About Us
First and foremost, we are Affiliates' Advocates: We test stuff… we let you know how it went… We test online products and services that are purported to make money for the user of those online products or services. Our primary focus is on website and blog monetization: Of all of the ways offered on the Internet to make money, and to do so for free, becoming a publisher/partner/affiliate with an ad network or other similar program is by far the easiest, and most definitively risk-free and legitimate way to earn money online. Website and blog monetization requires almost zero effort on your part, requires little more than a trafficked web property to make money (and sometimes not even that); you need not know anything about marketing, affiliate marketing, sales, bookkeeping; fostering business relationships, etc. At the most basic level of website or blog monetization, one does not even really need to know much about computers! If you can cut and paste a snippet of code into your website, shrink a URL, or post links on the Web, you can make money.
We are your one-stop-shop for objective information about how to do this, and who you ought to affiliate with, all the way down to providing one with access to a free website, from what we believe to be the absolute best free website builder in existence. In our reviews, we only list networks, programs or organizations that we have used ourselves for at least 30 days. Here's what we do during our testing:
During all of that, we do the fun stuff. We send purposefully idiotic questions to the network's, program's or organization's customer service or support. However, we ask these questions in perfectly clear, crisp and lucid English; and, we make sure that it is a question that is not answered in any Help, TOS, TOU or FAQ section of their website. We observe: Do we get a reply? What percentages of our questions go unanswered? Was the response cordial and understanding, or hostile and pretentious? How long did it take to get a response? How many times did we have to attempt to make contact before we received a reply? Did the reply answer our questions clearly and professionally? On rare occasions, we even toss-out baseless accusations to the network of being ripped-off or some similar shenanigan, to see how the network, organization or program is going to handle us, and how they handle such things more generally. In the event that we actually are ripped-off, we let you know with a detailed description of what happened.
We do not, however, always ask dumb questions and rarely feel the need to go to extremes. Moreover, and surprisingly, we are rarely ripped-off. Typically, the questions we ask are based on weak spots in the presentation or 'pitch' of the product, things about the product that most reasonable people would agree are unclear, usage issues such as problems we find with the dashboard (user control panel), and why certain things are happening and other things are not.
We do this testing of customer service and support so that we can accurately and objectively report back to you our experience, so that one can have a "heads up" about what one might be in for. Customer service in most industries, the world over, is awful these days; but, in the online industry, bad customer service is an art form. That being said, we have found some companies that shine and want to be able to objectively state when we have found those networks, programs and organizations that do. And those that do not. We make sure that we give these networks, organizations and programs the proverbially "difficult client"--if they handle us appropriately, the odds are heavily in your favor of being treated as you should be.
- We implement the product on—or through—one of our sites (about 25% of the time, we implement the product here, on TMMD.com). We implement on—or through—a site that gets at least 1000 page views per day (but usually more) so as to garner an accurate performance appraisal. We observe: If we are testing an ad network, for example, how are the load times of the ad units? Does the code we were provided conflict with anything else we have on the page or in our source code? How is the "fill rate" (does the ad unit ever show blank space)? How relevant are the ads to the target audience and to the content of the site on which we are testing the product? How do the ads look? Are there advertisers allowed that are misspelling words? If it is a text ad, are there characters not rendering properly? Is there adware/malware in the ad unit in any way, shape or form? How does the ad unit 'behave' (in other words, how does the resolved URL match with the ad text or imagery, for what is the resolved URL optimized)? Etc., etc.
- Are people clicking the ads?
- If so, what are our average earnings per click?
- What is our eCPM (earnings per 1000 impressions of the ad) after 30 days?
During all of that, we do the fun stuff. We send purposefully idiotic questions to the network's, program's or organization's customer service or support. However, we ask these questions in perfectly clear, crisp and lucid English; and, we make sure that it is a question that is not answered in any Help, TOS, TOU or FAQ section of their website. We observe: Do we get a reply? What percentages of our questions go unanswered? Was the response cordial and understanding, or hostile and pretentious? How long did it take to get a response? How many times did we have to attempt to make contact before we received a reply? Did the reply answer our questions clearly and professionally? On rare occasions, we even toss-out baseless accusations to the network of being ripped-off or some similar shenanigan, to see how the network, organization or program is going to handle us, and how they handle such things more generally. In the event that we actually are ripped-off, we let you know with a detailed description of what happened.
We do not, however, always ask dumb questions and rarely feel the need to go to extremes. Moreover, and surprisingly, we are rarely ripped-off. Typically, the questions we ask are based on weak spots in the presentation or 'pitch' of the product, things about the product that most reasonable people would agree are unclear, usage issues such as problems we find with the dashboard (user control panel), and why certain things are happening and other things are not.
We do this testing of customer service and support so that we can accurately and objectively report back to you our experience, so that one can have a "heads up" about what one might be in for. Customer service in most industries, the world over, is awful these days; but, in the online industry, bad customer service is an art form. That being said, we have found some companies that shine and want to be able to objectively state when we have found those networks, programs and organizations that do. And those that do not. We make sure that we give these networks, organizations and programs the proverbially "difficult client"--if they handle us appropriately, the odds are heavily in your favor of being treated as you should be.
We have well over 100 products and money making tools currently under review, and offer our experiences with them as each review is completed. We also have a Services Review Series under development; wherein, we will share our experiences with services that are not free, but purport to be able to increase your earnings on the Internet. In short, we spend the money first, to let you know whether or not you should. We should note that we have used and continue to use the traffic, link building, article and blog marketing, and various other such services that can be found advertised throughout The Making Money Depot.com, and highly recommend them. Our experiences with them will be published when we release our Services Review Series.
If you have a question or comment about any of our listings; or, simply wish to share an experience with making money on the Internet, feel free to participate in The Making Money Depot.com's chat forum found in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, or at the official TMMD.com blog. If you have a comment or question specifically for TMMD.com that you would like addressed in private, please use the "Contact Us" feature (the little envelope icon) in the same toolbar appearing on any page of TMMD.com.
If you have a question or comment about any of our listings; or, simply wish to share an experience with making money on the Internet, feel free to participate in The Making Money Depot.com's chat forum found in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, or at the official TMMD.com blog. If you have a comment or question specifically for TMMD.com that you would like addressed in private, please use the "Contact Us" feature (the little envelope icon) in the same toolbar appearing on any page of TMMD.com.
