Well I got some exciting news! I have a new contest that I am busy preparing to launch on the 1st of December. I am really excited because this is not the typical contest and it is something that will definately Stand Out (pun intended :P) and hopefully gain a whole lot of exposure.

This will be one of the most fun and creative competitions the blogging community has ever seen and it is sure to build awareness for the bloggers that enter - plus you will have a crazy amount of fun!

BUT…

As we all know, a contest is not a real contest with out fantastic prizes - right? And I need 12 of them! 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes for each week in December (Thats right, its a new contest each week :D) So the last couple of days I have been doing a whole lot of research into what products I think you will absolutely love! And I have found quite a few that I want to get.

How Do I Get The Products I Want As Prizes?

There are really only three ways that I go about trying to get these products as prizes.

1. Buy Them Myself

   Honestly, I hate this option! It means I have to spend money and why would I do that if I could get them for free. The only reason I would use this method is if it were for a tangible product like an iPod or Flip Mino.

2. Get The Products Donated

   This is more like it! If you find a product you like and would love to see as a prize in your contest why not shoot the owner a quick email or give them a call to see if they are willing to donate the prize. You would be surprised how many will.

   Just make sure you focus on the WIIFM factor (Whats In It For Me). The products owner will want to know how giving away a copy of his product will benefit him.

   Here are a few options for you to use:

   • Back links on each post about the contest
   • Entrants are required to link to them
   • Blog has over 500 Subscribers
   • Blog generates over 10,000 unique visits a month

   The better you sell yourself and your competition, the more chance you have of getting the product you want. Never be afraid to ask for something. The worse they can do is say no!.

3. Joint Venture With The Product Owner

   I have run my fair share of contest, but it wasn’t until today that I thought of this option.

   So what do I mean by joint venture?
   Well let me explain it by how it happened! I was browsing through The PayDotCom Marketplace, and found a product that I was sure you would all love (because I wanted it myself). It was a great product on list building - by a guy that has a built a list of over 200,000 and makes $40,000+/month from it!

   Everyone is talking about how if you are blogging you need to focus on building an optin list. It’s all about lists.. And the fact is, I have just created a new project that is based solely on list building - so I wanted this product as well.

   What if I could get a free copy for myself as well as for a prize?
   Wouldn’t that be amazing? To be able to get free products for our own personal use. But I knew to be able to convince the product owner to give me a copy of his product, free for my personal use I really neaded to ramp up the WIIFM factors!

   That’s when I thought about doing a joint venture!

   • What if I agreed to read the product, and spend a week working the ideas and tips from this product into my new project?
   • What if I agreed to post the results, daily, as a case study on how effective the product really way? - Wouldn’t the product owner love that!

   But I decided that I wanted to benefit even more from this joint venture. I wanted to profit from it - I wanted money! So I decided to ask that during the case study, that I be able to use my affiliate link to his product. That way we both profit - a perfect joint venture!

Interesting concept isn’t it? But I know what you are thinking.

How Do I Word The Email For The Best Result?

Instead of giving you the key points, etc… I decided the easiest way is to show you the email that I used. Notice it is short and to the point - because most successful internet marketers don’t have time to read massive proposals!

My Joint Venture Proposal Email:

Hi Steven,

My name is Thomas Sinfield and I run a blog called StandOutBlogger.com (500+ Sunscribers).

The reason I am writing to you is because I am planning on running a (Insert Contest Name Here) on my blog throughout December and I would love to see you ‘Quick List Formulas’ be one of the major prizes!

I am expecting not only great participation on this competition, but also a lot of exposure and I would like
to ask for your support.

What I Would Love To Receive From You:

2 Copies of your ‘Quick List Formula’

• 1 for one of the weekly contests 1^st prize!
• 1 for me so that I can do an honest review post on your product.

What Do You Get From It:

• All entrys submitted in your week will link to your products sales page
• Your link will be added to all posts on StandOutBlogger.com for that week
• A full length review post of your product on StandOutBlogger.com (Using my affiliate link)

I am currently in the process of launching a new email list and I would love to use it as a case study for your product. This would mean multiple posts, making reference to your product linking to it (using affiliate links) – Making you extra sales.

My list is: (Insert Link Here) (I would love the opportunity to (Insert Extra Opportunity Here) you when the list launches!)

I know this competition is going to be a huge success and we have already received the support of other high profile internet marketers

And I would love to see you and your product added to it.

I look forward to hearing from you, and really appreciate your consideration.

Thankyou

Thomas Sinfield

http://www.standoutblogger.com

It’s All About Creating Win/Win Senarios

As you would have noticed, I made sure that the offer didn’t just benefit me but instead focused mainly on how my proposal benefits the product owner. If you do this I am sure you will get most of the products you ask for!  (I will let you know as soon as I get a response!)

I hope this has been helpful to all you bloggers that are looking to run contest. But to be honest, to do a joint venture like I discussed above you don’t even need a contest to get a free product and affiliate sales!

So what are you waiting for?

Have you ever noticed that the majority of bloggers have maybe one or two methods of making money from their blog - and that’s it. For example they will have adsense and private ad sales, or the affiliate minded ones will have their adspots with affiliate links as well as promoting affiliate links in their post.

Today I want to take a quick look at the different ways you can make money from your blog and hopefully you are able to at least pick up another revenue stream.

1. CPC Advertising

   This is adsense, bidvertiser or another other advertising program that pays you per click. Usually this is where people start and most of the time it is only pocket change -  a dollar here, a dollar there. However some blogs do make a substantial amount from adsense, but these blogs are usually in niches outside of the MMO or blog about blogging niches.

   I use adsense on a couple of my blogs, including this one. Only one of them is pulling in over a dollar a day, and that is a blog outside of those niches I mentioned above.

2. Affiliate Ad Sales

   When you blog is new, you realise that no one is going to buy your adspots because you have no traffic stats. So what do you do? You sign up with Commission Junction and Clickbank and ad your little 125×125 ads, hoping that someone clicks though and buys something.

   Affiliate ad sales can be quite lucrative if you find one that your readers seem to connect with. I know a lot of hosting companies are paying $90+ on the affiliate sales (pity HostsBlog.com can’t seem to get any referrals yet :P)

3. Private Ad Sales

   This is the path I have taken this month with my Adspot Auction. And seemed to do alright. I mean I’m no John Chow making $500 a month per spot, but its a start. Your adspot price usually seems to be determined by RSS subscribers because while I am earning about $10 per 125×125 spots, Tyler Cruz is selling out his 125×125 adspots and his alexa rating is almost twice what mine is (even though he has 4 times the subscribers!)

   But if you can make good money off your private ad sales it does provide a steady income.

4. Paid Reviews

   Similar to private ad sales, where you get paid in advance for the ad. A paid review is where you get offered money to write a review about someones product of website. Prices for these vary greatly and it doesn’t necessarily depend on PR, feed count or traffic.

   I do a mixture of private paid reviews and using paid posting websites. Currently my private paid reviews are $30 - and I get about 2 of these a month, and paid posting websites which can be quite lucrative (I know Jim from TheNetfool.com got $200 for one paid review using the program I also use, Sponsored Reviews - they pay great and have a great referral commission for you affilliate ad people :D.

5. Affiliate Reviews

   Here is where things start blending together. Affiliate reviews are a mixture between affiliate ad sales and paid reviews. The way you go about making money from affiliate reviews is you find a product that you like and wouldn’t have any trouble recommending, see if it will pay you a commission for getting people to sign up to their service or buy their product, and then write up a blog post reviewing the service or product (inserting affiliate links as you see fit).

   If you can make a habit of writing non-biased reviews that once again find your visitors sweet spot you can make quite a lot of money from affiliate reviews!

   The only thing I will add is that make sure you don’t just rewrite the sales blurb the the product has on their website. Make sure you try and test it out, see how it works. Even try and score yourself a free one by telling the creator that you want to make them some sales! But just don’t rehash what everyone else is saying… (Sorry. This is a pet hate of mine :P)

6. Creating A Product And Use Your Blog As A Launching Pad

   I have watched a fair few bloggers get REALLY good results from this. I remember when Yaro announced his Blog Mastermind Program. His blog and the network he build from his blog is what really helped him successfully launch his blog. The same thing with Darren and his Problogger book.

   I am in the initial stages of doing the same, but a little bit different because I see this as the one way to make money from your blog that can quickly and exponentially increase your earnings!

I think that about covers them all, but if I missed one just let me know. I’d love to hear your stories of the methods that have work and those that haven’t - so please comment below!

I havn’t been posting that much over the last couple of days, but it has been for a good reason.

After finding out about this product available called Micro Niche Finder, I read the sales page and it had me hooked - I just had to give this product a go. And this is what I have been doing over the last 3 days. What I am sharing now is just my initial thoughts on the product, I will be posting a more in depth analysis in a couple of weeks when I can truly gauge the results.

What Does It Claim To Do? (Extracted From The Micro Niche Finder sales page)

• Uncover Completely Overlooked Niche Markets that are so Profitable You’ll be Absolutely Shocked at How Easily You Found Them.
• Locate the MOST Profitable Affiliate Programs for Your Niche Market Keyword Phrases with the Built in Targeted Affiliate Product Search Tools.
• Exclusive Strength of Competition (S.O.C.) Index Tells You at a Glance How Strong the Existing Competition is for any Keyword Phrase.
• Built-in Competitive Analysis gives You a Breakdown of the Number of Competing Websites Using Search Engine Optimization Techniques for a Particular Keyword Phrase.

So in theory what this is saying is the product will help you find uncompetitive yet highly searched keyword terms, help you analyze the strength of your competition and then find the best affiliate programs for you to promote.

What Are My Thoughts So Far?
I’m glad you asked! Over the last couple of days I have been spending a lot of time looking into all the features of the Micro Niche Finder program as well as testing to see if I could actually find some uncompetitive and highly searched terms for some current domains that I have.

Here is a screen shot of some results I found for one of my projects - obviously I have blanked out the keywords as I want them all for myself! ( I had to edit thescreen shot to make it fit, but I did not doctor the results)

What I have found almost instantly is 6 key phrases that are searched for over 300 times a month each (up to 1800 times!) with limited direct competition, and no strength in the competition.

I think this alone is enough to warrant the price of the program because from the information I have recieved above I can then:

1. Write articles targeted at those key phrases and link them to email capture pages, or affiliate landing pages.
2. Create made for adsense pages for those keywords and do limited SEO and rank in the first page of the results.
3. Write articles and use them as pages for my Build a Niche Stores directing traffic to my stores.

How Have I Been Using Micro Niche Finder So Far?

I have pretty much been doing what I mentioned above, but here is a what I have been doing more specifically.

1. Written a couple of couple of pages targetting two niche key phrases for my BANS store (one with 1200 searches and 434 competition)
2. Getting some articles written for me for the blocked out keywords above (as I don’t know a thing about the niche) and created a review website which is full of affiliate links.
3. Creating a few articles that get sent to a new email capture page for a mailing list I am creating.

So I will have a fair few ways to judge how successful Micro Niche Finder has been for me, but I will not be able to truly judge it for a couple of weeks when I start seeing results. But from what I have seen this product is well worth grabbing if you have some spare cash because it allows you to focus your time on the most profitable niches.

Hit me up if you have any questions…