Sadly this was before I knew anything about “making money online” otherwise I could have really cashed in with the amount of traffic and regular visitors I was getting back then on that site/forum. But I was blissfully happy with all the cool toys and the small amount I made with adsense on the homepage (the one ad company I actually knew about at the time). God, just think of how much I could have raked in with zip/email submits and all the other freebie offers out there.

I did sell the site/forum for a couple grand in the end when it died down at least but I still have a weak spot for those freebie type sites, offers and contest. Regardless how much money you make, getting a free ipod in the mail is awesome! Helping two dudes unload and carry a 200 pound 61inch tv off a truck, that you got for free, isn’t too shabby either lol.

Anyway, this is all just a lead-in to yet another contest I am entering. My wife wants one of the newer Flip HD cameras…I guess the regular non-hd isn’t enough for youtube silliness but I love the Flip and I definitely wouldn’t mind an HD version.

Ryan From SmarterWealth.net is giving away a HD Flip to one random blogger who joins his mailing list (which looked good anyway) and then blogs about the contest. So I figured I might as well try my luck and see if I can actually win something here. After all, all my freebies stopped coming in years ago and I miss getting big boxes in the mail.

Ryan explains the contest better than I do so here is the info in his words:

Ryan McLean from Smarter Wealth is giving away a brand new Flip Mino HD to one lucky reader. This will be the easiest Flip Mino HD to win because barely anyone is going to enter meaning more chances that you can win.

The Flip Mino HD is the coolest gadget around. You can shoot one hour of video in HD (so you can play it on your plasma) and you can even edit your footage right on your device. This device is so small that it will fit in your pocket so you will never miss capturing a moment ever again.

To enter all you have to do is sign up for Ryan’s newsletter and post about the competition.

Check out all the details of how you can enter the Win a Flip Mino HD competition now.

Here are ther "teirs" that are open to win:

TITANIUM TIER: $300,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: A New Smart Car ($11,990 Value)

PLATINUM TIER: $90,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: VIP Las Vegas Vacation
1st Class Air, Stay at the Wynn for 2 nights , $500 Cash

GOLD TIER: $10,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: 32 GB iPod Touch with $500 iTunes Gift Card

SILVER TIER: $1,000 Commissions Earned
Reward: XBox 360 Elite Package

The contest ends at the end the month though so if you want to get in on the prize levels you need to really push some traffic fast.

You can also get entered into a drawing for some other smaller, but still cool, prizes just for blogging about the contest.

So, if you want to win a 3G Iphone (the new, faster, Iphone) then you best head on over to JohnCow as he is the only one giving one away thanks to Maket Leverage…at least so far.

If you haven’t already signed up he has some cool prizes but even if you are already a publisher with Market Leverage you can get entered for some cool prizes by blogging about the contest and even by just commenting on the contest post over at Zacs blog

For Publishers:
One of the main concerns about selling paid links on your sites, and especially using a well known “paid text link” sales service/broker, is that Google, for one, has made it very clear that they are very much against site owners selling links based on pagerank. Of course the reason for this is doing so affects the “true” amount of links, or “votes” a given site gets from other sites in the index. Basically, because of the way Google set up their ranking and the importance they put on incoming links and the visibility they made available, they have created tons of over-optimizing wannabe SEO freaks. Pretty much any site owner these days knows that they need to “build” links to get better search rankings and the easiest way to do that is to just go out and buy links. Google has helped create a system that helps to degrade their own search results and now they are struggling to stop it and in doing so are starting to aggressively penalize sites who obviously sell links based on PR (selling traffic links is ok still as long as you add “nofolow”).

So, is it worth risking getting your site delisted or losing PR to make some money off links? Well that is up to you. No one knows the depth of Googles crackdown yet and it’s hard to say how hard they will come down on specific sites for selling links. Some site owners might not rely much on search traffic or care about PR so for those it could be a great easy way to make more cash. If search indexing and PR is important to you, it might not be the best idea to sell PR links regardless how you go about it but if you do the safest way would be through private sales and not to go overboard with it. TNX does appear to understand this and look to be working on various ways to hide the fact that you are part of their network so there may be less risk than some of the other text links brokers but still some risk.

As far as how much you can make by selling links though TNX, it really just depends on what PR your site is and how well that PR is spread throughout the rest of your site. The more higher PR pages you have, and the more of those pages that are indexed, the more money you will make. You can use the calculator on the homepage of TNX.net to get an overall idea to what you may make if all your links sell out. You can sell up to 4 text links as well so the more you allow the more that number will go up.

One cool feature is you don’t have to sell links on every page of your site. You can pick and choose specific pages if you wanted to. You will make the most if you just add the code sitewide but some site owners might not want the links displayed on some sites and it’s easy to make sure that doesn’t happen.

For Advertisers:
Although there is conflicting “evidence” (read: opinions), from what I have heard Google doesn’t bother penalizing sites who obviously buy text links, even for PR. They seem to only look for link seller. If that is the case, you can go crazy buying all the links you want and TNX makes that pretty easy. And cheap.

Of course it’s not a great idea to go and instantaneously get tens of thousands of new links to your site overnight as that is pretty obvious to the search engines but if you were smart about it and set up a small number of links over time and kept adding to them then it could be an excellent way to really get some great links.

Unfortunately you are not able to pick and choose which sites you get links from so that could be an issue depending on the quality of sites in the network. I mean, this type of setup would be attractive to crappy spammers who would want to take advantage of it and if there are enough in the system then you could end up with some “bad neighbors” sites linking to you. TNX does have pretty strict terms though so it might not be something to really worry about. But not being able to pick the specific sites that link to you also takes away your power to make sure you are getting very relevant links. But in the end, it seems, regardless, links are links and they help.

Overall:
In my opinion, the advertising part of TNX seems to be the most usable, and least “risky” for site owners wishing to get some links and traffic built up. I personally would be a bit of a wimp trying to sneak past Google by selling links through a service, regardless of the integrated protection schemes that might come out, but I have no problem buying links this way. At least until it’s clear that Google will penalize for that as well.

The best way to decide if it is for you though is to just test it out yourself and see how it works for you. They have a promotion going right now where you can get a free 5000 credits on your account…all you have to do is sign up and head on over to a thread on DigitalPoint forums and ask. That should be enough for you to get at least one good campaign going and see if you want to continue or sell links yourself and earn more. You can find that thread here: TNX @ DP

Tyler has the clear advantage as his blog has been around longer, has more traffic and a larger RSS subscriber list but I have a feeling Gyutae enjoys a challenge and seems to have a knack for marketing which may even out the odds in the end.

I actually read both blogs on pretty much a daily basis and enjoy both. Both are great for learning some new tricks, getting marketing ideas and seeing some of the best done reviews out there. It is hard to decide which is my “favorite” to be honest but rather than try to choose a favorite I will go with who has inspired me most. Both have inspired me some and I have learned from both but one stands out a bit.

Tyler has been pretty successful with his online earnings by most people definition. He lives a comfortable life and is happy with his revenue and only works only when he wants to, which tends to be less and less often. Although a nice place to be in, that can also be dangerous as once someone gets comfortable they stop trying and striving. I’ve always considered Tyler to be one of the “A list guru bloggers” and assumed he was a good source of inspiration. That is still partly true but after reading his recent 2008 goals post it really gave me the feeling that he is just doing enough just to get by and not challenging himself much at all and although it’s impressive that he is happy with that situation, it’s not the most inspiring. Being honest with yourself and setting realistic goals is one thing, but just getting by and letting things do what they will makes it a bit depressing as I honestly think that if Tyler put the type of effort into his overall business as he does in almost every single post he makes on his blog that he really would be one of the gurus pulling in hundreds of thousands a month.

Gyutae hasn’t been posting on his blog long but has already made a pretty hefty dent in the scene around him. Don’t make the mistake of associating blog age with lack of knowledge or valuable information (except in my own blogs example…sucks regardless of age lol). I wouldn’t want to say Gyutae has “better” post than Tyler and I’m not basing my vote off of specific post, but Gyutae has burst onto the scene with a “conquer the world and bring them with me” tone and contrary to Tylers goals of just increasing revenue by it’s natural growth/inflation pases, Gyutae is doing it and making it happen and setting his goals much more aggressively. That to me is inspiring and I honestly think Gyutae will continue to build and demand a larger audience because of his hard work. He’s also pretty good at marketing so odds are he has gotten your attention or will in one way or another sometime soon.

So, although I respect Tyler for what he has done and it’s nice to see he is happy with just floating along, in the end I have to “vote” for Gyutae. I think both are worth reading as much as you can and both have something to offer. And although I have “taken a side” for this little promotion of theirs I will continue to support both . Of course I may be a little bit biased still basking in the glow of my free John Chow review I won in theWinning The Web contest.

If you haven’t taken your side yet, you should definitely check both out as they have both already started with the bribes and offering swag to their supporters. In the end they both win and hopefully that will help both of them bring us even more great content meaning we will again.