I’m sure for all you affiliated marketers out there reading this (probably like 2 of you guys), you know website colors can affect a conversion or not. But can the same thing be said about making money with your blog? Does color really have such an impact on your daily lives that it could influence you to not click on an ad or visit a specific site? Well, the answer is yes .

Color does affect many aspects of our lives. For instance, they say red symbolizes power, intensity, passion and courage. Now, have you ever wondered why so many businessmen wear red ties?

Now, let’s stick with the color red example. On the other hand, some people say red can symbolize sexual impulses, danger and quite possibly shame. Now, have you guys ever been to a porn site before?

Yes, you say? *cough* Pervert… just joking, I mean, it’s pretty hard to avoid stumbling across one nowadays, huh? But a large majority of porn sites have some sort of red theme, and most of them that have that color know that red symbolizes sexuality and sexual impulses.

Now, I’m not saying every site would or should have red but that was just a simple observation.

Since we’re stuck on red , did you guys know that the percentages are higher for red cars to get pulled over by a cop than any other colored car? Also, car insurances are usually higher for red colored cars as well.

Can you believe just a simple color can affect our daily lives?

I recently read on Uberaffiliate.com and Paul mentions that landing pages for affiliate marketing should have “happy colors” such as blues , greens , oranges and reds . According to Paul, “The most popular color is probably blue, although I’ve had some success with orange pages on a white background. In most cases keeping the background white is better, black looks much too dark and almost depressing.”

He also mentioned the fact that people should stay away from gloomy colors like grey (did you guys notice me changing my colors last week?).

Now, Paul is an “Uber Affiliate” marketer, he obviously has lots of experience with landing pages. And the color schemes can be said about blog themes too!

What I’m trying to say is colors can affect your daily life, but at the same time, it can also help you adjust to have readers stick around a little longer. Maybe have an additional conversation? Maybe get a few more ads clicked on?

Some tips about website color schemes that I have read:

- Black text on a white background is dull but it is the most readable and pleasing to the eye
- Yellow text on a light or white background is not only unreadable, but causes eye-strain which equals people not staying on your site very long
- Blues and white backgrounds work best for business sites
- Maternity sites should consider using some pink
- Golf or lawn sites should consider green
- Food sites should consider red

I’m sure I left some off but I hope you guys get the point: website colors can affect your blog as well; if your visitors can barely read your site then I bet you won’t have many people returning. And if you don’t have people going to your website that means you’re probably not going to make money.

Yes, some people love him and some people despise him, but either way John Chow is a well established dot com mogul. Don’t worry, I’m not here to suck up to him in anyway shape or form, but I do have respect for him. But the purpose of this post is to tell you that John Chow can help you get good traffic… and get this, you don’t even need to subscribe to his RSS Feeds, visit his blog, or even know about him!

So, how does John Chow help you get traffic without going to his blog?

Simple. All you need to know is “John Chow.” Yup, that’s it. All you need to know is the keywords “John Chow,” well, you also need to know some search engine optimization. But after you get past those two things, you can potentially get hundred(s) of unique visitors to your site.

And don’t worry, even John Chow’s blog won’t be competing with you!

Wait, what? Yup, the dot com mogul himself won’t be competing with you for the keywords “John Chow!” Don’t believe me? Well, just try Googling “John Chow” for yourself and I can assure you he doesn’t appear on the first page, or even the first five (probably more but I was too lazy to search past that).

For those you guys that are too lazy, I took a screenshot of the top five searches for that keyword. But again, you should try Googling it for yourself, it’s pretty shocking for those who don’t know the background between Google and John Chow.

See the image below (click on it to make it bigger):

I won’t go into details but let’s just say Google didn’t appreciate some of the SEO technique’s Chow was practicing.

Still don’t believe me on John Chow helping you get traffic without needing to go to his blog or know anything about him? Well, then why is it that so many people come out with these knock off blogs? For instance, John Cow of Johncow.com , which is currently ranked #1 for the keywords “John Chow” and supposedly gets close to a hundred unique visitors a day (those stats are old and I’m sure it’s more than that now). Even Not John Chow of NotJohnChow.com ranks on the first page.

Now I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get tons and tons of traffic but if you can get yourself ranked in the top 3 spots on those keywords, that’s almost a guaranteed 100+ unique visitors a day!

And if you take my advice and get to the top 3 positions, please let me know the exact stats. I’d definitely be interested!

Does it spark controversy? Hell yeah. Is it good publicity? Hell yeah. Will there be a winner? Well, it’s made official, their will be a winner between John Cow and Garry Conn! And if you could careless about competition, it’s still worth the read when the trash talking began; especially for those who like controversy in gossip. It’s almost like rappers battling through their songs and lyrics, but instead, blogs and posts. But I bet all the hype about it, the trash talking, the "I’m going to take you off my blogroll" stuff is just controversy which will lead to great publicity.

Now, I don’t know the entire story so I’m not going to choose a side and give my two cents on the situation but whatever the case may be, they officially started a competition against each other to see who can make more money online or something?

How did this all start?

Well, if you’re in the "Make Money Online" niche or at least follow it, then you would know that there has been (and continues to be) controversy with Onemansgoal.com blog being sold for $10k to someone who doesn’t have too much knowledge in the "Make Money Online" niche. Well, I think Cow gave his opinion on a situation related to that and Conn called him out on his blogging and making money practices.

And if you know Cow, which I don’t know him too well but I read his blog once in a while, he never makes down on putting people in their place. The conclusion, they start a competition and this will ruin someone’s reputation in the blogosphere!

Well, maybe not to that extreme but definitely for bragging rights and shutting people up. But who will that person be?

Personally, I’m not cheering for either person and I’m still convinced that the whole entire thing is just a publicity stunt because who doesn’t like the controversy, the drama, the gossip - and they’re putting their heads together and it should really pay off for them in traffic, exposure, gaining more RSS Feed subscribers, making more money online, etc.

So, what do you guys think of the situation? Publicity stunt or not? Matter of fact, wasn’t Cow selling his blog or something?

Below are all the links from the beginning of the trash talking leading up to the competition.

Conn:
- John Cow dot Com’s Lifelong Dream of Scamming The Blogosphere
- John Cow VS Garry Conn in a COWpetition - MMO Case Study Enroll Today!

Cow: I couldn’t find that great post I read where Cow really went off and he even turned off the comments. It was a great read…
- John Cow dot Com called out Garry Conn dot Com
- Learn How to Kill Your Competition - A Case Study of How We Beat up Garry Conn
- Cow vs Conn and WIN Affiliate Elite Enterprise
- Cow vs Conn a Case Study for Making Money Online

Wow, Cow is giving away some good prizes… lol… I think I just might have to reconsider!

I’ll be the first to kick start this conversation because I have a feeling you’ll be seeing similar posts discussing Alexa.com’s “new ranking” system on every other blog for the next week or so. But are these new rankings going to better determine how much traffic a site gets? Well, my answer is still “no.”

Based on Alexa’s announcement page, they state things like “Alexa rankings are now based on more sources of data to give a better indicator of website popularity” and “The rankings are now an even better indication of website popularity due to new and improved algorithms.”

Yet, they do not state what those “better indicators” are, all they state is “We won’t tell any secrets just yet, but you can expect to see new features rolled out over the coming weeks and months.” That basically tells me nothing - nothing at all! Well, maybe one thing - that I’m sure those die-hard Alexa oriented webmasters and bloggers will be pissed if they are no longer in the Top 100k and they spent months, if not years, trying to get there.

And I would hate to think about those people who was striving to make it into the Top 100k for months to get pushed back even further. Luckily, most of us don’t care about Alexa ratings… but there are still some people who surround themselves with the inaccurate Alexa ratings.

How that will affect you?

Well, let’s say that a lot of places, especially Ad companies, use Alexa as a way of describing a websites traffic and now that they have changed their ranking system does that mean all these companies that rely on it will change theirs accordingly? Probably not. So, if you are no longer in the Top 100k, I think you’re going to be screwed. It’s almost like what happened when Google dropped a lot of peoples’ pageranks.

And I’m sure a lot of you guys know 45n5’s Top 100 Money Making Blogs, well, I wonder how the new Alexa ratings are going to change that whole entire list. Well, with the except of probably the top 5-10 blogs.

Also, all those posts from bloggers on “How to get in to Top 100K in Alexa” will probably go down the drain now, huh? Because I can guarantee you that more than half of those blogs are no longer in the top 100K… and sure enough, most of those blogs shouldn’t have been there to begin with!

How did it affect me personally?

Well, it seems this blog was knocked from 80,000 to 260,000+ and honestly, I’m not mad. I knew I didn’t deserve to be in the top 100k, at least not right now. But I’m just glad that most other blogs, especially people who rely on Entrecard for all their traffic, could pushed back even further.

The interesting part, is that my other blog DatCurious.com which I updated once within the past 3-4 weeks has a higher ranking than this blog. Here’s the thing, I think I get a lot more organic search engine traffic to that site than on here, so that does mean search engine traffic (most people who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed) will account for part of the rating system? We’ll see, I guess.

The Good News?

Now instead of seeing people articially decrease their Alexa ratings, supposedly they won’t be able to. For instance, all those Entrecard users who dedicate their life to drop and run or chain drop to articially decrease their Alexa ratings, hopefully with this new system, it can’t be gamed.

Well, I’m sure someone will crack it and start gaming the system soon enough!

So with the new changes to Alexa, do you think it will be better? More accurate? Or do you think it’s still going to be inaccurate?

Here we are again with another contest, but I decided not to hold it in the month of March because there were so many going on that my contest might get overlooked! So, I’m going to introduce to you guys the “Get Traffic” contest! You can potentially get your blog/site viewed by over 310,000 unique visitors and that’s not even including RSS Feed subscribers!

First of all, we all know if you want to make money online you’re going to need traffic, right? I always emphasize how important traffic is so that’s why I decided to put together this contest. So, what’s going to be featured? Well, let’s go over the prizes!

I know this post is pretty long but I had to include people’s traffic stats so you’ll know how much these prizes are actually worth!

The Prizes

Get your site reviewed on these big blogs for GREAT exposure:

Review on Carlocab.com (worth $80) – Well known as the “kidblogger” in the Blogosphere, this current 14-year-old has jumped past everybody in search engines for the “Make Money Online” keywords. A very modest young man who knows more about making money online than most people can imagine.Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 38,000+ unique visitors and 90,000+ pageviews
Alexa: 35,802
Technorati: 5,683
RSS Feed Subscribers: 1,105
Google Pagerank: 4

Review on Garryconn.com (worth $25 because winner must write own post) – Garry is a crazy online entrepreneur with crazy tactics, interesting and informative posts and he knows what he is doing. I mean, he makes a living making money from his blog and he can definitely teach you a thing or two! (Um, for the record, I don’t think he’s really crazy. For some reason I’ve been saying that since I bought a very cheap ad spot on his blog. Oh yeah, I called him crazy because he was selling ad spots for like $5.95 a month!)

“Winner must write the post and talk directly with the blogs readers.”

Site Stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 25,567 unique visitors and N/A pageviews
Alexa: 59,437
Technorati: 7,440
RSS Feed Subscribers: 784
Google Pagerank: 4

Review on Theuniversitykid.com (worth $60) – Yet another young entrepreneur that knows his way around the internet, Jason, also known widely as “The University Kid” has great potential and checking out his blog you can clearly see that!

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 23,088 unique visitors and 34,048 pageviews
Alexa: 63,134
Technorati: 11,842
RSS Feed Subscribers: 374
Google Pagerank: 3

Review on Theblogentrepreneur.com (worth $50) – Bill brings you the real deal when it comes to blogging and the truth. And sometimes the truth is harsh and he’ll be the first to express that. Though, I’m sure his review of your site will be just fine!

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 15,426 unique visitors and 33,087 pageviews
Alexa: 69,566
Technorati: 61,368
RSS Feed Subscribers: 230+
Google Pagerank: 2 (predicted 5)

Review on Bloggernoob.com (worth $25) – Though, he’s widely known as a “Blogger Noob” he is definitely far from that. He should be called something opposite of a noob, like old? Lol… well, he definitely shows people in the “making money online” niche that it is certainly capable of doing!

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 12,520 unique visitors and 25,559 pageviews
Alexa: 46,843
Technorati: 16,889
RSS Feed Subscribers: 289
Google Pagerank: n/a

Review on Blogaboutyourblog (worth $50) – Written by yours truly! Now Matthew of BAYB knows what he is doing, I mean, he manages like 5840392549305234 blogs. Then on top of that, I’ll be writing your review on BAYB, man, can you beat that? I mean, have you seen my reviews? Well, okay, have you seen Matthew’s blog?

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 16,792 unique visitors and 29,625 pageviews
Alexa: 53,307
Technorati: 7,785
RSS Feed Subscribers: 591
Google Pagerank: 3

Review on Piggybankpie.com – Patrick, my go-to guy when I need guest posting or writing services questions answered. Not only has he taken his blog from nothing to something in such a short time, you will see his guest posts on tons of A-list blogs and be like “damn, this guys everywhere!”

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 17,021 unique visitors and 23,000+ pageviews
Alexa: 188,586
Technorati: 57,613
RSS Feed Subscribers: N/A
Google Pagerank: 3

Some GREAT Ad spots:

One Month 125×125 Ad spot on Jonathanvolk.com (worth $40) – Jonathan Volk, if you never heard of this guy, well, I guarantee you’ll know him soon enough! And if you’re an affiliate marketer I’m sure you already know him. I mean, it’s hard overlooking a Super Affiliate Marketer making close to $80,000 a month!

Site Stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: According to Jonathan, “a LOT!” Lol! (I told you I would put that!) But I think he gets over 25,000 unique visitors a month.
Alexa: 44,532
Technorati: 26,192
RSS Feed Subscribers: 842
Google Pagerank: 2

One Month 125×125 Ad Spot on Winningtheweb.com (worth $50) – I would say Gyutae Park is slowly but surely “Winning the Web” but I’d be wrong… he’s winning the web over quick as hell! That just says something about his marketing knowledge and he shares that with you on his blog. I’m sure a lot of you guys already know him from his crazy contests but Gyutae was nice enough to contribute as a sponsor to my contest! A marketing genius as well as a down-to-earth helpful guy!Of course, this contest seems like nothing compared to his, huh? Lol!

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 37,000+ unique visitors
Alexa: 47,065
Technorati: 7,715
RSS Feed Subscribers: 843
Google Pagerank: 3

One Month 125×125 Ad Spot and Footnote Ad on Garryconn.com (worth $10.95 due to his crazy discounted rates) – Garry was kind enough to supply us with a sponsored post and ad spots. Now do I have to repeat his site stats? Why not!

Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 25,567 unique visitors and N/A pageviews
Alexa: 59,437
Technorati: 7,440
RSS Feed Subscribers: 784
Google Pagerank: 4

Two Months 125×125 Ad Spot on Etienneteo.com (worth $60) – Etienne is a blogger who continues to prove everyone wrong about making money through Blogger’s blogging platform. If you’re not impressed, you should see how much he makes from his blog!Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 13,000+ Unique Visitors and 20,000+ Pageviews
Alexa: 113,022
Technorati: 12,783
RSS Feed Subscribers: 524
Google Pagerank: 2

One Month 125×125 Ad Spot on Yimto.com (worth $20) - Tim is an up and coming affiliated marketer with some great affiliated makreting strategies you’d be interested in. He actually doesn’t really have ads on his blog so the winner will get even more attention from this prize!Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 15,000+ unique visitors
Alexa: 53,777
Technorati: 7,179
RSS Feed Subscribers: N/A
Google Pagerank: 2

One Month Text Link on Adesblog.com (worth $90) – Abdylas a.k.a. Ades is an internet marketer who has an impressive resume under his belt. Not only does he maintain a few different sites that receive hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month but he also develops various products for the internet, computers, etc. I mean, he quit his well paying job a few years back to focus on his personal projects. I can tell you he’s probably getting paid more now too!Site stats:
Unique visitors/pageviews a month: 57,000+ Unique Visitors and 130,000 Pageviews
Alexa: 68,102
Technorati: 12,463
RSS Feed Subscribers: 868
Google Pagerank: 3

One Month 125×125 on DatMoney.com (worth $20) – Now, I know you guys aren’t really impressed with advertising on DatMoney but let’s hope this contest will help out a lot!

Other/Miscellaneous Prizes:

Pingo.com – One of the most well-known phone card websites out there has generously donated 50 $5 phone cards and I’m giving them out to the first 50 who enters this contest! Not only will the first 50 get $5 but if you sign up for FREE, you’ll Get $15 in International Calls for FREE Now! Hey, if you’re not in the U.S., this is your chance to call me for FREE!

Blogpremiere.com/forum - Jason of Blogpremiere.com/forum has decided to generously contribute his eBook to everyone that enters! (Max. 1,000 people) I can’t even put a price on this eBook! His eBook is titled “Seven Tips to Live a Better Life.” You guys should be glad he’s so generous… so glad you guys should sign up for his forum!

Here’s how the Contest Will Run:

Now you’ve seen how much traffic you could possibly get to your site, I know it will help everyone… and I mean EVERYONE!

Similar to Gyutae’s Winning the Web’s “Craziest Internet Marketing Contest”, you will get many different chances of entering, and by performing certain actions you’ll gain more entries. Though, I’ll probably have easier ways to gain more entries but these clues will only be made available to my RSS Feed subscribers so I’d suggest you guys sign up!

How to Gain Entries:

1. Blog about DatMoney’s contest, link to the contest page and copy and paste and include my sponsors’ links. The links are below (worth 10 entries):

DatMoney.com
Carlocab.com
Garryconn.com
Theuniversitykid.com
Theblogentrepreneur.com
Bloggernoob.com
Blogaboutyourblog.com
Piggybankpie.com
Jonathanvolk.com
Winningtheweb.com
Etienneteo.com
Yimto.com
Adesblog.com
Blogpremiere.com/forum

2. Subscribe to my RSS Feeds by e-mail (worth 5 points) – Now I know a lot of you guys would prefer not to subscribe via e-mail and that’s fine, but I would definitely subscribe to my RSS Feeds in general because I’ll be dropping clues on how to get additional entries and I’ll also be announcing winners that way. (Please note: If you are already subscribed via e-mail, you’re already entered in this contest! Just make to check for additional clues and to see if you won!)

3. For every 2 comments made from now through the end of the contest (May 9th) you will get (1 entry). Of course, there will be a max limit of 6 comments/3 entries per day.

Now I know it’s not a requirement to subscribe to my RSS Feeds but I would suggest doing so because 1.) That’s how I will announce the winners, and 2.) I will give additional ways of gaining entries to the contest. It’ll be extremely easy ones… trust me! Just make sure you use the same e-mail/website to enter!

Also, this is not a requirement but please check out my sponsors’ sites, I guarantee you will not be disappointed! (Disclaimer: You cannot hold me responsible, I’m actually “Guaranteeing” that I won’t be disappointed. We are all different people with different opinions. Oh, and LOL!)

And don’t worry, everyone is a winner!

But if you don’t happen to win one of the reviews or ad spots, don’t worry, every single of one of these sites are definitely worth the price to advertise or purchase a review from. I’m not going to lie; I’m going to be purchasing a few myself! I mean, look at those stats! Check out their blogs for yourself, I was impressed and I bet you will be too!

The contest will end Friday, May 9th at midnight eastern time. Winners will be chosen at random the following day and if prizes are not claimed, DatMoney.com will be accepting the award on their behalf!

Good Luck! I mean, you have a chance of 310,000+ unique visitors possibly checking out your site! Why would you want to miss out on that?