I recently signed up with a service called Adf.ly who were promising over $4 CPM to show interstitial ads on your site, or by using them as a url shortener which shows an interstitial ad before redirecting a user to the intended link. I started using them on a few of my sites and with excellent results! It ain’t easy making money online, but occasionally a rare gem such as Adf.ly comes along and makes all the effort seem worthwhile.

Adf.ly has a number of options for monetization of either text links you can use on social networks such as Twitter or FaceBook (though in the case of FaceBook, you might want to run them through bit.ly or another link shortener to avoid having them removed), and for the monetization of regular websites. You can shorten links one-by-one, or use their Mass Shrinker Tool to convert up to 20 links at a time. Plus if you have a website, you can use their Full Page Script to convert 100s or even 1000s of onsite links automatically!

For more traditional website monetization, try Adf.ly’s Website Entry Script. It’s the tool I’ve personally been using. You simply copy and paste a small javascript snippet into the head section of your site and choose whether you want to display a single 728×90 banner at the top of your pages, or an interstitial ad which displays automatically after a delay period of your choosing (from 1 second to infinity). I highly recommend the interstitial option as it pays more! The user will see a full page overlay that they must view for 5 seconds, then they can press a big button at the top right of the screen to return to your site. This works particularly well if you have valuable content or offer a free service and is much less intrusive than using a content locker.

The company behind Adf.ly is called x19 Limited, which is based in Central London. They pay regularly and automatically to your PayPal account on the first few days of every month, with a minimum pay out amount of just $5.00. Not bad, huh? I’ve personally received two payments of around $10 each so far.

If you have a product or service you’d like to advertise for surprisingly decent rates, you can also use Adf.ly’s Advertising page to quickly order a burst of traffic to profit from affiliate offers, or product sales. Plus, unlike most advertising companies, you can get started with just $5, which is brilliant when you want to test the waters first. Plus with worldwide traffic starting at just $1 CPM for 24 hour unique visitors, all with JavaScript, Cookies and Flash enabled on their browsers and with their eyeballs guaranteed to be looking at your page for at least 5 seconds, advertising with Adf.ly could be very lucrative indeed! (US targeted and UK targeted traffic is currently priced at $4 CPM).

So…what are YOU waiting for? Give Adf.ly a try today! Sign up is quick and instantaneous, and you’ll be up and running in literally minutes. Copy and paste their javascript snippet into your site, leave it for a day or two and see how it performs vs your current ads. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

UPDATE:
Here’s a little tip to maximize your earnings with Adf.ly’s interstitial ads…
When you insert their Website Entry Script, change the int_delay value to “1″…

var adfly_advert = ‘int’;
var frequency_cap = 5;
var frequency_delay = 5;
var init_delay = 1;

I’ve been doing this on my own sites, and it really helps increase ad views as the interstitial loads only 1 second after a visitor moves their mouse on your page. You can experiment with the frequency_cap and frequency_delay numbers also to find a good balance between revenue/not annoying your readers.

Tags: Adf.ly, Banner Advertising, Internet income, Interstitial Ads, Monetize your blog by Angel
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Hear me out before you scoff at this idea. There are lots of people doing this and the reason they are making money online is because there are so many bad, poorly optimized travel websites all over the world. The idea I’m suggesting is that you go and live somewhere – anywhere you’ve always wanted to go – and make a website or blog about that place.

Let’s take Thailand as an example. I’ve spent a lot of time in Thailand and I’ve seen the large number of websites and blogs that people make about the place. However, most of these sites aren’t fully utilized for making money online. They’re hobby sites, so to speak, and people spend hours of their time writing content for them without getting any money in return.

What’s to stop you visiting one of Thailand’s major cities, spending a bit of time getting to know the place and then writing useful content to put on a site? Obviously if you choose somewhere such as Bangkok you’re going to come up against stiff competition, but if you go to Chiang Mai, Samui, Pattaya or somewhere equally on the tourist radar but not so much the focal point, you have a better chance of success.

I did this with my Phuket website. I lived on the island and spent time compiling content about the beaches, restaurants, nightlife, hotels and so on. Sure, it takes time, but if you have gained a significant amount of blogging knowledge from running other sites, then it makes sense to put this to good use – and there is nothing better than traveling the world and doing it.

Some people blog so that they will have more opportunities to travel, but there’s nothing to stop a person combining blogging and travel and making a decent living off of it.

Even if you don’t stay in one place for too long, you can do a lot of research on the Internet, look at what your competition is doing and then do it better. A lot of travel websites are dated and tired.

If you really want to take on such a mission, you can also look at the older websites that rank well for your keywords and try and buy the sites out. Many travel websites were started on a whim, but the webmasters ran out of time, money or energy and shelved their projects.

You will likely need a little money behind you to get yourself set up in a new country, but if you’ve been making money blogging for a little while, you should be able to do this without any problems, especially if you choose to live somewhere as cheap as Thailand.

Thoughts? Anyone will to take the plunge?

Tags: Internet income, Phuket by Angel
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I’ve had to think very hard about what I want to do with my life this month. Although I have always been a staunch opponent of working from home, I was very nearly tempted into doing just that. I’ve made a tidy sum of money over the past six weeks. Some bloggers say that you don’t start making money online until you are earning in excess of $1,000 a month. Well, now I’m at that point and could quite easily envisage keeping this rolling as long as I have the drive.

I was made one offer that could pay up to $1,000 a month working for a website. It’s not particularly difficult work, but I had to question whether I could seriously give up my job and dent my career in journalism to work online. The money is there to be made and I have proved to myself that I can make it, but because I enjoy my career, I’ve chosen to take a route that will earn me far less money.

What has really become apparent to me recently is that I don’t get as much of a kick out of working on the Internet as I do going out and doing something in the “real” world. I’m probably a fool for making this decision, but I think that the option to work online will always be there – it’s just a matter of keeping up with trends.

So what would you do? I calculated that I could earn more than six times my basic salary if I worked from home. Would you do it?

Tags: Internet income by Angel
6 Comments »