Category — Google

With the current bear market and an economy that is not doing too hot, we must find ways to maintain our high percentage returns on investments.  If you look to the stock market, you won’t find anything right now that can yield appealing percentages.  However, if you look online, you see a few options.  Even worse, those of us with money in the market, are seeing little or no returns.

No, please don’t go and get an online savings account with a .01% better rate than your local bank, because that is NOT what I am talking about.  I am talking about making money FROM the internet.  Here I will talk about one way you can yield high percentages online while doing very little work, and watching it pay off more and more over time.

We have all heard that blogging is a great tool to make some extra cash - right?  Well, that’s true, but you must stick with it and post often, and create “juicy” headlines and titles to attract readers, etc.  Some people just aren’t into that.  My suggestions are similar, but not exactly to that extent.  Here is what you do..

Figure Out What Topics You Have a Genuine Interest In

Seriously, it might be your career, or a hobby you spend time on when you get home.  It also might be a category that you frequently find yourself answering all the questions on Jeopardy!  Who knows.  We all have interests that we either supress or never find time for.  So dig deep and think about something that would really interest you.

Set Up a Wordpress Account

Once you have decided on a topic that intrigues or interests you  -  You can set up an online Wordpress account in a matter of a few seconds.  If you are an advanced web user, you can download Wordpress and install their standalone version on your web hosting account.  Either way, you will eventually be starting a BLOG.  Don’t worry, we aren’t trying to turn you into a journalist here.  We just need to use the advanced software that blogs are made from to get your site up.  They are also very easy to set up as well.  Some websites are run on Wordpress and you cannot even tell because they look like normal sites.  Wordpress has evolved into something much more than just blogging software.

If you are a Wordpress.com user (Beginner) then I recommend you change your theme to something that fits your blog’s overall theme.  You will find the option in your settings area on Wordpress.com.

If you are using the standalone hosted version of Wordpress, then check out some wordpress themes sites for some advanced looking themes that can easily and inexpensively be applied to your site.

Start Posting Information About Your Chosen Topic That Will Benefit Others

After you get your Wordpress account all set up and you have a chance to tinker and figure things out, then start posting!  Don’t just post a bunch of random crap, but think of things that you feel will benefit other people about your chosen topic.  Separate each point, tid-bit, or chunk of information into separate posts.  Be clear, but don’t worry about your writing skills.  People researching topics don’t want to see some corporate professionally written stuff, they want information from people that know what they’re talking about - like you!  Post as much as you can, whenever you think of something.

Don’t get upset if your site isn’t performing as well as you had originally hoped.  Sometimes it can take days, weeks, and even a month or two before search engines like Google and Yahoo come around and put all of your data into their search rankings.  Eventually, search will become your number one source of traffic.  When that happens, you will know it.

Implement Ads Into Your Site

Now you are ready to monetize this website into something that should make you a little extra money.  You can use Google Adsense or other advertising networks that are easily integrated into Wordpress.  The Wordpress.com (beginner) version offers easy to use tools that help implement ad placement.  The great thing about Wordpress is that almost any advertising model works very well with it.

When using the standalone version of Wordpress, you will find that most ad models offer some type of plugin that you can install and activate which will easily start working with little knowledge needed.  There are also tons of great resources on how to properly optimize your ad placements for the most clicks (PPC Model).

In the end, the more content you publish to your site, the more likely someone searching or researching your chosen topic is to come across your website.  With every post you submit and publish to your site, you are becoming more visible among the sites with your topic on search engines.  While there are some tricky ways to manipulate search rankings, you don’t need to worry about that now.  Just stay on track and post as often as you can with valuable information.  If you place your ads in the right spots, near and next to the content, then you will probably get a few clicks eventually.  The goal here is to accumulate a few dollars a week, month, or every so often.  But, when you add up the little money trickling in, and do the math… it turns out to be a nice little bit of change that can help offset your losses in the stock market and economy.  It can also help pay for gas, now that it’s averaging over $4.00 per gallon here in the United States.  The money your site generates can quickly grow as your site becomes more indexed into search results.  As I mentioned before:  Every bit of content you add, you are increasing your visibility among your chosen niche.

Extra Benefits

There are some extra benefits that can potentially come from running a successful website about something you are passionate about and knowledgeable on.  Often, when large media publications become interested in your niche or industry, they turn to the established pros, like yourself, to quote and cite.  This can lead to a career change for some people as they become the “go to” person in their niche.  If you are smart, then you will quickly figure out how to capitalize on your new found popularity.

Hopefully this post benefits some of you, because I sure find this very helpful to my income.  Most of my personal sites have gotten large enough I either have staff writers posting daily on them now or I turn them into destinations on the internet, rather than just trying to gather search traffic.  Eventually, you may choose to do the same.  I now make several hundred dollars each day from my network of websites and domains.

Within the past few months, Google has made some pretty wild moves to help their advertisers get more for their money.  But are they digging their own grave by worrying too much about the advertisers than the publishers?

The short answer to this question is - Yes.

Cause & Effect (speculation):

Cause:  Google changes advertising clickable region from entire ad to only text.
Effect:  A decline of about 7% in paid-click revenues from December 2007 to January 2008.

Cause:  Google updates Adsense display URL policy.
Effect:  Unknown.  As of this post, this change has not yet taken effect.  Effective date starts in April 2008.

While Google appears to be taking steps to clean-up the paid search results and quality of clicks on their ads, it is also hurting their bottom line.

Hopefully the ad-spending will rise in line with the quality of the visitors to their websites or we (Owners of Google Stock) are in for some hard times.  I am confident that Google will recover the short-term losses, but only time will tell.  I feel Google is mandating these updates so closely together so the effects are only felt in a single fiscal quarter before showing improvements through the higher dollar demands these better quality ads will demand.