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It's 2007 and it's going to be a great year for the Internet and Web businesses.
First, a little news about this newsletter. We've set up a new website exclusively for The Net Gazette where you can find all the content in this edition, and all subsequent editions. I truly hope you enjoy reading each one of these installments and that you learn valuable information to help you with your online experience and business. I also want to express my appreciation for continuing to subscribe. Finally, I just completed a new article about a possible future of the Web that you may find interesting and it's hot off the press. It's included here as a bonus at the end. Thanks for being a part of The Net Gazette family.
Web Tip #15:
Begin to consider the Web as the virtual business world that it is where you can set up small online businesses that continue to create money for you even after you stop working on them regularly.
Robert Kiyosaki, author of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and 'The Cash Flow Quadrant', and Michael E. Gerber, author of 'E-Myth' and 'E-Myth Revisited' both suggest that the goal we entrepreneurs should be shooting for is building businesses that eventually run themselves without our further involvement. This way, the money keeps coming in, and we no longer have to work "in" the business.
First, I recommend that you read everything each of these authors has written, and second, I suggest that you embrace and take advantage of the Web for achieving this worthy goal. Read on for one idea to accomplish this.
What is Web 2.0? |
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Question:
After initial setup, what produces both content and revenue without
additional effort?
Answer: Web 2.0 and AdSense.
What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 (or Web 2) is the popular term for websites that employ advanced Internet technology and applications including blogs, wikis, RSS and forums. These website have a characteristic that is common to them all, namely user contributed content.
For example, an online forum community can be considered a Web 2.0 website. That is, a forum's content is created by its users. The website grows without any additional effort from the website owner after initial design and setup.
This is one reason why blogs have become so popular. Popular blogs allow readers to add their own comments, thus growing the blog. Search engines love new and fresh content, but creating original content is time-consuming and often time challenging. So why not have your website visitors create it for you?
Keep in mind however that only a tiny fraction of blogs have a regular readership that routinely contributes. In an effort to present both sides of the Web story, here's a blog entry I found recently:
Why the Blog is Dead
I am not sure if blogging was really ever 'alive' come to think of it. Blogs are barely read by anyone at all.
I'm just another dumb ass blogger who tries to make regular entries in this blog. So I don't have any special knowledge about blogging in general. But I started wondering if anyone ever reads this blog, and then I dug a little deeper.
I mean, I rarely, if ever, get someone leaving comments here. Does anyone read this? Hello? Is there anybody out there?!
I decided to look at some stats on blogging. Here's what I found:
Gallup Poll Article Blog Stats:
About 75% of people in the US use the Internet ... just 12% of people read blogs at all ... and 56% of consumers don't appear to know what they are. Most of the results are regarding political blogs."
Ok, so only 12% of the people online even read blogs, and you can bet that they're all probably reading the same popular blogs and ignoring the rest of us poor shlubs completely!
Here's some more statistics that are a little more comforting:
About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day and the blogosphere (the entire interconnected web of blogs) is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.But if you think about it, if 100,000 new blogs are created each day, that's diluting the potential readership even more. Now our blog has to compete with 100K more today, and tomorrow another 100K, and the next day, and . . .
Here's some more info I found:
Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation and that few are regularly updated.
"The 'average blog' thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly. One cruel reader of this page commented that the average blog also has the intelligence of a fly.
The Perseus report noted above indicates that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, "representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned".
So, if you think creating a blog is going to make you famous, or if you think it's going to propel your business into 21st Century profits, you might as well consider blogging dead.
I suspect that there is still a mystery out there about blogs that perpetuates the blogosphere's growth. It's new, it's different, everyone's doing it. So people type away, adding blog entry after entry, really getting into their narcissism and crafting each sentence to seem important, interesting, intelligent, relevant.
And I guess I am going to do just the same. Maybe someday, some lone soul will happen upon this drivel and mildly like it.
So, should you make a blog? Yes. The only way you'll find out is to create one and work at it for a while yourself. Believe me, there are many bloggers who would disagree with the opinion above, and that's because they have done it right and have a large and engaged readership. The blogosphere has undeniably affected recent politics. And since search engines love blogs, attaching a blog to your business website can help rankings. Engines love blogs because they're updated often, and engines eat up fresh content. If you create a blog, be sure to do two things: update it often, and keep at it, even if you get no feedback or comments. Consider it your business diary that others can read, nothing more.
But maybe a forum website would be better for your industry. A forum creates a place where like-minded people can congregate. Although it opens up your business to public criticism, a forum can be great for a business website. It's a place where your customers can answer questions about your products. It's a place where you can announce new company initiatives and explain the benefits of new products or services. It's a place where you can discover many things about how good or bad you're doing in your marketplace. A forum allows for easy customer feedback. Warning: if you create a forum, you must have thick skin.
A wiki is best understood by simply going to wikipedia.com, the largest and most popular wiki on the Net. This is a website that grows by members who contribute to the articles. Anyone can contribute. And over time, the site grows because of a vast collaboration. A wiki is just one more way visitors can contribute to your content and help you grow your website.
If I can utilize others to help grow my website, whether it's a wiki, forum, blog, or other Web 2.0 technology, then I'm happy to oblige.
Also, check
out this month's edition of Entrepreneur
Magazine for a good synopsis of Web 2.0.
Google AdSense |
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Whether it's a blog, forum, or wiki, the content grows and grows over time. If you add advertisements to these interactive websites, you can monetize them. Fortunately, Google has made it extremely easy to do this. It's called AdSense.
Many books have been written about AdSense, and if you are at all interested in this, I recommend reading the book The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense by Joel Comm.
Google's website says: Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. Go to http://www.google.com/adsense to learn more and sign up.
You make money when site visitors are on your website and click on the ads generated by AdSense. In fact, people don't even need to click on them. After a certain number of people have viewed a page on your site that has AdSense, you make money. Often times we're just talking pennies, but it adds up.
You've probably seen Google AdSense in action many times while on the Web. See http://www.google.com/adsense/adformats for examples.
Getting back to the original questions posed at the beginning: After the work it takes to create and setup a new website, what produces both content and revenue without any additional effort?
The answer is websites that have AdSense on them and that allow users to contribute their own original content. If your website is unique, engaging, relevant and search engine friendly, you will make money, and not have to do any more work. Imagine if you earned $.05 every time someone viewed and clicked on a new forum entry AdSense advertisement? Now image if your forum website had 100 pages? Further imagine if you had 10 forums doing this simultaneously each and every day. You get the idea. There's gold in them thar hills!
Of course people
will have to be able to find your site and that's where search engine
optimization comes in. Read earlier Net Gazettes for information
on SEO (and keep a look out for future editions).
Search Engine Optimization – Internal Linking |
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For search engine optimization, links are the silver bullet. The more links pointing back to your website from other sites, the higher your site will rank for any given term with all other things being equal. What many people don't realize is that even the links within your site count towards ranking.
For example, if site A and site B have 2 links each pointing back at them from site C, but site A has 100 pages with a link on every page pointing back to the homepage, and site B has 10 pages with a link on every page pointing back to the homepage, and everything else is equal, site A's homepage will rank higher because it has more internal links pointing back to its homepage.
This is why sites with a massive amount of pages often rank well, even if they haven't bothered to practice on-page optimization. It's hard to imagine, but there are sites that have hundreds of thousands of unique pages.
You may be wondering at this point how it is physically possible to create that many HTML pages. Hint: Web 2.0 sites accomplish this by allowing and encouraging site visitors to contribute to the content.
Your internal site linking structure is therefore very important. Every page on your website needs to have a text links on it. Search engines do not follow links in JavaScript or images, so text links are paramount. Furthermore, all your internal links need to be descriptive. The keywords you want to rank well for need to be in the text of the links.
If you sell blue widgets, then every page on your site needs to have a text hyperlink that points back to your homepage with the words 'blue widgets' in it. Most sites have a text link on every page that says 'Home'. This is no good unless you want to rank well for the term 'home'.
If you look, you'll notice that many sites have text links at the bottom of every page, especially if the site uses buttons and/or JavaScript for its main navigation. The links at the bottom are for the search engines. And it's a good idea anyway since some people browse with JavaScript and images turned off. See our website, www.oakwebworks.com, and view any page's footer for an example.
Bonus Article - The Future of the WebAn original article about a possible, and maybe probable, future for the Web. |
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The Web of Tomorrow
A man switches on a tiny wireless chip that has been surgically implanted behind his ear, which then synchs up with the Web wherever he is in the world. The mere thought of logging in to the Internet triggers the system to turn on and connect to the Web. He could be on a bus or at the beach and from all outward appearances he is just staring off into space. But he sees a three dimensional artificial world before him that he can manipulate any way he chooses by thought alone.
By looking at the trends of today we can begin to develop a picture of what the Web of tomorrow will look like. I believe the Web will improve and grow in a way that will dwarf its present existence and will improve and enrich everyone’s lives way beyond what we can imagine today . . . Read Full Article
Till next time, Happy Webbing
- Jason
To learn more about these subjects or if you have a need for e-marketing, design or programming services, please visit www.oakwebworks.com.
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