I saw a Google ad yesterday that caught my eye it was a 'loser' who wanted to raise a million dollars by year end and he was doing it by begging for the money. I thought to myself 'outrageous' but does it work? I honestly don't know if begging works but something so outrageous as to set a public begging target of a million dollars just might attract a few folks to donate - who knows?

All of my blogs have a begging message on them. It says if you liked this post why not buy me a beer? or similar. That message has been there from day one and has been seen hundreds of thousands of times by visitors to the blogs but I have yet to have anyone at all buy me a beer. I think that particular approach to begging for money worked when it was first used by someone but now - well its old hat.

I think begging for money online can work but only when it is original and outrageous enough for people to think wow! amazing! Let's donate some money. For the rest of the time I really don't think begging works at all.

I suppose at the end of the day, if we want to make money, we still have to earn it?

Until a few weeks ago, I never bothered with cloaking affiliate links. I mean why would I? Anyone signing up for a program and carrying my links (ie giving me some type of refferal fee or earnings) isn't penalized for it. They don't lose anything be being my affiliate.

Now, its easy to cheat someone of their affiliate earnings. When you hit an embedded url you just delete the last bit that contains the affiliate id and so doing, you stop them getting a referral fee or whatever. Again, why would anyone do that? Except through sheer bloody mindedness right?

Well, a few weeks ago, I embedded some of my affiliate links using a cloaking program available of the internet for free. It just mkeans that when someone clicks on the affiliate program link, they don't see the affiliate code there and so there is nothing to delete to stop me getting my fee or reward for referring you. I didn't code all the links on the site like that - just a few...just to see how YOU behave.

Here is another interesting service and way to make some cash - TNX. You can buy and sell links with this service. It uses points but points have a cash value and can be earned or used. Earned points can be cashed out.

Not only is this a great way to promote your own blog cost effectively but its a good way to generate some extra revenue from your blog by being a publisher. It has a good affiliate program too.

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