With credit increasingly difficult to come by prepaid credit cards are increasing in usage. As usual, many banks and firms are now offering these cards and anyone looking at this option is left with a bewildering list of potential suppliers. How to decide which is the right card, right offer, to suit your purposes?

Prepaid Cards are cards where you pay money in advance to the card provider and then use the card to spend that money. They have the convenience of a credit or debit card for purchase purposes but the advantage of having the money before you spend it. But such cards also come with a variety of fees and conditions of use that need to be closely examined.

Before going out and obtaining such a card however, it is advisable to compare the cards on offer. A Prepaid Card Review is available at a website called "What Prepaid Card?" which was built to provide such a service and a bunch of information on these cards. For example, take a look at their review of one card on offer, the Cashplus Card.

All of my web sites/blogs got knocked back to a PR of zero recently. Why? Because I use Payperpost for paid posts and Google doesn't like paid links. I am being punished for trying to make a few quid. Who is to blame? I blame Payperpost because they won't go along with Google's rules and force bloggers to expose themselves to Google's retribution.

So, I have made a decision - no more Payperpost paid posts. I didn't make that much money doing it anyhow because they want high PR ranked sites and as soon as you start posting - well, bye bye PR.

Instead, I will offer other forms of advertising on this site from now on.

The best way to make money I think is via affiliate programs but with every money making scheme there is a catch and I'm afraid most people delete the affiliate link when going to investigate an affiliate program from a site like this one. Its a real shame because it doesn't cost anything to be an affiliate for someone else.....

I was just out googling on terms like making money blogging and the blogosphere is literally filled with blogs that claim to tell you how to do that... but most of them are absolute garbage and if you read that crap and believe it then more fool you. Thats why I started this blog - to tell you the truth about making money blogging.

Again, the issue is how competitive it is in the blogging world. To make money you have to have traffic. It is THAT simple. But how do you build traffic? Well, google that term and you will find it comes down to just a few things really;

Post often,
Post quality,
Advertise and promote using social networks, advertising and comments on other folks websites.

But, I got news for you. Since this advice is pumped out daily on thousands of blogs, everyone is pursuing the same strategy. What is really required is something unique. Something different that stands out from the crowd. And that's the issue. In such a competitive space exactly what could be unique and compelling. Frankly, I don't know.

There is little money in blogging.

I have been trying to make money now for 9-months from several blogs and my maximum earnings are in the range of $100 per month. Can't retire on that little sum can I?

I think the problem is that there are simply too many blogs these days. I mean according to sources there are 1.6 million new blog posts a day!

The only way to have a successful blog is to already have a name - so if you are someone - blog and make money because you will attract an audience naturally. Another way is to find a small niche that is uncovered or relatively uncovered and promote the crap out of it. But frankly, its hard work for little return with traps all along the way.

Make money blogging? Forget it...

I just signed up with OfferForge. Basically, they are looking for bloggers to sign up for their service whereby they have a variety of affiliate schemes to offer. I'm still trying them out but you can visit them yourself at Join OfferForge and start earning today!

I have to say that making money reading emails is one of the most stupid ways to make money I have ever seen and yet folks do it. The idea is that you sit and watch an on line commercial for 1 minute and earn $0.02! Folks that is $1.20/hour and way below minimum wage! These people ought to be sued.

Yep - you are right - I tried it. Just to see how it worked. They gave me a $10 signing up bonus and will pay out at $25. I'd have to work pretty damned hard for the money and it is isn't for me...

I can see how this might help folks sat at home with nothing much else to do make some beer money but that is about that...

Meanwhile, if this sort of nonsense interests you - try this one out....

Good luck!

Since my days of running my own PR and Marketing Consultancy, VasMark Group, Inc., I have valued market surveys as a marketing tactic. Market surveys, if properly set up, can provide a wealth of information for your firm. A survey can actually generate sales leads, improve our brand awareness, help you gain knowledge about the competition, the market and buying criteria. They are an underused tactic in marketing from my perspective.

How To Set Up A Market Survey
A market survey has to be thoroughly thought through to be effective. It can't be too long and yet it needs to ask the right questions. Often, those dong a market survey miss the chance to truly add value by not asking the right questions or framing the questions wrongly i.e. they are open to interpretation on the part of the respondent.

The first question to ask is what information do you really require from the survey? You then have to construct a profile of the respondents you are looking to survey and frame the questions in a way that is not open to interpretation and yet provide the data that you are looking for.

Gaining Additional Information

Since Alexa changed the way it produces it's ranking I have noticed all kinds of strangeness. Has anyone else?

Firstly, ranks for my sites are prone to simply disappear. One day, the site has a rank and the next day it doesn't then the following day it does but its different. I sent them an email about this one. What the hell is going on?

Next, my ranks seem amazingly low. According to my host site stats, traffic is increasing and quickly. according to Google Adsense, the number of ad impressions is also increasing which lends support to my hosting site stats. But my Alexa rank is plummeting! How can that be? If my traffic is increasing how is my rank falling?

I'm pretty unhappy about all of this because while my Alexa rank falls my Technorati rank is getting better and better but many services I use actually use Alexa and not Technorati.

Any one else seeing these problems or is this just me?

Blogging is a funny thing. You write because you like to/want to/need to. Sometimes you write because you simply want to make some money. But sometimes you wonder is anyone reading this? Does anyone take any action based on what you write? That's the depressing bit for me.

First of all, I check the number of reads each post has and then I look at my host webstats and then alexa and Technorati and Google. And everyone one of them is different! It seems impossible to really know from any of these sources whether your posts are truly being read. I guess I trust my hosting webstats most of all and it does appear that visits are increasing but the acid test is is anyone acting on what I wrote?

One way to find that out is to look at whether folks are signing up as affiliates on programs that discuss and the fact is they aren't. Not in any big way anyway. So I am left wondering - is anyone actually reading my blog?