Where To Find Coupons

Knowing where to find coupons in Canada can save you hundreds of dollars a year. This article on where to find coupons, shows you how to get coupons in Canada that are located in many different places!

The average Canadian family spends approximately $800 a month on groceries – and that’s not including cleaning supplies, health and beauty aids or baby necessities, which can add hundreds more to your bill every month.

Coupons allow you to save a lot of money off your grocery bills without much effort. Sure, it will take some time to get the hang of using coupons “properly”, but once you learn to shop smart, it will become much easier.

With just a bit time and determination, you can start saving your family hundreds or even thousands of dollars every year with coupons.

Isn’t that worth a bit of your time?

If you’re wondering where to find coupons, I’ve listed a bunch of places below where you can get coupons in Canada.

Tear Pads

On your next shopping trip, walk down each aisle and scan the shelves closely. It’s likely that you will find at least 1 shelf with a tear pad full of coupons. Take what you need, but always leave some behind for other shoppers.

I suggest taking 1 or 2 of a coupon, even if you don’t use the product(s). You can use those for coupon trading and coupon trains (explained below). Don’t ever take an entire pad full of coupons – that’s just poor coupon etiquette.

Online Coupon Companies

There are many great Canadian online coupon companies available. Use these sites to select coupons that you want and you will get them mailed directly to your home, free of charge.

Printable Coupons

You can also search your favourite companies’ websites to see if they offer printable coupons (or you can visit our coupon database for Canadian printable coupons). Many of them do.

Be sure to sign up to their mailing lists, as some companies send out coupons in their newsletters. I suggest setting up a separate email account for these newsletters so that your personal email address doesn’t get overrun with offers from these companies.

Other printable coupon websites to check out: Smart Source, Living Well, Les Surgeles(French), Healthy Shopper

Contact Companies Directly

Sometimes calling or emailing a company and letting them know your family enjoys their products is enough for them to mail you a coupon. Ask them if they wouldn’t mind sending a coupon for their products, and include your address. Not all companies will send you coupons, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Visit: Canadian companies that will mail you coupons.

On Products

Look in and on the packaging of the products that you buy for special loyalty coupons. These can be in the form of a peelie (a coupon attached to the product, to be peeled off) or written directly on the package (such as a cereal box), to be cut out.

Please do not take peelie coupons off of products that you are not going to purchase.

Coupon Trading

Coupon trading is a great way to get coupons that you want, and get rid of the ones that you don’t. Check out the Mrs January coupon trading forum to trade with other couponers. You could also trade coupons with your friends, family and co-workers.

Coupon Trains

Coupon trains can be a bit complicated when you first get started, but after your first ride or two, you should be able to get the hang of how they work. Simply browse the trains available in our forum and the person who started the train will message you to get your address. (Or you could start your own train, of course!)

You should then receive an envelope stuffed with coupons in the mail. Take out the coupons you would like and replace them with coupons you already have and don’t need. Mail the envelope to the next rider on the list (the list will be in the envelope with the coupons). That’s it!

Coupon Inserts

Every few weeks, you can find Canadian coupon inserts in your local newspaper. There is Redplum every 4 weeks or so, SmartSource every 3 weeks or so and Brandsaver every 3-4 months. These coupon inserts are usually put in with your FREE newspapers (the ones that come with store flyers), but you can also find them in some paid subscription newspapers as well.

Keep in mind that using coupons is not the only way to save money on groceries.Check out my eBook, Money In Your Pocket, for many more ways to save on your grocery bill.

How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods

Having thought through whether you should blog for money it is now worth taking a look at some of the different models for doing so.

I tend to break the different models that bloggers are using to make money from blogging into two areas – Direct and Indirect methods.

Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.

Indirect Income Earning Methods – these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.

Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods – although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both ( I’ve seen a few bloggers get into trouble with this)

In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them.

Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers

1. Advertising

There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:

• Contextual Advertising – Programs like AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular with bloggers and are probably the most common income stream being used by them today (MSN are developing one too). In short – these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. They are generally simple to use and involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case (this confuses AdSense). I write much more extensively on how to use AdSense on your blog here.


• Other CPC Advertising – There are a variety of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis which are not contextual in nature (which is important as systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them). These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls(aff) which I reviewed here.


• Impression Based Ads – Impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount that they pays varies from program to program (and ad to ad) and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a variety of ad systems around like this includingFastclick (aff) which I reviewed here and Tribal Fusion. Impression based ads won’t earn you much if you don’t have a lot of traffic but can be great if you do.


• Blog Ads – BlogAds have become something of an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. They traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs but are expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The downside is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ‘sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.


• Text Ads – Another increasingly popular way to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The beauty of these are that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite(aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also other other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. Their systems are also both very automated and are just a matter of pasting some code onto your blog. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some (we’ve used them quite successfully on b5media although I have little personal experience with them).


• RSS Ads – An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. I’m yet to hear of too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet but the ad systems seem to be improving. AdSense offers RSS ads to some of it’s publishers (you have to have a certain number of impressions first) as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool I’ve used to help monetise my own feeds – they give publishers three options (1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them, 2. Amazon affiliate program and 3. if you have a lot of subscribers (over 500) they have an Ad Network). Pheedo is another system that you might like to try (although I’ve not had much experience with it).


• Other Ads Systems – In addition to the above systems (most of which I’ve used myself) are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here they are in no particular order:


• AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs,Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed,Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.

2. Sponsorship

Another form of advertising that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.

The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Camera Blog for two years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.

The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction andClickbank.

Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.

4. Selling/Flipping Blogs

The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc (a network of blogs) which sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. Of course this is the stuff that most of us can only dream of – but there are examples of smaller blogs being sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here.

Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.

5. Donations and Tip Jars

A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work.

6. Merchandise

Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.

7. Selling Subscriptions

The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.

8. Blog Networks

Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series.

Source: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger

 

Related articles

• 6 Monetization Methods of the Pro Blogger (business2community.com)


• Ad sense vs blogs continued (blogsnwebsites.com)


• "You deserve better than AdSense" - WordPress introduces WordAds (nextlevelofnews.com)


• 12 Blogging Income Streams [And the Story of My 10 Year 'Overnight' Success] (problogger.net)


• There is Life After Google AdSense (chroniclerwriting.com)


• Make Money With Your Blog and Google AdSense (buzz.blogger.com)

Make Money Blogging

How to Make Money Blogging

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on how to make money blogging. For a very quick and broad visual intro – check out this Make Money Blogging MindMap which visualizes just SOME of the ways bloggers make money blogging.

First – let me start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last 5 years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own (but which certainly add up).

These include recommending quality products like these here on ProBlogger: Thesis WordPress theme, Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Coaching Program and How to Launch the F*** out of your E-Book (and others) as well as some great products on my photography blog including 123 of Digital Imaging, David DuChemin’s amazing Photography E-Books and Mitchell Kanashkevich’s great ebooks.

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

3. E-Book Sales

Last time I did a wrap up of how I make money blogging this category did not exist for me – I didn’t really have any of my own products to sell at all. However in the last year or so I’ve released 3 E-books – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography and Photo Nuts and Bolts: Know Your Camera and Take Better Photos. While these products all only sell for under $20 they certainly add up and some months this has been my biggest category of income. The reason they were only ranking at #3 in the last month was that I didn’t do a product launch (I wrote about one launch which brought in $72,000 in a week here). This is an income stream I see growing as I add more E-books to my range (expect 3 in the coming few months).

4. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have fallen for me in the last year (they previously ranked #3 on this list). This is partly due to a change in my own focus but also partly due to the economy as it is. I should note that this area does vary a little from month to month depending upon the campaigns we’re asked to run – we’ve had a couple of months where it actually ranked #2 in the last year.

5. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They traditionally have worked best on product related blogs although their Premium ad units now convert well on a larger range of blogs.

While I’ve focused a little less on Chitika in the last 6 months (mainly as I’ve released my own products and moved a little away from advertising) they do continue to perform well where I use them and over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – as a result I can’t recommend them enough!

6. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (in fact it’s now earned me over $100,000 since I started using it). Christmas time (and the lead up to it) is a particularly good time for Amazon – last December it would have ranked #2 on this list.

Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging

A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.

Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.

Source: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger

Related articles

• How to make money from blog (hint: don't think a blogger) (guotime.com)


• Making Money from Blogs (savealittlemoney.com)


• Is Making Money from Blogging Passive Income? (problogger.net)


• 6 Monetization Methods of the Pro Blogger (business2community.com)


• The 3 Elements of Money Making Blogs (johnchow.com)

How to Make Money with Free Online Surveys

1) Be prepared. Surveyors are looking for specific types of people, and while you won't qualify for every survey (if you're a 25-year-old healthy hipster and they're looking for a 60-year-old couch potato, you're just not going to make the cut).

2) Fill out the surveys. Many survey companies offer screener surveys when you register, which usually don't pay.
- However, it's an important first step, and worth the little extra time it takes to fill these screening surveys out because the more demographic information the market research companies have on you, the more surveys they can send you.
- Remember, you will only be matched with surveys that you can actually contribute to, so if you leave all your screener information blank to get through it more quickly, you will receive fewer survey opportunities.

3) Check often! Keep an eye out on both the site and your email regularly for survey opportunities. Some companies offer surveys more often than others—and you certainly don’t want to miss any of them!

4) Any individual survey site may only offer a couple of surveys to you in a given month. The more companies you sign up with, the more surveys you'll be able to complete.
Set up a rule for your email so that any survey emails that come in are flagged, make noise when they arrive, and appear at the top of your list. Everything you do to make them stand out will help.
Choose and complete the best surveys. Once you have lots of surveys available, you can be more selective and pick the ones that seem like the best use of your time. If time isn’t an issue, on the other hand, you can do them all. You're under no obligation to complete any surveys if you don't want to.

Please Note:
Surveys only net a few dollars on average but take very little time. Even if you only spend a few minutes making $3 a day, in a month, you will have earned over $90!
Teenagers can also do surveys for cash but should always research whether or not a given company will allow them to participate.
If you use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, try using the WOT extension to stop yourself from going to scam sites.

Many websites with online surveys often have spyware and viruses, so be careful of them.
Don’t accept what sounds too good to be true.
Avoid giving out your phone number, as it can open the door for telemarketers. Some can even circumvent the Do-Not-Call lists because you've signed up to receive information.
Ask yourself what your goal is. Surveys are a nice way of getting a little extra change in your pocket but you will not be able to quit your day job. If you are looking to make more than $100/month online, you should look into affiliate marketing.
Most survey sites (and their affiliate companies) will start sending you tons of spam.