is probably the most likeable integration of MyAvatars in a blog.

Content
Abhijeet has been able to maintain a good frequency of posting and that has definitely helped his blog quite a bit and his posts itself are very well written and to the point. He doesn’t try to make it complex for his readers and that works to his advantage.

I also liked the fact that he has a Disclosure Policy in the navigation bar. Although, I have never felt the need for a disclosure policy, it can be useful to those who may object to some aspect of your blog content and by having a disclosure policy you can do away with all those people who have issues with regards to what you blog about.

One more suggestion that I would like to give Abhijeet is that, he might want to consider moving to the 3-column design of this theme and make the font of his content and sidebars a little bigger. I am used to reading small and large text but it can get to be a strain after a while for some people. I have kept mine at 11pt or 12pt font I believe but I think the theme itself has a stylesheet.css that sets the font at 10px which can be quite small. In comparison, the Google Adsense block on the left has a great font size and maybe making it a little bigger can help him.

So lets break it down to the Pros & Cons:

Pros:
- Great Theme Choice for the blog
- Location of RSS feed button is excellent
- Including Top Commentators is a good way to recognize your readers
- Nice Integration of MyAvatars in comments
- Good Frequency and Quality of Content

Cons:
- A few too many ad blocks
- Need an About Page to tell readers more about the author

Suggestions:
- Possible switch to 3-column design
- Increase the font size
- Cut down to 4 Adblocks from 6 AdBlocks
- Center Align the Feedburner Ticker and the RSS button below it

Hopefully those tips will help you out Abhijeet and I hope you like the review. I am sorry for the delay in getting this out faster! So go ahead and check out Life Is Colourful for a great read! Have a great rest of the weekend guys!

The basic concept of B5 Network is to cover everything related with gadgets and they do showcase some interesting products that I have not come across before. It seems to be a newly established blog because their Alexa isn’t high enough and neither is the amount of subscribers they have but they do offer some good content. The only downside of the B5 Network is that although they have some good posts, there is too much of a gap between posting, meaning that their post frequency is quite low. The last post on their blog is from the second week of November. They seem to get 3-4 posts a month and that may not be enough for them to sustain their blog. I think that B5 Network can go places if they are able to do a few things:

- increase post frequency
- clean up the design with something a little more appealing
- add an about us page so people arent misled into believe that they are part of B5 Media
- capitalize on the fact that they own a great domain name

I think it is all a matter of time before the people behind B5 Network will begin to realize that they can be successful online if they put the effort into it!

Make Money Blogging
The best part about the page is the PayPal screenshot. I just love these and so do most other people because seeing how well others are doing makes you want to do just as good or even better than them. The idea that he made over $840 dollars within 5 days should be motivating enough for most readers. Robert began monetizing his blog in July of 2007, about 3-4 months ago and as of September last month, his earnings was in the $5000 range! You heard right, $5000. The second thing about Roberts blog is that its a PR6 blog so he must be doing something right! Seeing Robert make money through PayPerPost has made me want to jump on the bandwagon too and after you read his post, you will probably feel the need to do so also.

Design
Talking about Design on this blog was pretty easy. I give Robert a high five for picking a unique theme. I have seen a lot of blogs that used the “Misty” look but this theme is different from most and even though its not custom, I haven’t seen it around and that makes it just as good as being custom. I like the idea of the RSS button being placed at a spot where it is visible and yet quite classy in the way its positioned. I also like how the Search bar and the Recent Posts boxes are extended to both columns. Speaking of design, I would really like to see Robert change out the default About picture to a picture of himself. It will really help people identify better with him as a blogger in the long run.

Content
The content Robert produces is what I like mainly because its concise and to the point. He doesn’t beat around the bush just to make a post twice as long as it was meant to be. For example, in some of his posts he just writes a few lines about an article he found interesting and links to it, letting the original article be the source of information. I would really like to see Robert talk about making money online and although he claims he isn’t an expert in the area, it would still help his blog gain better rankings if people see the numbers he is pulling each month. I would like to say that content wise , Robert provides a nice variety of articles so that you aren’t reading the same thing every time you visit. Sometimes if family related, other times its product recommendations or even blogging related. Its good to have a variety and Robert provides that variety very well.

Things I Like:
1) Unique Design & Excellent Theme Choice
2) Variety in Blog Posts Helpful to Readers
3) Make Money Blogging Page well placed on top fold of the page
4) Nice set up of sidebars – makes it easy to navigate through the blog

Suggestions:
1) BlogRush widget – I would highly suggest to relocate the BlogRush widget to allow the categories to rise to the top so that the widget doesnt look out of place.
2) Archives Sidebar – The archives go from 2004 to 2007 and are quite long, it may be sufficient to only provide 12 months, however it may not be possible depending on the coding of the theme.

3) Ad Removal – There is an ad in the sidebar that you can see below that uses a scrollbar. It may be best to remove that ad if it isn’t performing too well, that way you more room can be made for other things.

4) Center Align Sidebar Items – Under the scrollbar based ad, there is some advertising, a TLA button and Alexa widget, it might look more appealing if those were center aligned and that could be easily fixed with a div tag or simple html code.
5) Feedburner Chicklet - I would really like to see the Feedburner chicklet move from the bottom of the page to the top where it is visible. The blog has more than 50 visitors and so it can be tempting for others to join!
6) TTZMedia Ads – I really like the TTZ Media Ads however in the affiliate panel i suggest that he should change the borders from black to white there by allowing the blog to flow better because the black border around the ad isn’t helping the blog flow as well. You can see an example of the border below.

Conclusion
Well, thats about it, I am positive that Macewan will be able to take his blog to the next level because his current statistics are in great shape. I really think that starting to bring in the aspect of making money blogging will help the blog too. I also think that making some of the changes as suggested would be useful to him in making the blog more appealing and thereby attracting more visitors. So, I hope you liked my review and I want to see what your thoughts are on this blog.

Hey guys, Enkay is finally back after being bogged down with school for the past few days. I still have exams coming up but since I get a little time off I figured I would get the ball rolling. So, most of you are familiar with ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews and PayPerPost. If you are new to blogging then its important to understand how these services work.

How Do These Work?
The basic idea is that you are “paid” or “sponsored” by an advertiser to write a blog post about their product, service or website. Sometimes you may be required to write only about the benefits but other times you can write a full critique. According to me a full critique is the best way to go for an advertiser because they can find out what they are doing right as well as what they are doing wrong so they can improve upon the negatives.

Are They Worth It?
Paid reviews can be a great source of income for your blog and if you remember they contributed a large part of my income during my first couple months blogging however, over time I realized that reviewing products or services that were not related to the theme of my blog were not a good way to keep readers interested. If you ever decide to sign up for ReviewMe, PayPerPost or SponsoredReviews you need to remember that if you are a start up that it may not be the best idea to talk about unrelated topics.

One of the mistakes I made was to accept reviews that were unrelated to the theme of my blog and even though I received payments for these reviews, I was unable to acquire new readers and that wasn’t helping my blog in the long run. So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and know that reviewing other blogs or products/services related to blogging are probably what will help you the most as you can connect to your readers and give them something they want to read about.

Hopefully you see that being paid for a review is one thing but using that review to your advantage to gain readers is another. Hopefully you will take my advice and if you guys have any questions or need help just leave me a comment and ill get back to you.

Thank you!
I want to thank everyone who supported me during my 3 days of hiatus from blogging due to school work. Thank you to TheKingKongBlog, Adsense Tracker, Simon, RomanDock & Blogging The Movie. Here is a video that will help you relieve your stress in case you are dealing with work-filled days!

If you have been in the blogosphere for the past two months, you will notice that the number of contests have just kept rising over the past month and after a while it gets almost difficult to keep track of them. Its only ingenious that someone have a blog about contests and that someone is The Original Contest Blogger or Brian Aldrich (seen to the right). The Prize Blog was one of the first contest blogs that I had come across mainly because it was the ONLY contest blog at the time that I started blogging back in May. When Brian sent me the request to review his blog, I was more than excited to do so. Brian also owns Blog Duck which, unlike The Prize Blog, is focused on giving people blogging tips and ideas. I am currently a guest blogger for Blog Duck but I really hope I can contribute more in the future to that blog. Lets take a look around The Prize Blog, shall we?

Design
Brian has done a great job recently by changing the design of his blog. I have stressed several times that branding is one of the best ways to reach through to your audience and by having a character designed to represent The Prize Blog, its only fitting that he has made the right move. As far as design goes, the blog is very easy on your eyes and doesn’t use annoying flashing graphics or neon colored text for that matter either. I felt that the theme works well for Brian as the navigation menu is easily accessible at the top of the page along with a search bar. The RSS button is on the top fold of the page and is placed in an appropriate position which is also two things that I have stressed several times.

As far as color schemes go, I think it has been intelligently designed. If you notice, green and blue are the two colors prominent on the website. The same two colors are seen in the title of the blog on the page and when you move your mouse over the title of a post, which is in blue, it turns to green. I really like the way it is set up and my hat is off to him in terms of blog design and meeting all the requirements of being a successful blog. I also decided to see the improvements that Brian has made to the blog over the past 9 months and here is how it looks and if you are like me, you should be more than impressed by the changes.

Content
I have always been a fan of The Prize Blog and even though I have been familiar with it since the end of May, I decided to look back in time to see the type of content that The Prize Blog has delivered over time and to my surprise he has always been consistent in delivering information about contests the same way. In almost all of his posts since the beginning, he has mentioned the URL of the contest, the prize involved, the end date and if necessary, a picture of the prize. I think his combination of including the critical information in the first few lines of the post itself is a major plus. I think that it has become a standard for him to post contests in that manner and it is makes it very easy for a visitor to know what a contest is about just by glancing at the post. It should also be noted that Brian personally screens the submission of a contest before posting it on the site only to make sure that he is leading his readers in the right direction.

Pros:
There are quite a few things that work in favor of The Prize Blog and I think you would agree strongly with these.
1) Great Design Integration
2) RSS Feed Button Placement
3) Consistent Content Over Time
4) Easy To Obtain Contest Information

Suggestions:
Now for the suggestions, there were a few things that I think need a little attention but they aren’t any major issues but they can certainly help The Prize Blog quite a bit.
Note: Clicking on the images on the side will enlarge them.

1) Fewer Categories – If you notice on The Prize Blog there is are about 32 categories and at times, it becomes a problem for the reader to decide which category to pick. I have to agree to one thing that most of the categories cannot be consolidated but there are some categories that could be done without because of the few number of posts in that particular category. For example, “Information”, “Musical Instruments” and “Perfume and Cologne” are a few of the categories that only have one post in them so if the contests have ended it would be good for him to remove the posts until another contest in that category comes about.

2) Move “Submit A Contest” Upwards – On the sidebar you will notice that the space dedicated to submitting a contest is located towards the bottom of the sidebar. I do know that a button to submit a contest is present in the top navigation, but it would be a good idea to move that sidebar item towards the top, preferably under the RSS button, like so. I think that moving it upwards will help bring more attention to it and because Brian offers an upgrade to “Featured Contest”, this could also mean more sales for him in the long run.

3) Submit Contest Font Mismatch – The submit contest form on the contest page has a little font mismatch going on and it was a little difficult for me to figure out where the input boxes were to enter my information in. I figured that if Brian was able to get one of these two plug-ins I am going to mention that would be able to solve that problem. The first is the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form and the other is Enhanced WP Contact Form. Both of those plug-ins help you integrate a better contact form in your blog and that could tremendously with the issue I have seen in the contest submission form.

Conclusion
Overall, as I said earlier, I have always been a big fan of The Prize Blog, and I really hope that Brian will be able to keep some of my suggestions in mind. I also am going to offer to help him implement some of the changes if he needs it. If you haven’t checked it out already, now would be a good time to visit the site and subscribe to the feed! Also, do let me know your thoughts about The Prize Blog and how you liked my first direct review!

Get Reviewed!
This was my first direct review offer through the blog and Brian was smart enough to take advantage of the 50% off full-site review offer I have going on. If you would like to take advantage of this offer and get a full site review for only $20, you will also get a free 125×125 ad spot on The Wall of Blogs! So what are you waiting for, get your full site review and a spot on The Wall of Blogs for only $20!

Note: Please include your email address in the notes or description so that I can contact you regarding the website, product or service that needs to be reviewed. Thanks!

For starters, this isn’t a paid review by ReviewMe and I just wanted to get that out there. If you own a blog, then most of you are familiar with ReviewMe. For those of you who aren’t stick around for a little background info. Basically, ReviewMe is a website that allows advertisers to create accounts and get their product, service or website reviewed by bloggers based on a rating scale. Advertisers pay the bloggers an amount that is determined by the bloggers themselves. The blogger’s are rated on a few things: Technorati Rank, Alexa Rank and RSS readership. My blog isn’t rated so well with only 2 stars and a suggested asking price of $60. The next Alexa update will be bump me up to 3 stars with a suggested price per review of $100. According to me $100 is far too much to charge and my price will remain at $40 even as my rating rises.

Either way, I have been with ReviewMe for about 2 months now and I have noticed that ever since my start, I have received no review offers aside from a few campaign offers that I pick. It makes me wonder if some of the other popular blogs are seeing any review offers. With my rank closing in on 3 stars, I begin to wonder whether ReviewMe will help my blog in earning any money or not. As for JohnChow, he has seen high ReviewMe requests costing $400 each and ReviewMe makes up 20% of his monthly income. I have completed several campaign offers and in my first month, earned $15 and in the second month, jumped to $70. The payments for last month have shown a significant drop and campaign offers for this month are pretty much depleted.

Can You Bank on ReviewMe?
As I noticed over the past couple of months, you really can’t expect ReviewMe to be steady unless you are a highly popular blog. JohnChow gets several review offers mainly because of his high popularity. Also, lets not forget that ReviewMe charges the highest commission which stands at 50%, compared to 35% of SponsoredReviews and PayPerPost which doesn’t seem to charge any commission. Overall, I would say that even ReviewMe’s campaign offers aren’t stable aside from the fact that most of the review offers are directed towards the highly popular ones. I want to experiment by keeping my review price at $40 as I come into the 3 star range. I wonder if that will make any difference.

Dont Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
I have to mention that you can’t expect ReviewMe to be the only source of income on your blog. You have to diversify your sources of income and you need to be sure that you have atleast 5-6 sources of income. Relying solely on Adsense or Kontera or even ReviewMe will lead to unsatisfactory results. Remember, the average money making blog has about 6, so having that many won’t hurt you. Personally, I use Adsense, Kontera, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Text Link Ads and PayPerPost. Also remember that you won’t start earning money instantly and that it will take time for you to start receiving offers on paid-t-blog sites.

Hope that this will help you realize that ReviewMe can definitely help you make money, but you have to establish yourself in the blogosphere to really start rolling in the review offers and raking up the cash! Thanks for reading!

The way the offer was described, I decided to accept the offer but also made special considerations for it, in terms of the amount. The person behind the review is Navtej Kohli who is a philanthropist and a business owner. He wants me to spread a little link love to a favorite charity of my choice that will help enlighten my readers about giving back. We all don’t realize that aside from our busy lives, there are people who don’t have a fraction of what we have today. Navtej has a foundation of his own and the website Charity Navigator is an excellent resource for those looking to share their wealth with others who are less fortunate.

I have picked The V Foundation which is rated as a 5 Star foundation. I have never seen a website like this and I promise that once you see the website, you will be in awe too. The details page for The V Foundation contains their balance sheet showing their revenue and expenses and their history. The V Foundation was founded by ESPN and Jim Valvano back in 1993. They are an organization that is researching the cure for cancer and spreads awareness among Americans regarding the importance of the fight against cancer. They have helped raise more than $60 million for research and I wanted to help bring more awareness towards organizations such as this one.

I know that a lot of people donate their time and money for a charitable cause and I wonder how some of you spend the money you make from blogging, if you are monetized. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t accept any money for this review but I was able to reduce the offer amount to reduce the cost of this review. Personally, I use the money that I make from blogging to pay for expenses related to pursuing a college degree. How do you spend your money?

I talk about a lot of cars that I test drive and lately I have been waiting for a good review request for an automotive website and my wish has finally been granted. Vcars.co.uk has requested me to review them through Sponsored Reviews which marks my first review with them and I have to say that I was very impressed. Vcars is a comprehensive source of supercar wallpapers, motoring news and a search engine for used cars. Lets take a look at each portion of the website a little closer.

Motoring News
You have to realize that this is a website based for the UK and although some may say “Oh, I only worry about cars that are made for the US” you may want to reconsider mainly because newer technology usually hits the UK before it gets to the US and thats specially true of European cars. All portions of the website are designed very well and content on the motoring news section is updated more than a few times a day on some occasions meaning that you will always have new content to read!

Used Cars
The used car section is all well designed and I did try it out with a UK post code and it worked really well. Everything is organized well and design integration across the board is great. When you first look at the used car page you will see links to the motoring news and wallpapers section which is a great way of self-promotion. I like the idea of integrating the used car search into the website because it really does create a one-stop-shop for visitors.

Wallpapers & Screensavers
If you look at the header image for this post, you will see how well designed these wallpapers are. The screensavers are based off the wallpaper and all of them are just fantastic. There are many times when I come across a car wallpaper and think to myself “I wish my car was here” and because of the large selection that is offered, you have a better chance of finding your car here. On another note, the wallpapers themselves are excellent and I wonder if the man behind the website has designed them all because they are nothing short of amazing. The only thing that may disappoint is that all the cars are blue in color with a blue background, except for a few but other than that its a well designed site.

Conclusion
Overall, I liked the way the website was put together and I liked the fact that all three portions of the website were well integrated to build viewership. The motoring news section was probably the best for me considering the fact that I am a car enthusiast and that reading about the technology and development of cars across the ocean, is informative and entertaining for me. I hope that you liked the review and do check out the vcars.co.uk website!