Contrary to most popular belief, you don’t need boat loads of traffic to your site to continually make money on your blog. This site is living proof of that. I won’t go into details on how badly the traffic here is, but let’s just say, even the statistical tracking tools I take with a grain of salt says one thing: Traffic here SUCKS.

It seems like it’s been forever and a day since I have written anything on this blog. The funny thing is that while my statistics on this blog are like bottom cratered, I still continue to receive real money into my PayPal account monthly. In fact I think back to when I started blogging, and had no clue what I was doing or why I was doing it, this blog is making more now then it did back in the day.

Even back in the day when I was manually putting up ~+400 posts in a month (did I really do that?!?), I still wasn’t making much on this blog. Hell, not making much is a nice way of saying – I wasn’t making any money! When I think back, the traffic on here was not that great back then either, another nice way of saying – it was crap on a stick – but I certainly had more traffic on here vs my recent analysis of traffic.

What works on small blogs? It appears either direct ad sales (sweet plug for where I am working at now :) ) by being a premium publisher or using contextual text link advertising is the best bet. Sadly, I don’t qualify to eat our own dog food. While text links seem to be annoying, they do pay off. I’m living proof of that (as well as this blog). Many of you are skeptical, but I always say a picture is worth a thousand words. Since I don’t have the time to type out a dissertation or even a decent blog post in excess of 500 words, here are some pics that prove I’m not lying.

Now that is just for one month, so that doesn’t tell you the whole story. I decided to grab like a screenshot from December ’11 to now, and that tells you a bit more.

You are probably going, well that isn’t that much money totaled up – $192.36 – but let’s break that down. Traffic here has been bottomed out, nil, pretty much bots I figure – with a smattering of live viewers, which are most likely comment spammers. Also coupled with the fact that off the stats I do have, that money came in at no real investment cost to me personally. I haven’t done any blogging here, my other related sites scrape most of their content, auto piloted draws of traffic, and I basically use that money to buy music off of iTunes, rent movies on my Apple TV, and pay for the hosting and domain fee.

Could I push and make more money blogging? Sure, if I really wanted to write all the time and wanted to make my words a vehicle for monetary compensation. For now I figured I’d share with others out there with small blogs, that are sitting around gathering internet dust, that you can still at least make iTunes money with them. Even if you rarely post anymore or even draw much traffic. Making money online isn’t rocket science and it’s basically like anything else, the more you put in, the more you’ll get back out.

I haven’t put in much time to getting my blogs to make a ton, but they basically pay for themselves on auto pilot. That in itself is a nice thing, and coupled with the facts I work in Silicon Valley at a cool startup – can life get any better?

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Image by blahmni via Flickr

Many moons ago (ok about ~10 years ago) an old drummer of mine was trying to tell me something about a part in a song. He wanted to “semplerfi” it. WTF is “semperlifi”

No idea, as I know what Semper Fi is (thank God we have Marines) and what he really meant was that he wanted to simplify a few passages in a song we were writing as a band. While we never did semplerfi the song, but just worked through it, it did bring up an interesting point.

Quora is a great idea, but I think it’s over thought and not semplerfi enough. Most people need simple answers to basic questions. Not thread after thread of useless over the top information. You can find that by simply using Google. Those answers are available for free, with no Quora involvement needed. What is needed, at least in my opinion (notice how I’ve quit saying humble, as most  opinions are usually not humble to begin with, so why still do people say IMHO?), is that there needs to be a start up that is even more semplerfi than Quora.

Your basic Q&A portal where you could call it “The stupid question I was too afraid to ask on Quora…” Or something of that ilk. It wouldn’t be rocket science, but I bet you it would go over like gangbusters. The stupidest question you think is something too dumb to ask, I can bet you there are thousands that would like the answer, but are too afraid to ask on Quora since that place is for more than your semplerfi questions.

If you are interested in working up the semplerfi answer to Quora, hit me up, as I’d love to work on that as a startup.

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Image via CrunchBase

Yes, while I’m writing this about ~2 weeks in advance of it posting online, Google+ is turning into nothing but a cesspool of marketers and spammers. Too bad, as many of us had so much hope for G+ as the next social network that made sense. Of course those of us who are as cynical as I can be, realized that once they opened up access, so would the carpet baggers, hanger ons, and the scum of the internet would join. It’s come to pass, and even though I write this about ~2 weeks in advance, doubtful much will change by the time this post goes live.

While G+ goes down the drain in massive fashion, that still won’t prevent Google+ from going into a giant social space. Will it be used once the spammers flood the streams? That’s hard to say. Currently, Ignore All has become my favorite new addition to G+. Most of the crackpots that are joining, I wouldn’t want to see their streams on G+ or any other social network.

Here is to hoping that I’m totally wrong this time. Doubtful since I’m sure by the time this posts live, we’ll all still have spam in our inbox, as well as see spamvertised links elsewhere.

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While you are out doing the surf thing this weekend, if you see a banner ad that makes you click, ask yourself why did you click that ad! As we all know, advertising is the money maker online.

Basically: Two ways to make money online – you run ads, you convert the results of those ads to sales – OR – you have a product (software as a service (SaaS) seems to be quite popular!) – OR – (third bastard child way) a kind of marriage of those two are apps. You know how to write one that everyone wants to buy or fund you to make more or hire you to make their app.

Still, I’d like to know what makes you click that banner ad. What is it in particular that turned you on to click that ad. If you’d like to leave some feedback on why that ad server that sent you that ad mattered, that would be great. Feedback is the comments area of this blog post of course.

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Why it’s tearing down the entire social sphere. Facebook spammers are at best a humorous bunch of people. They are at worst the heart of what is destroying the social sphere overall.

Not only is Facebook being destroyed by this lot of idiots who feel that posting random Follow me on twitter messages on every open page it can find is of any benefit to them or to the entire ecosystem is beyond me. It’s not only breaking down the system, but it’s an age old problem that has never been fully addressed.

Google+ while releasing a read only api for the time being is going to be under assault of this rogue group of people who’s only intentions are going to be to destroy the platforms that allow them to speak freely. Quite insane if you ask me, but hey, no one is addressing the issue of shutting down these rogue sites or groups of funny people. While everyone agrees it’s an issue only a few companies are tackling it.

While we wait for other people to figure out that this funny stuff spam is nothing but a destroyer of all that is good about social and open, it will be too late. The people who want to contribute to help grow the system will leave in disgust. Quite a shame, but that’s the truth.

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As I looked at the main page of my blog the other day when I decided to break out and start writing again, I too noticed that the main page was filled with Kanji and other languages. I found it humorous at the time, but looking back, as you can also see by the Google Ads being shown, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing I have ever done.

Speaking of which, there are probably a lot of not so smart things I’ve done throughout my life. Just writing posts in foreign languages to see how Google would place ads was probably not the wisest thing to do. It was fun. So was a lot of the other stupid mistakes I’ve made in my life. If it wasn’t for fun, I probably wouldn’t have done half the stuff I have done so far in my lifetime.

Why would someone want to engage in something boring or not fun? Oh yeah, in the old world that was called work. You remember how your parents use to come home, eat dinner quietly, not say two words to you except ask you about school. They hated life, but would never tell you so. They lived the motto of grin and bear it.

I for one of many of my generation decided to have fun and say fuck it more than we would say, let’s think about that for a minute. There in itself lies the downfall. Too much fun and not enough work can lead to spinning your wheels for a bit trying to get a firm grip on what it is you are to do.

Back to the beginning though, it was fun messing with Google and seeing some foreign ads on my site. Yup, fun ruled in this case, but if I would have thought about it, I would have bored you to tears with a not so fun post about nothing.

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Image via CrunchBase

I get invites to be part of people’s LinkedIn all the time it seems lately. It’s almost as bad as how when MySpace was a valid social network, people would bug you to be friends with them. Almost as bad as how Facebook is. How bad Google+ will become if they don’t watch out or let loose a free to post api before they are ready.

Today, I saw an actual invite in my email that had me checking to approve. I looked up and saw a ton that I haven’t bothered to approve! So I went through each one, approving most except the obvious spammers. Like I said it’s like a good way to bug the shite out of people.

Not that there is anything wrong with Shite the religion, but rather shite the nice way of adding an “e” to not just write a word more commonly referred to as excrement. Seriously though….

LinkedIn is starting (has been for quite some time actually, just getting around to writing something!) to become just another social network. Speaking of which, I find most of them are pretty bloated places. Wondering why Facebook and Google+ didn’t learn from the mistakes of MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, etc… etc… The beat goes on.

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Well it seemed to have started here, and it’s almost like coming home in a way. Full circle blogging. I just found a new favorite blog by a serial entrepreneur that actually has inspired me to write again. Eric’s new blog or revived site has quite a few interesting posts so far. I’ve read them all, even the one today about his stain glass hobby he is starting again. His earlier posts were all advice he was giving out for free to potential new entrepreneurs that were looking for advisers. Date your advisor before getting married was the last post in that series. You should go back to the first in that series and read them all. Like I said – FREE advice!

Technically Speaking, this the last time I’m going to use that line. For real, it’s hit the full circle, now time to move on to something more progressive.

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I see spam daily. In fact most of us see too much of it. We mostly ignore it and here are some reasons why. If you are in the business of affiliate marketing or email campaigns, you’ll want to review these reasons.

1. English is not your native language. That is probably one of the main reasons your message is given the deep six. When you state things in English and if English isn’t a skill you command naturally, get some help. Even if the marketing message is something the person opted in to receive, more than likely they will ignore it and mark it as spam going forward if there are basic English mistakes. Most of these are grammatical errors that are quite obvious.
2. Sending your marketing in Arabic, when the user can’t read Arabic. Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc. – doesn’t matter what foreign language it happens to be, but if you are shotgun marketing your message in one of these non-English languages, you better be precise about your target audience. Basic marketing 101 stuff, but usually I will see a few Arabic messages a day.
3. Promoting a domain that has “bot” in it. Cashbot, Moneybot, incomebot, etc. All of those are versions of domains I have seen, and are real. Any domain with the word “bot” will usually be a quick way to have your email marketing sent to the hole of spam hell. No one really wants to put any money into a bot, unless they are looking for a losing proposition for their list or their money.
4. Shotgun marketing has your short url blocked. Yes, the short url people do block affiliate urls once people abuse them with shotgun marketing tactics. If the person you are sending your marketing message isn’t opted in, don’t send it. That should be rule #1 on your list before you email. Are they opted in, and if they are not opted in, the next item is to remove the email from the list. It shouldn’t be sent. More often than not, people have short urls blocked because they were lazy and just figured the more they sent, the better the results will be. More does not always make a conversion. Shotgun marketing is generally just a really, really bad marketing tool to use.
5. Believing that Twitter is the best marketing tool. Yes, while Twitter can be a great tool, if you are not engaging in conversation with the people, you may as well just be a bot and not a live person. People will be more receptive to your marketing via Twitter if you first engage and actually strike up a real conversation with them. Yes, we are all guilty of using Twitter like it is the end all, be all marketing tool. But yes, we all have been guilty of abusing it.
6. Facebook is not your only place to be. While there are probably close to what, ~750 million people on Facebook now, that doesn’t mean that you must have your silly marketing message all over the site. In fact, being on Google+ now has given me the same look I had when I first joined Facebook. Looking at my Facebook stream is like how it was looking at MySpace streams. Look what happened to MySpace just recently. It was no surprise, and now that Google+ is around, Facebook is starting to have that MySpace appearance in feeds.

Marketing by email and affiliate marketing can be a good thing for many people. I think though, if you are ignoring some of the above six items, you’ll find out that marketing and affiliate marketing can be a losing proposition for you. Not because the product is good or bad, or even your messaging. It might just be flat out ignored due to the fact you have already violated some of the six simple reasons on why your marketing message is considered spam.

Technically Speaking, this has been some of the basic and obvious things I see daily. This list could be longer, but I think these six items are some of the main issues on why most marketing (and affiliate) campaigns fail as well as why most people will surely fire the marketing email right into the spam folder.

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Which of the three services do you like (you can like all three) and for what purposes are you using them?

Do you buy into what this article stated – Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded | Singularity Hub

Vote here or just leave a comment with your thoughts if you like all 3 services equally or have no real preference at this time:

Technically Speaking, how many think that the “awesome” Facebook announcement was lame? (leave a comment also if you want to answer that one!)

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Use Google Translate if you can’t read Kanji

今日は明日されていない現実には日本では以上です。つまり、私はそれが既に存在を超えている5月27日に生まれた国です。 Google翻訳のおかげで、私は私の母国の言語でこの記事を書くことができます。私はそこにされていないけれども私はあなたの出身地隠そうとする方法を私が住んでいる彼らは’フードから実際にいるとき、私はシカゴに彼らの故郷を呼び出すこと知っている何人かの人々のように関係なく、推測〜5歳の頃から今私は否定できないメープルウッドミズーリ州と呼ばれる-私は5月27日に横須賀、日本で生まれた。

私は多くの知る限りではそのことについて日、今の子どもたちの多くは、時間のビデオカメラ、写真などのtechologyの進歩のための鮮明な記憶を持っていること、そしてもちろんFacebookに登録して、/ Ustreamのに戻って、歴史的な視点のイベントのライブストリーミングの日-私の生みの母親は、そのような利点を持っていた。実際に戻って当時では、それはおそらく非常に非結婚恥ずかしいと子供を抱えていた。したがって、私はかなりすぐに養子に与えられた。

したがって、私はどちらかの側に私の本当の家族の何を知っている。私は、彼はおそらく軍人だった知っているが、私の父は、私の出生証明書に入れていませんでした。私は彼女に位置することがないが、私の母の名前は、証明書を利用しています。私は彼女が見つけることを望んでいないと確信しています。私は彼女は、私が一年をとってきて、もう一度、彼女は生きているかもしれないと仮定する。

私はGoogle翻訳の助けを借りて、漢字で書くことができるというヘルプを超えて私の故郷に接続されていることかもしれませんが、私はそれは私の誕生のお母さんにありがとうを言う方法だと思う。同様に列挙されて二度とていた私の誕生父、限り。

私はあなたの両方に何を伝えることができますか？さてあなたはおそらく、常に”人に正確に自分の本当の親だった”知りたがっている5人の孫がいる。それは私が答えることができることは決してないだろうものです。私は、彼らがそれについて考えることにしようとどのくらいの空白、またはギャップを自分自身の歴史の中でどんな人生の空虚さを残すことと思います。あなたの孫のすべては、一部の日本人が知ることに誇りを持っています。さらに私は人生の中で持っているより。

私がそれを受け入れているよりも実際には私は私の実際の遺産を否定してきました。私はこのバックの段落に、これらを先行するになると思います。私は養父母（アメリカ）私の新しい国を採用していることがある意味、多かれ少なかれ私は過去に生まれた国を去った。

技術的に素晴らしい休日の週末を持っている、といえば。私の誕生日を持つことの利点のひとつは、月27日にされて、私は通常の休日やその周囲に右のいずれかにそれを持って取得するという事実です。 ：）

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Я не говорить, читать, ни писать русский. Так я получил, что и чирикал его в качестве моего QOTD (Вопрос дня) немного назад: http://twitter.com/ # / RexDixon/status/71664043508760577.

Я подумал, было бы интересно писать быстро блога на русском языке. Что касается заявления, что выше, я не читать, писать или говорить на любом языке, кроме английского. У меня есть некоторые слабые воспоминания о японской и может рода понимаю, что я помню с момента, когда я был ребенком, растущим в Японии, но это было много, много лун назад.

Теперь thoses, что читать, говорить, писать русский язык может быть оскорблен этой должности, я думаю, что это говорит о многом тому, как современные технологии создали возможность для меня легко написать в Google Translate Россию. Я мог бы также писать по-китайски – простой или традиционной, или даже хорватский, немецкий, испанский и т.д..

При наборе этого и смотреть это волшебно перевод с английского на русский, я думаю, что русский язык является довольно красивый язык. Очень загадочный вид, но эй, это русский! :)

С технической точки зрения, в эту пятницу было очень быстро один, наслаждаться выходные!

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In case you missed this from about ~5 days ago….

That picture of a cat licking a lollipop you found on Google Images may be infected. According to the SANS Internet Storm Center,a number of Google Images are actually infected with malware that misdirects users to pages that try to sell fake anti-virus scareware that and to make users believe they must download the program to avoid viruses.

These scammers use photos from third-party sites so that the images appear to be legitimate, using top search terms from Google Trends so that the content on the page also seems real.

When a user clicks on an infected thumbnail, his/her browser sends a request to the infected page, which then runs the hacker’s script, and then redirects to the site trying to peddle scareware. SANS guesses there are over 5,000 hacked sites, with Google referring about a half million visits to these fake sites each day.

While researcher Bojan Zdrnja has developed a Firefox add-on that displays the infected images with a border in red, it is not yet available for public use.

Google spokesman Jay Nancarrow told Krebs on Security that the company is making “active efforts to improve both the quality of the results and malware detection. We’re improving, as are the people trying to put users at risk, and in the interests of those users it’s best if we don’t reveal everything that we’re doing about this.”

Technically Speaking, worth sharing again; the above is from a newsletter I received.

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This is going to be a quick and ez post about the experiences I went through looking into and researching how to create an Android or iPhone app. More than likely the first, since my site wouldn’t make it past the Apple censor nazi’s, but with Android’s growth exploding in the market, who’s to say if going iPhone first is the best way to reach total market penetration.

The nice thing I found out, and here is a tip for you Android or iPhone app developers, is that there are currently many dev’s out there who are ahead of the game. Instead of just creating the next best app, they are creating the next best place for normal people to create their Android or iPhone app! Better (biz) plan if there ever was one.

Why take job after job, and make “x amount” of money only to compete against other developers who could do it faster? Why not put out a tool and open it up for anyone with a RSS feed to create an app? Much better business, and the competition is small right now in this field. If you are a developer who has been pondering the best way to leverage the app playing field, this may be the one.

In my research, I did ping a few developers that I know and all of them said similar advice. Use the current RSS feed you have and there shouldn’t be a need to have someone write an API at this point. RSS to Android or RSS to iPhone was what I used to search. Here is what I came up with.

1. iSites

This place was already covered on Mashable and other blogs. It’s a nice place and it will create a proper app for you. It does however cost $$$ to do so. Right out of the box. If you have the traffic, and you know you can cover the costs, go this route. I’m sure they have tons of customers. For those that don’t have the traffic or just want a mobile app that they can experiment with, read on.

UPDATE3: See the comment thread between iSites support and this blogger. 1 month FREE, so this might be a viable option even for those not sure on spending the $$$.

2. Majoobi

This is where I created a really quick app for TurboWhiteTrash.

You can read about it here, and load the app here. The nice thing is for a site with not so much traffic like TWT, you can try it for free up to ~25k pageviews I believe. Is it a real app like  you see? Not really, but it does give you a mobile presence and you can gauge whether you need to go to the above company and create the proper app for release, or find a dev that can help you out.

UPDATE: From the comment left below: Actually you can install Majoobi apps on the device and it will look native, what you do is click on the “+” button in Safari (found at the bottom of the screen), click on “Add to home screen” and that will install it on the desktop. What’s cool about this is that you won’t see the Safari browser url or any other panels, the whole thing behaves as a native app :)

UPDATE 2: The fine support crew at Majoobi has sent over a couple of links on how to drop the app to an Android device. For the not so savvy, these 2 links are a must read. Now you can have a native appearing app on your Android device.

Technically Speaking, while maybe not the best solutions, unless you are a crack shot developer who can write an API or even use RSS to create a quick app for Android or iPhone – chances are you will be investigating one or both of the above solutions soon for your mobile app presence.

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This morning I saw a post from Amplify which along with many other sites encourages conversation around content that is already created. The small time blogger, unless they have a fan base, pretty much is talking to the hand at times. This post I’m referring too was called Most People Have Nothing to Say - and that was based on a Forrester research piece.

With that being said, people still try to build something from nothing and create more content upon original content. Like a comedian who is looking for material in every day life. While those that create original content seem to be in a niche category these days, but do rather well as long as they address the needs of their readers. Which ultimately means you have to spend more time fixing your blog and looking for new content creators.

Why have people dropped off from blogging? Well I did an experiment earlier this summer to see how much traffic I could drive between all my different blog properties. I basically regurgitated content about making money online, driving traffic, photoshop, graphics editors like GIMP, etc… Your basic high traffic type of content it seems. Traffic did really well, and actually finally got me over the hump of receiving a Google Ads money minimum.

Was it actually creating content? Not really. It was just a step below what I termed above as a comedian looking for material in real life. Only was way below that, because I really had nothing to say about the information I found. Sure it drove a ton of traffic and may have driven more, but is it any fun? Well I guess if you dive deep into it, like one of the people I know from Oz, sure you can make a living doing content optimization or as it’s better known SEO, SEM, etc.

Where is all the real content? Unfortunately for the naysayers, it’s on the social channels. As you all saw earlier this month, I set up a paper.li and twittertim.es page. You are going to read far more interesting content at either of those pages than I can crank out on a daily basis. Pretty much if you think about it, even one of the long time blogs who tried to always do the honorable and correct thing, CenterNetworks, is soon dropping away and selling.

Twitter, Facebook, and OneTrueFan are the benefits of the lack of original user created content. The sites that benefit from all of this are the main content churning machines like AOL/Techcrunch (my guess is ~$30MM + Incentives/Stock), VentureBeat, RWW, and your bigger niche sites like Inside Facebook, ValleyWag (Gawker), etc. Sites like OTF are going to win in the end since people will continue to surf even if there is no original content created.

As long as there is data out there for people to examine or think about, whether or not people have something to say will be irrelevant to the number of people accessing online entrance points. Data is the business model for many startups.

As long as mobile continues to grow hardware and software proportionate, there will be no need for people to say anything. Mobile analytics is another business model being adopted by startups. Won’t matter what people say, the money churning machines will continue on forward.

Technically Speaking, I have something to say all the time, most times these days, I just need to find the time to say it. I just said it, so if you have anything to say why not leave a constructive comment?

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Just thought I’d share a few spam thoughts with you. I tweeted them earlier today, but you may have not seen them.

• Seeing more LinkedIn related spam. Just think before you click that invite from “Monique Howard” or “John Lasister” – if you don’t know them personally or via a friend, don’t click it!
• Seeing more angelfire.com spam. This must be the new banging playground for spammers.
• Still seeing blogspot.com spam. This is starting to die down a bit, but now instead of the usual garbage dot blogspot – there are actual long names being created like MoniqueHoward1970.blogspot.com – so be careful!
• Shipping company spam. Weird that people would click on a shipping company url, but they seem to work.

Lastly, a few ways to report bit.ly spam are below. Created some basic Google Doc forms that can be used in lieu of the standard route with a bit.ly account. If you follow my @RexDixon twitter account, you have seen these promoted lately.

bit.ly or j.mp Spam Reporting Options:

• No Bit.ly Username (bit.ly or j.mp url): http://bit.ly/SpamReporting
• Long URL (no bit.ly or j.mp url): http://bit.ly/MSVLongURL
• With Bit.ly Username: http://bit.ly/ZeroSpam
• E-mail: abuse@bit.ly

Keep in mind on the http://bit.ly/MSVLongURL link, that the long url can only be listed in the bit.ly spam database so that people can’t create a bit.ly or j.mp url of it – ie: doesn’t get reported outside of that system.

Technically Speaking, if you enjoyed reading this, let me know via the comments!

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That weapon of course is called Split Testing and this is worth a read:

What Is Split-Testing?

Split-testing is the process of creating two separate variations of anything that a visitor or a prospect is exposed to which requires them to take an action, such as a web page, a PPC ad or a banner ad. An action required for measuring a split-test can include the click-through-rate on a PPC ad, submitting a form to request a free consultation or purchasing a product online. Splitting traffic between the two variations of the same element shows you which one produces the best response rate.

Split-testing allows you to remove the guesswork from your marketing campaign by showing you the difference in response rates each variation produces. The first time that you design your web page and set up a PPC campaign, you’ll of course have to use your “best guess” and experience helps a lot here. However, once a page or an ad is activated and you start achieving results you can use split-testing to continually and incrementally improve these results over time.

Essentially, split-testing allows you to identify the combination of factors that produces the highest conversion rate and, in turn, the highest return on investment (ROI) from your advertising budget.

Why Is Split-Testing Important?

Split-testing is the fastest way to increase your conversion rate and lower your cost-per-action, which increases profitability. But more than this, it allows you to be more competitive in your marketplace by allowing you to spend more on advertising than your competition, yet still achieve higher levels of sales and growth at a lower Cost-Per-Action (CPA).

Split-testing also allows you to test what your competition is implementing on their site and to see how it affects your own conversion rates. Over time, split-testing allows you to capture a larger share of your online market.

Let’s Take A Look At The Numbers

Your competition is spending $2 per click and has a 1% conversion rate. That means it costs $200 to drive 100 website visitors. At a 1% conversion rate they are getting 2 conversions (ie sales or sales leads) for every $200, which means their CPA is $100 per action.

If through split-testing you were able to increase your conversion rate to 3% that means for the same $200 spend you would get the same website traffic, but instead of getting just 2 conversions, you would get 6. This means that your CPA is $33, rather than the $100 your competition is achieving…all from the same advertising budget.

What this really means is that you can afford to spend 3 x what your competition is spending and achieve the same CPA, which means that you will dominate the top positions on the search engines and capture the lion’s share of the online market. Convinced yet?

Conversely, if your competition is split-testing and you are not, they will get the lion’s share of the online market and you will miss out.

In the current economic climate, split-testing allows you to get the most out of your advertising budget and to continue growing your business during these tougher times.

What Should You Split-Test?

You should split-test anything shown to a visitor that requires an action. With PPC advertising you can split-test two separate ads and see which ad produces the lower CPA. With your website design you can split-test two separate pages and see which one produces the highest number of conversions. You can also split-test email campaigns, banner campaigns and other forms of paid advertising.

SEO listings (ie what displays in Google’s organic search) are harder to split-test because you don’t have full control over the information displayed in the listings. Saying that, you can split-test the page that prospects land on after they click on your SEO listing.

On your website, you should split-test the following items on your highest traffic web pages – which you can find through Google Analytics:

• Headlines
• Call to action
• Offer
• Sales copy
• Images
• Testimonials
• Button styles
• Navigation styles
• Background color
• Listing a phone number versus not listing a phone number
• And anything else which holds a prominent position on the page

For your PPC campaign, you should split-test the text ads, keywords and landing pages.

How To Split-Test

The most important metric to measure with split-testing is the CPA, which is measured with conversion tracking. If you don’t have a website form or shopping cart and all your website leads come via telephone or email, it will be much harder to split-test.

The easiest way to split-test is to use a form on your website for somebody to submit whenever they wish to contact your company. When somebody submits that form, they are taken to another page that is call the “thank you” page, which contains a short message saying something like, “Thank you for your enquiry, we will contact you shortly.”

With split-testing, a conversion code is placed on the ‘thank you’ page which then measures the results. If we were split-testing two landing pages using different headlines we would use split-testing software to rotate between those 2 pages so alternate visitors would see alternate versions of the landing page. After a reasonable amount of visits and because conversions are being tracked, one of the two versions will start producing a higher number of conversions than the other. This is then the better landing page, also referred to as the ‘control piece’. The goal with split-testing is always to try and beat the control piece.

To justify that a split-test is statistically correct you need enough visitors and conversions to make an informed decision– as a general rule you will need a minimum of 30 conversions before you can make a decision on which of the variations is best. Note that The difference between the conversions of each version has to be greater than the square root of the sum to ensure statistical integrity.

Technically Speaking, I know that you now want to read the rest or read more…

This would actually be interesting to try some time. Capturing the logos you see every day online and this guy did it in 33 minutes, with 33 logos.

Here follows 33 logos / labels seen in the first 33 minutes after I wake.
The original idea was to include logos that appear throughout an entire day, but that would leave you with A LOT of scrolling.

Technically Speaking, this person did this before he was even dressed for the day, read the entire post.

Yesterday we had the Top 7 Tips, now we have the 5 worst ways to make money with Amazon Associates:

1. Do not use Amazon.com banner ads: 5% of total 2009 earnings

Even though I made 5% of my total earnings from Amazon banner ads (which is the same amount as the Buy Now buttons I implemented on my websites) it’s important to recognize just how much screen real estate I devoted to their use (most times a 468 x 60 ad and a 300 x 250 rotating ad unit with Google Adsense both above the fold). The reason why I believe these ads perform so poorly is two fold:

a. Web visitors avoid clicking advertisements in general, but I’ve found the Amazon ads especially tend to convert very poorly (all varieties)
b. The ads Amazon does offer are far too general and don’t work well for niche specific websites. i.e. if I was running a site focused on just LED HDTV‘s the closest ad I could use is one for electronics.

The most effective Amazon ads I did run were carousel widgets and even those performed poorly when compared to the tactics I know work. One unknown trick is to simply create your own ads for products on Amazon; however, you must email the customer service team to get approval before running them (if you want to play it safe that is, which I always tend to do). The ads I did go through the hassle of creating and getting approval for were even more effective than the carousel widgets, but again none of these solutions were as effective as linking to content within posts my most effective means of earning money from Amazon. In fact, as you can see from the last post I earned over 80% of my total income share based on in content related tactics.

More terrible ways to make money with Amazon Associates are continued after the break

2. Do not use an Amazon store: 1.2% of total 2009 earnings

I used Amazon stores for almost every one of my websites in 2009 and linked to the store via the navigation bar on each respective website. I would also link to the store from time to time when new products were made available for purchase. In the store I’d include products that were related to the niche and include both low priced items and high priced items. I’d also customize the color scheme to match the site in an attempt to make the appearance look seamless. So what I’m trying to get across is that I did everything right that Amazon describes for the best results and I still couldn’t any money. I wouldn’t even waste your effort building a store and instead use the space freed up in the navigation bar to link to “money articles” or categories.

3. Do not display ads unrelated to your niche

This is an obvious tip in my mind, but I’ve seen new and experienced bloggers alike use Amazon consumer electronic banner ads on their blog about puppies (as an example). At the very least display ads related to dog toys and even then that’s not going to make you much money as you can see from my results above. It’s all about staying within the confines of your niche if you want to get the best results. Remember, people came to your blog, website, forum etc. for the topic you’re covering – that’s it! So your readers will respond best to content related to your niche.

Technically Speaking, the rest of course is a task where you need to read more …

Remember, this is kind of old information, so some of the data may be dated. Also, it says 28 ways to make money with you website:

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:

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
• BidVertiser
• Chitika
• Clicksor

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:

• Casale Media
• Burst Media
• Value Click
• Advertising.com
• Tribal Fusion
• Right Media

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:

• How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
• Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
• Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
• Openads Ad Server
• OIO Publisher Ad Platform

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:

• DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
• Text-Link-Ads
• Text-Link-Brokers
• TNX
• LinkWorth

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:

• Commission Junction
• ClickBank
• Azoogle Ads
• Link Share

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:

• WidgetBucks
• ScratchBack
• SmartLinks

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:

• PayPerPost
• Sponsored Reviews
• ReviewMe
• BlogVertise
• Smorty

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:

• Feedburner
• BidVertiser
• Pheedo

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:

• vBulletin
• Simple Machines Forum
• phpBB
• Vanilla

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:

• JobThread
• Web Scribe Job Board
• SimplyHired Job-o-matic
• Jobbex

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:

• Tribal Fusion
• PayPopup
• PopupAd
• Adversal

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:

Technically Speaking, there are still more ways obviously, and you need to go read more …