Do you have a blog or a content website?  You can make money with the simple words that you type.  Kontera is a service that adds links to keywords in your content.  By linking to the keywords to advertisers in their system, you can make money when your readers clickthrough to the advertiser.

My friend Matt at BlogAboutYourBlog, wrote up a little post about the deal at Kontera.  It’s pretty straight forward, see below.

How to do it?
1. Join Kontera by Jan 15th.
2. Sit back and relax.
3. Reach $75 in your account, and we’ll send you a check for $100!

Seems very easy.  Take a look on the website and see what kinds of benefits the publishers get with Kontera!  Happy New Year!!

6 Comments

If you want to make a brand out of some well taken photos for your business, then you need to head over to Animoto right now.  Dubbed the “end of slideshows”, Animoto takes some of your favorite images and puts them to music.  I know, you think it’s just like every other website on the net?  You would be WRONG.

Animoto was featured in the newest issue of Entreprenuer magazine and after I read through the interview, I had to try out the service.  Taking about 12-15 images for a 30 second short, the Animoto system puts your images to the music YOU choose.  What do I mean?  If you choose Latin music you will see a different video than if you choose a Beethoven piece.  Your images will be the same, BUT the effects and music will change.

It really doesn’t take all that long.  I did two quick videos with about 5-8 images each and the video was ready for review in about 3 minutes.  After I did my first test video, I realized that I could use the service to create an entire exprience through many images.  I chose the second set of images very carefully and really liked the second run through.

How to Use Animoto.com to Brand

If you run a website that provides a specific service, like web design, you could have one of these videos playing on the homepage that showcases your portfolio.  Set to music you can really create a buying atmosphere for your clients or first timers.  Check out the Animoto website and see if it’s something that works for you.

What Animoto Says

Animoto has case studies for come specific niches like, photography, real estate and classy resturants.  I think that you can use this type of service for just about any niche.  For blogging, you could take screenshots of your blog’s popular posts and just have them rotate to the music, pulling your readers into your blog.  Not to mention increasing the avg. time spent on your site.

The business, or commercial services they provide are priced very reasonable.  For unlimited videos and DVD quality downloads, you pay only $99 for 3 months or $249/year.  For business use you get amazing features like:

• Cinematic Artificial Intelligence
• Include Text
• Incredibly fast turnarounds
• Share with ease
• Call to action button
• Unlimited DVD-quality videos
• Remix
• Upload promotional videos to YouTube
• Sell DVDs to your clients
• Spice up your blog
• and MUCH more…

As you can see, the business part of the Animoto service can really brighten up and enhance the user experience on your site or blog.  For the price of $99 (3 months), I think it is well worth the time and money for your own case study.

Other Options with Animoto

If you do not want to subscribe, but want a full length video made, you can get them for $3 each or just buy an all-access pass (unlimited videos and downloads) for a small fee of $30/year.  All payments through the website are handled with Paypal & Google checkout.  This makes the process even more secure and faster.

Animoto Shorts are 30-seconds in length and free for everyone. You can produce, remix, and share as many as you’d like.

Full-length videos, in contrast, are extended in length. A video’s length is determined by the number of images and the music it uses. The length of a full-length video is limited only by our upload file size cap, which is 10MB for music files. This is generally 5-10 minutes of music, depending on the encoding.

 

That’s That…

While creating a couple of shorts for my blogs, I realized how easy the service really is and how addicting it was at the same time. Take your time and you can create some really nice videos, like the one I made for this blog.

Have you used this service before? Comment and link us to some of the shorts you have created.

3 Comments

I was looking at my stats recently and realized this blog is only 5 months old.  I really couldn’t believe that, because it has seemed like a lot longer.  As I look back on the last 5 months I wanted to point out a couple things about my blog.

Stats via Google Analytics

Everyone LOVES numbers, so I thought I would gather all of mine up so that you can compare, boast about yours, or just enjoy them in silence.

• 109 posts (21.8 per month)
• 169 approved comments
• over 2,300 visits
• over 4,600 pageviews
• 2:16 avg. time on site

Top 4 Referring Sites

• stumbleupon.com - who would stumble my content?
• images.google.com - image of money that gets searched for
• shoemoney.com - commenting on his blog
• entrecard.com - best free way to get traffic to a blog

Posts with Most Traffic (besides homepage)

1. http://www.affiliateobsession.com/make-money/amazoncom-niche-store-free-trial-review/ - top keyword post, too no income on that which surprised me
2. http://www.affiliateobsession.com/advertising/250-in-facebook-ad-coupons/
3. http://www.affiliateobsession.com/cpa-networks/who-wants-entrecard-credits/
4. http://www.affiliateobsession.com/marketing/how-to-get-online-marketing-for-free/
5. http://www.affiliateobsession.com/make-money/facebook-coupon-ppc-campaign-gamefly-trial/

I also had over 1900 new visitors to this blog, but as you can see, not too many of them found the content good (or unique) enough to subscribe.  I understand that part of it.  This blog is very similar to many others on the web, it’s just that this one is MY blog and where I jot down my experiences.  It might not set it apart from all the others, but my situations might create an idea or situation for another.

Some of things I would like to see in the future?

I guess i wouldn’t mind to see about 500 more subscribers for the new year.  I will have to think of ways to gain the readership that other blogs have and that is going to take some serious planning.  I also would like to see more people commenting on my blog.  With at least 15 visitors per day, I would like to think my content would create some discussion with at least ONE of them.

I also plan to get more involved in social media.  I know the traffic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but the effort it takes to gain the exposure is quite small.  So, I don’t think it was a bad 5 months at all.  The traffic is choppy but on the rise and I have gained subscribers without any type of subscribing contest, so that must mean something.

Wish me luck and I would like to say good luck to everyone in 2009!

2 Comments