These days you need to have plenty of links pointing to your site, and competition is harder each day. I hate to spend my time building links, rather than updating my websites and blogs. I’m listing some free sites and places where to get backlinks without too much hassle.

I’m only including some of the lesser known places. I’m sure you already have links from Youtube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest etc…

1. – 25 free backlinks via SocialMonkee

Review: SocialMonkee  helps you to build up 25 free daily backlinks.  You can use their web interface or their plugin for Firefox. Their version is limited to “only” 25 daily back links, and only one website can be submitted per day. Premium version has up to 100 backlinks, and 3 site submits per day.  You can do just fine with the free version.

Get your backlinks from: SocialMonkee website

2. – TraffUP

Review:  Traffup works by points. You can get backlinks by adding your websites to Traffup, and “pay” users by points. Users get points by visiting your site(s).

More points you are willing to pay, the more visitors your site will get. You start up with 100 points, and get more by visiting other websites. IF you only wish to get working backlinks. Just give user one point per visit. That way your points will last for long, and your websites will stay visible.

Get your backlinks from: TraffUP website

3. – 2500+ free backlinks via IMT Website submitter

Review:  Don’t get too excited with IMT’s website submitter. Links that you get via IMT submitter isn’t the greatest, but at least you get a good start. Also your website will be indexed faster. It’s gonna take some time, before all the sites has been submitted.

Leave the IMT website submitter on, when you have nothing else to do with your computer. There is no registration needed, and IMT Website submitter works directly on their website.

Get your backlinks from: IMT Website Submitter website

4. – Various other backlink places

PR (PageRank) 1-7 sites:

identi.ca
www.folkd.com
multiply.com
ycombinator.com
www.oneview.com
www.linkagogo.com
www.social-bookmarking.net
www.startaid.com
www.ttlink.com
www.oyax.com
www.sitesays.com
www.bookmark4you.com
www.stumpedia.com
snuggythugg.com
www.blogbookmark.com
www.i89.us
www.findbetterlinks.com
www.geimhost.com
www.karmalynx.com

5 dollar discount from iHerb health store: Visit iHerb.com, and get your 5 dollar discount from your first your order.

When you are doing search engine optimized blog posts. Sometimes you are simply over doing it. Have you made these mistakes?

1. Keyword stuffing

For some reason people think that keywords are something you need to add to every possible place you can find. Wrong! It will kill your content and make it hard to read. Why would you try to optimize your blog posts to Google, and not to your readers?

Question you should ask from yourself when writing an article: “Would you share this on social media?”.

2. Non-optimized images

Name your images properly. “46431dsGfd4542.jpg” vs “chart_of_my_passive_income.jpg”, which one you think search engines would like better? Also remember to add alt tags. I also like to add text under images (description).

3. Changing tags, keywords, titles too often

It’s not cool to edit your blog posts every two days, just because you think that your titles were wrong or could be better. That’s just bad SEO. Everyone should know that it takes time to build up proper relationship with search engines. People will link to you site based on content, and not by title.

4. Meta Description & Keyword Spam

Meta description is an invitation to your site. You have 160 characters to prove, why your site is worth visiting. Always tell what your site is about. Keyword stuffing is bad for your blog.

5. Focusing on a certain keyword

I rarely focus on certain keyword(s) You don’t beat the keyword competition by focusing on one or two keywords. Think about sentences that your visitor would write on Google. You win the competition by quality. Quality sites get higher quality links. It’s slightly slower method, but it’s worth it.

6. Your site is too slow

If your site is filled with crap (ads, videos, banners, scripts etc..), it will scare your visitors away. Slower sites also gets lower ranking by the Google. Always test your site with website analyzers.

Related: 18 Free Tools To Analyze Your Website or Blog

7. Never abandon your older blog posts

Make sure you keep your older blog posts up-to-date. Keeping the content fresh means that visitors will more likely to link your past content.

Related: 5 Reasons why you should update your old blog posts!

8. Spending your time elsewhere

Your articles doesn’t write themselves. If you are pushing all the article writing thanks to Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums….You’re in trouble. Building up connections is a good thing, but make sure you’ve have set your priorities right. Set yourself daily goals, and when you have done them, you are free to spend your time on social media.

Tired and bored sitting in front of your computer?:

Check out iHerb: iHerb.com, and get up to $10 discount from your first order by using coupon YUY952 – Me recommends!

Sometimes I wonder, if I’m the only one using the iHerb’s affiliate program? iHerb is one of the biggest health stores online.

and only affiliate network that’s not Klingon to beginners.

From iHerb‘s website:

“Recent data analysis, conducted in October 2011, found that iHerb customers referring 3 or more people over a year ago earned an average of $240.00. And the figure for customers referring 10 or more people was $640.00. “

Goal: Getting one new referral per day? Calculate yourself. Did I get your attention?

1. Multilevel earnings that works!

Beauty of the iHerb referral systems is the multilevel earning system. You only need to sell the service once, and you’re done. No need to re-sell everything to the same referral. Best of all…once he or she refers the iHerb to a new customer, you get gain commission from that too. Up to level 4 referrals!

4% from level 1 sales
3% from level 2 sales
2% from level 3 sales
1% from level 4 sales

There are no buying or resale requirements. Or any other strings attached!

2. You don’t even need a website to start earning!

With the coupon code system, you don’t have to worry about customer using your links.

Tips how to get new referrals:

- Use coupon as signature on web forums (if rules allows)
- Share the coupon to your friends, family, neighbors, colleguas…
- Use Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc…)
- Share on bulletin boards
- Promote on your blog/website
- Use as your email signature (don’t spam)

3. International – Get referrals from all over the world!

One of the few referral programs that works worldwide. You can get customers from all over the world! China, Japan, Finland, Spain, Australia, US…

4. Adblockers can’t block your ads!

Unlike Adsense. Ad-blockers (like adblock+) can’t block your iHerb ads. You can build custom links, and images yourself! Just don’t rename them to ad_banner etc. and none of the ad-blockers won’t detect your ads!

5. Great service and prices!

I’m a regular customer myself, and even if you aren’t making any money with iHerb rewards program. You still get great products for cheaper than you would from your local stores. It’s easier to recommend iHerb products to your friends, when you have your own first hand experiences.

6. Discounts and campaigns!

iHerb has plenty of new discounts weekly, and great referral campaigns that can boost of your income. Just follow the emails you are getting from iHerb for new earning possibilities. Remember: All the iHerb coupons have the same value!

7. Usable on any site.

Just be creative, and you can sell iHerb products on any kind of website. As you can customize your own ads. Perfect way to to get fitting ads, as you can design them yourself.

I use iHerb as my main ad network on every site and blog I have. I don’t have to worry about custom links and codes on each site. As the same link works on every site!

How to get started with iHerb?

Visit: www.iherb.com and make your first order with a coupon YUY952 and you will receive a $5 discount (or $10 on order over $40). Once you have done your first order, you will then get your personal code that you can start share with your friends….

Reminder: Always read the FAQ and Terms & Conditions carefully. This applies on any affiliate network!

Monetizing your blog: See other affiliate networks on my review: Adsense vs iHerb vs Amazon vs Tradedoubler vs Linkshare.

Tired and bored sitting in front of your computer?:

Check out iHerb: iHerb.com, and get up to $10 discount from your first order by using coupon YUY952

This is the boring intro text that I always skip when reading other blogs. Please continue…

1. UFO – Unique, Fresh and Original

“Content is…”

No matter how many times the Google’s search algorithm will change. Without a good content, your website won’t be worth sh*t. Never worry about the article length, worry about the quality.

2. Choosing the perfect title for your blog post

Title is the first thing that will lure people to your site.. If you want to stuff your title full of keywords, Don’t blame me if you don’t get any visitors.

3. Meta Description – It’s not for the Google!

This is an invitation what your site/page is about. It’s not a place where to spam your keywords. I wouldn’t visit a site that has description full of stuffed keywords. Would you?

4. Title tags…

When you have lured visitor to your site. It’s safer to add those keywords to the H1 tag. Yes…Use just one H1 tag. Some SEO “gurus” tell you that Google doesn’t pay much attention to H1 tags. I must say…Thanks!

5. …Even more title tags!

Adding H2 title tags (sub-headings) between paragraphs. You get more important keyword space, and visitor get time to breath. I do not read blog posts that are long, if they don’t have any sub-headings. It’s also easier to find just that information you are searching!

6. Using Keywords and Labels

Yes, they are not so important anymore, but you will never know when that is going to change. Also labels/keywords helps visitor to better navigate your site. How many keywords should I use? BlogSpot has a limit of 200 characters (and Blogger is owned by Google). Do the math…

7. Taking your old blog posts in a good use

Always remember to add links to your related blog posts. Getting more visitors to your older articles, and more internal links = Win-Win situation.

8. Something to see – Pictures!

Almost any picture is better than nothing at all. Make sure your image has alt tags, and that the image is named properly. If you don’t have any fitting image…be creative! Image used on this blog post was taken from a post-it note. Yes. Those yellow stickers. I just took a photo of it, and added some photo filters! Simple, free and easy!

9. Spel-Checcker – More professional look!

Always fix spellings errors, before sending your blog post to the Internets.

10. Chop your blog post!

Sometimes your blog post might be just way too long. Solution? Just cut it to multiple parts, and publish them separately. You can pick new titles and keywords! Genius!

11. Finally your blog post is ready!

Double check everything, and click the publish button. Whew!

12. Last Step – Backlinks!

This is the most boring part (I’d rather spend time on writing). I don’t like building links, but it’s something you need to do daily. Places I usually put/promote my links are Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious, Digg and SocialMonkee (which will give you 25 free backlinks daily). Remember to change the lead text, and keywords.

Tip: Add different topic, and keyword variations to Notepad. Copy-Paste = Win

Hopefully I kept this short enough? Did you read other than the titles? Did I just prove my point?

Tired and bored sitting in front of your computer?:

Check out iHerb: iHerb.com, and get up to $10 discount from your first order by using coupon YUY952 – Why this ad is here? Answer is here.

People often abandon their work from the past. You’ve spent countless of hours working with your old posts. So why don’t you recycle them? Newer readers might have missed your earlier blog posts. Editing your old blog posts is a good way to bring up new and fresh content!

#1 Keep your blog posts & site updated – Always fresh content to share!

If your blog have outdated info. Why not just go back, and revisit the outdated parts from your blog? Fresh content with just a fraction of time you used on the original article!

#2 Add Pictures – Ooh..Shiny!

Adding picture(s) makes your blog post look like new! Also Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg etc. uses images from your blog post, and having any image is pretty much better than no image at all. Google image search is a great way to gain more visitors to your site! Remember to add proper image tags, and name the image.

#3 Link to your older blog posts – Don’t abandon your previous work!

Remember to link to your older posts every time you get a change, if you have written previously about the topic. Just don’t over do it, or your blog posts starts look spammy. Linking to older posts can help Google to index posts that haven’t been even indexed! It’s also nicer to share your old articles with updated info on Twitter, and other social media!

#4 Keywords and Labels – For the Search Engines and visitors!

For some reason people don’t add labels and keywords to their blog posts. Sometimes the labels (at least on Blogger) are faster indexed than the whole blog posts! Users can also better navigate on your site by using labels.

#5 Spelling – More professional look to your site!

Correcting spelling errors from your site brings your site/blog into a new level. Many browsers has a built-in spell checkers nowadays and you can use free Office software like OpenOffice or LibreOffice to correct your spelling.

Let me know, if you have more tips to share!

Tired and bored sitting in front of your computer?:

Check out iHerb: iHerb.com, and get up to $10 discount from your first order by using couponYUY952 – Thanks!

If you are looking for a free tools for the Search Engine Optimizations (aka SEO). Check out these website analyzers that help me to find out if I have missed anything crucial, or I have errors within the site/blog. Also many of these analyzers gives your website a free backlink!

I’m gonna keep this blog post short and sweet. I’m sure you want to test these tools by yourself!

Oh, and one more thing: I always link only to sites that are safe (aka have passed virus/spyware scanners and WOT tool (Web Of Trust))

1. Woorank

These listings are not in order, but this is my favorite one. If I have to pick up just one free tool. This is it! Too bad that the free version only works once a week. It’s still better than any other free tools that are out there.

2. Pear Analytics

Easy to use analyzer that shows up what you need to improve within your site. Great and simple tips to beginners.

3. Google Page Speed Online

“Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. Reducing page load times can reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates”

4. GoingUp

Diagnoses out your titles, keywords, meta-descriptions, tags and much more. Fast and simple.

5. WebSiteOptimization

Simple way to see how many different objects your site has. Objects like images, CSS, javascripts and other files.

6. AboutUs – We Know The Web

Analyzes your pages, titles, links, and pictures, and shows up how search engine friendly your page is.

7. Alexa

How many visitors your site has, sites that links to your site, keywords and much more.

8. ScrubTheWeb – Free Meta Tag Analyzer

Checks your meta-tags and rates your site on how well your site is ranked.

9. Website Grader – Website SEO tool

Reviews your website and blog. Also has “Improve Your Grade” service, which works 30days for free.

10. Pingdom

Enter a URL to test the load time of that page, analyze it and find bottlenecks. Great way to find out how fast your website loads!

11. Website-seo-tools.com

“Website analyzer tool is created just for analyzing webpages SEO optimization . This is not some website popularity grader. Final Score is calculated from various parameters. Our tool doesn’t count in social bookmarks or anything like that. Website analyzer is purely offline tool that will measure SEO as it will be without pagerank and backlinks. ”

12. Visible.net

“The Visible.net website analyzer tool is the perfect addition to any webmaster’s toolbox. It provides SEO data and statistics designed to help improve many of the important ranking factors taken into consideration by search engines. With this tool, clients or users can quickly and easily run any page URL, select filters and set limits for results to immediately receive a web page analysis for your meta tags, header and page content, keywords, images and links. We also provide some interesting page stats such as HTTP code, load time, page size, text, anchor tags, nofollows, bold tags, page headings, alt tags and both internal and external linking data.”

13. SEOworkers

“This SEO Analysis Tool is to help you analyze and measure the ranking potential of your web pages. It doesn’t only analyze the Meta Tags of your pages, rather it tries to use the same spider technology as the search engine spiders themselves.”

14. Check-domains.com/

Pagerank, backlinks, authority links, indexed pages, social networking, SEOmoz results

15. Submit Express
“See how search engine robots analyze your or your competitors web site, Receive tips on how to improve your Meta Tags. Check the keywords used on the page and find the keyword density, web server operating system where site is hosted, website file size, links found”

16. Website-seo-tools.com

Title/meta description relevance, headings, links, images, domain age, domain expires etc…

17. PageBoss

Website has annoying autoplay video, but other than that. Pageboss is a fine website that gives you backlink details from various sites. Just click those arrows to find more details!

18. StatsCrop

Meta-analysic, links, Alexa traffic, SEO score, DNS….

Bonus – Free Backlinks!:

Get 25 free backlinks daily from SocialMonkee site. Me highly recommends. Site has annoying autoplay video, but don’t let it run you down.

Bored sitting in front of your computer?:

Check out iHerb: iHerb.com, and get up to $10 discount from your first order by using couponYUY952 – Thanks!

I see way too often photos that have been over sharpened, or where the images have been killed with excessive use of noise removal. Maybe because the sharpening would have added too much extra noise to them? Here’s a guide that helps you to sharpen your images without additional noise + It gives you much more freedom than the regular Photoshop sharpening tools. This guide works on every Photoshop CS version (might work on earlier versions too):

Original picture: (Matt Schofield – Puistoblues 2011):

As you can see this pictures has a nice amount of noise, and it would be hard to add extra sharpening without adding too much extra noise. Photo is not the technically best, but it’s a good example for this tutorial.

Lets start with the guide, shall we?

1. Open the image, then duplicate the layer (right mouse click and select -> “Duplicate Layer”)

2. Make sure you have the new layer duplicated layer selected, and go to Filter -> Other -> High Pass.

3. Image should now turn grey. Select the radius, and move the slider until you see outlines coming out. 0,9 pixels is usually a good starting point (fits for most of the images). When you have found the right settings, click OK.

4. Next we need to take the saturation out from the “high pass image”. Select Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U) , and move the saturation slider to the value -100. This step will remove any extra color noise from the sharpening progress.

5. Remove extra noise/grain from the “high pass image” with the Photoshop’s noise removal filter. or use your favorite noise removal plugin like Noise Ninja, Neat Image etc… Just make sure that the lines doesn’t get too blurry.

6. Once the noise/grain has been removed set the layer type from normal to overlay (or try soft light/hard light).

8. If the image is not sharp enough, you can duplicate the “high pass layer”, many times as you want! That’s it!

Final image with corrected levels. As you can see the original noise is still there (it wasn’t removed in the first place), and yet the image is much more sharpen without any additional noise!

With this method you can make your images much more sharpen, than what you can do with Photoshop’s own sharpening tools that brings white halo around your images easily, and also sharpens the noise. I’m using this sharpening technique to all of my images (that needs extra sharpening that is…)

You could also turn this into a macro that fits best for your needs, but this isn’t too time consuming in the first place. You just need to tweak your images couple of times.

Happy sharpening.

Believe it or not, but this blog does not write it self.

Support this blog and buy your health products from iHerb.com, and get a 5 dollar discount (or $10! from orders over $40) from your first order by using coupon YUY952 – Try it, love it, share it.

There are way too many ads on the Internet that will promise you a huge income with just a little effort from your side. If you expect an easy or a quick way to get rich, then I recommend you to stop reading this blog post any further.

If something is too good to be true, then it usually is. If someone promises you on an advertisement banner a $300/hour income…You might want to ask yourself “Where can I signup?”..Well…joking aside. Exaggeration can be great on some ads, but sometimes it goes totally out of control, and some online ads goes more on a comic side. If the Internet would be a full of “making millions sitting at home” job opportunities that actually work, who would do a “normal work” anymore? Why would anyone send out and emails to strangers, if making money is so easy? I doubt that they would have to let strangers to know about these job opportunities… I’ll never seen a guy (or a girl) on real life that makes money purely online. Have you heard from a guy who lives just by his advertising revenues? Me neither…. if you have. I’m guessing you heard this from your online friend?

Is it possible to make money online then? Yes it is. Just don’t set your expectations too high. You can make some pocket money by adding ads to your website. On this blog post, I’m only listing reliable and well known companies that has been online for years. And also from whom I have had first hand experience.

Important! Before your sending your applications to these advertisers, make sure you have read their terms and conditions!

Adsense, Amazon Associates, iHerb and Tradedoubler – Best ways to get an extra income?

1. iHerb.com – Vitamins, health products etc. – Offers discount coupon

One of biggest names in health product business. I order products regularly from iHerb, and I would recommend their products to my family and friends, even if I wouldn’t’ get a dime! It’s easier to recommend health products or any other products when you have actually used them.

For the health food/superfood and other bloggers this is certainly the best way to make some extra money. If you have a large amount of friends on the social media, you should gain referrals rather easy. How the referral thing work with iHerb?

Here is how much income you get from sales:

Level 1 – 4% – those who have used your coupon code)
Level 2 – 3% – when levels above you have share their code, and so on…
Level 3 – 2%
Level 4 – 1%

More about the iHerb’s reward system: http://rewards.iherb.com/

According to the iHerb website here is the estimated income you can expect:

“Recent data analysis, conducted in October 2011, found that iHerb customers referring 3 or more people over a year ago earned an average of $240.00. And the figure for customers referring 10 or more people was $640.00.”

How to get started with iHerb affiliate program? visit: www.iherb.com Make your first order with a coupon YUY952 and you will receive a $5 discount. Once you have done your first order, you will then get your personal code that you can start to promote.

iHerb.com – Pros and Cons:

+ You can start earning even without a website
+ International (ships almost all over the world)
+ If you have many friends (also on Facebook and other social media), you should gain your first referrals easily.
+ Multilevel commission. Commission is paid up to four sub-levels!
+ Adblockers doesn’t block your ads
+ You can advertise on your website, forum signatures, bulletin boards (gym, flea market etc..), give the coupon to your colleagues at work etc..
+ New $10coupon for orders over $40 means higher commission.
- No revenue from impressions or clicks
- You need to build your own ads
- Starting up can be hard, if you don’t have that many friends, or you don’t use social media.
- Multi-level marketing has a bad reputation.
- Jealousy. People doesn’t like links that have a referal code in it, even if there is nothing to lose. iHerb and other referral bases services allows blogger and website owners to earn from their hard work.

More about iHerb on my other blog post: 7 reasons why iHerb is my favourite affiliate network?

2. Google Adsense

Ad service provided by the Google. If you haven’t heard about Adsense before, this must be your first time on the Internet. Google Adsense works on both PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and impressions (PPV = Pay Per View). Google Adsense is easy to set up, and it’s a well known and trusted. Biggest flaw with the Google Adsense is it’s weakness against ad-blockers.

More details: Adsense.com

Google AdSense Pros & Cons:

+ Setting up adsense account is easy (for example if you have a Blogspot blog platform in use, there it can be installed directly)
+ Possibility to display ads as images or as text only
+ Payments are made directly to your bank account
+ Google will pay for both clicks (PPC) and impressions (PPV) (fees may vary depending on the advertiser)
- No commission from sales
- Ad sizes are pre-set (choice is moderate)
- Ads can be blocked easily via Adblocker add-ons and softwares.

3. Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk – Amazon Associates

With Amazon your earning are based on commission. Associates earn up to 10% in referral fees on all qualifying revenue made through their links. I’m also a regular buyer on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. I recommend their services to many of my friends.

Get started with Amazon: Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates – Pros & Cons:

+ Possible to make your own referral links (as above), so the adblocker won’t work
+ More you sell, the higher the commission percentage will be.
+ Amazon’s ad tools are filled with possibilities
+ Kindle.
- If your country doesn’t have it’s “own Amazon”. It might be harder to get sales.
- Ad-blocking software will prevent the general image ads completely
- No revenue from clicks or impressions

4. TradeDoubler

Tradedoubler is available on the following countries: Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Russia, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, United Kingdom

Tradedoubler is a PPC and commission based. You should read the terms and conditions carefully, before applying for any of the advertisers.

Get started: Tradedoubler.com

Tradedoubler – Pros and Cons:

+ PPC and commission based.
+ Allows you to make your own ref-links (prevents adblockers to block your ads)
+ Paying revenue directly to the bank account
+ Possibility to display ads in pictures or just a plain text (link)
+ Commissions from sales and clicks (depending on the advertiser)
- If your application gets rejected by the advertiser, it’s not possible to apply again to the same advertiser. Make sure your site is following the guideline set by the advertiser, before applying!
- Ad-blocking software blocks image ads completely.
- PPC amount set by some advertisers can be very low.

5. LinkShare

Review coming later!

Important! Before your sending your applications to any of these advertisers, make sure you have read their terms and conditions!

This page was last time updated: March 27, 2012

Believe it or not, but this blog does not write it self. If you liked this post:

Support this blog and buy your health products from iHerb.com, and get a 5 dollar discount  from your first order by using coupon YUY952 – Try it, love it, share it.