Matched.co.uk No More, Finito, Gone

Matched.co.uk, the generous UK blog advertising network I featured recently, has suddenly shut down as of 20 November. Says its website:


If you were quick enough to milk this cashcow out of this while it lasted, good on you. Any suggestions for alternatives?

My Money-Making Moral Dilemma: Do No Evil?

Sorry for the wee hiatus lately but my recent post about Froggybank and 'ethical cashback' got me thinking.

A fortnight ago I reviewed cashback sites and commented how the biggest commissions on offer generally come from what I'd call 'habit-forming' services. By which I mean anything which can get you 'hooked' - online bookmakers, casinos, 'credit cards and other certain erm, *looks aside* *cough* 'specialist' websites designed for mature audiences (not that I'd know about that sort of thing of course).

Moving swiftly on, my point is in our quest for quick and easy money, do we promote things we might not approve of ourselves or class as 'good' for other people?

For instance, on my travels I've seen a number of bloggers (who I won't name) promoting sites offering 'Payday Loans'. For the uninitiated, these are short-term cash advances which let you borrow, say, £100 immediately - the catch being you pay back £125 on your payday.

Personally, I find the idea of charging someone stuck for cash an extortionate 25% interest per month just wrong, wrong, wrong - even akin to loansharking. Though payday loans might sound like quick, handy short-term fix in these credit-crunching times, they could easily lead people into a spiral of debt. They are a bad choice, full stop. Anyone struggling to live on their wages should seek debt advice urgently - there are lots of lower interest options available.

As I mentioned some bloggers have no qualms or compunctions about carrying ads for Payday loans, even actively recommending them to readers.

'How do these people sleep at night?', I asked a friend. He replied: 'Probably in very luxurious beds'.

While I've focussed here on one source of potential revenue the argument extends also to the other 'habit-forming' services like I mention above. And while I've been writing this, I've noticed this blog is promoting secured loans with my Matched.co.uk advert - something I'd only recommend myself as a last resort option but definitely a wiser choice than a payday loan.

The question is can we make our million quick, easily and with a clear conscience? Should we leave our own personal morals and ethical standards at the door when others don't seem to mind? Can't we just let people make their own decisions?

I'm not sure I know the answers yet but, dear readers, I'd like to know your thoughts and advice please.

Make Easy £75 Per Month with Matched.co.uk

Quick Win No.2: Is your website about as popular as Simon Cowell at Glastonbury? So undesired that even Jehovah's Witnesses won't visit you? Then don't hold your breath hoping to rack up loadsa dosh from Pay-Per-Click advertising programs like Google AdSense. The sad fact of these schemes is no eyeballs = no dosh = no fun.

But fortunately for the trafficly-challenged, help is at hand!

UK-based Matched.co.uk^ (don't confuse with dating site Match.com) will pay you up to £75 per month just to put adverts for things on your website, completely regardless of how many visitors you get or actual click-throughs.

Think of it as renting out space on your website or blog.

Once you've registered, Matched.co.uk will try to pair you with an advertiser. If successful, they'll pay you £3 per month for each ad shown. You can have to up to five per site (they must be on separate pages) and five sites per account. Which means potential earnings (punches figures into calculator) of £75 per month, if you dare to go the whole hog.

Setup, I can vouch, is amazingly quick and easy (which we WBFMs love) - 10 minutes' work max if that. Honestly. So the challenge is create sites at low or no cost, get Matched.co.uk-accepted, then sit back and watch the cash steadily roll in. That's the idea. NB You must have a PayPal or UK bank account to be paid, and Matched.co.uk, in its wisdom, only seem to pay out for whole months, starting on the 15th of each.

And judging by Matched.co.uk's roster of advertisers, there seems to be - how do I put this - quite an inclusive attitude to accepting sites when it comes to quality and visitor numbers. So there is hope for the rest of us, then. You can see our own ad in action on the sidebar.

A £5 commission bonus is also on offer if you refer a friend (surely we class ourselves as friends by now?) So if you feel like supporting us, go give Matched.co.uk^ a punt via this link. Cheers.

Kiss the Caring Cashback-Giving Frog: Save the Planet While You Earn

Hard on the heels of my previous post comes the spawning of another new 100% web cashback site, the funkily-named Froggybank^.

Froggy has a green conscience: You can shop for good causes or do your bit for climate change by donating cash rewards for carbon-offsetting schemes, if that's your thing.

Membership costs a fiver per year deducted from your initial earnings though on the plus side, there's a Maximum Cashback Guarantee and no minimum payout threshold. Refer a friend and Froggybank gives you £2.50 if and when they earn £5.

The little caret (^) thing next to the link above means we earn a little referral bonus too if you register via the link. If you're not feeling particularly charitable today hop off directly to www.froggybank.co.uk.

Cashback Sites: Don't Save Money, Make it

As those early-80s British headband rockers once sort of said, you can get money for nothing.

Not by playing your gee-tar on the MTV I've found - but by using web cashback sites. It really surprises me how few people are actually aware these sites exist. Simply put, cashback sites give you a cut of their commission when you shop, visit or do business with linked retailers through their portal. So if you're already going to buy something online, such as taking out property insurance, getting a credit card (something I personally don't like) or buying a CD for someone, I would always check if you can earn cashback before you dish out the dosh. It's unbelievably quick and easy to do... and isn't that what we WBFM's (Would-Be Future Millionaires) like?

The two major downsides to cashback sites are

1. It can take around three months to receive your cashback, if at all. Your money's not guaranteed. The retailer might not pay out, your transaction might not be tracked as I've found out from personal experience. Never count your cash until it's sitting in your bank account.
2. Some won't let you withdraw your earnings until a certain payment threshold is reached (usually around £25). So if you use lots of different sites, you'll make it harder to access that cash. A good strategy is to stick to 2-3 different sites and focus mainly on the big-ticket money-earners so you pass the threshold quickly.
   

Though we all want to save money in these troubled times, we really want to make easy moolah too.

So ragingly desperate are some sites and retailers for your custom, they will happily pay you more than you give them - making a net gain for you. There is a reason for this: These sites tend to those of the 'habit-forming' variety. Yes, gambling sites. Just do what you must to get the cashback, then walk away.

Here's a list of the main cashback sites. Register with the following sites for nothing. The little caret (^) on a link means we get a referral bonus when you register, though this doesn't influence my choices - honestly. Thanks in advance for any support.

Big cashback players (ingeneral order of preference)

• Cashback Kings^ (Highest cashback guarantee, Keeps first £5 of cashback)
• Top CashBack^ (No payment threshold)
• WePromiseTo^ (No payment threshold, high rates)
• Quidco (Keeps first £5 of cashback, £5 annual membership fee, no payment threshold afterwards)
• Rpoints^ (£5 introductory bonus payable after first £20, low payment threshold afterwards - £1, usually lower cashback rates)
• GreasyPalm^ (High initial payment threshold - £22.50)
• eCashRewards^ (Cashback-match promise, £2.50 signup bonus, £15 payment threshold)
  

I'll be posting up any no-brainer deals on here as I find them. If you see any too, let's share them.

Now I just have to work on the chicks for free part...

See also:

• Cashback offer comparison tool (via MoneySavingExpert.com) - use after you've registered with the sites above.

Blogging's Holy Grail: The Ideal Adsense Placement

Quick Win 1: Blogger makes it ridiculously easy to place Google text adverts on your blog, providing you've already got an AdSense account. You must have seen these before on sites. When a visitor clicks on an ad link, Google pays you a few cents. (1c = just over half a penny). Some online businesses apparently even base their entire business models on this. But you need an awful lot of clicks to make a significant amount of pennies so big traffic and eye-catching placement is really the key.

We're going to give AdSense a try here and see if anyone clicks on the things. Rather than muddle around aimlessly trying to fathom out which and what works best, we WBFMs (Would-Be Future Millionaires) want to do it the easy way, so let's draw on the collective wisdom of the Internets.

Where should I place Google ads on my pages? That is the question.

Google itself has a "heat map" illustrating what it calls 'the ideal placing on a sample page layout'. In a nutshell, clicks are strongest in the area directly above the main content and parts where users' attention is focussed, which is plain common sense. Here's the advice for blogs.

There's a lot of anecdotal (and frankly conflicting) tips out there - see the Related Links below - but for me, the most useful yet is this guy's research. Interestingly, according to his tests, a wide standalone AdSense strip actually above the content worked much better than something plonked into text. He writes:

... the only way to find that out is to TEST, TEST and then TEST some more. It is the quickest and easiest way to increase your AdSense income immediately.

Looks like we'd better get TESTING then...

See also:

• Really Evil Google AdSense Placement (Hongkiat.com)
• AdSense Placement Optimization: User Behavior (Robin Good)
• 9 Clever Google AdSense Recipes (Advice Maker) Google Cached version
• Adsense Optimization (Chris Pirillo via YouTube)

Day One: Where It All Begins

Can anyone with a bit of determination, enterpreneurial spirit and forethought make serious dosh from the Internet? And not just a few thousand quid. I mean really serious cash, of the life-changing variety?

Well let's give it a go. After all it never hurts to try something new (apart from hand-feeding sharks possibly...).

The goal's this: To make £1,000,000 pounds through online activities, as fast, easily and painlessly as humanly possible... and all legally of course.

Let's see how we get on. Who knows where it will all end up or what will happen along the way. Grab my arm, pal, we're going to be millionaires!