Note – this is a paid review and not influenced much ( 
) by me getting paid. If you would like to order one for your website, please check out my Advertise page 
Normally websites that are asked to be reviewed aren’t really fun to do so… the website owner takes the review more for the traffic it could deliver and the high PR links rather than wanting a honest, detailed look at his website – one that usually isn’t very interesting.
In this case, however I was asked to review a website that I found genuinely interesting – why not, as it is one that will help me online. Ideamix is the creation of William Montanaro, who is a personal friend – he ordered a review to get some feedback, as well as the exposure that comes with a review on TUK.
First off, the website’s design – I love it. It’s simple, yet clean; kind of looks like a sales page for Wordpress. Content is king, and that’s what’s most featured – at the moment, there’s not a single bit of paid advertising. The website loads up with a random idea on the front page, and the logo looks very Web 2.0ish… which we all know is the big thing nowadays, and the colours match which is always good.
The concept is that Ideamix will provide you with one different idea to make money online every single day – that’s 365 ideas yearly, and you can start to understand how useful the website could become. With such a scope of ideas, there’ll be something for even the most basic of internet newbies and it is something that people can look over, and constantly come back to if they want ideas on new things to try.
Although the website is okay at the moment, I do have a couple things that I feel are off about it, and hopefully this will help with increasing the potential of the website in the near future.
Monetization – at the moment, I cannot see a single little bit of monetization on the website, apart from a link to a book through Amazon that kind of looked like an affiliate link. Sure, selling ad space may not be a good idea, especially as the website is fairly new; however, there is certainly the place for a decent amount of affiliate links – to hosting, which will be required to implement quite a few of the ideas and to various other programs like NeverBlue Ads which would be required for the email/zip submits idea and BANS (which takes less than ten minutes to signup for their affiliate program). Well placed affiliate links can lead to residual income being generated months after an article is written, so why not include them?
Promotion - Google and Alexa can tell you a lot about a website – at the moment, all I can see is that the promotion done on the website is minimal (perhaps a good thing with regards to my next point). It’s been posted to Stumble Upon, and posted on William’s own website, but apart from that – zilch. There are very few backlinks to the website itself using one of the standard backlink checkers on the Internet and with an Alexa rank of 3,500,000+ I think it’s safe to say there’s minimal traffic – that has to be increased, as added backlinks and traffic is what a website requires to become successful.
Due to the lack of backlinks the website has no PR – had it been promoted, even slightly more than it currently has been there is a good chance that it would have had gotten some in the recent Pagerank update. Personally, I don’t hold PR too highly, but advertisers certainly do – should William decide to go down that path, he will get a lot more should his website have some.
Content - while the content is the first thing you see when visiting the website (apart from the kick ass header), and it is located in a good place I’m going to have to say that a lot of it is lacking. Not in style of writing, as I personally like William’s style, nor even in spelling and grammar, as both of that is bang on as far as I can see, but in length. In my opinion the majority of users that will be visiting and making use of the website are relative newbies to the whole internet marketing game (in their first year of online business), and for them simple instuctions won’t work – they need things throughly explained. I’ll take an example – the recent image hosting article. Image hosting is quite a complicated way of making money online to start up in, especially for newbies – I’ve seen guides for it written that were upwards of 10,000 words and still had stuff left to explain.
Now, I’m not recommending William write more than 10,000 words for the website (do that 365 times and I’d probably kill myself too) however that post (and quite a few of the others) could be explained a lot, lot better – I’m thinking 1,000 words minimum. In the case of image hosting, you could talk about choosing a domain (with tips), then talk about different scripts (with recommendations), different specific types of monetization (with a short blurb on each one and affiliate links) – that’s enough for such a post.
Putting in the work now may seem difficult, or even near impossible but once those ideas are written about (and if they’re done well they’ll certainly be linked to) they’ll generate income. At the moment, the image host article isn’t even 200 words – that’s jack all. Even at 1,000 words, doing one article a day (or even one every couple days) should not be too difficult, although thinking of ideas certainly will be
What I really like about the website - I absolutely love the ‘Randomize’ button – I don’t know how hard it would have been to code, but nevertheless it’s pretty cool. Once the website has its full complement of make money online ideas, it’s quite conceivable that visitors could spend hours just clicking that button and checking out various way of making money online.
Hopefully this review will help generate some traffic to the website, but more importantly offer ideas on how it could be improved – if you have any comments, leave them below; if you have any ideas to make money that you haven’t seen discussed, use the form and submit them
March 9th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Cheers for the review Jason.
In terms of monetization, I’m staying away from it until I’ve done some promotion, people won’t trust an idea if they think it’s to earn me money through affiliate links as well. I’m working on promotion, but I’ve been building up the content slowly to the point where the site is actually valuable. I know I need to work on the lengths of the posts, its tough though and keeping to the “one a day” schedule is certainly not easy…
thanks for the feedback…
Monty’s last blog post..#20 – Image Hosting
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March 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I absolutely love this site.
I just added it to my RSS reader.
I don’t however, agree with you about the length, maybe a little bit longer posts, but I think the whole point of the site is show different ways to create money online, so you can find one (or many) methods that you like and research them more.
As you said many of the people reading this site are going to be newbies, (like me) and all that they want to do is see all the different ways that it is possible to make money, and then type what they find into that little “google” search bar (soon to be my search fund bar) to find more about each method.
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March 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Nice choice of site. I agree with willhaynes. My only suggestion would be provide a few links to blogs/sites that have authority on the topic for newbies who want to explore the subject more.
Crystal’s last blog post..Blogging Money & Traffic – My Experience Part 1
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March 9th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I checked the site out…nice and clean…but I don’t like that I can’t get to all the ideas and read the ones I want…But other than that….awesome!
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March 9th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
@ Will Haynes, people visiting other websites to search for more indepth guides means you may lose out on affiliate commissions
@ Taylor Blue, there’s an Archive that has all past ideas as well as the random generator.
Glad you guys like the site, if you have anymore thoughts just post them up
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March 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Thanks for the update Jason. That site looks generally positive and I will definitely be taking a look at what it has to offer over the next week or so. Sounds like a winner thusfar
Jim’s last blog post..What’s the Deal With Microsoft and Yahoo?
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March 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
The randomize button is definitely awesome, I’ve spent nearly half an hour on it already
George’s last blog post..Adding 2 More Proxies to My Collection..
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March 9th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I’m glad for the feedback you guys, and I really enjoy reading positive comments about it, it makes me want to work harder on it…
William Montanaro’s last blog post..#20 – Image Hosting
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March 10th, 2008 at 1:00 am
I like the randomizer too. Awesome site.
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March 10th, 2008 at 2:27 am
I really like Ideamix and have added it to my reader. Great review, by the way.
Dusty’s last blog post..How to Create a Blog from Scratch – Step Four
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March 10th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Great review, really professional and ging a lot of ideas to the site owners and at the same time everyone else who start a new site. Great idea with a lot of potential.
ForexTrader’s last blog post..Trading Foreign Currency Online
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March 10th, 2008 at 4:30 am
The button is very useful for bloggers who want some ideas when blogging.
David Chew’s last blog post..Do You Blog To Earn Money Or Blog For Fun?
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March 10th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I love the site as well and I will be adding it to my feed too
Misty’s last blog post..High Speed Internet Is A Must-Have For Gamers
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March 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Nice Innovative site. Yes could do with a bit more monetization.
Good for building a list.
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March 10th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
About the post length, I love it as it is short and sweet. I hate long posts. I’m too sleepy to read anyway..
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March 10th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I agree with Jason’s review point stating that you should monetize the site. I think a site that tells you how to make money should actually be making money itself, and showing proof of it.
But anyway I like the site, great concept. Maybe I am missing it, but is there somewhere to subscribe to the RSS via email? I would much rather view it in my inbox than through a RSS reader.
egk’s last blog post..Under the Hood :: 1994 E320 – Turn signals, hazards, and rear defrost
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March 10th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I will get onto monetization, but I’m reluctant simply because if a site is there just to make money then it’s not really going to provide great content, and I think people think that when they see ads…so I want to build a solid traffic base before I monetize….my first priority is great content…
I’ll get onto the subscribe by e-mail form some time soon….
William Montanaro’s last blog post..#23 – Outsourcing Web Design Services
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March 10th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Monty – a tip for keeping up with the one a day post schedule is to spend a day or so and try to pump out ten or so posts. With this system, you could keep weeks or even months of content to auto post itself in case you are gone for a while.
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March 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
It must be very difficult to be running this site.I mean you have to write every day of the year a way to make money.
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March 11th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
It is hard, and I know at some point I’m going to start running out of ideas, but I reckon I can get through the first year OK and then we’ll see how it goes from there, I might just expand on each idea after that….
Monty’s last blog post..#23 – Outsourcing Web Design Services
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March 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I see that you added the subscribe by email form. Subscribed. Looking forward to the daily posts…
egk’s last blog post..Off Topic :: Ramiele Malubay : artworks
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March 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
@ Monty:
Subscribed and I have been getting your daily posts….
One suggestion that I would like to make: I have been receiving and visiting your latest posts from my inbox. This is fine for reading a particular post. However I would recommend adding the Home, Archive and Randomize links at the top of all of your pages. These are currently available at the bottom of the page, but what happens if I lose interest in the middle of a post?
I jumped to the top of your page and did not find a home or archives link, I had to scroll to the bottom of the post to find these. I think it could improve your bounce rate if you added links to more articles above the page fold.
Just a suggestion, but this is what I have found on my short time visiting your site.
egk’s last blog post..Off Topic :: Ramiele Malubay : artworks
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March 13th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Interesting site. I click several times on Random idea. Got several ideas.
Aleks’s last blog post..Funny picture of the day
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March 18th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I had a look at the website and it looks great.. it’s hard to tell how well it’s doing because it has no PR and no interactivity of any sort and I think it could do with a little bit of both.. this website will go far.
crumblepie’s last blog post..Fluff Friends – It won’t eat your dollars, but it will eat your hours!
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May 19th, 2008 at 7:52 am
What happened to ideamix? I haven’t seen any new content since the site redesign….
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June 14th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Quick comment on the promotion for the PR, I guess he should have done the PR linking or contacted you or one of those link building services for it… I’d be happy to do it!
iBlogtoBlog.com
iBlogtoBlog.com’s last blog post..Celtics Complete Biggest Comeback in NBA Finals History Down 24 to Beat Lakers
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July 21st, 2008 at 2:54 am
All the advertising spots on this site are empty, so is most of the sidebar. This turns me away a lot
Ryan McLean’s last blog post..Smarter Wealth – Not Just Another Financial Blog
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November 6th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Well, when I try to check the site, I got this messages :
Address Not Found
Firefox can’t find the server at http://www.ideamix.net.
*dooh**
Busby SEO’s last blog post..Busby SEO Test
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