Earn money with MyLikes
Last month, I ran across a great way to earn a little extra cash AND at the same time provide to my social media followers that they would love. Sounds like a win/win right? It definitely is. The affiliate program is called MyLikes, and over the past two weeks I’ve earned nearly $100.00 using it. The best part (well, other than the money), is that MyLikes is really easy to set-up and use.
What is MyLikes?
MyLikes is a really slick affiliate program where they create a “viral content” website for you that you can then share viral content to from their likes.com content repository. The site they create for you is hosted on one of their urls, but is customized for you (I’ll explain in a sec). Once you publish content to your MyLikes website, you can then share that content on your blog, to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, using your mailing list, and a number of other ways. Each time someone visits the content you shared on your MyLikes website and engages with it, you earn money!
There are a few things about the MyLikes set-up that are a bit confusing, but hopefully I can help clarify them a bit.
Your custom website and URL (domain name)
When you sign-up for MyLikes, you’ll enter your personal information including a username. When MyLikes creates the name for your MyLikes website, this username will be part of the URL, so choose your user name wisely! I would not recommend using your name, and would recommend using something that conveys the type of content your MyLikes site will showcase.
Let’s say you use “viralphotoz” as your username. That username will be combined with a few of MyLikes reserved domain names like humorable.org, dailysmh.me and many others. So you’re custom website address will be: viralphotoz.humorable.org or viralphotoz.dailysmh.me.
There are a few problems with these custom domain names:
- They look spammy in many cases. This can cause people to not want to click on your links and content.
- Because these domain names are shared by thousand of other people, they often get flagged as spam on Facebook and Pinterest, making your content unsharable. Not a good thing.
- Since you’re using their domain name, if you want to move your site to another platform, you can’t.
Instead of using their domain names, I would recommend getting your own private domain name and using it. Having your own domain name solves all three problems above.
To learn how to do that, read my article: How to find a good blog name. MyLikes tells you how to use and set-up your own domain name to work on their site. I ended up going with The Viral Edge, if you want to see an example of how a MyLikes site can look. All of the posted content is from likes.com, although some of it is custom content I created, which I’ll explain in a bit.
MyLikes.com vs Likes.com
Likes.com is an independent social media site, similar to Facebook. You can participate on it just like any other social media site and share your content and content from others. Likes.com does not allow you to build out your own website though, that is what Mylikes.com is for. While I’m not 100% sure, I would guess that the Mylikes.com site started first, then they decided to branch out and extend it into a social media service by creating likes.com.
Regardless, you’ll want to sign-up at mylikes.com, which will create a likes.com account for you and integrate the two together.
Payment
MyLikes offers a number of different payment capabilities: Paypal, Amazon Gift Cards, and wire transfers. The fastest and easiest way, use Paypal. Using Paypal, you’ll get paid weekly if your amount due is greater than $20. MyLikes pays out each Friday afternoon, and the cut-off for the amount due is 48 hours prior. If you earn money and don’t meet the $20.00 minimum, you’ll receive a credit to your account and you’ll get paid once your total credit amount exceeds $20.00.
Amazon gift cards pay out weekly, just like Paypal payments. Wire transfers have a $50.00 minimum and only payout monthly.
Finding and sharing content
Once your MyLikes account and website are set-up, it’s time to begin sharing content on your Mylikes website. Here are some tips:
- Pick content that is relevant to your audience. A large portion of the content on MyLikes is a bit riske, and some of it looks very spamming. Try to find content that you think your social media audience would enjoy, and share it on your MyLikes website.
- When you do share, make sure you select your MyLikes domain in the pop-up, otherwise you might accidentally share it to someone else’s page. I’m not really sure why, but the default site to share content to on the share pop-up isn’t my site, it’s somebody else’s, which is a bit irritating.
- If you have multiple Facebook pages, consider creating a Facebook page for your MyLikes website. Share the website links to this FB page, then share from that FB page to your other Facebook pages. Check out my The Viral Edge Page as an example.
- Don’t over due it! Don’t share MyLike link after Mylike link. Mix your MyLike shares in with other high quality content for better results and to avoid getting your page marked as spam.
Thus far, I’ve been successful sharing my MyLikes links on Twitter, Facebook and through my email lists.
Last, but certainly, not least: Read the FAQ. With MyLikes, you can’t just share your content anywhere, and there are some restrictions. For example, you cannot share MyLikes links in groups that you don’t own. That’s a great way to get your MyLikes account suspended.
Create your own content
One of the really slick features of MyLikes is that you can create your own custom content. If it begins to get popular you’ll not only get paid like you normally would when people visit it, but you’ll also begin to get a percentage of the earnings from other people sharing your content. These are called royalties.
I created a number of custom content galleries for my pages. The great thing about custom content is not only can you earn more money, but you can laser target the content to your audience. For example, for my Blue Ridge Mountain Life Facebook page, people love beautiful photos. Given fall is here, I put together a Gallery containing 15 stunning fall photos from various photographers I follow on Facebook. That gallery has been my most popular so far. Why? Because I shared it on my Blue Ridge Mountain Life page, and as expected, my followers loved it
To create new “viral content”, you either create a Gallery or an Image. On the your likes.com page, you’ll see blue buttons, one named “Add Gallery” an he other “Add Image” in the top upper right and green area. These buttons allows you to create two different types of “viral” content. Galleries are collections of images or text, and an image is just what you would expect, a single image.
I would highly recommend you spend time creating your own custom galleries, targeted for your social media audience. Not only do they do better, but creating them is kind of fun too.
Wrapping Up
While I don’t think MyLikes is going to make you rich overnight, nor will it most likely be your #1 income source, it is a great way to add some diversity to your income portfolio, and a great way to add some extra, and pretty easy to earn, cash to your wallet. I’ve also found that if I’m really selective about the content I share, my Facebook fans and social media followers enjoy and reshare the content as well.
Enjoyed the article as usual! You are always very thorough in your articles as this one is. I was so hoping you had found an answer to the double url in the popup share Facebook feature. Makes me wonder if the urls belongs to MyLikes? At any rate just gotta be careful to share it to my page as you stated. A good way to suppliment my income. I have already made some decent money using them. Thanks for pointing them out to me.
Thanks Charles – I’m going to do a little research on that “double url” thing, as its a bit confusing, but I’ll bet you’re right, they belong to MyLikes. I’ve made over $100 at this point, so pretty happy with the results, especially given how easy it is to do.
Great article Larry! Love mylikes~
Thanks Michelle – Me too!