Didn't The Bubble Burst Teach Anyone Anything?

Perhaps "publishers" today were not in the business when the dot com bubble burst, but I was, and all it really was, was a completely necessary correction to what was considered valuable on the internet.

Before the bubble burst the internet was a completely unrealistic playground. Things were free and immediate. You could get free internet access, free web space, free this and that, only because businesses and stock investors were in love with this new fangled technology and money was flowing like the Mississippi River. Every company and every investor wanted their piece of the internet pie. After a while it became apparent that many internet businesses actually had nothing in terms of product or tangible assets. Investors started getting wiser and money started drying up. When that started happening dot coms started dropping like flies.

This was completely necessary, and looking back I am glad it happened. It was a stressful time, but it put the internet back in line with real world business models. One needed a product to have a business. The survivors were the real businesses. Google, Yahoo and I couple others had the market for search engines, Amazon.com and the like had cornered the retail markets, any given leading in their vertical had stuck around, weeding out the middle men, resellers and so on.

Today, many people still push the business models of the pre-burst to internet newbies. They tell you that you can get a web site, have no content or product, slap some affiliate ads up and make millions. That actually was possible at one time, but such is not the case any more. Actually, it wasn't even that likely back then, but was certainly more likely than it is today.

Today people need content and/or product to care, the only people that don't see that are the one's so desperately wanting to believe they can make a million without any work. If you have a good idea for a web site, build it. If you have useful knowledge on a given subject, share it, at the end of the day the consumer will be the jury that makes the decision of whether it's valuable or not. If the jury says it is, then, and only then, worry about advertising to make money.

So many people I see today I building a "blog" or some such thing and put more time and effort into planning their ad placement before they even write any content or have any traffic. You need to have traffic to make money. Do not make this pre-burst mistake, make a valuable product before you price it.

Who Can Monetize Their Web Site With Advertisements?

The short answer to this question is, of course, anybody. However, the longer answer is just that, much, much longer. The short answer does hold true, the longer answer comes in to play when we start discussing how much one can expect to earn and which web sites make it worth the time to try to monetize.

Although many blogs here on Blogger and elsewhere on the internet will tell you all you need to do is create a blog, post a few things, add Google AdSense (or whatever other ad system they are hocking) and you can plan for retirement, such is not the case in the real world. Revenue from any sort of monetization is directly related to the amount of traffic you have coming in. I realize this blog post won't generate as much interest as those other blogs, but that is only because it's not what people want to read, they would rather read about how many thousands of dollars they can rake in each week for literally no work, even tho it's a lie.

Speaking from strictly common sense, if a web site doesn't get traffic from live people (as opposed to any of the various automated crawlers out here in the world wild web) why would any advertiser pay to place ads on your site? Moreover, if no traffic comes, who is clicking the ads?

The old adage of building it "and they will come" does not apply online. Getting traffic to your web site does not consist of simply slapping up a blog and letting it sit there. It requires some work, be it marketing, search engine optimization, link exchanges, or any combination of those and other tactics. In addition your site requires frequent content updates and/or additions to keep people engaged and coming back for more. MySpace would never have reached the popularity it did if it wasn't for the fact that there were always new comments in people's guest books, new pics and videos and that sort of thing. Same holds true for YouTube. Yahoo and Google are not only the highest visited sites because of their search engines, they are also very popular resources for news, stock information and more.

Sites That Can Successfully Monetize

In my personal opinion, which is formed by my personal experiences, the best sites to try to monetize through advertising revenue are community sites and sites that host continually updated information on a specific topic or topics. The sites do need to be relatively focused in terms of topics in order to get well targeted, profitable ads but also need to be of a topic or topics that has a wide audience to generate a decent amount of traffic.

On the whole, I have found up until your web site has 100,000 page views a month or so, any advertising will likely generate minimal income. If the site is self-maintaining with user-generated content (such as a message forum or user submitted articles) then any income is worth it.

Sites That Won't Monetize As Well

The trend of blogging more often than not, does not generate the amount of revenue that snake-oil salesmen would lead you to believe. 99% of blogs disappear into the bowels of the internet never to be seen because either the blogger gets bored and simply stops posting or because the blog is so wide ranging and random in regards to topic that it never winds up getting much for search engine rankings and regular audience. The trick with blogging is keeping the topic focused, and making it a subject you are passionate about, and continually research and learn more about as it will constantly be providing you with additional content to post about, and it's unlikely you will stop posting as it's a topic of passion.

For those same reasons the freely hosted (or even paid hosted) personal homepage type of sites rarely do well. They are usually very random and un-focused content-wise and often go for long periods of time without updates. The additional problem with personal homepages is that the target audience is usually just family and friends, so traffic is minimal.

Tips For the Web Master

The best thing the web master can do is keep your hopes and expectations in check. If you have a relatively small amount of traffic, don't expect riches from it, regardless of what the blogger trying to sell you an eBook says. Bottom line is if you don't have traffic you won't make money. You need people visiting to make any money.

The next thing you have to understand is that it is continual work, posting new and/or updated content, watching your search engine rankings, monitoring your incoming links and more. Nothing in this world has ever come with no work involved, the internet is no different.

You need to establish yourself, or your web site, as an authority in the field you are covering. How you go about this could be any number of ways, depending on the field, and the audience it could be easier or more difficult. But that is the task you are trying to accomplish.

It all takes time, you will not start a blog and make $100 the next day, I don't care what anyone tells you. Do not fall for the hype of making millions blogging. Put in your time, do your research, build a web site, attract a decent audience that brings a decent amount of traffic then worry about making money. Otherwise you will be one of the many people around various online communities that site and trash YPN, AdSense or any other ad system for "being a fraud" when in fact the systems are not frauds, the people they listened to, or helped them set too high of expectations, are the frauds.

ShoppingAds is back...Finally

A few days ago I reported a random suspension of my ShoppingAds advertising account, a new advertising system, still in beta, from the people at Text Link Ads that I have, thus far, been very pleased with.

My pleasure with the system came to an abrupt halt a few days ago when ads quit showing, after a day or two I logged in to my account to see what's up, giving them that time because I know it's a beta product, and it said I was suspended, and gave me an address to email to be re-enabled. I emailed, a couple days later I received an email saying I was all set. After a couple more days ads still were not showing so I emailed again, now, finally, this morning, after more than I week, I have ads back.

As it turns out their beta program was hammered with spam submissions applying to be a publisher, which forced them to further secure themselves and re-investigate their database of publishers, making sure only legitimate sites are enabled.

I will throw them a bone on this one, it's part of the beta process, finding and fixing issues like that. However, it would seem somebody with the experience of creating and managing Text Ad Links would be able to predict such an issue and would develop accordingly.

While I find it somewhat surprising, my ads are back online on a couple sites and further analysis of their performance can now continue.

Keeping Your AdSense Account in Good Standing

Google takes their AdWords system very seriously, as it generates a huge amount of revenue for the company. To that end they protect their advertisers, sometimes at the cost of publishers, many times deserving their fate, sometimes not.

The most common issue that gets publishers in trouble is the now infamous "invalid clicks" issue. Google has some proprietary detection systems that analyze each click against their massive databases of information to see if the same IP, UserAgent, session values, etc, is clicking the ads repeatedly. Although my opinions are strictly speculation, I would assume they compare against user info of users that sign in to any given AdSense administration as well, if that user info is being stored for loads of clicks on that same account...well, that user gets banned. Invalid clicks are a legitimate reason to ban an account, because it is essentially robbing AdWords advertisers of money.

Other things that are a violation of the terms of service (which nobody ever reads, but that is no excuse) is placing your AdSense ads in popup or popunder windows, or encouraging users to click your ads. By saying things like "This site is ad supported, click the ads to help raise money" you are encouraging people to click, not for the product, but strictly to make you money. This is unfair to the advertiser.

The biggest problem with AdSense according to some (not me) is MFA, or, "made for AdSense", sites. These sites are sites that have either no content at all, only ads, little content, and/or stolen content. More often than not these sites are pertaining to how to make money on the internet, it seems. When you visit one, all it consists of is ads for scams about making money reading emails, taking surveys, surfing web sites, etc. None of which are truly viable ways of making money unless you work more hours than your typical work day anyway. I won't get in to details of why my opinion differs from many other than to say, once they make their first $100 they get banned anyway.

AdSense, any other ad serving system, is a legitimate means to monetize a web site. The chances of getting the extreme wealth promised by some is very, very slim. However, if you have a web site with respectable traffic, unique, valuable content that keeps new users coming in, you can make money to make the site worth running. The best things you can do to make the most money possible is make sure you are optimized for maximum search engine placement and your ads are placed and designed properly.

In order to keep your account in good standing, you need to be proactive. Read, understand and follow the terms & conditions of the service, keep an eye on your web sites and make sure they all comply with that TOC, not just the one you registered, but every site you have running AdSense. First an most obvious, never, ever click your own ads, if you do by accident, let Google know. Watch your account for unusual click activity such as an unusually high number of clicks, if it happens, report it to Google. Also, if you are predicting a major increase in traffic from things like being on digg, slashdot or some other large form of promotion, let them know so they are aware of it. If you do get banned, and you think it was unfair, or out of your control, you can appeal to Google for reinstatement.

The best thing you can do for your account, as I have seen it, is simply be honest and proactive with them, they will, in turn, likely be proactive and honest with you. I have heard some stories of people unfairly banned and such, and that sucks, but from my experience, I watch my account, when something looks odd I let them know, they log it in my account info and keep an eye out for me. I assume they do the same for most serious, active publisher.

Get great AdSense tips and tricks to get the most from the AdSense ads from my eBook Common AdSense, as well as other great bonuses.

General News regarding random Ad Systems

A couple days ago, my my previous post, I looked at WidgetBucks and have come to determine that their contextual sensitivity is non-existent. After 3 days or so this blog is still showing ads of hiking boots and that sort of thing. WTH? I went back to category driven ads which are far more accurate and would therefore, in theory, be far more worth having. I also stumbled across this blog which I found very interesting. WidgetBucks will likely be very short lived in the advertising scheme across web sites that I run in favor of more profitable and less controversial systems.

In another previous post I talked about ShoppingAds, a new system from Text Ad Links. I actually very much like this system, but then, without warning and for no apparent reason they decided to disable my account. The ads stopped showing up so I logged in to my account after a couple days and it said I had been suspended and to email them with my account info and they will re-enable it, and that they were sorry for the inconvenience. This suggests to me it was something on their end, as they are in beta, but after a couple days I still have not heard from them and am still not seeing the ads.

AdSense is changing their format to help decrease the chances of accidental clicks, which is good news, only the ad title and URL will be clickable rather than the whole ad. Not sure yet if this is a good thing, but at the very least, they are doing something to help fight their invalid click issue.

Speaking of Text Ad Links, they sent out an email yesterday asking publishers to update their code, and the weirdest thing, to remove referral links to the ad blocks. I guess it's a new rule that linking to their referral tool has to be done elsewhere, not in the ad block itself. They also mentioned that advertisers don't like to be bordered or labeled as "sponsors" of the site...which I guess makes sense. But the most strange thing they said was that the ads that sell best are single page ads, not site wide. So, does that mean I am best off having only TLA on my front page, or, multiple TLA units across the sections of my site? Mine are site wide and always full of ads, so I am not sure what they are saying.

Looking at WidgetBucks Ads

I just stumbled across this new ad system, or, new to me anyway. I am currently running it on this blog to see how it works. It's called WidgetBucks. It's sort of a modern take on what many other advertising systems do. Selected a category, or use optional contextual sensitivity, and pick a size and color scheme and it generates an ad with related products in it.

The thing that makes this system a bit different is that the ad it generates is an animated Flash ad that can, on large format ads, show up to a dozen or so products in one single ad, constantly rotating between previews of the products in the list. There are many sizes to choose from, in all the standard ad formats plus one whopping huge ad that I sincerely hope nobody ever actually uses. Along with the size choices there are over 100 color choices. But it's just selecting one primary color and the entire ad changes to a scheme based on that color, it's not picking a color for each element of the ad like many systems use.

At face value I think it looks nice, it's well designed and attractive in most any size, and with the category based ads it's well targeted, though I have no been very impressed with the contextual targeting at all. However, it's probably too soon to judge to harshly, but after half a day I am still showing ads of hiking gear and outdoor sportswear, not sure what content that is coming from. I have not had time to judge clickthru and payout just yet. One thing I have noticed is that the ad, when loading, sometimes chokes the page, and stops the browser from responding (in FireFox at least) which indicates to me that the Flash is processing a lot of information and using a lot of resources.

If you are interested, check them out for yourself, at this point I am still convinced the text ad format of AdSense and Bidvertiser (and others) perform better than animated ads, but I would love to be proven wrong and find a better payout.

The Basics of Starting a Web Site

Newbies to the web are often of the frame of mind if they know some HTML and can copy and paste some JavaScript tricks they are good to go on the 'net. Afterwards, only come to find out there is a plethora of work to do and things to understand before you even bother with building the web site.

There are typically two major players involved in publishing a web site, those being the domain registrar and the web host. Many times web hosts will let you buy your domain through them, but behind the scenes they are really only reselling for an authorized registrar. Many times registrars will also offer hosting services but they are generally for over priced.

The "domain registrar" is the place you go to buy (or more accurately, lease) your domain name. if you want to get a domain name such as "myawesomedomain.com" you go pay them for the permission to use it. All of the licensed registrars keep large databases of who owns what domain so no registrar can sell the same domain name to two different people. Two of the most common registrars are GoDaddy and Network Solutions.

The "web host" provides the actually server space that your web site is stored on and facing the internet. Their task is essentially to keep that server up and running, and secured from intrusion so your site is accessible at all time from the internet. I personally only use HostPC for my hosting needs, what to look for in a web host is something I discussed in a previous blog.

With each request somebody makes for your domain, it queries that large database of domain names and looks for it's "DNS" information (domain name server) which tells the requesting computer where that domain lives. The registrar of the domain stores this DNS information, and if you change servers for whatever reason, you need to go to your registrar and update your DNS information. To save time, many ISP's cache DNS information for a period of time so it doesn't have to look it up all the time. For this reason, when you update your DNS it can take anywhere from no time to a week or so to propagate your new DNS information to all these ISP servers with the new DNS information.

All this is information you should know before starting a web site. After you get a domain name and web host, then you can worry about the obvious stuff, such as building your web site and uploading it to your web host. Make sure you understand, at least in concept, what is mentioned above, as it is critical to know through the life cycle of your adventures on the internet.

Many people I have seen in support forums say out of one side of their mouth they simply want to be told in layman's terms whats wrong and how it's fixed, but then out of the other side of their mouth say they have no interest or time in learning any of the information involved in having a web site. That doesn't fly, if you want to be involved on the internet, do business on the internet, and make money on the internet, it is your responsibility to at least know conceptually what is involved in having a web site.

How to Affiliate Market

Affiliate marketing successfully is not simply a matter of slapping ads on a web site. At the very highest level it may seem like that is all it is, the people promoting these products say that is all it is, but it's not. It's like I have preached over and over again in this blog, nothing comes free and without work. To be successful and profit from anything, or profit any worthwhile amount, takes time, effort and dedication.

I've said it again and again, and I will keep saying it, because very few of us are trying to out-shout the snake oil salesmen of the internet, you need to have a quality web site before anything will come of it. In order for people to buy through your ads they need to click the ads, in order to click them, they need to see them, in order to see them they need to be at your site. The first goal is to get them to your site. The best way to get them to your site is to build a web site that is worth coming to. A web site that has original, high quality content on a focused subject matter that get achieve high search engine rankings.

Some of the most common, and yet most annoying, affiliate marketing is the snake oil site. The one page, mile-long sales pitch with pictures and testimonials from non-existent people pushing a product down your throat. Many of these are selling products that are guaranteed to make you money, make some body part larger, or help you lose weight. I can't give statistics but I would doubt these perform very well as there are hundreds of them that are all the same, they are annoying to look at and read and are very ugly, typically.

In my mind this isn't effective marketing, though it may work, it's not how I prefer to do it. I don't want to be a snake oil salesmen, I want to bring people to decent products they actually need or want.

Most everybody has a couple of pet topics they are interested in, or at least knowledgeable of due to personal interest, or needing the knowledge for work, or some such reason. Look in some affiliate systems, see what sort of products you can sell in that area. Research some products, write reviews and personal opinions and try to establish yourself as some sort of authority on the subject and sell the products you most believe in. Some affiliate programs pay quite handsomely, some do not, do your research.

The Importance of Knowing SQL

The backbone of most modern web sites is a database, and the code that gets data from it. I have worked in many places through my career and one of the biggest performance issues modern web sites deal with is caused by poorly written SQL queries or poorly design databases. This issue becomes very evident when one gets a database with millions of rows of data.

The most common, is especially common from rookie developers, and that is the evil nested queries. Rather than learning the more complex subselects and table joining, the newbie often gets a simple primary query, then, while looping through that recordset, does queries based on the original data created major amounts of database I/O (input output) that takes a lot of time and resources to execute, when one, well written query would get everything necessary, be a single recordset and make the pages render quicker, put a much lower load on the server, and be much easier to maintain down the road.

For example, if you query a list of categories, then do a nested query to find out how many items are in the category, with, say 20 categories, you will have 21 queries, one going thru the main category set and then an individual query for each item count in the loop. If you would use a subselect to bring back the item count with the first record set, the entire thing would cost you one single query instead of 21, a substantial decrease in executed queries for the same work.

In truth, I know rookies often do it, because I did it. I was lucky and never dealt with that massive of databases so I never saw the performance hit and learned better before it created problems, I suggest the rookie developer learn it as soon as possible and save some problems in the future.

Another common issue is using the wrong datatypes. Rather than saving "yes" and "no" in a database, save 0 or 1. Integer query much faster than text and use less space. Whenever possible, make the columns you have in your "where" statements be integers or boolean values, query time will decrease. Whenever possible (which is almost always) select data by their primary key or a collection of other columns that are integers, such as perhaps a category ID field which could be a collection of rows belonging to the same "category", and if your database allows, set that category ID field as a foreign key.

If you database does not allow foreign keys, such as some versions of MySQL, set the category ID field to be indexed. Indexing is like a shortcut for a database, it keeps it's own reference data on a column that is indexed to be able to find them faster. While there are sometimes very complex theories as to what fields to index and which ones not to, my basic rule of thumb is to add an index to most any field that is used a lot in the "where" clauses of SQL statements. I have seem substantial performance improvements by doing something as simple as adding indexes to the right columns. Adding indexes doesn't change any existing code either, it's strictly a database change. No SQL changes necessary to your application.

The final common problem I am going to mention is over-use of the "null" value. Null is a resource waster, I use it as rarely as possible, in truth I typically only use it on a date field that has no date, other than that I typically populate an "empty" integer field with a zero, and an empty text field with an empty string rather a null value. SQL executes a bit slower when digging through null values.

A veteran database administrator or developer is reading all this and going "well, yeah, of course" but sometimes new developers don't realize this stuff, or don't practice it because they have never personally witnessed the problems they can cause in their comparatively small projects from their classes or small jobs that have never had large databases behind them. That doesn't give an excuse for poor SQL, it just means you may never get caught with using it.

Good SQL can be the difference between an applications success or failure. Take some time, learn about subselects, table joining and unions. They can make a world of difference in your application.

How to Choose a Web Host

Choosing a place to host you web sites is a very serious decision that should not be taken lightly. I have been playing this game for many years, starting as a hobby and looking for only the least expensive hosts to running a business that needs service level agreements more than economy.

For a hobby web developer, a little downtime from time to time isn't really a big deal. It can drive you nuts if it happens to be a time when you are learning something new and trying to use the space to practice it, have some new photos you are trying to post or whatever, but at the end of the day it hasn't lost you a customer, money or anything serious.

If you are a business, however, you need uptime. Any downtime can cost traffic, customers and revenue, depending on how web-enabled or web-reliant your business is.

I have been in and out of more web hosts than I can shake a stick at, but for the last few years I have been with HostPC who has been stellar. While that isn't intended to be a plug for them really, they do represent what one needs in a host. They have great service, generous space and bandwidth quotas and decent prices.

Things to look out for in a host are numerous. Look to see if they have support forums, if they do, check them out, see what kind of support they provide, check local webmaster forums and see what people are saying about specific hosts. While doing this, realize that everyone will have one or two bad deals in their past, that just comes with the territory, every business owner knows that. What you want to pay attention to is how the host responds to support requests in forums, or to bad reviews on host/webmaster forums.

Beware of hosts that offer "unlimited space and bandwidth", because it's not, it can't be. These hosts say it for hype and bargain on most users not using much so the hogs can take theirs, if these clients grow your server can start being seriously impacted if you are in a shared environment.

You also have to be aware of what you need. Most web sites today are database driven, make sure your host will allow some sort of server side code to interact with a database. ASP, JSP, PHP, .Net, Java, Perl or the like and a SQL Server, MySQL, or at least an Access database. Most of the scripting can all accomplish many of the same tasks, databases all store info and retrieve it, so the technologies you need depend on the technologies your developer(s) want to use and are most comfortable with. Some technologies run better on Windows servers, some on Unix/Linux servers, rely on those that know to advise you as to what would work best for you and your needs.

Talk to the host inquire about service level agreements via email or phone calls. See how eager they are to help or see if they sound bothered by the inquiry. The host you choose is responsible for your web presence staying online, don't take the decision too lightly.