Google PSA's (public service ads) showing on webpage in stead of normal ads

For those of you who dabble in Google's AdSense program and discovered that your Google ads all of a sudden started displaying PSA's (public service ads), here are some tips and general pointers from personal experience:

* Google only requests your banking details for your profile once you have reached the $10 mark
* You are then required to enter a PIN number that Google will send to you by snail mail for reasons only know to Google. This PIN number will be valid for 6 weeks or so.
* If you have not received this pin (like in my case - thank you very much SA Postal Services), you can request it to mailed to you again. The pin can be requested twice, after which you will have to contact Google if you have not received it.
* There is no mystery as how to contact Google Ad-Sense support. Simply e-mail them at adsense-support@google.com with your AdSense code in as the subject. You will get an auto responder telling you how to fix the problem. Simply reply to this e-mail (and remember to replace the to address with adsense-support@google.com again) and tell them that their help-page does not help with your problem, although you have tried all their suggestions.
* In my case, my websites started showing PSA's because I have not updated my pin yet (becasue I have not received it). Google support responded to my e-mail and re-instated my normal AdSense with another 3 months, while I wait for my PIN to arrive in the post.

Example of Google's PSA:

Extra cash for selling your photos online

As mentioned in the previous post, I bought a very nice SLR-like digital camera - the Canon S10. See its review on Cnet here.

R3000 (or two thirds) of the R4500 I spent on the camera came from May's total earnings off the internet. I have been planning on getting a new digital camera for some time now. The extra cash came in very handy at the right moment!

The plan is to get a proper Canon SLR at some stage, but in the meantime I am experimenting with photography and trying out some free courses available online. Check out the Morguefile for an excellent free photography course divided into 10 very helpful lessons. They start off with the basics and go through everything you will probably need to know about photography.

It is strange how things work out sometimes. Buying my new camera mostly with money I got for free, got me into thinking if I could possibly make some money with my new hobby, photography, on the net. I Googled for a bit and came across a blog post of some lady making around $3000 per month selling her photographs on various sites of which Fotolia seems to be her biggest cash cow. I must add that she has over 1200 photos uploaded to her profile.

Fotolia basically pay you whenever someone downloads your photo and they take a small commission on every sale. The service is totally free. There are many of these sites out there but I decided to just check out Fotolia for now. There is a banner on the right-hand side on this blog that will take you trhough to their site if you are interested. I am not going to try and explain how they work in full.

I am not expecting any money at all from Fotolia, but it would be an indication to me as to how good or bad a photographer I am. So far I have uploaded 15 of (what I think are) my best photos to Fotolia and 5 of them have already being declined. I am yet to find out if the remaining 10 will be good enough. And yes, so far it seems that I am a crappy photographer (according to their standards), haha. Being strict on the quality of photos they choose is a good thing. People get paid for good photos. If you read some of their reader's comments in forums, you will see that some of them uplaod up to 200 photos per day. Hence the strict quality control. You've probably seen the crap some people (read: your friends) load onto their Facebook profiles and albums - please don't tell them about Fotolia.

There are many more sites like Fotolia out there. If you manage to be successful with any of them, I'd like to hear about it. If you come across something else that really works great, I'd like to hear about it too.

Happy snapping!

I crossed the R3000 mark this month with online revenue!

- before we go on just a quick note. I received a total amount of just over R3000 commission in total this month from all the affiliate programs I joined. I have not reached my long term average goal of R3k per month yet, I still need to get to the short-term goal of R1500 average per month...

Right, so it possible to make some bucks on the internet and every other month one does get a nice total when all the nice payments fall within the same month.

Let's have a look at the money I made on interwebs this month:

Mantality R1542.09
Kalahari R1205.96
Traffic Synergy R268.80
Rhytm Records R69.83

Total for June 2009: R3086.68

Not kak at all hey? I used the bucks to help pay towards a new Canon S10 camera of around R4500. Very naughty of me, seeing that in these economic times I should be putting more bucks towards my bond. Sheesh! I will start behaving beetter next month.

I am still aiming for an average of around R1500 per month by the end of the year. Check back at the end of June to find out if I am still on track to achieve this goal.

I have also decided to go for a new template for this blog for various reasons. One of them being the new affiliate programs I am following and old ones I gave to boot. The new template will have all sorts of bells and whistles attached to it - adouble feature really: It makes for better reading or viewing and it will also illustrate some plugins and features I have discovered aling the way that for instance imporves adsense etc.

Check back later this week for the new features.

See it as a 13th cheque?

Let's have a look at earnings that I recevied for the first quarter of 2009.

First a breakdown of all the programs I am experimenting with (the ones that paid):

Kalahari earnings (total from 1 January until current)
A total of R1888.66

AdGator (January to End Feb earnings)
January 2009 Earnings Earnings R206.31
February 2009 Earnings Earnings R104.22
March 2009 Earnings R180.26
A total of R490.79

AdSense (January until current)
More or less a total of R200 (if you work on the current total of almost $25 and work on today's Rand / Dollar exchange rate)

Mantality (I've only been trying it out for little over 1 month, but let's pretend I joined in January):
A total of R370.

Traffic Synergy:
Just over R100.

AdSense only pays out once a threshold of $100 is reached, so I assume that I will reach it by the end of the year at least.

Traffic Synergy pays out once R250 is reached, so I assume it will at least happen twice a year.

If I add everything up for the first quarter I get a grand total of R2849.45 or an average of R950 per month. If you conservatively pretend that its a total for 6 months you can have a projected total of at least R5700 earnings for the year.

Mulitply R2850 by 4 and you get an annual total of R11400 - presuming you stay on your averages.

Can you regard this as an average 13th cheque? That depends on your definition of a 13th cheque and for someone who earns an entry level to average salary, this might as well seem like a 13th cheque. Remember that this assumed amount of R11400 is accumulated over a year and received in small payments, so it virtually does not get taxed.

If you had to add tax of let's say 25% in a normal working scenario, you are looking at a "13th checque" of around R14250. Now it looks more like an entry level to average salary amount, doesn't it?

Not bad for hardly doing anything, right?

I am planning on opening a separate savings account to pay these small amounts into and see where I end up, come December.

Hopefully I will have enough cash to help towards a small holiday in Cape Town or something.

From this first quarter "report", you can see that I am close to one of my first statements I made around 3 months ago on this blog - that it is possible to make a little cash on the internet, but not to get all starry eyed and carried away. If I remember correctly, I think I mentioned that between R1000 and R1500 per month is possible. Well, I am standing on an average of R950 per month, so I am close enough to my own predictions. I would like to get the average up to R1500 per month in the next three months.

How is your moneymaking on the internet doing?

Giving Loot the boot. I am going gambling.

I've decided to remove Loot from all the affiliates I am trying out at the end of Feb. There's been absolutely zero cents generated from them. At the same time Take2 has made me just over R20. It's not much but its better than a kick in the balls, so I will keep them on for now.

The main reason why Loot is doing badly could possibly be due to their own website. The site is a bit bland and doesn't really appeal to me. I've never bought from them and I am sure their service is excellent. I will probably try and buy my next batch of Xbox games through them (if pricing is better than Kalahari or Loot) just to be fair and report back here.

In Loot's place I've decided to give Silver Sands Casino a go. The long and short of it: They pay you a 25% of the net revenue for each client that you bring in. NET REVENUE=NET WIN-FREE BONUS. For example if someone buys 1000 credits in chips, they give him 200 credits FREE BONUS. If he wagers 1100 credits and withdraws the rest, the commission is calculated as follows: NET REVENUE=1100 credits-200 credits. They will split 900 credits with you. If he wagers 1200 credits you are entitled to 300 credits commission.

I actually installed their casino software tonight to give it a bash. At first I played with "fake" money and soon enough went over to playing with R500 real cash. I used my credit card to play. Soon enough I was down to a below R10 and miraculously won some cash twice in a row bringing me to just over R550. Now, the thing with gambling (or the way I approach it anyway) is to make peace with yourself that you are going to loose whatever you plan to play with. In my case I made my R500 back with an extra R50. Did I cash it in? Nope. I went and lost R150 again. I cashed out the R400 that was left. Did I have fun? Of course. It beats driving the 4km to Monte Casino, sitting in a crowded casino, ending up playing some slot machine you don't wanna play because some wrinkle-faced geriatric is hogging two machines. I sit at home, drink my own cheap beer and watch TV at the same time. It's also much better to sit at home and cry when you part with your money after a couple of beers.

I came across Silver Sands Casino's affiliate links by chance (after landing on some fake sites).

The only URL you should visit to sign up for an affiliate program is this one. If you hover your mouse over the link, have a look at the bottom of your browser. The link ends with ?paffid=4127

That is my referral ID for when people click through. In other words, I will get a little % as well when you sign up as an affiliate. You can remove that last bit if you want to. It just means Silver Sands won't pay me for referring you, that's all. Trust me, sites like Progressiveaffliates.com and the rest are bullshit links. They actually contacted me by phone last year sometime to advertise a banner on one of my big websites and offered something like R600 per month. I sort of expressed interest but never gave it any second thoughts. I happened to read about other people that got scammed. Google it if you don't believe me. The only proper way of signing up is through the link I posted above, or going to www.silversandscasino.com and signing up under the "Webmaster" section. That's the way I did it.

To get back to my own gambling tonight. I've submitted my withdrawal and will probably see how they handle it by next week Tuesday. Personally I enjoy gambling over at Piggspeak Casino. They also take credit cards. The difference there is that I've learned to part with R200 over a playing time of around 5 hours. I don't play big. I dont play cards or roulette. I play the small slots and I do it maybe twice a month. Also, they refund you straight back to your credit card right away, which is cool. I probably enjoy Piggs Peak more, because I am more used to it and have been playing for years. It would be really cool if they had an affiliate program though.

I just thought I'd join the Silver Sands program because of the 25% payouts. If it will work is another question. I came across a woman's website where she claims she made R20k per month. She is probably talking out of the wrong end, so we will see. As stated before, this blog's purpose is to get real info, real stats and real results.

A last note on Silver Sands - if you want to link their banners, you don't have to save it to your PC to FTP it to your site. Do as I did in this example and reference the images from their site:



If you don't understand how to do it, leave contact details in the (moderated) comments section and I will try and explain.

On a different note - my unpaid balance at Kalahari now stands at R 2,305.96. This covers the period of December, January and February so far. I have not yet received a payment. I've made around R600 in February so far. I suspect the non-payment has something to do with February being the financial year-end, so hopefully I will get the full amount at the end of Feb or early March. If not, I will just give them a call.

AdSense is still doing pathetic at somewhere over $12 but what the hell, it just needs to get to $100, hopefully before we host the world cup soccer. I will post some screen shots of the smaller generating stuff sometime.

Which programs are you finding useful? Feel free to leave comments and your e-mail address if you want to. If you don't want comments published but would like me to get back to you, just indicate so. I moderate comments, so they don't go live straight after hitting enter.

The Mantality of it

You were expecting the riveting AdSense story, weren't you? The long and short of it is that I am on $8, so it will have to roll over to the next post when I am on $15. Also, someone at work asked me to explain AdSense to him (probably because he is too lazy to read up on in). OK, I will explain AdSense to those lazy okes next time. Just not today. Being a smoker and drinker, $8 doesn't sound like much, especially after Trevor's budget speech today.

So you might have noticed another little square banner I added at the top for Mantality. They give you R30 just for signing up and pay out once you've reached R300 worth of sales commission. I thought mmmkay, I'd give it a month and then can it, but it is actually starting to pay off. And now I might decide to can the Loot banners in stead, as I am on R0, but I'd give it another couple of weeks and then give you my honest opinion of why it worked or did not work. Obviously, if it starts generating a couple of cents in the next 2 weeks or so, I will give strangle it a bit slower. Then can it.

Mantality is an online South African shop that sells products and gadgets that appeal to men. Products that I am interested for instance, is a waterproof wireless Ipod speaker. That's right, you gooi it your pool. It floats. You drink beer. You listen to your tunes. Another nifty product is a flint-like lighter that can start your braai even in the Amazon while its pissing down with rain, snakes and flu virusses. I actually saw it on some survival program on Discovery the other night before seeing it on the Mantality website. I am definitely interested in these two products but won't buy it for now. I will buy it from Mantality with the money they give me for selling (in my sleep) the same kak that I want. So far I am not doing too kak for three sales:



Doing some quick maths in my head, I am probably standing on around R2500 for the month for money made on the interwebs, but I'd rather give you a proper breakdown at the end of Feb with a start and finish date for all programs, so take it with a lump of salt.

In a totally unrelated event, a friend and I received our first AdSense cheque of just over R1000. We decided to buy beer with all the money. After all, we waited a whole fucking year to reach $100. See, its not that easy...

Buying a second property with internet money? Haha!

You get this plastered all over the internet. People who claim to have yachts and all sorts of kak they made by working from home. And for R250 a pop they will sell you the secret. Like they would really need that extra cash. Usually its just a scheme where they basically tell you in a round-about way to fuck over the next guy for R250, using the same lies.
For normal people, buying a second property with internet money is highly unlikely buy this is not entirely impossible. This depends on lot of factors. I am going to sketch a little scenario showing the possibility of buying property generated from money on the internet alone (sort of) followed by some factors that will determine the possibility. By the way, I don't own cars and shit bought with quick-rich money. Everything (or the little) I have, I worked for the good old fashioned way, but let's move on...

Everything I mention for this proposed scenario is not 100% factual but rather relies on personal experience, as I am a home owner myself, paid for by my hard earned salary I get from a normal day job.

Have a look at this property in Centurion after reading this post. I am going to use this as an example with some calculations. In now way does this place belong to me, nor do I know the owner. I just went to Private Property's website and searched for a property under R500 in an area which I am familiar with - it is close to where I work.

According to the bond calculator on the website, it will set you back around R6100 per month. You could probably add another R500 per month (if you're lucky) for levies which will bring your total to R6600. If you are already a home owner, like I am, chances are quite small that you will be able to secure another property on a 20 year bond and be totally happy about it at the same time. Let's face it - you would rather stick that extra R6600 into your existing bond. Chances are you don't have that money anyway.

Let me just sketch some background to support the argument:

If you could qualify for a second bond for some reason (maybe your salary is not too kak) there might be a slight chance. In my case, I bought a house together with my girlfriend. Our bond comes to around R14k per month (I am including levy as well). That sets us each back around R7k per month. She however already has a smaller property just around the corner from us that she bought a couple of years ago. When we moved in together she started renting it out at around R4k per month. Her bond and levy amounts to around R6k per month, so there is a shortfall of R2k every month. This fine, as her car is paid off. Had this not been the case and she had to pay off an average priced car of around R2k per month, she shortfall would be R4k per month - if you are following my train of thought.

If you apply for a second bond you could qualify for it if you for instance state that you will get X amount for rental income and if you can prove that you can pay the difference. They will cross-check it with your bank details and salary slips anyway. Back to the example on Private Property. Let's assume you could get a rental income of around R3600 per month for a 2 bedroom place it will leave you with a shortfall of R3000 per month. Money you will need to make online for the purpose of this blog entry.

Is it possible? Yes but only if:

• You are able to generate R3000 per month on the internet and this happens constantly. It doesn't help if you had one lucky month over December and the rest of the months look dreary.
• You actually qualify for a second bond.
• You are close to freeing up other expenses (such as paying off a car that you are happy with and don't need a new one)
• You are secure in your current job
• You are actually generating that kind of money on the net right now and the housing market doesn't skyrocket.
• The repo rate stays fairly stable - its been kind of a hurricane out there the last couple of months.
• You are very realistic and have a clear understanding of your own finances and possibilities.

Would I do it?
Probably not. I am generating around R1000 per month for the last three months if I average it out. I did make around R2k in January, but it is not a constant. For the moment I am happy covering my hosting and internet bandwidth and I do enjoy buying the odd Xbox game or ten. I am not that disciplined when it comes to spending the extra I get, but I am also not foolish enough to spend more than that little extra.

I probably left out some other factors. If you could think of any, or would like to give your 2 cents, I would like to hear from you. Just gooi it under the comments.

For the next post I will finally tell you the awsome tale of how I made $5 since joining AdSense on the 19th of January. It is riveting stuff!