Popularity: 9% [?]

If I can say one thing about the Debt Settlement Company, it’s that they have a very nice looking site design.

Perhaps we’ve been in a situation where we might need credit card debt help (can anyone say post-Christmas!). I can imagine the stress that being in debt can cause on a person, a couple, a family. It sucks. No one wants to be in that sort of position. Stress kills relationships. Kills a credit report too. You just don’t want to be in a bad situation, but sometimes that happens. Maybe it has to do with a bad situation, bad luck or just plain poor money management skills. What ever the situation was, there is a solution to get help and get out of credit debt and get the credit card debt help you need.

At the Debt Settlement Company they give you a selection of options to choose from. If you go through them they can get you a lower payment rate, in a shorter amount of time you could be out of debt and get the credit card consolidation that you need to get on with your life and leave debt behind you.

I think with the Christmas holidays coming up and perhaps Black Friday hit your credit card a bit hard and you’re thinking “how am I going to get out of this one??” You might want to check out the Debt Settlement Company and see what kind of options they have to help you out.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Last week I wrote a little blurb about how I went out of my usual routine and finally took the plunge and bought a website. Yes, call it a crazy moment - but all in all an awesome moment. I’m not really sure how indepth I should go into the whole “who I bought the site from” and all that good stuff - but I have to say THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT THE LEAST STRESSFUL THING EVER!. The person I bought it from was totally awesome, totally upfront, and I have to say really supportive if I had any questions about the site/product. So far - so good!

The site I bought plays into the whole “I like to design sites” sort of deal - and the site looks like fun, so I thought - why not. This also takes me into the world of Ebooks. Never, ever, done an ebook before. So I’m hoping that this will give me the opportunity to spread my wings a little on the Internet and try something different - and spread out my online income.

Now with the site, I had a bit of a dilemma - with the Ebook I needed a way to sell it. One of those digital product download sites. I was thinking maybe I could use PayPal… but I wasn’t sure how that would work, and honestly I wasn’t looking for a lot of hours of work trying to sort it all out. LUCKILY the person I had bought the site from recommended to me to try out Digital Product Delivery. (You may or may not have seen reviews here and here - they offer great feedback on the site… and I won’t go repeating what they said here - read them!).

So I have my handy ebook and I’m wondering if the Digital Product Delivery would be easy to use. I’m all for no-headache technology and software I went to the site and registered. That took me no time at all… you are given 4 choices:

If you look to the right… you’ll see what I always love (when trying something out)… FREE - you can test the Digital Product Delivery for free. You can one product to sell digitally - and you have to have a payment processor already set up… like paypal, paydotcom, etc, because they don’t do the money… you need to get it set up. This wasn’t a problem - I have PayPal, easy-peasy.

As a designer - I have to say it’s not every day I see a site that is this easy to read. I just have to say that

Once I selected “free” I was sent through to the next page which was the form - username, password, email, the usual things you’d do to sign up for an account. Activation was smooth and I was ready to rumble in minutes. Which is so nice, because I hate having to wait to be verified.

Once I accessed my account… um… I was a little worried as to where to start. But the site is well laid out, and they offer:

Start with our Quick-Start Guide to learn how to rapidly create new protected downloads, or watch one of our tutorial videos to see how easy it is to use Secure Delivery.

… the quick start guide saved my butt! Once I got into the site - it was pretty easy to set up - the system takes you step by step - what to call the product, upload the product, and get links to sell the product and I loved that they had so many options - text version, graphic versions (good selection) to fit your site.

I was pleased with myself when I managed to get through it unscathed and happy because I managed to do it all within about 15 minutes. YAAAAA!

So if you’re like me and want to do some ebook selling or any digital product downloads (digital scrapbooking, etc) this would be an super easy way to do it. Also (as an affiilate marketer) this got me pretty happy too… is that they offer affiliate tools - so you can definitely help out the income stream by promoting this product.

Plenty of documentation (which I have yet to really use), help and support guides are available and you can stay up to date with what’s happening on their blog. Which wouldn’t be bad - if you promote it - you can keep your promotions up to date.

So, I’ve got the links on my new site and I’m hoping that this goes well - I’ve been able to track clicks through Google Analytics with Digital Product Delivery - which is super handy and look at the stats on their end as well. I’m hoping once I start marketing the site a bit more I’ll be able to see the numbers a bit higher than they are right now…LOL. So I’m into something new - trying something a little different with this new site I bought and trying out a new payment/delivery system. I’m pretty darn stoked by the new venture.

*fingers crossed*

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’ve been signing up at a few review sites, some I’ve signed up with months ago and some just this last week. All in search of making some money online doing reviews of products and/or websites.

I’ve got to say I’m not sure this is the most reliable way to make money online. Actually, I know this way would seriously suck and I’m not sure there are many out there who are rollin’ in the dough doing it.

Who I’ve tried so far:

PayPerPost : You’ve probably heard of them. They came out with this system and they got caught in the whirlstorm of conflict about disclosure. What should be said when you write up a review - do you tell people or do you mask it as apart of your everyday content. Well, things for the most part got sorted out and I think as far as the players in this game go - they’ve got a good selection of reviews.

Positives: Good selection of Reviews
Negatives: Low payouts.

ReviewMe : They were actually the second review site that I signed up with. I was EXCITED to be apart of it. When I got the email from Patrick Gavin about this site, I thought that this would be a great way to make more money, why not right… Patrick was behind the Text Link Ads site and I was making money with them.

I found at the beginning I had more opportunities than I do now. I don’t know if it’s over-saturation of the site, but it’s been a desert wasteland for opportunites with them as of late. I think it’s been almost 2 months and nada. I actually turned down an opportunity, because it had no relevance to this site. I didn’t think the sponsor of the article would get much value out of me reviewing their site. So I said no. Since then - I’ve had no offers. That seriously sucks. I wonder if I blew it by turning them down. Well, I guess all I can do is wait and see.

Positives: Good payouts for written articles
Negatives: Offers are few and far between. It could be because of the type of site content I have. Maybe the whole thing is a bit over-saturated at the moment?

BloggingAds : Many moons ago I found Blogging Ads and they asked to advertise certain sites in a quick paragraph at the end of a regular blog article I wrote. I thought this was a great way to make a few dollars and my site at the time didn’t have Text Link Ads on it or was it monetizing for me. So I took them up on the offer. Now they’ve got an actual site and I just signed up with them again and I’m waiting for this blog to be approved. Not sure what offers await. So I’ll keep you posted.

Positives: A consistant number of reviews per month.
Negatives: Low payout. Not alot of offers each month.

Smorty : A new site to the scene and I just signed up with them and approved for this site. There weren’t a lot of offers available - yet. I’m thinking that this site is still pretty new and I’m hoping that it will pick up and be competitive with the likes of PayPerPost. I found this site thanks to 45n5.

Positives: New to the scene.
Negatives: Low payouts - which would mean they need more offers to build up a good payout for the blogger.

Sponsored Reviews : Another site similar to Review Me.   Unlike Review Me, Sponsored Reviews offers bloggers a chance to browse potential offers and make a bid.  The advertiser then has an opportunity to accept or reject the offer from the blogger.  Seems like a good concept and I was excited to try it out.  So far I’ve got nine review requests in - and I’ve had only one response.  The advertisers are VERY SLOW in responding.

Positives: Opportunity for bloggers to pick reviews and offer a price for the review
Negatives: Advertisers are incredibly SLOW at responding.

There are a few others that I’ve signed up for and I can’t even remember them… tells you how often I hear from them to tell me something new is available. If I don’t get a reminder or an offer… I forget. My bad.

But when I remember - or get that reminder. I’ll be posting what I think.

What do you think of review sites? Have your experiences been similar to mine or have you actually hit the golden jackpot?

Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve been using Google’s Analytics for a while and I really like to see what people are clicking on… the hotspots, etc. But I’m also looking for a new host (to divvy up my website projects). So I’ve been looking around on the ‘Net and you know when you visit web hosts - they often claim their 100% on customer support, 99.9% uptime, etc. They ALL say this.

So I’m looking around and found this site:

>> www.realmetrics.com

This is what is on their site:

RealMetrics is the leading publisher of unbiased metrics for online service providers enabling customers to choose a service provider with confidence.

By performing over 110,000 tests per day against real accounts established with each provider, RealMetrics is able to publish objective reliability, speed, and customer service reports you can trust.

Real Metrics say that they are an unbiased company that sets up real accounts with each host and then frequently tests the performance of these accounts to publish reliability, speed, and customer service responsiveness data.

Has anyone else tried this out? I’m always curious to see how other hosts match up, etc. This might be one convenient location to search for the better web hosts out there?

Popularity: 3% [?]