The Cheap Bastid» Bukisa

My Bukisa Page

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:54:00 +0000

A some of you may have noticed I’ve retired my ‘Blasting Bukisa’ page and experiment.

It was a noble effort, and I gave it every chance in the world to work, but in the end the earnings still hovered in the 5-7 cents a day range. This just isn’t worth my time, over there and certainly over here.

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Article Publishing Site Throwdown!

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:45:57 +0000

As most of you know I am absolutely frustrated with Bukisa. Articles that are well key worded and highly promoted are getting few views yet some of my first articles which are poorly key worded and totally unpromoted are getting views. I’m also not happy with their referral program, I feel it encourages people to spend more time looking for referrals and little or no time creating content.

I recently discovered (and signed up on) Info Barrel. At first glance it appears that both sites are owned by the same person as the graphics are remarkably similar between the two sites. There are some critical differences however that, in my opinion, make IB a far superior choice as an article publishing site.

Many of us are getting adsense revenue from our blogs or websites and Xomba, but, with the minimum payout of $100 on adsense are months (or even years) away from getting our first check.

Enter Info Barrel. This site pays through adsense exactly the same way as Xomba does, and, in my opinion is a far better choice as a second or even third article publishing site as it will add to your adsense pool and give you a quicker payout.

Now, let’s get to the nitty gritty..

How do articles perform?

I’m glad you asked.. Let’s look at two articles. They are on the same subject, targeting a similar traffic keyword. For the Bukisa article there are 10 xomblurbs pointing at it and about a dozen other links on social sites. The Info Barrel article has NO promotion whatsoever.

First the Bukisa article performance in the last 5 weeks..

About 10 hits a week, or 1.5 per day..

And now the Info Barrel article published one week ago..

57 hits, almost 8 a day!

There’s something really wrong here. Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I’m just looking at the numbers. Also, Bukisa has an Alexa rank of 28k, and IB has a rank of 54k so the Bukisa article should have far more hits, but it doesn’t, what’s up with that??

So, my conclusion is that articles perform much better, hit wise, on IB than on Bukisa.

IB 1 Bukisa 0

Oh, let me also say that I chose to use the same subject type articles so they wouldn’t be unfairly effected by current trends.

How can this possibly happen?

Actually, the answer is simple. IB has the most robust article publishing page I have ever seen, it blows away every other one in terms of options. eHow, Bukisa, Xomba don’t even come close to it.

Check this out..

Wow, more options than a 2009 Lexus!!

Amazing, not only can you use BOLD (an SEO goody), but you can also designate H2 and H3 tags. Absolutely awesome! You’re also allowed to insert links into the article body as long as they are relevant.

IB 2 Bukisa 0

The Payout

The Bukisa payout is simple, you get whatever the ‘Bukisa Index’ happens to be per 1000 views. Currently it’s set at 3.72, so you get $3.72 for every 1000 views you receive on your articles, this works out to about 1 cent per 3 views.

IB pays you 75% of the adsense income for an ad click on one of your articles. It’s impossible to calculate how much this will be but a well keyworded article will get views and will eventually get a click.

IB 3 Bukisa 0

The Referral Programs

As I’ve already said, the Bukisa referral program, in my opinion, is a bit too generous and encourages more recruiting than writing. Info Barrel on the other hand gives you just 2% of the adsense earning of the people you refer. Not so much to make this a recruitment drive site, but a content producing site.

IB 4 Bukisa 0

My Conclusion

Info Barrel wins this throwdown without much of a fight. IB wins on every level, from article performance, editing options, link creation, payout and referral program.

Personally I’m going to use Info Barrel site to publish content targeting high payout, low traffic keywords. Just one hit should generate more income than a whole month of Bukisa views.

Anyone else using IB? Any luck with it?

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Bukisa Update | Is it worth it?

admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:45:40 +0000

It’s now 1/2 way through the month and as I look at my Bukisa earnings I’m beginning to wonder if the time I’m spending there is worth the return I’m getting.

I’ve earned a whopping $2.82 so far and will probably end the month at about $6.

If you’ve been reading here for a while you know that one of my biggest goals is to get the best return for the time I invest. To be honest, the time I’ve invested in Bukisa would have given me 5 or even 6 times more money easily on eHow.

Let me ask you folks out there..

With 30 articles and maybe 60 or so Xomblurbs pointed at them I’m getting maybe 17 cents a day. We all know on eHow the return would easily be near a dollar a day.

Personally I feel that Bukisa has a fundamental flaw in the way it works. Their signup program encourages people to spend more time trying to recruit people than they spend creating content.

I have two people in my network, neither of which has published any content at all. I’ve asked both of them why and they both responded with the ‘I’m trying to build a network” response. So in the end, none of us are making any money.

So with that being said I think it’s safe to assume that the only money I’m going to make with Bukisa is with my own content. Question is though, should I throw in the towel and walk away from Bukisa or should I just keep pushing forward until I figure out the correct ‘formula’ for success there?

You guys have any thoughts on this? I’m on the fence right now with how I should proceed.

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Article Writing Tips | Bukisa Meta Tags Analysis

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:50:09 +0000

This article writing tip concerns Bukisa. I used the SEO tool to analyze the article page meta tags. If you remember our analysis of an eHow page you’ll see that a Bukisa page is slightly different, however, the difference is in fact significant.

You can view the article I’m looking at here.

Very interesting..

Take a look at the screenshot above. As you can see the title and description are near perfect. This differs from eHow in that an eHow article does NOT have a description field, instead it reads the first part of your article.

Take some time and craft your description in your Bukisa article. Keep the length under 200 characters and try to use each of your keywords once.

The body is pretty straight forward and the same as an eHow article.

One item of importance though is the keyword field. If you remember eHow articles do NOT have a keyword field, it’s on the publish page, but it doesn’t show up as a keyword field.

On a Bukisa page the keyword field matters, so populate it with your keywords, don’t be shy about it either. Go for at least 4 keywords.

Now if you view the actual HTML of the page (go to the article, right click on the page and choose ‘view page source’) and search for H1, you’ll see that it is indeed the title. Unfortunately the H2 tag is ‘Leave a comment..’ on the bottom, there is also no H3 tag available to use.

Argh...

Interesting stuff. A Bukisa article is actually a bit easier to keyword properly than an eHow article. the Bukisa page rank is still much lower than eHow so in my opinion it’s a wash. Either way, pay attention to your title, description and keyword areas and you should rank well with a 3 or 4 word keyword.

For more article writing tips just click on the ‘article tips’ category on the right.

If you’re interested in joining Bukisa and making money by writing articles you can use my referral link here and help support this site.

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Promoting Articles | The Bukisa – Xomba connection

admin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:14:22 +0000

If y’all look up top you’ll see a new page titled ‘Blasting Bukisa’ .

I’ve started yet another experiment to increase passive earnings.

I invite all of you to read and comment on what you think of this.

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Article Aging | Do they really get better with age?

admin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:59:01 +0000

Like any new eHow’er, when I first started writing articles I lurked in the eHow forums reading and learning.

The following dialogue would happen over and over again, seemingly on a weekly, if not daily basis.

Newbie24 “I have 32 articles but I only made .06 cents last night, why??”

Veteran3 “I checked your articles, they are all only a few weeks old, you need to wait until they age at least a month or two before you’ll start making money off of them”

Well, what the hell does that mean?? This isn’t wine, it’s words!

When I first read this I didn’t believe it, I though it was foolish to say that. After all, once Google indexes your page nothing more needs to be done, right? wrong!

I’ve read books and visited sites for the last few months and gradually I came to realize that articles do indeed age, in fact it’s only after about 12 weeks that you can really say an article is nearing it’s full potential.

First off, let’s talk about the reason Google exists. Believe it or not Google does not exist solely for webmasters to jockey for page rank. Google actually exists to “provide Internet users with quality relevant content based on their search inquiries” Simply put, Google will display the most relevant content based on what a user types in.

With that being said consider this..

If two eHow articles with the exact same title should show up in the search engine results page (SERP) based on what a user types into the search box we all know that the oldest article will appear first, with the second article as a subset of the first.

In addition, if two exactly identical articles should appear the oldest (original) article will be the ONLY one listed. I’m not going into the whole duplicate content debate right now, that’s another post..

Here’s what the experts have to say from SEOMOZ.ORG, a well respected SEO site..

Older articles have more authority

As you can see, the experts agree that the older an article gets, the more authority it is assumed it has on it’s keywords. This also means that if somebody copies your article and posts it on some other site, your article will always be listed first.

Now, let’s talk about another reason an article needs to age. You might want to brace yourself for this one…

Not everyone uses Google!!

I know, blasphemy, but alas, it is indeed true. I myself was a non believer up until a few years ago.

So, whereas Google may index your article in a day or two, other websites may take weeks, possibly even months to get to it.

Here’s a look at the traffic stats on one of my Squidoo lenses, notice NO Google traffic, but one hit from Microsoft Live…

No Google traffic!

Some of you may have noticed that my earnings have been extremely good over the last week. Why is this happening? I can honestly say it isn’t the 16 articles I’ve published this month or the booming economy.

One thing I do know is that from December to January I published over 85 articles, some of those articles are now nearing the 8-10 week old mark and are starting to make real money, I know this because I checked my reports and I see articles from January in my top 50 now, some in my top 25 list.

Be patient when it comes to earning, it really does take time, don’t get discouraged. Just keep writing and remember, the article you write today will ‘grow up’ in 2 – 3 months.

Another thing to remember is that to take full advantage of holiday or seasonal articles you need to publish them at least two months, preferably three months in advance. That means get your summer articles out NOW!!

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Article Writing | Changes at Bukisa

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:47:52 +0000

A quick post here, but highly important.

Bukisa has just changed their minimum payout to $10!!

In my opinion writing articles over there can now be a useful outlet for those eHow clunkers we all have, you know, the zero earners.

Article writing, in my opinion, is best when there are many outlets, multiple streams of income I always say.

So, get publishing over there, no need to start writing articles anew, just republish some of your zero earners over there, just change them up a bit and make sure to link the Bukisa article from your eHow article for extra profit.

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Article Writing | Bukisa Experiment Round 2

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:47:41 +0000

As some of you may know, I used to publish articles over at Bukisa in November and December of last year, but gave it up due to the high minimum payout, and the poor income. It seemed article writing over at Bukisa just wasn’t worth my time.

A week or so ago I decided to have another go at it, using my newly acquired knowledge of keywords and other article writing tips that I have.

Well, the experiment consisted of three articles, each targeting a different type of keyword.

The results were absolutely startling in terms of which article earned the most. In fact, they are so unbelievable, that I honestly don’t believe it.

So this evening I will be publishing another article over there, using the same keyword strategy as that top performer.

Lets see how this goes…

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