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Selling advertisements in your site (links,banners,etc) is a cool way to make more money from your site. The best benefit in this business model is that you don’t have to wait for any third party to send you a cheque, so you can faster “recycle” the money you earn.

Selling text links

Selling text links is the easiest thing to do, as the requirements are not so difficult to get reached and there are plenty of places to find new customers. Bellow are my thoughts on this subject.

Put your links in a visible place

Most webmasters buy links for SEO purposes, but as Google wants to “eliminate” sponsored links from their algorithm, more and more people are actually looking for traffic. So make sure that the sponsored links in your site are visible, and that they exist on a high traffic web page.

Don’t use common phrases in your sponsors listings

Google can recognize sponsored links by the tag line you have before them. Instead of using the phrase “Sponsored links” or “Sponsors” you can use a graphic or a phrase like “Sites we like”. This will give more value to the links you sell.

Put some links there before start selling

People don’t like to be the first to use a service. If the advertiser see some links there he/she will probably like to follow more. But you should be careful on that as none wants to buy a link on a page that has 20 or more listings

Selling your banner inventory

A common thing I see in banner sales is that people sell their inventory on monthly basis. I am not really sure if this, or if selling on CPM basis is better, but I guess it depends on the site. In general there are a few principles for both ways.

Selling banners on monthly basis

In my opinion the best way to do this is by having a few small banners in the sidebar of your site, and a very small number of banners in the header of your site. A big mistake is to use 10 or even more banners in rotation in the header of your site. This way the value of your ad space is getting lower and the traffic/visibility is getting smaller and smaller as new advertisers come in. Make sure that you rotate no more than 5 banners, and rotate them on a random way so that each banner will get the same impressions with the others.

Selling your inventory on CPM basis

Selling banners on CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions) has the main benefit that you can reach bigger advertisers and that you sell ads by performance. So if your site have a big raise in traffic (eg. you got on digg’s frontpage) you will earn more money, while with monthly basis ads you should wait some time to raise your prices

If you use this model make sure that you are using a well known script to do the job because this will make you look more serious to your clients. A great choice is openAds (aka phpAdsNew) which is open source and you can download it for free.

Also be sure that you are not displaying too many times the same ad per session because this will cause lower CTR and your clients wont be satisfied. In general advertisers want to fill their campaign the soonest possible but they care more for clicks.

How to find clients to sell your ads

So you set up your ad platform, created some nice places in your site to display ads and you need some clients. Let me show you how this is get done

Is your site a good choice for an advertiser?

Ok you know that your site is the best advertising opportunity in your niche, but you should tell that to the possible client too

You should explain in your sales page why your site is good for advertisers. For instance you can define your visitors, or give some information on the niche that your site is.

Additionally you can add some graphs (traffic, alexa, pagerank buttons, etc.) Those will help them to buy.

Have an “advertise here” link in your site

I know this is so obvious, but believe me there were countless times I wanted to buy advertisements in sites and couldn’t reach such a page. You need to cross link your sales page from all your site, and make sure that this link is visible. I am emphasizing on this obvious thing because most of my in house advertisements are soled to regular visitors of the sites I own.

Post your ad in forums

As you know there are countless webmaster forums out there, and most of them have a marketplace where webmasters can buy/sell or even trade several webmaster related services and products. You can use them to post your ad, but be careful not to write BS in your thread

Get your site listed in AdBrite’s marketplace

Ok, that’s a little black hat, but as Mark Cook explains here, it is easy to get listed in AdBrite’s marketplace without using their system

Give incentives to your clients

You can always give some added value to your clients. For instance you can give some freebie to your advertisers like an ebook or a review in your blog. A great incentive that worked for me is giving a lifetime link to the donators of webdigity.

Final concusions

In general selling your inventory yourself requires some time in order to find out how to make the most out of it. But it really worths your time as you don’t have to wait for third party network cheques, and you don’t need to pay a big cut of your earnings to them just because they connect you with the “client”.

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Running e-commerce sites can be a great source of revenue but have you ever been in the situation where only a couple of products are being sold at the expense of others after all you can only feature so many products on your home page.

Mini Sites

Mini or niche sites are a favoured tactic of the SEO community for years, they allow you to target specific terms without having to adjust an entire site instead you create smaller sites dedicated to one product or niche that then link back to the main page to make the sale. These sites work because they are bringing the searcher exactly what they want, no hassle or fuss.

Determining suitable products

Mini sites are all about balance finding products that people are searching for and are easy to compete in the SERPs the key therefore to our mini sites is research.

Keyword research is laborious and tiresome anyone who has done any serious niche blog development will tell you how many possible combination of subjects their are out there you would be amazed the number of extreme ironing websites there are. However we are at a significant advantage in that instead of the near infinite topics niche bloggers have we only have a finite number that of our product catalogue.

Using word tracker and Google trends

We will use a simpler version of a technique I use for finding niche sites but for the purposes we are using it for it will work perfectly. Instead of me explaining it I’m going to use a video from the Thirty Day Challenge which if you haven’t already discovered is a great little site.

Just a few points

• In the video they use a base line “male yeast infection” the reason is simply they know the approximate traffic for high ranking page for that term
• Wordtracker is US based so some keywords it will have problems with
• You can save yourself some time by using the Firefox or IE 7 search plugin for Wordtracker

So now go through all your products looking at both Wordtracker and Google trends and then for each one do a Google search jotting down the number of competing sites (as part of this you may want to also check your own sites current rank for individual products) You are looking for products with high number of searchers but small number of sites ranking for the term.

Hopefully you have been able to find 3 to 4 products so now its time to create your mini sites.

Developing mini sites

There are loads of resources out there for developing Mini sites and niche site’s some of the best are Quick Whois Mini site guide, and Net business blog Niche Case study. However before jumping in and setting up your site there are a few things to remember and watch out for.

• Domain names – The nice thing about a mini site is you can buy a nice highly targeted domain name however when thinking of domain names remember that you cannot use other companies brand names so for example even though you might be selling Heinz Backed beans you can’t use Heinz name therefore you will need to look for a name like backedbeans.com
• Make your sales direct – while we haven’t discussed your main site at all in this article you need to make sure that you can go from the mini site direct to the checkout in a single click, you don’t after all want to lose that customer
• Unique content – don’t just copy and paste your product description rewrite and expand it, also use pictures where appropriate.

Mini sites are a lot of hard work, however if you are running a large e-commerce store having 10 or 15 high ranking satellite mini sites will bring in a continuous stream of sales, allowing our to focus on the high traffic high number of retailer products on your main site front page.

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So you want to start your own ppc search engine? A ppc search engine may be a good additional income, and you can easilly add it to an established site, or maybe start a new one just for this.

What do I need to start my own ppc search engine?

Well to start you will need a third party network which will provide you the search results. The business scheme is very easy to understand. They give you an automatically way to fetch results based on the keywords that your visitors use to search your site and they pay you for every click that your users do in those results.

Selecting an advertising network for search results

In the past I have used many networks but the only one that was reliable for me was SearchFeed. So in this tutorial I will help you create a ppc search engine using SearchFeed.

Creating your own PPC search engine with SearchFeed

Before you start you will need an account with SearchFeed. If you don’t, use this link to register one, and then come back for the rest of this tutorial

The basics

Login to your account at SearchFeed, and go to Integration Tools > XML and Text Usage. From there you will see your track identification number (trackID) and your partner identification number (pID). Those are very important as they are used by SearchFeed to assign the clicks to your account.

The script. Time to create our php search engine

The above code is very basic. I suppose that you allready have some PhP knowledge in order to work this out. Of course if you have troubles using it you can allways post a question to a PhP forum

function searchFeedResults($q, $results, $tID, $pID)
{
$res = array();
$url = "http://www.searchfeed.com/rd/feed/TextFeed.jsp";
$url.= "?trackID=".$tID."&excID=&pID=".$pID."&cat=";
$url.= urlencode($_GET['q'])."&nl=";
$url.= $results."&page=1&ip=".$_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
$ret=file($url);
if ( count($ret) == 0 ) return $res;
for ( $i=0;$i {
$j = $i;
for ( $j=$i;$j<($i+4);$j++)
{
$a = explode('|',$ret[$j]);
$tmp[] = $a[2];
}
$res [] = $tmp;
unset($tmp);
}
return $res;
}

This function (searchFeedResults) gets the results and returns an array with them. The parameters are :

• $q => The query (search terms)
• $results => How many results to display
• $tID => Your SearchFeed track id
• $pID => Your SearchFeed partner id

How to use the script

Here is a common usage of the script. I suppose that the user is using $_GET['q'] to send a query. So here is how we can parse it:

$results = searchFeedResults($_GET['q'], 20, $myTid, $myPid);
if ( $results ){
foreach ( $results as $rec ){
echo '
<p>
<a href="'.$rec[2].'" onmouseover="window.status=\'http://'.$rec[1].'\'; return true"
onmouseout="window.status=\' \'; return true">'.$rec[0].'</a><br />
'.$rec[3].'<br />
<small>'.$rec[1].'</small>
</p>';
}
}else{
echo 'No results for '.$_GET['q'].'<br /><br />';
}

Conclusions

Hope you like our script. By the way I have also added a full working script, which you can download here.

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Before a few years I was looking for a web site idea to start over with making money online. In the beginning writing content was really hard for me (plus publishing content was not so easy these days) so I finally decided to create a web directory.

Today, a lot of years after that, more and more directories are created every day and this looks a little odd as people don’t use web directories any more because of the social bookmarks. So a first question that comes to my mind is….

Why people start web directory sites?

Well the answer to this is simple. Web directories are :

1. Easy to maintain
2. They are attractive to a newbie webmaster
3. They can easily earn money when they have some good pagerank value

Of course running a web directory, and especially a successful one has some cons too, but most people don’t know them before they start

Cons of running a web directory

1. Requires some time – on daily basis – to approve/disapprove new listings
2. Gets a lot of spam submissions
3. It is hard to promote it as there are tons of directories out there

Now let’s start with the basics of the web directory business…

The basics

First you will need to decide the subject of your directory. There are niche directories that list sites from a specific market (eg. a directory of software products), localized directories (eg. a greek directory), directory of directories (directories that list directories) and general web directories that list sites of any interest.

In my opinion the best decision is to start a niche directory. This way you have much more chances to establish it and the promotion will be easier than a general web directory. Be sure to know a few things about your niche as it will help you in the future.

After this you will need a domain and a hosting account. The domain would be great to have the term “directory” in it with a term that defines your niche. The hosting is in general not important, but you should use an ip address that does not host another directory.

Directory software

The script that you are going to use is very important as this will be your vehicle in this business. There are many scripts out there but not all of them are good or have support and communities around them. So for that I will strongly advice you to use phpLD which is for sure the best and it has a big community for support, themes, etc.

Starting out

So now we have a domain and our new directory script installed, so we are ready to start. Before you start promoting this new site, be sure that you have the correct categories (not too many for the beginning) and that there are a few submissions. Tip: You can submit some major web sites in your directory. This way the site wont look empty and you will have some quality web sites listed in.

The promotion plan

As I’ve tolled you before, promoting a web directory is not the easiest thing to do. You need a simple but effective plan to go with. Here is what you have to do:

Promoting a web directory: Phase 1

As our site is brand new, we don’t want to submit it to the top lists right now, as most of them are going to reject us. For the beginning we just need to get new submissions and make the site look established. Make sure that the submission cost in your directory is zero, and go to announce it in every webmaster forum. There are even forums with categories dedicated to announce new directories (like DP) Also be sure that you are using a forum signature in all these forums with a link to your site.

Promoting a web directory: Phase 2

Our only purpose on promoting a web directory is nothing but pagerank. I know this sounds silly and it doesn’t have any meaning but in this “newbie world” pagerank is the only thing that makes a web directory stand out. So we need as much incoming links as possible.
Take a list of web directories (eg. http://info.vilesilencer.com/) and submit your web directory – which now has some listings and you get a few submissions every day – to a few of them every day. This is important because if you submit to 1000 directories in one day those links will be like search engine spam to google, and you wont get good rankings from them (at least not soon)
Add your directory to as many sites as you can, and make sure that you help people who submit their site to your directory to link back to you. You can do this by stating it in your welcome email, by having a “link to us” page in your directory, etc.
If you have a few bucks buy some high pagerank links. This will help more to establish your directory fast.
Post a few articles in article web sites with some links to your site attached, create a lens at squidoo, sponsor phpLD or WP themes, and in general find as many free links as possible.

Important: Increasing your pagerank is a time consuming process. Don’t expect to make a successful web directory in a few days, but be prepared to wait for months until your site becomes a money making machine

Promoting a web directory: Phase 3

Now we suppose that our directory has a few hundreds of listings, and got some pagerank (3+). In this part we need to submit it to the major directory lists and directories of directories. Bellow are some of the best lists, and I can assure you that if you get listed there, you will have a stable source of traffic :

• IseDB
• Vilesilencer
• Directory Critic
• AddURL
• Free web submission

From these sites alone, my directories get around 2000 visitors per month, so I guess it worths to try

The business plan

If you do this right and be consistent on what you do you will have a pagerank 4 or higher. At this stage your directory is established and you can start thinking different

Use your site to promote it

Stop giving free links. Give free links only to those who link back to you and help you with your promotion. To the others charge a reasonable price for listing their sites with you and a higher price for featured links.

Do some 3 way linking. Find other webmasters to exchange links with, and make sure that they have same or higher pagerank than yours.

Directory monetization

Don’t fill your directory with ads. A web directory must be clean of ads, as it is supposed to serve those who pay to get listed. Of course you can add a block or two from adsense. Adsense wont give you great results, but in general web directories get high pay per click ads.

Your purpose is to make money by selling links (listings, featured listings, home page sponsors) and believe me it is much better to get your money instantly through paypal than waiting for a check

Some last words

The web directory business is not the easiest to run, but it is good for new webmasters and people that don’t have enough knowledge to run other types of web sites. In my opinion is cool to have one or two directories in your portfolio as it can bring in some easy money in the process (I still have my directory in my ownership) while when it is established it wont require too much time.

I hope this article helped you, and I wish you good luck with your web directories

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A few months ago I was seeing many proxy websites sold at the popular webmaster marketplaces. What made me interested about this business is that a full automated site can earn big sums from $10 – $100 per day with no work at all. So I thought it would be cool to experiment a little and establish a proxy site.

The result was very good as I made a site that earned about $300 per month with no work at all, and I later sold it for $3000 which was really cool. I know that this sum may not seem great to many people, but please have in mind that this site cost me about $30 and about 20 hours of work (including promotion and everything)

Today I feel like I have to share my conclusions about proxy business and maybe some tips for those who are interested to start a proxy web site.

Benefits of having a proxy site

The biggest and most important benefit of running such a site is one, automated money. But before you start being excited on this check the….

Cons of running a proxy web site

I know earning automated money is what every webmaster wants, but in this case there are many problems too. Here I will try to describe the problems I got into while I was running my proxy :

1. Proxies create overhead. That means that a proxy site can be easily crash your server if you have enough traffic, so consider that very well
2. Bandwidth. I had months where I was using 3 TB (terrabytes) of bandwidth which was more due to…
3. Hotlinking. You should be careful that other sites don’t steal your bandwidth in order to hotlink other sites
4. Abuse. Hackers and cybercriminals use proxies to do their “job”. So you must be very careful, and be sure that your host allows you to have proxy web sites.

I know the cons are too many, but I have to tell you the truth and know exactly what you may face in the future before you start.

How to establish a proxy website

Now let’s say you want to start a proxy web site(I am sure most of the people will stop reading till now ). Here are the steps you have to follow :

Domain name

The domain name is a very important factor in the proxy business, but not the way it is for other kind of web sites. My experience learned me that a domain with keywords “myspace” or “proxy” is very bad for that kind of site, because these are the keywords that network admins search when they ban sites from their network

Instead you can use words, like “hide”, “seek”, “surf”, etc.

Proxy script

In general there are a few scripts for proxies but only two are commonly used : phproxy and the CGI proxy. The first one is very easy to install, uses less server resources, but it has a big disadvantage. It can’t be used to visit myspace (login issues).

So as the most of the people will use a proxy site to visit myspace from school or work, CGI proxy is the way to go here. It is a little difficult to install it, but if you can’t you can easily find someone to install it for you (freelance sites, webmaster forums, etc.)

Promoting a proxy web site

The promotion of a proxy is a really easy part. You just need to do 3 things :

1. Get a $20 ad at proxy.org. It really worths your money as it can bring many visitors, and if some of them start to promoting your site, the results can be significant.
2. Join proxy topsites. It sounds so 90′s technique but it works great with proxies.
3. Try to promote at myspace. There are groups about proxies, and you can always send bulettins to get some extra traffic. Another good thing you can do, is link to your myspace profile from your proxy site, so people who like your site can add you as friend.

SEO is not really important in proxies, and a good SEO campaign can harm you as it can help admins find you

Monetizing a proxy site

This is the nice part All you have to do is to put 2 big adsense boxes in your home page (check this proxy) and an adversal popup in your proxified pages (you can read an adversal review here)

Please notice that it is forbidden to use adsense in the proxified pages, so if you want to add there ads from another network along with adversal, use something like CodeAds or adbrite (which is not the best, but still is an option)

Affiliate marketing is probably not something that can work with proxies, but you may try it. I did and haven’t any good result.

Final conclusions

The proxy business is a risky business but still it is nice to run such a site, as it is full automated and after the initial work you will have to do, you wont have to do anything to make money from it. If you want a final piece of advice, please have in mind that proxies got blocked from network admins all the time, so if you got your site to a state that it earns some decent money sell it

Well I think that’s all for this tutorial, I hope you enjoy it