The Blog Of Oussama Messaoud - Ways to make money online -

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Since I joined the Blogging Idol contest, I am looking for ways to improve my RSS subscriptions count. I tried several things, amongst which offering 30 ec for every email subscriber. I succeeded to double my count from 7 to 14, but this is far from being satisfactory. Seeing the way the competition is going, my chances of winning against some blogs who went from 0 to 100+ (following the rules or not?), are really really small. However, I would like to use the contest to motivate myself increasing the number of my subscribers and the goal I am setting for myself at the end of the month of July is 100 subscribers.
So, I am offering a deal : I will subscribe to the RSS feeds of everyone who subscribes to mine. In order to track that, I think we should use Email subscriptions. I will email everyone who subscribes so that he/she sends me a link for his/her blog and I will subscribe.

This will help creating a network of reciprocal readers, and serve our blogs by increasing their subscriptions count. Uniting can help our smaller blogs reach their various goals. And if you could spread the word about this initiative, it would be great and we can create a community just like “U Drop, I follow” that helps increase our readership. Of course, anybody willing to join the initiative commits that he/she is going to do his/her best to offer quality content to readers. It’s not just about numbers; everyone is looking for good articles and for an added value. Anyone willing to join the community, please leave a comment on this post with your URL, so that I can keep a list of everyone offering the reciprocal subscriptions and make them easier to find.
So go ahead : Join the community and subscribe to my RSS feed. I will get back to you within 24 hours and will subscibe to your RSS. I also created a little button for the initiative, that anyone can use on his/her blog to show (s)he’s a reciprocal subscriber.

Thanks everyone and let’s grow those numbers.

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After a few days of thinking (diversity or focus), the decision is made : FOCUS! I started working on my monetization programs messaoud.info and decided to keep the following :

Google AdSense
TTZ Media
Project Wonderful
Widget Bucks
Kontera
Banstex
AdToll
Scratch Back

Focusing on these programs will allow a better control of the blog, lighter page loads, and a nittier design on which I am still working, removing the big skyline header, and opting for a simpler use of colors.

To compensate and exceed what was generated by the removed program, I am adding 3 other direct sources of revenue :
- Direct Ad Sales : 125×125 buttons costing $7/month. These come with a FREE 7 Day Trial offer.
- Stripe Ad Sales : Text Links on the Stripe visible on the top of the screen for $5/month. These come with a FREE 2 Day Trial offer.
- Paid Reviews : These are sold directly too.  $15/review.
More details on the Advertize Page.
I think it is the right time to start selling Direct Ads, since the blog is now PR2 and Alexa ranking is starting to go down again (it reached 300,000 at some point, and then I had the hosting issue, and it started to go up). As Jay, from DatMoney says : “I am one of the biggest procrastinators”. Now it’s time to get things going and get this blog to generate some more money after the time spent on getting traffic. I won’t go the porn way, Jay, but I will put some more efforts on generating more and more interest around the blog : more quality posts with more frequency, more socializing, and many sleepless nights.

More to come in the next days. And hey, I forgot to tell you that I set up a new Contact Form, so don’t hesitate to share or ask questions.

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Ok, I would like to challenge you with a little enigma that requires some intellectual effort.

Here is a series :

OTTFFSSENTETTFFSSE

Can you give the next 3 letters of the series?

C’mon guys! Impress me !

I just downloaded Firefox 3.0 and I am already feeling a difference. I didn’t get the chance to go through all the new enhancements yet, but I already have a feeling of lightness, better navigation and less memory usage. The last point alone means the world to me, given the computer I have is getting older and every drop of every memory bit counts.

There is just one thing I think I will need time to get used to, which is the intuitive adress bar, which gives you suggestions of web pages from your history as you’re writing. It searches even the titles of the pages and I was confused the first time I saw how it turned out to be in this new version of Firefox.

But, the overall feel I have about this new release is very positive. I am loving what I’m getting.

To download Firefox 3.0, click on the Firefox logo on this post or click here.

After a long long period of silence, mainly due to  a very busy  job schedule (and a lack of inspiration), I today felt like writing about a great initiative started by my friend Tarek, namely the “Network of Anglophone Tunisians“. This network was initiated in order to have English Speaking Tunisians gather, share experiences and get to know each other.

This young initiative gave birth to the BIRD NEST (The Bimonthly Reader’s Digest of the Network of English-speaking Tunisians), which is a the magazine of the community. The second issue just came to life, and the evolution in the articles’ quality and the magazine’s design is already very clear.

So congratulations for this great network and all the best for the coming days to come.  I have been a bit busy these last weeks and haven’t been able to contribute to the editorial efforts. I hope I can give a hand for the coming issues.

Here are the links for the 1st issue and the 2nd issue.

I wasn’t expecting it anymore. But hey, Google loves to play games with us! I finally went out of PR Zero to PR1. Yes I now have a Google Page Rank

I admit it : I am quite happy with this. When I see that Winning The Web dot Com is still a PR Zero, and noticing that my Alexa Rank is constantly increasing, I can say there’s potential out there !

But then, only future can verify that .

If, when reading the title, you asked yourself : “Who the hell is John Chow?”, then I am afraid you are either a Martian or a brand new blogger. John Chow is one of the most famous professional bloggers out there who earns an average of $25,000/month from his blog.
This said, I asked myself this question : “Is John Chow Losing Momentum?” when I saw the evolution of his Alexa Rank on the last 6 months. Here is the graph :

It looks like a big drop to me! But then, it’s still the big question of how much is the Alexa rank relevant as to give information about the real traffic of a web site.
However, it seems like John Chow is starting to lose readers and I wonder why is that happening.
- Are people starting to get bored with his Vancouver dinners plans?
- Are people starting to be fed up with the amount of Paid Reviews they read on his blog?
I mean, you don’t read anything new anymore on John Chow dot Com. What made the blog very popular once : the tips, the challenge of making it a big revenue blog, etc. is no more present now. That may explain the loss of interest that readers are showing .
Again, these are all personal assumptions, and my point of view on the subject. And for me, there is a discussion beyond that :
- How can someone who reaches the top of the blogging hill, remain on the top of the freaking hill?
- How is it possible to always come up with new things and manage to keep the interest of your readers.
From another perspective, the subscriptions to the RSS feed of John Chow and the monthly earnings are constantly increasing in the last period. So I may just be basing my thoughts on some kind of erroneous indicator, namely Alexa.
In any way, there is always something to debate out of this observation of John Chow’s rank drop.
So what do you guys think? Is he losing momentum or is Alexa playing games?

Here! Like I already said it last year, I HATE THIS DAY. For the same reasons mentionned in 2007 , I hate this day. Nothing but a commercial event meant to sell more and nothing else.
I will put last year’s suggestion on the table again : No more Feb 14th!

January 12th, I started this experiment to try and figure out how much would a blogger pay for EntreCard credits. During 20 days, I invited visitors of this blog to vote and now is the time for results :

- Duration of the poll : 20 Days
- Number of voters : 14 (A bit disappointing but a good number anyways, that allows for some results)

Votes Break Down :

- 43% (6) would pay … nothing for 1000 ec
- 36% (5) would pay something to get 1000 ec :
* 1 would pay $20
* 1 would pay $15
* 1 would pay $5
* 1 would pay $3
* 1 would pay $1
- 21% (3) have no clue or gave another answer

Some Analysis :

So!! It seems that most people would pay nothing to get the 1000 ec. I hear them saying “I’d rather drop like crazy and keep my cash”. Which is fair enoughI guess. If you think about it, some EntreCarders drop 300 cards per day, so it will only take them 3 days to get the 1000 ec.

Others would pay for their time, but the value given is quite different from one to another. At least we know that there are people there who are ready to pay 20 bucks for the 1000 ec. But if you would consider selling 1000 EC credits, you better keep your price $5 or lower.

This said, I would argue that the best price for people who would spend money for those credits would be $3 per 1000 ec, which is $.003/credit.

I will, nevertheless try another way to calculate this : the average of all suggested prices, that’s (20+15+5+3+1+0+0+0+0+0+0) / 11 = 44 / 11 = $4 for 1000 ec = $.004/credit

Synthesis :

Although, based on this experiment, 43% of people wouldn’t pay a dime for EC credits, we could consider that those who would pay, are ready to spend between $.003 and $.004 for 1 ec.

What do you think of these results and how would you analyse them? I would really like to hear from you so drop your comments and shout your opinion.

In order to be invloved in determining the cash value of EntreCard credits, you still have ONE day left. And the countdown is going on (you can see it above the poll itself).

I encourage everyone to vote and give their opinion in order to maximize the success of this experiment. I will be unleashing the results on February 1st, so Vote and Keep Tuned. One great way to be sure not to miss the announcement is to subscribe to the RSS feed