Well the Holiday Season sure sucks for making money off the internet. Already revenues have dropped 40% or more overall. This is especially bad since I need money to get gifts! Doesn’t help that we’re in the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Haha, well anyways it happens every year so don’t worry too much about it. Advertisers are spending less money around the holiday season and more money putting gifts under the Christmas tree.

Currently I’m working on some CPA work which hasn’t been doing much. In the past three weeks I’ve made one sale, netting me a grand total of 13 bucks (edit: now 18 bucks). I really hate CPA but it’s currently the only untapped revenue source that I haven’t looked into.

Merry Xmas!

Permalink

I’m gonna try to work with Adbrite for my new blog based on Aki Hoshino. Since the images are a little bit raunchier, and the Adsense TOS is fuzzy about whether they would allow bikini/lingerie pictures (PG-13 mind you), I decided that I would just go with Adbrite. Hopefully Adbrite works well (definitely won’t be as good as Adsense though), but if not, I’m still serving CPM ads anyways so I’ll make a little bit of revenue. I loved the fact that I happened to acquire such a good domain name so I’m trying my best to use it to my advantage.

Permalink

So just through experimenting with placement I doubled my Adsense CTR on one of my pages. That page was getting low click throughs so with just a little bit of tweaking, I managed to double my CTR. Let me show you where I put the ads.

This is where I ORIGINALLY HAD ADS. I was getting a CTR of around 7%. I had originally thought this placement to be pretty good, but from someone else’s tip I decided to change my placement.

This is where I put the new ads, giving me a CTR of 12-14%. Be careful, you can’t have the ad directly underneath the article title because this is a violation of Adsense TOS.

Also be sure to make your links the same color as your ads for better blending.

That’s it for now. Happy earning.

Permalink

Recently I’ve downloaded a bunch of e-books about making money online. Some of them gave me some good hints, but most of them were just trash. My advice to you is to NOT buy any e-books on the subject unless you are a complete newbie. Most websites like mine and others have plenty of resources that the e-books simply just rehash.

Follow the general principles in order to make money on the internet. Remember, these principles are about MAKING MONEY not getting a lot of traffic and having a big website. Trust me, there are big websites out there that do not make money at all (Youtube actually loses millions of dollars for Google).

1) Find niches that make money

I need to start following my own advice, because right now many of my sites are in niches that doesn’t make a whole lot of money (this blog is also in one of those niches - internet marketing). Use Google trends to find topics that people are talking about.  Or visit the following page to find high paying keywords and make good content. Making websites off the good key words is the best way to get success using Google Adsense.

http://www.top-adsense-keywords.com/highest-paying-keywords.htm

2) Write the content and USE BLOGGER

Keep your website/blog updated. Also a good idea would be to use blogger for your blogs. The reason you want to use blogger is because Google puts the best paying keywords on your blog if you’re using adsense. Obviously, if you’re not using Adsense then it doesn’t matter what blog program you use.

Don’t be afraid to outsource your content. Get guest writers or staff writers or ask to borrow the content from another website.

3) SEO & Backlinks

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial. Make sure you have the right keywords, the right meta tags, and content that effectively promotes the content that you want to SEO. So this means that if you have a page that you want to rank high for “Buying Used Comic Books, ” then make sure your title and description tags mention these words and that you write the phrase on your page as well.

The second step would be to increase your page rank by getting backlinks. This can be done by simply buying relevant backlinks, or by getting link trades with other bloggers/website owners. http://forums.digitalpoint.com is the place that I like to go to for my link buying or my link trading.

Also a tip that most of you guys probably know. When you buy links, ask them to make your linking text something that you want to optimize for. An example is that if I wanted to get links for Sector Online and rank high for the keyword “make money online,” I’d ask them to use the linking text “Make Money Online.” Also make sure to buy links from websites that are actually related to your niche as well, since it is rumored that Google actually penalizes you for buying random links.

4) Traffic

With good seo, good traffic should come. However, if you’re optimizing your site for incredibly obscure search phrases or phrases that people aren’t that interested in, then don’t expect SEO to do it all (in fact, if you’re doing this, you probably should just forget about your site altogether because it generally won’t be profitable if no one is interested in it). Of my websites that are content-based, about 80% of my traffic comes from Search engines. If you don’t know SEO, then buy a book or download a book or read the hundreds of articles that are on the web.

You need to advertise your website somehow. I remember that at the beginning of one of my websites, I had advertised on the forums of a competitor of ours.  I also made a Myspace profile and got a bunch of friends, built a bunch of different Squidoo lenses, uploaded some of our videos to Dailymotion, put my websites link on my forum signatures, and probably a bunch of other ways that I can’t name right now. Entrecard.com is also another good way to drive traffic to your website.

5) Use the good networks

I recommend Adsense for your CPC ads and Tribalfusion for your CPM ads. Alternatives are Adbrite (CPC) and DirectMedia (CPM).

Permalink

Revenue is now at an all time high! YAY!

Thanks in part to Google Adsense. However, my revenue with my CPM ad network is a lot lower than with TribalFusion. I am getting a pathetic average 0.14 CPM. (Currently DirectMedia - look them up on Google).

But with Google Ads, my revenue went up double to what I had been previously making with Adbrite. Won’t share the details for now.

Also I made my company’s website.

http://www.kevintang.net

A very simple page, not really much to it right now.

Another one of my sites went online. It’s called AsianCyte and I’m doing the beta testing for it right now. Check it out at http://www.asiancyte.com

Permalink

I think it’s best to start off the blog with a comprehensive listing of some webmaster resources that you may or may not have known. All these sites will have some very valuable information that will help you increase traffic, increase your search engine rankings, and most importantly, monetize your online business.

SitePoint - Although I cannot say it’s the #1 resource on the web, it sure comes close. If you aren’t a member of Sitepoint Forums then you are definitely missing out on some great knowledge. Not only does Sitepoint contain hundreds of articles related to everything about webmastering, it is a very good resource to ask questions of other webmasters. Many big earners spend their time on this site, and you can also buy/sell/trade online properties such as advertising, templates, sites, and domains.

ProBlogger - This site is mainly aimed at helping bloggers make money, and to be honest, this was the site that initiated my interest in creating the blog you see here. Personally, I like making actual websites over blogs, but I felt that it was time to delve deeper into the online business world. Although this site is for blogs, it has many hints and tips about site monetization, generating traffic, SEO, and the like. Definitely worth a read.

Webmaster Talk - A site similar to Sitepoint. Actually, it’s almost like a clone of Sitepoint, but this is a good site to use to get more opinions, share your links, or sell/trade online properties.

Webhosting Talk - If you have questions about webhosting, this is the only site you’ll ever need. Great activity and many helpful members here to assist in helping you pick a host, find deals, and the determine the difference between a VPS and a shared server.

StevePavlina - Another blogger just like myself, and he’s quite a big earner. He has some very useful articles about blogging and webmastering, but most importantly, his site informs about personal development as a whole.

MattCutts - Matt is one of the most trusted experts on SEO and Google. This is definitely the place you want to go for helpful SEO information.

ShoeMoney - A lot of random stuff, but he has a lot of good information about online businesses and websites.

Wicked Fire Forums - A webmaster forum with, but the best part is that there aren’t many rules. It’s not as uptight of a community as Sitepoint, and the result is that you will have a lot more fun. The downside is that some members aren’t very professional and you may not get the answers that you want.

Hopefully I can add to this list as time goes by. If you think there’s a site that I completely missed, feel free to e-mail me and reccomend the site. However, I give no guarantee that I will add the link.

Permalink