Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Make money online

There are many ways to make money online, but let's consider the three hottest: Google's Adsense, social networks, and the website. If you are new to all this then let’s start with what Google's Adsense is.

Adsense: On the front page of Google we have the traditional search box – just enter what you are looking for, hit the return key, and you have the famous search results listing. On the left are your results. The top three lines are paid-for ads. The right side is also paid-for ads.


OK, how does Google get paid for these ads? Easy – just mouse over and click. This is called a Click-Through (CT). Now the owner of the ad will pay for all traffic driven to their website from one of these Click-Through links. Google helps the business with budgets, CT rates (CTR) and many tools designed to maximize the business’ ad money.


One of Google's mottos is: "Give the advertiser the most bang for their buck!" That was great and still works fine. But what happens when a user clicks the search text instead of one of the CT ads? No money is made.


Targeted market ads: So up pops the brainchild Adsense – originally prototyped by Paul Buchheit, lead developer of Gmail. Now we can follow the user onto the next leg of their journey and then on to the final destination: the owner of the advertisement.



This is where Adsense and you make money. At this point the user has not yet reached their destination. They are still researching the product or service.



This is where you come in. You have a blog with information for the user. On the sides of your blog you provide advertisements from Adsense. Adsense then pays you for CT traffic, so when someone clicks through to your blog and finds an ad that interests them, they click it, Right? Right! And when they click it, you get paid as an owner of the blog and having registered with Google's Adsense.


So you make money when someone clicks the ad on your blog, simple and sweet. Well… kinda. In order to make money, there is much more to learn on this topic and we’ll cover it later.


Social networks: Social networks like YouTube also have CT ads that are posted near the content. But more importantly, they make videos. These videos make money. They are used to promote a product, music, or present the fun side of business. Some of the clients of YouTube also have links to blogs and websites to promote products and services. Now these blogs and websites have ads, and ads have Click-Through revenue. So again, we are back to Click-Throughs.


Websites: These are a breed unto themselves for making money online. A website can have all the above elements and still focus on informing, advertising, buying advertisement, incorporating Adsense, selling ad space directly and adding links to Affiliate Programs.


Note: An Affiliate Program pays you if a user buys a product or service by clicking the advertisement link placed on your website.


So websites can be the most versatile, but they also require the most work to maintain. Remember, one of the major reasons for a website is to draw customers to the products or services you provide. Through the use of Affiliate Programs and Adsense advertising, you can help defray the cost of a full-blown, fully-featured storefront.


If you have a simple website, then the placement of Adsense and properly written blogs and Articles can move you up Google's search engine, and maybe even onto page one.


Getting customers to your front doorisn’t this the point of your website? So they see your products or services, and buy them.


Now on the backside of your website you can have multiple blog areas that may address different subjects, say machine tool equipment and another for machine tool programming. Each of these in turn would have their own Adsense links and their own targeted market ads. So with your web site, you could create a machine tool community with products and services that surround your product line.


Besides the product information, the website can be used to publish articles about products or services you offer.


How about unique and different ways to use your products or services? You may even provide a repair parts page that would have ads for UPS, or repair service organizations, creating affiliates or providing the space for Adsense advertisements. The possibilities are nearly endless. But each aspect can be used to create revenue.


And in the end, is this not what we are in business for?


So you must decide how you want to make money online; doing Blogs (Articles), Social Networks (Video), a Business Web Site (selling Product), or a Website community (Doing Blogs, Video, Support and Products).


OK to Make Money Online - Setup


BigBear


1 comment:

  1. Thanks, BigBear. This is helpful. Hoping to implement your suggestions on my own blog: http://bulk-reo-and-notes.blogspot.com/.

    ReplyDelete