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I am quite a few days late with this news, but on the entire blogsphere, I have not seen one small mention of this, so I decided that I would let everyone hear about it. No longer will you see Google Adsense on Digg. Those in charge of DIGG wanted to try a company that was a bit younger and more creative and that was why they fired Google and signed on with none other than Microsoft. Now, this has caused quite a stir in the neighborhood for one very interesting reason: most of Digg is all for apple and linux and they find Microsoft to be the ‘devil.’ Now they have to do deals with the devil.

Microsoft has been signed on for three years to run advertising on the site. What will this do, then, for the two companies in mention? Digg had more than 9.5 million visitors last month. That’s great for them. That’s also 9.5 million visitors that were clicking ads via adsense. Now that Google has lost this client, it might give them a slap to the face about their program. This will DEFINITELY help Microsoft grow. The way PPC works, in my eyes, is that advertisers will sign up if they have great publishers. Publishers will sign up if there are a lot of advertisers. This is the first step towards Microsoft getting a bigger chunk of the market.

What does this mean for people like me and you? Whether we decide to change to Microsoft or Yahoo or stay with Google, this does one other good thing for us. It creates competition. As Microsoft grows, Google will shrink. There is only so much money to be made. So, if Microsoft starts to steal people away from Adsense, Google will need to start doing something about it. One of the things they could do is offer more money for their publishers. We all know that we have been feeling some hurting from the click prices. Google is robbing us, so this might get that fixed. It will be interesting to see how this massive change affects the market. Very interesting, I think. To read the article, go here.

About a month ago, I had talked about how I was going to get pens made for Dorm Earning. A month later, they arrived and I have to say, I am very pleased with them except for one small problem. Because of a fault made by myself, I accidentally slipped and hit s on the end of DormEarning so I wound up with DormEarnings.com. It’s alright, though, because I was able to buy the domain DormEarnings.com. I figured that it was cheaper to just buy a new domain name and then forward it to the original than to get all new pens, especially since it was my fault in the first place.

I was very pleased, though, with how fast the pens came and also how easy it was to do business with the promotional marketing company. Everything was done real smooth. Now, all I need to do is hand the pens out to people. If this works out, I might very well move on to getting pens made for my science forum. Since I am a science major, I could hand the pens out ONLY to those that are in the science department. It might work and it might not. We will see how this does for Dorm Earning. And if nothing else, I got some very cool pens. We’ll see, though.

One of the big things that I find irritating is how Google is going on and on about how it is wrong for people to buy links. They say that anyone that buys links should be penalized in the search engines and that no one should buy links. Every time I hear this, I get so irritated. Why do they think that they can tell us what to do? Why is it Google thinks that they can tell us we can’t buy links.

I think that it is foolish that Google is telling us not to buy links. In real businesses, they buy advertising any way possible to try and increase sales. Why is it that a webmaster can’t buy a link? Why should I be penalized for using my money for advertising? They don’t get penalized for stealing most of the publisher’s money, but we get penalized for having links that are purchased leading to our site?

In my opinion, the purchasing of links should be allowed. Why is it that Google can sell links (for 10K a piece, I believe), but if we do that, we’re doing something wrong? And why is it that they can tell us what to do? We’re web masters…They’re our websites. And the truth is…There are a lot of other fish in the sea. If I had to go to Yahoo, I would, because I am a believer that purchasing links is alright. However, I may be wrong. Until proven wrong, though, I am going to continue buying links. That’s just my opinion.

One of the things that I learned from working at the Deli is that people are two-faced, fickle, and they are annoying as all hell. I made two friends while working there, but at the same time, I also grew to really hate some people. Now, one of my friends was dating one of the people I could not stand at the deli. I don’t mind relationships where you work, but I have a very firm belief that you should never mix your business and your personal life. Business and pleasure should be completely separate.

Say you are dating someone and you two decide you want to make a website together. That’s cute, that’s cool, perhaps you’ll make some money together and be able to afford to go on a nice vacation and spend some quality time with each other. Then the dreaded honeymoon syndrome goes away and voila, you are fighting all the time and bam, your relationship ends. What do you do now? You have mixed business and pleasure together and you’re stuck with a predicament. How do you continue to work on your site when the two of you are so hostile towards each other?

If I ever make a website with someone, it’s because we’re friends at most. I won’t make a website with someone I am dating because if something happens (which is prone), the business is effected. It is very important that you don’t mix the two because that results in lost profits. And on a final note…Don’t USE business money for your personal life. If your websites are earning $500.00 a week, ensure that you aren’t spending it all on your personal life rather than expanding your business. Business and pleasure should never be mixed, at least not in my opinion.

I have been using Kontera for a few months now and one simple thing has come to my mind when I go and take a look at my earnings: is Kontera only for big sites? The reason I ask this is because I have made very little money when it has come to running Kontera on my site and I often wonder if it is because I don’t use the correct keywords or if, perhaps, the program really is for those kinds of websites that get a lot of traffic. I wonder if anyone can make a lot of money with Kontera, or if you actually want to make ANYTHING on it, you need to have ungodly amounts of traffic.

My friends ask me sometimes why I still use it. They know that I am not making much money and from time to time, I have to say that the ads are ugly. I tell them the same thing every single time. I am hoping that one day, it’ll start to pick up and it’ll start making money. Perhaps that’s not the case and perhaps it’ll never pick up, but for right now, every click I get is closer to the $100.00 mark and since I don’t want to put all of my eggs into one basket, I will continue to use it.

However, I have lost a lot of faith in it. When I signed up, I was under the impression that it was an amazing earner. Yet, my traffic has stayed consistent, if not increased nicely, and yet my earnings have not followed when it comes to Kontera. We will have to wait and see how it works out in the end. What has been your success or failure when it comes to Kontera? Am I looking at a good possibility of making some nice money or is it going to be a failure? Just curious, that’s all.

One of the big things that I see a lot of companies doing these days is diversifying. Dell used to only make computers and now there are televisions. Apple now has a cell phone as well as the iPod. Google started out as a search engine and now has a map program, an online payment program, their advertising program, and tons of other things. They diversify because they realize that is where the max profits are. If you stay very limited, you’re not going to make as much money.

So, that leads me to my next point…Online diversification. That’s a big word with a very simple meaning. Try new things. I was reading somewhere that the reason some people make it big on the internet is that they try new things. They experiment. Don’t be afraid to experiment. If you are making a good chunk of change from your network of arcades, try something else. Sure, continue working on those arcades, but rather than making ANOTHER one, why not try and make a content site? Or…Why not try making a blog? By diversifying, you ensure that there are no risks.

What if one day Google decided that arcade sites were not good for business and just disallowed their ads to be placed there? Those that rely entirely on adsense income from their arcades would really be in a bind. However, if you had diversified and had other types of sites that were earning you money, you would still be able to survive and earn because of the fact that you had the money saved up and all of that. Basically, it is very important for you to have other things so that if anything happens, you’re alright. It’s diversifying and everyone should do it.

I was finally given the opportunity to write a real review, so I decided that I would give it as a means of showing people what the reviews are going to consist of. If you are interested in getting a review, please follow the image on the right and sign right up. So, let’s get started on this first review.

Pay Per Post is a great way for people to make money and to get great reviews to their site. Although, at first, they did not accept my blog because it was believed to have been created for the sole purpose of making money through their network, a second application in and I was accepted without hesitation. That was one of the first features that I found absolutely amazing about this service. Once they opened their doors to more bloggers, it opened a new passageway into providing content for publishers. But, looking at how their system is, I have to say that it is an even greater system for the advertiser.

Because of their vast blog network, the options are nearly endless about what you can get blogged about. Since the site is a marketplace for people to buy reviews of their site or their product, it is definitely one of the better places to go. I have seen a lot of places that provide this service, but very few have ever had the same ‘professionalism’ and yet at the same time ‘relaxed feel’ to them that I think is imperative for an online business such as this one.

One of the things that I find rather useful on it, coming from a publisher’s perspective, is how they put you into their marketplace, but they also show you different opportunities that you can pick from when deciding what to write about. Some opportunities only pay five dollars while there were a few that paid a great price of $250.00. If that’s not a nice chunk of change for writing a review, I honestly do not know what is. And since you get to keep the majority of your profits unlike other companies similar to this, it really is a great feature for publishers to use.

Although I am new to Pay Per Post, I have to say that it is a great system to use if you are looking to make money writing reviews or if you are looking to create more buzz about your site or your product. Whether you are a blogger or an advertiser, what they offer is something you will guarantee to find useful and enjoyable. Check the site out and if you decide to sign up, sign up knowing that all it takes it a bit of hard work and some motivation and even you can be making some money. It’s a good system and one that I recommend highly to other people to use. Check it out.

Now that I am out of my job (since my last day was today), I figured it’d be cool to go away for a few days. I’m going upstate some more to this town called Ithaca. They’ve got a lot of cool things there and I always wanted to go, so I figured why the hell not, you know? However, this does bring a small problem…What if the hotel doesn’t have internet? I’m going with my Father and he wasn’t sure if they had internet. How am I possibly going to do my blog posts? Well, I came to a realization…

I’ll time stamp them. So, if all goes according to plan, Thursday through Saturday’s posts will be written at another time, probably tomorrow. I will be doing that for Dorm Earning as well simply because if there is no internet, I cannot afford not to do my blog posts. For those that ever go on vacation, remember that it is important to update your blog, so using a time stamp is a really good idea. Even if you don’t know what to write about, it’s good to have a few blog posts there waiting just in case something goes wrong. So, I will be using it for the first time this week and if it works out well, perhaps I will use it more often when school starts. We’ll see.

For a very long time, I have been working hard on trying to get my Alexa rank better. I don’t know whether I should say increase my rank or decrease my rank, since the smaller your number is, the better; yet, increasing just sounds better. Either way, my rank is getting lower and lower, so that is something that is good. I was surprised to see that it had dropped 30K in a few days, but then I realized why it had gone down. There was now a FireFox Alexa toolbar and since there was one of those, everyone that viewed my site that had it installed, would therefore help me with my rank. Sure, it’s biased, but so what?

Now that I see it going lower and lower, I can start to see things getting better and better. Perhaps it’ll take time, but maybe as it grows, more and more opportunities will hit me. Because of this, I have begun thinking about forgetting all these review companies and just doing it all on my own. Perhaps that would work best. This is the first time any of my sites has gone lower than 600K for Alexa, so I am pretty excited. I know that I will have to continue working hard to get it even lower, but I really think this could be the start of something.

If you want to install the viewbar, please go download it. It really isn’t all that invasive.

One thing that people know who have read this site is that after a while, I get bored of a site and I sell it. I always somehow make a profit, but I get rid of the site so that I can do something else. Don’t worry, I’m not selling any of my sites. But, this brought about an interesting question in my mind when I was sitting thinking about selling one of my sites. I recently bought that local movie theater times website and I realized that I bought it for the sole purpose of flipping it. I bought it so that I could, in return, sell it. Now, why would I do that?

I realized that my passion does not lay in my content sites or my arcade or any of that. I realized that my passion is in three websites. They are the only three websites that are on my quick tabs for firefox and they are the ones that I check on a regular basis. There’s this blog, there’s my science forum and there’s my make money online blog. Other than these three sites, the other sites are just cushion sites. And even though my arcade site currently makes the most of my money, it is still not one of my most important sites.

The reason I write about this is because I realized that I could easily sell any of my sites if it came down to it. If I wanted to, I could sell my women of rock site without a problem. I could sell my arthritis site. I could sell the movie site. The point is that I could sell these because they aren’t overly important to me. I’ve come to a realization that my flipping of sites has been always used to grow my main sites. I have used the money I made from selling one site to try and expand another. And perhaps that is the business that I should focus on. Buy small content sites, build them up a bit, and then sell them for a profit so that I can devote more money to my main sites. It’s something I have to think about, but what does everyone think about it? I love three of my seven sites. Those are the three that I want to keep for good. So, is it a good idea to buy sites just to sell them a month or two later for profit?