The online quizzing business is one of the oldest internet businesses that I can remember. One of the first “scripts” I installed on my earliest website was a Bravenet quiz widget - although they weren’t called widgets then. With such an old and seemingly straight-forward technology, there doesn’t seem to be much room for growth, right?

Quibblo.com begs to differ.

If I had to describe Quibblo in a single phrase it would definitely be “quizzing 2.0″. This is as close to social quizzing as I think any website could possibly get without falling into the category of lame.

Quibblo is about you. It is also about people who are similar to you and about people who are totally different. It is about friends and strangers and content and knowledge. It is a place for you to create and interact with quizzes, polls, surveys and content around the topics that are of interest to you. Test your trivia knowledge, survey your fellow web surfers for their opinions or quiz your friends to see how well they really know you.

The premise of Quibblo is simple - Users setup and take quizzes, rate them, bookmark them, and create discussions based around them. It is very easy to create a poll on Quibblo.com and even easier to jump into other’s quizzes and participate.

For example I participated in a Paris Hilton poll (shut up, it was on the front page). The results were displayed in a nifty flash object.

How Useful is Quibblo?

People like interacting with each other, and taking quizzes is no exception. What I like about Quibblo is the user’s ability to discuss topics, share quizzes of similar interests, and make quiz-taking more than just gathering of statistics. Quibblo really does make quizzing a social event. It’s not exactly how I pass my time personally, but I can definitely see the appeal.

The question is now whether or not Quibblo can survive as a standalone entity. It seems to me a fairly narrow niche just offering this sort of functionality based around quizzing. But if say Myspace or Facebook were to acquire them and assimilate this sort of social quizzing technology into their already existing social network I could see that as adding very real value.

Only time will tell. In any case, I see Quibblo as a smart service with a bright future.

Sponsored by: Quibblo

Popularity: 5% [?]

The internet is primarily guys. Most guys are pervs. If that’s news to you then you’re probably deaf, blind, and dumb in which case I’m sorry for your misfortune. With this amazing knowledge it shouldn’t take one long to deduce that internet porn is an absolutely **huge** industry. With online poker (the other juggernaut online industry) on the decline porn is booming. A video by GOOD Magazine has popped up recently that really puts a lot of this in perspective in a borderline NSFW way.

I’ve already given my thoughts on the online porn industry so I won’t go into it again (check this out too). Nevertheless, this video certainly is interesting.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I don’t do much, if any, personal updates on this blog, but I figured my scarceness (is that a word?) around here over the last couple of weeks deserves a little bit of explanation. First off I’m still going to be making plenty of time to update this blog and as of right now I have no intentions of going anywhere, but life happens and other things come up.

As I mentioned in my recent advertising post, I am finishing up my last year at the University of South Carolina. The week before last was spent cramming for my finals and getting everything sorted for graduation and all that stuff. I’m happy to say it’s all taken care of and I’m finally done with school. Although this degree probably won’t go very far into helping me develop my online business it’s nice to know that I got it.

Last week and into this week was spent applying to a few different jobs. I’m still building my online income and don’t plan on slowing down one bit, but I’ve always wanted to experience the corporate world and office envorinment. Also full health care and other benefits are always good. I was worried that my career options would be fairly limited but that has turned out to not be the case at all. I actually found 4 Internet Marketing positions available here in South Carolina, all of which I applied for. Despite my age and having and lack of corporate experience I got an interview with every company I applied to. I used this blog as a primary case study in all of the applications with examples of my other work as well. That was enough to get my foot in the door and the fact that I was able to demonstrate my knowledge of the subject took care of the rest. The problem now is that I have to pick which job to take.

To add to the confusion, I’m getting ready to move on Friday so there has been a lot of running around paying off bills, transferring this and that, packing, shopping, etc.

And on top of all that I of course had to spend some time with all of my friends from school who are going back home to start their “adult” lives as well. Sunny South Carolina days make for the best golfing and fishing around.

Anyways I know this has been a long and probably too personal post, but I figure at least a few people would be interested in why I haven’t been around lately. Don’t worry though because I’m still here and will be back to full throttle blogging soon!

Popularity: 4% [?]

When Tyler announced Publisher Spot I knew it would succeed. It is an extremely simple idea but a fantastic one nonetheless.

PublisherSpot provides informative reviews and summaries of Internet ad network companies.

With ppc and affiliate marketing growing faster than ever, it was only a matter of time before someone stepped in and created a review center for ad network reviews. I have seen plenty of sites and blogs review individual programs before, but Tyler has gone the extra mile to create a strong, centralized service that attempts to collect and critique every online money-making program out there.

Each review is exhaustive and uniformed giving you a very fair (and mostly objective) comparison between all of the networks in the database. The website is still fairly new so the database isn’t exactly full, but it’s growing quickly. The reviews are rated by features, control panel, rewards, signup, referral program, payment, and customer support - all of the things you need to know about an advertising network.

The programs are also rated on a 10 star (kind of a dot spot really) scale and displayed next to each review.

Overall Publisher Spot is simple, functional, and a very good resource if you’re just starting out in this business or looking to expand into more ad programs.

Sponsored by: Publisher Spot

Popularity: 6% [?]

Tyler’s recent “Affiliate Marketing Plunge” has brought up some good questions that I thought deserved to be addressed here.

Before I start ranting, Tyler is a standup guy for keeping track of all this and making it public for his readers and asserting that he is just starting out and will undoubtably make mistakes. But in an attempt to keep my readers from losing a grand or so in their first couple of weeks of affiliate marketing, I would like to give out just a few pointers that I learned when I was doing it a year or two ago.

Throughout his affiliate marketing experiment, Tyler has done a few things that I would consider ineffective or just wrong that any beginner would do.

• Started with a competitive niche
• Bid high out of the gate
• Focused on volume of clicks instead of conversion of clicks
• Changed little after seeing his campaign was not working

Starting with a Competitive Niche

When one is first getting into affiliate marketing there is a lot more to learn than just how to cash your Azoogle check. You have to learn proper stat/record-keeping, basic web development (creating your own landing pages or using redirects etc), selecting and working with various product offers, and so much more. Knowing the high mountain you have to climb when starting out in affiliate marketing, why add the burden of throwing yourself into a competitive niche? What you should do is start out small, in a niche that you don’t have to pay out $2 per click (not that $2 per click is ever good anyway) to get traffic and that you can see how it all works without losing money.

Bid High Out of the Gate

The way I approached affiliate marketing, and the way I think most others do as well, is to bid as low as you can to begin with and slowly raise that bid when needed. The reason for this is that when you’re starting with a new campaign, whether you’re a beginner or a veteran, you need to find out how it converts within your target audience before you begin pouring tons of cash into it. If you only get 50-100 clicks in a week starting out that is still enough to get a fair idea of conversion. Then once you have a basic idea of your EPC you can safely raise your bids and expand to more keywords with much less risk.

Volume over Conversion - NO!

Again this is only my opinion from what I found through affiliate marketing, but volume is *not* more important than conversion. If you drive 5,000 visitors to your landing page a day by bidding high and only convert .50% there is no way you will ever make money. However, if you drive 500 visitors to your landing page a day by bidding lower and convert 20% then you should be well into the green.

Keep this in mind: Volume can always be increased by expanding your keyword list or safely bidding higher at a slow pace. Going for more clicks will not always yield more money, especially if you can’t even profit off of the clicks you already have.

Constantly Modify

I understand that Tyler has only been running his campaigns for 2 weeks, but at the speed he is losing money he really needs to step back and rethink his entire strategy. I agree that one should let a campaign run for a few weeks, even a month, before making any rash decisions (run it or pull it, etc) but if you’re losing that kind of money you really really need to rethink things.

I would like to reaffirm that what affiliate marketing I did was only in one niche (NFL football) and was fairly low-volume - I still made decent profit however. My responses to this question of quality or quantity in affiliate marketing may not be the best, and if anyone sees anything wrong with my advice please feel free to let me know.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was surprised when I woke up this morning to find that my feed count was about 3-400 less than what it should be. At first I was amazed that so many people unsubscribed just because I missed a day or two of posting (yesterday was the last day of finals, so cut me some slack!), but after noticing this post on Dave’s blog I realized it was just a hiccup in the system.

Apparantly Google’s Feedfetcher is not displaying accurate results for some people, including me. Here is a little before and after:

Before (Monday of last week):

After (Yesterday):

As you can see if your blog has seen a drastic drop in subscriber numbers it is probably just Google’s Feedfetcher screwing up, so don’t be alarmed. What confuses me is how Feedfetcher is only having a problem displaying some of the readers. Also, it does not seem to be a global problem as some other blogs I visit seem to have the correct amount of subscribers.

I know this may not seem like a big deal, but that is about another 300 daily feed impressions at least that I am not getting credit for, thus my FeedBurner Ad Network impressions (which are paid by CPM) are lower than they should be. That means perhaps less money from FAN which actually accounts for about 10% of this blog’s monthly revenue. Hopefully they’ll get this fixed soon.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Before I start throwing around sarcasm and nit-picking, let me just say first off that the fact that Technorati has finally done something worth writing about (other than being an over-hyped worthless “tool”) is good news. And who knows, maybe these changes are just the beginning and there is a plethora of fantastic Technorati goodies on the way. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Technorati has taken a lesson from every plumber you’ve ever met. When faced with a ranking system that quite obviously doesn’t work, for a number of reasons (non-blogs emulating blogs to increase rankings through linkbacks, reciprical linking and favoriting, etc etc) Technorati has decided to add some duct tape and pretty paint rather than fixing the problem.

As you can see Technorati has changed around the individual blog profile page completely, adding a screenshot of your blog as well as your most recent “fans” (rather than “people who favorited”). The most notable change, however, is obviously the addition of “Authority” in the blog profile page. Instead of listing your rank on your profile page (although you can see your rank when viewing the total blog linkbacks page) they show your “authority” - mine is 609 at the moment. Lee Odden has posted up some other - more high authority - blogs in a nifty little list .

So what does “authority” mean? It isn’t explained - at least not yet. Why would Technorati unveil what some are considering to be a huge change in their ranking system without explaining it? It’s because there isn’t a change at all. It seems to me that “authority” is simply a renaming of incoming links with a sexy little converter to make it an easier number to digest. So why in the hell would they make this change?

Who knows, it’s Technorati. As far as I can tell, the ranking system is still based entirely on incoming blog links and is just as worthless as before. But as I said earlier, this might just be the beginning of a ton of new changes - I just don’t think it is.

Popularity: 4% [?]

In celebration of the great success I’ve had with Net Business Blog as well as finishing my senior year at the University of South Carolina I have decided to cut all of my advertising prices for the month of May in half. This will hopefully give some people a chance to buy ad space who may have been interested in advertising on Net Business Blog before but simply couldn’t afford it.

I just finished adding up all of the revenue NBB pulled in during the month of April, and I was floored. I started this site with the idea that there had to be something to this blogging thing, but never really considered that it might actually end up comparing to my other sources of online income. At this pace I see this blog making more money than my web development business. If that happens, would I become one of those “make money online gurus” whose main source of income is teaching others how to make money? I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.

Anyway, I would love to sell out my ad inventory completely at half price as a big thank you to everyone who helped make this blog possible. Hopefully it will continue to grow and help others reach their goal of making a living online.

Check out my advertising page for specific information on advertising prices and statistics for April, or you can contact me for ordering information or if you have any questions.

Popularity: 3% [?]

ReviewMe has just launched its new “Advertiser Marketplace” which is geared at giving advertisers a bit of the control that they seem to have with ReviewMe’s competitors (Blogsvertise, SponsoredReviews, PPP).

In addition to our marketplace of premium blogs where you can purchase individual reviews, advertisers will now be able to create campaign offers that approved bloggers will then be able to accept. This new advertiser marketplace gives more control to the advertiser while still giving the blogger 100% control over what review offers they accept.

Since its creation ReviewMe has prided itself in being the “premium” sponsored post solution with the average price for a blog post in their premium marketplace being leaps and bounds higher than one would be able to see at any of their competitors. With the advertiser marketplace, however, ReviewMe is hoping to win over the hearts of splog owners everywhere by offering reviews for as little as $10 each ($5 payout).

I understand what ReviewMe is trying to do with this move - they’re basically trying to achieve the same level of advertiser freedom as their competitors. But should they?

Although ReviewMe seems to have made the separation between their premium marketplace and their advertiser marketplace very clear, it is still a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. Think about it, what blogger invests time into a $5 review? I don’t care what level blogger you are, a $5 review is never worth your time. You’d be better off at McDonald’s manning the cash register.

So who will this new marketplace attract? The Blogsvertise crowd. No offense to Blogsvertise publishers (I have used them before myself), but they’re far from the cream of the crop.

I’m certain this move will result in much more revenue for ReviewMe, but will they lose respect as a result? Is it worth branding yourself to lower level publishers and advertisers just to make a couple extra bucks? It seems to me, although I admit I’m not the most educated on this subject, that being able to advertise yourself as the *premium* solution would create value in itself. They can’t do that anymore. Sure they have a premium marketplace, but they also have a $10 marketplace full of spammy offers and spammy publishers.

I could be making too much of this, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe once the advertiser marketplace settles there will better offers than just lousy SEO firms trying to create cheap one-ways for their “clients”, but for now I don’t have much hope.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’ve used Digg a number of times to promote my websites, but I honestly never really got into using it as a source of news. Why? Because I think masses are stupid and irrational. It’s why I’m **almost** against democracy (go ahead, throw rocks at me). The latest Digg drama has me laughing, though.

Watch it was it unfolds. Or read why it all started. Or just watch Metropolis to get the jist.

Popularity: 5% [?]