Wednesday, February 13, 2008

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website


There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.

For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.

The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Related links:

4. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.

The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.

Text link marketplaces and networks:

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.

Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.

In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.

List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

6. Monetization Widgets

The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.

Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.

List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

7. Sponsored Reviews

PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.

Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.

If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.

List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10.Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:

12. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.

Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.

The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:

13. Marketplaces

Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.

Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.

The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.

You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.

Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).

These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.

Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.

17. Donations

Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.

Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).

A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.

18. In-text Adverting

In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.

Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.

If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.

Ad networks that use pop-ups:

20. Audio Ads

Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.

The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.

Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).

Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.

Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Related links:

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.

List of self publishing and publishing services:

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.

On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.

Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.

Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.

Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.

Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.

List of software to manage email newsletters:

27. Mentoring programs

People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.

Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.

Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

28. Creating a conference around the website

If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.

Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.


Source: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/

Posted by Raman Shukla at 10:13 PM 0 comments  

What is your robots.txt file telling your competitors about you?

Have you ever thought about your robots.txt file, beyond how the various crawlers interact with it? Chances are that if you have one, you probably haven’t looked at it in since the day you created it. Well, it is time you take a fresh look at it and see how it looks not just to a bot’s eyes, but look at it through the eyes of a competitor.

You would be surprised at the number of sites and companies who use their robots.txt file as a way to keep bots out of certain directories on their site, but not considering the fact they have just pretty much handed the keys to those private areas over to their competitors. How? Because many people create their robots.txt file thinking that if the bots aren’t indexing those pages, no one will find it… but when you include those directories in your robots.txt file, you are telling real people exactly where those directories are. And surprisingly, many of those “secret” directories allow competitors to access it without requiring any kind of authentication or password.

Another thing people often give away in their robots.txt file is what they are working on adding to the site, even if they haven’t officially announced it yet. And of course, since webmasters are thinking future SEO value even in pre-launch, the directory names are always very telling because they are often keyword rich. One client was able to launch an entire section to their site because they noticed their competitor was doing something very similar when the directory popped up in the competitor’s robots.txt file but before they had either announced it or officially added it to the site. And like any good businessperson, my client beat them to the punch and launched it first. If only that competitor hadn’t jumped the gun by robots.txt-ing it, my client would have been none the wiser until launch day.

When you are working on something that you plan to launch in the future - especially launch with a splash to get publicity on it, don’t put it in your robots.txt file… all you need is a competitor to come along and see your robots.txt entry to discover what you are working on (and worse yet, if you end up having that directory open so they can spy on all your work-in-progress) and then launch their own copy of it first. Ideally, it should be completely password protected or done on a test domain that isn’t connected to your site.

Don’t want to worry about what your competitors are seeing in your robots.txt file? Carefully look at it and see what it is revealing. Do you have a super secret directory listed on there? Remove it from the robots.txt file, password protect those pages and add the no robots meta tag on those pages for good measure.

Are you working on something new for the site but haven’t announced or launched it yet? Again, password protect it or move it to a completely different unassociated domain you can lock down with robots.txt (since hopefully your competitor won’t know about that site). Or the best solution is to simply leave it offline except for brief testing periods pre-launch. This means if you want to check how it is working online, you upload it for only the amount of time you need to see it, and then delete it off the server.

Play it smart with your robots.txt file so you don’t inadvertantly hand your competitors the keys to your site or give them the edge up by alerting them to what you are working on. And for fun, check out some of your competitor’s robots.txt files… you can usually find something interesting on at least one or two of them.


Source: http://www.jenniferslegg.com/2008/02/12/what-is-your-robotstxt-file-telling-your-competitors-about-you/#more-56

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 10:03 PM 0 comments  

9 Tips for Creating a Site Map for Visitors and Spiders

Not every site needs a site map, they can certainly be a good idea. Site maps provide a dual purpose: They provide search engine spiders easy access to all of your site pages and they provide site visitors easy access to all of your site pages. The difference is that search engines and visitors access your site map differently and therefore there are different methods that need to be applied to creating site map(s) that are friendly for both engines and search spiders.

Small sites typically don't need a site map so long as all pages are linked in the main navigation. Once you get into main and sub-navigation menu's then site maps are helpful in allowing search engines and visitors to quickly find anything they are looking for within just a couple of clicks. A single site map can be used for both purposes or multiple site maps can be created. Here we'll address creating site maps for spiders and humans separately.

Site Map For Spiders

.xml file: An .xml document should be added to your site's root directory containing links to all site pages. This .xml file should then be referenced should be compiled and placed into a proper .xml document which should be uploaded into the root directory.

Robots.txt file: With your .xml site map file in place you must then make it accessible to search spiders. Reference the site map in your robots.txt file by adding a line for sitemap: URL (example: sitemap: http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/sitemap.xml)

Keep current: Be sure that your .xml file is updated and uploaded frequently, or at least as often as pages are added or removed from your site. Large sites should implement an automated site map update monthly or even weekly or daily.

Site Map For Visitors

Navigation links: A site map designed for human visitors is just like any other website page. Link to the site map page should be included in the primary navigation or the site's global footer. Visitors should be able to find this link without too much searching.

Additional page links: Site map should also be linked from various pages within the site such as Help pages and your custom 404-redirect page. This helps point visitors to the site map as a quick and easy means to find what they need.

Overview: It's helpful to provide a short overview paragraph at the top of your site map page. This can be a nice introduction should someone land on this page directly from a search engine or elsewhere.

Heading and layout: The layout of the site map should present a clear visual hierarchal structure or your website. Both headings and sub-headings should be used above properly grouped links.

Text links & descriptions: Site map should primarily use textual links and page should not be cluttered with images or other distractions. It is also a good idea to provide an additional short description (provided there is room) for each link that allows the visitor to better understand where each link will take them.

Keep current: Be sure that your site map is updated and uploaded frequently, or at least as often as pages are added or removed from your site.

As I said above, not every site needs a site map. But those that do should be sure that the site map(s) they create are actually benefiting them. And the best way to do that is to make sure your site maps provide maximum usability for visitors and search engine spiders.


Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/9-tips-for-creating-a-site-map-for-visit.php

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 9:40 PM 0 comments  

Google Study: 1.3% Google Searches Return At Least One Malicious Result

Web Browsing, Search, And Online Ads Grow More Risky, Google Says from InformationWeek reports on a recent Google Study named All Your iFRAMEs Point to Us that shows 1.3% of Google searches returned at least one malicious result.

Niels Provos, a security engineer at Google, lead the study that took 10 months of data containing billions of URLs. The data collection period was between January 2007 and October 2007. They checked 66,534,330 URLs and found that 3,385,889 URLs were "suspicious," 3,417,590 URLs were malicious, pointing to 181,699 landing sites.

But the real impact to the end user, as described by the study showed that a search query at Google returned "at least one malicious result, with an average approaching 1.3% of the overall incoming search queries." Furthermore, of the top one-million URLs appearing in the search engine results, "about 6,000 belong to sites that have been verified as malicious at some point during our data collection." Here is the kicker, "about 0.6% of the top million URLs that appeared most frequently in Google’s search results led to exposure to malicious activity at some point."

Where does the malware originate from? Here is a chart from the study on that question:



Many of the malware stems from ads. The study showed that "on average, 2% of the landing sites were delivering malware via advertisements." But when you look at the searchers perspective, "12% of the overall search results that returned landing pages were associated with malicious content due to unsafe Ads."


Source: http://searchengineland.com/080213-090126.php

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 9:30 PM 0 comments  

MSNbot 1.1: Live Search Implements A More Efficient Crawl

Today, Microsoft announced changes to their Live Search crawler intended to reduce bandwidth resources during the crawl of a site. MSNbot (upgraded to version 1.1) now supports both HTTP compression and conditional get. The post on the Live Search Webmaster Center blog describes each feature in detail and includes links to tools you can use to check your server for support of these features.

  • HTTP compression enables search engine crawlers (and browsers) to compress files before downloading them.
  • Conditional get lets the crawler ask a server if the page has been changed since the last request (using the If-Modified-Since header). If the content hasn't changed, a server that supports conditional get returns a 304 response (not modified). When the crawler gets this response, it doesn't download the page contents (and continues to use the version already downloaded).

As the blog post notes, the other major search engines support these features as well.

Google
Google overhauled their crawler to reduce bandwidth usage in 2006 as part of the "Bigdaddy" infrastructure change. With this effort, Googlebot increased support for HTTP compression and started using a crawl caching proxy. The Google webmaster help center describes Googlebot's handling of conditional get, which is similar to MSNbot's.

Yahoo!
In 2005, Yahoo! announced support of both HTTP compression and conditional get.

Ask
Ask's webmaster documentation includes information about HTTP compression, although it doesn't mention conditional get support.

Cache Dates

In 2006, Google changed how it displays cache dates of pages to reflect the most recent visit to the page, rather than the most recent download of the page. Live Search matches Google's current functionality, showing the last time MSNbot visited the page as the cache date. Yahoo! doesn't display a cached date.

Other Ways To Reduce Search Engine Crawler Bandwidth

If search engine crawlers use too much bandwidth on your site, even once your server has HTTP compression and conditional get turned on, you can use additional methods to reduce bandwidth consumption. However, keep in mind that unlike HTTP compression and conditional get, these other methods could potentially reduce the number of indexed pages.


Crawl Delay
Live Search, Yahoo!, and Ask all support the crawl-delay instruction in robots.txt (Google is the lone holdout). You specify the crawl-delay in seconds, which indicates how long the crawler should wait between page fetches.

A robots.txt file that directs all crawlers to wait five seconds between each page fetch looks as follows:


user-agent: *
crawl-delay: 5

The Live Search webmaster help notes that the news crawler doesn't follow the crawl-delay instruction:

"Live Search also uses a dedicated crawler to crawl certain types of sites at high frequency. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 news crawler helps provide current results for our news site. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 does not adhere to the crawl-delay settings.

If you find that MSNBot is still placing too high a load on your web server, contact Site Owner Support."

In a recent interview, Matt Cutts of Google explained that Google doesn't support crawl delay.


"I believe the only robots.txt extension in common use that Google doesn't support is the crawl-delay. And, the reason that Google doesn't support crawl-delay is because way too many people accidentally mess it up. For example, they set crawl-delay to a hundred thousand, and, that means you get to crawl one page every other day or something like that.


We have even seen people who set a crawl-delay such that we'd only be allowed to crawl one page per month. What we have done instead is provide throttling ability within Webmaster Central, but crawl-delay is the inverse; its saying crawl me once every "n" seconds. In fact what you really want is host-load, which lets you define how many Googlebots are allowed to crawl your site at once. So, a host-load of two would mean, 2 Googlebots are allowed to be crawling the site at once."

Google's Webmaster Central crawl rate feature provides information about Googlebot's current bandwidth usage and enables webmasters to request a slower crawl (and in some cases, a faster crawl).

Using robots.txt To Reduce Bandwidth
You can block pages or directories from being crawled to reduce overall bandwidth. If you have large portions of your site that you don't want (or need) indexed, you can use robots.txt to block search engine crawlers from accessing them. Note that use of robots meta tags will keep the pages out of the index, but won't achieve the bandwidth reduction goals, as the crawlers have to access the pages to read the meta tags.

Many webmasters assumed MSNbot already supported HTTP compression and conditional get, although some had criticized Live Search for using more bandwidth than other search engine crawlers. With these enhancements, webmasters who have these features enabled on their servers should notice a bandwidth reduction.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/080212-160910.php

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 9:26 PM 0 comments  

500 Million Internet Users in Asia-Pacific

According to recent estimates there were 6.6 billion people in the world in 2007. Of that number, 1.15 billion, or 17.5%, were regular Internet users. By 2012, eMarketer projects that over 1.7 billion people worldwide (24.5%) will access the Internet at least once per month.

This year will see China overtake the United States as the most populous Internet nation in the world and the Asia-Pacific region will top 500 million Internet users.



By 2012, nearly 50% of the world’s Internet population will live in the Asia-Pacific region. The share of the world’s Internet users in Europe and North America will fall, though absolute numbers will continue to rise in both regions, as the share of users in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region both grow.



The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries lead the world in terms of Internet penetration, and reached something of a saturation point around 80% of the population in 2007.

Countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil and Mexico are relatively immature Internet markets and will be the primary drivers for worldwide Internet user growth over the next five years.



Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005929&src=article1_newsltr

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 8:57 PM 0 comments  

Six Steps to Conversion Health

Are you planning a site re-design? Is your landing page not converting well enough? Hopefully you've got the basics covered, and your landing page has a search function, contact information and a strong marketing message. But what else can you do to improve your conversion rate?

Once a visitor lands on your website, the clock starts ticking and you have only a few seconds to convince them to stay there, let alone make a purchase. At first glance, a user should know that they are in the right place and that their transactions will be secure. Sound daunting? With only a few easy changes, you can convert more visitors. Consider these six points as you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current site and plan your re-design.

1. Custom Landing Pages - Add a Personal Touch:

Does your landing page have a navigation bar or feature multiple product lines and promotions? If so, you are committing conversion suicide. You must convince the visitor that the landing page is just for them. Avoid using home pages or all-inclusive multipurpose landing pages. Create specific landing pages for every ad and paid search term. When you land a visitor on your home page, they may stay longer and check out more of your pages, but chances are they won't make a purchase. Instead, consider taking your visitors to a custom landing page. They'll stay on your site a shorter amount of time, but they'll convert about three times more often. And whatever you do, do not include a navigation bar on your landing pages - it's completely unrelated to your sale and can dramatically lower your conversion rate.

Custom landing pages are so important for pay-per-click advertising because you are creating consistency from keyword to ad to landing page. Many campaigns fall short of their goals due to an overly general landing page which does not meet the customer's expectations of relevancy. Just make sure you include some branding elements that will help consumers understand who you are and what you offer.

2. Images - Size Matters:

Product image size is actually one of the most important conversion factors on your landing page. The bigger and more detailed a product image is, the more inclined the consumer is to make a purchase. Make sure the picture is clear and full-color to contribute to the professional appearance of your landing page. In addition to product images, pictures of people can also increase conversion rates.

3. Confidence Messaging - Counter the Fear Factor:

Retailers must gain trust from shoppers. A large percentage of consumers won't buy online because they're absolutely terrified of giving out their credit card information. They've heard stories on the news about identity theft and with increasing spyware and phishing threats, consumers are rightfully concerned. Smart marketers counter customer fears by placing third-party endorsements such as "VeriSign secured" or "BizRate.com customer certified" on their landing pages to give visitors confidence to buy.

5. Registration Forms - Don't Scare Them Away:

More information is not always better. When you scrunch too much copy onto one landing page, you make your visitor's eyes hurt and they are more likely to leave. Keep your font size over 10 point type and try just one column of copy. Few visitors will scroll down, so your marketing message should be short and sweet and above the fold. Your goal is to not confuse your visitors, so place your conversion activity in a clear and prominent location. Overall, the design should be clear, uncluttered and easy to read. Don't try to jazz things up with flashing buttons, overly bright colors or artsy fonts.

6. Newsletter Subscriptions - Keep Them Coming Back for More:

Not only are visitors worried about their privacy, they're also a little "work averse". So keep your registration forms short. Limit your page to six or seven fields and don't require too much personal information like Phone numbers. Include e-mail privacy information so the visitor knows that you won't share their information with other marketers.

It's also important to have the reg form on the landing page above the fold so the user doesn't have to click to convert (remember, they may be concerned that a program will download if they click).

Another tip is to not require registration for free downloads like white papers. Instead, on the thank-you page, offer a sign-up for further updates and offers.

Test it.

Conversions don't always happen right away. Keep your visitors coming back by having an easy e-mail newsletter sign-up on your landing page. You're also more likely to keep your customers converting when you build a relationship with them by sending various offers, news and discounts directly to their in-box.


Source: http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/answer.py?answer=77127&hl=en

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 4:28 AM 0 comments  

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Google Is Doing More Than Indexing The Web, They’re Making Their Own

While I pretty constantly feel I’m in a constant grappling match with Google and their engineers, I really do respect them on so many levels. But perhaps most of all, is their general “business plan”, and how they implemented it. They are no longer indexing the internet. They are making one of their own.

The True Genius Of It
When Google started, even if they had the resources they do now, they could not have created what they have now. When Google started, search engines, and especially caching content, were dubious at best. As time went on, they were allowed more and more leeway with the information they gathered from websites(out-out, of course). They no longer just linked to dictionary sites, they added the “define:” command. They no longer just linked to local businesses, they gave them a section above the search results themselves. Things like this would not have been ok before; Google waited until popular opinion and the almost (dare I say it?) omnipotence of Google was firmly established in the global consciousness.

Essentially, they invalidate the largest websites and niches using their information and market share. Whenever some (non-viagra) niche is doing too well, they replace it.

Breaking Down Their “Tools”, and Their Purpose

  1. E-Commerce
    1. Google Checkout - There is no business that makes money like the money business. Stepping into Paypal’s shoes, this service is not massive…yet. I have an odd feeling the plans for this are future-based
    2. Froogle - An invasion upon the various comparison shopping websites(remember when MySimon was huge?).
    3. Google Base - Call it CraigsList2.0. It even has personal ads.
    4. Music Search - Try Searching for “The Decemberists Album”. You’ll see yet another top bar ahead of the search results. This is their way of driving traffic to Google Base. But it once again shows that they’re gaining some decent AI about product searches. Not only searching information, but understanding it.
    5. Google Pages - Google’s free hosting setup. Why is this under e-commerce? Read the next section and you’ll understand…
  2. Information Centralization
    1. Google Reader - A central location to access all websites you would not normally have to search for. Takes the place of (well, other RSS readers), but also type in traffic and bookmarks.
    2. Local Search - Invalidates the need for a small business website(in the eyes of many). At the top of any search result, it shows business addresses, phone numbers, and busienss names.
    3. Knols - Brings the information of Wikipedia into the “Google” fold. With the information they have organized and indexed, it’s easy to bring it together. Ties in lovely with the define: Function
    4. Question and Answer - Everyone, open a new tab, and search for “What is the population of China?”, or “What time is it in Dayton, Ohio?”. Surprised? Yeahhhh. By having users go straight to them for this information, once again, increased marketshare, no webmaster participation involved.
    5. Define:keyword Search - Perhaps the first sign that Google was doing more than just indexing information. They were organizing it, extracting meaning from it. It’s the first step necessary to being able re-create information.
    6. GMail - You’ll notice this little gem(and it is a gem by the way) got introduced when a significant portion of the middle-aged adults were getting more acquainted with the internet. This particular group has a tendency towards e-mail; it’s safe and requires no credit card number. Not only did it cut into Hotmails market share, but in doing so the people not overly familar with the internet became familiar with Google, and became potential crossovers from the default Live.com search.
    7. Google Print - Google’s project aiming to scan as many books as possible into their database. Using OCR, they’re text-searchable. Click one, and surprise surprise, we see a familiar bar at the left allowing us to purchase this book from a variety of sources…once again, read the next section to realize the implications here.

How They’re Going To Bringing This Together To Establish Their Own “Internet”
Note: This section is speculation, but I believe it is firmly supported by their actions thus far.
Let’s take a look at what Google has here from an e-commerce prospectiong. They currently have a freehost, payment processing company, and a tremendous knowledge of various products that are sold(all categorized, of course). I suspect in the near future, we’re going to see that “free host” (google pages) turn into a “Yahoo Store” like thing, that gives you a top panel above all the searches, like searches for music already do. Imagine them combining this with their book search and Google base/Froogle? That would actually have the potential to be a “amazon killer”, cutting into the profits of everyone.

Also as they get better and better at not only indexing the information, but understanding it, we will be seeing more and more top panels that make the rankings of sites less and less relevant. With the introduction of knols, much of the information previously available on other sites will be available right there, making them increasingly irrelevant as well.

It appears Google found an odd answer to Search Engine abuse; simply control all the ranking websites. Their information centralization services have already deeply cut into many other services, and give them more than enough data to make this possible. And judging by their most recent additions to the search engine(detailed above), this is definitely the direction they’re heading in.


Source: http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/?p=201

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 10:09 PM 0 comments  

What is Good Content? A Working Definition and Some General Principles

This is quite an interesting question because many blogging experts have talked about the importance of great content and how it trumps other factors when it comes to growing one’s website.

I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard the adage ‘Content is King’ repeated so very often.

Good content is a necessary foundation for most successful blogs. High quality content makes it easier for someone to recommend it to friends or other potential readers. Content makes blog marketing a whole lot easier because it naturally supports the push or pull process involved in promoting a website.

Every successful blogger recommends the same thing: Create great content and learn how to market it. The whole crux of the matter lies with the notion of good content: What exactly is it? And if it’s so important, how do you create ‘good content’?

Let’s examine this idea of content quality in this article. For all its lauded benefits, I’ve not yet seen a working definition for it. Can we crack the content code and determine some general rules or guidelines for its development?

After some thought, I’ve made a list of three general principles on content quality, alongside a definition of what I consider to be good content.

Principle #1: Content Quality is Subjective


I’ve talked about content development in a previous article but I’ll say this again: Content quality is subjective because it is inevitably tied to the knowledge or experience of both the content creator and reader.

When someone feels that an article is excellent, it is not so much because of the content quality itself but rather, his/her own knowledge levels and receptivity to ideas. For someone more experienced, the same article might seem amateurish.

This subjectivity of content consumption is one of the main reasons why I think that content dissemination and distribution channels are sometimes more important than the actual content quality. The more visitors you can get to view your articles, the more they will begin to resonate with the right people and spread on their own.

Recognize that there are many uncontrollable variable factors at play here. Every person that reads your blog has his/her own built-in filters. Some are looking for a very specific solution while others want general overviews for beginners. Their overall receptivity is also influenced by what they already know about the topic.

Don’t feel bad when nobody comments on or links to an article you thought was quite excellent. Nor should you be disappointed when others criticize your content because their opinions only offer a selective assessment on the value of your work.

Principle #2: Content Quality is Comparatively Determined


Apart from content relativity, the value of an article is also comparatively determined. Your article will inevitably be juxtaposed with others on the same topic. The strength of another article will make yours less attractive as a citation source, unless you offer something distinctly different and unique.

Similarly, the weakness of other articles will make your content a more attractive and valuable resource. There is also a contextual determinism when it comes to advice given by experts. The strategies they recommend are often hypothetical or observations based on specific blogs in specific niches/situations.

These techniques and advice can sometimes be unsuitable for your blog niche, unless you learn how to implement them in a way which takes into account your audience expectations and the flow of information within your industry.

For some niches like entertainment/celebrity gossip, there is far more benefit in providing news reportage through short blog posts, than there is writing baits to attract social media audiences. This is because social media traffic is quite easily dwarfed by the massive number of search engine visitors.

Principle #3: There Are Guidelines to Determine Content Quality

Even though content quality is subjective and comparatively determined, one can still create content that is perceived to be of high quality. One way to do so is to study the popular articles of other bloggers, especially the ones in the same niche. These articles provide one with a rough measure of possible content popularity.

In my opinion, good content usually has the following characteristics:

  1. Thought-provoking. The article should present new ideas or offer a critical and new look at ideas or assumptions commonly held by others.
  2. Highly entertaining. An entertaining piece of content can come not only in the form of written text but videos or pictures. Humor is especially powerful when applied on current events or industry happenings.
  3. Important News. Breaking news are considered important because changes usually impact most people in the same industry or niche. Be the first to cover and explain news and people will naturally talk about your blog.
  4. Comprehensive. If your article is comprehensive enough, it may outshine others on the same topic. Bloggers love referencing articles which are comprehensive because it gives their readers a good starting point.
  5. Well Researched. Well researched articles with multiple links to related discussion on this topic are especially valuable because it allows you to insert yourself within an ongoing conversation in the blogosphere. Extensive research also denotes value because this signifies an investment of time.
  6. Unique. The less you repeat what other bloggers say, the more you’ll stand out. If your article examines a topic that’s rarely breached, it is likely that you’ll be regarded as an authority within the field as more people write about it.

Creating a Goal-Oriented Definition of ‘Good Content’


Content is consumed by users in many ways and it is difficult to measure how they value your articles, apart from the usual citation links, comments or emails. Instead of defining ‘good content’ according to reader feedback, why not define it according to the content creator’s perspective?

When we talk about ‘good content’ consider how it impacts your blog and brand. Here’s a working definition: Good content refers to content which succeeds in achieving the objectives that the content creator has set for it.

For example, if you want to network with others in the same niche, a good piece of content should link out and reference as many bloggers as possible. If you are a linkbaiter purely looking to get some incoming links for a webpage, good content would be content which achieves that purpose of acquiring links.

Successful content is no longer measured by the opinions of yourself or your audience but rather, to what extend did it fulfill end goals.

Content determined by purpose is strategic. It serves an objective and strives to achieve a specific result. Before you write a blog post, you should clearly examine your intentions. What exactly do you want to achieve with this specific article? Each blog post must have a defined purpose. Frame the content to suit that specific goal.

And then after the post is published, promote it in a way which accentuates that goal. For instance, if you’re purely looking for opinions, send it to some friends via StumbleUpon or email and get them to let you know what they think about it.

If you’re out for some heavy social media traffic, push it out to some influencers and request they disseminate it to the appropriate channel. After the marketing process is finished, look at your post and record its results. How many links did you get? How many people commented on it? Did you manage to get it cited by a popular blogger?

These results will give you a rough indication of ‘good content’, i.e. content with a track record of achieving objectives. This goal orientated approach to content development may sound a little mechanical but I think its a fairly straightforward method to assuage the quality of your work.


Source: http://www.doshdosh.com/what-is-good-content/

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 9:25 PM 0 comments  

High Performance SEO Requires Fast Load Times

Many large companies assume that site speed isn't very important to the overall user experience. This is normally a result of the site's operational departments setting goals in terms of what they think is a reasonable range. This range can often be well over two to four seconds.

This may not sound like much, but if you add other network issues on top of this time, it can create a horrible user experience. For example, if you have a visitor from a small country on a poor dial-up connection you could see a load time of several minutes, in an extreme case.

More often, you won't see the several minutes load time -- or even hear about it -- because the user on dial-up won't come back. You'll be lucky if they take the time to tell you the problem they had with your site.

These considerations are taken into account by most major search engines. If you look at short tail or tier head keywords, such as news, cars, real estate, and others, you'll find these generic terms searched for in massive quantities and high frequencies.

If we assume any one of these keywords receives 100,000 searches per day with an average CTR (define) of 75 percent, you would need to return this page at an average of 250 milliseconds to be able to handle the load for optimal speed and efficiency. If you return at a rate over 1000 milliseconds, your speed will be to slow to deliver a reasonable experience.

It would be unwise to assume this form of measurement isn't taken when search engines perform their quality score (define) in relations to your PPC (define) campaigns. It would be unwise for them to list a slow site in the top listings.

You can see what your average site speed is through the Google Webmaster Tools interface. If you're still skeptical about search engines looking at this data, carefully think about why a search engine would store this data.

It would be illogical to store data you're not going to use in your calculations. It's rare to see a slow Web site ranking for a competitive term, no matter how much link popularity and unique content can be found.

Many operations departments find search engine bots to be a nuisance. Instead of making the site fast enough to handle these issues, they'll introduce an application called mod throttle. This application can be loaded in apache and will spit back server error messages, typically within the 500 range, saying the server is unavailable.

While the users will never see this message, don't kid yourself. If you give this message to the search engine, bots or spiders (define) will assume it's the message you're sending to your users. They won't manually check every site to be sure it's responding quickly and accurately.

Here are some other helpful tweaks in order to keep your site fast and clean.

Consider using a caching service like Akamai or install hardware to make sure your pages are stored in memory.

Decrease the size of the images you see on the pages. The more images you have -- and the larger they are -- the slower your site will respond.

Many people still don't have broadband connections. Others use comparatively slow WiFi. Still others access the Internet on their mobile phones. These users will likely experience slower site load time.

Another great Google-inspired trick: Use more white space in your design in order to load less in terms of visual affects. Or, if you're green and in favor of consuming less energy, use more black space, as Blackle does.

In writing code for your site, decrease the white space by eliminating excess spaces. Excess spaces between your coding are simply unneeded tabs and spaces. That reduces the number of bytes off the total size of the page, speeding load time.

There are also companies that specialize in monitoring sites and sending you alerts when the speed changes dramatically. These services are great for making sure you're returning appropriate levels of performance around the world.


Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628404

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Posted by Raman Shukla at 9:22 PM 0 comments  

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