Beyond The Rhetoric, by Michael Kwan, is running an excellent contest, one definitely worth taking a look at, I know the Web Entrepreneur did! He is giving away a free USB TV tuner (more about the tuner here) with PVR and time-shifting capabilities, to the value of $80!

There are three different ways to enter the contest:

1. Add Me To Your Technorati Favorites. This is by far the easiest way to enter, because all it takes is a single click. See the button on the top-right underneath the massive RSS icon? Click that. Everyone who has already added me as a favorite is already eligible to win! It’ll help if you leave a comment below with your Technorati username, but I’m sure we’ll be able to figure it out even if you don’t.
2. Review My Blog OR Put Up A Post About This Contest. Your blog entry has to be at least 200 words and it can be positive, negative, or anything in between. I’d appreciate if you linked to http://btr.michaelkwan.com using the anchor text “freelance writing“, but this is not required. If you blog about the contest, please link back to this page. For a bonus entry, take a screenshot showing that you subscribe to my RSS feed and include it in your blog entry.
3. Be One of June’s Top Commentators. There’s five spots and each of the top commentators will get one entry into the contest. Be number one on this list and get a bonus entry.

The deadline for entering the contest is July 1!

I have something new for everyone, something fresh, and something fantastic. Traffic Synergy has launched a new campaign for generating traffic on your blog! AdRands, is the simplest way to get targetted traffic to any website with low startup costs and advertising budget! AdRands is very similar to Google AdWords, in fact, it is basically the same, but the best part about it is.. it’s LOCAL! And we all know that local is lekker.

The campaign is great, you get to decide your own budget, meaning that you won’t receive an invoice for hundreds of rands, which is a good reason why most people avoid these types of campaigns. I have taken a good read of the material available, and see this as a fantastic way to promote a website!

Here are some features:

• An online marketing solution from a centralised point of control
• Exposure on a multitude of online mediums
• Affiliates will be managed on your behalf as early as the sign-up process.
• Zero tolerance fraud prevention measures include Duplicate click verificationMulti-Dimensional Statistical analysis to monitor click ratio irregularities

Signup to TrafficSynergy Adrands Click Here!

I have been monitoring my Google Adsense closely since the last cheque arrived, and decided to pick one of my domains to prove that being patient has a lot to do with affiliate marketing. As you can see by the graph below, the dollar amounts are plotted in the Y-axis, and these are relative to the days of the month, plotted on the X-axis. It is very clear that the Adsense on this domain has been steadily increasing over the last several weeks. Be patient, monitor your Adsense, and you will see it grow!

It takes time!

Things have been really busy in the Webtrepreneur’s life recently, and finding time to write articles is not the tricky part, it’s finding content which is full of information, and won’t waste you time that is hard! I don’t believe is writing useless content just to keep the blog posts rolling.

I have seen a massive increase in traffic over at Blogvertise, which is great to see, the ‘Whose pixels rock‘ section has seen some good changes too, which is always interesting to watch. For those of you who are using the service, may I ask that you please add a link from your website to Blogvertise, this not only increases the popularity of the website, but also brings you potential traffic, and creates traffic for others. Blogging, and the art of increasing ones traffic is a group effort, support others and they will support you, it’s as simple as that. You can find our banners here, take a look please. I will post the latest top pixel list sometime over the next week or so.

I was taking a look at all the affiliate networks earlier this morning, and have a little bit of information on each one. I noticed on Bidvertiser that they now have a service which you may use to drive traffic to your eBay adverts. The service looks rather useful to me, I took some time to read about it, and decided that I would paste 6 points here for you:

1. Browse our directory of participating sites and use our keyword tool to find the ones that are appropriate for your eBay item(s).

2. Choose your geographical targeting, to only show your ads to users from specific locations.

3. Set your max bid and budget.

4. Choose any of your eBay Items.

5. Your ad is created automaticaly.

6. Your ad runs on the sites you have selected.

Sign up for Bidvertiser now!

Google Adsense update from the Inside Adsense blog:

“We’re now requiring AdSense publishers to comply with the spirit of our Page Quality Guidelines. If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you might already be familiar with these guidelines, which are intended to provide a better experience for users, advertisers, and publishers alike. If you use any kind of online advertising, know that these guidelines encourage publishers to, among other things, create sites with simple navigation and substantial, useful content.

This new policy requirement doesn’t mean that you can’t use online advertising; it simply means that if you do, you need to be sure that the way you advertise meets with the guidelines, whether it’s through AdWords or through any other advertising program. However you advertise your site, it can always benefit from significant and relevant content, clear navigation, and the other points in our quality guidelines.

The other noteworthy update: now you can place up to three link units on a page. As we’ve noted in the past, link units are a great way to provide relevant, user-friendly ads in hard-to-fit locations on your site. With the new opportunity to place three link units — and the plethora of link unit formats — we hope you’ll find great ways of incorporating this unique ad format on your site.”

As the days go on, I find myself moving more and more away from Adsense, and taking on a lot of Traffic Synergy’s advert campaigns. I have watched my stats very closely, and have noticed that I am starting to make more money with Traffic Synergy than any other affiliate network I am involved with. To new publishers, PPC (pay per click) campaigns are always the most appealing, as you see revenue right from the beginning, but why not take some time, and be patient and use there CPA (cost per action) campaigns. There are several campaigns, which can generate you a huge amount of money! Hint: Travel Campaigns!!

Right, so that’s the update for now. I am going to do my best to start putting up content more often again, and hopefully source some useful information!