Entries fromApril 2007

MySpace News is an news aggregator which pulls content from websites and blogs around the web unto their front page. MySpace users will then have the ability to vote for the news that they think is most interesting. The news section is categorized by topic, alphabet or popularity which makes it easy for users to find the latest news on various topics.

This is the second post in my series of articles on developing Direct Ad Sales as an alternative revenue source. You can find the first post and an introduction here.

I previously talked about the benefits and disadvantages of direct advertising sales while covering the basic steps you can take to create an impressive advertiser sell page. In this article, I will cover the types of direct advertiser options available to bloggers and other webmasters.

While advertising networks can restrict the types of ads you can sell on your website, there is virtually no limitation when it comes to direct ad sales.

Selling advertisements on a website is one of the most efficient and easiest ways to make money online. Many bloggers and webmasters utilize ad networks like Text Link Ads and ReviewMe, both of which take a huge 50% cut of all your ad earnings.

These third party ad brokers dominate our monetization strategies because of the strength and trustworthiness of their brand as well as their advertiser reach, which gives them the leverage to demand a cut of our ad earnings.

Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney and the owner of this famous Adsense check has put up a nice little video about his presentation at the recent 2007 New York Search Engine Strategies Conference.

Part of a panel on contextual advertising which included Jennifer Slegg, Jeremy’s presentation was mainly centered around his personal experiences on making money with contextual ad programs like Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network.

The video in question was 27 mins long video and was a brief introduction to contextual advertising, primarily from a publisher’s perspective. I took some notes on Shoemoney’s suggestions and made a short list of the key points:

Seth Godin has written a concise post about how small businesses can leverage the power of the internet to grow their customer base. This includes a barebones and very simple marketing strategy that is most suitable for business owners who are not web savvy.

His suggestions differ from elaborate SEO campaigns and only involves three easy DIY steps.

1. Set up a simple blog on a free or paid blog host. Write some posts about your business service and include your contact details.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a term coined by Rohit Bhargava and refers to the optimization of a website in order to make it more accessible, visible and linkable in social websites and search engines. The central focus of SMO is to structure a website so that its content and ideas can easily be transmitted virally through media like blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

Bhargava came up with a list of 5 rules for social media optimization, which provided some guidelines on preparing a website for rapid and continuous exposure in a wide variety of social networks.

I’ve decided to start my first blog post series on Dosh Dosh, which will cover the topic of how to become an authority in your blog niche. Several bloggers such as Darren Rowse have written extensively about niche blogging but very few have ever produced extensive blog or personality-centric case studies that chronicles and examines the development and methodology which establishes one as an foremost leader in a field.

This series of case studies to come will feature specific bloggers and will include analysis of their content development strategies, marketing tactics as well as their other efforts on building an influential social profile.

As you can probably tell from my gigantic list of internet marketing and webmaster forums, I’m very interested in online communities. Interacting in forums is probably the quickest way you can learn how to effectively make money online. There’s absolutely no cost involved except time and an innate willingness to learn from others.

For site owners and entrepreneurs, forums can be a useful way to attract, maintain and monetize a large number of recurring and new visitors. The question is are forums a lucrative business venture to pursue? And is creating a forum an easy way to make money?