Pay Per Click vs Product Links

On the surface Pay Per Click sounds good. It would seem to be a good way to support your blog/site. But than looking at it more closely, does it really work? Here on Squidoo it seems to work pretty good, because Squidoo gets millions of visitors and thus millions of clicks each week. Squidoo lensmasters get paid for the stuff they write for Squidoo, based on the amount of clicks, for Squidoo lensmasters this works out pretty well.

(BTW: For you non-Squidoo members reading this, the author of these articles written on Squidoo, have no control over the Pay Per Click Google ads that show up on their Squidoo lenses. It's a requirement, in order to have your page hosted by Squidoo, you must allow Google to put ads here. Some Squidoo lensmasters love the Google ads, while others hate them, but love them or hate them, you can't have Squidoo without them!)

So PPC works for sites getting millions of visits and millions of clicks. The question now is, does it work for the average blogger, who may only get 10 - 100 visits per week? I have no idea, because I've yet to hear a blogger who said PPC is working for them. I do however read a lot of questions asking this: How do I get PPC to pay?

I think product links are better than PPC for the average blogger. However, like PPC, it seems that the power of an income with product links is hit and miss at best, and again, largely dependent on how much traffic you have coming in.

Here on Squidoo, product links pay pretty well, because you can ad eBay and Amazon products to your lenses, and as with PPC, Squidoo is getting millions of visitors so, sooner or later someone is going to buy something off of your lens. But that is Squidoo. Do blogs make any income with product links?

I'm an affiliate with Amazon because I joined Amazon in 1997, and when they started doing the affiliate program they asked me to be part of the beta test run, so I joined the Amazon Affiliate Program and whenever I want to review a book or DVD, I just add an Amazon link right into the blog post itself. That way you don't see ads all over my blogs.

Of course you do see links all over my blogs, cause I link out to every site I read, but I don't get paid for doing that. :( If only I could get paid to share the links to my fave sites/blogs/lenses; I'd be a millionaire in a week! LOL!

While I'm on the subject of making money online, I thought I'd mention all those sites you see advertising: get paid to take surveys. I have noticed a lot of web sites, and in fact many Squidoo lenses even, where the web/lens master has placed tons of affiliate banners saying that if you click the banner and join some club/group/site/team, you'll get paid loads of money for completing the surveys the group sends you. A few of the more common examples include: CashCrate, SnapDollars, Greenfield Online, etc, etc, etc.

As far as I can tell, the folks making money from these sites are NOT the folks taking the surveys, but instead are the folks promoting the affiliate banners telling other folks to take the surveys.

I've been getting paid to do survives since 1997, in my experience the ONLY survives that ACTUALLY pay you (checks ranging from $50 - $200 per survey or with the actual products tested in the survey) are the companies themselves: Hersey's, GMC, Kellog's ect, not some go between scammer site.

I'm a member of all 3 of the sites I just mentioned, as well as dozens more like them, for several years now, one, Greenfield, I joined in 1997, 12 years ago, and have yet to see a penny from any of them, or from any other third party site for that matter.

To date the only ones that have ever actually paid me are the actual companies. Write to the company, tell them you want to test their products and be on their consumer test team. They'll put you on a waiting list, and when they do their next round of product testing, you'll get the product (and/or a check to buy it) in the mail along with a survey to fill out and send in. (Or you may be asked to go to a hotel conference for a face to face survey - which usually pays you for the expense to get there).

In other words, if you want to do surveys for Sony and Nike, you don't need some third party middleman, all you have to do is write to Sony and ask to be put on their list. That's what I did and that's how come I actually get paid for the surveys I take.

As a result of taking these consumer test surveys, I have eaten candy and cereals as much as 2 years before they hit the store shelves (thanks to Hersey's and Kellogg's), I've used shampoos and beauty products that no one knew existed a year or two before the public knew about them. I've gone to conferences at hotels and had a free meal while we discussed what we did and did not like about the meal and what things we would and would not buy and how much we would pay for them - and on top of the free meal, the good company, and the exspences paid, we each received a $75 check just for showing up. GMC pays in scratch off lottery tickets and Walmart Gift cards for trying out new cars, only I don't have a drivers license, so I couldn't test drive the cars, but they paid me any ways just for showing up and telling them what I thought about the new models (I did not like the new models and told them so - they were very glad to get my bad review! LOL!) I was eating Wonka Runts and Rinky Dinks 4 years before they were released to the public.

Also, many local businesses will advertise in the Sunday classifies looking for testers, that's how I found the GMC ones.

Don't bother with the online third party sites - get out there and start contacting the companies directly. You won't make a full time income doing it, but you'll certainly have fun, meet new people, get to try out a lot of great products, and get a small extra check every once in a while.

There is a new site, Treasure Trooper, which has only been around since 2008, they claim to have actually paid members over $1million dollars since they started up. Since it's free to join, I figured I'd try them out and give them a chance to prove that they are NOT like the other sites. As of yet, it's too soon for me to say wither they make good on their promises or not. I'll let you know one way or the other, after I've had a chance to test them out. And if you want to try testing them out to, here's the link to their site. If you do try them out, let me know how it goes, because I'm always on the look out for money makers that actually make money.

I always put donation boxes (via PayPal) on my blogs, because I hate blogs with ads on them, and so I try to avoid having ads on mine. (Using a Blogger blog means it already has Google ads on it).

Anyways, I just never could understand the whole Pay-Per-Click mentality, it just seems like such a waste of time to me. The way I figure, if you are going to put an ad up, you should at least put up an ad to something you already bought yourself (like a book or DVD), that way you can actually support your reason for putting the ad there, by saying: "Hey, I just read this book, and you should read it to, because it was...."

Of course, I realize there are folks who like to support a blog, but I hate seeing PPC all over a blog, so if someone wants to support my blog, I just ad a PayPal donation button to the blog... that way, if they really truly and honestly want to show their support they can, rather than given me a half hearted click-tip, which pays what... a penny per hundred clicks? Yea, big support there.