Make money bookmarking web pages you did not even write

August 13th, 2010 | Add a Comment

It can take up quite a lot of time writing articles and submitting or publishing them to ad revenue sharing sites in your efforts to earn some extra income online.

Then, it doesn’t end there – to get a decent amount of traffic to your articles you have to be active in the community of the online writing sites you have joined, and use social bookmarking sites like twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, digg and reddit to get more people noticing your articles, visiting the articles, and hopefully clicking on the ads if there’s something in the ads that interests them.

To get a decent amount of traffic, a writer may join quite a few social bookmarking sites and, once an article is published – whether it be on the writer’s own blog or own website, or an online ad revenue sharing writing site, the writer may spend time bookmarking a recently written article on all the social bookmarking sites he or she belongs to. Bookmarking does not take too long, but if you’re bookmarking each article you write to 20 social bookmarking sites, and are also trying to be a little active in those sites (to get your bookmarks noticed more) it really does seem like a lot of effort. Trying to get lots of traffic to your articles cuts into time you could spend writing! (or doing something else like spend more time with your family.)

Perhaps you don’t even like writing that much, but you know that the more effort you put in, the more chance you have of getting lots of visitors and lots of clicks on those ads. You love the idea of earning extra income online through something as easy to do as write articles and bookmark them, but, boy, does it take time!

Now how about if you could earn extra income from doing only the bookmarking on social sites, and not actually writing any articles?

You can.

Social sites like facebook, twitter, digg, reddit and stumbleupon do not share their ad revenue with users – not yet, anyway – who knows what the future will bring.

However, some bookmarking sites do share their revenue.

Xomba
She Told Me
Best-Reviewer
RedGage

are just four of them.

Yeah! Google Adsense ads appear near the content of your bookmark (and your bookmark often links to an article of yours that is on a site that may also have a Google Adsense revenue sharing program or other ad revenue sharing program) (Sites like HubPages) (or your own blog or website.)

Now, bookmarking is easy. It’s hardly writing at all. On Xomba you just need to write about 50 words. On Tip Drop only about 25, and I think She Told Me is somewhere inbetween.

Note: the above paragraph is 34 words – not a lot of words, hey?

But what if you don’t have any articles to bookmark and link to?

Then bookmark somebody else’s articles!

Now, some places like Xomba, and I think She Told Me too, allows users to link to a web page only once, so if the writer of the article or owner of the site has already linked to it, you can’t.

There are loads of articles online though, that are not bookmarked.

People who don’t know anything about bookmarking their articles or pages on their website are not bookmarking them. You can.

Risk: Although the person may appreciate the traffic your bookmarking brings them, they may not want to be linked to from social bookmarking sites, choosing to rather use other forms of linking such as from similar sites, or directories related to what their business or site is about. They may get upset that you link to them without first asking that you do – especially when they realise you may be earning some extra income from it (it being bookmarking on sites that share ad revenue – and bookmarking content they have written.)

What about people who want to bookmark all their articles and web pages, but just don’t have the time?

Offer a service and do it for them!

Join sites like Xomba and She Told Me, get and use a Google adsense account (free) if you don’t yet have one, and offer a service bookmarking other people’s writing!

The sites I mention in this blog post are all free to join and use.

Where would you advertise that you offer a free social bookmarking service?

Announce it on your Facebook profile, twitter, free Blogger blog, or on your own site or self-hosted blog.

If wanting to contact businesses and website owners (and not just writers of articles on various writing sites) you might want to browse around on the Internet and look for business websites that have quite a few pages and also have quite a few articles. Contact them via the contact form or page on their site, or email them if their email address is displayed on their site.

If emailing people be careful of not allowing your email to seem like spam. Obviosly the risk of these emails seeming like spam is lessened as you are not charging the people anything for your service and they stand to benefit if your bookmarking efforts produce some extra traffic for them, but you may also benefit, and this may seem like spam. Make it clear in an email or any advertising that you do, that you do in fact stand to benefit. I’m not too clued up about email marketing and you may have to first do some research on the do’s and don’ts of email marketing if this is the method you plan to use to let people know about the free service you offer.

If you’ve read this far, and it sounds too much like hard work, you’re probably also the type of person who doesn’t like to write long articles in an effort to earn some extra income online. Then think about it – this actually suits you.

Still not convinced or bothered?

There is also a way you can bookmark content that has not taken you as long as it takes to research and write long articles – still using ad revenue sharing bookmarking sites, of course.

Photos.

The photos should be yours that you’ve uploaded to a site or various sites. Write a short little description of the photo (on Xomba or She Told Me etc) and link to it.

Taking loads of photos, quickly resizing them and uploading them to a site or two is quicker than researching and writing long articles.

One site you might enjoy uploading your photos to is RedGage – Your photos can earn you residual income on RedGage as RedGage pays you according to how many views your content (including photos) on their site gets.

Create two ways of earning an income from your online photos by uploading them to RedGage and describing (bookmarking) and linking to them from a site like Xomba!

Oh, nice, but you do still rather want to do the bookmarking articles thing?

When you tell people about the free service you offer, be sure to add a little disclaimer, or at least make it very clear what the work entails.

Tell them that it’s a free service and that you work at your own pace. You don’t want to be rushed. If they feel they have the time to rather do it themselves, or time to find somebody that does it quicker than you do, then that’s what they should do.

If they decide to use your service, tell them that should they decide to start doing it themselves, or should they get somebody else to do it, you are not going to remove any bookmarks you have already made. Although you are offering a free service, it saves the person who “hired” you a lot of time, and you are entitled to continue earning residual income from the effort you put in.

Also let them know that you reserve the right to stop “working” for them at anytime. They are not paying you.

Earnings disclaimer:
I’m not saying you will make an overnight fortune using any of the extra income methods I describe above. Obviously the harder you work at it, the more you will earn, but this hard work also includes tagging your bookmarks carefully, using good keywords and repeating those keywords a few times, and being aware of not only Google Adsense program policies and Terms of Service, but also the terms of service or terms and conditions of the various social bookmarking sites you might join.

Do a bit more research first, and good luck!