Our 12 Favorite Mobile Apps For Earning Extra Money

You’re not going to get rich by downloading mobile apps, but I have used these 12 apps successfully to earn a little extra money every month.
In fact, I made $75 from downloading #4 and I’ve had good success with all twelve…

1. Nielsen Homescan

This app will pay you to scan your groceries. Crazy, right? Once you sign up to become a Nielsen Consumer Panel family (yep, the same company that tracks TV ratings), the company will send you a free scanner or you can use your smartphone. Every time you go shopping, you simply scan the barcodes on the back of each product and send your data off to Nielsen.
If you want to give it a try, you can fill out an application here.
As an active participant, you earn gift points which you can redeem for different types of merchandise. You can choose electronics, jewelry, household items, and even toys for the kids. The longer you stay on the panel, the more opportunity you have to earn points towards prizes. You also receive entries for the panel’s many sweepstakes. Prizes include money, vacations, and brand new vehicles.

2. Swagbucks

This Swagbucks mobile app is one of the only legitimate paid survey apps out there. They’re currently rated an A+ with the Better Business Bureau.
The questions are pretty simple. What do you like more — Coke or Cherry Coke? How many times have you been to the movies in the past 12 months? And so on.

The average payout for answering a series of questions is 75 SBs, which is equivalent to $0.75. You won’t qualify for every panel, but I usually find that I can earn about $5 for 30 minutes of work.

3. Ibotta

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite apps. The Ibotta app will pay you cash to take a picture of your receipts.
Here’s how it works:
1. Sign up for a free account with Ibotta (just need a name & email address).
2. Download the mobile app and then click on the “Rebates” section.
3. From here, you should see dozens of different rebates you can take advantage of. For example, right now the app is offering me 50 cents if I upload a picture of a receipt showing that I bought milk. And there’s another rebate for $10 if I upload a picture of a Best Buy receipt.
Now, you obviously don’t want to go out and buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need, but I think you’ll find tons of rebates for things you are already buying. Plus, you can stack regular coupons on top of the rebate, meaning some of you savvy shoppers will be able to get free stuff.

4. Smart Panel 

There’s a new company called “Smart Panel” and they will literally pay you to download their free app. 
The apps purpose is to collect anonymous statistics from your phone to help your favorite web sites, apps, tech companies, and mobile carriers give you better services and more features. They want to know how long you’re spending on Facebook each week, what YouTube videos you like, and how often you check your email.
It’s run by Verto Analytics which is a trusted analytics firm.
Here’s how it works…
1. You can’t download this from the app store. Here’s the promo link. It’s free to download.
2. Once you’ve qualified and downloaded the app, they will give you $5. If you keep it installed for at least two weeks, you’ll earn another $10. And then for every month that you keep the Smart App installed, you’ll get another $5. All total, you can earn up to $75 for the 1st year!
You can redeem your rewards via Paypal or an Amazon.com gift card.

5. Field Agent

The Field Agent app will pay you to complete small tasks around town for their clients. The tasks are pretty simple: scanning barcodes with your iPhone, checking prices at your local grocery store and conducting field surveys.

Payouts vary and depend on the job and area that you are in. For example, as I write, a job is posted in Mission Viejo, California is looking for an agent to take 4 separate photos of products in the toothbrush section of the local Target. This particular gig pays 9 dollars.

And in Brooklyn, New York, a field agent can jump in to a local Toys “R” Us store, snap a shot of the $19.99 & under video game display and zip out a healthy $5.50 richer.

Remember though: you’re in this to make money; don’t bust out the plastic when you see a new Xbox 360 game nearby that you’ve been itching to buy. Field Agent job payouts typically vary between 2-8 bucks (payable through PayPal). Most of the jobs only take 5 minutes, so the real time involved is with driving to each location. Still with travel time and gas, you could easily make $10-$20/hour completing mini-jobs.

6. InboxDollars

InboxDollars has been around since practically the beginning of the internet, but they just came out with a pretty cool mobile app that will pay you to search the web, play games, and take surveys.
The app is totally free to download. Plus, they give you a free $5 just to signup.
Once you’ve accumulated $30 earnings (it’s possible to do this in only a couple of hours), you can request payment via check. It does take about 2 weeks to get the check, but I’ve successfully cashed out five different times now.

7. Receipt Hog

RecieptHog is very similar to Ibotta. You take a picture of your receipts and the “hog” rewards you with points that you can redeem for Paypal or Amazon gift cards.
The difference with this app is that you don’t have to shop anywhere specific, or buy anythings specific. You can take a picture of any of your receipts and the app will reward you with points. I like the fact that I earn points for shopping anywhere, but I also find that it takes me a lot longer to cash out with this app in comparison to Ibotta.

8. Bookscouter

The Bookscouter app is really useful when you want to sell your old books that are just collecting dust on the shelf. You scan your book’s barcode with a smartphone and Bookscouter will let you compare the payout of 20+ different buyback companies.
Once you’ve found the buyback company offering the most cash, you just fill out a little information about where you want your payment sent and prepare the books to be shipped. Most of the buyback companies offer prepaid shipping labels too, so there aren’t any costs associated with this.

9. ESPN Streak for the Cash

Think you know sports? The ESPN Streak for the Cash app will let you make predictions for upcoming games and then reward you with cash if you have the longest streak of correct predictions. To make it tougher, you have to make call for 10 different sports.

The person with the longest winning streak earns $50,000 every month. Pretty sweet!

10. Mobee

Have you ever tried mystery shopping? The Mobee app will pay you to go undercover in your local stores and rate the level of customer service and cleanliness, among other things.
Most of you know that I’ve done quite a bit of mystery shopping, so I was pretty excited to find this app. I found it really easy to use and the shops went pretty quickly, but I wasn’t too impressed with the payment amounts. For example, there was a Subway mystery shop in my area that was paying $8. That’s not a huge amount for a mystery shop, plus I had to buy a sandwich during the shop that wasn’t reimbursed. Regardless, it was like getting a free lunch, so I’ll take it!

11. SlideJoy – 12. ScreenPay

Both SlideJoy and ScreenPay operate on the same principal – download their app and they will serve ads on your smartphone’s lock screen. For this, you get paid a monthly stipend.
The SlideJoy app doesn’t specify how much you earn (it’s based off how often you look at your phone), but the ScreenPay app will pay you a flat fee of $3 a month, plus they’ll give you $1 just for signup up. These are both Android apps, so they won’t work on your iPhone or Blackberry.

Growtraffic.com is the best site to get free traffics to your websites

Your Turn: Are you currently using any of these aptps? What’s your experience been?

How to Make $750 a Month Selling Used Books (2016)

 It’s a bit of a horrifying experience the first time you walk into a college bookstore. I remember the first time saying to myself, “You want a $145 for that?” To say I felt ripped off is an understatement, which is why this side hustle I’m about to share is all the more delicious.

I’ve written previously about how I sell used books online for extra money (“How to Become a Used Book Hunter“), but that involves going to garage sales every weekend and sweating the summer heat. Today I’m going to show you how to buy textbooks online at sites like Ebay, and then how to resell them online for a profit at places like BookScouter.com. Consider it my sweet revenge against the bookstores that overcharged me as a college student. Here’s how to do it…
There’s a handy little tool I use to make this work at BookScouter.com. Their site will let you plug in a book’s ISBN number (right next to the UPC) and then it will tell you how much the book is worth and which buyback company will give you the most money. I use this tool before buying a book to make sure that there is a company willing to pay more for the book than what the Ebay seller is charging.
Let me give you a couple of examples I found this week…
Here is a screenshot of an auction that just closed for the book “Fundamentals of Physical Geography.” It was sold for $52.50 (plus $3.99 for shipping) giving the buyer a total cost of $56.49. Using the tool at BookScouter, I see that Moola4Books.com is paying $61.25 for the same book and they will cover the cost of shipping if I send it to them, giving me a profit margin of $4.76.

Also on Rent Scouter, it shows that Amazon’s buyback program would be willing to give me a $71.77 Amazon gift card for this book. Amazon’s program also comes with free shipping so I would profit a $15.28 gift card. Not too bad!
Here’s another one:

After shipping charges, this book cost the buyer $37.11. BookScouter shows that it could be traded in for a $41.26 Amazon gift card, giving me a profit of $4.15.
As you can see the profit margins aren’t huge on a single book, because there are several other Ebayers playing this trade-in game. However, if you can average a $5 profit margin on each book, you only need to buy 5 books everyday to pocket an extra $750 dollars each month! Considering there over a million textbook auctions on Ebay right now, it shouldn’t be too hard to find 5 books a day to resell.

If you do decide to sell textbooks for cash, there are a couple of things you need to remember:

• Be sure to check the condition of the book before buying it. Most buyback companies expect a little wear and tear, but if there are ripped pages or severe damage to the cover, they probably won’t accept your book.
• Pack your books carefully. Most buyback companies will give you a prepaid shipping label, but you are responsible for your own packaging. If the books are damaged during transit, you’ll have to eat the loss.
• Be careful of payment fees. If you are offered the choice of a Paypal payment or a check payment, keep in mind that if you choose Paypal, you will need to deduct those fees from your profit margin.

Good Luck Penny Hoarders!

 

Google AdSense Is The Current Leader

Google AdSense is the current leader in content-sensitive web-based marketing. Webmasters can place Google AdSense JavaScript code on their web pages in order to allow Google's servers to show context sensitive advertisements (Google Adwords). The left hand side of this page shows an example of a Google AdSense skyscraper displaying a text or image ad. Google's terms and conditions are very strict such that many web publishers cannot use adsense adverts on their sites. They are either denied from joining the Google AdSense program in the first instance, or in a situation that is becoming more and more common do not wish to do business with Google. A number of publishers are also finding their Adsense accounts are being disabled for reasons that are completely beyond their control. The problem is that most of the alternatives to Google's Adsense are pretty useless. Most of the good adsense alternatives (such as doubleclick) are only interested in very large volume customers and so are not interested in the little guy with his blog who wants to earn a small income on the side. For this reason I have compiled my Top 10 alternatives to Google's Adsense that are ideal for the small time publisher. This site provides an updated list of the best website monetization programs that are available to webmasters. If you are a advertiser then you may be interested in these best alternatives to adwords. Has your adsense account been disabled? Then try these top 10 alternatives. Bidvertiser B4PSAds.com Yllix Media RevenueHits Infolinks PopAds Clicksor VigLink Propeller Ads Media Chitika Others to consider: Adversal, StatCommerce Note: The descriptions are based on personal experience and do not represent any form of endorsement.

1) Bidvertiser
Bidvertiser is an excellent alternative to Google and offers some intriguing ad formats including what they refer to as free design. This lets you specify the look and dimensions of your text ads. While a useful feature I have not investigated how well it works but imagine that while it sounds good on paper it could result in lower priced ads being displayed. I.e. most advertisers will probably want to keep control of the layout of their ads and so turn off support for Free design ads. All the standard ad formats exist, however, and the payouts are excellent. Pop-under ads and XML feeds are also supported. Bidvertiser have also recently introduced two knew features that can boost your earnings:

• Conversion Bonus
  As far as I am aware Bidvertiser is the first affiliate marketer to offer this seemingly obvious service. As well as paying traditional CPC for each valid click Bidvertiser will now track those clicks and if they turn into valid leads will pay an additional conversion bonus to the publisher. If your site refers a number of high value leads this can lead to a substantial monthly bonus. In many cases this additional bonus can be higher than traditional CPC earnings.
   
• Revenue Generating Toolbar
  The second new feature offered by Bidvertiser is the customized revenue generating toolbar. The BidVertiser Toolbar allows you to distribute your own customized toolbar to your website visitors and then earn money when your users use the toolbar for searching. The toolbar is fully customizable allowing logos to be changed, links to your home page added, useful tools, direct program links etc.

If you want you can download an example of the toolbar using the link below to try it out.

Bidvertizer pays you either in $100.00 increments by check or $10.00 increments by PayPal. They also do not require you to complete any tax information or provide a social security number.
Maximum customizability for the layout of your ads: BidVertiser gives you a simple point-and-click tool to help you customize the layout of the ads to fit your site's look and feel, in order to retain the high quality of your website. Bidvertizer also offers the opportunity to block unwanted ads. The reports provided by Bidvertiser are adequate but not outstanding. The only real problem is that it has been reported that they can be picky with who they accept into their program and can be quick to ban users whose websites show what may be perfectly valid fluctuating visitor behaviour. Although I have not heard any recent reports so they may have relaxed this policy somewhat. Click here to visit Bidvertiser's website where you can either sign up as a publisher (show peoples ads on your site) or as an advertiser (show your ads on other sites).
As an advertiser you can get $20 in free clicks by following this link: Bidvertiser Advertise and get $20 in free clicks.

 

2) B4PSAds.com
Granted they might not have the catchiest or easiest to remember URL but B4PSAds.com are a rising star when it comes to alternatives to Google Adsense and for those of you who lost out due to the AdBrite going bust debacle B4PSAds.com offers a reasonably good alternative there as well. B4PSAds.com are a complete advertising solution offering Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA) to publishers and advertisers alike. It is very easy to get accepted with B4PSAds.com, they do not require a US social security number and approval is typically instantaneous after validating your email address. They support regular webpages as well as blogs and news feeds. Some of things B4PSAds offer include:

• CPA Bonuses - They pay you CPA bonuses for clicks that actually turn into actions for advertisers. This means you can earn income on both the click itself and resulting actions.
• Hands Free Operation - No longer will you have to search for the highest performing ads, nor will you have to pull ads when they run out. Every night, the B4PSAds system finds you the highest CPM yields, but then will also rotate to the next most profitable set of offers when advertisers end their campaigns or go over budget. This ultimately translates into more earning potential from your website traffic.
• Publisher Control - B4PSAds includes a full publisher control suite for you to control every aspect of your ads.
• Account Management - B4PSAds offers real time management of campaigns and provides details statistics and full accounting ledgers of historical and month to date (MTD) earnings and withdrawals.
• No Fees - There are no administration or network fees and it costs nothing to join.
• Monthly Contests - B4PSAds offers monthly cash prize contests for publishers.
• Privacy - In a move that may be critical to publishers in Europe B4PSAds does not collect or store any personal identifying information form users that visit your website. They collect only non-identifying information required for running the advertising campaigns.

Easy Payment: B4PSAds offers payment via Paypal or Direct Deposit. Minimum payout is just $50 and payment is on an extremely frequent Net 5. That is by the 5th of each month your earnings from the previous month will be reviewed and posted to your account ledger and available for withdrawal. In addition, in a feature that I believe is unique they offer the ability for high volume earners (over $1,000 per month) to withdraw a portion of their earnings early. Did you lose thousands of dollars because of AdBrite's 3 month vesting scheme. No worries here, you can withdraw your funds within just days of earning them. All withdrawls can be direct deposited by eCheck to your Bank Checking Account or via Paypal.

3) Yillix Media
Yillix Media are a newcomer to the field but appear to be growing rapidly. What makes them cool is very easy signup. Just go hear and enter your name and email in the form at the bottom of the screen, confirm your email and you'll be good to go. They also offer multiple convenient payment options including PayPal with $10 minimums and a best in class weekly payout. No waiting for months to get paid.
Yillix Media's clever system always shows the most expensive possible ad for every one of your visitors. It compares eCPM's of all available ads for your visitors and shows the most expensive one. They offer a large range of different (and in some cases unique) ad formats including:

• Banner Ad
  Classic image, flash, text or an 3rd party banner advertisement. May be CPM, CPC or CPA. You can place up to 3 banner ads per page.
   
• Slider Ad
  A banner rolled up from the bottom of the page that can be closed. Banner format is chosen randomly and you can select on which side of the site the slider will appear (left/right/random).
   
• Mobile Redirect Ad Tag
  Place mobile redirect ad tags on your website and all visitors using mobile phones or tablets will be redirected to the advertising page. Other visitors see your website normally, without any changes.
   
• Mobile Banner Ad Tag
  Only for mobile phones and tablets. This shows affiliate banners on other devices. May be CPM, CPC or CPA. You can place up to 3 banner ads per page.
   
• Popup Ad Tag
  A new window containing an advertisement opened in the browser of your visitor. This has some very interesting rates. You can use one popup ad per page.
   
• Layer Ad Tag
  A layer ad is a window containing an advertisement over the content of your website. A layer ad can be closed by the visitor by clicking a red (X) icon. Also has some very interesting rates. You can place one layer ad per page.
   
• Full Page Ad Tag
  A link where you can redirect your visitors. You can have it as a popup. Also includes very interesting rates.

Yllix support both regular and adult websites. Something the likes of Adsense do not. So, if you have an Adult themed website then Yllix is the monetizer site for you.
The best part about Yllix is that right now it is very easy and quick to get accepted and you do not have to provide lengthy tax details or bank account information. This makes it useful to non-US publishers.

To sign up as an advertiser click here.

To sign up as a publisher click here.

4)
A newcomer to the scene but a service that is growing fast . Unlike some of the competitors ' website appears to be very smooth and well designed with an easy to use and navigate user interface. They offer a number of different Ad placements including some that are unique to revenue hits. Here is a list of what is currently offered:

• Banner - Standard banner ads in the traditional sizes: Leaderboard (728x90), Full Banner (468x60), Layer Ad (800x440), Mid Layer Ad (600x330), Medium Rectangle (300x250), Wide Skyscraper (160x600) and Skyscraper (120x600).
• Popunder - a standard page that opens behind the users browser window.
• Slider - a banner ad that slides across the page after loading - can be customized as to where it ends up on the page.
• Top Banner - a banner that stays hovering at the top of the users windows.
• 158x21 Button - Have a small space on your site where only a small button will fit? If so then this is the ad for you.
• Footer - a banner ad that stays at the bottom of the user's window even as they scroll the page.
• Interstitial - These are ads that show up when a visitor first goes to your site. It makes them wait a certain number of seconds before showing the site. You get paid per view so these can be very lucrative if you have a lot of traffic.

Setting up ads is easy and you simply place javascript within your html where the ad is to be placed. They offer a nice preview button that lets you see what the ad will look like. This is useful when trying some of the more exotic placements.
What's cool about is that, unlike a lot of adsense alternatives that only focus on North America and Europe, their system offers 100% fill on all GEOs worldwide. They also allow you to include their ads in Apps and Widgets, not just websites, and so you have multiple opportunities to earn revenue and reach different customer demographics. I have not tested it long enough to know what the quality of their ads are like but will update this review once I have more info.
pays out at $50 via PayPal, Wire transfer or Payoneer.
There is no risk and it is free to signup so give a try today and see if it works for you.

5) Infolinks
Infolinks is an veteran of the online advertizing field having been around for many years. Originally begun as a company that specialized in In-Text Advertizing, Infolinks now provides a wide advanced advertising solutions. Infolinks' offerings give value to sites owners by monetizing all of their unused ad space. Infolinks has a variety of products that ranges from traditional contextual ads to display ads with an edge, to their Inline-text advertizing and additional products all of which target your users real-time intent.
Infolinks has substantial market presence and a large backing of established sites and advertizers. At the time of writing they are 3rd largest marketplace of sites in the world with more than 125,000 active sites spanning more than 128 countries.
Historically Infolinks is known for their In-Text ads that index your page looking for keywords and phrases that are not currently links and converts them into advertizing links. When a user places their mouse over the link a box opens up showing the ad. If they click on the link you get paid. It is very simple and works very effectively. The nice part of In-Text ads is that you can use Infolinks to compliment an existing advertizing campaign on your website.
In addition to In-Text ads, Infolinks also offers a broad range of traditional and innovative ad units that help publishers better monetize their sites and advertizers attract more valuable referrals:

• In-text - Scans a page's content in real-time to deliver relevant ads. The ads are neatly presented within a page's text, delivering effective results.
   
• In-screen - An ad functions as an ad intermission between page views. This results in well-timed display ads, driven both by user intent and website content.
   
• In-fold - This ad unit takes advantage of the power of search and display, delivering ads on a wider scale of traffic.
   
• In-tag - Displays the most valuable keywords directly related to the content of a page in highly customizable ad units.
   
• In-frame - Provides a solution for unused real estate on wide screens. These attractive display banners present relevant and perfectly timed ads.

In-Text advertizing is also useful if you have a site under construction. For example, suppose you have built a list of links but have not added all the links yet. Infolinks will parse your page and convert a lot of these into links. People then think these are part of your site, click on them and you get paid. The unobtrusiveness makes it a very attractive way to monetize your site without inundating and alienating your visitors with flashing banners, pop-ups etc.
Infolinks pays you either by bank wire, Automated Clearing House (ACH) ($400 minimum), or by PayPal ($50 minimum). Intriguingly they also offer payment via a prepaid Mastercard that will be refilled with your earnings each month. This is an interesting approach to payment and may be useful for international customers without PayPal or US Dollar bank accounts. However, the fees for this prepaid card appear to be fairly steep.
In summary Infolinks' features:

• Quick and easy setup with no changes to your website.
• Ads are tightly integrated with your content - no additional space required.
• Free sign up with no commitments or risk.
• User triggered, less intrusive advertising that won't distract from your site's content.
• Highly relevant In-Text ads for your site visitors with record high conversion rates.
• Related tags.
• New affiliate program just launched.

Click here to visit Infolink's website and signup for an account to give them a try. As with most alternatives to adsense it is free and there is no obligation.

6) PopAds
Pop Ads is brand new but growing fast and it is very quick to get accepted. The things that make them a good alternative to Adsense are that they have super fast payments via PayPal, AlertPay or even bank wires. You are able to request a withdrawal of your earnings whenever you want and funds are cleared for withdrawal within 24 hours of you earning them.
PopAds' claim is that their system offers the industry's highest rates and the best international coverage. Average revenue for 1000 US unique visitors on a website publishing their code is stated as never being below $4.00 USD and they have advertisers for over 40 countries including North America, Southern Asia, India, Western Europe and Australia. This means many international publishers who do not qualify for other ad providers will qualify for PopAds.
PopAds also support mixing with other Ad providers allowing them to be part of a blended monetization plan.
The support both PopUps and PopUnders allowing you to earn funds on a per hit basis. It can also be mixed with Google Adsense.
Signup today, it's quick and easy to get accepted and provides an additional way to maximize the return on from your website or maximize your advertising budget.

7) Clicksor
Clicksor is one of the current leaders of the small publisher Adsense competition. They have payouts up to a market leading 85% and unlike a number of alternatives the cost per click bid values are high enough that you can earn a decent income. They are also, in my experience, much more tolerant than Google. Their terms and conditions suggest that you should only place one copy of their code on a page but as long as you only place a single pop-up or DHTML code on a page they seem happy to let you place many context sensitive ad blocks on a single site.
Clicksor also has a big advantage over a number of the lower ranked alternatives on this site in that their ads are truly context sensitive. Thus while you can provide keywords they have technology that will also show ads targeted to the content of your site. This means your visitors are exposed to ads of the same subject as they were searching for when they reached your site and thus vastly increases the click thru ratio and thus your sites earning potential. The context sensitive nature also saves you the hassle of having to specify keywords for all of your sites and decide in advance what people might be looking for.

The online stats provided by Clicksor are not perfect but they are enough for you to keep track of the trends with your site. They also allow you to add as many sites / domains as you want under a single account. You also only need the root page of your site approved. Once this is done you can place ads on all of your sub pages.
The payment schedule with Clicksor is also much better geared to the small site owner. In any pay period in which your earnings exceed $50.00 ($20.00 with PayPal), payments are made either by check or instantly through PayPal ($20.00 minimum for PayPal). Revenue totaling less that $50 (PP $20) will rolled into the following period. The pay period is based on a 15 day schedule so you can get paid much more frequently. Clicksor also do not require a Social Security (SSN) or Individual Tax Identity Number (ITIN) to join and so while this 'technically' does not help US site owners with their tax liability it does make it much easier for non US citizens to join up and start earning revenue.
That said I have had several reports of late about Clicksor becoming more picky about who they accept and rejecting accounts. This is especially true of sites not based in the USA, Canada or the UK as well as sites not predominantly in English. I have also seen issues with their reporting of earnings, especially referrals not working properly. Thus I have moved them further down the list but I still recommend you to try them.
Advert wise Clicksor features:
Multiple formats available including text, image and animated ads.

• Text Links
• Image Ads
• Flash Ads
• Animation Ads
• Banners
• Pop unders
• Interstitial Ads (NEW)
• Dynamic (DHTML) highlighting

Click here to visit Clicksor's website and sign up for an account to try it out. There is no obligation and no fees ever. Note, once you start adding the advert code to your site it can take up to 24 hours for Clicksor to get up to speed as it were so initially you may see some ads that don't appear to be relevant. Once their contextual engine kicks in, however, the relevance quickly improves.
Ex AdBrite customers note: Clicksor is offering guaranteed account approval to anyone who had an active account with AdBrite when they went bust on Feb 1st 2013.

8) VigLink
VigLink is a direct competitor of Skimlinks. Indeed there are many examples on the web of people comparing the two services. Viglink works by monetizing key phrases on your website and converting them into affiliate links. Like Skimlinks they can take regular links on your site and redirect them through their servers. This is cool for things like Amazon links since it provides you with additional revenue above an beyond what you would get from the Amazon feed.
At the time of writing VigLink offer three key technologies:

• VigLink Convert - This takes simple link, for example to Amazon, that VigLink automatically converts for you into a link that earns you revenue.
• VigLink Insert - This takes phrases in your text and converts them into affiliate links. For example if you were discussing a specific product it would automatically add referral shopping links to that product for you. This service will also take URLs on your site and auto link them through Viglink so you earn additional revenue.
• VigLink Anywhere - This is for sharing links via Twitter, Facebook, email, or virtually anywhere else. You can create a simple short VigLink Anywhere link to earn revenue in all of your postings automatically.

VigLink offers customization settings for the above technologies so you can control how links open, how many links there are, the types of links created etc.
VigLink have over 32,000 affiliated merchants, they pay monthly on a Net-60 schedule via PayPal or US Check on revenue share of between 25 and 50%. VigLink covers the PayPal fees. It is easy to get approved with account activation being instant upon verification of your email address. If you've had issues getting your site approved on other affiliate marketing programs give Viglink a try since they are typically much more relaxed when it comes to site approvals. There is no obligation, no costs and it's easy to remove from your site if you don't like it so go ahead and give VigLink a try.
9) Propeller Ads Media
Propeller Ads media are another relative newcomer to the field but definitely worth taking the time to try out. They support payment world wide including the ability to receive prepaid debit cards. The support On-Click Ads, Mobile Ads and Video Ads allowing you to offer a wide range of advertising.
Specifics for Publishers include:

• Payouts 200% higher than anywhere else due to detailed optimization of each site individually and selecting the best performing campaigns.
   
• Quick and in-time payouts by any payment method convenient to you. (although notably absent at the time of writing is paypal).
   
• 100% monetization of your inventory at all ad formats at maximum CPM rates. Try it now to increase profit from your site.

Specifics for Advertisers include:

• Propeller Ads Media have launched thousands of CPA and CPL campaigns so they have experience in conversion tracking and results optimization.
   
• More than 30 mln onclick impressions and 200 mln banner impressions daily.
   
• Qualified and responsive account managers. 24/7 Support. (Try getting that from Adsense)

Some specifics of their OnClick ads include:

• CPM up to $10.
• Place on any action, link.
• 1000 imps = 100 visitors.
• CPM, CPA and CPL campaigns.

Video Ads include:

• Pre-roll, post-roll, overlay.
• In-banner video.
• Pre-Game video SDK.
• VAST/VPAID waterfall solution.

So give Properller Ads a go. Getting accepted is very quick and easy and you can be up and running within hours.

10) Chitika
Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka) is the industry's leading alternative to Google AdSense both in terms of Revenue and Size of Network (with 200,000+ active publishers worldwide). Chitika was founded in May 2003, is based in Massachusetts and is closely tied with Yahoo as witnessed by this May 2013 press release. In fact, when Yahoo shut down its Affiliate Program, they referred all publishers to Chitika.
Chitika began, not as a stand-alone advertising solution but instead as way to complement existing advertising / publishing programs through the use of additional Ad Units which were altogether different from the standard ad boxes, pop-unders etc that everybody else provided. Instead of displaying these 'industry standard' advert boxes with text and image ads that all look the same Chitika instead provided active boxes that showed targeted products from different manufacturers. If you ran a blog for example and discussed a product you might have found the Chitika box showing links for this product and competitors' products. If people purchased these products you would get paid a commission. This was referred to as affiliate marketing in the form of Premium Ad Units (eMinimalls).
Chitika has now progressed, however, into a fully-fledged advertiser service. The eMinimalls initially evolved into advertising units that would show adverts based on what people searched for to get to your site (exactly like Google AdSense). This is subtly different from the standard keyword driven advertising since it shows ads that are more relevant to the original intent of your visitors search. This greatly increases the chance that someone will click on an ad. This type of advertising is still offered by Chitika and is a good addition to a site containing traditional banner ads.
However, Chitika now goes beyond this, also offering what are termed premium ads. Chitika uses its proprietary "Click Prediction" technology to show select ads when there is a greater chance they will be clicked on. This is obviously a great way to improve your revenue.
For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue. If you visit a site showing Chitika's ads from a search engine then the Chitika premium ad unit kicks in showing you ads that are specific to your searching - otherwise the ad code falls-back to the page text and finds a suitable ad to display.

You can find info about their entire ad suite on the Chitika website but in short:

• Linx ad code - an in-text unit Linx ad units can be run in addition to Chitika's standard ad units and works best on sites with lots of text content. The code will scan the page, determine the words which should net the highest CPCs and underlines them. When the user mouse-s-over the word, a small, highly targeted text ad is shown.
   
• Hover ad code - a slider unit Hover ad units can also be run in addition to the other ad types. It also targets incoming search terms and in the absence of that, it targets page content. The unit is a small window that slides in the frame from the right-hand side.
   
• Mobile ad code - automatic display of ads on mobile devices At the time of writing Chitika is one of the only advertising networks in the world (aside from Google) whose standard ad code can sense that the user is on a mobile device and automatically serves a mobile ad at the bottom of the screen specific to the device screen size.

Chitika offers payment by PayPal (with a $10 minimum) or via Check (with a $50 minimum). Click here to visit Chitika's website and sign up today. Chitika used to be top of this list but they appear to have become very fussy in who they accept these days so they have been moved down the list. Still it will not hurt to submit your application and see if they accept it.

Click here to visit Chitika's website and sign up today

Others to consider

A couple of other sites to consider:

Adversal
Adversal is a new kid on the block but growing rapidly. It's a great Adsense alternative and works just as well as Chitika. Their banner are high quality and the revenue and CTR adapts automatically to get optimum results from your website. Their image ads are also high quality. If you want a direct replacement for Google Adsense then Adversal is one of the best. Languages other than English are accepted and work well. This is something that a lot of over Ad servers do not support, the obvious one being Chitika.
Some key points for publishers:

• Multiple Ad Formats
• 100% Fill Rate
• Minimum $20 Payments PayPal, ACH, Check, or Wire
• Net 35 Terms
• Affiliate Program

And some key points for advertisers:

• Multiple Banner Sizes
• Pop-Under Ads
• Quick Setup
• Easy to Use Interface
• Minimum $25 Deposit
• PayPal, Credit Cards Accepted

Adversal claims they require a website with a minimum of 50,000 page views per month but they are quick to approve and don't appear to hold tight to this traffic minimum so I'd suggest giving them a try. They offer quick and easy payment via PayPal and the payout minimum is only $20 so even low earning sites can yield actual fund payments.
In terms of clicks, page views and earnings tracking Adversal has one of the most sophisticated I have seen. This includes a full world map showing you the location of each of your visitors. Very powerful and impressive.

Click here to sign up for a free no obligation Adversal account.

StatCommerce
StatCommerce is the parent company behind a lot of 3rd party ad providers such as b4psads.com. They have been around for a long time and have a broad base of publishers and advertisers. One of the nice things about StatCommerce is that their acceptance process is automated. You simply signup and verify your email to create an account. You don't have to worry about having your site scrutinized for number of hits, content relevance etc etc. As such StatCommerce is a good adsense alternative for people whose site was not accepted by adsense.
StatCommerce's main claim is that they auto optimize the ads that are shown by their publishers. From their website:

Wouldn't it be great if an ad network would rotate, test and track all of your ads, placements and landing pages ... and then crank up the winning combinations when & where they led to more conversions? This is what most smart marketers would do .. but now Advertising Intelligence can think and optimize for you the same way over 1000s of campaign combinations.

While some competitor networks leave you constantly struggling to stay ahead of the game, our network uses a proprietary new technology ad-serving technology.

While you sleep, it is working hard for you to bring you the best results in the matrix because it thinks and strategizes like an Expert Human Marketer, scaling up ad variations & placements that make the most money and redacting the ones that aren't so lucrative.

Another nice thing about StatCommerce is that they work seemlessly with other ad networks. You can place text and image based banner ads from StatCommerce and other advertising networks side by side without problems. (assuming the other network's terms and conditions allow it).
StatCommerce pay on a monthly basis with a minimum payout of $50 via either free ACH bank transfer or PayPal.
It is risk free to sign up so consider giving StatCommerce a try. One hint, if you sign up with the same email that you joined one of their affiliates with you will receive and error. Just sign up with a different email and all will be good.

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The Top Websites for Downloading Free Images

If you are new to blogging or managing a website, it is easy to think of the internet as one large source of free images for your website; though, using copyrighted images is illegal and could lead to litigation or a removal request from the copyright holder.
When you need an image for your website or blog, you cannot just grab the first image you come across and add it to your site, without first checking to see if the image is copyrighted.
Luckily, there are plenty of options for finding free images that you can use on your blog or website. Learn where to find free images and how to tell if an image is copyrighted.

The Top Websites for Downloading Free Images

Where can you find free images? There are quite a few websites that have large databases of free images containing various copyright licensing. Some of these sites have more images than others, so to help you out, here is a list of the top 10 websites for downloading free images:

• Freeimages.com
• Pixabay.com
• Flickr.com
• Google.com
• Bing.com
• Commons.wikimedia.org
• Picjumbo.com
• Publicdomainarchive.com
• Publicdomainpictures.net
• Creativecommons.org

#1 – Freeimages.com

Freeimages.com is a good place to start searching for images for your website. The website is a little more user-friendly than some of the other sites on this list. After entering a search term, just remember to click on “Free Images” to filter out the copyrighted or paid images.
One of the nice things about this site is that you do not have to deal with attribution – which would require you to add link or name of the photographer below the image.
Visit freeimages.com

#2 – Pixabay.com

Pixabay includes over 500,000 free images that you can search. Once you enter your search query, you will be presented with a grid of free images. Use the search tools to filter your search and narrow down your selection.
Visit pixabay.com

#3 – Flickr.com

Flickr is a website owned by Yahoo that allows people to upload images for private or public use. The images that are uploaded for public use are tagged based on the type of licensing the photographer chose. Once you start your search, you can filter images based on the licensing you are looking for.
Visit flickr.com

#4 – Google.com

To use Google for finding free images, head over to google.com/imghp and enter your search query. Once the results show up in your browser, look for a button labeled “Search Tools”. After clicking this button, you should see a selection of search options, including “Usage Rights”. Click on that button and choose from the different licensing options.
Visit Google.com

#5 – Bing.com

Bing has options similar to Google on their image search page. After searching for an image, you will notice various options similar to the search tools used for Google image search. Select “License” and choose the licensing option you need.
Visit Bing.com

#6 – Commons.wikimedia.org

This next site is a part of the Wikipedia foundation and includes over 29 million media files, including images, that you can use. Along with images, you can search for video and audio files. When you find a file you want to use, it will include the licensing associated with the file. Make sure that the image contains the right type of licensing before using it on your website.
Visit Commons.wikimedia.org

#7 – Picjumbo.com

Picjumbo is another site that allows you to search totally free images that do not require attribution. Simply enter your search query and find the right image for your site. The only disadvantage is that the website can be tricky to navigate and you may have trouble finding the exact image you need.
Visit picjumbo.com

#8 – Publicdomainarchive.com

Public Domain Archive has a large collection of vintage and modern images that you can use without attribution – all of the images are public domain. Unfortunately, the website is not searchable, you will need to browse through different categories to find the image you want.
Visit publicdomainarchive.com

#9 – Publicdomainpictures.net

Public Domain Pictures is another repository for public domain images, which again means that no attribution is needed. As with some of the other free sites on this list, Public Domain Pictures has a large selection of images that are public domain, but you will need a premium membership to download full resolution HD images.
Visit Publicdomainpictures.net

#10 – CreativeCommons.org

Creative Commons is one of the largest sources of free images. It is actually a content aggregator site, finding images with a suitable copyright license from other websites, including Flickr, Google, Pixabay, and others. Using Creative Commons is one of the simplest methods of locating images that you can use on your blog or website.
Once you enter you search query, you can select which type of license to include in your search and then click on the website that you want to search. Essentially, Creative Commons provides one page from which you can search multiple sources.
Visit creativecommons.org

Understanding Copyright Licenses

If you are not getting an image directly from a website that offers free images or a search engine that filters out copyrighted material, you should assume that the image is copyrighted and that you cannot use it on your site. This includes images from other people’s websites and random images that you have downloaded.
There are essentially seven different copyright licenses that allow you to add an image to your site. The type of license determines how you can use the image. Here is a quick overview of these seven licenses:

• Public domain
• Attribution (CC BY)
• Attribution with Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
• Attribution with No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
• Attribution for Non-Commercial use (CC BY-NC)
• Attribution for Non-Commercial use with Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution for Non-Commercial use with No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-D)

Obviously, public domain means that the image is completely free to use – you do not need to credit anyone. With the other six types (CC licenses), you still need to add attribution. These six licenses can be divided into two categories – commercial and non-commercial (NC) use. If you are going to sell a product or service that contains the image, it cannot have an NC license.
If an image contains a no derivatives license (ND), then you cannot modify or edit the image. Share-alike is used for images that you can edit and then set your own licensing for others wanting to use the edited image.
When you start searching for an image, first decide how you intend on using it. Are you using it for commercial or non-commercial purposes? Do you plan on modifying it or using the image as is? Once you answer these two questions, you will know which type of copyright license to use in your search.

Take the Time to Find Free Images

As a website owner, you are responsible for the content on your site. This includes all forms of media, including images and video. If you want to use images on your site, then you need to take the time to find images that are free to use.
If you cannot find any suitable images for free, your other option is to use paid stock image websites, such as Shutterstock. These sites tend to have a larger selection of professional photographs, but they will cost money. Depending on the site you use, you may pay per image or get charged a monthly fee that includes a number of downloads.
The next time you write a blog post and need to find the perfect image to go along with your content, use the tips and suggestions provided. Finding free images is not difficult and it will save you the hassle of dealing with a removal request or litigation from the copyright holder.
If you have any questions about how to find free images, feel free to leave a comment.

10 Best Google Adsense Alternatives (2016)

10 Best Google Adsense Alternatives (2016)“Your Google Adsense account has been disabled or temporarily banned”.

What a nice phrase on an email to start the day huh? Well, consider you’re not alone. Everyday, hundreds or thousands of accounts are being banned from Google’s Adsense program. Why? I can’t tell you specifically. Either there’s something wrong with the web you’re putting you ads on, or you just simply missed one rule from Google’s TOS.
Instead of crying or bashing Google in multiple forums (actually, this is a very bad idea), remember the world is not over yet, and there are plenty of alternatives out there to try. Google was just your first one, and you failed.
So, stand up, be proactive and act professional! There’s no time to lose.
Updated March (2016):

• Kajamba has been added as a new alternative
• Popcash added in the 5th place
• Infolinks moved to a better position due to performance

10 best Google Adsense Alternatives

Here are some of the best Google Adsense Alternatives you can try to monetize your website without using Google Adsense, and I’ll tell you how they work and why you should consider them, so let’s start:

10. Amazon Associates

You can make a good amount of money from Amazon, especially in Christmas and other holidays

Amazon is the biggest online store in the world, so they must be doing something good. Well, if you have a website that talks about any product that can be found on Amazon, then Amazon associates could work for you. Amazon allows you to put dynamic image ads to your blog, so that you can promote them and while this isn’t a Pay-per-click or CPM program, it will pay you a small commission for everything they sell from your links. So let’s say you have a blog about Apple products and you put an ad driving them to buy an iPod or just a cable. If they buy it, an small commission will be for you. So if you sell a $10 cable you might receive a few cents, but sell a $1500 Laptop and you might receive $100. The good thing is that everything they buy through your link (even if it isn’t the product you recommended at first) will generate a commission for your. the only con I find with Amazon, is that they need to send you a check that could take weeks to arrive to your home, unless you live in the United Stated of America where you can provide your Bank account. You can use this with Adsense at the same time.

9. Yllix Media

Yllix is a network I have heard a lot in the last years that has a decent CPM and many monetization options. Their homepage might look simple but their dashboard is great and it’s easy to get started. Yllix has Pop under ads, mobile redirects, sliders, layer ads and full page ads so you can get a good CTR and make money with them. Definitely a good option for starters and their approval is fast. Sign up here.

8. Chitika

The reason I put Chitika on the number 3 of this list, is because Chitika is very similar to Adsense. they allow you to customize your ads, and it only serves contextual ads. One good thing is that you can use it along with Adsense and there are no problems at all. Chitika pays via Paypal ($10 USD minimum, which is good for starters) or via check ($50 minimum). If I were to recommend an ads service as an alternative to Adsense, Chitika would be my first choice, hands down. Chitika can pay you via paypal if you need. Sign up here and get your account approved fast and easily! Bonus: Check my Chitika earnings here.

7. PopCash

Popcash is another very good network that has been out for a long time and usually gives me similar results as PopAds (see number 4). PopCash has PopUnder ads with a great CPM and good inventory for all countries both for mobile and desktop traffic. You can request your payments inside the dashboard and they pay via Paypal, Payza and Paxum. Money transfers usually take 24-48 hours which isn’t bad at all. Sign up here and get started with Popcash.

6. PopAds

PopAds is a performance network specialized in Pop Unders. They have good rates and they can monetize all countries. Something great about PopAds is that they can pay daily as long as you earn $5 or more per day. Their quality is good, and they also have pop ups, tab ups/unders and other monetization methods. Their approvals are easy and setting your ads takes just a few minutes. Sign up as a publisher here.

5. PropellerAds Media

Propeller Ads is one of the biggest pop-under networks available. They started working on 2011 and quickly developed into one of the biggest networks with great CPMs. They specialize in monetizing websites for the following niches: entertainment, videos/movies, games, dating, finances, software, gambling and more. If you’ve got one of this sites, you could make more money with Propeller than with Adsense. They also have banners but the pop unders work better overall. Also, if you’ve got mobile traffic, they’re a great Adsense alternative as they work closely with ad networks that monetize apps and mobile services leading to huge ROIs and great CPMs too.
Propeller pays on a NET 30 basis and they have a great fill rate for tier 2-3 countries. So if you’re struggling to monetize traffic from countries like India, Singapore, Turkey, South Africa, etc. Propeller has a big inventory for them too. Sign up as a Publisher with Propeller Ads here.
Bonus: Check how to setup PropellerAds  and a case study on how to make $300 per day with PropellerAds and viral websites.

4. Kajamba

Kajamba was founded by industry veterans who used to work with big companies with the idea of having more efficient operations to increase the profit they can give to their publishers. This ad network offers full monetization solution for small and medium websites/blogs — including banner ads, video ads, pop ups/unders, footers, interstitials and other widgets — all with a simple interface and one of the industry’s highest revenue per visitor for a CPA Network.
Kajamba pays in a regular basis on NET 30 and they can pay also on Net 0 for VIP accounts. Their referral program is one of the best I’ve seen in the market. In other words, Kajamba is a new Ad Network in the market and it’s totally worth the try. Sign up as a publisher here.

3. Infolinks

Infolinks is one of the largest monetization networks in the world today, helping more than 200,000 online publishers in 128 countries earn money from their unused ad space. Their FREE to use native ads work perfectly with all ad solutions and don’t interfere with the user’s experience! From effective contextual and video ads, to engaging display banners – Infolinks’ highly customizable products will guarantee you make the most out of your traffic.
Their platform is very simple to integrate into your site, and is open to any publisher, big or small, with no setup fees, no minimum requirements for page views or visitors and no hidden commitments. Infolinks advertisers are selected based on quality, that’s why they work with worldwide leading brands such as: Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, Ali Express, Pizza Hut, TripAdvisor, Hyundai and many more. Start using Infolinks here.

2. Adversal

Adversal is a great alternative of Adsense. They have good banners and the CTR and revenue adapts to get the best results for your website. I’ve seen the Ads on Adversal have a good CTR and they have good image ads too. This is probably the Ad network which seems to work better for those looking for a replacement of Google Adsense. It works decently with other languages too.  You account gets approved really fast and they also have Pop under /CPM ads as an option. Note: Adversal requires a website with a minimum of 50,000 page views per month, but they have proven to work really well. I earn over $500-1000 per month. They also pay via paypal. Sign up here. Bonus: Check my Adversal earnings here.
Revenue Hits is a very strong network with several years in the industry. I’ve been working with them for 2 years and so far the results have been great. Revenue Hits is a Performance Ad network, which means they pay you for results (CPA, which is great for many niches). Revenue Hits has an advanced platform that learns from your Ads so if you give them a try make sure to keep their ads running for at least 3-4 days to get the best results. Another great thing is that they have different monetization channels available. You can create banner ads, sliders, pop -unders, buttons and more. Revenue Hits pays on a NET 30 basis and they issue payments via wire, Paypal and Payoneer! Create your account and get started in just a few minutes !
Note: I moved Revenue Hits to the first place because some publishers have been generating more than $100 per month in their first try with Revenue Hits. Some of them are already generating a lot more, and there’s no entry barrier such as with Adversal (500k monthly traffic). I’d recommend to and let us know how it does for you! Bonus: Read my full RevenueHits Review where I show you how I earn more than $1,000 per month.

BONUS: Affiliate Marketing

I’m leaving affiliate Marketing in the number 1 spot for many reasons. Affiliate Marketing means you’re selling a product or a service from another enterprise (which means you don’t have to develop it) and you earn a commission for that. You can find a lot of Affiliate Marketing programs on the net, and they can vary from selling a $10 small product up to selling a $300 software. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that the more you know and test a product or service, the more you can sell it.
Some affiliate programs can earn you more than $50 for each sale depending on the product and I truly recommend you test and backup your sales by using the product yourself (even though it’s not 100% necessary). If you are an authority in a niche, you can use it to boost your sales and grow even more. You can set affiliate links in banners, text, images and basically everywhere, and it can grow into a big passive income earner if done well. Some examples of people that have become very successful with affiliate Marketing are:

• Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income blog
• Luke Kling from Peerfly
• And more people that earn 6 figure incomes per month, mostly via passive income or PPC campaigns.

The BEST WAY to get started at affiliate marketing is by joining a Forum and reading affiliate marketing blogs. I recently opened a new “Affiliate Marketing” category in this blog where I’ve posted some great case studies.

What can I learn from this?

Life can be rude sometimes. You Google Adsense account could have been banned because you didn’t catch a rule from the TOS, or maybe it was a mistake, however, you can’t always rely only on 1 solution. The secret word here is to “diversify”. Try to have as many income streams as you can by adding and testing different ad services, and you’ll find your way to the top. Those Google Adsense alternatives will help you develop as an Internet Marketeer even more.
Even if your Google Adsense account was banned, this is not the end of the world. In fact, it’s only the beginning

Make $200 Per Day With Viral Websites.

 Several months ago I wrote an article on how to make $200 per day with Viral websites. If you want to know how to add $300 per day more with Propellerads then this article is for you. When I wrote that article more than a year ago I didn’t expect it to go “viral”. A lot of people contacted me in 2015 to learn more about how everything works or simply because they’re putting some work and wanted some feedback on the results they’re achieving.
With over 600 comments it’s one of the top 5 articles on my blog and I know the reason behind it is the “simplicity” of the game.
But as many of you can see, creating a viral website isn’t that easy. In fact, from over 600 comments I have in that article maybe just a couple dozens of them are from people telling me that they started their viral website and made it work. Some of them make $50 per day, and some of them are making more than $500 per day. The rest is just people asking questions or commenting about how good it looks but they don’t have the money to do it, etc.
So first let me explain what this article is going to be about:

1. I’m going to explain what you need in Facebook to go viral, WITH REAL NUMBERS, not the shitty articles that tell you go viral by creating something people love and that stuff that everybody knows but nobody knows how to put to use.
2. I’m going to explain what you need in Adsense to make money as it’s not that easy. It’s a math game and all relies in the numbers
3. I tried different methods and found that you can generate some extra income with popunder ads from networks like Propellerads using your viral website. This will be the final part of the post.
4. I’m going to show you a few tests I made and the earnings with PropellerAds

That’s it. As always I’m going to try to keep it short, but you know I normally write 2,000 words per article so make sure you grab a cup of coffee before you continue reading.

Facebook Ads and going viral

OK so as mentioned, this is a numbers game and Facebook is the main traffic source to tackle if you want to go viral with clickbait news and stuff. I already mentioned how I do it basically in the former article, however a lot of people email me or comment asking for questions like:

• Is my CPC too high?
• Which countries should I target?
• What do you put in your interests when targeting people?
• I’m making money but I spend more than I earn with Adsense

Those are the main questions I think I’ve received in the last 6 months and I’m going to answer them all so you can understand the theory behind going viral on Facebook and making money.
This is the first part of the equation and your target here is to get as many visits as possible with a low budget. Remember we are using Facebook ads, so you need to invest money to make money and you’ve got to have some decent budget to test A LOT of campaigns.
What is a Facebook Ads campaign?
In this case, a campaign would be the news/article you’re promoting, but keep in mind the price of the visitors could change a lot if you change your headline and image to something more compelling.
So the first step is to have a blog and start posting some news in the form of viral articles as explained before. That should be clear by now. But how do you make it viral?
Well, as surprising as this might sound, most of your articles won’t go viral. AND THAT’S FINE. It’s something you have to accept because you’re not the best copy writer in the world and you might not be expert at marketing either.
The thing is you need to test a load of campaigns and news until you find the golden ones. Sometimes it takes you 10 articles to find a golden nugget. Sometimes it could take you 30 or 50 until you find one.
Again, don’t worry. It’s normal to fail a lot of campaigns until you find the best one and scale it. Not even the best marketers in the world can make every product or campaign go pro no matter how good they are. However, you need to consider that if you’re going to test a lot of articles and fire campaigns on Facebook Ads, you need a budget.
How much do I need to get started?
Something a lot of my readers told me is why do they need $1,500 per month to get stared?
They just have $100 bucks and they want to know why they won’t make it.
The truth is they COULD make it, but most probably they won’t. Here’s the math behind it.
Let’s say this is your first time doing viral websites and you’ve got a small idea of how everything works. You write 5 articles every single day of the week and every 20 articles on average you find a good one that goes viral.
5 articles per day becomes 35 per week and 150 per month.
You create a campaign on Facebook ads for each article and pump $5 bucks to test it before deciding if it’s good or not.

• That’s $5 x 150 = $750 USD in just a month.

Now, if you write more articles or if you decide to test with a higher budget or with different images/headlines you’ll need more money, so it could easily become $1k per month or even $2k per month just in tests.
If you have $100 bucks to get started you’ll try a few articles and before the week ends you’ll burn your money without any success and you’ll move to the next shinny thing you find in the warrior forum. But let’s say you get lucky and find a campaign with those $100 and from 10 campaigns you launch 1 of them goes viral.
Now you need money to scale the campaigns and make a lot of money, but you don’t have it and Google Adsense won’t pay you until the end of next month… By the time you receive the payment your campaign will be long dead and the initial momentum you gained will be lost in space.
Now that I’ve explained the basics behind the budget you need to enter this business let’s analyze how your campaigns can go viral by answering the most common questions mentioned above:

1. Go broad and pick up a country. It doesn’t matter which country it is. Facebook has a ton of traffic from every part of the world so just pick up a country where you know the language and maybe the slang and things that are viral at this moment. You can use Google trends to do some research.
2. You’re going to write viral articles that appeal broad audiences, so initially you don’t need to worry about the gender or the ages of people you’re targeting on Facebook. Later you can go back and check your Facebook reports to see what’s working better. Initially just gather data.
3. You don’t need to target specific interests because you’re going broad. Don’t try targeting people who already liked other big viral websites or meme websites because they might have already seen the article you’ve written somewhere else or they are used to those kind of ads in their newsfeed.

Finally, let’s get technical and do the math so you can understand how to make more money than you’re spending.

Facebook Ads by the numbers

I’ll make it simple with an example:
Let’s say you’re running a campaign in France and your average Adsense CPC is worth $0.25.
Initially you start a Facebook campaign (Clicks to website should be your objective) and your average CPC is 0.05 with an average CTR on your banner of 1%.
What do you need to be profitable in this case? Do the math… I’ll wait…
OK so if you earn 25 cents from every click on your Adsense banners and every click from Facebook ads to your website costs 5 cents it means you need at least 1 click in your Adsense banners every 5 visitors just to break even. Right?
So if you need 1 click every 5 visitors it means you need an Adsense CTR of 20%.
Are you going to make money here? I don’t think so… Who gets a CTR of 20% when the average Adsense CTR is usually 1-2%? maybe 5%?
Now let’s image this example:
You’re running the same campaign in France and let’s say your average Adsense CPC is $0.3. You start a Facebook campaign and with a great image and headline you increase the CTR of your Facebook banner to 5%. This results into a CPC of $0.01 which is 5 times lower than it was before.
What kind of CTR would you need in your website to make money? I’ll help you with the math again.
If you get paid 30 cents per each click in your Adsense banners and you’re paying 1 cent per visitor from Facebook, then you need at least 1 click to your Adsense banner every 30 visits to break even. Anything higher than that and you’d be profitable!
1 click every 30 visitors means you need an Adsense CTR of 3.3%. Is that possible to achieve? for sure!
So, in conclusion, what you need to make money with viral traffic is to get your clicks from Facebook as cheap as possible and to increase your Adsense CTR as much as possible to earn more money per visitor. The second question is, how do I do that?

The key behind cheap FB clicks

What you need here is to split test a lot of images and headlines until you find the best ones. If you’re not sure how to tackle this go to your Facebook account and like all the Facebook Fan pages related to viral websites until you understand the style behind them.
I already mentioned that writing a lot of articles and launching campaigns is they key behind this business, but trust me, the same article can perform a lot better just by tweaking the headline and the image. One image could have a mediocre CTR (les than 2% CTR on Facebook Ads) while a good image could have a wonderful CTR (4% and above) and that will lower your CPC costs a lot. That’s simply the key behind Facebook ads and cheap clicks.
Bonus: You can also use retargeting and custom audiences once you start getting traffic in your website to launch campaigns that will perform a lot better (extra ROI) because you know those people already visited your website. Also, don’t forget to check the Facebook Ads report in your ad manager to see which genders and ages are clicking your ad more so you can create ads for them and lower the CPC.

The key behind a great Adsense CTR

You need to split test several themes and positions. Do the math and discover what kind of CTR do you need to be profitable as we did in the examples above and start testing like crazy until you find the best combination. You can split test themes (with WordPress this is quite easy), split test colors, positions of banners, colors of banners, banner sizes and more. Make sure you split test as much as you can until you find the best combination for your traffic.
Here’s a simple test that can increase your CTR by 1-2% just by making a small change:

Split testing between right sidebar and left sidebar can help you increase your CTR

Another good thing is to split test colors and mix them with the design of your website. Have a blue website with blue menu and links? test blue ads and blue links:

Google Adsense font and colors

Once you start launching several campaigns and measuring all your statistics you’ll know how everything works and fell more comfortable spending money. You need to get out of your comfort zone and make it work. Otherwise you’ll never make it in this industry.

PropellerAds and viral traffic

Finally, let’s talk about adding some extra ROI to your earnings by using PropellerAds.
If this is the first time you’ve heard about PropellerAds, they are one of the largest networks and most of their ads are shown on a popunder (onclick ads, as they call them) format.
What is a popunder ad? Well, you know… the type of ad that pops in another window behind your original website. It looks something like this:

Yes, these are the same ads that most people hate and some of then assure pop under and pop up ads are dead but they can’t be more wrong. Pop Ads work wonderfully although I accept they’re very intrusive and sometimes I just hate to see them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work.
Anyways, the real reason you’re here is because you want to know how to make extra money and see how I earned $300 extra per day, so here it goes.
First thing you need to do is to understand how to install and show PropellerAds in your website. I wrote a guide and a small review about them a few months ago, so make sure you check it out and come back when you’re done.
Back in September 2015 I started doing tests with a small viral website without Google Adsense just to see if I could earn any decent money with PropellerAds and my (already big) Facebook Fan pages. Here’s what I quickly achieved:

$30 to $70 per day just from popunder ads and Viral traffic with PropellerAds

As you can see, I quickly noticed PropellerAds had some potential but the first I wanted to try it with a small website and decided to do the test just with my organic traffic from the Fan Pages I had grown in the past with my viral websites.
Some days I made $30 and some days the CPM (cost per thousand visits) was better so I made more than $70 per day with a CPM of $5.
My next step was to test the strategy with my biggest Fan Pages so I could make my $200 per day with Adsense plus whatever I could achieve as an extra with PropellerAds to increase my earnings and overall my ROI on my Facebook campaigns.
Here’s what I achieved back in September:

Up to $355 per day just with PropellerAds and viral traffic

As you can see, I was earning pretty much the same with PropellerAds compared to Google Adsense, so I decided to contact my manager at PropellerAds and ask them if there was a problem if I used PropellerAds at the same time with Adsense.
My manager told me there was no problem and Google shouldn’t have problems either, however, they told me to be careful with Facebook because they don’t like pop ads when you’re running traffic through Facebook Ads.

WARNING, YOUR FACEBOOK ADS ACCOUNT COULD BE BANNED

If you don’t follow the steps below closely your FB ads account could be banned. There, I said it. So please read below to see my strategy before trying anything.
So I decided to check out Facebook Ads Terms and Conditions and yes, they don’t allow pop ups or pop unders on the destination of the ads. They don’t have problems with organic traffic (A.K.A. Fan Pages without Ads) though. So what I decided to do in order to use both Google Adsense and PropellerAds was to create an specific page with Adsense banners only for the articles that I promoted via Facebook Ads, and then clone the same article and put both Adsense and PropellerAds and use that specific link to promote it to my Fans without paying for Ads (organic traffic just by posting the links in my Fan Pages).
So in conclusion:

1. While you’re searching for your golden nuggets to go viral using Facebook ads make sure you’re using the URL of your article with Google Adsense banners only
2. For all of the articles that you promote to your fans organically (no Ads) use the URL where you have both Adsense and PropellerAds

What was the final result?
At the end of September and during October I was making $500 per day overall with my viral websites. Around $150-200 from PropellerAds and $300-350 from Google Adsense. Quite a nice bump in earnings just by adding a second ad network to the equation, isn’t it?
AGAIN, make sure you don’t use the URLs with PropellerAds when promoting via Facebook Ads or your account could be banned. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU!
Anyways, even if you don’t have an Adsense account, you can still make good money with Propeller Ads and viral traffic, the only bummer there would be that all your FB Ads would need to be focused on getting likes to your fan Page instead of website clicks and then you can promote your viral website with PropellerAds organically to your fans.
Since November 2015 I have been split testing a lot of PopUnder ad networks like the ones mentioned here and found a few ones that sometimes perform better than PropellerAds. But as always, you need to split test the networks because what works for me could not work for you as there are many factors to count in like country of the visitor, operating systems, devices, etc. One of the best ones I tried was Pop Ads but overall PropellerAds has been more solid for this kind of traffic.

Conclusions

There you have it.
That’s how I added $300 per day with PropellerAds and viral traffic and overall how you can make more than $500 per day just with viral websites.
As always, remember to put this to test and never forget to split test everything until you find the best combination for your website/traffic. Don’t quit if you launch 3 campaigns and fail. That’s pretty common but the ones that persist are the ones who dominate it and make it big.
Finally, if you want to read more posts like this where I explain everything with numbers and step by step please don’t forget to share this post and leave a comment below. If you’re already running viral websites, I’d love to hear your feedback and know what’s working for you.
Talk to you later this week!