Posted on 7:11 AM / 1
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Make Money Blogging
Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers who make money blogging.
How to Make Money Blogging
In this page I want to share some information for beginners on how to make money blogging. For a very quick and broad visual intro – check out this Make Money Blogging MindMap which visualizes just SOME of the ways bloggers make money blogging.
First – let me start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.
What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.
The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last 5 years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.
I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.
1. AdSense
Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.
2. Affiliate Programs
I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own (but which certainly add up).
These include recommending quality products like these here on ProBlogger: Thesis WordPress theme, Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Coaching Program and How to Launch the F*** out of your E-Book (and others) as well as some great products on my photography blog including 123 of Digital Imaging, David DuChemin’s amazing Photography E-Books and Mitchell Kanashkevich’s great ebooks.
The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!
3. E-Book Sales
Last time I did a wrap up of how I make money blogging this category did not exist for me – I didn’t really have any of my own products to sell at all. However in the last year or so I’ve released 3 E-books – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog,The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography and Photo Nuts and Bolts: Know Your Camera and Take Better Photos. While these products all only sell for under $20 they certainly add up and some months this has been my biggest category of income. The reason they were only ranking at #3 in the last month was that I didn’t do a product launch (I wrote about one launch which brought in $72,000 in a week here). This is an income stream I see growing as I add more E-books to my range (expect 3 in the coming few months).
4. Continuity Programs
This is another newer category for me but one that continues to grow.
A continuity program is a site where you earn a recurring income from people who subscribe to a service you offer.
For me this includes two sites – ProBlogger.com and Third Tribe Marketing. Both programs are membership sites and generate monthly income from the thousands of members that they have as a part of them.
5. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships
Private ad sales directly to advertisers have fallen for me in the last year (they previously ranked #3 on this list). This is partly due to a change in my own focus but also partly due to the economy as it is. I should note that this area does vary a little from month to month depending upon the campaigns we’re asked to run – we’ve had a couple of months where it actually ranked #2 in the last year.
This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two atDigital Photography School.
6. Chitika
Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They traditionally have worked best on product related blogs although theirPremium ad units now convert well on a larger range of blogs.
While I’ve focused a little less on Chitika in the last 6 months (mainly as I’ve released my own products and moved a little away from advertising) they do continue to perform well where I use them and over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – as a result I can’t recommend them enough!
7. Amazon Associates
Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (in fact it’s now earned me over $100,000 since I started using it). Christmas time (and the lead up to it) is a particularly good time for Amazon – last December it would have ranked #2 on this list.
8. ProBlogger Job Boards
The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. These job boards now bring in over $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.
The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.
9. Speaking Fees
I get asked to do a lot of speaking and increasingly they are paid opportunities. I’m not able to do as many as I would like (mainly because I live in Australia and most of what I’m asked to do is overseas and I only travel 2-3 times a year) – however in April I did a couple of events and the income was enough to include in this list.
Other Income
In addition to all of the above there are many smaller incomes. Many of these are from smaller advertising programs that I test but none are big enough to really rate a mention here.
The other income stream that there was no actual money from in April was book royalties from theProBlogger Book. These are only paid every 6 or so months (not in April). It’s probably also worth mentioning that authors don’t tend to make a whole lot of money on book royalties – you don’t write books to get rich (unless you sell a lot of them).
Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging
A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.
Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.
Information sources : Problogger
Posted on 7:11 AM / 0
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Do You Know the Difference : Affiliate Marketing And Network Marketing ?
When looking for ways to make money online you will certainly come across countless opportunities in affiliate and network marketing. To a newbie or not so newbie seeking home business opportunities, it’s easy to get confused over the many terms and definitions used. If you are not quite sure how these business models work, then you need to read this article.
There are distinct differences and it’s essential to understand them. The best way to explain them is in terms of how compensation is paid. Knowing this information can help you decide which one is a better fit for you.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
In affiliate marketing, you are marketing the products/services of another merchant. You get paid a commission when a customer purchases that item through you.
Some affiliate marketing programs feature 2 levels, meaning you not only make money on the sale; but you can also make commissions on the sales of that customer should they sign up to become an affiliate as well.
For example, you will earn commission when you sell the product to customer A and if customer A signs up to be an affiliate and manages to sell to customer A1, you get compensated too, in addition to person A. You will not make any money from the sales of Customer A1, should they sign up as an affiliate too.
Most affiliate programs are free to join and the products are easier to sell because they are typically low-cost. There are thousands of products that you can be an affiliate for and commissions can range from 20 – 75% per sale.
However, it’s a one time transaction only. So you must continually look to promote the next big product since there is typically no income from residual sales.
A “super affiliate” is one that is able to generate thousands of commissions by himself. An affiliate marketer is in business for themselves and by themselves. They do not have the benefit of leveragingthe work of others.
Affiliate marketing also does not require you to interact with people, so you are not really building a rapport with your customer base.
Although as a bonus from buying through them, some affiliate marketers may offer personal coaching or some one-on-one time, that is not the objective. It’s all about the sale.
Plus, they understand that most people won’t take them up on the offer anyway. It’s like the rebate offer. How many of us actually take the time to fill them out and mail them in? A very small percentage, which is why stores offer them mainly by mail only. They too understand that the objective is only the sale. So they offer a discount by rebate, knowing all the while, you won’t even turn the darn thing in.
What Is Network Marketing?
With network marketing, you must like people and want to build residual long-term income while leveraging the work of others. The main difference between network marketing and affiliate marketing is that in network marketing you are building a downline of distributors.
You cannot build a downline of affiliate marketers to have residual income. Consider network marketing if building a large organization is attractive to you.
In network marketing you not only get get paid to sell products, but you also make money as products move through your downline.
This includes reps you personally sponsor and your downline distributors which can go several levels deep. Exactly how many reps and levels you can earn money on will differ from one mlm company to the next. It can be several levels or unlimited.
The advantage of using multi-level compensation is that you are able to leverage the work of your downline. It was John Paul Getty who said “I’d rather have 1% of the effort of 100 men than 100% of my own effort.”
This is not an easy feat however. There are many factors at play, chief among them being choosing the right mlm home based business, with the right product and leadership.
Retention and recurring customer use is what provides true residual income in network marketing. After an initial investment of 12-36 months of hard work, the network marketing business model can generate earnings for a lifetime. With a solid network marketing company, residual income is almost guaranteed.
Network marketing is essentially a people building business. You build people and people build your business. As you continue to help them meet their goals and develop strong relationships, your ability to make huge sums of money will increase substantially as your network grows.
With affiliate marketing, your income is limited. With that being said, if you truly have no interest in connecting with and helping others or if you’re solely driven by making money, please for the sake of the network marketing industry, become an affiliate marketer.
However, if the idea of long-term residual income, the ability to meet new people, build great relationships, the fulfillment you get from helping your team members build their business, and steady growing paychecks sounds appealing to you, then be a network marketer.
But, here’s the thing…
You don’t have to choose. You can combine the power of both as your team builds. My Lead System Pro not only teaches cutting edge online marketing strategies, but it has an affiliate component to you which allows you to earn income as you build your network marketing team.
Which One Is Best For You?
With affiliate marketing, your income is limited. With that being said, if you truly have no interest in connecting with and helping others or if you’re solely driven by making money, please for the sake of the network marketing industry, become an affiliate marketer.
However, if the idea of long-term residual income, the ability to meet new people, build great relationships, the fulfillment you get from helping your team members build their business, and steady growing paychecks sounds appealing to you, then be a network marketer.
But, here’s the thing…
You don’t have to choose. You can combine the power of both as your team builds. My Lead System Pro not only teaches cutting edge online marketing strategies, but it has an affiliate component to you which allows you to earn income as you build your network marketing team.
Information sources : Thealphanetworkeralliance
Posted on 7:09 AM / 0
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How affiliate marketing works ?
Within this example a 'merchant' is an online retailer with a transactional website where you can buy products or services. An 'affiliate' is an online publisher or partner who has access to traffic.
Affiliates are traditionally website owners who can send traffic, via links to your site. They do this on the basis that any sales generated from this traffic will earn them an agreed commission. This reward model is commonly known as Cost Per Action (CPA) and is more transparent and accountable than the older Cost Per Click (CPC) model.
There are many different affiliate types to work with and these relationships are facilitated by a merchant joining the network and using the promotion tools available. In every case the affiliate takes the risk of sending you traffic at no cost to you as you only have to reward them if their traffic completes a purchase.
A consumer visits an affiliate's website (for example a shopping portal or directory)
The customer finds a product (or retailer) and clicks the link to be taken to the merchant's site to review or purchase (this click-through stores a network cookie on their PC). *
The customer completes the sale online. Tracking software records the key purchase data such as sale amount, IP, date and time, etc and reports this to Affiliate Window. The customer journey has now concluded.
The merchant is able to allow a period of 'grace' to consider the sale complete and pays commission due to the affiliate for sales generated.* This cookie lasts for a predetermined period set by the merchant allowing any sale to be attributed to the referring affiliate as long as the unique visitor completes a transaction within this cookie period.
The value of affiliate marketing
Online shopping has been predicted by to account for 40% of all UK retail sales by 2020*. Currently households spend 10% (£980) of their annual shopping budget online typically on holidays, electronics, clothes and gifts items.
Affiliate marketing in the UK grew by an estimated 45% during 2007, taking the total value of online sales generated by this channel for that year to over £3 billion**. With a conservative estimate of commissions and fees paid out to affiliate networks amounting to £186 million, an increase of 40% on 2006. This covers both the affiliate commission and network override.
The same report** found that UK merchants involved in affiliate marketing drive 16% of their online sales via this channel and that 78% of them expected to be "more reliant" on affiliate marketing by 2009.
In light of these statistics and predictions it is clear that affiliate marketing should form part of an integrated and successful digital marketing strategy.
* USwitch – insert date and reference details
** The eConsultancy Affiliate Marketing Merchants Report 2007
Posted on 7:06 AM / 0
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The top companies in the Affiliate Network
If you intend to make money online, all the leading companies in this area so you can choose.
An affiliate network acts as a broker between companies that want to advertise their services or products and websites (such are yours) that are willing to display those advertisements. Some companies pay per click, but it is more usual to pay a commission on any sale (or lead) generated from an advertisement on your site.
The following is a list of affiliate networks, each are different so its worth spending the time to identify which is best for you:
www.google.com/adsense 
Google AdSense is a very popular and effective means of running targeted ads on your website.
Google AdSense is a very popular and effective means of running targeted ads on your website. Google AdSense provides context sensitive advertising for each web-page. What this means is simply that AdSense decides what it thinks are the best adverts to show for your page for the current visitor. For individual pages, well targeted ads from other networks should be able to out perform Google AdSense. The trick is to identify appropriate ads and that can be difficult. So for pages where you are unsure of the best ads to run on the page then Google AdSense is hard to beat.
A UK based affiliate network that pay in pounds Sterling. They have a large list of affiliate programs and offer good commissions, mostly UK with some European names. They also provide the option of providing contextual advertisements, although these are based on keywords you supply rather than derived from the context of each web page.
Commission Junction. Quite possibly one of the largest affiliate networks. Mostly American companies, but expanding to include companies from other countries. Commission only.
European affiliate network. Gateway site can be configured to suite a number of different European languages.
ClixGalore is a worldwide affiliate programme. They operate regional websites in the USA, UK, Australia and Japan. Operates both pay-per-click and pay-per-sale.
Simply provide context sensitive advertising for your website. So they try to match the best ads for the content of your pages. If they cannot find any suitable ads then they display advertising from Google AdSense (theirs not yours!) When trialled on this site they performed only about half as well as Google AdSense.
CPAway a USA based affiliate network (based in Florida), and they run campaigns for visitors from the USA, Canada and UK as well as some which are for Internationals (i.e. not country of origin specific).
They vet every application so the application process is not quick. They also ask for more information as part of this vetting process than any other network reviewed to date, presumably not all of which is strictly necessary as our reviewer declined to give some information and was still approved.
Once approved you are assigned your own affiliate manager should you wish to avail yourself of their services. They also send out regular campaign updates by email to inform you of what offers (i.e. ads) are expiring and which ones have been added to their network.
Click2Sell offers money making opportunities with its free online affiliate program network.
Merchants can add products to their marketplace and start selling, running an affiliate program and accepts payments instantly. Promote your products online and develop your online business. Track keywords and find out why buyers buy your promoted product. Track every aspect of your campaign with powerful buyer tracking system.
Affiliates can earn money online promoting great products.
A leading affiliate marketing network for financial services and insurance programmes. They also provide a content service, providing appropriate ads to a site according to the site's content.
Whilst this is the UK site, there have sites specific to a number of countries: Australian site at http://au.omgpm.com, French site athttp://fr.omgpm.com, German site at http://de.omgpm.com, Indian site at http://in.omgpm.com and Polish site at http://pl.omgpm.com.Profitistic - Monetize Your Website Today!Affiliate operating both in the global market and in the UK, providing schemes for both CPA, CPS.
SinoNetwork is a Chinese language self-service advertising affiliate solution serving more than 3 Billion ad impressions monthly. SinoNetwork also provides advertisers of all sizes access to a global network of publishers, educational resources and sophisticated reporting tools. SinoNetwork delivers all the functionality needed for the general management and administration of performance-based marketing program – all on demand.
Clash Media is a new CPA Affiliate Network in UK active on the UK and US market. They have large number of prize draws and a mixed merchant offer. They also have a co-registration facility for affiliates who wish to take part in their lead generation program.
Pays 1$ per 1000 banner-impressions, minimum payout 100$ (i.e. after 100,000 banner impressions, that's a little less than 3 years at 100 impressions a day or a little over 3 months at 1,000 impressions a day.) Be aware that the site generates pop-ups (and pop-behinds), using it may therefore annoy your visitors and will not be acceptable if you are trying to meet WAI accessibility standards. Does not pay for clicks or sales.
CPA Affiliate Network. Filinet is a performance-based CPA Affiliate Network that empowers its affiliates with the internet’s top performing offers while offering real-time tracking and outstanding support.
WebGains is a UK network working with both SME and blue chip clients (Cadbury's, One Tel, Cloggs). They offer 24/7 support and pride themselves on their service and advanced in depth reporting. Webgains offers the personal touch that is very much focused on producing results for both merchants and affiliates alike.
StellarAds is a newer network providing a CPA network that offers a wide variety of campaigns in multiple categories. For the most part, StellarAds caters to a US audience.
ClickBank is a very popular network for both buying and selling products and services. It is very popular with smaller websites that have products to sell because it is very simple to set up.
UK based affiliate network. They provide first and second tier commissions (which means that if you refer a website that signs up as an affiliate then you get a small commission on the sales they generate).
Affiliate network started February 2007. Unlike most affiliate networks FireLead vet all applications, but in my experience this was very quick.
An affiliate network that specialises in the travel industry. All the advertisers are therefore travel industry related.
ePurpose Media is a UK based affiliate network serving both Merchants and Publishers. In addition to their affiliate network services, ePurple Media also provide Search Engine Optimization and e-mail marketing services
IncentaClick is a leading two-tiered affiliate network focused primarily on performance-based online advertising, email marketing and banner advertising. Their affiliate programs include free trial, direct sale, lead generation and revenue share campaigns.
An affiliate marketing agency established in 2008, by internet and advertising professionals. They operate with both pay per click and pay per lead. Pays out when balance reaches $50.
An affiliate network with campaigns from all over the world.
A long established UK marketing company which has more recently moved into the affiliate network arena. They provide schemes for advertising in emails (although you will need to contact them for this as you can only earn commission on newsletters which they have
Posted on 7:05 AM / 2
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About Adsense and Google Affiliate Networld For You Blog
Easy AdSense for Your Blog
Blogger provides a simple way for you to make money with your blog. AdSense is Google's content-targeted advertising program. This means that you don't select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies.
Blogger requests access to your AdSense account in order to allow us to create and place ad code on your page through our layouts and template tools. As part of this process, you may notice that Blogger is receiving "0%" of your AdSense earnings - this means that you will receive the same amount for clicks or impressions as you would creating the ad code from your AdSense account. To view any partners that have requested access to your AdSense account, and their associated revenue shares, please log in to your AdSense account, click the "My Account" tab, and choose the "Account Access" sub-tab. If you see a "grant access" link next to blogger.com, you must click this link in order to create ads with Blogger tools.
Putting AdSense on Your Blog
This integration between AdSense and Blogger is intended to make it easier for you to get up and running with AdSense on your blog. To place AdSense on your blog quickly and easily, see our help articles here:
* How do I put AdSense on my blog (using Layouts)?
* How do I put AdSense on my blog (using a classic template)?
To take full advantage of other AdSense options and settings, you can sign in to the AdSense site and have a look around. That's where you can see how much money your ads are earning and all that good stuff.
See Also: What Is AdSense?
Putting Google Affiliate Network on Your Blog
Google Affiliate Network and AdSense have integrated their payment systems to provide you with even more options to monetize your blog. To place Google Affiliate Network links on your blog:
1. Sign up for a Google Affiliate Network account.
2. To sign up for advertiser programs, click Advertisers, then click the Join tab.
3. Check out our Help Center content on generating links for your advertisers.
4. Once you've chosen which links to post on your blog, copy and paste them into Notepad, Text Edit, or a similar program.
5. Log into your Blogger account and go to the Layout page.
6. Select HTML/Javascript under 'Add A Gadget.'
7. Enter your links' HTML code (found in your Google Affiliate links management center).
To take advantage of other Google Affiliate Network options and settings, you can sign into the Google Affiliate Network site and have a look around.
See Also: What is Google Affiliate Network?
Posted on 7:01 AM / 0
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Seo - What is XML Sitemap?
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a quite easy XML file that contains information regarding one or more URLs on your Web site. The information that is stored there helps search engines better spider your website. All it requests to be is a list of URLs for your Web site, but to get more out of it, you want to take account of other information as well.
Dynamic Google XML Sitemap generator
SiteMap generator is an dynamic .net based sitemap generator.It crawls your website to generate an xml sitemap.It contains a range of configurable variables for definig the sitemap content.for getting sitemap of your site.The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are accessible for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include extra information about each URL: when it was last updated, how frequently it changes, and how vital it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more cleverly. Sitemaps are a URL addition protocol and match robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo united to support sitemaps, a standardized method of submitting web pages through feeds to the search engines. Today, the three are now joined by Ask.com in supporting the system and an extension of it called autodiscovery. This is where the major search engines will automatically locate your sitemaps file if the location is listed in a robots.txt file. Announcements are up from Google and Ask now Yahoo and Microsoft.
Information on how to create sitemaps files can be found at the Sitemaps.org site. Aside from the sitemaps XML formal, you can also provide RSS 2.0 or Atom 0.3 or 1.0 feeds. That’s handy for those with blogs that already generate these feeds.
Sitemaps XML files too complicated? Don’t run a blog? Note that the site has newly expanded information on how you can submit a simple list of URLs in a text file.
In the past, if you created a sitemaps file, you then had to manually tell the search engines where to find it. With today’s announcement, search engines will check your robots.txt file for a link to a sitemaps file, then get the file from that location. This is a big plus because all the major search engines regularly check robots.txt files as part of their ordinary crawling.
Sitemap: LOCATION-OF-SITEMAPS-FILE
Replace the LOCATION-OF-SITEMAPS-FILE with the actual location. For example, if you ran a site at mywonderfulsite.com and had a sitemaps file called allmypages.xml in your top level, the reference would be like this:
Sitemap: http://adsenseco.blogspot.com/allmypages.xml
Have more than one sitemaps file? Ideally, you’d create a special "sitemaps index" file that links to all of them, then put a link to the sitemaps index file in your robots.txt file. If that sounds like too much work, you can have more than one sitemaps URL listed in the robots.txt file.
Aside from autodiscovery, you can also ping Google and Yahoo with the location of your file. The Sitemaps.org site has more instructions on this in general. For specifics:
Google: See here. Note that this pinging is different than the pinging Google also supportsfor blog search.
Yahoo: See here and here. Unlike Google, the same pinging system is used for both web and blog search, to my understanding.
Both Google and Yahoo also allow you to manually submit sitemaps files. In both cases, doing this via their Google Webmaster Central or Yahoo Site Explorer systems gives you access to specialized monitoring and reporting tools or information on how they crawl you.
Quote : Searchengineland
Posted on 12:23 AM / 0
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Google's official beta Witkey platform Prizes
Google bought the Slide seems like a low-key work, following the application of group chat and photo sharing applications Disco Pool Party in addition, they launched the third in today's social networking application Prizes, it will need to help people and solve problems ─ ─ people together to solve the problem of people from the hands of people who need help receive monetary awards.
Prizes still in Beta testing phase, but has publicly registered, but that you must have invited it to send tasks, did not invite it can only solve the task. Prizes may be worth noting that through Facebook or Twitter account, but not Google Accounts.
Each task has a time limit issue, and can also be another vote, and follow each other messages.Money transactions are settled via PayPal, Google Checkout has been ignored. Slide looks really Google's most independent team, it will not be subject to Google to use Google's services.
Relative to the platform in terms of general tasks, Slide is a long-term vision of the team. Platform in the prizes, you can exchange messages with other users in real time. The rapid transmission of information convenient, as one of the most important trends 2011. Coupled with the earlier group chat application has been launched Disco, Pool Party photo-sharing application, we can see, Slide team retaken the move, the two hot spots and convenient!
Foreign Witkey platform has a lot, and now Google the Prizes depend on a strong backing, I believe and then to develop some new applications will come from behind the bar! In addition, I also joined the closed beta to see if there may be harvested here, there are already some ideas, and do not know can not work, who are interested can look!
Sign Up here : http://prizes.org/
Sign Up here : http://prizes.org/
Posted on 9:39 AM / 0
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