I've found a new blog tool: Gleam giveaway widget

I've had varied success with the blog tools I have tried out here and on Literary Flits over the past few years. I still love the LinkWithin widget and am pleased with my first affiliate marketing program, Affiliate Window, which is easy to use. I've also recently signed up with another affiliate marketing program, Rakuten Linkshare. Their interface is pretty user friendly, but I haven't seen any real results yet. It's early though - hopefully soon! On the negative side, I soon gave up with CommentLuv as it wasn't compatible with Blogger's mobile view. I also abandoned LinkyTools due to a lack of interest from visitors and struggled to get my head around setting up Rafflecopter.

However I do enjoy running my weekly Wednesday giveaways over on Literary Flits so have been keeping a lookout for a professional looking gizmo to organise entries for me. I did initially try keeping a track across twitter / facebook / blog entries manually and I would NOT suggest attempting this to anyone else. Absolute chaos! For the past couple of months I have just been asking for a blog comment as an entry method and this was fine, albeit limited and a bit dull. Then two weeks ago I realised I was entering someone else's giveaway through a Gleam widget. I liked the procedure and flow from a user point of view so decided to learn more and try out Gleam on my blog.

Gleam is an Australian enterprise with a friendly, laid-back vibe and it turns out they offer far more than just giveaway widgets. There's lots more toys tools for me to explore using, but as yet I have only experienced the giveaway widget so that is what I will talk about here. It was really easy to sign up and find out where on their site I needed to be. It was also easy to set up the widget the first time although I did find it quite time consuming to add all the various options I wanted. The free version allows me to include a good selection of giveaway entry methods. I asked entrants to visit my Facebook and Pinterest pages, to follow me on Twitter and retweet a specified tweet, and to comment on my blog. I also added two custom options including visiting my Bloglovin page. This is what took time because I couldn't remember all the various social media URLs I needed. You'll notice I haven't gone around and found them all again for this post! Perhaps I should set myself up a draft email?! After that however, all I needed to do was check the start and end times and confirm how many prizes I would be giving away. The html code was created for me. I simply pasted that into my blog page, then sat back and watched the widget do its magic.

A week later I had seventeen entries to my first Gleam-run giveaway and received an email a couple of hours after the closing time reminding me to log in and pick a winner. This again was very easy to do. I logged in the next morning, clicked the big 'pick winner' button and the widget randomly chose a winning entry. It also confirmed said entry had completed the action they claimed to have done - in this case to have visited my Pinterest page. The winner's email address was revealed so all I had to do was get in touch and then pack up and ship the prize. Sadly Gleam has not yet invented a widget to stand in Post Office queues!

If you'd like to see the Gleam giveaway widget in action for yourself, please feel welcome to enter this week's Literary Flits giveaway! The post will publish at noon today and the prize is a copy of a humorous Devon novel, Not The End by Kate Vane. Alternatively, if I've already sold you on Gleam, click through any of their links from this page and get started running your own giveaways and competitions! It's fun!

I hit the Google Adsense threshold and we go flat hunting in Torquay

I was delighted to receive an e-mail from Google Adsense on Friday morning letting me know that they had sent me a payment! I have finally hit their £60 payout threshold and it's only taken four years of blogging! Thank you to everyone who has visited and especially to those who have clicked on advertisements. You might remember back in August last year I posted about the monetisation avenues I use here. Well, that Affiliate Window payout and this Google one brings my total blog earnings up to £81.69. (It's a good thing I write for the love of it!)

In other news, our search for a new permanent base has begun in Torquay this week. Dave has been intensively researching on Rightmove for months to narrow down locations after our UK tour last summer and the Torbay area seemed like a good place to start. It was interesting to learn that the lack of contrast meant he hadn't been anticipating our winter travels with such excitement this year. For the previous two winters, we had exchanged house living for our caravan lifestyle. Departing in October 2015, we had already been in Bailey for thirteen months.

We have only seen eight flats so far but they are beginning to blend together so it's hard to remember exactly which features we liked from each! One in particular did 'tick most of our boxes' (I hate that phrase), but we're not yet completely convinced as it is very near (i.e. over) the top end of our budget. So in the meantime, if you know of a spacious two bedroom flat in good decorative order on the first floor with no other flats above it, which has interesting architectural features but isn't Grade Anything Listed, has double glazing and an outside space such as a balcony or low-maintenance garden or terrace, with off-road parking and ground level bicycle storage, that would be a secure lock-up-and-leave in a quiet and pretty area with a shortish walk to good local shops but with no loud children or yappy dogs within earshot, could you let me know?!

How I have finally earned money from blogging!

Can I get a Woo Hoo? It's certainly taken long enough!

Thanks for buying these mugs
from Twinings 

For those readers who are newer around here, Stephanie Jane is my second blog (the first being the now-defunct local arts and culture blog Theatrical Eastbourne) so I have been blogging since April 2012. Over three years experience means I pretty much know what I am doing and also have a good idea of what brings in lots of blog traffic and therefore potential income. Unfortunately those sorts of posts aren't the subjects about which I enjoy writing! I am never going to be fascinated by celebrity gossip. Neither am I going to start trialling loads of different brands of makeup or getting Dave to photograph my daily dress choices! He's already frequently infuriated by having to wait to eat while I snap pics of our dinner!

So, as a niche blogger, where does this leave my potential blogging income? I use a few sources, some more successfully than others. Google adverts have adorned both my blogs since the start. My account there seems to be credited with about a penny for each hundred page views and a higher single payment if one of you kind visitors actually clicks through to an advertiser's website. Click amounts vary from usually less than 10p to once a massive 74p. Google won't pay out until I accumulate £60 though and, after over three years, I am still nearly £6 short of that magic total. I'll keep on slogging blogging.

You might have spotted the PayPal link in the right-hand toolbar? Dickens fans should get the Dorrit reference. I put this up after seeing other blogs with similar 'hats on the pavement' and the link has worked. Once. Thanks Adrienne!

Affiliate links used to be a lot more successful than they are now. A

Thank you for buying this t-shirt
from Red Dog Wear on Amazon.co.uk

website I curated a over decade ago brought in at least £100 every month from affiliate perfume sales. Stephanie Jane doesn't! However, I link all my book review posts to their respective titles on Amazon.co.uk. There's other varied links scattered throughout this blog too. Any visitor clicking through an Amazon.co.uk link who then buys any item will earn me a small commission. The purchase doesn't have to be the one I suggested and Amazon.co.uk's payout threshold is lower than Google's too. It's just £25. I have only £19.92 still to earn.

My passion for reading and blogging my book reviews has had unexpected benefits though. Independent authors and small publishing houses have begun to contact me via Goodreads and Twitter offering free ebook copies of their novels to read and review. These offers are becoming more frequent as I am better known. (I am now in the #200 top UK reviewers on Goodreads.) I get to not only save money on book purchases, but also to read some superb novels that I might not otherwise have discovered. One author even sent an Amazon.co.uk gift card with which to purchase their book. The card had a greater value than the book price so technically I guess I got paid the remainder to review the work! This week I have also been invited to guest post on a purely-books blog.

My final and most financially successful avenue is another affiliate

Thank you for buying this book
from Waterstones 

programme, Affiliate Window. This site is basically a middle-man between business advertisers and website owners allowing me to choose to promote companies whose products I actually like and use myself. I drink Twinings tea and Whittards hot chocolate. I like shopping at Go Outdoors, Waitrose and Waterstones, use Ordnance Survey maps and visit English Heritage properties. I adore spending hours browsing Etsy! This makes it easy for me to integrate name-dropping into my posts and my enthusiasm for the products must show as I get far more click throughs from specific text links than from generic banners. Pennies only roll in from purchases though so Thank You for purchasing those pretty mugs from Twinings, that English Heritage membership and those books from Waterstones. After three months with Affiliate Window I achieved their £20 payment threshold and my first payout arrived in my bank account a couple of days ago. How much was it?

Drum roll?

£21.66!

OK, it's not a life changing amount, but it is enough to cover our internet bill this month. And, if I could just get Stephanie Jane to earn that much every month, or even every day ... !

(Please remember that all income should be reported to HMRC.)