Making money online isn’t easy and I am always looking for new ways to make some extra cash which is why I was excited to learn that IZEA CEO Ted Murphy unveiled his newest money making venture, Sponsored Tweets.

Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising service that allows advertisers the opportunity to leverage Twitter users to hock their wares. The idea is simple. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking tools available and big name stars like Ashton Kutcher, Lance Armstrong and others are using it to reach massive audiences keeping them up to date with what they are doing.

Bloggers and everyday tweeters can make money by signing up with Sponsored Tweets and allowing advertisers to use their twitter stream to advertise products and services. You have the option of writing the ad copy yourself or letting the advertiser do it. You can also set your own price.

If you are looking for a new way to generate some ad revenue without clogging up your blog space and you have a decent amount of twitter followers, this may be just the thing you are looking for.

Already, a lot of top name bloggers and celebrities have signed up to use Sponsored Tweets. Names like Neil Patel, John Chow, Holly Madison, Sister Hazel should ring a bell.

You begin by putting in some basic information about your twitter account, setting some keywords, a price and how you want to be notified of new ads pending.

Then you just sit back and wait for the cash to roll in, right? Not exactly.

Your success with this tool is going to depend on several factors. Your twitter followers (the more the better), the content of your tweets (keep in mind this is about networking) and the frequency of your tweets are all going to contribute to your success. In essence, the more followers you have, the more conversations you carry on, the more people you reach, the more you can charge advertisers for leveraging your account.

Is Sponsored Tweets going to change the landscape of twitter advertising and making money using twitter? Maybe. Am I going to be testing it out, definitely. I’ll keep you posted and let you know what kind of success (or failure) I find with this tool.

Now when you log in you get a breakdown of which sites you are selling ads on are active and what kind of links you are selling, notice the small blue or red icon next to each listing. You can also see how many ads are sold on each of your sites.

They have also made it much easier to find your projected earnings for the month. On the right side at the bottom of the main page is a box that shows your projected earnings.

Text Link Ads really is one of the best ways I have found to make money online. The bottom line is, if you can drive traffic to your site, you can sell advertising the easy way by having someone else do it. Less work means more time for blogging and getting other things done. Sign up Today!

What is Twitter?

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks today because it is simple, straightforward and it works. Twitter allows you to communicate what you are doing in 140 characters or less. If you are already following me on Twitter then you already know this and I’m preaching to the choir. However, if this is new to you, it’s time to look at what Twitter can do for you and your online business.

I use Twitter to not only get news on topics i’m interested in, but stock trading ideas, marketing and information on making money online and other business related ventures I am involved in.

Just as you want to have multiple streams of income, you need to have multiple avenues of information gathering and dissemination. Although I don’t follow every single one of my own followers, I do follow those ones that I feel contribute to the topics I am interested in or need to keep track of.

Why Do I Need Followers?

Your efforts to make money online are only going to be as successful as the number of people you can reach. You may have discovered the greatest money making opportunity ever but if you can’t tell others about it, you could be losing hundreds or thousands of dollars in revenue.

What you want to do then is get as many people following you as possible. There’s one tool on the market that does this better than any other tool i’ve seen. It’s called Hummingbird and you need to buy it today if you are serious about making money online.

Hummingbird works the same way a human would if they were adding followers in Twitter. You search for followers by keyword or hashtag(#) and then using the tools in the Hummingbird interface, add all those followers.

That’s the first part, but there is more. What will happen is your account will get to a point where you can’t add any more users. You wait one day and then unfollow all those people that haven’t followed you back. Hummingbird knows who you have followed an unfollowed and will prevent you from following the same person you have unfollowed so you won’t seem spammy to the Twitter servers.

When you are able to add more users, usually a day or soe later, you just repeat the same process. It’s not uncommon for someone to be following thousands of others and have thousands of followers.

My goal is to have as many followers as possible so that my marketing efforts have the highest impact with the least amount of effort. Download Hummingbird today, it’s the best tool for the job.

The basic idea behind TweetBucks is to pay users a commission on clicks through to links or products. You shorten your URL using bit.ly and an affiliate code is automatically inserted into the link if it matches one of the merchants in the TweetBucks database.

So if you post a link to Twitter or Facebook that goes to Amazon.com, Best Buy or any of the other 1000 or so merchants, your affiliate code is automatically added and you earn a commission on the sale. It’s that simple. You can sign up for a free account today.

There’s also a great article about TweetBucks here. ProTwit asked a great question in the article:

Protwit: So what if the link I want to shorten is not part of your list of supported Merchants?
TweetBucks: That’s the best part, you can still make money on every click using our customizable ad-frame!  This optional feature inserts a leaderboard (728×90) ad unit on top of the site you are sharing.  We pay you for every click.  People are earning anywhere from $0.5 to $1 eCPM.

So, if you aren’t on Twitter or Facebook you can still earn money using an ad-frame. The potential for making mone with this is unlimited! It’s much the same as everything online. Drive traffic, convert clicks and make sales and you’ll find success. If aren’t doing so already, follow me on Twitter and keep up with what I am doing.

I wasn’t able to attend the second or third days due to a conflict with my work schedule so I missed the two keynot speeches I really wanted to see. I think next year I may just take the time off work so I can fully enjoy what Ad:Tech has to offer. The show floor this year was bigger and had to span two entire floors of Moscone West. If you plan on attending next year, let me know so we can meet up for Lunch or drinks during the show.

Here’s a wrap up video of the first day (This isn’t me, I just found it on YouTube). Enjoy.

For reference, here’s the email:

Hi,

We’re writing to let you know that we’ll be retiring AdSense video units at the end of April. After reviewing this feature, we’ve found that it hasn’t been performing as well as we had hoped, so we’ve decided to focus our efforts on other opportunities to help publishers monetize their sites.

We recommend that you begin removing the video unit code from your pages as soon as possible, to ensure that you can take advantage of the available ad space on your pages. At the end of April, any remaining Leaderboard or Skyscraper video units will begin directing users to YouTube.com, while other video unit sizes will automatically be changed to standard embedded YouTube players. These standard video players will display top YouTube videos, but you won’t generate earnings from them once this change occurs.

If you’d still like to display free video content from YouTube, you can do so through YouTube.com directly: visit any specific video page for the embed code, or sign in to your YouTube account to create a playlist. For more information about embedding YouTube videos, please visit http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57788. Alternatively, if you have less than three ad units on your page, you may prefer to replace your video unit with a regular ad unit.

Although video units are being retired, other video offerings within AdSense aren’t affected. Video ads may still appear on your pages and AdSense for video is still available for eligible publishers. If you’d like more information about the retiring of video units, please visit our Help Center at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12182.

Thanks for your support of video units in the past, and we appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I think what really wasn’t working here is the format of the video units. The idea was that you could embed YouTube videos into your blogs and people using the player would generate revenue for you when the videos were played. The problem was, none of the sizes of the players are economical in terms of real estate on your blog. They were too big for most spaces and had a clunky interface. Perhaps they are going back to the drawing board to redesign them. We’ll have to wait and see.

Ad:Tech brings together the top advertising programs and producers in one location for you to meet and schmooze with. Last year was extremely successful and this year should be just as good.

Registration is open and the exhibit floor plus all the keynotes are free if you register before March. Ad:Tech SF runs from April 21-23 at the Moscone Convention Center. Register today!

I’ll be there checking out the floor. Let me know if you are going to attend and we can meet face to face.  See you there!

Maybe you just aren’t interested in keeping the place anymore but haven’t had any luck selling it. Maybe you don’t know what a timeshare really is and are interested in getting more information about them.

If this sounds like you then you should check out Timeshare Resale Marketplace.

Timeshare Resale Marketplace specializes in buying, renting and selling timeshares. A timeshare is basically a condominium that is owned by several people who all get a couple weeks a year to live in the place should they choose to do so.

It is common practice to rent out timeshares in which case the owning party for that time period would recieve compensation. In September of this year, we spent a week in New York (actually Brooklyn) and we rented out a 3 bedroom apartment which was so much nicer than staying in a hotel and so much easier. This is what a timeshare offers you if you are considering renting for a vacation instead of a costly hotel. Timeshares are deeply discounted compared to hotel rates.

Since it can be difficult to find buyers and renters, you might want to have someone handle this process for you and that is exactly what Timeshare Resale Marketplace does.

To find out more information, go to Timeshare Resale Marketplace and fill out a simple form.

For college students and other people who feel burned out trying to balance paying the bills and living at the same time, ads like these can prove to be irresistible. Many of them make perfect sense and easily hook you based on good concepts. Unfortunately, many times the product or service does not match the brilliance of a great idea for making money from home or through the Internet. As I’ve learned myself, the further you go down this road, the more excited you get. You basically get hooked, and if you aren’t careful, you will end up working hard and falling further into debt than you can imagine. Much like gambling, the lure of easy money and independence can make just about anyone fall prey to work at home scams that feed off your dreams to get to your wallet so they can go on to the next victim.

Hopefully, you will never fall victim to these scam artists. However, the fact of the matter is that these scammers would not be wasting their time if they were not making any money. And as long as people continue to get mixed up in this business, these scammers are going to stick around to trick more and more people.

The best way to keep a scammer’s claws away from your credit card is to do thorough research on each opportunity that you are considering. This means doing much more than simply reading a bit about it online. In my personal experience, I have been taken by companies who were savvy enough to pollute the Internet with staged testimonials, guarantees, questionable references to big name endorsements, and even appearances in the Better Business Bureau.

A colleague of mine who invested in vending machine placement services even went so far as to physically go to the manufacturing plant to tour the warehouse as well as contact the Better Business Bureau of that state. What he received, in return, were twenty malfunctioning candy machines with a list of local businesses who had apparently agreed to receive them. Not only did none of these businesses know what he was talking about, many of them were hostile when he showed up to place them.

What you want to do is check message boards such as the ASK section of Yahoo.com. Another simple method of weeding out the scams from the genuine opportunities is to go to a search engine and simply type in the company name followed by the word “scam”. If you do this, and you are barraged by an endless list of complaints, you my friend have found a nugget of gold in a sea of mud.

In terms of the Better Business Bureau, it is best to contact them directly to ask about any complaints, and also find out how long a company has been listed. The Better Business Bureau operates state by state. They will be able to tell you if they have any complaints on file. If they do, you will want to avoid the opportunity at all costs. But if it appears that a company is doing business the right way, you can continue your own research.

Being in the Business Bureau is not necessarily that hard to accomplish. Many scammers can use their money and connections to set up a front to initially qualify for the Better Business Bureau just long enough for them to collect their cash from unsuspecting victims, close shop, create a new identity and start again.

Before you decide to do anything, attempt to get in touch with the company that you are interested in. Can you get a human being on the phone? Do they have an actually physical address? How long does it take them to respond to your e-mails, if at all? If you cannot even talk to the company before you start, there is not chance that they will be around when you really need them. I once made quite a bit of money selling vacation vouchers on auction sites. The marketing plan was sound, and the money saving vouchers was a hit. Only problem was, I could never get in touch with their customer service department to handle my customer inquiries and complaints once I realized that the promises that existed in writing on the vouchers were misleading at best. This proved to be such a problem that it took me over a year to recover from the negative publicity on my auction site.

Of course, there are legitimate home based businesses out there. With the Internet and all the low cost, web producing tools available, there seems to be a renaissance in entrepreneurship. Basically, just find a product or service you can market online, and do your research. Sell on EBay if you don’t want to build your own website. You can have a website their and all search engine marketing is already done by EBay. The Small Business Association has an office in downtown Tacoma and contains invaluable information on their website http://www.sba.com. Since small business is the backbone of our country economically, sources such as these are eager to help you create a plan with realistic expectations.

However, like anything else worthwhile, you have to do your homework and work hard at it. The problem is that too many people make you think you can practically go online and make money just clicking on a mouse. You want to steer clear of any business that asks to you to pay for their “Top Secret” e-book that will teach you how to make an automated income.”

Think about it, if you are in dire need of cash, can you imagine any other situation in which you would not only work for free, but pay for the privilege to work. There are no magic formals or secrets worth paying for. All of the information in these e-books can be found for free through your own research if you have common internet skills.

If you don’t want to work hard and just make a few easy extra bucks without donating your blood or volunteering to be a guinea pig, it is possible to make some good extra money filling out online surveys or through mystery shopping. There are real opportunities out there which require no fee to get started. Not only that, several of them will even give you a $5 bonus just for signing up. If a company such as this is legitimate, they would be making lots of money through the success of its members. Companies that require that $49.97 start up fee only make money through the fee and only want to teach you how to get other people to do the same. The products are all useless lists and general information that anyone with a functioning mind could figure out on their own, or get for free by doing their own research.

In 12 years of trying to make a living on the Internet, the following are the best companies I have ever encountered for making a few extra bucks filling out surveys, playing games and mystery shopping. They probably won’t pay the rent, but if you’re interested in making an extra $400 or $500 a month or eating out at nice restaurants and going to movies for free, you may want to check these out:

Mystery Shopping Providers Association.

This site contains all the information you will ever need on starting up as a mystery shopper. It is also a portal for the best sites to go to for mystery shopping jobs online, and they don’t require that you invest a penny.

InboxDollars.com. (you can sign up for free and get $5 just for signing up. You can make a few hundred dollars in one day and if you are willing to, you can use a credit card to sign up for free or paid trials. Just make sure you have the patience to fill out the long surveys and keep detailed records so you can remember to cancel your free trials before you get charged. Also, you can fill out surveys to make a dollar or two which are completely free. I’ve made about $400 with this site.

http://www.treasuretrooper.com. (a lot of free surveys and cool games).

http://www.tiktikcash.com. By far the best of the survey sites. The free surveys are tremendous. You can make a dollar or two in one minute. This site has the shortest, most painless surveys. I made over thirty bucks in less than an hour after signing up.

Below are my statistics for a 7 day campaign of several products. The resulting sales totalled just over $12 which is just totally pathetic.

As you can see I had 420,908 impressions and only 251 clicks which cost me a total of $126.73. Again, this only resulted in two sales. You can also see that Facebook has a very high CPC compared to other advertising programs like Miva or Adwords.

Even following strict rules including negative qualifiers to try and weed out curious clickers, some of these cost me a lot of money for no reward.

So although I think you can still use Facebook for a CPC campaign, finding the perfect niche product and maximizing your return from these campaigns is going to be difficult at best.

Anyone else have a better experience with Facebook? I’d like to hear what worked for you and what didn’t. Next month i’ll be working on some more campaigns to see if I have better luck using Adwords.