Mystery Shopping

Mystery Shopping is something that is has been in the background of my mind for a while but I wasn't really sure if it was for me so I have put it out of my mind until now.

For those that are unsure basically mystery shoppers are people that go into shops, restaurants, hotels etc and feedback on the service.

Recently I thought I might like to give this a try and so set about researching the various companies that sign up mystery shoppers. At this point I must tell you to beware, there are companies out there who ask you to pay to sign up with them and I really can't see the point in this as there are many out there with excellent reviews that charge you nothing whatsoever (after all that would defeat the point for me!).

I read a lot of good things about a company called Grass Roots https://www.grassrootsmysteryshopping.com and so have recently signed up to them.

I will let you know how I go as time goes on but so far I have found them easy to use and I like the set up of their site. You can add up to 5 locations that you are willing to mystery shop in (e.g. home, work) and also specify the times that you would be available at each address. Assignments are then emailed to you whenever they become available in these areas and you can choose whether to accept or decline once you have read the brief.

The Homeworking Forum

I have just recently discovered a brilliant forum for tips on all things homeworking. http://www.homeworking.com/forum.htm

This forum really is one of the best I've seen in a while and after looking around it I tend to trust it a bit more than the average forum as it doesn't focus on advertising various programmes (in fact this is banned) and seems to have a lot of people involved that want to give genuine advice.

If you are interested in a specific person's efforts to work online then there is the option to message the person or you can click through to their profile for further information. So there is still the option to gain idea's but it's not rammed down your neck if you know what I mean.

Due to the above this is not really the place to go if all your are interested in is advertising your affiliate programme or whatever but if you really are after advice then I would definitely pay this site a visit.

Bloglovin

A reader has suggested Bloglovin as an additional way to promote blogs (thanks for the tip!) and I thought I would follow this up to see what it was all about.

So far I have had a quick look around their site and signed up but from what I can see so far it seems to be a way for me to add blogs that I'm currently interested in following rather than to promote my own blogs.

I can see what my reader was saying in that you could encourage others to add your blogs to their Bloglovin file but other than that I'm not sure how it's useful to promote my own blogs. Or am I missing something?

Anyway it's a really good looking site, clean and concise, with mainly girl users centring around fashion blogs mostly.

I would love to hear more from anyone who uses this regularly?

Building Mania

I've hardly had a chance to get anything done lately it's been so manic here. We are having lots of things done to the house and have had various sets of building people here almost constantly for the past week. I'm currently hiding out upstairs while lots of banging happens downstairs and it's nice to just pop on here and think of something else for 5 mins.

I had never realised before how much builders moan! It started with the boiler people having a good old grumble about the cottage being old fashioned and pipes etc being awkward to get at and then the wall knocking down lot were unimpressed with the boiler lot and so had a bit of a groan about them and so far it hasn't stopped. The building trade is more gossipy than the housewife brigade I have decided!

Another week or so and we should be workmen free :-)

SocialGo

Hey everyone,

This post will mostly be a plee for input from others out there also working from home online.

I once went on a site called SocialGo and now regularly get emails from them about setting up my own network and was wondering if anyone else had come across or was using this site?

It seems to be a place where you set up your own community for your chosen topic, so i.e. you get message boards, places for people to post pics and exhance idea's etc. Now I think it looks brilliant but there are many levels and I was wondering if anyone had used the free one in particular? I wouldn't mind paying a fee eventually if it was worth it but I would want to start out on the free package at least until I knew a bit more about it.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

New Blog Still Going Strong

My newest blog is still going strong and now has 6 followers after 2 posts. Amazingly though my others are still getting hits, even when I haven't updated them in quite a while. The target now has to be increasing the amount of hits (and clicks I guess but I'm not sure how I can influence that and I think it's actually frowned upon by Adsense if you try), I'm hoping by increasing the amount of hits, the clicks will take care of themselves.

For now I have decided to concentrate only on blogging as a way of earning online. There are millions of ideas out there but I found I was getting pulled in all sorts of directions and not actually getting much done.

Will This Ever Work!?

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I was having problems with my old computer and so haven't been keeping up with things as I should. I fully intend to get back to this now though and make a good effort on it.

I have started a new blog for the new year and this time rather than making it about a specific topic I have just wrote exactly what I thought and it seems to be going much better! Ok so granted I have written one post so far but already it has 5 followers and 4 of those have commented. Now I'm not sure how everyone else's blog does but for me that is a pretty darn good result.

I'm hoping now that this leads to increased views and clicks which will all tot up on my Adsense account.

Paypal Account

I've got an issue with my Paypal account at the mo. I've recently been sent a new bank card for my current account and the big number across the middle has changed, however my Paypal account is registered to my old account number.

I'm pretty sure this won't be a big deal as I've never actually verified my other account anyway so I've just removed it for now and plan to attach it to my new number asap. Has anyone had any problems with things like this in the past? I was just wondering if I did have any money in my Paypal account when this happened whether it would have caused me any big issues or not?

Clicks While I Was Gone

Amazingly I was still getting views on my blogs while I was away and actually a few clicks as well.

The blog that is still viewed the most is the 'My Best Self' blog http://mybestselfjourney.blogspot.com/ the majority of the advert clicks came from there as well. I think this is a topic which really hits home with alot of people. Plus the nature of my blogging usually means I mention weight loss which ensures quite a few diet / weight loss adverts on my blog and it seems like web users are more attracted by these adverts than some of the others on my other blogs. For example my travel blog http://upupandawayadventures.blogspot.com/ has quite a few adverts for things like malaria advice abroad etc, very specialised and only really of interested to people who happen to be travelling to malaria zones in the near future.

So in summary it's much more productive to blog on a topic that is of interest to a large group of the online community.

Back from Nepal

Hey all,

I've just got back from volunteering in Nepal and it was brilliant and terrible at the same time! Anyway as a result I haven't been working on my working from home for 3 weeks and now have to shift my thinking into getting back into it. I hope it's not as hard as it sounds lol.

xx

Ebay

Im defo going to give this a go. Im going to Nepal next week for nearly a month and so have been having a big sort out of everything and i've realised just how much suff I have! At least some of this can fetch a good price on Ebay I figure.

I don't know too much about this so far as I don't yet have an Ebay account but I look forward to setting one up :-)

SocialGo

I have found this site called SocialGo and I think it's fab! Im sure, long term it will have limitless ways to cash in on the internet but even if it didn't I would still think it is a very funky site. http://www.socialgo.com/

Basically it allows you to set up your own community. There are various options depending on how hi-tech you want to get but one of those options is free. You can pick any subject you like (obviously im sure there may be rules re dodgy topics so if you wanted to set up an adult porn community for example you may want to check these out first) and then get creating! You can add forums, invite people to join, start discussions etc and there are some really funky backgrounds and fonts for you to really personalise the site.

Im in the very beginning stages of setting mine up so I will let you know how I go and of course invite you all to join once my site is a bit more presentable.

Using Forums To Increase Traffic

The most important thing to say here is that this defo works.

I have four blogs and I have been promoting one above the others through forums and it gets way more traffic than the others. I searched google for forums which centered around my blogs topic (in this case weightloss and body improvement) and joined the one at the top of the list, reasoning that if they had reached that spot then they would be one of the more popular forums. I set up a signature which included a link to my blog then set about starting my own thread and commenting on others whereever possible and bingo, increased traffic to that blog.

What I will say though is that you do have to be interested in your topic (which I am as im currently on a health kick) and you have to post relevant remarks. If you just type the odd word here and there not only will people be on to you, but they won't be interested enough in what you have to say to click on your link and find out more.

Adsense Update

Well I thought it was time I gave you an update re my Adsense earnings, which basically is people clicking on the adverts by the side of my four blogs.

£2.99! Thats what I have reached so far. Now don't get me wrong im chuffed to have earn't anything but I think we can agree that is a low figure.

I was initially impressed with the way Adsense works as it targets ad's to your blogs content, however im not at all sure whats going wrong as my page impression figures have gone way up but actually getting clicks on the adverts are not following through.

Since I can't control the adverts on my blogs the only thing really to do is to keep trying to increase traffic. At the moment im mainly doing this through forums, joining specific forums related to each blogs topic and then linking back to my blog through my signature.

Ideas Wanted

Hey All,

As anyone who is interested in this topic will know there are literally thousands of working from home ideas out there and while im going to do my best to work through and evaluate as many as I can, Im also throwing the floor open to anyone from blogger who might like to suggest things for me to try out?

The ideas can be pretty much anything, if there is something that has caught your eye but maybe you haven't had time to look into it yet, then give me a shout and I will test it out for you.

I would also just like to say thanks for everyones comments so far, feedback is great and keeps me on the right track!

xx

Confused Over Content Promote

Hmm well im reporting back on my efforts with Content Promote from my last post but I have to admit im a bit confused. Once signed up I submitted my blogs url's so they could use the content automatically but im not at all sure this is all you need to do.

There seems to be an option to submit data manually as well so I guess that would mean copying and pasting each blog post but that does seem like extra effort if I am also submitting automatically. The trick will be working out if the auto feed is actually working.

The site it's self doesn't give that much information and there is no forum, which I usually find is by far the best way to get your questions answered.

Content Promote

Hey All,

Im sure lots of you here have been in the Coffee Shop looking for advice on promoting your blog so that it reaches more people. I set up a post asking this very question the other day and got a suggestion from a chap called Vin about submitting your blog content to Content Promote http://www.contentpromote.com/

This seemed like too good an oppertunity to miss so I have gone along and signed up. Im currently at the stage where I have confirmed my email add and im now waiting for approval. As soon as there is more news I will report back.

Yuwie

Yuwie http://www.yuwie.com/ is a new site I found recently and so far seems to be alot like Facebook, apart from the fact that you get paid, for page impressions and inviting new members. Literally all I have done so far is set up an account so I don't have that much information yet but I did pop into the chat room and lots of the members seem to prefer it to Facebook and MySpace so far.

There is still lots for me to find out about Yuwie yet, not least how you actually go about recieving the money you earn, so I will do lots more research and report back at a later date.

Body Improvements Forum

Following the success of posting in the Coffee Shop I decided to spread my wings and find other un-blogger related forums to post in. As each of my blogs concentrates on very different topics I would need to find relevant forums for each but decided in the first instance to concentrate on my http://mybestselfjourney.blogspot.com/ blog, which is basically about my body improvement attempts e.g. weight loss etc.

A quick search on google showed that the Body Improvements forum seemed to be one of the most popular and seemed to fit the bill nicely! Lots of posts about weight loss etc on there. It took a few mins to join and then I was away. You can post immediatly and it lets you add a signature which appears at the end of every post, I included my blog addy in mine. Body Improvements forum actually shows this signature straight away as well, which is good as i've seen some other forums that require you to post so many messages before it will show up. If anyone is interested in checking them out the link is http://www.forum-body-improvements.com/ see if you can spy any of my posts ;-)

Dedication Seems To Work

Good news! My income from adsense has trippled since I last wrote :-) Granted this is still not a great deal in the scheme of things but im so happy to be seeing some progress, I wonder if everyone feels this excited in the beginning? It's kinda like gambling I bet lol.

Anyway all I have been doing so far is posting in the coffee shop on blogger and leaving my blog addy at the end of every post and actually I haven't even left that many posts yet (maybe 4 or 5) but it is defo having an effect which is brilliant. I have also been following other interesting blogs out there (of which there are many). This seems to help in a community effect kind of way as other bloggers can find you through links etc, in fact I have had one comment already saying this is how someone found my blog :-)