I first wrote about Zopa in 2007, back then returns on ISAs and similar investments were good and Zopa was a relatively new website with no track record. 

With interest rates at 0.5% and most highstreet ISAs giving a similar return I've been struggling to find somewhere to save my money.

Zopa's philosophy remains unchanged, you move money into your online Zopa account, set the rates you wish to lend at and Zopa lends your money to people that need it.

When setting your rates Zopa gives you guidelines as to the market rates, these change frequently and I tend to set mine on the high end of the recommended rates. This means my money is lent our slowly however the return rates are higher.

I lend out a maximum of £10 per person hence my maximum exposure per loan is limited. Zopa has a number of markets and you can choose the rates you lend to each one (if at all) A* being the best market and B being the riskier, obviously the rates for the riskier markets are higher. 

Through your loan book you can see the usernames of who you lend money to and the reasons, most are for DIY, cars or to consolidate existing debts however you do get some more entertaining ones.

If you need access to your money quickly Zopa has a rapid return facility however you lose a percentage of your earnings by using this.

My difficulty with Zopa came in trying to calculate the percent rate of return over a period of time. Therefore just over a year ago I took the decision not to add anything further into my account. 

Over a year long period I could then calculate the years earning as a percent to then compare with other investments. 

As a result in this time I had one unpaid load (ie bad debt), once taking this into account and the 1% Zopa fee my return was 5.56%.

Compared to high street ISA's and similar this is a good return.

Here are the five best cash back credit cards as of March 2013:

1. Barclaycard Cashback Card - this card offers a huge 6% for the first 3 months then 2% thereafter. The only downside is that there is an annual fee of £24.

2. American Express Platinum Cashback Credit Card - offers a very nice 5% for the first 3 months and 2.5% thereafter. For this card you need an annual household salary of at least £20,000 and there is a £25 annual fee.

3. Capital One Aspire Elite - this cash back card offers 5% for the first 3 months and 2% thereafter. The big downside with this card is the £120 annual fee and you need an annual income of over £50,000.

4. Sainsbury's Cashback Credit Card - this card simply offers 5% for the first 3 months. You get an additional £5 each month when you spend £500 per month on shopping at Sainsburys and selected other retailers.

5. Santander 123 Credit Card - offers up to 3% cashback on fuel, National Rail and TfL, 2% cashback at department stores and 1% cashback at supermarkets.

Getting the right card is a tricky mix, especially if you are not a heavy spender. As with any credit card If you are in debt it is important to get credit card debt advice
 

With the choice of 100s of CPA Networks how do you whittle them down to the best quality and value? How should you know which to sign up for and why not just join them all?

1. Look for a trusted network -  CPA networks come and go, some stay for longer than others so look for a well established network with good positive feedback in Google. There are many forums for discussing CPA networks and its easy to search Google for content related to the network you are researching.
2. Look for a CPA network that has experience in your niche - different networks have different areas of expertise, look for one that either has experience in your niche or in your wider sector. This will help match more relevant adverts to your content helping your conversion rates.
3. Look for networks without automatic enrolment - networks that let anyone in are bad for the overall quality of sites. Networks that have strict guidelines are more likely to have better quality merchants and publishers.
4. Look for networks with a lot of offers - look for a network with at least 100 offers so that you have the choice and flexibility in choosing advertising for your website.
5. Look for networks with high payout percentage - it goes without saying that you want to get as much as possible from the adverts you run on your site so shop around until you find the best rates.
6. Look for networks with good transparency on tracking - you want to make sure that every offer that goes through your site is tracked.

About two months ago I sold my first website on Flippa.com, a site dedicated to buying and selling websites and domains. Launched earlier this year by a team from the internet resources site Sitepoint the marketplace is like Ebay for buying and selling websites.

The site I sold was www.ipodhistory.com, I originally bought the site from the Digital Point Forums about 18months earlier for $180 (£90 at the time), it was my most expensive site I had bought and was a relatively big gamble. Over the following year and a half I invested in search engine optimisation, added new content and grew a community. In this time I tripled the traffic and advertising revenue. 

I listed the site on Flippa and immediately received interest and a number of offers. After around two weeks the site sold for $2000 (£1300). I was paid through PayPal and the transaction went very quickly and smoothly. 

You can list sites on Flippa either with an auction style listing or where people submit private bids for a site. Flippa charge a listing fee with various optional extras (about $28 for my site) plus a final value fee of 5% (with a cap of $498). 

It's sad to see the iPod History site go from my portfolio but I'm more than happy with the return on investment. 

2009 has been a tough year for Bloggers to make money compared to 2008 but there have been opportunities and ad networks have matured to become better accepted by marketers. Gone are the large amounts of money for private ad sales in favor of link exchange agreements and PPC amounts have tumbled.

Here is how some of my sites have fared over the past year for monetization.

Sponsored Reviews

Sponsored reviews have fared well in 2009 with advertisers keen to show their products in a natural way to consumers and search engines. They are often criticized for degrading the quality of a blogs content but I've found a sponsored review mixed in between a number of good quality posts to perform well. Strict new rules for Bloggers in the US may mean some good opportunities for non-US blogs in 2010.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

It's been a rough year for Pay Per Click marketing, the amount made per click in 2009 has plummeted on a number of my sites, hopefully 2010 will see the PPC market performing much better.

Google Adsense - Has been a reliable income throughout the year though relies heavily on people clicking high value ads. Adsense performed well on my iPodHistory site before I sold it however has failed to do well on 12stix or ImAFish.

Clicksor - Has replaced Adsense on a couple of sites where they are not suitable for Adsense or have been banned. The amount per click is fairly poor even compared to Adsense.

Monthly Ads

Monthly ads are where you are paid a set amount per month for an advert though these often base prices on Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. There are a number of key players:

TNX - Has been a consistent payer throughout the year but relies on paying a small amount for a lot of adverts.

LinkLift - Recently out of beta, LinkLift is one of the newer players but has shown good growth throughout the year.

Linkworth - Advertising revenue has dried up significantly from Linkworth over the past year.

Text-Link-Ads - TLA has paid consistently low amounts all year.

Teliad - Has paid consistently for higher Page Ranked pages.

Private Ad Sales

This time last year there was a lot of money for private ad sales however this has declined significantly. Companies are now turning to link exchange programs rather than paying directly for ads. Even the better paying gambling sites have been cutting back on their advertising budget.

Conclusion

Hopefully we are over the worst in 2009 with the slump in the advertising market. There are plenty of opportunities out there for Blog monetization but Bloggers need to work that extra bit harder to attract the advertisers.

Advertising revenue has been sliding in recent months but has been offset by the weakening dollar. It might be time now to start working on a strategy for increasing advertising through the recession.

There are lots of ways to monetise your website including services such as Google Adsense, Text Link Ads, Linkworth and Pay Per Post. The one I want to look at today is TNX.

The service is simple to install with a small PHP script to embed into your sites template. From there everything is automated. A cost in TNX points is given per page based on page rank but you can still earn from pages without a page rank.

TNX is good for:

• If you have a site with a lot of pages - such as a blog with posts, category pages, monthly archives and pages.
• If you have a site with a good page rank or have page rank on internal pages.
• If you do not want to worry about selling advertising, approving adverts or adding/removing adverts manually from your website.  

Payment can be made at any time to your PayPal account.

Payments for the Christmas period should now have been sent out - how well did you do? I was surprised how easy it was to make money without having to do anything! Did you know if you get your friends to sign up through EI42 and they each get their friends to join and purchase through EI42 you can make over £100/month!

Your store should look just like mine below (but with your username)

http://uk.ei42.com/pwhite/

Now is the perfect time to start recruiting people - then let your friends do all the hard work while you watch their purchases make you cash back!

It's easy to promote your EI42 store:

• Email the address to your friends.
• Add it to your email signature.
• Send it to your friends on Facebook or Myspace.
• Add it as a shared link on social networking sites such as Facebook or del.icio.us
• Add it to your forum signatures.
• Send it to your contacts in Instant Messenger programs such as MSN and AIM.

Good luck and happy earning!