People will always pay more if they're confident in what they're getting. That's true whether we're talking about advertisers or for the eventual acquirer of your site. Not only that, given the choice of two otherwise identical sites, they'll always choose the one with greater transparency.
Because of that, there are two free services that I strongly recommend signing up for.
Google Analytics
I know some people who I highly respect recommend avoiding Google Analytics, but I just haven't ... Keep reading »
Great post today by the new owner of Blogging Experiment on "What I Look For When Buying A Website." It's an outstanding look at all the elements of value in a site -- many of which most people never think about.
If you know what's valuable, you can focus on those things and make your exit as lucrative as possible.
After a hiatus of several months, the guys behind Elite Retreat have thankfully announced a new Elite Retreat for this April in San Francisco. If you're entertaining any thoughts whatsoever of someday quitting your day job, I simply can't recommend this conference highly enough. It changed my life, and I have no doubt that it will change yours, too.
Nowhere will you get the one-on-one time with this many true experts. ... Keep reading »
So I read Search Engine Myths Exposed yesterday. (If you're involved in Internet marketing at all, I'm sure you saw at least one person pushing it.) It was free, and since getting good at SEO is what started my journey, I figured I'd give it a look and see what "expert" advice this "guru" was giving.
The first thing I found was that he definitely has the Internet Marketing Hype Meter turned all the way up to 11 ... Keep reading »
Last month I wrote about how important it is to learn from others who are already successful. Well, this month I decided to make that a little easier for you to do. Here is a roundup of all the posts I've found so far where bloggers listed their earnings for October. Click the dollar figure to see their details.
Shoemoney (~$30,000)
Direct Ad Sales: 50%
Affiliate: 30%
Other: 20%
John Chow ($23,448.59)
Direct Ad Sales: ... Keep reading »
Good post today from Al over at Self Made Minds on how he targets affiliate offers. He mentions Christmas specifically, but most of these strategies work year-round.
If you rely largely on advertising for your revenue -- whether direct, affiliate or contextual -- you're making money by encouraging your visitors to buy or do something elsewhere.
There's an important concept there that we often never think about: If the advertiser is willing to pay you $0.10 per visitor that you send them, then that visitor must be worth noticeably more than $0.10 to them. Otherwise, they wouldn't be willing to pay you that, right? (In other ... Keep reading »
Very often, it can be hard to figure out what products or companies to advertise on your site. Some sites have obvious tie-ins (a site about cars, for example) but others are much more difficult.
If that's your situation, or if you could just use some fresh ideas, check out sites like yours who are successful and see how they're generating revenue. Who advertises there? Where are the advertisements on the page? Use some of the same ... Keep reading »
I wrote last week that you can learn a lot by looking at the public stats of those who are already successful. Well, an article in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle reveals that A-List blog TechCrunch makes $240,000 a month with about 1.25 million unique visitors. That's $0.19 per visitor.
You have to dig deeper into those stats to get the real story, though.
The 1.25 million visitors comes from comScore, who in ... Keep reading »
