Hello everyone - Zero and Up has been nominated for the best blog design competition at Blogger’s Choice Awards!

Be sure and click on that link to vote for me - it would be great if you would!

No sense in making a post without some other news though, right?
Well, I’m thinking of starting a new business, and documenting it’s success (well, I hope it will be a success) here at this blog - maybe it could one day serve as a guide for people who want to start up their own online business. I’m not sure exactly when it will happen, but I’m hoping to get started within the next month or two. Wish me luck!

First of all, head over to the new contest at Greatest Reviews - there are plenty of great prizes. (Not to mention that I have pitched in three prizes as well ) Click here to check it out, and be sure to enter. Best of luck to all of you who do decide to enter!

TheNetFool is also running a contest with plenty of prizes - there are so many that probably everyone who enters will get at least some small prize. Visit this link to enter the contest.

Also, don’t forget about the Saturday Cash promotion going on here at Zero and Up. All you have to do is subscribe to this blog via email and you’re eligible to win cash, a winner is selected each Saturday.

Be sure to participate in all three of these contests - you might end up winning some cash for it! Best of luck to all of you.

I’ve ready many people who say that running a SocialSpark sponsorship will hurt your traffic. Personally, I believe that this is only true if the sponsorship is poorly designed, annoying, or irrelevant. However, I’d like to go on more than just my personal opinion. So, guess what I’ve done? I’ve applied for a 30 day SocialSpark sponsorship that is relevant to the content of this blog.

Here is one thing to keep in mind. If you don’t like the little popup - you’ll only see it four times during a whole month max. The little bar at the bottom, although some don’t like it, is really nothing different than the sponsorship bar that John Chow and many others run across the top of their blogs.

At the end of the sponsorship, I’ll show you some stats and we’ll be able to make an educated decision - does  a SocialSpark sponsorship affect traffic?

P.S. - You can read my content daily without even visiting this blog. Just subscribe via email by filling in the subscription box on the upper right area of the sidebar. Thanks!

So many people wonder if it’s possible to get a genuine work at home job. You want an actual job that pays you by the hour, not one that pays you commission to sell things, but they just don’t seem to exist. Well, if you are one of those people who have been looking for genuine, legitimate, and/or pay-by-the-hour online jobs so that you can work at home, today is your day.

Of all the sites that I’ve been to, very few have actually been a truly free resource of online jobs. After a few hours of searching through Google, I came across genuinejobs.com. At Genuine Jobs, new jobs are posted about every other weekday. None of the jobs will require you to pay; in fact, any jobs that require a start up fee of any kind will be removed from the website once they are discovered.

So, what kind of jobs will you find there? For the most part, you will find article writing jobs. People are looking to pay people to write blogs for them, and you can expect to be paid about $5-25 per post. Also, if you know anything about web design, people will pay you to manage their website for them. The typical going rate for jobs in that category is about $10-20 per hour. I’ve also seen a few other jobs, such as being paid to write curriculum, or being paid to ghost write an e-book.

This DOESN’T Mean It’s Easy To Get The Job
Just like in the real world, there is a lot of competition for these jobs, and usually there are only 1-5 spots available for each job. Before you even head to the Genuine Jobs website, you’ll want to make sure that you have a professional resume and a portfolio of your personal experience. Of the 15 jobs I’ve applied for, I’ve only heard back on 1 - and that one didn’t end up working out. This is a great opportunity to get genuine work online, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. My guess is that it would take quite a few months of checking the job board and making applications before you get a done-deal on a job there, but when that day comes it will definitely be worth it.

I hope that this post and that website will help some of you realize that there are genuine ways to earn money online that truly don’t involve selling and that have no monetary investment.

Today is a day to celebrate mothers around the world. If you are a mother, happy mothers day! If you know any mothers, be sure to tell them happy mothers day as well!

What are you all doing to celebrate the great mothers in your life today?

First, let’s look at the link love for today!
Freelancer 2.0 has a nice review of the John Chow e-book. If any of you are thinking about downloading Mr.Chow’s free e-book, then this may help you make up your mind.
The Net Fool celebrates getting a PageRank upgrade and also delves out some information about what PageRank is.
Internet Babel has a comprehensive list of the top marketing websites for bloggers.
ThatBlogSite shares some SEO tips while reminding bloggers to write for humans, not search engines.

I hope you enjoy all of those great posts from various blogs around the web.
Now, let’s get on to the cash - yep, it’s time to give out some cash to one of my lucky email subscribers! All you have to do to be eligible to win Saturday Cash is to subscribe to this blog by email. You can do so by typing in your email address on the upper-right hand side of the blog and confirming your email address.

So, who is our lucky winner this week?

t**tro@**ail.com (some letters removed for privacy)
The winner has been emailed and has 48 hours to claim their prize of $3! (The prize each Saturday is randomly selected from 1-10)

If you aren’t already subscribed via email, go ahead and do so know so that you can be eligible to win next Saturday! Thanks, and hope to see you all again for the next Saturday Cash! (Well, actually I hope to see you back tomorrow for my next post, but…)

This post is by Guest blogger Agent 001. He is a student, currently at IIT Kharagpur. He is from India and would like to share some of his knowledge on RSS. He blogs on Greatest Reviews.

What is RSS?
RSS is short form of Rich Site Summary when it was in version 0.91 or Really Simple Syndication when it is in version 2.0. It does not matter what it stands for, its work is what matters. RSS is kind of summary of certain website or blog. In simple words it is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Most bloggers know of Feeds. RSS is just a format of feed. Real question is not RSS but what feed is.

What is Feed?
Feed is the process or way of feeding information full or summary to a particular individual to its desk. It is way to deliver the news or updates to one person without having him to visit the website or blog. So the updates or news is available directly to you.

Here we are to discuss one of the best formats of Feed, the RSS.

I am assuming Feed and RSS as one here. So when I say RSS it also indicates Feeds.

So how RSS does work?
It is very simple. RSS is just a copy of summary (or whole) of news or article published on the website or blog. It is .xml form of the .html or text or photo you just published. The contents of your articles or news is copied and sent to the desired destination when it asks for updates. RSS can be read by only some special software programs. When these software programs ask for updates on particular feed, the updated content is sent to it.

So what are the programs and how can you get these RSS?
RSS content can be read by programs called an “RSS reader”, “Feed reader” or an “Aggregator”, which can be web-based or desktop-based. Web-based means all the RSS content is collected on some website. Desktop-based means all the RSS content is delivered to you desktop or computer. Currently all popular web browsers (IE 7, Firefox2 and Opera 9) can read RSS so you might not need extra softwares. For web-based Feed reader look for My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

Well so why is it so important?
It is very important for both website/Blog owners and visitors. The numbers of Feeds subscriber shows its owner the number of loyal readers. For visitors it shows the worthiness or popularity of Blog/website.

I feel now you know all about RSS and feeds. Hey wait dear have you thought of how to get more RSS subscriber for your own Blog/website (Now on I will say both as Blog). Well I feel I know how. Just wait I will tell you but first some of my Blogging tips to you all. I promised Alan to give you some Blogging tips too.

First of all you need to have a good Blog. Good blog means good blog design and good content. Have a simple blog design. Good content always attract people. If you are in you starting stage it might seem difficult to get people to read your blog. Do your best and give as much good content as possible. Go to other blogs and leave some good comments on them. Join some Social networking Sites. I am just giving you small tips to get good traffic. I cannot give all details here. Well now tell your visitors that if they like your content they must subscribe to your RSS Feeds or just tell them that your articles updates soon so they need to subscribe to RSS Feeds. One of the best way that I know to increase your RSS reader count is to hold a contest and tell your visitors to subscribe and win prizes. You can be more creative and find your own way.

Also, here are some of the links which can provide more info on RSS and Feeds.
1. RSS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. XML.com: What Is RSS
3. What Is RSS? RSS Explained - www.WhatIsRSS.com
4. Introduction to RSS - WebReference.com

Thanks again to Agent001 for the guest post! If you are interested in writing a guest post, then just send me an email or leave a comment and I’ll get back to you. Click here for my contact information.

I mentioned a while back that I had signed up for SocialSpark; In fact, I was invited for the alpha. So, what makes SocialSpark great?

First of all, they have a code of ethics that sets them above and beyond other paid-blogging services.
-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

No longer do you have to worry about getting on Google’s bad side to do paid posting - with SocialSpark, all paid posts use the nofollow attribute.

So, you’ve gone through the simple sign up process - now it’s time to really get started!
Even if you aren’t interested in making money with your blog, there’s still tons of stuff that can help you out. Each blogger and advertiser has a profile. You can create a friends list and send messages to other bloggers. This friend and messenger system is a great way to meet new bloggers. (By the way, remember that part of your May checklist is to make a new blogger friend!) Overall, SocialSpark has a very friendly atmosphere - every day or two I get another friend request from someone else. Sometimes it’s someone I already know, but sometimes I meet new people as well.

By placing the ITK code on your blog (which is provided for you when you add your blog), IZEA will record interesting statistics about your blog. How many hits did you get? How many unique visitors? What country where most of your visitors from? All this and more is available at SocialSpark - this can be a plus especially for showing off your blog to prospective advertisers.

The opportunity system is okay - although it could use some tweaking. You all have heard what I think about the reservation system. It’s a wonderful idea, they just need to make it more distinguished between readily available posts and ones that are just able to reserve. Sometimes I’m looking for something to post about right away, you know? The pay is decent, although it seems harder to grab the higher paying opps. If I had to choose one thing about the opps system, though, I’d say that it would really come in handy to know why I don’t meet the qualifications for a certain assignment. Other than that, nonetheless, the opp reservation system seems to allow a more wide spread distribution of assignments than previous installments of paid blogging.

Another cool thing about SocialSpark is that anyone can run an ad campaign, even with $0.00 of funding. There are these things called “Sparks” that allow you to give ideas to other bloggers. If you’d like them to link to your blog, you can do link exchanges using this system as well. Keep in mind that it’s still good in my opinion to use nofollow links even in the free spark assignments, since Google seems to look down on blatant link exchanges.

No, SocialSpark isn’t perfect - but I do think that it’s on the way to becoming the best paid blogging platform around. If you haven’t signed up yet, be sure to head over to SocialSpark.com and sign up - at the least you’ll get a few free hits to your blog. Who knows, you might end up earning money too!

Not John Chow asked “Where does your income come from. What has worked for you?”

For Zero and Up, the main source of income comes from private ad sales. In fact, so far, Zero and Up has been monetized solely by private ad sales - no middleman involved. Forums have been a great tool to sell ad space, resulting in additional exposure. At first I gave out a few ads in exchange for reviews, and after that I have moved into a sale price structure, which has worked really well for me.

However, it can be really tough to get people to be interested in buying ads from you, especially in beginning stages of blogging. In some cases, it’s more reasonable to consider using third party advertising such as Google Adsense or Adbrite. Nonetheless, I heartily recommend that if possible, you stick to private ad sales for the most part. You really maximize your earnings as well as the value given to advertisers by sticking to an ad method over which you hold total control. (Not to mention that since there is no middleman, you get to keep 100% of the profits!)  If I had to pick one thing that really impresses advertisers, I would guess that it would be your RSS feed subscriber count. Really focus on driving up that number.

As for my private ad sales, the majority of my income has come from image/banner ads. I’ve also sold a handful of no-follow text links as well, along with one paid review so far. My earnings aren’t huge, but they aren’t small either; they are higher than what you would expect a three-month-old blog to achieve. I’m hoping to keep this up over the coming months, and I’m hoping to keep building relationships with my current advertisers as well as any new people who wish to advertise here.

To the readers: What would you say is your best way to earn online? Do you sell ads privately, or rely mainly on something like PayPerPost or Adsense? Sound your opinion!

How do you find inspiration on what to write about? and when you do find a subject to write about, how much research do you do or do you just go from the top of your head (i.e. opinion)? - JMom
JMom, I’d have to say it’s a mix. There are plenty of days that I go right off from the top of my head. I see something that I already know about that I haven’t written about yet, and I decide to sit down and write about it. For the average informative post, I’d say I do about 1 or 2 Google searches just to make sure I’m on the right track and to confirm that I’m not passing along a misunderstanding. Opinion posts do seem to get the most traffic, I’ve noticed. As for the inspiration of what to write about, I don’t even know myself. It’s something that I still struggle with on some days that I have writer’s block.

What is your favorite Wii game, and what game are you looking forward to most? - Mattmagician
Ah, the Wii - it’s a fun system in itself. I’d say that right now, my favorite game on the Wii would have to be Super Mario Galaxy. The music is absolutely amazing and I think it’s the true sequel to Mario 64. As for what game I’m looking forward to most, I’d have to say that Animal Crossing on the Wii would be pretty tight.

I don’t fully understand about “No Follow Links.” Could you explain those for me please? Thanks! - Charla
No-Follow links are links that are ignored by the search engines. Google organizes it’s search results in order of authority - the most popular sites (based on linking) appear higher in the search results. Because link ads would allow people to basically purchase higher search results, Google has introduced the rel=”nofollow”. Links with that code (example: <a href=http://sponsoredlinkad.adv rel=nofollow>) are not factored in to Google’s search result placements. Hopefully I answered your question for you!

Thanks to the people who submitted questions - I can’t guarantee that I’ll do this again, but who knows - it’s always a possibility.