Happy Thanksgiving to all my American visitors.

I hope you’re all enjoying your families and not sitting at the computer right now. I’m here as obligation dictates, but I’d also like to spread the spirit of the day with everyone. Being thankful for what you have can keep you down-to-earth and level. If you have a moment, please just sit back and think of all the things you have that others aren’t so lucky to have, such as good health or a supportive family. It can be extremely easy to take the great things in your life for granted.

I’m beginning my trial of TNX, which is supposed to be like Text Link Ads. I actually found the link to this site on the Cash Quests site I mentioned in my last post. Amanda, the previous owner of The Blog World, had mentioned it to me a while ago, but I hadn’t ever looked at it. When I brought it back up to her she told me she’d done a review for Empower Women Now (no link because the site hardly works) and had negative results. She said when she put her site into the system, Pajama Mommy, she was told her PR4 site that makes her $5,000+ per month would stand to make $0 per month from TNX. I decided something had to be wrong here and I was going to try it for myself.

I went to the website and I put in the information. Basically I would be lucky to make $50 per month from this program on The Blog World. But the fact that many of these calculator tools seem to be wrong appealed to me. Why would you put a calculator on your site that basically says people won’t make enough to buy a bottle of water each day on your program? I admit, the site is poorly made, but what do I have to lose giving it a shot?

So I signed up last night. I didn’t get an email from them, but my login works. I set up The Blog World and now it says I have to raise my link limit from 0. I click the link to do this and everything’s in another language. Wonderful.. but I don’t see where to list how many links I want. Do I wait until I’m approved for that? How do I get approved? Will they email me? The world may never know. Right now, all I see is..

Your site is currently being reviewed. If the site disappears from this page in several days, then it may not fit our requirments - may be it is not google indexed, etc.

They say it takes 1-2 days for your site to be reviewed, so I’ll let you know how it goes. I assume TBW will be accepted, since that Cash Quests website, which tells people how to cheat Google, was accepted. If you’re thinking about signing up yourself, use my referral link up there. And let me know how it goes for you, too.

EDIT 11/12/2007 7:25AM
The message has been removed from under The Blog World and there is now a management and a statistics link. The management link says it is “temoraly blocked”. Not looking good. Is this necessary for me to be able to sell ads at all? How much money am I potentially losing right now?

Affiliate links can be a great money making resource, if used properly. You want to keep in mind the type of visitors that will be coming to your site and what they’re looking for while they’re there. There was a while where TBW had ads for Lane Bryant, which has clothes for plus sized women. Is this what the readers of TBW were looking for? No.

I’m working on a website about products, services, and issues relating to my generation. On this website I’m going to review products, like MP3 players and clothes, anything that would be appealing to my generation. So one of the services I have lined up is the Amazon Associate. Basically I can log in to my Amazon Associate account and link directly to the product on the Amazon site. If you buy from my link, I get a commission from that sale. These products relate to my blog niche and therefore will earn me a higher likelihood of revenue. This is the same basic idea Google’s Adsense has, by giving you targeted ads.

My suggestion is to take a look at the affiliate programs and ads you currently display on your site. Ask yourself, “Would my visitors be interested in this?” If the answer is now, or it’s not a high earning ad/link, you’ll probably do better to replace it with something else.

I’m working on a resource list of affiliate programs which I intend to release shortly. If you would like yours to be considered for the link please contact me.

VPS Hosting is a great way to go dedicated without the price of a dedicated server. I decided to get a dedicated server because I wanted root access and I wanted full control over my software. However, with only 10 sites, a full dedicated server is probably overkill. Especially if you don’t want to have to manage the server yourself.

A Virtual Private Server is where a server administrator splits root access between multiple clients. Using Virtuozzo you can see all the server information including resource usage for your account. Virtuozzo is great behind the scenes as well, because it allows your site to stay up even if another client is over using their resources.

Network Solutions has just released their VPS Hosting with the Plesk control panel. Their smallest package gives you a whopping 10GB space and 500GB of bandwidth for only $50 per month. I pay $170 per month for my dedicated server and will probably never use that much space or bandwidth. Their largest VPS package has as much space and bandwidth as my server and still only costs $100 per month.

If you’re looking to go dedicated without the cost, it is a great alternative. If you’ve heard bad things about VPS hosting (downtime and slow servers) please keep in mind that this is Network Solutions, a very reputable company. They have the resources to keep their services up and working well.