No offense to chatters, I do chat often too, but I believe that chatting is really a huge time waster, unless it is not a chat about work and similar. How ever, how do you turn that “boring” moments into bucks you might be wondering? Yeah exactly that famous say Time is money.

Today I had again that blank moment, I have it every day actually and recently more often then what I should permit to myself. However later on the day I did read a friends blog and he had a post about something called Bux.To. Nice name no? Bux.to…do what? Well I had heard about them earlier, but never saw the picture in the way I am describing it to you (time is money)..Bux.to is actually a pay-per-view program, where you get paid cents to view an advertisement (liked it or not, all you have to do is just view the ad for full 30 seconds and earn a cent for the view).

Before I even continue, you will need an account with AlertPay in order to get paid from Bux.to.

Now, you have already created your Bux.to account and you click on the “Surf Ads” button. A list will be presented with ads that you can surf and get paid for. All you have to do is click in the link, and stay in the page for 30 seconds (pay attention in the countdown at the top, it should change to Done when you can close the window).

Can you get rich with Bux.to?

Well, first of all it depends what “RICH” means for you. $300 a month won’t make me rich for sure, but for a student thats a good money especially if doing nothing. I bet you got confused now, I was first referring that you earn 1 cent for surfing an ad and now referring to $300 a month earnings, hold on..let me explain.

People like me do it when they have time to waste, some others got into this much deeper and actually pull even more then $300 a month, but to understand better read bellow how the system actually works.

Earnings Example

• You click 10 ads per day = $0.10
• 20 referrals click 10 ads per day = $2.00
• Your daily earnings = $2.10
• Your weekly earnings = $14.70
• Your monthly earnings = $63.00

So practically you view 10 ads a day and earn $0.10 cents for the day. But if you have 20 referrals under your Bux.to and all 20 referrals do the same your daily earnings becomes $2.10 a day instead of $0.10 a day.

The sweetest part is that if having referrals under your account is hard with any other program with Bux.to it is not hard at all actually. You can actually buy those “non referred” users for a fairly cheap price. For example you can buy

• 15 referrals for $16.98
• 35 referraks for $34.95
• 100 referrals for $98.00

Why I am telling you fairly cheap price is because the ROI is good. Presume you buy the cheapest plan, 15 referrals for less then $17 and all 15 referrals do view 10 ads a day thats $1.50 USD a day (plus 0.10 a day from ads you will view), in 10 days you have already pulled back the money you invested and all the rest is pure earnings. If you purchase 35 referrals you get back your invested money in less then 10 days and so on you can create an empire of users until you reach a point that you earn enough money a day without doing anything but simply buying some referrals from time to time, sit in your back, view some ads when you are bored and cash in the money.

Are you convinced that time IS really money and that even cents can turn out to become real bucks quickly enough? Subscribe to Bux.to and build your money empire (and don’t forget to get a AlertPay account too).

Actually even many corporations would use one of those free wordpress themes for their companies blog with just some slight modifications…and just few months ago BOOM everyone was lurking for a personalized wordpress blog theme. Everyone wanted to stand out from the rest of the fellow bloggers with a unique design that would reflect to their personality.

I have been thinking now and then to get a new blog design for this make money online blog but I just feel really comfortable enough with the current layout I am using (yeah, it is a free wordpress theme so what?) that I don’t even find the hassle to sit down and open photoshop and design me a new layout.

It makes sense tho to hire a company for your website design even tho sometimes prices are just too high, especially if you think that return on investment won’t be that good. Speaking of this I ended up seeing the website designing page of Hosterio.com.

I have to admit I like their layout, actually I love simplicity, even tho they are a hosting company actually they also offer website design services too. The first thing that caught my eyes was their pleasant design, so Ok i thought, it is worth reading maybe I get convinced and hire them to do the work for my lazy self (some times it is harder to design for yourself if you are a designer, rather then designing for a customer).

The page looked nice, well written content and most important the price was really cheap, I quote from their own website

Our website design services starts from as low as USD249 only. With that package you will get a complete website of upto 10 pages with free domain name and web hosting

Intrigued me, it does intrigue you too right? So what should stop me for hiring them? Well there is one thing that stops me from hiring, actually it stops many, I presume, from hiring a website design firm to work on your personal website design if they don’t have a portfolio show case from where I could see the quality of their work (let me remind you, their site already looks nice..but one example is just not enough).

That was the first thing I did notice, the second, being a semantic code maniac, i checked the source code. I think I will better refrain my comments, after all very few are the sites that satisfy me from how the layout is structured and how the elements are being used, but I can’t stop myself repeating to everyone that tables are meant to be used for displaying tabular data, and not structuring the websites layout.

From that, I can tell that there are few things people should and do look at when they are thinking about hiring a website design firm or even a website designer as freelancer, let me name them

• Companies Design
• Read the whole sales letter, it will help you understand a lot about how serious they are.
• Portfolio of previous work, this is a must and inspires/convinced people to hire you even more
• Code structure. Using semantic correct markup? Is the code search engine friendly?

However, I hope the folks at Hosterio.com will read this blog post and will take their time to build a nice portfolio showcase.

Before I started blogging (which was like a year or two ago) I had a great social life and yet had my online business which was bringing me that extra revenue which could afford me many luxurious going outs, expensive clothes and what so not. But let me separate this post in Before Blogging and After Blogging.

Before Blogging

My social life was more relaxing, more going outs, more friends, more drinks and definitively less sleep during night (actually, i was almost like Dracula if not even better, live during the night and sleep during the day). Everything was so intense and my days were always full, and each of the day was different from the next one. Late night at the bars, few hours sleep early in the morning and later in the morning (after an hour or two of sleep) was already out (most likely on swimming pool, if not in another Caffee shop).

When I first started my online business I was already working full time, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day (not counting the 1 hour break). That work was taking too much of my time that I really did not had much time to really enjoy my life, thats why after ups and down and the internet skills I had since ever I decided to start a online small web hosting business which started to slow grow, then jumped into building few mini sites and use affiliate links, and all this was done during the few free hours I had (between university studies and work). This jump on making some extra bucks online gave me the freedom to reduce my working hours from full time (let me stamp it in your mind, 5 days a week 8 hours a day + 1 hour break) to part time work (4 days a week 6 hours a day) and still making the same money as I used to when I worked full time, but huh I got whole 3 free days just for myself.

I knew it was going to work out the extra 3 free days I had into increasing my online revenue and enjoy my life even better. After 4 months that I started working part time, money was no longer a issue, but I liked to keep the work for one or another reason (mainly because I had a scheduled week and some of my friends were actually even my colleagues and it was fun working with them).

Just as many would become greedy for money after tasting a good amount of bucks I started to become greedy too, but not for money that much, rather for my free time. I liked so much my free time that I wanted more…and more…and more, and since I had already reached a steady income online I could permit myself to quit my part time job and have the whole free time I ever wanted. And this was my biggest mistake, all this free time turned out to slowly turn me into “internet addicted” once I started blogging.

After Blogging

With my entrance in the blogsphere almost 2 years ago blogging started to pull me closer and closer to blogging, it pulled me that close that I became addicted to internet (and not only to blogging). I started slowly to cut out the time I would spend with my friends (and for this it helped me the cold winter, I hate cold and especially going out during the winter), in other words I started to put aside my friends to spend more time my computer and together with this killing my social life. So flash preview of the Good and Bad that blogging and internet brought to me, I came to conclusion that it more hurt me (in the social life perspective) rather then helped me (I am not a big chatter, so I rather even chat online, another big minus for me?).

The Good

• Do not have to hear a work giver complaining about something
• Can wake up whenever I want and go to sleep whenever I want
• Definitively more money then having a regular day job
• More time to have a serious relationship (not that before did not had really time for serious relationship, but … I could not dedicate the time that person would have deserved so it often ended up in the bad way, and after awhile stopped to give such hopes to girls)

The Bad

• No more wild going outs every night (just occasionally now)
• No more coming back home drunk and waking up with a new chick next to me
• No more healthy laughs and doing stupid things with my friends
• Lost my body shape
• Became more lazy then what I used to be
• Wrapped up in few word – Killed my social life

You might be asking why I am bragging about this, well I am not cursing, or bragging or whining I am just coming close to reality and giving you another point of view on how things might turn out if you decided to quit your day job and make money from home, and even if you decide to do that just don’t let yourself get involved way too much and forget about your social life. Spending time to learn internet marketing, affiliate marketing and other streams of making money online will most likely get you addicted to your computer after a while. Just take a break from time to time, go out, remind yourself that there is a real whole world out there and not just the virtual one you can see through your web browser.

Have to say something? Shoot your best.

Having a unique blog design can tell lots about yourself and about how serious you are with your blog. But sometimes prices touch the sky when it regards about web design (is it a static website design, a blog design, a CMS design or even a forum skin design). Just as every art, also the art of designing a graphical layout costs money since the author has implemented his imagination, time and efforts to build something beautiful and pleasant for your and your visitors eyes.

The crew at xhtml coding has made it possible so you can have your own blog design and to be sure that not the whole blogsphere is going to have the same identical layout as yours. To accommodate the prices for everyones needs the newest Blue Glory layout is being sold on two type of licenses, as leased license with which you can purchase the theme for $65 USD only and be sure that only you and other 10 folks will own the same layout in the whole blogsphere, or you can purchase the layout under owned license and have it as unique with full rights for only $550 USD.

The theme is darkish, but beautiful and elegant theme and in the same time it is pleasant for eyes and relaxing for your readers while reading your posts. It also has a customized homepage coding to highlight your most important categories and the latest post of the categories. The great elegant design makes so that the theme is eye catching and it is also designed to highlight other aspects of your blog such as all the latest posts, the rss feed subscription which has a centralized position to have the first impact on visitors eyes and the tag cloud in case visitors would like to surf through your blogs tags to gain more specific informations (depending on how you have tagged them). Here is a preview of the header of the blog

This is a great opportunity to grab a great looking wordpress theme for such a low price, but if you can afford the full price $550 the theme could remain yours only and your blog will have a completely unique design. With the owned license you also have the rights to do whatever you want with the theme but not to list it in your design portfolio (if have one) or claim it as your design, but what you can do is sell it, use it on as many blogs as you want or whatever you really like. If you were looking for a beautiful blog design then rush over at xhtml coding and buy this theme.

Usually when I see such websites I close them as they load, waiting for it to load in most cases is a waste of time and filled with bunch of content (if we really want to call it that way their most likely faked testimonials or maybe not) and if I even get interested to buy that i have to scroll a mile to reach the buy button. Well let me put it clear, you are forcing me to read the testimonials, you are preselling your product based on what testimonials say, which doesn’t tell me much about your product but that you have no clue how you can define your product and how you can pre sell it to me, if I wanted to read what testimonials say I would rather click on a page called testimonials and not have it slapped in my face as the page loads.

I have a theory that If they designed their pages in a smarter way and with marketing in mind, they would build more credibility with their “sales page” visitors and most likely will increase sales as well. Since I am not into that business scheme, and I do not actually sell ebooks I don’t have such a page, but would love to run an experiment on such a page.

And to run my experiment I want to get my hands on a website that is already using a sales letter page for awhile now, that is actually selling a copy or two a day of his product (don’t care if its ebook or whatever) or that at least has a decent traffic stream over at his website (via targeted PPC ads or organic traffic like 500+ uniques a day) but it is not managing to sell enough copies of his/her product. Than to redesign the site (for FREE) the way I think it will best perform and to see the results of the sales after a month, with the same traffic amount (PPC targeted or Organic targeted if we want to see really the results). Why I am asking for PPC or organic targeted traffic is simply, because the traffic IS targeted and it is not JUST traffic.

If you have such site and you are willing to get your site a design liftup for free and agree to get my hands and run this experiment on your site, please comment on this post and I will contact you (no need to mention your site, we can discuss that later on via email).

About Daniel Harrison

Daniel Harrison is from England has a degree on Computer Science, living in Hampshire and working as software developer. From his about page I see that he is giving himself a pretty long time to achieve his goal, which is make a living online, and I can understand him as working as software developer certainly is time consuming. Daniel’s goal is to achieve to make money online from 5 websites in a time frame of 2-5 years.

Daniel’s PowerDosh

Daniel decided to jump in this train of making money online on December 13th (at least thats the date of his first post working for myself) and he also stated that he decided to take this approach on his about page.

The blog is quiet new, but from the few posts it can be seen that Daniel does know what he talks about, and he sure has some subjects to pull out from his personal experience and knowledge. He’s blog is about how to make money online (don’t ask me if he is teaching people or asking, but I would rather seen some healthy software helpdesk posts from a software developer) but he also has a good knowledge and has clear ideas on how to make money online from his blogs.

His first approach to making money online seems to be through paid blogging where he explains what paid blogging is and how it works. Another approach Daniel has taken to monetize his blog is through Google AdSense and he is using different size and shapes of AdSense ads (most likely still testing which ones perform best). Other than blogging about money Daniel has other categories such as Working For Yourself, Settings Goals, Powerdosh News and Blogging category on which he has a nice post on basic tips for new wordpress blogs.

My personal thoughts

Daniel has a new blog and deserves mainly compliments for being brave enough and jumping on the train to build online income and make living out of it. He is using a free wordpress theme which he has than customized to fit on his needs and has create a nice header that matches with his logo and the rest of the layout in color and style.

What I can advice Daniel is use little less adsense, looking at his blog with all those ads poping from here and there it sure gives that look of a stuffed with ads site which more likely is going to scare out the readers (at least those regulars). Another advice I would like to give you Daniel is to get focused on affiliate programs as well and as soon as possible.

I will make sure to follow Daniel on his journey to make a living online from now and than and see how he is doing, wish you best luck Daniel.

Gyatae from Winning the Web

Gyatae launched his Winning the Web blog not long time ago, on October of 2007 but has already became successful thanks to his first contest where he was giving away ReviewMe review on John Chow’s blog as winning price. He used a scramble type of contest, where people had to subscribe to his RSS feed and from there they would receive one letter at a time (visible only to his RSS readers were the letters).

His first contest created a big buzz, as it was fun and the price was just great, to have a free review (well someone else paying for it) on a big and popular blog as John Chows.

Tyler Cruz from TylerCruz.com

Tyler is longer than Gyatae (or rather his blog is older) in the blogsphere, and is already well established and already has more than 1000 RSS readers that read his blog daily, thing which is a sign that his blog does have quality content that are worth to be read and he is a good money maker too.

About my vote

Both bloggers are about making money online and from the appearance I would say Tyler Cruz is making way much more money online than Gyatae even tho Tyler’s prices for the contest is more poor than Gyatae’s. Tyler is giving away 150 Entrecard credits while Gyatae is giving away a nice free tshirt (even tho I doubt he will send it long way to my place heh).

Lets say that the price counts on my voting decision, but what really helped me make my decision to vote for Winning The Web are the following

• It’s a new blog and deserves a push
• Has a nice design (yeah sue me for voting because of the design)
• Has good content and is very creative guy

My vote goes to Gyatae in the hope I win the $100 and a nice tshirt (i look just great on blue shirts heh).

What Happened to the 200 Entrecard credits?

Instead of keeping the credits I decided to give them away on another contest in a learn seo blog. There is already a contest running and giving away 600 Entrecard credits for the first winner of the contest and the rules are really easy. All you have to do is blog about dnseo.net and link to the homepage with keyword Learn SEO or link to any of the named pages with the proper keywords: SEO resource or seo tutorials.

To make things sweet, I have given my 200 Entrecard credits for a second lucky winner to increase the chances to win a price if you won’t manage to win the first price of 600 credits. If you are in need for Entrecard credits and you would want to expose your blog in the blogsphere this is your chance.

Why enter in a contest?

Entering in a contest has two valid points (for me), the first is obviously winning the price. Usually when you become a winner of a contest the author of the blog is more likely to announce the winner and link back to the winner prices.

The second reason is also valid, entering in blog contest where you have to blog about another blog is a great way to fill that empty space of blogging when you don’t have the right idea or motivation to write about something.

So in simple words, you have fun and challenge your luck, if you don’t win you had fun, but if you win you get the price and you also get mentioned and linked back on the contest authors blog which may result in a good source of traffic and maybe some extra bucks during the traffic spike.

What can you do with 200 credits

200 credits at first will save you the hassle to drop 100 credits to other bloggers and expect that they drop all drop a card to you. With these 200 credits you could already be able to purchase ads on several blogs that require less credits to advertise at, or acquire a spot on one of the biggest bloggers of your niche. Remember bloggers that use the entrecard widget are classified by category so you can easily locate your niche and advertise on related blog as yours.

How to Win

To win this contest is plain simple and the rules are the next

• If you have a blog write about this blog on yours and use anchor text for linking “make money online” or “make money blogging” (5 points)
• Comment on this thread and claim your participation to this contest will give you 2 point
• Blog about this contest and linkback to the contest page as well as to the homepage with any anchor text you prefer will give you 3 points

As you can see, the rules are pretty simple and easy to obtain, you are not restricted to follow all the rules but remember the more points you gain the bigger are the chances to win 200 entrecard credits and to start promoting your blog.

I will keep this content running until Wednesday 26 December, if no entry to the contest will be applied I will keep the credits for myself , and if there is going to be only one participant than he is going to be the winner of this easy contest and win 200 entrecard credits.

As you have most probably notice Another Night Shift blog is under a new design which is more pleasant for reading and it highlights more topics and articles in the homepage of this make money online blog. I mainly changed the look of the design for better user experience for my readers, the old theme was dark and I did not felt like it was suitable for a make money online blog, of course the theme will more probably change as fresh is something we all want, don’t we? But i will make sure to get you used to this blog mainly for the content and not for the look of the site.

Few reasons why I changed the wordpress theme that another night shift is using are the next

• Modern Look: The new layout has a modern look and up to date, not the classic one page blog
• Highlights more articles: The current layout highlights more articles and topics and it does it in a better style rather than using the latest posts feature
• Possibility to expand: The new features and look of this current theme permit so I can easily expand the theme for different needs in the near feature, such as text link advertising, banner advertising and highlighting posts

Hope you do like the new look of Another Night Shift Blog and you can have a better and more pleasant navigation while reading tips on how to make money online.