The Benefits of Sponsored Reviews

Traffic

Rank	Website	Price	Clicks	Words	Comments	CPC
1	Tyler Cruz	$120	580	1,309	13	20c
2	Jonathan Volk	$40	282	493	1	14c
3	Courtney Tuttle	$100	574	713	32	17c
4	The University Kid	$55	206	877	18	26c
5	Carl Ocab	$70	278	691	7	25c
6	John Cow	$100	334	535	12	29c
7	Internet Babel	$20	25	848	0	80c
8	One Mans Goal	$40	29	418	6	$1.37
9	Infected By Bugs	$35	21	660	0	$1.66
10	The Blog Entrepreneur	$50	14	1390	4	$3.57

Here you can see what review brought me what traffic, I typically would say anywhere around 20cent per click would be money well spent. If you were to pay for 125 x 125’s on these websites you would be looking to pay around 50cert per click and if you were to pay Google you would pay around $3.00 per Adword click.

RSS Feed

Getting sign ups to your RSS feed is one of the most important things for a blog because its a long term traffic source. With buying reviews I am usually able to pick up quite a good number of RSS sign ups, they are targeted people I want visiting to my website on a daily basis. So if I buy a review and get 100 visitors, 10 sign up as RSS readers and visited my website twice a week that’s a extra 80 visitors a month on top of the 100 visitors.

Search Engine Rankings

Every time I buy a review my rankings go up, so as well as getting traffic from the website that reviewed me, I get traffic from search engines as well. I notice a great improvements seeing first page on terms such as Making Money Online, Young Entrepreneurs, Creating a Business, Creating a Website and Looking for investment. The more reviews I have the better rankings I can get.

Newsletter Subscribers

I have a area at the top of most pages on the main website for visitors to join my mailing list and get a free eBook on how to make money online. Typically I get around 20 signs a day, but when I get a review I can see as many as 50 to 70 sign ups for 2 days.

Life Time Back Links

I never tell reviewer what back links to use and what anchor text to use so it looks legitimate to search engines, because of this I get a vast amount of keywords for my website and typically all related to make money and young entrepreneurs.

Brand Exposure

Nearly everyone in the Make Money Online niche knows about Retireat21.com and that is because I have purchased reviews on some of the top websites in this niche. Most would know I have bought a lot of reviews and most would be able tell you exactly what my website is about and what it offers.

How Much Should I Charge

Hello Everyone,

On Sunday I announced I will be giving away a sponsored review and a 125 x 125 on The University Kid, Germz won the review and Shane won the 125 x 125 advertising spot. Today I am giving away a sponsored review on Infected By Bugs which is worth $75! Just comment to have a chance to win.

Pricing Competition

Why is it that I can buy a eBook for $50.00 when the eBook is showing me how to earn $100 a day, every day. Recently I saw a post on The University Kid, he talks about how he is going to release a book about making $50 a day guaranteed with hardly any work and he asked us how much we would pay. I was amazed to see that his readers were saying they would pay as much as $500 for the product, you may be thinking but this is only 10 days earnings. Why pay $500 to make $50 when his already established and known completion is charging $27 for a eBook that says it will show me how to make $100 a day. Pricing it with your competition is important to have a chance to compete with the 1000s of other Make Money Online products. How much would you charge for the eBook?

Should Jason charge more and sell less and or charge less and make 5x the amount of money? Is it worth the hassle?

Missleading your Customer

I work with a lot of programmers all over the world and have been charged from $20 to $150 for a Wordpress theme to be programmed from PSD. A while back the Retire at 21 blog wasn’t programmed to my standards so I seeked a new programmer and wanted to make sure they were the best! When I found a programmer I saw there portfolio and new they would be perfect, but she wouldn’t give me a price! All she would say is minimum of $100, so your probably thinking like I did, so around $150 - $200 max. Well when I got the bill for $350 I was very surprised, I had already paid $100 before she started, so I didn’t really have a choice. Before starting the job I did try to get a exact price for the work but she kept telling me, this isn’t how it works, I will have to just see how long it takes me and she charged me a hourly rate I think. This was by far the best coded Wordpress theme I have had and so It was worth it to me, but I only budgeted to spend $150 hearing that she was giving me a minimum price of $100.

Do you think she did this because:

A. My website is successful and is sounds like I have a lot of money.

B. She knew she had $100 off me already, so she could charge a much higher price knowing if I don’t pay I lose $100 so it would be likely I would have to pay.

C. She really didn’t know how long it would take to code a Wordpress theme when she has coded 100s in the past.

Taking Advantage

Another thing that happens is people like to charge me more because I have more money. A friend of mine called Scott crashed into the back of another friends car called Steven, these two people were best friends. Scott said I am very sorry, if you get it fixed I will pay you back how much it cost. Steven went of to and got a quote from a garage for $700 and asked Scott for the money, Steven then went on eBay and paid $20 for the parts and got his friend to fit it for him. It turned out that Steven did this because he knew Scott had a lot of money and knew his parents would pay for it. I can tell you that they are not friends anymore, but would you ever take advantage of a customer because they can afford to pay more.

Making Money Online Young

Hey everyone,

Back in March I released a list of Top 30 Bloggers Under 21, today I have revised the list to make it more fair, taking into account there Age, Alexa and Technorati. Since revising the list, we have welcomed nearly 20 new bloggers to the list, to have a chance of being in the next list, post your details here.

Yesterday I said I would give a review on Jonathan Volk, the winner is Chetan. Today we are giving away a sponsored review and a 125 x 125 advert on The University Kid, just comment to have a chance to win. I would also recommend following me on Twitter and signing up to our RSS feed to hear about other opportunities to win prizes. If you want to donate some prizes for future posts, please email me.

Please Digg, Stumble and Twitter.

Rank Name Website Age Alexa Technorati 1 Thilak Raj Rao http://tech-buzz.net 18 21,749 20,499 2 Marco Kuiper http://www.marcofolio.net 19 32,712 14,278 3 Eli Burford http://www.photoshopstar.com 17 36,526 21,714 4 Carl Ocab http://www.carlocab.com 14 90,186 6,138 5 Ahson Rafiq http://www.blueverse.com/ 18 43,137 17,285 6 Paul Bourqe http://uberaffiliate.com/ 19 103,459 8,464 7 Sly Blanco http://slyvisions.com/ 16 118,472 25,273 8 Jacob Cass http://justcreativedesign.com/ 20 107,174 14,169 9 David Wilkinson http://www.techzi.net 14 188,304 101,512 10 Mike http://bloggin-ads.com/ 19 154,870 9,588 11 Jason Pereira http://www.theuniversitykid.com 16 206,995 10,655 12 Collin LaHay http://mixedmarketarts.com/ 18 135,608 12,460 13 Max Miroff http://blogbadly.com/ 13 173,262 158,126 14 Nadeesha Cabral http://www.rockfuse.com/blog/ 19 129,174 164,504 15 Chloe Spencer http://www.neopetsfanatic.com/ 16 163,472 249,273 16 Jon Wheatley http://www.j0n.org 20 131,348 81,810 17 Wayne Liew http://www.wayneliew.com 18 196,163 21,372 18 Shannon Lilly http://www.infectedbybugs.com/ 19 171,253 64,354 19 Javier http://mrjavo.com/ 20 233,994 32,580 20 Chetan http://www.thewwwblog.com/ 20 196,315 48,669 21 Jim http://www.thenetfool.com/ 18 250,089 37,926 22 James McDonald http://www.eatfruitplease.com 18 182,688 131,962 23 Carl http://www.thatblogsite.com/ 17 264,267 83,861 24 Fabien http://smallfishbigmoney.com/ 15 182,942 75,992 25 Connor Wilson http://www.connorwilson.com/ 16 254,818 97,305 26 Marko Dimitrovski http://buckserv.com/ 13 151,737 152,199 27 Glenn Wolsey http://www.glennwolsey.com/ 15 212,863 35,720 28 Nick Throlson http://nickthrolson.com/ 19 264,537 216,641 29 Tom Ross http://pushstandards.com/ 19 191,731 115,970 30 Mark Walsh http://walsho.net 18 189,981 101,512

I make more money online because I am productive

On Wednesday I posted that I had a Carl Ocab review to give away, the winner is Henry, today I have a Jonathan Volk review to give away, just comment to enter.

Today I want to share with you the steps I took to being more productive, healthy and to earn a lot more money!

Developing a Routine:

When I dropped out of collage I wasn’t very productive, I would wake up late around 11am, hang around the house for a couple hours and then finally attempt to get some work done, it just wasn’t working out! I would end up staying out late every night and play computer games telling myself I will work hard tomorrow to make up for it. I am sure a lot of you are reading this and are thinking to yourself, THIS IS ME!

In the last few months I decided to change this, I now get up early and keep to a routine. Its taking time to adjust but I am nearly there.

7.30:		Take the dog for a walk along the beach
		Shower and get dressed
9.00:		Cook and eat breakfast
9.30:		Check emails and RSS Feeds
10.00:		Blog Post for Retireat21
		Add a interview to R21 and blog about it
		Blog post on Webdesigndev
		Email Newsletter readers announcing new interview
12.30:		Cycle up to the village stores to get a sandwich made
2.00:		Work on new website ideas
3.00:		Clear emails and proper ideas for tomorrows work
3.30:		Networking with other entrepreneurs

Having a routine allows me to be more productive and get more done. You can see I only get around 4 hours of work done a day but it is intense and I get more done then I would working 8 hours in my unproductive life style. The reason I take my dog for a walk first thing is that it allows me to think out my dad and come up with ideas to better my business and life. You may be thinking but why do I have to get up early, couldn’t I start this at 11.30 and finish at 7.30, my honest opinion is “the early bird catches the worm”. Although this doesn’t apply so much to the internet, I still find I am more open to opportunities online because of getting up earlier and mixing with Australian’s in the morning and Americans in the afternoon.
Eating Better as a Young Entrepreneur

Before I started my routine I was eating a full English breakfast every morning, snacking on chocolate all day (its so easy!) and ending up eating a kebab later on in the evening. I would also not drink enough, aspecialy when I went out in the evening with friends and would end up feeling like I had the mother of all hang overs in the morning when I haven’t even had a drop of alcohol. Since starting my new eating routine I find I don’t snack at all and it fills me up, I feel more energetic and sleep better.

Breakfast: Porridge (oats) and fruit.

Since eating breakfast before starting work I have found myself to be so much more productive and it feels me up till lunch. If you are struggling to come up with a great breakfast, Leo from Zenhabits has a great guide.

Lunch: Turkey and salad sandwich on granary bread

Dinner: Usually chicken, vegetables and potato’s but changes regularly to keep it interesting, such as Roast chicken, chicken casserole and breaded chicken. I also don’t say no to a fresh home made soup!

You are probably thinking that these meals sound boring and “healthy”, well they are definitely healthy and I enjoy them a lot! Since eating well, I have felt a lot more energetic and full of life.

Being Frugal Young Can Mean Success

Being young we spend a lot more money then we need to and waste a lot more money. In business we need all the money we can get to invest in our business ideas, here’s my tips for saving more money.

- Eat before you go out: I was going out every night and would usually not eat before so would end out spending $10 - $15 a night on take aways, that’s around $60 a week! This was quite easy to cut out, I now spend $15 a week at most on eating out at take aways.

- Only withdraw the money you need: Before I would go out at night I would withdraw money I thought I needed for the week, before I had the money there in my wallet I spent it there and then. I now only take money out when I need to and only the amount I need. Typically this can save me around $50 a week.

- Don’t go over drawn: I once went over drawn on one of my bank accounts and the bank charged me $50 because of it, I now keep a $500 buffer in the account to make sure It doesn’t happen again.

- Alcohol and Smoking: I don’t drink nor do I smoke but I did use to drink a lot, like most young people. Typically it was costing me around $150 a week in the summer and so I made the decision not to drink anymore, since then I have been 100x more productive and much more well off mental and in my bank account.

If you are already in debt and want to get out of debt, you may find this article helpful

If you have any suggestions how I can improve my healthy and productive life style, let me know!