Internet Business Daily

It is almost inevitable that a website will be hacked. Someone always thinks they control the Internet and police sites they don’t like. Even the company I work for, an enormous website with lots of protection, got hacked for pissing someone else off.

There is nothing a webmaster can do about this except try to protect the site. If you are really savvy you may even retaliate. Unfortunately I fell victim (along with all the sites on the server I am on) to a hack. My server admin informed me that someone had hacked his server. This hacker flooded the server with requests for the same data over and over again. Honestly, I shouldn’t even be talking about this for two reasons. First, the hacker might read this and get pleasure that they were mentioned. Second, the hacker might read this and hack us again. Regardless, the first hack did absolutely nothing to the server or my site. I believe the site went down for all of 10 seconds while the admin checked a few settings but other than that there was nothing more than a hiccup.

Again getting hacked is pretty hard to avoid. Just the other day reddit.com was hacked and the user names and passwords of tons of people were stolen. Now you might say who cares if someone has my reddit info, but if you are like many people you have one user name and password for every one of your hundred different websites you sign in to. This was a major blow to reddit.

One thing I did not mention is why I was hacked. In all honesty, I really don’t know. It could be because a jealous digger saw my site get to the front page and decided I should pay. Whatever the reason I survived to see another day. So for all webmasters out there when you get hacked, just hope for the best and don’t get too angry/upset.

If you have not read my article about Moola.com, you should probably read that before continuing here. I had praised them for their great idea and execution of their website. For those who don’t know moola.com is a site where they give you one penny and by playing simple strategic webgames, you can turn it into $10 million. Again, check out the Moola article for more information.

Unfortunately, instead of praises this time I have been very disappointed in the past week and will only be giving them negative feedback now. Here is how it all started. After playing for a day or two, I was not able to get past 5 or so wins. This did not bother me at all because I realize if they are giving away $10 million, they better make it very hard. The problem started when I began to get disconnected for no reason I would click my bid during a game, and less than a second later it would say I lost because my bid was not received in time. Granted losing 32 cents isn’t a blow to my wallet, but after spending hours trying to build up to 32 cents it gets very annoying having it taken from you.

Now they do offer a way to investigate what happened and possibly get your money back, but after emailing them over 7 times with all the information they needed, I still received no response. This problem continued to happen till about the time I decided to write this post. I got sick of winning and then losing for no reason. This was especially annoying because I watched every ad they threw in front of me and answered all the questions.

So with no response from them and the continuation of the disconnection issue, I do not think I will be using the site anymore for a while. With such a great idea, it is frustrating that they have such poor execution or staff (sorry guys). Ill check back in a little while to see if they fixed these issues. One thing I must say as a user and webmaster is that a quick response time means A LOT to people! Come on guys, let’s get it together over there.

Besides my job at an Internet company, John Chow has been the biggest help to me in my money making schemes. He has helped me time and time again regardless of the fact that I probably annoy the hell out of him with my endless stream of questions.

There is a very good reason I allow myself to bug John Chow, he knows how to make money on the Internet and he is willing to help little guys such as myself. An great example of this is one of his latest posts titled: Review My Blog & Get A Free Linkback. He already has had many bloggers write about him and his site because of this offer, and now I am taking advantage. I will probably be included in the 7th batch of reviews. Obviously he has something to gain from bloggers writing an entire review of his site, but each review on a small blog is equal in worth to one link on John Chow’s very popular site.

As I said before, John has helped me in many ways. I first went to his site after he wrote the Biggest Google Whores article. After that I become a regular reader. He write about topics ranging from how to make money when credit cards offer no interest specials, to how to increase adsense revenue. I highly suggest that any webmaster who is new to the game check out John’s site. It is very informative and he updates it regularly.

One thing I would like to see on John’s site is more information about what/how he is doing with his main sites: TTZ media, thetechzone.com, and so on. He may not want to give that information away though because those are his golden babies…can’t get everything you want. Thanks John:).

It’s official, one of the top digg users has been deleted from digg. Supernova17 (19 years old) had been paid to submit an article about a company. This company’s marketing department stated that since their company “does not have a lot of money,” this was one of the only ways to spread the word about their service.

In my opinion, Supernova17 is not the only one receiving a bribe to put a story on digg. I am positive there are numerous top diggers that receive “benefits” from submitting a company’s story. One of the best and cheapest ways to get the word out on an upcoming product is through social news sites such as digg. Having a story on digg is like getting your product in front of the eyes of the people who basically create/run the Internet. This is why top diggers like Supernova17 get numerous offers per week for payment to digg a story.

The digg team has been struggling to say the least with fraudulent and false stories. There are “digg armies” built to help each other digg stories and get to the front page. Even webmasters with large followings can get to the front page very easily. Hopefully digg sorts out all these issues or they will be in trouble.

**This is not a paid post.
Ever since gambling was banned on the Internet, I did not think there would be anything else that would provide me the raw competition that I loved about poker. I am happy to say today, I have finally found something amazing. Moola.com is the most addicting website I have come across in a very long time. It combines the feeling of gambling (although I must state it is not gambling in any way) with simple and very fun flash games.

Here are the rules. Moola provides you with one penny to start. There is no credit or major registration required, they just give you the penny. Each time you win a match, you double your earnings. The premise of the site is that there is a chance to win $10 million dollars. This only happens after winning 30 matches in a row. Let me tell you, this is no easy task. The most I have won so far (after 1 day) was 5 in a row. You can also cash out at any time. Lets say you get really good and win 15 in a row, you could cash out the $300+ dollars that would amount to.

The games are the best part about the site. They are a lot of fun to play. All games are played against a real person going for the same 10mil you are. There are three games. The first game, and most simple is hi-low. Basically you get a series of playing cards and each time you have to guess if the next card will be higher or lower than the last, hence the name. This game basically requires no skill because the obvious thing to do is go with the probabilities, there is only one correct way to play each series of cards. The second game is rock, scissors, paper except a little different. Each round one motion is picked and if that one is not used, a bonus is given. Somewhat hard to explain unless you play it. This game requires some skill. The last game, which is my favorite is Gold Rush. The takes the most skill to play. You gamble your gold nuggets ranging from 1lb to 6lbs. The person with the higher weight nugget wins. The games are very fun to play.

You must be thinking how in the world do they make money? Even ads wouldn’t pay for something like this. They do ads a little differently. Moola shows you a video advertisment before each game played and there is a one question quiz at the end of it about the video. It’s a little annoying at first but then when you realize what they have to do to keep the site running, watching the ad is worth it.

Overall the site seems to have the right idea. It’s addicting and with the chance to win 10 million bucks, who wouldn’t want to play? They seem to have a good business model and hopefully it will continue to work. The game is by invitation only right now but if you email them and ask for an account, I think they will give it to you.

I have been reading lately that Pay Per Post has made many low-traffic bloggers some pretty decent money. John Chow has recently written an article about the highest paying ad network for low-traffic blogs. Step aside adsense, Pay Per Post definitely takes the lead on this.

Before going any further, I would like to state that this is not a paid post. I currently am monetizing my blog with two ad networks, and adding a third way to make money with this site just seems like stepping over the line between a blog and a billboard.

I will be testing the value of Pay Per Post. I am not a huge fan of whoring my site out to advertisements, but this is more like an experiment. One of my next posts coming soon will be a Pay Per Post. I will clearly label it to make sure everyone knows I am not trying to pedal a random company.

Now a little about the companies product. Advertisers pay bloggers such as myself to write about their product. One main point I don’t like is that some advertisers require you to review their product in a positive light. All campaigns are marked which can be positive or negative and which can just be positive. I have heard of many people who make pretty decent money using this service. At $5-$10 per post (50-100 words), I would have to write many articles to consider having made a “good profit.”

There is no harm in trying however. I will try to get a paid post out by the end of the week. Hopefully my readers arent too offended and they understand this will only be a test and not a continuing thing. If anyone has already experimented with this, please comment how it worked for you.

I have finally launched my first website (non-blog website). I will shamelessly plug the website now: mygamingspace.com. Basically the site consists of flash games you can either play on the site itself, or you can also take the code with you and embed it into your own blog or myspace page (hence the name).

I bought the site from my friend. At the time of purchase, there was not a whole bunch of traffic because my friend had not done any promoting on the site what-so-ever. All of the traffic came from organic Google search and the few people he had told about the site. Regardless, it was doing pretty well for not having any promotion. When I first saw the site, I knew it had potential. It already had a great interface and many, many games (280+). It was so simple to add more games to the list, and even easier for users to take these games and embed them into whatever they want.

This was a very important purchase to me because it is my first real, non-blog site that I am running. It is the beginning of what I hope will be many more successful websites. I am already thinking of a million different ideas of how I want to promote the site. The first thing I did was have my most recent game submitted to digg.com (here’s the digg link). Almost immediately the game shot to the front page and within 20 hours it was at 1000+ diggs. Here is the game that was so popular. This game shot up to the most popular game on my site within an hour of the story hitting the front page. The number of members to the site greatly increased, and I am hoping these are going to be returning users. Regardless, the story will provide a boost in traffic due to all the back links I received. My friend told me that when a gaming site hits front page, a large amount of the traffic generated (which would usually die back down after a few days), would most likely stick. This is very good news for my site.

In addition to my game being dugg, I am also contacting other gaming and relevant sites for link exchanges. This should also help boost consistent traffic to the site. There are also other ways of promoting flash gaming sites such as this. Since it is so easy to embed my games into your MySpace page, I will contact everyone I know who has MySpace to try to convince them to put a game on their page. I will also be creating a page dedicated to the site. Social networking will be an important factor in promoting this site.

Overall I believe the site was a good purchase. I will have to wait to see if the traffic will rise permanently because of the digg story. If anyone has any promotional ideas, they would be much appreciated. Also if you would like to do a link exchange, please email me or comment to this post. I will have an update on how the site is doing in a few weeks. Wish me luck!

Just like everyone else, I had to try my hand at PPC arbitraging. Basically what PPC arbitraging is, is people buying cheap traffic from a service like google adwords and sending them to a page with much higher paying CPC, CPA, or even CPM ads. There are many different implementations of arbitraging. I will explain exactly how I did it but if you want to know other ways, the best thing to do is read webmaster forums.

The first time I heard about PPC arbitraging was from John Chow’s article on how Google is punishing arbitragers. This is not a good first impression. For those who don’t know, let me explain exactly how arbitraging works. An arbitrager will choose a niche market, such as keyboards or dog grooming. The next step is to sign up for an advertising service and get high paying ads. I chose to use the CPA (cost per acquisition) model. This means every time someone enters a piece of information, I get paid. I chose to use Azoogle to give me ads.

So here is how it works. I used adwords to buy cheap traffic (max 10 cents each click), and sent them to a full page ad (example: kingdomcomelyrics.com) that pays $15 per acquisition. Here is what the adwords ad looks like:

This would generate as much traffic as I am willing to pay for. I set the max CPC (cost per click) to 10 cents and a $5 per day spending limit. At this rate, you can figure that about 75 clicks is going to be $5. So now you have very cheap traffic to your ad page. Out of these 75 people, if just one of them enters their information into the ad, you already tripled what you spent. It is not as easy as it sounds however, I have only had minimal success. To maximize success, people have told me much research is required. You have to be able to find a niche market that no one else is using. Deciding keywords to use with adwords, and which ad will best suit this traffic is the hardest part of it all. Here is what the arbitrage page looks like:

Let’s look at some numbers. Most ads wont be paying you $15 CPA, it was only because a user had to enter their cell phone number and confirm it that it was worth so much. Let’s say that instead of $15 CPA for a confirmed number, a company will pay you $1.50 for an unconfirmed email address. So we will pay $5 for 75 clicks at about 5 or 10 cents per click. Only 4 people need to enter their email address, which doesn’t actually need to be valid for you to make money.

This is just one way of doing arbitraging. Another popular way is to setup scrapper sites. A scrapper site is a webpage full of ads, with automatically generated content. Then people put adsense ads on the page and buy cheap traffic and send it to higher paying ads. There are many more ways of doing this and I suggest you do much research before trying it.

What’s the best way to learn more about something? Talk to someone who already knows! There are countless niche forums out there that allow us to do this. For a newer webmaster, these forums are priceless. A great example of an excellent webmaster forum is digitalpoint.com. It’s a friendly environment and everyone is there to help each other so check it out.

Topics in these types of forums range from general search engine talk to marketing and link development to the business and legal side of everything. Just as in real life, after posting in these forums for a while you will start to meet people. They are in the same position as you and understand how frustrating it is sometimes for webmasters. Start to build a network of friends and you will absolutely see your traffic increase. You will be able to swap links with people, get quick answers for questions you may have, and give advice to people who have questions. They also help out with things like stumbling your site and submitting it to social bookmarking sites.

There is a wealth of knowledge in these webmaster forums and i’m sure just like me, once you start reading them you will become addicted. So come join me at digital point or any other forums you find. If you happen to find a really good one please post it in the comments.

I have recently been learning the art of buying and parking domains, and have learned many things the hard way. This will be my first of a few domain parking articles, and is aimed to help anyone out there thinking about becoming a domainer.

For those of you who don’t know what domaining is, it is the art of buying domain names not to build them into websites, but to place specific content ads on them. For example, if your domain name is xbox360controllers.com, you would put ads on that site that relate to xbox360 controllers: simple enough. Here is an example of a lyrics site (kingdomcomelyrics.com) that I have:

There are only a few ways that people will come to a website without it having any back links of promotion. You can setup MFA (made for adsense) sites and buy keywords hoping that your ads will pay more than your payment for the keywords. I decided not to take this route because I wanted to become a domainer with as little investment as possible. The only other way that people will come to your domain is by buying a quality domain name. There are still a percentage of people out there that don’t know how to use search engines, they just type in what they want into the search bar. For example, if they want to search for car parts they will type carparts.com. This is where domainers come in. We buy the domains that we think people will type in, and then put relevant ads on the site hoping for clicks. This is basically how it works. Also misspelled domains work such as yhoo.com.

The first thing I have learned, which I’m sure everyone already knows, every domain name you can possibly think of is already taken! I have thought of hundred and hundreds of the most random and ridiculous domains, only to be discouraged when I find out they are taken. I have had some success at the same time. Here is my story so far.

I am currently buying domains from 1and1.com. I have seen a lot of bad press for 1and1, mostly relating to them over-charging people for domains. I have not had one problem with them yet, so I will stay with them because they are the cheapest. Also, I use namedrive.com for my parking service. 1and1 has their own parking service but namedrive not only looks better, but seems to pay more. So this is the current parking setup I have now.

I first started buying very random domains. I am starting a mapping site and decided to buy domains relating to maps, which were iheartmaps.com and iheartmashups.com. Yes they are very lame, and did not work well at all obviously. There were a few more poorly chosen domains, which I won’t even list here. All together I spent about $40 on my first set of domain purchases. Then I started thinking about what people would actually be searching for. The first thing that came to mind was lyrics, people search for lyrics on the Internet all the time. I then purchased doctorsadvocatelyrics.com (The Game’s new cd) and after a few days of having it I checked namedrive and wow, it had accumulated 800 uniques. This gave me the push I needed not to quit trying to become a domainer. Here is a picture of my domain stats for 2 weeks of last month. Many views, a few clicks, but not much revenue.

There was another problem on my hands now, even though I had been receiving clicks on my site, the CPC (cost per click) was horrible. I was getting only 3 cents every time someone clicked a link. I contacted namedrive and asked what was going on and they told me that lyrics sites don’t have very good CPC. I decided to try a different genre of music lyrics: rock. I purchased thepickofdestinylyrics.com and after a few days of having it, it started generating clicks. This site was getting 23 cents per click! Much better than my rap lyrics sites. I am not sure why exactly this is, so I purchased a few more rock lyrics sites and am waiting for the results.

My final conclusion to all this is that I will continue to purchase a few domains per week and see if anything sticks. If I find one kind of domain works, ill buy every variation of it and hope for the best. I have just purchased gearsofwarnews.com and gearsofwarboards.com. I want to see how gaming sites do.

This will be first of many posts to keep everyone updated on how my domaining business is going. If anyone has suggestions or comments please feel free to post a comment and ill definitely read it. Hopefully I find a domain name that works!