Internet Babel

1. Contextual advertising
Since AdSense came out I’d imagine this has been and still is easily the most popular or at least, well spread way of making money online. It takes seconds to implement and customize an AdSense or any other contextual ad unit. You get payed per click, simple as you like. But don’t bank on the continuation of clicks to be easy.

2. Direct advertising sales
Probably the most profitable method of making money via a website. Selling direct advertising can be extremely lucrative if your website gets a lot of unique visitors, pageviews and is a dominate in a certain niche / market.

You control the prices, you control who advertises. No middle men. It’s probably best to implement an automated system whereby the ad only goes live once payment is made though. This will prevent you having to chase advertisers for money. For bloggers OIO Publisher is perfect.

3. Subscriptions / Paid memberships
Have never had any experience with getting people to pay money to subscribe or to own a membership. I’d imagine it could be very lucrative if gone about the right way though. All depends on what niche your in but more importantly how you market it.

Some forums for example, charge to sign-up when they get to a certain level. Obviously only certain (huge) forums can get away with this as when they reach a certain level, they don’t need to convince people to join. People WANT to join, that’s the key. They have to believe there’s some special discussion going on inside that they want to be part of. With forums at least anyway, as for other memberships… enough said.

4. Freelance content creation
I personally would never consider making money via content creation for other people. If you’re good enough at writing or other content creation, you should be creating content for your own websites.

Don’t you think the people who pay you plan to make a bit more than what they payed you? Work for yourself, be rich, be happy.

5. Web design
A lot of money can be made with web design. Even if you’re not as good as the best. Seriously, price ranges so dramatically within web design that any web design company can make cold cash if they put their mind to it.

I’ve seen local crappy designers who get a ton of work yet charge outrageous prices for shabby designs. Then I see AMAZING designers charge half what they charge get much less work. This is really because laymen don’t know what’s good and what’s not. Yes, they obviously have a visual representation to judge by, in the same way. But they don’t look at it all the same way. They don’t know about what’s behind it, so what might look shabby to a web designer / coder / Internet marketer. Could look brilliant to a laymen.

If you’re even a modest web designer, have a go at making some nice cash from it. Play with prices, target small businesses, provide good services. But make more than you should!

6. E-commerce
Never actually setup an e-commerce store. Almost did before, was about to but has some issues. Have a domain ready for it though. When I get some free time and some more cash that’ll be one of the next things I develop.

I think e-commerce is a tricky one. If you get it right… YOU GET IT RIGHT! and make a lot of money. But if you get it even a little wrong… you… don’t.

There’s so many huge e-commerce stores (Amazon and Play coff!) that sort of dominate most things people buy online that it’s hard to make an impact with e-commerce. I think it’s best to create an e-commerce store in a very niche market that you know a lot about. I think people generally underestimate how many people are interested in what they are.

7. Paid reviews
Referring to blogging here obviously. I like paid reviews, I don’t really see a downside for anyone. With contextual advertising or any advertising at all, you could argue it compromises user experience etc.

But with reviews on a blog, given that they’re totally relevant… are fine. It doesn’t compromise user experience providing the review is written well, you’re subscribers might even sometimes like an inside look on an outside product.

Just don’t sell out. Do paid reviews at a controlled rate. Too many can potentially drive people away from your blog as they think you’re just blogging for money now. Mix the odd review with tons of great content and you get a good mix, for everyone.

8. Donations
Donations… they do seem pretty desperate by any account in my eyes, on a generic level. But if the right presentation is used with a donation option, I think it can attract attention.

Just like the Buy Me A Beer Plugin for WordPress, it’s a nice creative way of saying ‘give me money please’. And you’d be surprised how well it can work.

9. ebay
Gotta love eBay.

10. Direct sales of digital content
You can make a fair bit if you can manage to conjure up worthwhile digital products. Whether it be; instructional videos, ebooks… or whatever else you can think of.

Make sure though, if you’re going to slap a significant price tag on it that it’s quality. If you write an ebook – Get some inside and outside opinions on it, give away some free copies, ask people how much they ‘would’ pay for it without telling them what you’re going to charge.

Compromise price but not so much that you lower the perception value of your product.

11. Affiliate marketing
Have never got on with Affiliate marketing. But then again, I haven’t been in this game that long. A few years…

Anyway, there are so many affiliates out there that I’m not going to bother mentioning any because I’ll end up not being able to resist typing and typing until my fingers seize up from not being able to list all the affiliates out there.

Go look for yourself Make money, be rich.

12. PPC marketing for ROI / Arbitrage
Again, zilch experience. Has never been my thing, it’s just one of those things to me that seems awkward and iffy and just… blah. Stock markets ring a bell there too.

If it’s your thing though, I do know a lot of cash can be made from it. It’s just a matter of finding your limit, getting the balance right and learning from mistakes. Like with most things really.

13. Quality directories
In a way, I’ve never really saw the value in directories. I would never stay on one and look through the links, it’s like walking instead of running… hello Google?

But I can see the practical and long term value in QUALITY directories. Human edited, give a little extra, well trusted directories. I think niche directories add value as well, general ones are usually just link farms.

I did get listed in Dmoz once but they’ve messed their reputation up now with their dodgy editors scamming people.

There’s obviously lots more ways to make money online. Feel free to share.

I think you need to experiment and continue to experiment regularly with your blog. Your ads, ad networks, placement, just try different things continuously.

Try and improve your blog everyday. Look at successful blogs and think ‘what do they have that I don’t’ emulate things to a degree but ultimately try and create your own unique brand.

Posts / Content

You can always improve your posts. I’m sure if you’ve owned a blog for a while and have over 100 posts on it – you have looked back on now and then and been surprised and how rubbish you think an old post looks!?

I have done this a few times. Make sure you always experiment with your posts to constantly provide fresh content, fresh views, advice and standpoints.

Use bigger images, smaller images, bigger headings, color texts. Be provocative, leave questions unanswered. Try what you can to increase reader interaction and constantly try to improve your grammar and most of all. Presentation. Make things easy on the eye.

Subscriptions

This is for me, the most fickle aspect of a blog. Changing one thing can increase subscriptions a lot. Always experiment with where you place your subscription options, how you present them, how visible they are etc.

Generally, the more visible they are the better. You want people to know

• Here is my RSS subscription
• Here is my Email subscription

Which brings me to my next point. Make sure you always offer an email subscription option! whilst most don’t like email updates, well most bloggers. Due to obvious reasons. It’s still another option for people who may like it and can do nothing but expand your subscriptions.

RSS makes it so easy to flick through blogs in seconds and it’s so convenient and neat. I love RSS and would never subscribe via email personally. Don’t see much point. But still, make sure it’s there and people can see it.

Advertising / Revenue

Very subjective topic. If you’re absolute only purpose of a blog is to make money. I don’t think you will get very far. You need an undertone, something which makes your blog great. Whether that be simply an amazing logo, so be it. Overall though, great content, obviously.

But if you are trying to grow a blog or even static website based purely on re-written or purely ripped content, surrounded by Adsense blocks… give up now!

What you should be doing is writing pure original content. That’s right – from scratch. It’s good to get inspiration but make sure you don’t copy people, develop your own train of thought on a subject instead of borrowing somebody else’s.

That being said, this will then provide you with a good surrounding for ads. People don’t mind ads nearly as much if the content is good. Just look at John Chow – he has said a lot of time his blog doesn’t look like it’s full of ads, well… John, hate to break it to you but it does. A lot but we don’t care because your content is great!

Make sure you follow in John’s footsteps if you need a stepping stone example. Great content surrounded by targeted advertising = revenue.

Traffic

Why put this one last? because it is the most important silly!

Traffic to your blog or any website is the foundation for EVERYTHING. No matter how crappy your content may be, how spammy your ads may look, everything escalates with traffic.

With crappy content surrounded by ads but A TON of traffic. The bad content ironically becomes a good thing. People will want to get out of there and if your traffic isn’t savvy to these things, they will click ads. All the time. Which equals? big revenue!

But. I wouldn’t want this. I’d much rather try and build a quality content source with highly relevant ads. Advertising then becomes less of a hindrance and more of an alternative source for the user. If they don’t like what you’re saying and are going to leave anyway… you may as well get payed for it.

Big Traffic Equals

1. A lot of people viewing what you say and do!
2. A lot of potential buzz!
3. A lot of potential revenue!

It’s just all about how you utilize these qualities that decides how much money you make and how successful your blog becomes.

Final Thoughts

There is obviously other criterea also important to your blog such as; Design, Backlinks, Impact etc.

But I have sort of covered all those a lot in previous posts and things like backlinks and impact can be easily related back to traffic so in some areas it’s not worth expanding. Because I’ll go on forever… maybe another time…

Remember above all though. Neve be satisfied *Never be satisfied