Entries fromSeptember 2007

One important question to ask yourself when developing any new business idea or website is this: What’s going to make my visitors come back for more? Finding the answer to this question is essential for success on every level.

A long term profit strategy requires a solid understanding what drives your visitors to return to your website repeatedly. And what makes them want to recommend your website to others.

Visitors often visit websites and perform keyword searches in order to find the information they require. One way to make money from this often repeated user action is to display targeted advertisements on your search results pages.

Ideally, you want to monetize while adding value for your visitors and a means to achieve this aim is to use Google’s Adsense for Search, which places text-based ads next to your search results

I’ve inserted a Google Custom Search engine on Dosh Dosh a few months ago and I thought it’ll be helpful to share the process of setting up a Google Custom Search for your own site, in order to generate some extra income.

Google Adsense has a referral program which will allow you to earn up to US $1 everytime you refer one new user to install the Firefox browser. The more people you convert to the Firefox browser, the more income you will earn from your website.

Unlike other Google Adsense units, this referral program allows you to directly recommend products by using action-based text, which directs a user to click through on any specific links or ad banners.

Google Adsense’s Help Center clearly shows that this is something that is allowed:

Rob Watts writes about building your brand with social media and tells us that being sociable on these online communities can really help to develop your perceived authority and personal brand.

I’ll just like to highlight one mistake that I’ve often seen on social news websites: consistent submission and promotion of your own content and nothing else.

It makes your brand look bad. Instead of submitting your own content to sites like Sphinn all the time, try submitting someone else’s work. It gives you credibility and I’m sure other bloggers or webmasters would really appreciate it as well.

Free is an business model that works extremely well for most types of businesses and websites. The idea of getting something for nothing is one that is incredibly attractive, because it perfectly fulfills the self-interest of even the most casual visitor or consumer.

“Free” is also a keyword that is malleable and fully capable of attaching itself to just about any possible search phrase.

Free iphones, free software, free stock pictures, free audiobooks, free coupons. And it goes on forever, like a parasite embedding itself as a modifier for its host.

I’ve been thinking lately about how blogs can be used to make money and I thought it’ll be useful if I could develop some blueprint or template listing the exact steps you need to take to generate substantial income from a blog.

While there are many ways you can build up and make a blog profitable, I think some generic steps do apply for all types of blogs, regardless of their niche or focus.

Simply put, these are the things you need to do in order to make money blogging.

StumbleUpon is a great way to not only share interesting content you come across, but also your opinions on various websites or issues. By thumbing up and reviewing a website, you give it more exposure by increasing the possibility that others will view it as well.

But that’s not the only way to share a website that you like; you can also use the toolbar to send any webpage directly to both your StumbleUpon friends and other non users as well.

In fact, there are some very good reasons why you should do so.

John Reese, a renowned internet marketer, recently launched BlogRush, a content syndication network that claims to be capable of sending free, targeted traffic to your blog.

How is this possible? Through the placement of a simple blog widget on your blog and the blogs of others. The widget will then display the headlines of your latest posts, which are pulled from your feed.

Apparently, Blogrush was only launched yesterday and at the time of writing this article, I have not yet obtained any statistics ever since I placed the widget on my site 12 hours ago. More data and use of the widget will allow for greater analysis but for now here’s a review and introduction to BlogRush.