Million Videos Online! Search Here,Business Solutions!

28. Creating a conference around the website

2008-05-01T03:06:00.002-07:00

28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars

27. Mentoring programs

2008-05-01T03:06:00.001-07:00

27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

2008-05-01T03:05:00.002-07:00

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:
AWeber
SendStudio NX
PHP Autoresponder
Constant Contact

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

2008-05-01T03:05:00.001-07:00

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

2008-05-01T03:04:00.002-07:00

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

2008-05-01T03:04:00.001-07:00

23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:
Lulu
Self Publishing
iUniverse
WordClay

22. Selling an Ebook

2008-05-01T03:03:00.002-07:00

22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:
Writing an ebook for your blog
How to sell ebooks
Processing payments for your ebook
How to sell digital products online
List of ebook selling software

21. Selling the Website

2008-05-01T03:03:00.001-07:00

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:
How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
How To Sell A Website - How Much Is Your Website Worth?
Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?
Indirect Methods

20. Audio Ads

2008-05-01T03:02:00.004-07:00

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.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

2008-05-01T03:02:00.003-07:00

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

18. In-text Adverting

2008-05-01T03:02:00.001-07:00

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.

17. Donations

2008-05-01T03:01:00.002-07:00

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.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

2008-05-01T03:01:00.001-07:00

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.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

2008-05-01T03:00:00.004-07:00

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.

13. Marketplaces

2008-05-01T03:00:00.003-07:00

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.

12. Job Boards

2008-05-01T03:00:00.001-07:00

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

11. Private Forums

2008-05-01T02:59:00.003-07:00

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

10.Premium Content

2008-05-01T02:59:00.001-07:00

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.

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

2008-05-01T02:58:00.002-07:00

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.

8. RSS Feed Ads

2008-05-01T02:58:00.001-07:00

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

7. Sponsored Reviews

2008-05-01T02:57:00.002-07:00

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

6. Monetization Widgets

2008-05-01T02:57:00.001-07:00

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

5. Affiliate Marketing

2008-05-01T02:56:00.004-07:00

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

4. Text Link Ads

2008-05-01T02:56:00.003-07:00

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

3. Direct Banner Advertising

2008-05-01T02:56:00.001-07:00

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

2. CPM Advertising Networks

2008-05-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

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

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

2008-05-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

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

Make Money Online Fast

2008-05-01T02:47:00.002-07:00

Make Money Online Fast
What every successful Internet business has in common... and how it will help YOU make money online -- fast!
The most successful Internet businesses -- no matter how they get started -- have one thing in common:
A market who's clamoring for what they have to offer.
It all boils down to this: find a market BEFORE you find a product, and base your business around that.
That's also KEY to your ability to make money online -- FAST!
In a minute I will give you three excellent quick ways to make money online, but first, here's what you need to know to earn an online income -- at "warp speed"! (Well, at least a LOT faster ;-)
Find a tight group of people who share a common problem. People usually come online searching for a solution to a problem. So your job is to find a group related to your area of interest, and figure out what you can offer them that will solve their problems!
Check out the competition to see if a solution is already available. Once you know what you'll offer them, make sure that it's NOT already being supplied by the competition -- or worse, being provided for free!
Make sure you can sell the product easily over the Internet. If you can't reach your market online, you won't be able to deliver them your solution -- no matter how good it is!
Once you've found your niche market and decided on the types of products that will deliver your market exactly what they're looking for, prepare to start padding your wallet.
As promised, here are 3 excellent ways to make money online -- fast!
Join an affiliate program. Promoting another company's product or service is hands-down one of the best free ways to make money online, fast. Read more about making money with affiliate programs.
Purchase the rights to an existing product. The amount you can earn depends on the type of right you purchase: resale, reprint, or master licenses. Learn more ways to make money online selling information with resell rights.
Earn money displaying Google AdSense ads on your site. This is really one of the easiest quick ways to make money online. You just sign up with Google AdSense (http://adsense.google.com), and START earning money whenever one of your site visitors clicks on an ad. Learn how to make money online with Google AdSense.
Whichever of these three quick ways to make money online you decide to use, you'll be able to earn money at a much FASTER rate if you find an eager market first!

Make Money Online with eBay

2008-05-01T02:47:00.001-07:00

Make Money Online with eBay
Want to make money online with eBay? Know your profit margins!
If you want to make money online with eBay, understanding your profit margins is crucial.
It's important to know roughly how much your items will sell for so you can work out how much you can afford to spend on buying stock and listing items -- and still make a profit!
Luckily, figuring this out boils down to a simple formula:
(Item Final Selling Price + Shipping and Handling Fee) - (Item Purchase Cost + eBay Listing Fees + eBay Final Value Fees + PayPal or Credit Card Fees + Shipping Costs) = Profit
Let's say you list a picture frame you bought for $2 at a garage sale with a starting price of $0.99 and a gallery picture (listing fees: $0.65). You then sell it for $10 plus $5 for shipping, incurring an eBay final value fee of $0.53 and PayPal Premier Account fees of $0.75. Let’s say it cost $3.80 to actually mail it in a bubble wrap envelope that cost you $0.20.
So your profit margin is: ($10 + $5) - ($2 + $0.65 + $0.53 + $0.75 + $4) = $7.07.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors involved in working out your final profit on a sale.
Now that you know how to figure out the profit margins of a particular item, it's time to decide on a pricing strategy. Will you sell high volumes of items with slim profit margins or fewer high-profit items?
Here are some tips on how to make money online with eBay using both pricing strategies:
Sell high volumes of items with a low profit margin. It is possible to make money online with eBay using this strategy -- provided you sell enough items! The key to your success will be having good, reliable suppliers and a method for staying on top of all the extra work involved in listing lots of auctions and shipping lots of items.
Sell fewer items with a high profit margin. Selling high-priced items generally means you need to sell fewer of them to make money.
But selling high-priced items on eBay can be more difficult than selling items of lower value. For one thing, there's often a smaller market for high-priced items. And, you need to work harder to establish your credibility as a seller since very few people will pay a high price for an item from an untrustworthy source.
Once you figure out your profit margins and pricing strategies, you'll be able to source products with confidence and enjoy fatter profit margins as you make money online with eBay!

Discover the top 3 FREE ways to make money online!

2008-05-01T02:46:00.002-07:00

Free Ways to Make Money Online
Discover the top 3 FREE ways to make money online!
Looking for free ways to make money online?
Consider one (or ALL!) of our top 3 recommendations:
Promote other people's products and services for a commission. If you don't have a product or service of your own to sell, joining an affiliate program is one of the best free easy ways to make money online. All you have to do is sign up for a (free) program that offers a product you'd like to sell. Use their free marketing materials to promote their product on your website. Then earn a commission whenever someone you refer to their website buys one of their products. There are an almost limitless number of affiliate programs to choose from and therefore all kinds of free work-at-home jobs to make money online. Free affiliate programs offer drastically different commissions, payout schedules, and a host of other factors that can affect your earning potential.
Sell advertising space on your website. Selling advertising space on your website with Google AdSense is one of the quickest free easy ways to make money online.Once your site's been approved for the program, Google will begin displaying their advertisers' text ads on your site. Whenever one of your site visitors clicks on one, you earn a small fee. Get free tips on making money online with Google AdSense.
Create your OWN free ways to make money online! The above two methods for generating an online income without investing money are quick and easy. However, there is a definite ceiling on how much you can earn with them. So while these two free work-at-home jobs to make money online are great ways to get started, if you want to generate an online income that'll keep you flush for years to come, you'll probably need to think beyond them. So... consider mining your own interests, skills, and talents to create your own free online business opportunity selling information -- and keep most of the profits!What information do you have access to that other people would be willing to pay for? Once you've figured that out, package that information into an eBook or a members-only website.
As you can see, it IS possible to find FREE ways to make money online that you can immediately put to work for you. In the Internet world, start-up capital is NOT usually the make-or-break factor for your success with an online business... but the amount of time and effort you're willing to invest in its success IS!
If you'd like to skip the learning curve involved in creating your own wildly profitable online business, check out our best-selling "Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" course.
Packed with the hottest-performing tips and strategies exhaustively tested by the IMC team of experts, you'll learn the same system we used to generate over $60 million in online sales!

Work-at-Home Business Idea to Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:46:00.001-07:00

Work-at-Home Business Idea to Make Money Online
Looking for a work-at-home business idea to make money online? Sell a highly profitable eBook!
If you're looking for a viable work-at-home business idea to make money online, consider creating and selling an eBook.
Information, especially packaged into an eBook, is hands-down the most PROFITABLE thing you can sell online.
Here's why:
eBooks are free to reproduce and deliver -- so you keep most of the profits! Because it costs nothing to stock, package, or ship eBooks, the profit margins are extremely high!
eBooks can be delivered automatically, so you can sell them around the clock -- without lifting a finger!
eBooks can be delivered instantly -- capturing the attention of impulse buyers and people looking for an immediate solution to their problems
You don't need to stock, package, or ship anything -- so you can work at home to make money on the Internet without invading your home with inventory
The other reason eBooks can be so profitable is because most people come online looking for information and solutions to their problems!
All you have to do is provide the exact information your market is looking for in your eBook. (Just make sure the information is valuable and not found for free elsewhere!)
As you can see, selling an eBook is an ideal work-at-home business idea to make money online.
For those of you who'd rather eat worms than write a single paragraph, relax!
You have plenty of options that don't involve any writing at all:
Hire someone to write an eBook for you. You can find inexpensive rates at sites like Elance.com, where writers bid low to win contracts.
Compile and package expert information. You could compile a list of articles from industry experts, with their permission. Or you could interview them yourself. Or you can even list hard-to-come-by resources.
Of course, before you're able to start enjoying the increased profits and hassle-free sales eBooks can give you, you'll have to put in the time and money needed to develop it. But the benefits far outweigh the costs.
If you'd like to learn more about whether eBooks are your ideal work-at-home business idea to make money online, and to find a ton of other ideas for making money online with a home-based business, check out our best-selling Internet marketing course.

Business Ideas to Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:45:00.002-07:00

Business Ideas to Make Money Online
Business ideas to make money online --that won't cost you a penny!
Looking for some business ideas to make money online?
There are a TON of ways you can generate an online income. And the best part is, you can do most of them without investing a lot of money up-front.
To get you started, here are some free ideas to make money online:
Build your own website! If you're willing to do the work yourself, you can build a simple website for free in a matter of days. Look for free website templates, and modify them using free HTML editors like Nvu.com. You might also consider starting a blog. You can sign up to use free blogging software like Blogger.com, and be writing your first post in minutes!
Sell advertising on your site. By signing up with programs like Google AdSense, you can earn money by displaying other companies' ads on your website. Every time one of your site visitors clicks on an ad, you earn a small fee.
Start an eBay business. Registering with eBay is absolutely free, and it's a great way to get products and services in front of a massive audience, without building a website. If you don't have a product or service to sell, start by listing things you have lying around your house. (To learn more about eBay, click here.)
Create a members-only website. Consider leveraging your talents and expertise by setting up a "members-only" website. Fill it with valuable information that people are willing to pay for -- then sell access to it for set intervals of time (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or yearly). This is a highly profitable way to make money online because you create a steady stream of recurring revenue!
As you can see, you don't need to have a lot of money to start an Internet business. Once you start generating some revenue from these business ideas to make money online, you can reinvest some of it to grow your business even further (though you may not even need to!).
For more business ideas to make money online, check out our free "Marketing Tips" newsletter archive. You'll find a TON of free ideas to make money online!

Can you make money online with affiliate programs?

2008-05-01T02:45:00.001-07:00

Free Tips On Making Money Online
Can you make money online with affiliate programs? You bet!
Read on to get some free tips to making money online with affiliate programs...
First off, there are basically two ways you can make money online with affiliate programs:
Join another company's affiliate program. When you sign up for another company's affiliate program, you promote their products or services on your website. Whenever someone clicks through from your website to theirs and buys something, you earn a referral fee.
Start your own affiliate program. If you already sell a product or service on your website, you can start your own affiliate program. You get other people to promote YOUR products. Whenever someone they've referred makes a sale, YOU pay them a commission.
Here are some online affiliate program money-making tips for joining another company's program:
Promote only quality products or services. Ask yourself if you would personally use the products you're recommending. You'll be able to sell more convincingly AND your customers will come to trust you.
Fill your site with keyword-rich content. If you want to make money online with affiliate programs -- and lots of it -- you need to attract lots of targeted traffic. The more people you can refer, the more sales will be generated, and the more money you'll earn. You'll also give your customers a compelling reason to return to your site.
Now, let's look at some free tips to making money online with affiliate programs promoting your own products:
Offer a generous commission. You'll attract more affiliates and motivate them to work harder for you if you pay out a decent commission. Don't be afraid to give out up to 50% of your product price. You'll benefit from increased traffic and sales from sources you don't have access to. PLUS, you get to keep 100% of the profits from any subsequent purchases those customers make from you.
Use tracking software. Invest in affiliate tracking software like AssocTrac that will manage all your affiliate chores -- automatically. As your affiliate program grows, you can end up spending all your time keeping track of affiliate sales, commissions, and payouts!
Offer your affiliates free resources. Help your affiliates help you by giving them banners, text ads, or informative articles about your products and services. Your affiliates will be more effective, and both you and your affiliates will benefit from it.
It is definitely possible to make money online with affiliate programs -- whether you join someone else's program or start your own.

Free Tips On Making Money Online

2008-05-01T02:44:00.002-07:00

Free Tips On Making Money Online
The critical first step to making money with an online business
There are many reliable ways to make money online.
You can earn money by displaying ads on your website. You can earn affiliate commissions by promoting other people's products. You can use drop-shippers to sell name-brand products on your website. Or you can develop and sell a product of your own.
Making money with an online business is possible using any of these methods. But for any of them to be lucrative, there's something you NEED to do first: find a viable niche market -- BEFORE you invest time and money promoting a product nobody wants!
To make sure you're on the right track, here are some general guidelines that are absolutely crucial to making money with an online business:
Make sure you're targeting a well-defined, narrow niche. The most accessible markets on the Web are highly focused. Let's say, for example, you want to sell all-natural vitamins online. If you try to target "everyone who takes vitamins," you'll have to compete with giant vitamin companies. But if you establish your niche market as "people who are allergic to artificial colors and flavors in vitamins," you won't have to!
Make sure your market has a problem and is seeking a solution for it. Don't try to give your market something YOU think they need; give them something THEY think they need -- a solution to a problem they're actively searching for. (You can use keyword research to help you discover those problems.)
Make sure your market is willing to pay for a solution to their problem. If your market won't pay money for a product or service that solves their problem, your business isn't going to generate much of a profit! Find out how much they're willing to spend for a solution, and make sure that you can sell your product or service at that price and still generate a profit.
Make sure there aren't a number of products that already offer a solution to their problem. If your market already has a variety of products or services to pick and choose from, what makes you think they'll want to buy yours? You have to be able to offer your market something they can't get anywhere else.
Make sure your product DOES offer a viable solution to their problem. Try giving a small number of new products away -- for free -- to a small group of people and ask them for feedback to make sure they like your product, and feel it does a good job of solving their problem.
Once you've found a viable market, you'll be better able to come up with a product or service that will satisfy their needs. You'll also be able to hit the ground running using any of the reliable ways to make money online -- and guarantee your success from the start!

Free Tips On Making Money Online

2008-05-01T02:44:00.001-07:00

Free Tips On Making Money Online
Learn these free tips on making money onlinewith Google AdSense
Looking for free tips on making money online?
Well, one way to make money from your web site is to allow other businesses to advertise on it. And the easiest way to do that is with Google AdSense.
Google's AdSense program is a business service that allows you to make money by displaying targeted text ads on your website. The ads are paid for by Google AdWords advertisers who want to attract new customers with pay-per-click advertising.
Here's how the Google AdSense program works:
You become an AdSense "publisher" when you sign up for an AdSense account with Google. Every time one of your visitors clicks on one of the text ads displayed on your site, you earn money.
The text ads are small and unobtrusive. And because the ads are "contextual" (or related in some way to your site content), they can actually add value to your customers. Google also allows you to block certain ads or content that might compete with your own.
One warning, however. As easy as it is to make money with Google AdSense, there are potential drawbacks. If you sell products and services on your website, for example, you can end up hurting your own sales by diverting traffic AWAY from your website!
That said, there ARE ways to maximize your revenue with AdSense. Here are five proven tips on making money online with Google AdSense:
Attract lots of targeted traffic to your site: The more people who see your ads, the more ad clicks you are likely to get. And the more your site content relates to this traffic, the more likely your visitors are to be interested in related ads.
Target high-paying ads: Ads that promote desirable, big-ticket items (like electronics or holidays) will most likely pay more because they have higher bid prices on keywords.
Maintain good, keyword-rich content: If you have keyword-rich content, the ads that show up will also be highly targeted, and therefore more likely to be relevant to your visitors.
Format and position your ads for profit: Putting the ads in the correct place on your web site, and in a format that will draw the eyes of visitors will contribute to better click-through rates.
Constantly track and test: Tracking and testing your ads allows you to find out which format and placement of ads have the highest click-through rates. This is also critical to making sure that AdSense is NOT negatively affecting your sales.
By following the above tips on making money online with Google AdSense, you can easily add another stream of revenue to your business. You can also get additional free tips on making money online from Google.
If you'd like to learn about more ways you can maximize your Google AdSense profits -- and get TONS of other free tips on making money online -- check out our online archive of free newsletters.

Legitimate Ways To Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:43:00.000-07:00

Legitimate Ways To Make Money Online
Why email is still one of the best legitimate ways to make money online
There are illegal and there are legal ways to make money online. Spam -- unsolicited email -- is one of the illegal methods, but don't let people tell you that spam has killed email as a communications tool.
Spam may have reduced the effectiveness of email, but, if you follow some recognized guidelines, email is still one of the best legitimate ways to make money online.
Email marketing is also one of the most reliable ways to make money online.
Here's why:
Email is cost-effective: With no postage or print costs, email is one of the cheapest ways to communicate with your target market.
Email is easy: Using software or online services, you can send an email to thousands of people on your list.
Email is targeted: Thanks to the powerful personalization features available through email marketing, you can personalize your emails so it sounds like you're writing directly to each and every recipient.
Email is popular: Yes, despite spam, people still check their email inboxes every day. Email has become part of modern life for many, many people, because it's so cheap and easy for them to use. So, despite the problems with spam, it's not likely to go away soon.
So, there you go. Five reasons why email is still not only one of the best legitimate reasons to make money online, but one of the most reliable ways to make money online.
Thanks to the Can-Spam Act, senders of illegal spam email can be fined and even jailed, but email is still one of the best legal ways to make money online if you follow the requirements set out in the Can-Spam Act, including:
Keep records of how and when people are added to your list.
Track requests to opt out, and remove people who opt out of your list immediately.
Post your privacy policy on your web site and opt-in form, and abide by it.
Investigate third-party service providers before signing any contracts for email services.
Be careful when using rental lists.
Use a real return email address with enough storage space to receive your bounce backs and opt-outs.
Provide easy instructions on how to unsubscribe from your list.
Provide a valid physical postal address of the sender.
Use a consistent "from" address.
Use an authentic, non-misleading subject line.
The best way to keep yourself informed about the latest developments in spam laws is to visit www.spamlaws.com. It's a great resource site for finding out what's going on with both state and federal laws, as well as the anti-spamming laws of other countries.
By making your emails compliant with the spam laws, you will help ensure email marketing remains one of the best legitimate ways to make money online.

Free Ways To Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:42:00.002-07:00

Free Ways To Make Money Online
Why blogging is one of the best free waysto make money online
Everyone likes something for nothing. And, more than any other medium, the Internet offers unrivalled opportunities to earn some extra cash, or even generate a full-time income -- with very little, or even no, start-up capital.
In fact, you'd be amazed how many people are looking for...
Free ways to make money online
Free information on how to make money online from home
Maybe you even found this article by searching online for one of these very phrases!
So what are all these free ways to make money online?
One way is through a blog -- a frequently updated website containing news, links, and the thoughts of the authors. Blogs are massively popular. At the last count, blog directory Technorati.com was tracking more than 50 million of them!
And one of the reasons for the popularity of blogs is that they can generate an income for the owner -- making blogs one of the best free ways to make money online.
You can start a free blog at www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com, and there are three proven ways to make money with a blog:
Sign up (for free of course!) to be a Google AdSense publisher: Google AdSense allows you to display text ads on blogs. The ads are related to the blog content. So, if you write an article about dogs, you might see ads for companies selling dog toys, books about dogs, and so on.You make money every time someone clicks on an ad on your blog. It's not a lot -- only a few cents per click -- but it can mount up if you target your content to attract higher-value ads. For example, you could write about hot products like home electronics.
Join affiliate programs: You can also promote another company's products on your blog by joining their affiliate program. This time, instead of being paid for every click on an ad, you get paid when someone who clicks through from your site actually makes a purchase. When that happens, you earn a sales commission.And the returns can be far higher than AdSense -- even as much as 100% commission!
Ask for donations: If you're an especially good writer, and your blog builds up a loyal readership, you can ask your readers for donations to help keep the blog going. Paypal allows you to accept donations through a "Donate" button on your blog.
So, if making money online is as easy as this, why doesn't everyone profit from all these free ways to make money online?
It's because it's not enough to just read all of the free information on how to make money online from home that you can find in articles like this and sites like www.marketingtips.com. You also have to do the work to make it happen, and learn as much about Internet marketing as you can.
Only then will you be able to benefit from the various free ways to make money online like starting a revenue-generating blog.

Make Money Online From Home

2008-05-01T02:42:00.001-07:00

Make Money Online From Home
How to make money online from home with a profitable Internet business
So you want to make money online from home? You're not alone! "How to make money online from home?" is a question many people would like to know the answer to.
This isn't surprising when you consider the reasons why so many people want to make money online from home...
You can manage your own schedule
There's no boss looking over your shoulder
You can create your own ideal working environment
You don't need to spend hours every week just getting to and from work
In short, working from home makes you the master of your own domain... the king of your own castle. Just imagine it: no long commute... no cranky co-workers... no meddling boss... no dreary meetings. You can even work in your pajamas if you want!
It's this need for more freedom in their daily life that drives many people to start their own home-based business.
And one of the best home-based business options available is starting up your own successful Internet business. The reasons are clear...
Low start-up costs and overheads: It's possible to get an online business up and running for less than $500.
You can automate your business so it runs itself: For more on automation, go to www.marketingtips.com/newsletters.
Your website is your 24/7 salesperson: With no staff needed to keep the business running and process sales, your overheads are kept low and your profits high.
However, exactly how to make money online from home is the big question.
Tips on making money online from home
Here are some tips on making money from home that are proven to work...
Find the online business model that's right for YOU: This could be selling other companies' products through an affiliate program, promoting your services, or creating your own eBook. Whatever method you choose for making money online, it has to be right for you.
Find a profitable market: The best market for an online business is a niche market -- a group of people who are searching the Web for a solution to a problem and not finding many relevant search results. Find your market first, then look for a product to sell to them!
Follow your passions: The first place you look for a business idea is your own passions and interests. That's because you'll find it easier to present yourself as an expert to your potential customers , and you'll be a lot more willing to work hard and get your business off the ground.
An Internet business is, without doubt, one of the best ways to make money online from home.
And a fully-automated website -- requiring only a few hours' time spent on it every week -- means you have time to come up with even more ways to make money online at home.

Opportunities To Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

Opportunities To Make Money Online
The top 5 opportunities to make money online...when you have nothing to sell!
There are tons of opportunities to make money online, but what are the BEST opportunities to make money online?
Specifically, what are the best opportunities to make money online... when you don't have anything to sell?
It might surprise you to hear that not having a product of your own to sell needn't hold you back from taking advantage of the online marketplace.
In fact, you may actually have a lot to sell -- you just don't know it yet!
So here are the top 5 opportunities to make money online... even when you have nothing to sell:
Sell an eBook: An eBook is an information product that people purchase and then download online, meaning there are no shipping costs and they receive their purchase immediately.But eBooks aren't just great for consumers -- they are THE most profitable of all the opportunities to make money online for sellers, too. That's because, once you've written your eBook -- ideally on a topic you know about and know there's a demand for -- there are no more costs to eat into your profits.No print costs. No storage costs. No shipping costs.Simply put, eBooks = 100% profit!And because most Web users search for information online, there will always be a demand for well-targeted information products.
Promote other people's products: Another of the best opportunities to make money online is to promote other people's products, or "affiliate" products.An affiliate program allows you to promote another company's products on your website -- in return for a sales commission.You can find affiliate programs to join at websites like www.AffiliateGuide.com and www.AssociatePrograms.com.
Place advertising on your website: You can also make money online by signing up to be a publisher for a contextual advertising program like Google Adsense.After you become an Adsense publisher, ads related to keywords in the content of your site will show up on your Web pages. This strategy is especially suitable for high-traffic, content-rich websites and blogs.
Sell a service: You may not have a product to sell, but do you have a service to sell? Are you an accountant, a writer, a dance instructor... ?You can promote and sell any practically service online, and you can even create tailored services to sell as if they were products. For example, if you're a writer you could offer a résumé-writing service on your website for a set fee.
Sell your "junk": The last, but not least, of the top 5 best opportunities to make money online is to sell stuff you don't want anymore.Websites like www.Craigslist.com (a classified ad website) or www.eBay.com(an auction website) allow you to sell anything and everything. You might not want that bright yellow coffee table you inherited, but someone else might!
So, if you think you have nothing to sell, look around -- there are opportunities to make money online everywhere!

Make Money Online

2008-05-01T02:40:00.002-07:00

Make Money Online
Before you start an online business: Five ways to make money online
BEFORE you start an online business, take some time to look at the following tips to making money online and decide which business model is right for you.
After talking with hundreds of website owners and analyzing thousands of websites, we've discovered that there are five basic ways to make money online.
How To Make Money Online
Sell productsThis option gives you total control over your business. You make products or buy them wholesale, set the price, make the sale, rake in the money — all with no one telling you what to do. Things to consider: Find out if there's a demand for the product. Plan how you'll make the product or stock your inventory. Consider shipping costs — will they add too much to the cost of your product?Good market research at the beginning reaps big rewards later.
Sell a serviceWhen you sell a service over the Internet, you're in control, you can specify the terms of any sale, and you're offering something that no one else can: namely, YOU.Things to consider: You only have so many hours to spend. That limits how much money you can make. Try to develop some related products that will "sell while you sleep."If your service is restricted to a local market, get your site included in all your area's online business directories, and exchange links with related local businesses.
Sell an information productFor pure profitability, NOTHING beats an info product! Because you deliver them in digital formats via email, shipping is instantaneous and free. And there's no limit to how much you can sell!Things to consider: You have to create the content first, and it has to be quality stuff. But YOU don't necessarily have to create it. There are thousands of freelancers out there who can do your writing, research, or layout. Pay them a one-off fee, then you can sell your product as many times as you like!You could also buy ready-to-sell info products — reprint rights to proven sellers are occasionally available to buy, and often come with a well-known name attached to make your selling job easier.
Become an affiliateAs an affiliate you promote other people's products and services on your website, and send potential customers their way. Whenever that lead makes a purchase, you get paid.This business model is easy to set up right out of the gate. You have no cost outlay and good profit potential. And businesses with successful affiliate programs even supply their affiliates with images, salescopy, and everything they need to generate sales.Things to consider: Margins can be slim and there's also a lot of competition. Do your research and find affiliate programs for products that offer a good commission and have good conversion rates without oversaturating the market.
Drop ship"Drop shipping" is collecting orders and payments for products, then passing those orders on to the supplier to send out to the customer.The customer pays you, you pay the supplier, and you pocket the difference. In this business model, you can make decent profits, you don't have to deal with inventory and shipping yourself, and you can use your customer contact information for email marketing.Things to consider: You have less control over the price, and NO control over product delivery or customer service. As with affiliates, choose your business partners with care!
Oh, and if you thought multi-level marketing would be on this list... sorry!To be blunt, we don't recommend this option. In our experience, very few people actually make money online this way, and most end up losing money (and annoying their friends and family) despite their best intentions.
For more tips to making money online, visit our FREE online archive of articles packed full of useful tips, advanced strategies, and the most powerful tools you can use to jump start any e-business.
Once you have the knowledge, you have the power to make money online, so it's up to you! Good luck!

Ways to Make Money Online Selling

2008-05-01T02:40:00.001-07:00

Ways to Make Money Online Selling Information
Discover ways to make money online selling information -- even if you don't have your own product!
If you're looking for ways to make money online selling information -- but don't have the time or money to develop your own product -- consider buying the reprint or resale rights to someone else's.
Basically, you purchase the right to sell an already established product. And depending on the type of rights you purchase, you keep either a percentage of the sales or all of the proceeds.
In the best-case scenario, you can even purchase a master license -- which gives you the right to sell the purchasing rights to other people!
Selling information to make money online is extremely easy when you buy the rights for an already established product. Not only do you capitalize on the good name of the author, but you don't have to spend any time developing your own product!
Let's take a look at the three types of rights you can buy to make money online with information:
Resell rights. When you purchase resell rights, what you're actually purchasing is the right to sell a product for someone else -- a product that they continue to own. Because you don't actually have control over the product, you keep only a percentage of each sale as your commission.
Reprint rights. Reprint rights cost more than resell rights, because you keep 100% of the proceeds from any sales! You can also make as many copies of the product as you wish, and sell as many as you can.
Master rights. Master rights are the most valuable of the three, and therefore are the most expensive. As with reprint rights, you have permission to reproduce and sell the product for 100% of the profit. But you're ALSO allowed to sell the actual reprint rights to the product to other people! So even though they cost more, you automatically start out with two separate streams of income — sales of the product and sales of the rights.
The majority of products that carry rights on the Internet right now are information-based products. So it's the perfect time to make money online with information by buying reprint rights.
Here are just some of the ways to make money online selling information products:
eBooks. eBooks are the most popular, so you can usually find eBooks that are suitable to resell to your market -- no matter who your audience is.
Email courses. An email course is often delivered in smaller pieces over a course of days or weeks -- and as the name suggests, you email it to the customer, rather than sending them to a website where they download it.
E-zine articles. You can frequently buy individual articles to use as content for your own e-zine. This is a good choice if you want to deliver an e-zine to your audience, but don't have the time (or desire) to write it yourself.
As you can see, selling information to make money online is quick and easy when you purchase the rights to sell an established product.

7. Subscription websites

2008-04-07T02:02:00.001-07:00

7. Subscription websites
Finally we come to what I believe is an under-developed opportunity to make money online ... subscription websites!
Subscription websites, often referred to as membership sites, are becoming increasingly popular with people willing to pay a regular subscription to access information that is difficult to find elsewhere. Other types of site that often use the subscription model are sites that provide a specialised service, or make available a library of useful content. Internet dating sites and image libraries are two prime examples.
Anyone who can provide a unique service or specialised information in a niche market could set up a subscription website. By signing up new members on an annual or monthly payment plan, you could soon build up a sizeable income. For example, let’s say you’re a bit of an expert on how to make money from property development. You could set up a site that gives free information on this subject, but only allows paying members access to your private membership site. This would be a secure area which can only be entered using a username and a password. It would contain those ‘closely guarded secrets’ that only your expert knowledge and experience can reveal. Only subscribers would then have access to the most effective methods and shortcuts on how to succeed in the lucrative property development business.
This is just for illustrative purposes of course. But anyone who has a passion and expert knowledge of a hobby or business could set up their own subscription website, providing they know how to go about it. Fortunately there are some very good resources and examples of how to start and run a subscription site.
One of the best sources of information is Membership Site Advisor which offers membership site management tools. Subscribing to their service will give you access to the information and tools you need to set your site up.
Also take a look at Bill Myers Online. Bill has produced an all-in-one solution that enables a company or any individual to set up their own membership site online. It’s called ‘Membergate’ and is an excellent product.
Bill made a fortune from his skill as a product developer. His website is a superb resource for anyone interested in product development. Whether it’s a simple ebook or professional DVD production, there’s a ton of information here that can help you succeed with producing and marketing your own products.
The most important ingredient of course is to have a target market. If there isn’t enough people out there who will be interested in what you have to offer, then you’re unlikely to succeed in your venture. It’s important to do some research first to find out if there will be a demand. One way to do this is to use Overture’s search term tool. Overture provides information on how many searches were done on a specific keyword or phrase. For example, at the time of writing I did a search for ‘dog breeding’ and there were 16,943 related searches carried out during the previous month. However, ‘dog breeding’ is a fairly generic term, so if you specialised in breeding boxer dogs then the results would be much lower but highly targeted towards a niche market.
So let’s assume there’s enough demand and little competition in your chosen category, after setting up your site, the next step would be to attract subscribers. To do this you would need to generate a lot of good quality traffic to your site. By good quality I mean carefully targeted traffic which consists mainly of visitors who are definitely interested in what you have to offer. Not everyone will sign up of course, but the more focused your advertising campaign is, the more likely you are to receive good quality traffic.
Using some of the methods oulined above will produce good results. PPC (pay per click) advertising on Google and Overture for example.Viral marketing using free giveaway ebooks that offer useful information and a good introduction the benefits of subscribing to your site.E-zines and newsletters that promote your service. Either produce your own or choose existing publications that are suitable to advertise in. Affiliate programs. Find affiliates who are eager to promote your membership subscriptions on a commission basis. And of course, let’s not forget to mention search engine optimisation which is essential if you want your site to rank highly in the search engines.(See resources list below for more information)
Once set up and running, in order to maintain and increase subscriptions, it’s important to continue to provide a first class service. If you don’t give your members a good reason to return to your site regularly then your venture will fail. Always provide a high quality service and good content. Information and services that people can use to their benefit will ensure that they continue their membership, and hopefully recommend you to their friends. In conclusion
I have given you some insight into the methods which I consider to be the seven best ways to make money online. There are other ways of course, but these are the ones that I would recommend to anyone looking for new ways to boost their income with their online business, or for newbies just starting out.
Ok, I hear you say. It’s all very well having your own website and knowing which methods work best to make money online, but how do I get people to visit my site?
That’s a good point! If you can’t reach a big enough audience, or target the people who are actively seeking the products or service you’re trying to promote, then you’re hardly going to succeed. But the fact is there’s an endless source of free information online which explains how to get visitors to your website. From how to achieve a high search engine ranking to the simple technique of getting link exchanges, there are many ways to choose from.One way to get more visitors to your site if you’re starting out on a shoestring budget is to join some of the better startpage programs which send free hits to your website when you open your browser a set number of times (usually 1 hit for every 2 times you open your browser). By joining a select few of these programs and recommending others to do the same, you can soon begin generating extra hits to your site. One of the programs I can recommend is Trafficswarm.
If you’re serious about making money online then the methods outlined above are the ones that are most likely to succeed. And there’s nothing to stop you implementing all seven of these methods to create multiple streams of income. Forget about ‘paid to read emails’ and the like, either set up your own website or e-zine and promote it vigorously, applying the methods described above. Or put the same effort into promoting SFI or selling a niche market product on eBay
Then, if you try hard enough, you will succeed at making money online!

6 - Selling stuff on eBay

2008-04-07T02:01:00.003-07:00

6 - Selling stuff on eBay
Selling stuff on eBay is easy. Most of us have heard reports about how some individuals and businesses are making massive incomes from selling on eBay. But like any other business there’s no magic formula to instant success. You need to learn the ropes first. Start small and work your way up.
Sole traders and big companies are using eBay as a way increase their sales. But it’s not a guaranteed way to make money online. There are charges to consider before calculating the profits you might expect from selling through their auction pages. If you’re new to the concept of selling on eBay I suggest you read their guidelines thoroughly. Make a note of their listing and selling fees and consider all other costs you might encounter regarding postage, packing and the use of payment processing services such as Pay Pal.
If you’re not registered with eBay you will need to register first before you can start to buy or sell. Click here to go and register now.
Try testing response rates by putting a small, select number of items up for auction first. Choose products that allow you to realise a good profit margin. After eBay’s listing and selling fees, plus delivery and payment processing charges are taken into consideration, there should still be room for making a profit. At the same time, choose products that you can afford to make a small loss on if necessary. After all, if they don’t sell you will still need to pay the listing fee. You could even lose money on the sale if you don’t follow some simple rules to minimise losses.
Whole books have been written about how to trade successfully on eBay. One of the most popular ebooks available online is written byJim Cockrum, the author of ‘The silent sales machine hiding on ebay’ His experience and techniques have helped many people to make money using the most popular auction site online. Another good source of advice is Ken Evoy’s Make Your Net Auction Sell. With the information provided by these two bestselling authors, and by getting some basic experience of trading on eBay, you will soon learn to see the possibilities of making money from online auctions.
Once you become proficient at selling on eBay you might consider approaching companies and manufacturers who are willing to provide you with supplies of their products for you to sell on their behalf. Providing you can negotiate a suitable selling fee with room for a good profit margin, then finding a niche product that proves to be popular can lead you to a goldmine.
Some ebayers are turning over tens of thousands of dollars in revenue every month! Some have even closed down their offline trading premises to trade solely on eBay. Such is the success of the eBay phenomenon.
The most successful merchants on eBay are known as ‘power sellers’ Next time you visit eBay look out for the power sellers and take notice of how they run their business. Take particular note of how they promote their products using powerful descriptive headlines and text, as well as high quality images that showcase their products to the best advantage. Their excellent after sales service and customer relations help them achieve a top feedback rating which builds trust among new and old customers alike, who are happy to deal with them again and again. Emulate their success by following the same techniques and principles they employ to make big sales!
For a more detailed article about selling stuff on eBay click here.

5 - E-commerce website

2008-04-07T02:01:00.001-07:00

5 - E-commerce website
Many people assume that the best way to make money online is to set up a shop selling products direct from a website. While this is true for the majority of well established online businesses, it can be a costly and daunting proposition for newcomers who want to set up a business online for the very first time. If you have products you want to sell on the net but want to test the waters first before making a major commitment you should consider Pay Pal as your online payment payment processing system. It’s free to join, very simple to set up and you can use it to configure your own shopping cart to fit in with the design of your site. Whether you have a range of products or single items to sell, Pay Pal is a quick and easy way to start selling products online.
An alternative to using Pay Pal is to use an all-in-one solution such as Atomic Shops which allows any type of business to set up a fully functioning website in minutes, whether you simply want to promote your business or sell goods online.
If you already have your site built and are seeking a good web hosting service, consider using MidPhase Hosting who offer fast, reliable web hosting and for a small monthly fee can provide everything you need to set up your own e-commerce website. Alternatively, the host4profit web hosting service is well worth considering because host4profit also gives you access to a wealth of marketing information from some of the leading marketers on the internet.
If you don’t have products to sell but still like the idea of having your own e-commerce website you can sign up with SFI and promote your own online store complete with a whole range of items to sell in various categories. SFI is an easy solution to starting your own online business. But like all the other methods described here, it requires good marketing skills to get visitors flocking to your store. Without targeted visitors you won’t make a penny! SFI is free to join and is ideal for anyone wishing to start up an online business with a zero budget.

4 - Newsletters and e-zines

2008-04-07T02:00:00.004-07:00

4 - Newsletters and e-zines
Newsletters and electronic magazines (e-zines) are a great way to build up a customer base and a trusting relationship with people prepared to deal with you on a regular basis. This is the cornerstone of most successful businesses whether established online or offline.
Having a list of subscribers that you can regularly mail to puts you in the perfect position to bring related products or services to your customers attention. Whether you provide your own saleable products, electronic information or otherwise, or join partners as an affiliate and promote other merchants goods, the process of churning out a regular newsletter can seem suddenly more inviting.
Starting a newsletter or e-zine is also a good way to learn and improve your marketing skills. Public relations, effective advertising, producing useful information that people are actively seeking out, and building a subscriber list through opt-in subscription methods, are all essential skills required for making money online. Some successful e-zines are even produced and distributed without the need for a website. Building up a strong subscriber list can be achieved simply by advertising in the right places. An effective advert and a simple link to your mailing list subscription manager may be all that you need. Check out the ‘ListApp’ service at Server.com for more details about how to start your and run your own mailing list.
If you need inspiration to think up ideas or learn how other e-zines are proving to be popular, take a look at the two e-zine directories Ezine-universe and Ezine Search where the choice of subject matter is huge. If you see an opening for an untapped market then you could be on to a winner. Start building your subscriber list now! If you can reach thousands of people interested in a topic of information or a service that you can provide, then you could turn this to your advantage and make sales. Not only that, once your subscriber list has reached 5,000 or more you could easily make more money by including paid for advertising.
Getting people to subscribe to your newsletter or e-zine isn’t that difficult. All you need to do to get people to sign up is to entice them with a free offer for something you know they can’t resist. For example, a free e-book, or free software. Providing they perceive the offer as being valuable and able to save them money, you can’t fail to get a steady stream of new subscribers.
Fact: It’s a lot easier to make follow-up sales to existing customers who you have a good relationship with, than trying to sell to someone who has never dealt with you before. So build up trust by providing new subscribers with a first class service and you are far more likely to succeed in your new venture.

2008-04-07T02:00:00.003-07:00

3 - Info products
Digital products are ideal for selling on the net because they cost next to nothing to produce and are easily duplicated with no overheads such as printing and packaging costs. Some of the highest paying affiliate commissions are available from promoting ebooks, marketing courses and software products. This is because of the high mark-up profits which are possible, allowing resellers and promoters to make between 25% - 50% commission on each sale.
A whole range of downloadable products can be found at ClickBank including some of the best information products available online.If you want to seek out and promote products with exceptional profit margins, Clickbank is the place to visit.
Of course the big money is made by the originators of these products. Imagine creating an ebook and having hundreds, possibly even thousands of affiliates signing up to sell your book? It’s not so difficult as it sounds. If you sign up with ClickBank to sell your digital product through their marketing program, you also have the advantage of having thousands of potential affiliates ready to promote your product on their websites using simple tracking links that Clickbank provides. As long as your product is of a high standard and has little competition, you are likely to get plenty of interest. Affiliates are usually generously rewarded with high commissions ranging betwen 25% to 50% but because you’re selling a digital product your overheads are practically zero.
The article ’ebook writing’ by Miguel Alvarez will give you a brief introduction to writing your own ebook. For a more comprehensive writing guide I recommend you read Ken Evoy’s ’Make Your Knowledge Sell‘ Ken provides first class information on how to produce and sell your own information products as well as how to become proficient in pre-selling products you choose to promote.
Ebooks are not the only option though. Have you ever considered designing your own software?
Too complicated! I hear you say? Don’t know anything about programming?
Well actually you don’t need too. It’s now possible to create simple programs that you can sell, or use as a promotional giveaway.MYOS (Make Your Own Software) is a piece of software that allows you to use your creativity to develop simple, but exclusive digital products of your own. It’s the perfect tool to boost your sales or mailing list. Click here to find out more about it’s features and benefits.
Talking of mailing lists..... that brings us to our next money making method....

2008-04-07T02:00:00.001-07:00

2 - Google Ads
An alternative to joining and promoting a merchant’s affiliate program is to incorporate Google AdSense advertising on your website.
Here is an example:
Consider this... Google is one of the most successful companies online, in a similar league to Yahoo! and MSN. Next time you use Google and type in a search term take a look at the column down the right side of the page when the search results show up.
What you'll see is a selection of small text ads which are related to your search query. These are what is known as PPC (pay per click) advertisements. In other words, whoever has placed the advertisement with Google has done so on the basis that every time their advert is clicked on, the advertiser pays a small sum to Google. So the advertiser gets good quality targeted traffic to their site, Google makes some extra cash, and everybody is happy. But it doesn’t stop there, because Google, in their almighty wisdom, allows you to put these ads on your website too, and they’re willing to pay you a percentage of their commission. It’s a win win situation. What makes this so brilliant is that the ads that you display on your website will be mostly related to the content you provide, and statistics show that visitors are much more likely to click on these ads than banners. All you need do to get started is apply to Google first, and once accepted they will provide the code which generates the ads to appear on your site.
Notice I said that your site needs to be accepted first. That’s because Google has a few rules that need to be adhered to in order for your site to be accepted. This is neccessary to keep their advertisers happy and raise the standards of good search results.
To read their guidelines to what is acceptable and what isn’t click hereThere are many individuals and companies who are also making very good money from actually paying for these ads to be shown. Affiliates for example. We’ve learnt how affiliate programs work and how displaying Google ads on your site can also make you extra money, but what if you don’t have a website? Is it possible to still be an affiliate and make money from an affiliate program?
Absolutely! By utilising the PPC (pay per click) opportunity that Google and similar PPC search engines provide, even someone without a website can join an affiliate program and promote a merchant’s products or service using their own affiliate links. Providing you follow Google’s editorial guidelines and any terms and conditions as stated by the merchant that relate to the use of PPC advertising to promote their products, there shouldn’t be any problems.
Unlike the time and effort involved in planning, designing, building and hosting a website, setting up an account with Google and making money from Google AdWords is quick and simple. Providing, of course, you research your market correctly and apply some easy to learn marketing knowledge first to ensure good results,
Chris Carpenter has made an excellent income using these techniques and has written a book entitled Google Cash which is recommended reading for any affiliates wishing to embark on this money making system.

The 7 best ways to make money online

2008-04-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

The following methods of making money online are not listed in order of preference or earning power. They are simply a brief introduction to the most popular and efficient ways to generate a part-time, or even a full-time income using your PC working at home, or anywhere else you may have access to the internet. For some a website is essential, for others you don’t need one.
I suggest you bookmark this page for future reference.
1 - Affiliate programs
If you have a website, and you want to make money from it you should consider joining an affiliate program. If you don’t have a website but are willing to learn how to build one be sure to read the simple guide to ‘Designing and Building a Website’
Becoming an affiliate means you can make money by advertising and promoting the products of other merchants from your website. This is generally done by placing banners and text links on your site. When a visitor clicks on a merchant’s banner or text link they arrive at the merchant’s website whereupon the visitor may make a purchase from which you will earn a commission. The results of promoting someone else’s products however, can vary enormously. Simply putting up a banner or a text link on your website is unlikely to generate much commission, unless you receive many thousands of daily visitors. But if you’re willing to learn a few simple marketing techniques, such as pre-selling through recommendations, even with a small website you could soon start building up a useful income.
You can apply what you learn from affiliate marketing to sell almost anything you can think of. But ideally your first priority should be to sign up with merchants that sell products your website visitors are interested in. For example, if you wanted to advertise pet food on a ‘Tips for breeding dogs’ website then you’re much more likely to generate a sale and earn a commission than you would if you placed the advert on a site for ‘How to build a PC’ because most of your visitors simply wouldn’t be interested in pet food. So always look for products and services that are compatible with the content of your site.
You may be surprised at the range of products and services available from merchants who require website publishers to promote their stuff. To get some idea I suggest you take a peek at one of the best affiliate network directories on the net Commission junction. It’s free to join and there is no charge to link up with any of the merchants listed. Everything is simple and straightforward. You get quick access to the html code for all the banners and text links you need as well as daily statistics of how many sales you make and which advertisements are working well and which ones aren’t. All you need to get started is some basic knowledge of how to cut and paste the linking code into your web pages. This is the code that has your affiliate identification embedded into it to accurately track all sales.
Promoting other peoples’ products through an affiliate program is a useful way to generate income using your website. You don’t need to hold any stock or have the responsibility to fulfill the order or take payment. You simply get paid for introducing the buyer to the seller and when a sale is made your obligation ends there.
There are a number of ebooks and articles available online that can help you learn more about affiliate marketing. My advice is to seek out the people who are already making substantial incomes from promoting affiliate programs and learn from them. People like Rosalind Gardner for example, whose monthly turnover is in excess of $20.000 per month, simply from promoting affiliate programs using simple methods that anyone can learn and put into practice. Rosalind has written an ebook entitled The Super Affiliate Handbook which reveals her successful techniques to creating a super affiliate income.
Another proponent of affiliate marketing is James Martell who makes tens of thousands of dollars a month promoting other peoples products and services. He also has a very good course in affiliate marketing which is packed with information and knowledge that have taken him years to aquire. You can read more about his affiliate marketing course by clicking here.
The Internet Marketing Center also has some excellent advice for everyone new to affiliate marketing. You can sign up for their excellent affiliate program and gain access to their affiliate training and resource center for free. As experts in the field of internet marketing their products are second to none. The brilliant internet marketing course which can be found at the Internet Marketing Center is packed with everything you need to know about internet marketing and is widely regarded as the best available.

5. Income from a Google Search Bar

2008-04-07T01:58:00.002-07:00

5. Income from a Google Search Bar This feature will allow you to add a Google Search Box to your own website. So, this means that visitors to your web page can search for information contained within your website. Also, it will allow people to search across the world wide web, to look for information contained in other sites. And what's more, when your searchbar is used, the search engine returns Google AdSense Advertising in the results page. It's fully automatic and the advertisements are directly related to the search query. Now here's the good bit! When people click your Search Ads (these are the sponsored ads), you are paid money. It's a pay per click scheme, or PPC as it's known, so you can make money as people use your search bar. For example, if a search is performed for 'hotels on the moon', this means that the 'Ads by Goooooogle' in the search results will also be about hotels on the moon. Don't worry if you are not using search technology directly within your site. Once again, it's all taken care of. For example, it will work perfectly well on a simple HTML site. You can download the Google Search Bar (as illustrated below) through the Google AdSense programme. Search this Website:

Web
www.quickonthenet.com
Making Money OnlineHow to Embed Video ~#~ YouTube Video Download ~#~ Download Free RealPlayer ~#~ Compare UK Camera Prices ~#~ YouTube Ad Money ~#~ Post a Free Ad ~#~ Banner Advertising Service ~#~ Make Money with Google ~#~ How to add Code ~#~ How to Download YouTube Videos ~#~ How to Watermark Video Start and Build Are you ready to show your customers what you can do? The possibilities are simply amazing and it's great fun. Join us today and get started by building a website right now! Make a start and build your new online income stream on the internet.

4. Generate Cash from Video Advertising Clicks

2008-04-07T01:58:00.001-07:00

4. Generate Cash from Video Advertising Clicks What could be better than this? We are talking about an opportunity for you to spice-up your website with full-motion video and make money at the same time! The internet world is going absolutely crazy about online video and now you can be part of it. We have outlined 2 options here, namely YouTube and Revver.
YouTubeThe key idea here is very simple and effective. You choose the type of videos (video content) you would like to present on your website and then 'Ads by Google' will be played alongside your video clips, to monetize your web pages. It's very neat and just like all AdWords adverts, the theme and content of the advertising shown is directly related to the content of your web page. So, this is a fresh way of adding value to your site, making it more 'sticky' and generating some income at the very same time.
RevverWhen you add a Revver Video Gallery to your website (from Revver.com), you get paid when people click the on-screen advert which appears at the end of each film clip. In fact, with Revver Video, you can earn 20% of the ad revenue by 'Sharing' videos created by other people. In other words, you can think of your online web videos as a new form of advertising. At a glance, it might seem like a bit of fun, and indeed, it is. But there is a serious business dimension to this initiative, so take a look at the listed business videos to see how this idea might apply to your company website. Let's suppose you run a restaurant. So, using your own movie sequences, provide an online guided tour around your restaurant facilities and its private function rooms. We invite you to have a look at the sample below, which shows a restaurant and its outdoor terrace, with a Spanish waiter serving up fresh seafood paella.
Getting started with this idea could not be easier. We provide the online toolkit for you to embed video clips within your web pages and this means that you can easily integrate the playback capability from any of the world's leading free service providers, including:
YouTube (YouTube.com)
Revver (Revver.com)
GoogleVideo (Video.Google.com)
YahooVideo (Video.Search.Yahoo.com)
StupidVideos (StupidVideos.com)
Metacafe (Metacafe.com)
Vimeo (Vimeo.com)
iFilm (iFilm.com)
Break (Break.com)
ClipShack (ClipShack.com)
Sharkle (Sharkle.com)
Clip a Day (ClipaDay.com)
The list goes on and on... In fact, you can add the film clip sequences from any third-party playback provider which offers embed code (embeddable code). But right now, as far as we know, only YouTube and Revver are running money-making initiatives. Are you ready to make a million dollars? Revver has recently announced that it had paid $1 million to video creators and publishers (website owners) over the past year.

3. PayPal Sales Revenue

2008-04-07T01:57:00.002-07:00

3. PayPal Sales Revenue
Sell something! Perhaps we're stating the obvious, but only a very small percentage of the world's websites are built to do e-commerce. In other words, most internet sites are not created for the purpose of collecting customer payments via debit cards or debit cards. Remember, we're talking about people making money payments to you, through secure credit card and/or debit card transactions, and we are not involved in the payment transfer. Here at QuickontheNet.com, we're independent, so the good news is that you can use any card payment service provider, including:
PayPal
Google Checkout
WorldPay
Nochex
Roman Cart
HSBC
Etc In summary, this is an opportunity for you to take online payments for products and services sold directly through your business website. OK, we've highlighted PayPal, but there are other options to consider. You will tend to find that there are certain advantages and disadvantages associated with each provider. But there is a common thread running through each service provider; and that is that they all take slice of the action. In other words, they all take a small percentage of the money you make online. In terms of percentages, there is very little to choose between each solution provider. As you compare, you will find that the cost difference in charges/fees is not that significant, however, the range of e-commerce features offered by each provider is significant, and that is probably going to be a key factor when you choose a payment page solution for your site. QuickontheNet.com already contains a wealth of information about each company, so click around to discover more about the pros and cons with each solution. At a glance, as you create your own comparison, you will want to consider the following key points:
PayPalIt's FREE to set up and integrate with your website, so that makes it particularly attractive for startup businesses, who wish to minimise their startup costs. PayPal offers a fully-featured shopping cart (shopping basket) solution. As a business owner, you will be interested to know that you can apply your own design and creative branding to the payment buttons and the payment page itself. So, you can make it all blend in with your logo design and corporate colours. If you are a charity organisation or a revenue-generating business, PayPal will allow you to create an e-business solution to take subscriptions, donations, and single or recurring payments. The choice is yours. This e-commerce payment service is available in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Singapore. In fact, with more than 100 million accounts in 190 countries and regions around the world, PayPal offers a fast, affordable and convenient online payment service for businesses of all sizes. Are you ready to get started and make money online from your customers? Sign-up and open your own PayPal account. During the registration process at PayPal, you will need to sign-up for a Business Account or Premier Account (not a Personal Account).
Google CheckoutAgain, it's FREE to set up and integrate with your website. If you simply want to add 'Buy Now' buttons to your website with the minimum amount of fuss, look no further than Google Checkout. When it comes to Check out versus PayPal, we particularly like the fact that Google offers different price options using a drop-down menu, within each individual button. That is pretty nifty and it means that you can have a single checkout button for different price selections and that is really handy for customer order tracking. It's simple for both you and your shoppers (customers/clients). What's more, Checkout offers a unique invoice payment service for business people. If you're trading, you can use the service to send an invoice to your clients to request online money payment. The invoices you email to your buyers will contain a personalised message from you regarding the requested payment. The invoices will also contain a 'Pay now through Google Checkout' button. When buyers click this button in the email, they'll be brought to Google Checkout, where they can complete the payment process.
WorldPayA truly global service, we like WorldPay for its handling of single payments and/or recurring payments e.g. weekly, monthly, or yearly. It is not free to set up, but it is particularly popular with very large corporations and Small and Medium Enterprises or SMEs. In other words, middle-sized businesses. WorldPay comes with a range of tools to help you fight fraud and manage fraudulent transactions and its Customer Management System, or CMS is second to none.

2. Banner Ads and Click Advertising Sales

2008-04-07T01:57:00.001-07:00

2. Banner Ads and Click Advertising Sales
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This is a very different proposition, but it is still based on online web advertising. We are talking about affiliate advertising. The key difference here is that we are primarily talking about commission-based sales advertising. Although, some advertisers pay you for clicks, leads, page impressions and (the provision of) unique visitors. But rest assured, your big money is to be found with straight sales commission. What is affiliate advertising? What is an affiliate advertising programme? An affiliate programme is a banner advertising service which links and transfers website visitors from your website to your advertiser's site. It can therefore increase sales through your site and boost your traffic and search engine performance by pulling in search engine traffic looking for your chosen advertiser's website.
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Commission is paid by the affiliate advertising site for each referred sale. And what's more, it's completely FREE to Join! How does it work? Imagine the following scenario: Company A = Advertiser (this would be you and your website) Company B = Merchant
Company A participates in an Affiliate Advertising Programme
Company B participates in an Affiliate Merchant Programme
Company A has a website
Company A places an affiliate banner advert on their website on behalf of Company B
Customer visits Company A’s website
Customer clicks on affiliate banner advert
Customer is redirected to Company B’s website
During the redirection, an affiliate cookie is placed on customer’s computer (customer is not aware or informed of this)
Customer makes a purchase on Company B’s website
The cookie records the sale and Company A is paid a commission on the sale Many organisations operate affiliate programmes for advertisers and merchants, but one of the best-known schemes in the UK is operated by TradeDoubler. Lots of high-profile businesses and retailers participate in affiliate programmes through TradeDoubler, including:
American Express
AOL
Apple
Avon
Boots
British Gas
Carphone Warehouse
Currys
Debenhams
Dell
Dixons
Domino's Pizza
easyCruise (from easyGroup: easyJet)
easyMoney (also from easyGroup: easyJet.com)
ebookers.com
Eurostar
Halifax
Hertz
HP
Hilton
iTunes
John Lewis
Lycos
Natwest
PC World
Sainsbury's
Skype
Tesco
TalkTalk
Toshiba
Virgin Mobile
Yahoo
...and many others

1. Google AdSense Income

2008-04-07T01:56:00.000-07:00

1. Google AdSense Income You can think of 'AdSense' as a business opportunity. It's completely free. Yes, it's an opportunity for you to make money from Google Ads on your own website.
Google AdSense is a quick and easy way for website owners to display Google Advertising on their website. When people visit your website and click the Google Ads, you get paid money. Simple! The advertising served up by Google is related to what your visitors are looking for on your site. In other words, it's context sensitive. For example, if your website is about 'photography', then you can be pretty sure that the presentation of 'Ads by Google' on your site will also be about photography. Likewise, if your site is about recruitment, then expect to see adverts displayed about jobs, employment and careers. In fact, it's even better than that. Google AdSense looks at the content of each and every web page on your website. So, this means that the content of the Google Advertising will align with the information on each web page in your site. It's completely automatic and you don't need to worry about it. In other words, all you need to do is build a great website with engaging content and a wide range of interesting web pages, and AdSense will take care of the rest.

5 Ways to Make Money Online for FREE

2008-04-07T01:52:00.002-07:00

5 Ways to Make Money Online for FREE

If you have a talent for making money and a creative mind for business, here are five things you can do for FREE, to generate an online income on the internet. You can work from home, do it in your spare time, or do it anywhere, provided you can get on the internet. You can get started today! We show you how to make money with: 1) Google 2) Online Advertising 3) PayPal 4) Video 5) Search Bar Technology To do this stuff, you're going to need a website. You can build a website online using your internet browser, here at QuickontheNet.com, or you can use another web hosting service provider. QuickontheNet.com is a site builder. It's a place where you can design and build your own website and web hosting is always included as part of the service. Our prices are very low, starting at just a few pounds/dollars/euros per month and we offer many different types of business websites. On a 1-year plan, for every year purchased (with a single payment), month 12 is provided free of charge. To put it another way, you get a free month when you sign-up for a year. Or, if you prefer, just pay monthly and spread your costs. Perhaps you already have a website and you simply want to generate some revenue from it. Either way, you're going to need your own site if you want to try the five ideas below, for FREE. The web is awash with ideas for you to Get Rich Quick on the Net. Some of them good; some of them absolute rubbish. But remember this simple principle. To make your first million, firstly you have to make your first pound, dollar or euro. Start small, and try building your revenue through steady growth. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"; wise words and a timeless philosophy from Confucius. We are pleased to inform you that the 5 ideas below are founded on solid foundations, through companies you already know. We are talking about leading corporations you trust, respect and admire. So, let's assume you have a website now and you're ready to make some online money on the web. Firstly, we need to start with the basics. With all of these ideas, you need to add some code to your web page. The good news is that it is extremely simple and we show you how to add code to your web pages. The technique is quick and easy, so now we're ready to go...

Do You Have an InfoProduct to Offer?

2008-04-07T01:52:00.001-07:00

If you have been researching or involved in online business for very long, you have no doubt seen a multitude of offers for "eBooks", books, reports and training course on every subject imaginable.Why? Because information is the hottest product on the market! (At the foundational level, it's actually the Only product, but that's another article.) Information cuts straight to the root of all selling, which is answering the customer's question: "What will this product do for me?"There's another reason, though. Pure information is a product that doesn't require a huge financial overhead to produce(other than the hard knocks you got in gaining the experience and information), and is easy and relatively low cost to deliver to the customer. That is what makes it such a great product for us, as entrepreneurs, to offer.Everyone has life experience, training, and skills that others don't have. Everyone knows something that others want to know, or can do something that others want to learn. That's how I know you have an InfoProduct inside you, everyone does. Your first assignment is to decide which of your many gifts you are going to offer to the world!Does that mean you have to be able to write a book? No. Not necessarily. I'm talking about what is known as USP...Unique Selling Position. Your USP might be that you have detailed knowledge about someone else's product that you are selling as an affiliate. It could be that humorous way you present the information you have collected on some subject of interest, or the fact that you offer the best customer service available for the service you offer. You may offer the same products that others are also selling, but find your own unique market for them.But whatever you decide to use for your information product, your USP, you need to find one. If you were to research the online marketers who are honestly making the money they claim to be earning online, you would discover that they all have a USP. Your USP IS your product, however you package and deliver it.If you are working a Multi-level Marketing program or one of the BIBs (Business in a Box), you are not left out of this concept, but you may have to work harder to figure out how to be unique. You can still go for the niche marketing idea. Find a group of people who aren't usually reached by these kinds of businesses, or aim your advertising at people in the countries that are just now going online.You may, of course, actually write a book, eBook, or training course and sell it. Many are making good money doing just that. The list of helpful software and online publishers is growing every day. But even if you write your own product or design your own software, you will still need a well-thought-out USP to stand out in the crowd. It's like your business plan -- you need a firm foundation before you can build your future online success.

A Reality Check Before Starting an Internet Business

2008-04-07T01:51:00.001-07:00

The siren call of starting a business on the Internet is hard to resist. Work when you want, do it from home, make lots of money (even when you're asleep) - what's not to like, right? You'd be a fool not to jump in and start building that website or writing a blog!Not so fast. There are more Internet millionaire "wanna-bes" than you might think. And many have spent more than a few years and more than a few thousand dollars in a vain effort to start a profitable Internet business. It may seem that "everybody" is making money online, but that's simply not the case. And not many people will admit their frustration, partly because no one hates admitting failure but also because perception is everything online. If you are perceived as a failure, no one will buy from you, which makes you fail even faster.So what are the disadvantages and roadblocks that potential Internet entrepreneurs encounter?The first is the learning curve - it's steeper than you might think, and there's no single "how-to" process to follow.Succeeding at an online business requires mastery of several key abilities, not all of which directly correlate to doing business offline. For example, you not only have to build a user-friendly and relevant website or blog, you have to drive traffic to it, all without making any mistakes that cause you to lose credibility in your prospect's mind and cause them to click away from your site.Not easy!And though there are countless experts, books, and how-to courses on how to start a business online, it's hard for a beginner to know who to believe, and there are multiple online business models to choose from as well.The second issue, which was mentioned above but which warrants more attention, is the problem of driving traffic to your website. Novice Internet marketers know they want their site to be found in the search engines, but often vastly underestimate the amount of competition they have for the keywords and search phrases they desire.The Internet reality is that top-ten rankings for most popular keywords is extraordinarily difficult to achieve - which means that the novice "Interpreneur" will need to master the art of advertising online, which can become quite costly.The third and final obstacle mentioned here is that it's very easy to become distracted when building an Internet business.If you subscribe to Internet ezines or visit Internet discussion forums, which are recommended methods to build knowledge and connect with potential customers or partners, you're bombarded almost daily with new ways to make money. New advertising strategies to try. New top-secret, never-before-revealed-to-the-public ways to get more targeted website visitors than you've ever imagined. And so on.And while some of these strategies may be an excellent fit for a particular online business, many will not. Since inexperienced Internet marketers find it difficult to make that distinction, they waste time and money delving into new income models before mastering the income method they're using now.Hopefully, if you're considering starting an Internet business, this article will serve as a "reality check" for you. It's certainly possible to make a substantial secondary or primary income online - but it's much more likely if you have a good grasp of the obstacles you'll probably encounter along the way.Good luck!

7 Ways to Change Undesirable Spending Habits

2008-04-07T01:50:00.002-07:00

Many people dream of retiring with a healthy bank account but few people actually achieve it. This is largely due to lack of discipline in building up their retirement fund and poor spending habits. While building a retirement fund requires time, you can accelerate the process by making incremental but positive changes in your spending habits. Here are seven ways that you can change your daily lifestyle for more positive results in your spending habits:1. Do more walking than driving. If you can reach your destination within ten minutes by car, consider leaving the car behind and walk instead. You will save money on gasoline and parking fees. This can easily add up to a few thousand dollars a year.2. Use a bicycle if the destination is within 30 minutes by car. This helps promote blood circulation in your body and also reduces environmental pollution. You can also save on gasoline and parking fees.3. Bring your own coffee to office. Many people like to drop by a Starbucks or similar coffee outlet and end up spending a few dollars or more on a cup of coffee. You can potentially save many dollars dollars each week just by making your own coffee at home and bringing it to your work place in a Thermos. Besides, who knows, it may taste better than the coffee from Starbucks! If you really cannot live without Starbucks coffee, consider getting a Starbucks rebate card. You can use the rebates to redeem free Starbucks coffee after you have accumulated enough points.4. Dine at home more frequently. You can experiment with different recipes and save some money at the same time. In addition, you are honing your cooking skills and this could be very useful for the home dining experience.5. If you are a smoker, start reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke each day. Over time, you may be able to quit smoking completely. Besides saving money by not buying any more cigarettes, your health will also improve and this means a huge saving in your medical bills.6. Have you ever noticed how much time you spend sitting in front of the television? The longer you sit, the worse it is for your blood circulation. Besides, the time you free up can be used for more useful tasks such as teaching your kids or learning a new skill.7. If you are an avid reader, use the public library whenever possible. There is no need to buy the latest books from bookstores like Borders unless it is in a category that does not fit into a public library. The public library will usually acquire popular titles after some times. Learn to be patient.These seven ways are a good start for changing unhealthy spending habits. However, you should continue to research and incorporate more healthy habits that contribute to the building of your retirement fund. By re-investing the money saved from using these tips, you will be many steps ahead of your peers and closer to your retirement goals.

Stop Procrastination and Start Living Your Dreams

2008-04-07T01:50:00.001-07:00

Procrastination is almost a way of life for many people, but it's hard to know exactly why people procrastinate. When people procrastinate, they are usually putting off doing something that will be a benefit, but for some reason there is more energy put forth to put off the task than to do it. This is a very bad habit and is one reason many people do not achieve their dreams.Procrastination is an easy way of putting off goals and dreams for another time; goals and dreams that you want to come true, but something is holding you back. There may be a subconscious fear of failure, or a fear of change that is stronger than the goal of success. If you want success badly enough you will face your fears and decide to start immediately doing those things you have put off for so long.Here's the quickest way to get started:First, make a list of all the things you need to do that you have been putting off, you probably have this "to do" list already drafted in your office. Then, go to a quiet place where you will not be interrupted for about 20 minutes. Go through each item on the list and write down your excuse(s) for not having completed the task already. Maybe there is a money problem, or you do not think you have enough education or the proper qualifications. Whatever it is, just write it down and do not worry about how it will be resolved right now.Next, go through the list again and write down the benefits you currently enjoy because you are procrastinating on these tasks. Yes, you are receiving a benefit for not doing the task; otherwise you would have done it by now. For example, if you wrote down that you do not have enough education, then the benefit you are receiving right now by not getting an education is that you have more money than you would if you were spending it on school. Another benefit of this same item is that you have more time to do what you want, instead of spending it in school. Remember the old saying "time is money." Are you really making enough money in your current position to make it worth the time spent there?Finally, look at all the reasons you have listed as excuses for procrastinating, and the benefits you are receiving. Do these still make sense? This is the time to sit down again and make a plan - a plan that you will stick to and not put off for any longer. Now is the time to make a "to do" list that you will actually do! First, while they are still in your thoughts, quickly write down a list of things you will do to make your dreams a reality. Then, go through the list again and put them in the order you will do them (example: Do you need to get a loan before you can go to college?) Also, write down the date that you will complete each item.Now that you have your work cut out for you in a manageable way, go out and make your dreams come true!

3 Ways to get Bad Credit & 3 Steps to get it Corrected

2008-04-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

Many times the most well meaning people seem to develop bad credit. Those who had perfect credit in the past seem to go through periods in their lives where debt piles up and paying bills on time becomes more and more difficult.Why does bad credit seem to occur so often to good people with good intentions? Here are three circumstances in life that regularly turn good financial situations into bad ones:1. Many people never really learn how to manage their money and build good credit. It might be because their parents themselves did not know enough to teach them, or that they just never were interested enough to pay attention and learn how money worked.2. When people start to make decent money for the first time in their lives, they start to become confident in their abilities to be independent. This ability to make money will always be with them. They start to feel like they can treat themselves to more and more of the finer things in life. To them, the money will continue to come in forever. They start to spend more and accumulate greater debt.3. It's a fact that bad things happen regularly in life. Whether it's job layoffs, serious illnesses in the family, divorce, or any number of unfortunate occurrences, these setbacks do occur in life. When they do pop up, either money quits coming in, or more money starts going out. Since spending habits and lifestyles have already been established, it is very difficult to overcome the financial difficulties. The inability to pay off debt leads to bad credit. Credit scores start to spiral down, and lifestyles are changed dramatically. Fortunately, there are some ways to improve credit scores and get financial situations back in order. Here is a three-step process that can quickly get back good credit standing and allow anyone to start enjoying a comfortable, secure lifestyle again:1. Get $500 from somewhere. Sell something or earn it somehow. Go to your bank and buy a $500 certificate of deposit with that money. A couple of days later go back to the bank and ask for a $500 loan, using the certificate of deposit as collateral. This "secured" loan will be granted because the bank knows it will get its money back. Your cd guarantees that.Pay off the loan, making regular payments on time. The payments will be made using the money from the loan. It will cost a small amount of interest, but that will be well worth the expense for the improvement in credit.2. Once that loan is paid off, go back to the same bank and now ask for a $500 "unsecured" loan. With this loan, no collateral will be asked for. You are now in good standing with the bank because of the previous loan, so this loan should also be approved. If not, go through the process of the secured loan again. If the unsecured loan is granted, pay off the loan on time using the loan money as before. 3. Once the unsecured loan is paid off, you now can apply for an unsecured credit card, either through your bank or through another company. The terms of the credit card should be very favorable, and it should have a fairly high limit attached to it. The main thing is to keep this credit card paid off and clean. From there, your credit score will show a vast improvement over where it was just a few months earlier.There are many ways to get into debt and develop bad credit. Unplanned financial problems and unfortunate occurrences happen to everyone. Fortunately, for good people, there are always ways to get back to a happy, financially secure lifestyle.

The Importance of Money

2008-04-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

A great philosopher once said "Money is a barrier against all possible evils." Let's explore and expand on this thought.Money can prevent the sufferings that come with poverty like cold and hunger. While sickness can not be totally obliterated by money, it can be considerably relieved by it. Giving away money to charity can also provide us with the satisfaction of relieving others from suffering.With money, we can obtain an advanced education that may aid us in the development of genius and extraordinary achievements. It gives us the leisure to devote a part of our time to culture and art. Money can provide a powerful diversion for all or our troubles by permitting distraction from the anxieties that assail us.So we must try to get a thorough understanding of all that we may possibly do, in an honorable and legitimate way, to conserve wealth. Even to those who have inherited wealth, idleness can be a certain cause of ruin. A great fortune needs genuine labor for efficient administration. Those who leave this duty to strangers may pay a penalty for their negligence. This is why a rich man, who wants to preserve and increase his fortune, should be his own business manager.Even artists must know the price that their work is worth. It is necessary for the artist to be a businessman in order to have the right to be a genius. History is full of example of this. The great Shakespeare labored as a theatre manager to obtain the necessary leisure to produce his dramatic masterpieces. Edison worked as a telegraph operator to pay the bills while he "moonlighted" as an inventor.From the bottom to the top of the ladder, it is necessary to amass money in order to apply it to some great cause. Money is the means by which we may fulfill our purpose in a larger and better way. Everyone should, in his own way, make an effort to amass some money. Some will apply money to their daily wants. Others seek to swell the fortune that they desire to leave to their children. Some only desire money so they can devote it to some noble enterprise or charity. Finally, a large number see money chiefly as a means of immediate gratification.Whatever the reason, everyone capable of earning money should learn how to manage it properly in order to ensure that they will have enough of it to apply to the causes that they choose.

Running a Work at Home Business

2008-04-07T01:47:00.002-07:00

For anyone who wants to earn more money than they'd ever get with a day job, then the only real answer (besides winning the lottery) is to start their own business. Of course, starting a business can be very costly, something that puts starting a traditional business out of the reach of many people.However, there is an alternative, and that's starting a business from home. There are several different alternatives a person can choose from, from coming up with a completely new idea and concept and creating their own products, to joining an existing MLM type business, to starting an online business. Lately, a huge number of people have been lured by the idea of making their millions on the Internet, but the sad fact is, few of them ever make a decent living, let alone a fortune, online. Why is that? Many online opportunities are promoted as being very simple, and easy enough for everyone to do. If that were truly the case, there would be a lot more online success stories today than there are!One problem people have is too much choice. There are so many different opportunities and ideas, that they try and run with the lot, and end up falling quite heavily, simply because without focus a business is doomed to failure. Another problem is that many people really don't have any idea about running a business, and don't think about their home business as they would a real, traditional business. If you really do want to start a work at home business, and aren't afraid to put in a lot of time and effort (especially in the beginning) there are a few important things you need to know to set you on the right path. Firstly, watch your expenditure. An online business can be one of the least expensive businesses to run. Most people already have the basics they need to get started (a computer with an Internet connection). However, the problem comes when they actually start looking at online businesses and means of making money. Suddenly they're confronted with a million and one different products ALL of which are supposed to guarantee success. Many people spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, very quickly when they're starting out in the world of Internet business, and soon find that most of it was money down the toilet. To avoid this, you need to work out what it is you're going to be doing online and create a plan. There are numerous ways of making money on the Internet, including: eBay and other auction sites, affiliate marketing, Adsense (and other contextual advertising), as well as marketing your own product. Once you know what it is you want to do, then find one very good resource, and stick to it, The hint here is to do a bit of research first, and get honest reviews of any product before you purchase, rather than letting a sales letter induce you to purchase another worthless product.The next thing you need to focus on is how you're going to build your business. Most online businesses start with a website (and although there are plenty of sites that promise you don't need a website of your own, anyone who wants to make a long term living online will need a website). You then need a step-by-step plan you can follow, and you need to be able to follow it! One of the best things about working from home is also one of the most problematic, and that's the fact that you can work your own hours. Unfortunately, if you're not able to discipline yourself you may find that the hours actually spent in front of your computer aren't enough. It helps if you can work out a day to day plan of exactly what you want to accomplish each day, so that you know you're on the right track. Finally, it's worth remembering that a work at home business, even an online one, will require a certain amount of dedication and effort before you'll be rewarded with results. It's not a matter of whipping up a quick website and waiting for the money to start flowing in, and if anyone tells you it is, odds are, they're lying! Be prepared for months (even years) of hard, consistent work, and you'll reap the rewards, but fall for too many get-rich-quick schemes and promises and you'll be back to your day job before you know it.

Home Business Scams

2008-04-07T01:47:00.001-07:00

Everybody wants to work from home.We are all aware of the benefits of working from home. Work at your leisure, do what you enjoy and earn money in the bargain. Who would not like this luxury. But with the mad rush for people to work from home, scamsters seem to be making a quick buck and many people have fallen prey to them. The following are a few scams one needs to be careful about before engaging in work at home opportunities."Envelope Stuffing Scams"This is possibly the most infamous. You are required to stuff envelopes which the company sends you after you have paid a fee with a promise that you will be paid for every envelope you stuff. The problem is you never get paid and you lose the money you have invested in buying the envelopes."Data Entry Scams"You see many advertisements promising you instant wealth just typing from home. But what do most of them turn out to be? Well, typing Google adwords as prescribed by the company, pay for the keywords that are suggested by them and simply advertise for " Data Entry " jobs which leads the customer to their site. In other words all you are doing typing Google Adwords using your money for advertising their site and getting a small commission in the bargain. More often than not you end up burning a hole in your pocket with Google Adwords as we all know it does not come cheap. You could do this on your own with a Clickbank and Google Adwords account and don't need to pay money to do it."Call 1-900 Scam"You would have to call a 1-900 number to get more details on a home business opportunity or a work from home job. These numbers are not toll free. So you pay for the call and end up getting information which is of no use to you."Sending E-mail Scam"You are promised income by just sending e-mails. For this you have to pay the company for the necessary instructions. In return you get a list of e-mail id's to which you have to send e-mails. Here is the catch. You will probably end up spamming people and get penalized in the bargain.These are just a few scams. There are probably many more on the net. One needs to be careful before spending one's hard earned money. A simple search on Google for Home business scams can give you more information about the scams doing rounds on the net.

The Business of AdSense

2008-04-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

Even though AdSense is a very popular income source for many online marketers, few will make enough money from it to make AdSense their primary business. If you are currently trying to increase your AdSense earnings there are some tried and tested rules that will help you achieve more clicks and make more money.As an online marketer, you realize that you must be consistent and persistent to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. The AdSense business is no different. Yet the people who make the most money with AdSense are the ones who work at it smarter rather than doing the same things over and over that do not produce good results.In fact, it is a popular myth among online marketers that you must only develop and promote websites that pertain to high paying keywords. As a rule the marketers that make the most money from AdSense are the ones who consistently keep building websites around medium priced keywords within a theme. Then as they go along, they build websites that are related to that common theme. For example, you might build your websites under the theme of 'computers'. The mistake some people make is to develop one site devoted to only computers. It is advantageous to the marketer to make many websites related to computers such as laptops, computer hard drives, computer keyboards, etc. It is the concept of more is better that will make you the most money.As you start building your AdSense publishing business, here are some major rules to consider that will maximize your profits:1. Track your successes and failures.2. Use the latest tools and software available.3. Keep your AdSense sites easy to navigate. Do not promote anything else on these websites.4. Treat your AdSense business as a real business. The marketers that make the most money with AdSense are the ones who treat it as a business and consistently continue to produce high quality websites around themes or 'niches' daily.If you are just starting out, you have to realize that there is a lot of work involved to set up your websites, do the seo optimization, track your results and then repeat the process.You can use the latest tools and software to automate the keyword selection process, create good websites and do most of the tedious seo optimization for your AdSense websites. In this regard investing some money in the right software will turn more profit in the long run because you will be able to make more sites faster. The name of the game in the world of AdSense is to make highly profitable websites and keep making more of them all the time.A large AdSense income does not happen overnight. The best way to make the most money with your AdSense business is to follow the rules outlined here and constantly build more websites. Like planting seeds in a garden, you will reap AdSense income according to what you sow.

You Can Make Money With A Home Based Business

2008-04-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

Would you like to earn money by starting your own home-based business? People choose to work from home for several reasons including the desire to stay home with their children, the need for extra income, or simply being dissatisfied with their current job. A home-based business will provide you with an exciting way to earn money and be your own boss. Numerous opportunities are available to internet marketers.When starting your home-based business you should develop a business plan and research your options thoroughly. Making wise decisions and following your business plan each step of the way can help you in creating a steady stream of income. Operating a home-based business will require hard work and effort. You will not become wealthy over night. It will take determination to succeed as an internet marketer. The amount of money you make will be directly related to the amount of work you are willing to do.When making your business plan, include both short and long term goals. Determine how you will achieve those goals and put your plan into action. Affiliate programs are excellent home-based business programs and there are numerous other internet marketing offers that will create steady income if you are willing to make the effort. Some of these opportunities may require an initial investment from you and others are advertised as free. Research all internet marketing opportunities carefully to make sure you understand the terms and conditions.As an internet marketer, you will have to distinguish yourself from the competition if you want to succeed. You should know your target audience and know your competition even better. Do not let self-doubt stop you from accomplishing your goals. Every successful internet marketer gives their business the very best effort possible. Hard work and determination will make your home-based business a success and provide you with a steady stream of income.Starting a home-based business is one of the most exciting and challenging endeavors you will ever undertake. A sound business plan and the will to succeed will set you apart from the competition. Choose the products or services you provide carefully. Make certain your services will be needed over the long term and make customer service your top priority. A loyal customer base is the key to the success or failure of your home-based business. A home-based business is an excellent way to gain independence and financial freedom. A sound business plan and a strong work ethic are all it takes to succeed.

Making Some Extra Money With Paid Surveys

2008-04-07T01:44:00.002-07:00

There are many opportunities to make money online. It can be a hard decision on which method to try. Paid Surveys are one of the easiest ways to make money online and they are worth giving a try. Everyone has an opinion and what better way to earn than to share ones opinion through online surveys. One can visit innumerable websites and fill out surveys for some cool cash. All you need to do is Google the words "paid surveys"Paid Survey is a form of market research and by giving your views you can assist in shaping and molding future products and services. To start with, paid surveys require no special knowledge or skills. You do not have to build a website or advertise anything. Paid surveys are completely free for the participant.It is also very easy to find paid surveys. However, there are some companies who will not actually pay money, but instead pay through prizes or awards. These paid survey opportunities can still be good because you can earn a lot of good merchandise and perks through them. Signing up with a paid survey opportunity is also quite simple. Usually they will ask for personal information like your name, address and email address. They will also usually have an introduction or screening survey.The introduction survey is basically where they gather information about you that they will use to match you with available surveys. Sometimes they may be looking for people who meet certain specifications to take a survey and that use your introduction survey to see if you meet their criteria.You are usually advised of surveys that are available for you through e-mail or sometimes by visiting the website. When a survey comes available, you simply go to the website and begin taking the survey.You should not expect to get rich through paid surveys, but it is possible to make a few hundred extra dollars each month if you are participating regularly in paid surveys. If you are looking to make the most money then you should sign up for a few different paid surveys.Paid surveys are quite easy and they don't generally take a lot of time. You can easily start doing paid surveys in your spare time and be able to make a little extra income each month.You can start taking paid surveys from these websites:http://www.surveyclub.com http://www.yellowsurveys.com

Avoiding MLM Scams

2008-04-07T01:44:00.001-07:00

It's no secret that when multi level marketing (MLM) is mentioned, many people think of illegal pyramid schemes and other scams. Follow these tips to check out an MLM company and you will be able to avoid MLM scams.1) Contact the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org), the State Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade commission (www.ftc.gov or 1-877-FTC-HELP) and at no charge you will be able to check the records of the MLM companies and will get some great tips about how to safely evaluate them. 2) Check Google and other search engines for "company name + scam" and you will find out quickly if there are complaints.3) Check out home business message boards and scam.com for bad reviews. Obviously, there are always a couple of people that didn't make money and want to blame the company. Do proper research and you will quickly know which distributor had a legitimate complaint and who was just plain lazy.4) Go to www.mlmwatchdog.com and see if any problems are posted there.5) Ask your attorney to review any documents before you sign them.6) Present the entire program to a trusted friend and see what he or she thinks. Take their advice under consideration. You never know, if the company does turn out to be legit, then that friend is a great first recruit.7) You should be focusing on selling products or services and not recruiting more distributors. If this is the case, proceed with caution and at your own risk.8) Be leery of requests to make large purchases up front.9) All MLM's, just like any type of business, require work. Beware of false promises of easy money making schemes. Beware of guarantees such as "everyone is making money with this automatically."10) Do the math for yourself. Have a trusted advisor, friend, accountant or attorney check you and make sure that the payout plan is actually feasible.11) You don't want to sell products or services with false "miracle" claims to them. Actually try to promote the products and services yourself to make sure that you like them and WANT to promote them first and how they work.The MLM industry is one that holds great promise. Unfortunately, there are a few undesirable people and companies. By following your due diligence, asking questions and proceeding with caution you should be safe. Check these things out first!

So You Want to Earn Some Cash with Content Publishing

2008-04-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

You have read all over the internet about how easy it is to make money with something called content publishing. Well, it's true; you can make some decent money online with content publishing. There are however, a couple of things you need to know before you'll be able to generate significant money from Google's Adsense or any of the lesser known context advertising systems.First on this list is "original content". Do not fall into the trap of obtaining private label content for use on your context advertising site and using it without truly making it yours. This cannot be stressed enough. In order to get the biggest benefit from your private label purchases, you must re-write the content to make it unique. The search engines love unique content and it makes absolutely no sense to purchase the right to re-write the content, making it your very own, and then not exercise that right. There are so many people who buy private label rights and then do nothing with them. One of your objectives must be to make your content stand out from the crowd. The search engines will reward you with a higher ranking. This will translate into more visitors and more clicks on your ad links.That brings us to another issue that you must not forget about: traffic generation. You could have the best looking site on the world wide web, but if you get zero traffic you will not make any money from it. Like it or not, traffic generation is something that you must work at to be successful in content publishing. Sure, at some point you should be able to count on getting regular traffic from the search engines, but how long will that take? In the beginning, you will need to drive any traffic that you get to your site. Traffic doesn't just magically appear. It takes some hard work, but in the end the payoff can be significant.Traffic generation can be accomplished in two ways, free traffic or paid traffic. Free traffic generation methods include link exchanges with similar sites, signature lines in emails or forum posts, free classified ad sites and many more. Paid traffic includes sites where a specific amount of website visitors can be purchased. Be very cautious about using paid traffic sites as these sites may send traffic that is untargeted and therefore potentially unresponsive. It's obvious that the kind of visitor you want is someone who is interested in the content on your site. Although this is obvious, it needs to be stressed. Random web surfers who land on your site are very unlikely to spend much time reading your content or clicking the ads. The kind of visitor you want is someone who is actively looking for the kind of content you have published. These visitors are very likely to click on relevant ads and that is one of your main objectives as a content publisher.

Network Marketing Do's and Don'ts

2008-04-07T01:42:00.002-07:00

Why did you become a network marketer? Most people immediately respond, for the money! However, this is not the real reason.No one subjects them to the hard work of building a business just for little pieces of paper with the faces of dead presidents. The truth is you work in order to obtain what those little pieces of paper can bring you.The first thing you need to do is to find the reason WHY you are a network marketer. Is it the freedom to choose whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it? Maybe you are looking for a different lifestyle. If there is one thing that is critical to your network marketing success, this is it. If you dont have a reason, there is no motivation to succeed.A network marketing business is a teaching and coaching business. If you dont like interaction with other people, a network marketing business probably is not for you. Theres a concept that most network marketers just cant seem to get a handle on. You do not sponsor reps, you sponsor people! If you have to find a reason why you are building your business, then doesnt it stand to reason that other people will have to do the same thing? If thats the case, then why is it that network marketers continually focus on how much money your prospect can earn?Theres no way you are going to convince Joe Sixpack, to get out of his Lazyboy recliner unless you find out what his motivation is. Most network marketers literally pound in the amount of money Joe can earn. They bombard him with message after message about how Successful Sam has just purchased his 10th Porsche, refurnished his 25,000 square foot cottage and promise Joe that he can do the same!Just how realistic is this approach? Joe isnt stupid. He works long, hard hours at his job in order to provide for his family and truly believes that the best thing he can hope for is saving enough money by summer to pay for a camping trip. Then here you come, promising Joe that he can have everything that Sam has and he can have it if he will just sign that piece of paper making you his sponsor!You will probably sponsor a few people that way, but if you are in business for the long haul you need to change your approach and do it fast. The proper approach is so simple, but in your rush to sponsor another rep instead of helping another person, all too often you talk yourself into and straight out of sponsoring the Joes of the world.God gave you two ears and one mouth and he did it for a reason. We are supposed to listen twice as much as we speak.Instead of pouncing on Joe with the latest and greatest network marketing program of all time, find out what Joe wants and needs. Ask him questions, lots of questions. In fact, in your first meeting with Joe, dont even mention your business! Yes, thats what I said. Dont even bring it up. Remove yourself from the super duper network marketing persona and spend time making a new friend.Follow these recommendations and you are set to grow your business exponentially.

Why MLM Companies Don't Want You to Succeed

2008-04-07T01:42:00.001-07:00

MLMs are in the business of making money. They (with very few exceptions) could not care less if you succeed. In fact they want you to fail, it's good for present and future business.How can this be? Logic says that if they have more members, they make more money. Well, let's look at how they operate.The MLM makes money by keeping the difference between membership fees and the commissions paid out. The best member for the MLM is one that is signed up by the MLM itself. Because there are no commissions paid out. So the MLM does a lot of advertising for itself to get a huge top line where they don't pay out any commissions.The next thing they do is to make it difficult to qualify to earn commissions. Examples: your first two sales go to your sponsor (probably the MLM); you have to sponsor two new members every month to stay qualified; you have to sell a certain amount of product each month to stay qualified; you have to sponsor five members to start getting commissions.So you have to do a great selling job while competing, not only with other MLMs, but also with the MLM you joined!Let's look at the situation where you have to sponsor five members to receive commissions. Assume that the monthly membership is $50. You join and pay $50, and since you got in early, there is great enthusiasm for the MLM, so you sponsor 4 new members. That's great for the MLM because they now have 5 members paying in $50, and NO commissions going out. In the second month there is still great enthusiasm so your downline sponsors 4 each, but that 5th one is really hard to get because you are now competing with your MLM, your own downline, and all the other MLMs out there, for a new member.So, there's you and your downline, 17 people strong, sending $850 per month to the MLM and getting nothing in return.Now pretend that there are 100 like you that joined the MLM. Now the MLM is getting $85,000 per month and paying out $0 in commissions. It's a license to print money.Since you only need one more member to start earning commissions, you are likely to stay with it for another month, so the MLM makes more money. When you do quit, the MLMs make it your fault, which actually inspires you to try again with another MLM. After all, it's a piece of cake to find just 5 people; especially with all the help the MLM gave you.So you join another MLM, which is probably run by the same guy that ran the other one. So, you lose money again.How do you stop the slide?Find an MLM with a real product that is appealing to a lot of people.Find an MLM with a product that you like and can get excited about.Find an MLM that pays commission on EVERY sale that you make.Find an MLM that provides true assistance in sales.Find an MLM that pays out a large commission, 60-80%And the best way to avoid wasting all your money on MLMs is to become an affiliate for products that you like and use. That's right, the advice from this author is to avoid MLMs entirely.The only way to make big money in an MLM is by being able to bring in a large following from your own lists. How to build that list, and getting people to trust you are best left to another article.

Making a Living Online

2008-04-07T01:41:00.002-07:00

Is it possible to make a part time or full time living on the Internet? Can you really make enough money to make your time worthwhile? According to all the "gurus" you can easily make a LOT of money by buying their program and doing EXACTLY what they tell you to do. Is all of this hype really true? The answer is yes and no. It really is true that a stay at home Mom or a student in need of extra income or a full time worker needing a part-time income can make money on the Internet. It is also true that a lot of people are making a full-time living and even becoming rich on the Internet. The question is, "Can you do it too"? Again the answer is maybe yes and maybe no. It all depends on how much time you are willing to invest in studying the techniques and learn the methods you need for Internet Marketing (IM) success. The fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. There are a lot of "get rich quick" tutorials for sale on how to make it on Ebay, but you don't need one. You can simply register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house. A lot of people make a few extra dollars to a few hundred extra dollars a month on Ebay. Others make a lot more. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will partially depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project. The great thing about online businesses compared to brick and mortar stores is it usually costs a lot less to get started. For instance, getting stared selling on Ebay doesn't cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad. Once you have some money rolling in on Ebay, you can invest in one of the guru courses that you can find in any search engine by doing a search for, "Internet marketing". Do you have to buy a course? No, you can find free information online to help you get started. The advantage of a course is that it is all in one place. A decent course starts at about $67 and runs up to about $197. There are other cheaper courses and more expensive ones. It is best to start learning with a moderately priced course. Every course you find will offer you good advice. Some are better than others. It is hard to say which is best. Just like some people love Fords and hate Chevy's, it is the same with IM guru courses. The secret is to do a little online research, pick one and then follow it. Internet Marketing can be as easy as creating a simple website and putting other company's ads on the site. You get paid when someone buys a product or even when someone clicks on an ad. You don't even need a product to sell; you only have other's ads on your web pages. Ebay is a make money today proposition. For most people, Internet Marketing is a get rich slow process. Yes, some people make money within days or weeks of starting on online business. Most take a little longer to get established. There are no hard and fast rules on how long it will take you to make money online or how much you can make. It all depends on how hard you are willing to work and how much time you are willing to devote to creating a new business.

How Small Businesses Waste Money

2008-04-07T01:41:00.001-07:00

Most business owners subscribe to the thought that you "must spend money to make money". This can be true, but you also must know exactly where that money is going and the results it brings. A small business owner never has any money to waste.Some ways that your business might waste money includes the following:1. Manage your credit cards - If you have several cards, develop a computer program that will show you the exact balances, due dates, and the interest rate you are paying. Always be aware of other solicitations that save you money and possibly change your balances over to a new company. If you have any employee cards, see if you can set a limit on them. If not with the credit card company, make sure that the employees know their limits. Manage your credit cards wisely and never, ever miss a due date.2. Develop an annual plan so you know where you will spend money. This helps you in several ways. The business person will be aware of what portion of the profits are going to advertising, towards incentives, towards accounting and other internal expenses, etc. 3. Do not over-purchase any products or services for a business. If you buy in bulk, the money is tied up and a place must be provided to keep the extras. That might be an unnecessary expense.4. Developing an advertising budget and knowing just what resources to use is key to keeping money under control in a small business. You must advertise, but you also must get value for your money or you will soon be out of business. Keep a record of how much is spent, can you get payment terms, when is the most efficient time to advertise your particular product or service to get the most value for the dollar. Every dollar must be accounted for in advertising because the lifeline of your business depends on new and paying customers. Advertising is the way to get the word out to the community or the Internet. 5. A small business owner will sometimes be under self-induced stress to manage all aspects of the business. Sometimes, leaving the control and decisions to others that are qualified is the best way to manage the business. Releasing control may be hard to do sometimes, but in a lot of businesses, money can be wasted because the owner cannot possibly be as efficient as the person who has studied or is knowledgeable about a particular field. For instance, if a business owner does not know accounting, many mistakes in reporting income and taxes can be made. A qualified accountant can possibly save more than the cost of their services in reduced taxes.Take a hard look around your business and do not let anything be set in stone if saving money is the goal. Challenge everything that will cost money and see what can be done to change the situation. Any money that is saved is money that can be put back into the business either in profits or in growth.A business owner wants their business to be successful and will work hard to sustain growth. A business owner wants a way to continue making and growing money from a product or service that is interesting to them. After growing a business and being smart with cash flow, many business owners will sell their businesses only to start another business. The reason is that business owners are independent types and challenges are rewarding when met and faced. Saving money through every day operations will help the business owner to meet their financial and emotional goals.

Developing a Money Mindset for Financial Success

2008-04-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

What were you taught about money as you were growing up? Something like "money doesn't grow on trees", or "money is the root of all evil", or maybe "all rich people are greedy"?Well, how do you expect to become a success financially if you believe these things?First of all, believing that "money doesn't grow on trees" is an example of what's called lack or scarcity programming. Our parents taught us that there was never enough money to go around, and that it was not readily available or abundant. But in truth, the universe is very abundant, and there is lots of money to go around for everyone.The key is to start thinking that you deserve the money and that there is lots of it available for you, and then you can start attracting it into your life. That's abundance thinking, which is the opposite of lack or scarcity thinking.And what about thinking that "money is the root of all evil"? Can you really expect to become a success if you believe that money is the root of all evil? Unless you have a desire to be an evil person, your subconscious will not let you have money if you believe deep down that it is the root of all evil.By the way, that quote is taken out of context in the first place. It was originally stated as "the love of money is the root of all evil". So it has nothing to do with the money itself.Now that you understand that, you can start to think that money is in fact good. You can help people with money. You can stimulate the economy with money. Even the most kind-hearted spiritual person, who says they don't need money, can do more to make the world a better place with money than without money.And what about thinking that "all rich people are greedy"? Well, that creates an us versus them mentality, whereby you have labeled all of "them" greedy in your mind. You, on the other hand, are very giving in your mind. That's why you don't have money, because you're not greedy.Sure, there must be some rich people in the world who are greedy. But there are also poor people who are greedy. There are both rich and poor people who are very giving as well. The amount of money you have has nothing to do with these character traits.In fact, a lot of rich people got there by not being greedy. Having a giving attitude opens up a flow of money that often brings them more. You will find the same thing... give away money joyfully to a friend, and notice that it comes back to you in some other form. The world needs to be a balance of give and take, and being joyful both as you give and receive will ensure that you always go with the flow.And changing your mindset from what you were taught as a child to a healthier view of money will allow you to become the financial success you deserve to be.

Developing a Money Mindset for Financial Success

2008-04-07T01:39:00.002-07:00

The Top Five Reasons Why Many Home-Based Businesses Fail

2008-04-07T01:39:00.001-07:00

Everyday there are thousands of people looking to start a home-based business. In addition, there are hundreds more who start a work at home business and then fail miserably. Why? It is because they fail to see that the business opportunity was not viable and junk to begin with! Can this trap be avoided? Yes, if people learn to target the gems and reject the scams. Let's discover the top five reasons why many home-based businesses will never work.Problem #1: Most new opportunities are totally unproven. The fact is many of the opportunities are too new! The market for the products and services is not well-established yet. Usually, the only people who get rich with these opportunities are wealthy Fortune 500 companies that have tons of money to spend anyway. Opportunities that are too new are too risky! It is important to let others who can afford it pave the way.Problem #2: Most of the money-making methods are the same old boring plans and programs. Many opportunities claim to be new and innovative, but really are not. Some look new, but in reality are only a facade! With a little research, you will see that there is nothing "new" at all about them. What is important is to get involved in an opportunity that is new, different and better than others, is rock solid, and is part of an explosive combination of the three hottest emerging multi-billion dollar trends.Problem #3: Many home-based business opportunities only make the promoters rich. Average people who are involved in these plans almost never make any money. Only those considered the "heavy hitters" make the real money; they are the ones who have all the connections.Problem #4: Many of the hottest and exciting money making opportunities are immoral and illegal. This is something that has to be avoided at all costs! Never, ever, get involved with any opportunity that looks and sounds good, but due diligence shows to violate ethics and laws. Who wants to go to jail? Always ask what is the product or service behind the opportunity, where is the market for this product or service that is supposed to take the world by storm, and would it be possible to make lots of money without all the hype and buzz? Problem #5: Many opportunities are not long lasting. In other words, they are here today and gone tomorrow! They are pure hype with no type of firm foundation behind them; there is no "real" product or service. When all the hype runs out, the market is gone for good! Never become involved in a home-based business opportunity based on pure hype.So, there you have it: the top five reasons why some home-based businesses will fail. Carefully look for potential problems with any business opportunity; avoid them, and you will be well on your way in finding a true legitimate business right from the start!

Kill Your Credit Cards

2008-04-07T01:38:00.000-07:00

Credit cards are kind of a drag once you get over the novelty of having one or more. By that time you are at your credit limit. Now instead of spending at a shopping spree, you are struggling to make the minimum payments every month.Now you are also wondering why the balance keeps going up even though you are not using the credit cards to buy anything anymore. Not that you do not want to buy stuff with your credit cards, but when you try they come up declined.The reason your balance is getting bigger is because you are being charged an exorbitant interest rate on your credit card balance, and then interest on the interest, plus any of the various fees you might be getting charged. You are in debt and you need to get out!High credit card balances are bad because you are paying outgoing interest that puts a hole in your finances. What you should have is incoming interest to build your savings. This is hard to do when you do not have any savings, and harder to do when debt is giving your money an outflow rather than an inflow.Ever wonder why the poor get poorer while the rich keep getting richer. It is because the rich are collecting interest on the money they have and the poor are paying interest on the money they do not have. The first thing you have to do to move from poor to rich is to stop having to pay interest. Scrimp, budget, and sacrifice. Anything you can do to pay down on your credit cards to get you out of the downward spiral.Once you get them paid, close the accounts because we have an almost certain inevitable tendency to use our full credit balances when we have them available. That is why credit card debt is so common, and why credit card companies are making such good money. Do not let them make it from you anymore. Kill your credit cards! If you need to use credit cards to make payments, banks and credit unions now have debit-charge cards available that are linked to checking accounts so that you do not have to borrow money or get charged interest to pay bills.Do this and you will have extra money available every month that you can spend rather than paying down on a recurring credit card bill that gives you no benefit. You can also decide to save that money in an interest bearing account. Having savings will restore your peace of mind with the feeling of security rather than your previous stress caused by debt.Once you get in the habit of not borrowing money and saving money instead, you will have that incoming interest which will give you a brighter future. First you have to get out of the dreary dilemma of debt, and unless you have borrowed from or gambled with the mob, credit cards are the worst kind.

Fire Your Boss when Your Job is No Good For You!

2008-04-07T01:37:00.002-07:00

Hey working stiff! Yeah you, with the aching back from working too hard and the puffy eyes from not getting enough sleep. Do you like being used and abused? Do you like slaving away your life filling the pocket of someone else while your pockets are always empty?Such is the plight of the employed! Remember when there was a lower class, middle class, and upper class? Now there are just the rich and the working poor. Exploitation is the name of the game for the rich. People working for them just keep getting poorer and poorer because working men and women are denied proper compensation.Workers get paid less and less so the boss can get paid more and more. Massive and ever increasing profit is all that matters to the boss. Workers are not cared about at all. If a machine could replace you then you would be replaced. Have you seen your job go overseas? It is because paying you peanuts is not cheap enough. Penny paychecks with no benefits are the best they give you, but they don't want to give you anything. According to them, you should just be proud to be part of their team, giving excellent service so the company can keep rolling in the profits to fill the big fat pockets of the boss. Work like a dog, you lucky dog! Then die broke like a dog! It is because we get treated like animals that 95% of all Americans die broke.It is a sad fact that workers deserve better treatment than what they are getting today. They are making the American dream possible, not for themselves, but for their boss. Consider this, when the rate of inflation goes up but your wages do not, that means you are making less money year after year. Your job is taking you down into the gutter. Soon as the job has gotten as much as it can out of you, it will toss you away like trash. Why cater to a demeaning job that does not respect you. In order to get the respect you deserve, you need an alternative to a job. You need to take care of number one. No! Number one is not your boss like you were programmed to think! Number one is you. Putting yourself first is the best thing you can do for yourself. It also makes you unemployable!Unemployable is good. It shows you have the self-esteem not to be pushed around and told what to do. Would you be the master of your time, your money, and your life? If so, work for yourself. Run your own business. Get the full rewards of being at the top and in control. Have the leverage of tax breaks and receiving the lion's share of money. Invest the money and make even more money. Yes! Your own business! That is what makes people wealthy!

The First Step Toward Living Debt Free

2008-04-07T01:37:00.001-07:00

All of us incur debts from time to time. It is normal to purchase items on account and pay for them at a later date. The point where we run into trouble is when we overextend ourselves and owe our creditors more than we can repay. This article will explain to you how to set up a budget so you can meet your credit repayment obligations and move on to a debt free life.Do You Have A Positive Or Negative Cash Flow?The definition of a break-even point is when the amount of money you are paid every month covers your expenses exactly. The two numbers would be equal in this case. When you end up with more money than you have in expenses, you have a positive cash flow for that month. Otherwise, you have a negative cash flow, and you may be borrowing money to make up the difference.You probably have a good idea of your salary, or take home pay every month. You need to add up the total of your credit obligations and compare it to your salary. Hopefully, you are bringing home more money than you have outstanding in credit card debt. If this is not your situation, you need to get professional help from a debt counselor immediately.If you have a negative cash flow, you may also be headed for trouble financially. You should seek the advice of a personal money manager before you borrow yourself into deep debt.For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the scenario of a positive cash flow. By making a budget you will be able to find money to start paying off your current debt. Everyone should have a budget in place. It makes your financial picture clearer to you. Then you can decide how to best allocate your money to reduce your debts.Making Your BudgetThe process of making a budget for your family is really not too hard. First, you list your revenue (your salaries, wages or any other income), and then you list your monthly expenses. You must include everything. This means groceries, gasoline, car insurance, mortgage or rent, and every other normal expense you have every month.Then subtract your expenses from your monthly income. The balance is an amount of money that you have available to use to pay off your creditors. Although you could try to pay off your creditors with this full amount every month, you may find that you end up in a cycle of paying this amount until an emergency arises. Then you would probably borrow again to make ends meet. This would defeat your purpose.Now you need to decide how you are going to use this money to pay off your bills every month. It is best to deposit a certain percentage in a savings account every month (for emergencies). If you do not have a "safety net" of money in reserve, it is too easy to borrow from high interest credit sources to meet your needs.With the money you have left over after depositing a percentage every month in your savings account, you can start paying down your debts. You want to focus on repaying the bills that carry the highest interest penalty. This is usually your credit card bill. Make a plan that will pay the most money to your credit card company and still keep you current with your other creditors. This is a simple and easy to follow formula that will help you pay off your creditors faster and build a reserve fund should you need it.You will find that money management can be fun. It's exciting to see your debts dwindle and watch your savings grow. All this takes is a good plan, and the will power to see it through.

Be your own Boss

2008-04-07T01:36:00.002-07:00

Are you still working for someone and earning only a small amount of money just enough to make ends meet? Are you constantly being pushed by your bosses to meet your deadlines and have to stay for long hours in the office to meet the deadlines? The main question is that are you making enough money and still happy with your work? If all these questions are on your mind, it is time you start looking around for the abundance of opportunities that are available where you could make a living and be your own boss.Now, in the new technology world, there is an abundance of opportunities available on the internet. All you need is a computer connected to the internet and you can start making money online. One way to make money online is to set up a website and earn money even if you do not have a product to sell. You could join affiliate programs where you could promote affiliate products and if you manage to sell them, you would earn a commission from the affiliate product.You could also join Google AdSense in which you can put Google ads on your website and when somebody clicks on your AdSense advertisement, you will earn a commission from Google.Above are just 2 example of how you could make money online with your website. However, do not expect to get rich overnight. You may have set up your website to sell affiliate products and put up some Google ads in the hope to make money. However, even with a good website, without any traffic its useless as it will not attract any visitors or sales.There is a lot of effort that is still needed to research on how to build a good website with quality content and bring traffic to your website. Start working online a few hours a day to learn as much as possible. You will be surprised to see that many people online are able to give you valuable advice and help you during your initial online adventure. Once you get the hang of the techniques to make money online, you will finally realize that you can do it too!Learn as much as possible and once you are sure that you are confident enough that your online earnings are enough and stable to sustain your living, you should start considering becoming your own boss and work online full time.

Making Money with Affiliate Links, Google Adsense and PL Content

2008-04-07T01:36:00.001-07:00

One of the most frequently asked questions of all time is, "How do I make money on the Internet"?If you have been trying to make money on the Internet for even a short while, you have undoubtedly heard quite a few names being thrown about. It seems as if everyone sees themselves as an expert and everyone who is anyone knows everyone else who is someone. It is like a marketing guru clique. And they make you think that if you do not know somebody, you will always be a nobody.You have probably encountered product launches, audio and video streaming, teleseminars, and joint ventures, etc. The gurus that are selling these products and services are making money hand over fist. In all fairness, these products and services are genuine and valuable to the folks who buy them.But what most of them will not tell you is that there are thousands of people on the Internet making thousands of dollars a month without spending a lot of money. They do not fly to every seminar in the country just to make contacts. They rarely do joint ventures, because frankly, no one knows who they are. They literally sit in front of their computers in their underwear, click a few links, and wait for the money to roll in.How do they do it? Affiliate links, Google Adsense, and content.Take Google Adsense, for instance. Search engines love good content, the more, the better.When you create multiple content pages on your website, the search engine spiders crawl the site, then follow each link to more content, which helps raise your rankings.How does this make you money? By placing Adsense ads on every page. As readers click through your pages, many will also click the Adsense links. Every time they do, you make a commission from Google. It can be anywhere from a few cents to several dollars.They do not have to buy anything. Just clicking the link makes you money. The more people you drive to your site, the more people will click the links, and the more money you will make.Now all you need is content. If you are a good writer, you can write your own. But most of us are not.One option would be to use articles written by others. Go to any of the popular article directories and you will find thousands of articles. Most can used free of charge as long as you include the resource box with each article. Since you are not promoting your own product, this is a very viable option.The major downside to using other peoples articles is that the reader will view them as the expert and likely click the link in the resource box instead of the Adsense links, and you lose money.However, the best option is Private Label Rights articles. Just a little editing can turn these articles into your own creation. The reader will view you as the expert, since you are not competing with another writer.You can also include your own resource box with a link to an affiliate program, so whether they click the Adsense links or your affiliate link, you have increased your chances of making money. And you have done it without a single product of your own.Making money on the Internet is not as difficult as some would have you believe. As with any business, give the people what they want and they will keep coming back.

Making Money From Your List

2008-04-07T01:35:00.001-07:00

Making money from your list is one of the hardest aspects of Internet marketing to learn, but once you do, you are set. By learning how to make money from your list you are in complete control of your earnings, no more worrying about what Google will do to your website's rankings the next time the spider comes around.By now you probably know how to build a list, or at least how to start getting people to sign up for your list. Just about anybody can get people to sign up for their list, but how do you make money from them?The simplest answer to this question is to test and track. It is not the answer most people want to hear but it is the surest path to making money form your list.What to test and track is an important a question. Again the simple answer is to test everything.Here is a list to get you started thinking:1. Day of the week message is sent: Some people find that sending their email message on a Monday results in fewer sales because people are getting back into their work week and don't have time to read email. Tuesdays or Thursdays seem to work better.2. Subject line: This too can have a dramatic effect on how many people open and read your message. You want your subject line to sound compelling, but not appear as SPAM.3. Length of email: The optimum length varies by niche, so you will have to test and track this, but remember, shorter emails are more likely to be read.4. Placement of links in email: Usually the links placed higher up in the email body will get a higher percentage of clicks, so put higher paying clicks near the top.5. Frequency of mailings: Some people email their list monthly, some daily, and some several times a day. If what you have to say is interesting why not contact your list more often. Naturally some people will think you are spamming them, but by now most people have double opt-in lists so people are getting what they signed up for.Remember that making money off your list is not easy, and it will also vary by how responsive your list is. Don't be discouraged if it takes a year or more to learn to make money off your list, because once you do, you will have a cash machine for life.

How to make money online

2008-04-07T01:30:00.000-07:00

Today, people use the Internet not only to gather information or as a communication medium, but also to market their products or services and thus, to make money. Many people try different ways to make money online, but they hardly get any success. By understanding the reason as to why they fail in their attempt to make money online and by looking at some proven ways of making money, we can effectively earn money online. In this article, we will look at what we could do to make money online.We need to understand that the Internet is not a magical place or some sort of money- making machine. But it provides the cheapest way to communicate with lot of people. It helps you in reaching out to millions of people who use the Internet daily. In business, if you want to grow and make more money, you have to market your product or service quite well. In other words, you should try to make people aware of your business. This is where the Internet comes into play. As it provides cheapest way to communicate, it becomes an excellent medium to market your business. Considering this, we can conclude that it would be a better option to have a business first and then use the Internet to market it. You can start a business to provide others with some kind of service, or to create and sell your product or to market other peoples product. Lets look at how you can start with a service-oriented business.In service-oriented business, you have to sell your skills. For example, if you know how to develop software, then you can become a freelance software developer. Another good example is, if you are good at writing articles, then you can become freelance writer and make money by writing and selling your articles. There are lots of freelancing websites on the net where people post different projects. You need to register as freelancer and then bid on the projects. In this way, you can start making money quickly.Some people use a different approach. Instead of bidding on projects posted by others, they either develop some software or write an e-book and later on, market it online. In this way, initially you need to spend some time in creating your own product and then you need to focus entirely on marketing. The more you market, the more number of people will buy your product and more money you will make.In the third approach, you dont have to develop any product or sell your skills. You just need to help others in marketing their products and in return, they will give you some commission on every sale. This is known as affiliate marketing. The more products you market, the more you can earn.No matter which approach you would choose to start your business, you must understand that, if you want to earn, you have to work hard. Think about which could be the best approach for you. You can also start with more than one type of business at a time. For example, while acting as a freelance writer, you can also write articles to market products created by others. So start working now to make money online.

Help customers find you on Google Maps

2008-04-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

Help customers find you on Google Maps
Millions of people search Google Maps every day. A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for them to find you.

Use the Local Business Centre to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they will find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your shop front or products. It's easy, free and you don't need a website of your own.
Do you not have a Google Account?Create a newGoogle Account
Learn more about the Local Business Centre

People search Google Maps for a business such as yours.
Reach new customers on Google Maps and Google.co.ukLocal customers are already searching for the products and services that you offer. Why not make it easy for them to find you on Google search and on Google Maps? The Local Business Centre is the place to start.
Works great for businesses of any sizeWhether you run a single dentist's office or dozens of coffee shops, manage all your listings from a single account.
Update your listing at any timeUse the Local Business Centre to edit your listing whenever and however you like. Your Google Maps results will be updated in a few weeks, not next year.
I am ready to help customers find me.

Earn money from relevant ads on your website

2008-04-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Earn money from relevant ads on your website
Google AdSense matches ads to your site's content and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them.AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content, ads so well matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.
AdSense for search allows website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.
AdSense for mobile content - Have a mobile website? AdSense can help you earn money from your content with a simple, integrated solution.Get started

Advertise on Google with AdWords

2008-04-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

Attract more customers
No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. Connect with potential customers at the magic moment they're searching for your products or services, and only pay when people click your ads.

Keywords are what people search for on Google.

Your ad appears beside relevant search results.
You create your ads You create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your business. Get keyword ideas
Your ads appear on Google When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you are advertising to an audience that is already interested in you.

You attract customers People can simply click on your ad to make a purchase or learn more about you. You don't even need a webpage to get started - Google will help you create one for free. It is as simple as that!

-History of search engines

2008-02-02T05:33:00.001-08:00

Where would we be without 'em?Our experience of the Internet is often facilitated through the use of search engines and search directories. Before they were invented, people’s Net experiences were confined to plowing through sites they already knew of in the hopes of finding a useful link, or finding what they wanted through word of mouth.
As author Paul Gilster puts it in Digital Literacy "How could the world beat a path to your door when the path was uncharted, uncatalogued, and could be discovered only serendipitously?". This may have been adequate in the early days of the Internet, but as the Net continued to grow exponentially, it became necessary to develop a means of locating desired content.
At first search services were quite rudimentary, but in the course of a few years they have grown quite sophisticated.
Not to mention popular. Search services are now among the most frequented sites on the Web with millions of hits every day.
Even though there is a difference between search engines and search directories (although less so every day), I will adopt the common usage and call all of them search engines.
Archie and Veronica The history of search engines seems to be the story of university student projects evolving into commercial enterprises and revolutionizing the field as they went.
Certainly, that is the story of Archie, one of the first attempts at organizing information on the Net. Created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a McGill University student, Archie archived what at the time was the most popular repository of Internet files, Anonymous FTP sites.
Archie is short for "Archives" but the programmer had to conform to UNIX standards of short names.
What Archie did for FTP sites Veronica did for Gopherspace. Veronica was created in 1993 at the University of Nevada. Jughead was a similar Gopherspace index.
RobotsArchie and Veronica were for the most part indexed manually. The first real search engine in the sense of a completely automated indexing system is MIT student Matthew Gray’s World Wide Web Wanderer.
The Wanderer robot was intended to track the growth of the Web counting only web servers initially. Soon after its launch it captured URLs as well. This list formed the first database of websites, called Wandex.
Robots at this time were quite controversial. For one, they occupied a lot of network bandwidth and they would index sites so rapidly it was not uncommon for the robots to crash servers.
In the Glossary for Information Retrieval Scott Weiss describes a robot as:
[a] program that scans the web looking for URLs. It is started at a particular web page, and then accesses all the links from it. In this manner, it traverses the graph formed by the WWW. It can record information about those servers for the creation of an index or search facility.
Most search engines are created using robots. The problem with them is, if not written properly, they can make a large number of hits on a server in a short space of time, causing the system’s performance to decay.
The First Web Directory
In response to the problems with automated indexing of the Web, Martjin Koster in Oct. 1993 created Aliweb, which stands for Archie Like Indexing of the Web. This was the first attempt to create a directory for just the Web.
Instead of a robot, webmasters submit a file with their URL and their own description of it. This allowed for a more accurate, detailed listing.
Unfortunately, the application file was difficult to fill out so many websites were never listed with Aliweb,
Spiders
By December 1993, three more robots, now known as spiders, were on the scene: JumpStation, World Wide Web Worm (developed by Oliver McBryan in 1994, bought out by Goto.com in 1998) and the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) spider.
RBSE made the important step of listing the results based on relevancy to the keyword. This was crucial. Prior to that, the results were in no particular order and finding the right location could require plowing through hundreds of listings.
Excite was launched in February 1993 by Stanford students and was then called Architext. It introduced concept based searching. This was a complicated procedure that utilized statistical word relationships, such as synonyms. This turned up results that might have been missed by other engines if the exact keyword was not entered.
WebCrawler, which was launched in April 20, 1994, was developed by Brian Pinkerton of the University of Washington.
It added a further degree of accuracy by indexing the entire text of webpages. Other search engines only indexed the URL and titles, which meant that some pertinent keywords might not be indexed. This also greatly improved the relevancy rankings of their results.
As an interesting aside, WebCrawler offers an insightful service, WebCrawler Search Voyeur, that allows you to view what people are searching as they enter their queries. You can even stop it and see the results.
Search Directories
There was still the problem that searchers had to know what they were looking for, which as I can attest, is often not the case. The first browsable Web directory was EINet Galaxy, now known as Tradewave Galaxy, which went online January 1994. It made good use of categories and subcategories and so on.
Users could narrow their search until presumably they found something that caught their eye.
It still exists today and offers users the opportunity to help coordinate directories, becoming an active participant in cataloging the Internet in their field.
perfected the search directory, however.
Yahoo! grew out of two Stanford University students, David Filo’s and Jerry Yang’s, webpages with their favourite links (such pages were quite popular back then).
Started in April 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests, Yahoo soon became too popular for the university server.
Yahoo’s user-friendly interface and easy to understand directories have made it the most used search directory. But because everything is reviewed and indexed by people, their database is relatively small, accounting for approximately 1% of webpages.
The Big-Guns
When a search fails on Yahoo it automatically defaults to AltaVista’s search.
AltaVista was late onto the scene in December 1995, but made up for it in scope.
AltaVista was not only big, but also fast. It was the first to adopt natural language queries as well as Boolean search techniques. And to aid in this, it was the first to offer "Tips" for good searching prominently on the site. These advances made for unparalleled accuracy and accessibility.
But AltaVista had competition: HotBot, introduced May 20, 1996 by Paul Gauthier and Eric Brewer at Berkeley. Powered by the Inktomi search engine, it was initially licensed to Wired Magazine website. It has occasionally boasted it can index the entire Web.
Indexing 10 million pages per day, it is the most powerful search engine.
Meta-Engines
The next important step in search engines is the rise of meta-engines. Essentially they don’t offer anything new. They just simultaneously compile search results from various different search engines. Then list the results according to the collective relevancy.
The first meta-engine was MetaCrawler released in 1995. Now called Go2net.com it was developed in 1995 by Eric Selburg, a Masters student at the University of Washington .
Skewing Relevancy
Prior to Direct Hit, launched in the summer of 1998, there were two types of search engines: author controlled services, such as AltaVista and Excite, in which the results are ranked by keyword relevancy and editor-controlled, such as directories like Yahoo and LookSmart, in which people manually decide on placement. Direct Hit, as inventor Gary Culliss relates: "represents a third kind of search, one that's user-controlled, because search rankings are dependent on the choices made by other users."
As users choose to go to a listed link, they keep track of that data and use the collected hit-ratio to calculate the relevancy. So the more people go to the site from Direct Hit the higher it will appear on their results.
which runs as a research project at Stanford University since late 1997, also attempts to improve relevancy rankings. Google uses PageRank, which basically monitors how many sites link to a given page. The more sites and the more important the sites that link to a given site the higher the ranking in the result list.
It does give a slight advantage to .gov and .edu domains. Basically, it is trying to do what Yahoo does but without the need for costly human indexing.
Is This Fair? Another way of fixing relevancy rankings is by selling prominent placement as Goto.com does. Founded by idealab and Bill Gross, this practice caused quite a controversy.
Apparently, there was some doubt as to the actual relevancy of its paid prominent listings. Goto insists that their clients must adhere to a "strict policy" of relevance to the corresponding keywords.
Their corporate site defends its approach:
"In other search engines, there is no cost to spamming or word stuffing or other tricks that advertisers use to increase their placement within search results. When you get conscious decisions involved, and you associate a cost to them, you get better results... GoTo uses a revolutionary new principle for ranking search results by allowing advertisers to bid for consumer attention, and lets the market place determine the rankings and relevance."
For the right amount of money you can ensure your site is placed #1.Check out the words that are still "unbidden".
Look similar?
That's for the courts to decide now. Goto.com has filed suit February 1999, against the Disney owned Go Network. Finding a nicheAs search engines try to index the entire Web, some search engines have found their niche by narrowing their field to a specific subject or geographical region.
Argos was the first to offer a Limited Area Search Engine. Launching October 3, 1996, they index only sites dealing with medieval and ancient topics. A panel decides on whether a site is suitable for inclusion.
Their mandate was to combat such problems as this example (from their site):
"At the time of this writing, a search for "Plato" on the Internet search engine, Infoseek, returned 1,506 responses. Of the first ten of these, only five had anything to do with the Plato that lived in ancient Greece, and one of these was a popular piece on the lost city of Atlantis. The other five entries dealt with such things as a home automation system called, PLATO(tm) for Windows, and another PLATO(r), an interactive software package for the classroom. Elsewhere near the top of the Infoseek list was an ale that went by the name of Plato, a guide to business opportunities in Ireland, and even a novel called the "Lizard of Oz."
Such specializing has also proven effective for MathSearch, Canada.com, and hundreds of others.
Ask Jeeves' niche is making search engines more searchable for the average user. (Who really knows Boolean anyway?) Founded in 1996, but not really well-used until recently, Ask Jeeves has a more human approach. Refining natural language queries so that users can ask normal questions. For example, "Whatever happened to Upper Volta?".
When a question is answered it matches similar queries it has already received and offers these as its results. This is supposed to help guide users to the desired location when they might not know themselves how else to find it.
The Next Generation
There is no denying that these sites are among the most popular websites. They mark the daily entry point into the Web experience.
Search engines are trying to offer more and to be more. Whether it is Northern Light’s private fee-based online library or Yahoo offering free email and content (news, horoscopes, etc.). Search engines are continuing to evolve.
We are seeing the sophistication of the spiders in finding and indexing sites, the increase in user-friendly searching techniques and interface, the expanding of databases and the improved relevancy of results from the database.
(Now if they could just make some money doing it, as most of the companies mentioned continue to operate at a loss.)
As I learned while researching this topic, search engines may open up the door to the World Wide Web, but not without some difficulty. Searching is far from easy or perfect.
As the Web continues to grow rapidly, the need for better search engines only increases.
If you are willing to use Search Engine Genie's Services Contact Us Or Mailto search engine genie support desk

-Search Engine History

2008-02-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

B.C-1956: The Dawn of Computing
Before Christ, there was the counting aid Abacus. Some centuries later, in 1642, Blaise Pascal builds a mechanical calculator. Around 1820, Charles Babbage follows-up with his steam-powered Difference Engine, and Countess of Lovelace Augusta Ada Byron is pondering programming it after having met him.
The first computer (a programmable calculator) by German engineer Konrad Zuse is completed in 1941.Britain and USA take over the computing technology field with Colossus, ENIAC, the transistor (by Bell Telephone), and UNIVAC — the "Universal Automatic Computer".
1957-1990: Previously on the Internet ...
In 1957, ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency, within the Department of Defense, DoD) is created to foster US-technology. Some ten years later, DARPA marks the beginnings of the Internet. Intel is founded in '68, Doug Engelbart spends time show-casing his revolutionary ideas of word processing, and a year later, Xerox creates the equally revolutionary think-tank PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. Universities are slowly being connected together via ARPANET in 1969. In 1977, Apple II is born, followed by the IBM PC in '81. 1984, the year of cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, sees the introduction of the Domain Name System (DNS).
In the late 80s, the number of Internet hosts breaks 100,000, and people are starting to get lost. In 1990, before the days of the World Wide Web, McGill University student Alan Emtage creates FTP indexing search tool Archie. One year later, Mark McCahill introduces the alternative Gopher. Veronica (Archie's girlfriend in the comic books, and the "grandmother of search engines") appears on the scene in 1992, spidering Gopherspace texts, and Jughead is arriving in '93.
1990-1993: WWW, and WWWW
In the meantime, the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee* and released by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in '91, is starting to take off. And 1993, the time the first web browser Mosaic takes the world by storm, also sees the first acclaimed Web robot, Matthew Gray's World Wide Web Wanderer. Martijn Koster announces meta-tag spidering Aliweb in late '93.
*For the story on how the Web got invented, this is the book by the man who did it; "Weaving the Web" by Tim Berners-Lee.
1994: Search Engines See the Light
The World Wide Web is becoming the most important Internet service. Pizza can be ordered online, and soon Sun will give birth to Java programming technology.In early 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Stanford University start Yahoo!* in their attempt to exert some kind of order on an otherwise anarchic collection of documents.Some months later in Washington, Brian Pinkerton's WebCrawler is getting to work; over at Carnegie Melon, Dr. Michael Maldin creates Lycos (the name comes from the Latin "wolf spider").
*"Yahoo" might be short for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but the two creators insist they selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
1995-1997: Dot-Com Rising
Metacrawler, Excite (late 1995), AltaVista (late 1995), later Inktomi/ HotBot (mid-1996), AskJeeves and GoTo; more and more search engines appear. Yahoo, actually a directory, is the leader, but AltaVista — meaning"a view from above", and being a wordplay on (Palo) Alto-Vista; — launched in 1995 (and bought by Compaq in 1997) is gaining popularity.
1998-2002: Google et al
It's late 1998. Stanford's Larry Page and Sergey Brin reinvent search ranking technology with their paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and start what some time later becomes the most successful search engine in the world. Google. The uncluttered interface, speed and search result relevancy were cornerstones in winning the tech-savvy people, who were later followed by pretty much everyone looking for something online. Other contenders, like MSN, are pretty much being left in the dust. In September 1999, Google left Beta status.
Search engine optimization becomes bigger and bigger field, with experts trying to boost rankings of commercial websites.
In 2000, Yahoo and Google are becoming partners. In late 2000, Google is handling over 100 million daily search requests.In 2001, AskJeeves aquires Teoma, and GoTo is renamed Overture.
2003: Searching Today
These days, we can find more than ever, faster than dreamed of, but we're also taking it for granted. Information at your fingertips; when you have a question, fire up Google. The answer's out there.
Google, with its 200 million hits, and over 3 billion indexed WWW pages, is hated and loved at the same time, but undeniably the most relevant search engine of today (and biggest player in the field). Google is constantly coming up with new, focussed services to enhance web search and everything that comes with it. But it's a fast world, with others lurking around the corner — most notably Norwegian FAST/ AllTheWeb, which went online 5 years ago — and throne and scepter can be inherited by anyone who dares topping Google's search technology.
For more see the Archive.
Google Blogoscoped is © 2003-2004 by Philipp Lenssen. I am not working for Google. GOOGLE is a trademark of Google Inc. You might also be interested to read the Urban Legend History of Google.

-A Brief History of Search Engines

2008-02-02T05:28:00.000-08:00

"How could the world beat a path to your door when the path was uncharted, uncatalogued, and could be discovered only serendipitously?" — Paul Gilster, Digital Literacy
The World Wide Web is different from anything we have known. Within the virtual reality of the Web, we can only see and hear things (at least at the time of this article). Because of this limitation, the Web forces us to find new ways to interact.
For instance, if I wanted to buy a book, I would go down to the local book store, select one I like, pay for it, and go home. The book store is usually in a visible place and has a sign out front, making it relatively easy to find.
But in cyberspace, there's no place to "turn." I have only my computer screen in front of me. Somehow, I need to find a place to purchase the book I want. There's no street on my screen so I can't drive around on the Web (I could "surf," but that's hit and miss; even then I still need to know where to start). Sometimes it's obvious: type in the name of the bookstore, add a .COM (as in barnesandnoble + .com) and it's a pretty good bet you're going to end up where you want to go. But what if it's a specialty bookstore and doesn't have a Web site with an obvious URL?
One solution to this problem is the search engine. In fact, it's probably one of the most widely used methods for navigating in cyberspace. Considering the amount of information that's available from a good search engine, it's similar to having the Yellow Pages, a guide book and a road map all-in-one.
Search engines can provide much more information than just the URL of a Web site. They can also locate reviews, help to compare prices, and even find if there have been any reported problems with the product or the manufacturer. Typing in "books" into the Google search engine returns about 9,270,000 results. If we refine the search to "books, Internet", we end up with about 6,070,000 results. We can narrow our search further to "books, Internet, search engines" and we will get about 803,000 results. If we know the book's author, let's say Danny Sullivan, then we enter "books, Internet, search engines, sullivan" and Google now returns about 10,900 results (of course, these results will change from day to day).
For many people, using search engines has become routine. Not bad for a technology that's not even 20 years old. But how did search engines come into being? What are the origins of this entity that prowls the outer reaches of cyberspace?
Note: This is by no means an exhaustive history of search engines. There's a resource list at the end of this article for more in-depth research.
The Early Beginnings of the Internet and the World Wide Web(or Your Tax Dollars at Work)
In 1957, after the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik (the first artificial earth satellite), the United States created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) as a part of the Department of Defense. Its purpose was to establish U.S. leadership in science and technology applicable to the military.
Part of ARPA's work was to prepare a plan for the United States to maintain control over its missiles and bombers after a nuclear attack. Through this work the ARPANET — a.k.a. the Internet — was born. The first ARPANET connections were made in 1969 and in October 1972 ARPANET went 'public.'
Almost 20 years after the creation of the Internet, the World Wide Web was born to allow the public exchange of information on a global basis. It was built on the backbone of the Internet.
According to Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, "The Internet [Net] is a network of networks. Basically it is made from computers and cables.... The [World Wide] Web is an abstract imaginary space of information. On the Net, you find computers — on the Web, you find documents, sounds, videos, ... information. On the Net, the connections are cables between computers; on the Web, connections are hypertext links. The Web exists because of programs which communicate between computers on the Net. The Web could not be without the Net. The Web made the Net useful because people are really interested in information and don't really want to have [to] know about computers and cables."
With information being shared worldwide, there was eventually a need to find that information in an orderly manner.
Archie, Veronica, and Jughead(or The History of Search Engines Beginning at Riverdale High)
The very first tool used for searching on the Internet was called "Archie". (The name stands for "archives" without the "v", not the kid from the comics). It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of filenames.
While Archie indexed computer files, "Gopher" indexed plain text documents. Gopher was created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota. (The program was named after the school's mascot). Because these were text files, most of the Gopher sites became Web sites after the creation of the World Wide Web.
Two other programs, "Veronica" and "Jughead," searched the files stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from various Gopher servers.
I, Robot
In 1993, MIT student Matthew Gray created what is considered the first robot, called World Wide Web Wanderer. It was initially used for counting Web servers to measure the size of the Web. The Wanderer ran monthly from 1993 to 1995. Later, it was used to obtain URLs, forming the first database of Web sites called Wandex.
According to The Web Robots FAQ, "A robot is a program that automatically traverses the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced. Web robots are sometimes referred to as web wanderers, web crawlers, or spiders. These names are a bit misleading as they give the impression the software itself moves between sites like a virus; this not the case, a robot simply visits sites by requesting documents from them."
Initially, the robots created a bit of controversy as they used large amounts of bandwidth, sometimes causing the servers to crash. The newer robots have been tweaked and are now used for building most search engine indexes.
In 1993, Martijn Koster created ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing of the Web). ALIWEB allowed users to submit their own pages to be indexed. According to Koster, "ALIWEB was a search engine based on automated meta-data collection, for the Web."
Enter the Accountants
Eventually, as it seemed that the Web might be profitable, investors started to get involved and search engines became big business.
Excite was introduced in 1993 by six Stanford University students. It used statistical analysis of word relationships to aid in the search process. Within a year, Excite was incorporated and went online in December 1995. Today it's a part of the AskJeeves company.
EINet Galaxy (Galaxy) was established in 1994 as part of the MCC Research Consortium at the University of Texas, in Austin. It was eventually purchased from the University and, after being transferred through several companies, is a separate corporation today. It was created as a directory, containing Gopher and telnet search features in addition to its Web search feature.
Jerry Yang and David Filo created Yahoo in 1994. It started out as a listing of their favorite Web sites. What made it different was that each entry, in addition to the URL, also had a description of the page. Within a year the two received funding and Yahoo, the corporation, was created.
Later in 1994, WebCrawler was introduced. It was the first full-text search engine on the Internet; the entire text of each page was indexed for the first time.
Lycos introduced relevance retrieval, prefix matching, and word proximity in 1994. It was a large search engine, indexing over 60 million documents in 1996; the largest of any search engine at the time. Like many of the other search engines, Lycos was created in a university atmosphere at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. Michael Mauldin.
Infoseek went online in 1995. It didn't really bring anything new to the search engine scene. It is now owned by the Walt Disney Internet Group and the domain forwards to Go.com.
Alta Vista also began in 1995. It was the first search engine to allow natural language inquires and advanced searching techniques. It also provides a multimedia search for photos, music, and videos.
Inktomi started in 1996 at UC Berkeley. In June of 1999 Inktomi introduced a directory search engine powered by "concept induction" technology. "Concept induction," according to the company, "takes the experience of human analysis and applies the same habits to a computerized analysis of links, usage, and other patterns to determine which sites are most popular and the most productive." Inktomi was purchased by Yahoo in 2003.
AskJeeves and Northern Light were both launched in 1997.
Google was launched in 1997 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as part of a research project at Stanford University. It uses inbound links to rank sites. In 1998 MSN Search and the Open Directory were also started. The Open Directory, according to its Web site, "is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors." It seeks to become the "definitive catalog of the Web." The entire directory is maintained by human input.

-ALIWEB:

2008-02-02T05:26:00.000-08:00

In October of 1993 Martijn Koster created Archie-Like Indexing of the Web, or ALIWEB in response to the Wanderer. ALIWEB crawled meta information and allowed users to submit their pages they wanted indexed with their own page description. This meant it needed no bot to collect data and was not using excessive bandwidth. The downside of ALIWEB is that many people did not know how to submit their site.
Robots Exclusion Standard:
Martijn Kojer also hosts the web robots page, which created standards for how search engines should index or not index content. This allows webmasters to block bots from their site on a whole site level or page by page basis.
By default, if information is on a public web server, and people link to it search engines generally will index it.
In 2005 Google led a crusade against blog comment spam, creating a nofollow attribute that can be applied at the individual link level. After this was pushed through Google quickly changed the scope of the purpose of the link nofollow to claim it was for any link that was sold or not under editorial control.
Primitive Web Search:
By December of 1993, three full fledged bot fed search engines had surfaced on the web: JumpStation, the World Wide Web Worm, and the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) spider. JumpStation gathered info about the title and header from Web pages and retrieved these using a simple linear search. As the web grew, JumpStation slowed to a stop. The WWW Worm indexed titles and URL's. The problem with JumpStation and the World Wide Web Worm is that they listed results in the order that they found them, and provided no discrimination. The RSBE spider did implement a ranking system.
Since early search algorithms did not do adequate link analysis or cache full page content if you did not know the exact name of what you were looking for it was extremely hard to find it.
Excite:

Excite came from the project Architext, which was started by in February, 1993 by six Stanford undergrad students. They had the idea of using statistical analysis of word relationships to make searching more efficient. They were soon funded, and in mid 1993 they released copies of their search software for use on web sites.
Excite was bought by a broadband provider named @Home in January, 1999 for $6.5 billion, and was named Excite@Home. In October, 2001 Excite@Home filed for bankruptcy. InfoSpace bought Excite from bankruptcy court for $10 million.
Web Directories:
VLib:

When Tim Berners-Lee set up the web he created the Virtual Library, which became a loose confederation of topical experts maintaining relevant topical link lists.

EINet Galaxy

The EINet Galaxy web directory was born in January of 1994. It was organized similar to how web directories are today. The biggest reason the EINet Galaxy became a success was that it also contained Gopher and Telnet search features in addition to its web search feature. The web size in early 1994 did not really require a web directory; however, other directories soon did follow.
Yahoo! Directory
In April 1994 David Filo and Jerry Yang created the Yahoo! Directory as a collection of their favorite web pages. As their number of links grew they had to reorganize and become a searchable directory. What set the directories above The Wanderer is that they provided a human compiled description with each URL. As time passed and the Yahoo! Directory grew Yahoo! began charging commercial sites for inclusion. As time passed the inclusion rates for listing a commercial site increased. The current cost is $299 per year. Many informational sites are still added to the Yahoo! Directory for free.
Open Directory Project
In 1998 Rich Skrenta and a small group of friends created the Open Directory Project, which is a directory which anybody can download and use in whole or part. The ODP (also known as DMOZ) is the largest internet directory, almost entirely ran by a group of volunteer editors. The Open Directory Project was grown out of frustration webmasters faced waiting to be included in the Yahoo! Directory. Netscape bought the Open Directory Project in November, 1998. Later that same month AOL announced the intention of buying Netscape in a $4.5 billion all stock deal.
LII

Google offers a librarian newsletter to help librarians and other web editors help make information more accessible and categorize the web. The second Google librarian newsletter came from Karen G. Schneider, who is the director of Librarians' Internet Index. LII is a high quality directory aimed at librarians. Her article explains what she and her staff look for when looking for quality credible resources to add to the LII. Most other directories, especially those which have a paid inclusion option, hold lower standards than selected limited catalogs created by librarians.
The Internet Public Library is another well kept directory of websites.
Business.com

Due to the time intensive nature of running a directory, and the general lack of scalability of a business model the quality and size of directories sharply drops off after you get past the first half dozen or so general directories. There are also numerous smaller industry, vertically, or locally oriented directories. Business.com, for example, is a directory of business websites.
Looksmart

Looksmart was founded in 1995. They competed with the Yahoo! Directory by frequently increasing their inclusion rates back and forth. In 2002 Looksmart transitioned into a pay per click provider, which charged listed sites a flat fee per click. That caused the demise of any good faith or loyalty they had built up, although it allowed them to profit by syndicating those paid listings to some major portals like MSN. The problem was that Looksmart became too dependant on MSN, and in 2003, when Microsoft announced they were dumping Looksmart that basically killed their business model.
In March of 2002, Looksmart bought a search engine by the name of WiseNut, but it never gained traction. Looksmart also owns a catalog of content articles organized in vertical sites, but due to limited relevancy Looksmart has lost most (if not all) of their momentum. In 1998 Looksmart tried to expand their directory by buying the non commercial Zeal directory for $20 million, but on March 28, 2006 Looksmart shut down the Zeal directory, and hope to drive traffic using Furl, a social bookmarking program.
Search Engines vs Directories:
All major search engines have some limited editorial review process, but the bulk of relevancy at major search engines is driven by automated search algorithms which harness the power of the link graph on the web. In fact, some algorithms, such as TrustRank, bias the web graph toward trusted seed sites without requiring a search engine to take on much of an editorial review staff. Thus, some of the more elegant search engines allow those who link to other sites to in essence vote with their links as the editorial reviewers.
Unlike highly automated search engines, directories are manually compiled taxonomies of websites. Directories are far more cost and time intensive to maintain due to their lack of scalability and the necessary human input to create each listing and periodically check the quality of the listed websites.
General directories are largely giving way to expert vertical directories, temporal news sites (like blogs), and social bookmarking sites (like del.ici.ous). In addition, each of those three publishing formats I just mentioned also aid in improving the relevancy of major search engines, which further cuts at the need for (and profitability of) general directories.
WebCrawler:

Brian Pinkerton of the University of Washington released WebCrawler on April 20, 1994. It was the first crawler which indexed entire pages. Soon it became so popular that during daytime hours it could not be used. AOL eventually purchased WebCrawler and ran it on their network. Then in 1997, Excite bought out WebCrawler, and AOL began using Excite to power its NetFind. WebCrawler opened the door for many other services to follow suit. Within 1 year of its debuted came Lycos, Infoseek, and OpenText.
Lycos:

Lycos was the next major search development, having been design at Carnegie Mellon University around July of 1994. Michale Mauldin was responsible for this search engine and remains to be the chief scientist at Lycos Inc.
On July 20, 1994, Lycos went public with a catalog of 54,000 documents. In addition to providing ranked relevance retrieval, Lycos provided prefix matching and word proximity bonuses. But Lycos' main difference was the sheer size of its catalog: by August 1994, Lycos had identified 394,000 documents; by January 1995, the catalog had reached 1.5 million documents; and by November 1996, Lycos had indexed over 60 million documents -- more than any other Web search engine. In October 1994, Lycos ranked first on Netscape's list of search engines by finding the most hits on the word ‘surf.’.
Infoseek:
Infoseek also started out in 1994, claiming to have been founded in January. They really did not bring a whole lot of innovation to the table, but they offered a few add on's, and in December 1995 they convinced Netscape to use them as their default search, which gave them major exposure. One popular feature of Infoseek was allowing webmasters to submit a page to the search index in real time, which was a search spammer's paradise.
AltaVista:

AltaVista debut online came during this same month. AltaVista brought many important features to the web scene. They had nearly unlimited bandwidth (for that time), they were the first to allow natural language queries, advanced searching techniques and they allowed users to add or delete their own URL within 24 hours. They even allowed inbound link checking. AltaVista also provided numerous search tips and advanced search features.
Due to poor mismanagement, a fear of result manipulation, and portal related clutter AltaVista was largely driven into irrelevancy around the time Inktomi and Google started becoming popular. On February 18, 2003, Overture signed a letter of intent to buy AltaVista for $80 million in stock and $60 million cash. After Yahoo! bought out Overture they rolled some of the AltaVista technology into Yahoo! Search, and occasionally use AltaVista as a testing platform.
Inktomi:
The Inktomi Corporation came about on May 20, 1996 with its search engine Hotbot. Two Cal Berkeley cohorts created Inktomi from the improved technology gained from their research. Hotwire listed this site and it became hugely popular quickly.
In October of 2001 Danny Sullivan wrote an article titled Inktomi Spam Database Left Open To Public, which highlights how Inktomi accidentally allowed the public to access their database of spam sites, which listed over 1 million URLs at that time.
Although Inktomi pioneered the paid inclusion model it was nowhere near as efficient as the pay per click auction model developed by Overture. Licensing their search results also was not profitable enough to pay for their scaling costs. They failed to develop a profitable business model, and sold out to Yahoo! for approximately approximately $235 million, or $1.65 a share, in December of 2003.
Ask.com (Formerly Ask Jeeves):

In April of 1997 Ask Jeeves was launched as a natural language search engine. Ask Jeeves used human editors to try to match search queries. Ask was powered by DirectHit for a while, which aimed to rank results based on their popularity, but that technology proved to easy to spam as the core algorithm component. In 2000 the Teoma search engine was released, which uses clustering to organize sites by Subject Specific Popularity, which is another way of saying they tried to find local web communities. In 2001 Ask Jeeves bought Teoma to replace the DirectHit search technology.
Jon Kleinberg's Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment [PDF] was a source of inspiration what lead to the eventual creation of Teoma. Mike Grehan's Topic Distillation [PDF] also explains how subject specific popularity works.
On Mar 4, 2004, Ask Jeeves agreed to acquire Interactive Search Holdings for 9.3 million shares of common stock and options and pay $150 million in cash. On March 21, 2005 Barry Diller's IAC agreed to acquire Ask Jeeves for 1.85 billion dollars. IAC owns many popular websites like Match.com, Ticketmaster.com, and Citysearch.com, and is promoting Ask across their other properties. In 2006 Ask Jeeves was renamed to Ask, and they killed the separate Teoma brand.
AllTheWeb

AllTheWeb was a search technology platform launched in May of 1999 to showcase Fast's search technologies. They had a sleek user interface with rich advanced search features, but on February 23, 2003, AllTheWeb was bought by Overture for $70 million. After Yahoo! bought out Overture they rolled some of the AllTheWeb technology into Yahoo! Search, and occasionally use AllTheWeb as a testing platform.
Meta Search Engines
Most meta search engines draw their search results from multiple other search engines, then combine and rerank those results. This was a useful feature back when search engines were less savvy at crawling the web and each engine had a significantly unique index. As search has improved the need for meta search engines has been reduced.
Hotbot was owned by Wired, had funky colors, fast results, and a cool name that sounded geeky, but died off not long after Lycos bought it and ignored it. Upon rebirth it was born as a meta search engine. Unlike most meta search engines, Hotbot only pulls results from one search engine at a time, but it allows searchers to select amongst a few of the more popular search engines on the web. Currently Dogpile, owned by Infospace, is probably the most popular meta search engine on the market, but like all other meta search engines, it has limited market share.
One of the larger problems with meta search in general is that most meta search engines tend to mix pay per click ads in their organic search results, and for some commercial queries 70% or more of the search results may be paid results. I also created Myriad Search, which is a free open source meta search engine without ads.
Vertical Search
The major search engines are fighting for content and marketshare in verticals outside of the core algorithmic search product. For example, both Yahoo and MSN have question answering services where humans answer each other's questions for free. Google has a similar offering, but question answerers are paid for their work.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN are also fighting to become the default video platform on the web, which is a vertical where an upstart named YouTube also has a strong position.
Yahoo and Microsoft are aligned on book search in a group called the Open Content Alliance. Google, going it alone in that vertical, offers a proprietary Google Book search.
All three major search engines provide a news search service. Yahoo! has partnered with some premium providers to allow subscribers to include that content in their news search results. Google has partnered with the AP and a number of other news sources to extend their news database back over 200 years. And Topix.net is a popular news service which sold 75% of its ownership to 3 of the largest newspaper companies. Thousands of weblogs are updated daily reporting the news, some of which are competing with (and beating out) the mainstream media. If that were not enough options for news, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us frequently update recently popular lists, there are meme trackers like Techmeme that track the spread of stories through blogs, and sites like Digg allow their users to directly vote on how much exposure each item gets.
Google also has a Scholar search program which aims to make scholarly research easier to do.
In some verticals, like shopping search, other third party players may have significant marketshare, gained through offline distribution and branding (for example, yellow pages companies), or gained largely through arbitraging traffic streams from the major search engines.
On November 15, 2005 Google launched a product called Google Base, which is a database of just about anything imaginable. Users can upload items and title, describe, and tag them as they see fit. Based on usage statistics this tool can help Google understand which vertical search products they should create or place more emphasis on. They believe that owning other verticals will allow them to drive more traffic back to their core search service. They also believe that targeted measured advertising associated with search can be carried over to other mediums. For example, Google bought dMarc, a radio ad placement firm. Yahoo! has also tried to extend their reach by buying other high traffic properties, like the photo sharing site Flickr, and the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is marketing via search engines, done through organic search engine optimization, paid search engine advertising, and paid inclusion programs.
Paid Inclusion
As mentioned earlier, many general web directories charge a one time flat fee or annually recurring rate for listing commercial sites. Many shopping search engines charge a flat cost per click rate to be included in their databases.
As far as major search engines go, Inktomi popularized the paid inclusion model. They were bought out by Yahoo in December of 2003. After Yahoo dropped Google and rolled out their own search technology they continued to offer a paid inclusion program to list sites in their regular search results. Yahoo Search Submit is the only organic search paid inclusion program remaining from the major search providers. Search Submit is sold both on a yearly flat rate basis, and on a category based per click basis.

Pay Per Click
Pay per click ads allow search engines to sell targeted traffic to advertisers on a cost per click basis. Typically pay per click ads are keyword targeted, but in some cases, some engines may also add in local targeting, behavioral targeting, or allow merchants to bid on traffic streams based on demographics as well.
Pay per click ads are typically sold in an auction where the highest bidder ranks #1 for that keyword. Some engines, like Google and Microsoft, also factor ad clickthrough rate into the click cost. Doing so ensures their ads get clicked on more frequently, and that their advertisements are more relevant. A merchant who writes compelling ad copy and gets a high CTR will be allowed to pay less per click to receive traffic.
Overture (Formerly GoTo)

Overture, the pioneer in paid search, was originally launched by Bill Gross under the name GoTo in 1998. His idea was to arbitrage traffic streams and sell them with a level of accountability. John Battelle's The Search has an entertaining section about Bill Gross and the formation of overture. John also published that section on his blog.
“The more I [thought about it], the more I realized that the true value of the Internet was in its accountability,” Gross tells me. “Performance guarantees had to be the model for paying for media.”
Gross knew offering virtually risk-free clicks in an overheated and ravenous market ensured GoTo would takeoff. And while it would be easy to claim that GoTo worked because of the Internet bubble’s ouroboros-like hunger for traffic, the company managed to outlast the bust for one simple reason: it worked.
While Overture was wildly successful, it had two major downfalls which prevented them from taking Google's market position:
Destination Branding: Google allowed itself to grow into a search destination. Bill Gross decided not to grow Overture into one because he feared that would cost him distribution partnerships. When AOL selected Google as an ad partner, in spite of Google also growing out their own brand, that pretty much was the nails in the coffin for Overture being the premiere search ad platform.
Ad Network Efficiency: Google AdWords factors ad clickthrough rate into their ad costs, which ensures higher relevancy and more ad network efficiency. As of September 2006 the Overture platform (then known as Yahoo! Search Marketing) still did not fix that problem.
Those two faults meant that Overture was heavily reliant on it's two largest distribution partners - Yahoo! and Microsoft. Overture bought out AltaVista and AllTheWeb to try to win some leverage, but ultimately they sold out to Yahoo! on July 14, 2003 for $1.63 billion.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords launched in 2000. The initial version was a failure because it priced ads on a flat CPM model. Some keywords were overpriced and unaffordable, while others were sold inefficiently at too cheap of a price. In February of 2002, Google relaunched AdWords selling the ads in an auction similar to Overture's, but also adding ad clickthrough rate in as a factor in the ad rankings.
Affiliates and other web entrepreneurs quickly took to AdWords because the precise targeting and great reach made it easy to make great profits from the comfort of your own home, while sitting in your underwear :)
Over time, as AdWords became more popular and more mainstream marketers adopted it, Google began closing some holes in their AdWords product. For example, to fight off noise and keep their ads as relevant as possible, they disallowed double serving of ads to one website. Later they started looking at landing page quality and establishing quality based minimum pricing, which squeezed the margins of many small arbitrage and affiliate players.
Google intends to take the trackable ad targeting allowed by AdWords and extend it into other mediums. Google has already tested print and newspaper ads. Google allows advertisers to buy graphic or video ads on content websites. On January 17, 2006, Google announced they bought dMarc Broadcasting, which is a company they will use to help Google sell targeted radio ads.
On September 15, 2006, Google partnered with Intuit to allow small businesses using QuickBooks to buy AdWords from within QuickBooks. The goal is to help make local ads more relevant by getting more small businesses to use AdWords.
On March 20, 2007, Google announced they were beta testing creating a distributed pay per action affiliate ad network. On April 13, 2007 Google announced the purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
Google AdSense
On March 4, 2003 Google announced their content targeted ad network. In April 2003, Google bought Applied Semantics, which had CIRCA technology that allowed them to drastically improve the targeting of those ads. Google adopted the name AdSense for the new ad program.
AdSense allows web publishers large and small to automate the placement of relevant ads on their content. Google initially started off by allowing textual ads in numerous formats, but eventually added image ads and video ads. Advertisers could chose which keywords they wanted to target and which ad formats they wanted to market.
To help grow the network and make the market more efficient Google added a link which allows advertisers to sign up for AdWords account from content websites, and Google allowed advertisers to buy ads targeted to specific websites, pages, or demographic categories. Ads targeted on websites are sold on a cost per thousand impression (CPM) basis in an ad auction against other keyword targeted and site targeted ads.
Google also allows some publishers to place AdSense ads in their feeds, and some select publishers can place ads in emails.
To prevent the erosion of value of search ads Google allows advertisers to opt out of placing their ads on content sites, and Google also introduced what they called smart pricing. Smart pricing automatically adjusts the click cost of an ad based on what Google perceives a click from that page to be worth. An ad on a digital camera review page would typically be worth more than a click from a page with pictures on it.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing is the rebranded name for Overture after Yahoo! bought them out. As of September 2006 their platform is generally the exact same as the old Overture platform, with the same flaws - ad CTR not factored into click cost, it's hard to run local ads, and it is just generally clunky.
Microsoft AdCenter
Microsoft AdCenter was launched on May 3. 2006. While Microsoft has limited marketshare, they intend to increase their marketshare by baking search into Internet Explorer 7. On the features front, Microsoft added demographic targeting and dayparting features to the pay per click mix. Microsoft's ad algorithm includes both cost per click and ad clickthrough rate.
Microsoft also created the XBox game console, and on May 4, 2006 announced they bought a video game ad targeting firm named Massive Inc. Eventually video game ads will be sold from within Microsoft AdCenter.

Search Engine Optimization
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the art and science of publishing information in a format which will make search engines believe that your content satisfies the needs of their users for relevant search queries. SEO, like search, is a field much older than I am. In fact, it was not originally even named search engine optimization, and to this day most people are still uncertain where that phrase came from.
Early SEO
Early search engine optimization consisted mostly of using descriptive file names, page titles, and meta descriptions. As search advanced on the page factors grew more important and then people started trying to aim for specific keyword densities.
Link Analysis
One of the big things that gave Google an advantage over their competitors was the introduction of PageRank, which graded the value of a page based on the number and quality of links pointing at it. Up until the end of 2003 search was exceptionally easy to manipulate. If you wanted to rank for something all you had to do was buy a few powerful links and place the words you wanted to rank for in the link anchor text.
Search Gets More Sophisticated
On November 15, 2003 Google began to heavily introduce many more semantic elements into its search product. Researchers and SEO's alike have noticed wild changes in search relevancy during that update and many times since then, but many searchers remain clueless to the changes.
Search engines would prefer to bias search results toward informational resources to make the commercial ads on the search results appear more appealing. You can see an example of how search can be biased toward commercial or informational resources by playing with Yahoo! Mindset.
Curbing Link Spam
On January 18, 2005, Google, MSN, and Yahoo! announced the release of a NoFollow tag which allows blog owners to block comment spam from passing link popularity. People continued to spam blogs and other resources, largely because search engines may still count some nofollow links, and largely because many of the pages they spammed still rank.
Since 2003 Google has came out with many advanced filters and crawling patterns to help make quality editorial links count more and depreciate the value of many overtly obvious paid links or other forms of link manipulation.
Historical, Editorial, & Usage Data
Older websites may be given more trust in relevancy algorithms than newer websites (just existing for a period of time is a signal of quality). All major search engines use human editors to help review content quality and help improve their relevancy algorithms. Search engines may factor in user acceptance and other usage data to help determine if a site needs reviewed for editorial quality and to help determine if linkage data is legitimate.
Google has also heavily pushed giving away useful software, tools, and services which allow them to personalize search results based on the searcher's historical preferences.
Self Reinforcing Market Positions
In many verticals search is self reinforcing, as in a winner take most battle. Jakob Nielsen's The Power of Defaults notes that the top search result is clicked on as often as 42% of the time. Not only is the distribution and traffic stream highly disproportionate, but many people tend to link to the results that were easy to find, which makes the system even more self reinforcing, as noted in Mike Grehan's Filthy Linking Rich.
A key thing to remember if you are trying to catch up with another website is that you have to do better than what was already done, and significantly enough better that it is comment worthy or citation worthy. You have to make people want to switch their world view to seeing you as an authority on your topic. Search engines will follow what people think.
Hypocrisy in Search
Google engineer Matt Cutts frequently comments that any paid link should have the nofollow attribute applied to it, although Google hypocritically does not place the nofollow attribute on links they buy. They also have placed their ads on the leading Warez site and continued to serve ads on sites that they banned for spamming. Yahoo! Shopping has also been known to be a big link buyer.
Much of the current search research is based upon the view that any form of marketing / promotion / SEO is spam. If that was true, it wouldn't make sense that Google is teaching SEO courses, which they do.

Google

Early Years
Google's corporate history page has a pretty strong background on Google, starting from when Larry met Sergey at Stanford right up to present day. In 1995 Larry Page met Sergey Brin at Stanford.
By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website. Larry, who had always enjoyed tinkering with machinery and had gained some notoriety for building a working printer out of Lego™ bricks, took on the task of creating a new kind of server environment that used low-end PCs instead of big expensive machines. Afflicted by the perennial shortage of cash common to graduate students everywhere, the pair took to haunting the department's loading docks in hopes of tracking down newly arrived computers that they could borrow for their network.
A year later, their unique approach to link analysis was earning BackRub a growing reputation among those who had seen it. Buzz about the new search technology began to build as word spread around campus.
BackRub ranked pages using citation notation, a concept which is popular in academic circles. If someone cites a source they usually think it is important. On the web, links act as citations. In the PageRank algorithm links count as votes, but some votes count more than others. Your ability to rank and the strength of your ability to vote for others depends upon your authority: how many people link to you and how trustworthy those links are.
In 1998, Google was launched. Sergey tried to shop their PageRank technology, but nobody was interested in buying or licensing their search technology at that time.
Winning the Search War
Later that year Andy Bechtolsheim gave them $100,000 seed funding, and Google received $25 million Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers the following year. In 1999 AOL selected Google as a search partner, and Yahoo! followed suit a year later. In 2000 Google also launched their popular Google Toolbar. Google gained search market share year over year ever since.
In 2000 Google relaunched their AdWords program to sell ads on a CPM basis. In 2002 they retooled the service, selling ads in an auction which would factor in bid price and ad clickthrough rate. On May 1, 2002, AOL announced they would use Google to deliver their search related ads, which was a strong turning point in Google's battle against Overture.
In 2003 Google also launched their AdSense program, which allowed them to expand their ad network by selling targeted ads on other websites.
Going Public
Google used a two class stock structure, decided not to give earnings guidance, and offered shares of their stock in a Dutch auction. They received virtually limitless negative press for the perceived hubris they expressed in their "AN OWNER'S MANUAL" FOR GOOGLE'S SHAREHOLDERS. After some controversy surrounding an interview in Playboy, Google dropped their IPO offer range from $85 to $95 per share from $108 to $135. Google went public at $85 a share on August 19, 2004 and its first trade was at 11:56 am ET at $100.01.
Verticals Galore!
In addition to running the world's most popular search service, Google also runs a large number of vertical search services, including:
Google News: Google News launched in beta in September 2002. On September 6, 2006, Google announced an expanded Google News Archive Search that goes back over 200 years.
Google Book Search: On October 6, 2004, Google launchedGoogle Book Search.
Google Scholar: On November 18, 2004, Google launched Google Scholar, an academic search program.
Google Blog Search: On September 14, 2005, Google announced Google Blog Search.
Google Base: On November 15, 2005, Google announced the launch of Google Base, a database of uploaded information describing online or offline content, products, or services.
Google Video: On January 6, 2006, Google announced Google Video.
Google Universal Search: On May 16, 2007 Google began mixing many of their vertical results into their organic search results.
Just Search, We Promise!
Google's corporate mission statement is:
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
However that statement includes many things outside of the traditional mindset of search, and Google maintains that ads are a type of information. This other information includes:
Email: Google launched Gmail on March 31, 2004, offering search email search and gigabytes of storage space.
Maps: On October 27, 2004, Google bought Keyhole. On February 8, 2005, Google launched Google Maps.
Analytics: On March 29, 2005, Google bought Urchin, a website traffic analytics company. Google renamed the service Google Analytics.
Radio ads: Google bought dMarc Broadcasting on January 17, 2006 .
Ads in other formats: Google tested magazine ads and newspaper ads.
Office productivity software: on March 9, 2006, Google bought Writely, an online collaborative document creating and editing software product.
Calendar: on April 14, 2006, Google launched Google Calendar, which allows you to share calendars with multiple editors and include calendars in web pages.
Checkout: On June 29, 2006, Google launched Google Checkout, a way to store your personal transaction related information online.
Paying for Distribution
In addition to having strong technology and a strong brand Google also pays for a significant portion of their search market share.
On December 20, 2005 Google invested $1 billion in AOL to continue their partnership and buy a 5% stake in AOL. In February 2006 Google agreed to pay Dell up to $1 billion for 3 years of toolbar distribution. On August 7, 2006, Google signed a 3 year deal to provide search on MySpace for $900 million. On October 9, 2006 Google bought YouTube, a leading video site, for $1.65 billion in stock.
Google also pays Mozilla and Opera hundreds of millions of dollars to be the default search provider in their browsers, bundles their Google Toolbar with software from Adobe and Sun Microsystems, and pays AdSense ad publishers $1 for Firefox + Google Toolbar installs, or up to $2 for Google Pack installs.
Google also builds brand exposure by placing Ads by Google on their AdSense ads and providing Google Checkout to commercial websites.
Google Pack is a package of useful software including a Google Toolbar and software from many other companies. At the same time Google helps ensure its toolbar is considered good and its competitors don't use sleazy distribution techniques by sponsoring StopBadware.org.
Google's distribution, vertical search products, and other portal elements give it a key advantage in best understanding our needs and wants by giving them the largest Database of Intentions.
Editorial Partnerships
They have moved away from a pure algorithmic approach to a hybrid editorial approach. In April of 2007, Google started mixing recent news results in their organic search results. After Google bought YouTube they started mixing videos directly in Google search results.
Webmaster Communication
Since the Florida update in 2003 Google has looked much deeper into linguistics and link filtering. Google's search results are generally the hardest search results for the average webmaster to manipulate.
Matt Cutts, Google's lead engineer in charge of search quality, regularly blogs about SEO and search. Google also has an official blog and has blogs specific to many of their vertical search products.
On November 10, 2004, Google opened up their Google Advertising Professional program.
Google also helps webmasters understand how Google is indexing their site via Google Webmaster Central. Google continues to add features and data to their webmaster console for registered webmasters while obfuscating publicly available data.
For an informal look at what working at Google looked like from the inside from 1999 to 2005 you might want to try Xooglers, a blog by former Google brand manager Doug Edwards.
Information Retrieval as a Game of Mind Control
In October of 2007 Google attempted to manipulate the public perception of people buying and selling links by announcing that they were going to penalize known link sellers, and then manually editing the toolbar PageRank scores of some well known blogs and other large sites. These PageRank edits did not change search engine rankings or traffic flows, as the PageRank update was entirely aesthetic.

Yahoo!
Getting Into Search
Yahoo! was founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang as a directory of websites. For many years they outsourced their search service to other providers, considering it secondary to their directory and other content features, but by the end of 2002 they realized the importance and value of search and started aggressively acquiring search companies.
Overture purchased AllTheWeb and AltaVista in 2003. Yahoo! purchased Inktomi in December, 2002, and then consumed Overture in July, 2003, and combined the technologies from the various search companies they bought to make a new search engine. Yahoo! dumped Google in favor of their own in house technology on February 17, 2004.
Getting Social
In addition to building out their core algorithmic search product, Yahoo! has largely favored the concept of social search.
On March 20, 2005 Yahoo! purchased Flickr, a popular photo sharing site. On December 9, 2005, Yahoo! purchased Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site. Yahoo! has also made a strong push to promote Yahoo! Answers, a popular free community driven question answering service.
Yahoo! has a cool Netrospective of their first 10 years, a brief overview of their corporate history here, and Bill Slawski posted a list of many of the companies Yahoo! consumed since Overture.
On July 2, 2007, Yahoo! launched their behaviorally targeted SmartAds product.

Microsoft
In 1998 MSN Search was launched, but Microsoft did not get serious about search until after Google proved the business model. Until Microsoft saw the light they primarily relied on partners like Overture, Looksmart, and Inktomi to power their search service.
They launched their technology preview of their search engine around July 1st of 2004. They formally switched from Yahoo! organic search results to their own in house technology on January 31st, 2005. MSN announced they dumped Yahoo!'s search ad program on May 4th, 2006.
On September 11, 2006, Microsoft announced they were launching their Live Search product.
Other Engines
One would be foolish to think that there is not a better way to index the web, and a new creative idea is probably just under our noses. The fact that Microsoft is making a large investment into developing a new search technology should be some cause for concern for other major search engines.
Through this course of history many smaller search engines have came and went, as the search industry has struggled to find a balance between profitability and relevancy. Some of the newer search engine concepts are web site clustering, semantics, and having industry specific smaller search engines / portals, but search may get attacked from entirely different angles.
On October 5, 2004 Bill Gross ( the founder of Overture and pioneer of paid search) relaunched Snap as a search engine with a completely transparent business model (showing search volumes, revenues, and advertisers). Snap has many advanced sorting features but it may be a bit more than what most searchers were looking for. People tend to like search for the perceived simplicity, even if the behind the scenes process is quite complex.
Outside of technology there are four other frontiers search is being attacked / commoditized from
Browser & Software Distribution: Search companies are paying computer manufacturers or software companies an aggregated value of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars each year to bundle their search toolbar with their products.
Social Search: Large social networks have significant reach and a ton of page views. Yahoo! is rumored to be entertaining buying social network Facebook nearly a billion dollars. Yahoo! has already bought social picture site Flickr and social bookmarking site Del.icio.us. In August of 2006 Google signed a 3 year $900 million contract to provide search and advertising on MySpace. In addition some companies, like Eurekster, are trying to create products which allow groups of webmasters to make topic or community specific search services.
Content Providers: Some content providers are trying to publish content on their own domains and build off their brand. Some are refusing to be included in search indexes. Some are requiring a kickback to be indexed. Some are unsure of what they want and are choosing to sue search engines, either for further brand exposure, or to gain further negotiation leverage.
Content Aggregators: Search is just one way of finding information. Via RSS feeds and various other technologies many sites are offering what some people consider persistent search, or a way to access any information about a specific topic as it becomes available. Google also bought YouTube for $1.65 in stock. YouTube consists largely of pirated content which Google can organize and publish ads against based on usage data and other forms of ad targeting.

Search & Legal Issues
Privacy
In 2005 the DoJ obtained search data from AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!. Google denied the request, and was sued for search data in January of 2006. Google beat the lawsuit and was only required to hand over a small sample of data.
In August of 2006 AOL Research released over 3 months worth of personal search data by 650,000 AOL users. A NYT article identified one of the searchers by name. In 2007 the European Union aggressively probed search companies aiming to limit data retention and maintain searcher privacy rights.
Publishing & Copyright Lawsuits
As more people create content attention is becoming more scarce. Due to The Tragedy of the Commons many publishing businesses and business models will die. Many traditional publishing companies enjoyed the profits enabled by running what was essentially regionally based monopolies. Search, and other forms of online media, allow for better targeting and less wasteful / more efficient business models. Due to growing irrelevancy, a fear of change, and a fear of disintermediation, many traditional publishing companies have fought search.
In an interview by Danny Sullivan, Eric Schmidt stated he thought many of the lawsuits Google face are business deals done in a court room.
Newspapers
In September of 2006 some Belgian newspaper companies won a copyright lawsuit against Google News which makes Belgium judges look like they do not understand how search or the internet work. Some publisher groups are trying to create an arbitrary information access protocol, Agence France Presse (AFP) sued Google to get them to drop their news coverage, and Google paid the AP a licensing fee.
Books
In September of 2005 the Authors Guild sued Google. In October of 2005 major book publishing houses also sued Google over Google Print.
Photos
Perfect 10, a pornography company, sued Google for including cached copies of stolen content in their image index, and for allowing publishers to collect income on stolen copyright content via Google AdSense.
Access to Hate Information
In May of 2000 a French judge required Yahoo! to stop providing access to auctions selling Nazi memorabilia.
Many requests for information removal are covered on Chilling Effects and by the EFF. Eric Goldman tracks these cases as well.
Pay Per Click & Ad Targeting Lawsuits
In 1999 Playboy sued Excite and Netscape for selling banner impressions sold for searches for Playboy.
Overture sued Google for patent infringement. Just prior to Google's IPO they settled with Yahoo! (who by then bought out Overture) by giving them 2.7 million shares of class A Google stock.
Geico took Google to court in the US for trademark violation because Google allowed Geico to be a keyword trigger to target competing ads. Geico lost this case on December 15, 2004. Around the same time Google lost a similar French trademark case filed by Louis Vuitton.
Lane's Gifts sued Google for click fraud, but did not have a strong well put together case. Google's lawyers pushed them into a class wide out of court settlement of up to $90 million in AdWords credits. The March 2006 settlement aimed to absolve Google of any clickfraud related liabilities back through 2002, when Google launched their pay per click model.
Search User Information
The US government requested that major search companies turned over a significant amount of search related data. Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL gave up search data. The Google blog announced that Google fought the subpoena
In August, Google was served with a subpoena from the U. S. Department of Justice demanding disclosure of two full months’ worth of search queries that Google received from its users, as well as all the URLs in Google’s index.
A judge stated that Google did not have to turn over search usage data.
AOL not only shared information with the government, but AOL research also accidentally made search records public record.
Search as a Commoditizer
Each search company has its own business objectives and technologies to define relevancy. The three biggest issues search engines are fighting are
Publishing Rights: All search engines are fighting trying to gain the rights to index quality content. Some of the highest quality content is so expensive to create and market that there is not a business model for openly sharing it on the web. Worse yet, as more and more people get into web publishing the businesses that delay to get their content indexed will have lost authority and distribution the whole time they delayed. This, and the fear of disintermediation, are part of the reason there are so many lawsuits.
Distribution: The more distribution you have the more profit you can use to leverage the ability to buy more content or make better content partnerships. Also more distribution means that you can potentially send more visitors (and thus profit) to a person who lets you index their content. More usage data may also help engines improve their relevancy algorithms.
Ad Network Size & Efficiency: Efficient ad networks can afford to pay for more distribution, and thus help the search company gain more content and distribution.
In order to try to lock users in search engines offer things like free email, news search, blogging platform, content hosting, office software, calendars, and feature rich toolbars. In some cases the software or service is not only free, but it is expensive to provide. For example, Google does not profit from Google news, but they had to pay the AP content licensing fees, and hosting Google Video can't be cheap.
In an attempt to collect more data, better target ads, and improve conversion rates Google offers
a free analytics product
free cross platform tracking
free Wifi internet access in San Francisco and Mountainview
a free wallet product which makes it quick and easy to buy products
The end goal of search is to commoditize the value of as many brands and markets as possible to keep adding value to the search box. They want to commoditize the value of creating content and increase the value of spreading ideas, the value of attention, and the importance of conversion.
As they make the network more and more efficient they can eat more and more of the profits, which was a large part of the reasoning behind Jakob Nielson's Search Engines as Leeches on the Web.
Selling Search as an Ecosystem
Because search aims to gain distribution by virtually any means possible the search engines that can do the best job of branding and get people to believe most in their goals / ideals / ecosystem win. Search engines are fighting many ways on this front, but not all of them are even on the web. For example, search engines are trying to attract the smartest minds by sharing research. Google goes so far as offering free pizza!
Google hires people to track webmaster feedback across the web. Matt Cutts frequently blogs about search and SEO because to him it is important for others to see search, SEO, and Google from his perspective. He offers free tips on Google Video in no small part because it was important for Google Video to beat out YouTube for Google to become the default video platform on the web. Once it was clear that Google lost the video battle to YouTube Google decided to buy them.
Beyond just selling their company beliefs and ideology to get people excited about their field, acquire new workers, and get others to act in a way that benefits their business model search engines also provide APIs to make portions of their system open enough that they can leverage the free work of other smart, creative, and passionate people.
Selling search as an ecosystem goes so far that Google puts out endless betas, allowing users to become unpaid testers and advocates of their products. Even if the other search engines matched Google on relevancy they still are losing the search war due to Google's willingness to take big risks, Google's brand strength, and how much better Google sells search as an ecosystem.
Extending Search
Google wants to make content ad supported and freely accessible. On October 9, 2006, Google announced they were acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. In March, 2007,Viacom sued Google / YouTube for $1 billion for copyright infringement. In 2007 Microsoft pushed against Google's market position calling Google a copyright infringer (for scanning books) and doing research stating that many of Google's blogspot hosted blogs are spam.
Social Search
In 2006 and 2007 numerous social bookmarking and decentralized news sites became popular. Del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking site, was bought out by Yahoo. Digg.com features fresh news and other items of interest on their home page based on user votes.

Text REtrieval Conference (TREC):
In 1992 TREC was launched to support research within the information retrieval community by providing the infrastructure necessary for large-scale evaluation of text retrieval methodologies. In addition to helping support the evolution of search they also create special tracks for vertical search and popular publishing models. For example, in 2006 they created a blog track. Past TREC publications are posted here.
Other Search Conferences:
There are a number of other popular conferences covering information retrieval.
ACM SIGIR
Search Engine Meeting
AirWeb
Search Science lists a number of conferences on the right side of the Search Science blog.
There are also a number of conferences which talk about search primarily from a marketer's perspective. The three most well known conferences for are
PubCon - hosted by Brett Tabke, owner of WebmasterWorld.
Search Engine Strategies
Search Marketing Expo - hosted by Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land
Sources and Further Reading:
Many of the following have not been updated in years, or only cover a partial timeline of the search space, but as a collection they helped me out a lot. SearchEngineWatch is amazingly comprehensive if you piece together all of the articles Danny Sullivan has published.
Archive.org - The Internet Archive Wayback Machine (especially useful to view old content if any resource links break).
SearchEngineWatch - Danny Sullivan's site about search. Here are some important events from his first decade of writing about search.
Where Are They Now? Search Engines We've Known & Loved - Danny Sullivan reflects on some of the search engines that have passed away.
Google Corporate History - The history of Google, from 1995 to today.
Shmula - timeline of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! acquisitions.
SEO Consultants - Offers a timeline of important events associated with the history of search and the internet. Up to date through 2006.
Story about the foundation and history of Ask - by Kelli Anderson, through 2006.
John Wiley & Sons - by Wes Sonnenreich, a history of search through 1997.
Google Blogoscope - by Philipp Lessen, a history of search through 2003.
CBS MarketWatch [PDF] - colored timeline of search through 2004.
Wikipedia: Search Engines & Timeline of Hypertext
Search Engines: Evolution & Revolution - by Glen Farrelly, covers 1990 through 1999.
Enquiro Eye Tracking Study - report of how humans interact with search results.
History of the Internet, Internet for Historians (and just about everyone else) - Richard T. Griffith's article about the history of the web, from 1991 to 2001.
Searching on the Web - Link to a page that is no longer active, but which content still exists on the wonderful Archive.org. Contents are from 1960's to 2000.
W3C: A Little History of the World Wide Web - by Robert Cailliau, from 1945 to 1995 .
Search History Page from Sympatico - Link to a page that is no longer active, but which content still exists on the wonderful Archive.org. Contents are from 1990 to 2003.
Hobbes' Internet Timeline - by Robert H'obbes' Zakon, from 1957 through 2004.
How Yahoo Blew It - Wired article about how Google beat out Yahoo to win the search market race
A Brief History of the Internet - by Walt Howe, from 1960 through 2006.
The Sergey Brin Story
Search Industry Explained - Search and Go discusses search history and SEO history
ISOC Internet Histories - list of various histories of the Internet.
Books About Search
The Search - John Battelle's book about the history of search and how search intersects with media and culture.
The Google Story - David Vise's book about Google.
The Google Legacy - Stephen E. Arnold's book about why he believes Google is in a better market position than its competitors.

-Types of Search Queries:

2008-02-02T05:25:00.002-08:00

Andrei Broder authored A Taxonomy of Web Search [PDF], which notes that most searches fall into the following 3 categories:
Informational - seeking static information about a topic
Transactional - shopping at, downloading from, or otherwise interacting with the result
Navigational - send me to a specific URL
Improve Your Searching Skills:
Want to become a better searcher? Most large scale search engines offer:
Advanced search pages which help searchers refine their queries to request files which are newer or older, local or in nature, from specific domains, published in specific formats, or other ways of refining search, for example the ~ character means related to Google.
Vertical search databases which may help structure the information index or limit the search index to a more trusted or better structured collection of sources, documents, and information.
Nancy Blachman's Google Guide offers searchers free Google search tips, and Greg R.Notess's Search Engine Showdown offers a search engine features chart.
There are also many popular smaller vertical search services. For example, Del.icio.us allows you to search URLs that users have bookmarked, and Technorati allows you to search blogs.
World Wide Web Wanderer:
Soon the web's first robot came. In June 1993 Matthew Gray introduced the World Wide Web Wanderer. He initially wanted to measure the growth of the web and created this bot to count active web servers. He soon upgraded the bot to capture actual URL's. His database became knows as the Wandex.
The Wanderer was as much of a problem as it was a solution because it caused system lag by accessing the same page hundreds of times a day. It did not take long for him to fix this software, but people started to question the value of bots.

-Parts of a Search Engine:

2008-02-02T05:25:00.001-08:00

Search engines consist of 3 main parts. Search engine spiders follow links on the web to request pages that are either not yet indexed or have been updated since they were last indexed. These pages are crawled and are added to the search engine index (also known as the catalog). When you search using a major search engine you are not actually searching the web, but are searching a slightly outdated index of content which roughly represents the content of the web. The third part of a search engine is the search interface and relevancy software. For each search query search engines typically do most or all of the following
Accept the user inputted query, checking to match any advanced syntax and checking to see if the query is misspelled to recommend more popular or correct spelling variations.
Check to see if the query is relevant to other vertical search databases (such as news search or product search) and place relevant links to a few items from that type of search query near the regular search results.
Gather a list of relevant pages for the organic search results. These results are ranked based on page content, usage data, and link citation data.
Request a list of relevant ads to place near the search results.
Searchers generally tend to click mostly on the top few search results, as noted in this article by Jakob Nielsen, and backed up by this search result eye tracking study.
Want to learn more about how search engines work?
In How does Google collect and rank results? Google engineer Matt Cutts briefly discusses how Google works.
Google engineer Jeff Dean lectures a University of Washington class on how a search query at Google works in this video.
The Chicago Tribune ran a special piece titled Gunning for Google, including around a dozen audio interviews, 3 columns, and this graphic about how Google works.
How Stuff Works covers search engines in How Internet Search Engines Work.

-History of Search Engines: From 1945 to Google 2007

2008-02-02T05:24:00.001-08:00

As We May Think (1945):
The concept of hypertext and a memory extension really came to life in July of 1945, when after enjoying the scientific camaraderie that was a side effect of WWII, Vannaver Bush's As We May Think was published in The Atlantic Monthly.

He urged scientists to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all mankind. Here are a few selected sentences and paragraphs that drive his point home.
Specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.
The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.
A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.
He not only was a firm believer in storing data, but he also believed that if the data source was to be useful to the human mind we should have it represent how the mind works to the best of our abilities.
Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of the systems of indexing. ... Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.
The human mind does not work this way. It operates by association. ... Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency.
Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his own shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory.
He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex.
Gerard Salton (1960s - 1990s):
Gerard Salton, who died on August 28th of 1995, was the father of modern search technology. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the SMART informational retrieval system. Salton’s Magic Automatic Retriever of Text included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms.
He authored a 56 page book called A Theory of Indexing which does a great job explaining many of his tests upon which search is still largely based. Tom Evslin posted a blog entry about what it was like to work with Mr. Salton.
Ted Nelson:
Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution.
While Ted was against complex markup code, broken links, and many other problems associated with traditional HTML on the WWW, much of the inspiration to create the WWW was drawn from Ted's work.
There is still conflict surrounding the exact reasons why Project Xanadu failed to take off.
The Wikipedia offers background and many resource links about Mr. Nelson.
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network:
ARPANet is the network which eventually led to the internet. The Wikipedia has a great background article on ARPANet and Google Video has a free interesting video about ARPANet from 1972.
Archie (1990):
The first few hundred web sites began in 1993 and most of them were at colleges, but long before most of them existed came Archie. The first search engine created was Archie, created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. The original intent of the name was "archives," but it was shortened to Archie.
Archie helped solve this data scatter problem by combining a script-based data gatherer with a regular expression matcher for retrieving file names matching a user query. Essentially Archie became a database of web filenames which it would match with the users queries.
Bill Slawski has more background on Archie here.
Veronica & Jughead:
As word of mouth about Archie spread, it started to become word of computer and Archie had such popularity that the University of Nevada System Computing Services group developed Veronica. Veronica served the same purpose as Archie, but it worked on plain text files. Soon another user interface name Jughead appeared with the same purpose as Veronica, both of these were used for files sent via Gopher, which was created as an Archie alternative by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota in 1991.
File Transfer Protocol:
Tim Burners-Lee existed at this point, however there was no World Wide Web. The main way people shared data back then was via File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
If you had a file you wanted to share you would set up an FTP server. If someone was interested in retrieving the data they could using an FTP client. This process worked effectively in small groups, but the data became as much fragmented as it was collected.
Tim Berners-Lee & the WWW (1991):
From the Wikipedia:
While an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. With help from Robert Cailliau he built a prototype system named Enquire.
After leaving CERN in 1980 to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd., he returned in 1984 as a fellow. In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet. In his words, "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web". He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NeXTSTEP) and the first Web server called httpd (short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon).
The first Web site built was at http://info.cern.ch/ and was first put online on August 6, 1991. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server. It was also the world's first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own.
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tim also created the Virtual Library, which is the oldest catalogue of the web. Tim also wrote a book about creating the web, titled Weaving the Web.
What is a Bot?
Computer robots are simply programs that automate repetitive tasks at speeds impossible for humans to reproduce. The term bot on the internet is usually used to describe anything that interfaces with the user or that collects data.
Search engines use "spiders" which search (or spider) the web for information. They are software programs which request pages much like regular browsers do. In addition to reading the contents of pages for indexing spiders also record links.
Link citations can be used as a proxy for editorial trust.
Link anchor text may help describe what a page is about.
Link co citation data may be used to help determine what topical communities a page or website exist in.
Additionally links are stored to help search engines discover new documents to later crawl.
Another bot example could be Chatterbots, which are resource heavy on a specific topic. These bots attempt to act like a human and communicate with humans on said topic.

-Multiple search engines

2008-02-02T05:17:00.004-08:00

Multiple search engines allow you to use many engines at once. The good news is that this is a fast and comprehensive way to cast a wide net. The bad news is that you cannot always narrow your search effectively because different engines use different codes. So use these multiple searches if you are hunting for something obscure and cannot find enough hits when you use your favourite, single search engine.

-Comparison of the search engines.

2008-02-02T05:17:00.003-08:00

I am not going to pretend that this comparison is the result of highly scientific work; I have also not checked my results with the producers of the different engines, though I have tried to ensure accuracy. Due to the fast changing nature of the Internet however, you are advised to check the information for yourself, since it will doubtless become out of date quickly.I chose Meta-search engines which offered as much variety as possible, and gave me examples of list, consecutive and simultaneous searches, and obtained the data for all of them on 25th February 2003. According to Yahoo there are at present a total of over 100 different sites offering engines of this type, so for a full list I would point you to them.My conclusions, which are my own personal impressions, nothing more, are as follows.I see no value whatsoever in the list approach. These are not examples of what I would regard as 'true' multi-search engines; anyone could put a list of these together and claim that they had created a multi-search engine when in actual fact all that they have done is be slightly creative with cut and paste facilities. The possible exception is Metasearch, which does automatically put your desired search terms into the appropriate places on the cut and paste search engines they have referenced. This approach also is unable to properly provide boolean operators etc, since the page does not interact with the search engines themselves, simply providing this front end cut and paste job. Worse, they are usually unable to offer much by the way of help screens, since this is dependant on the search engines themselves.
Consecutive multi-search engines were however much better. They did make attempts to integrate their page into the search engines, and so are generally better at providing a wider range of functions, although I still found that help screens and guides to searching were very limited. The major disadvantage of this approach is that it can take considerable time for the search to be completed, and the weak link is always going to be the slowest engine that they reference. However, they do seem to work reasonably well, and are certainly worth experimenting with.
Simultaneous search engines seem to be few and far between, but they are without a doubt the most effective. Superseek uses the Frames approach to overcome the problem of obtaining and displaying results on the screen, but this approach does mean that you have to have a frames compatible browser available, which not everyone will have. The search results screen also looks as though its come straight out of an aeroplane cockpit and is a little daunting when you first view it. However, it does not take long to get used to. They do also have a non-frames approach, but I did not try this out. Worth experimenting with.
My two favourites however are the Internet Sleuth and Savvy Search. Both were helpful, fast and efficient. I would be quite happy to use either or both of these to run a multi-search, and I would recommend them.
I would welcome comments, additions, updates and so on; please feel free to email me.

-Characteristics of Multi-search engines.

2008-02-02T05:16:00.000-08:00

I have tried to put together a list of the different elements which one might expect to appear on a multi-search engine page. Unfortunately few, if any of the multi-search engines exhibit all of these elements, and indeed some will have very few of them.
The number of search engines that a Multi-search engine will use
The number of search engines which are used varies dramatically - the smallest in the sample that I looked at only referred to half a dozen, while the largest in the sample gave me access to over one thousand search engines, or database front ends. This is no real indicator of quality however; it depends much more on the search engines which are used (and also the variety) rather than the sheer number. I would much prefer to use a Multi-search engine which referenced a small number of what I would consider to be high quality search engines than a much larger number of engines that I did not really know or trust.
Nonetheless, I think it is an acceptable criteria to use when evaluating the effectiveness of a Multi-search engine; while more is not necessarily better, less could certainly be considered worse. While I would not normally evaluate success in terms of the number of hits this is one of the reasons why one would use a Multi-search engine, so I feel that it is justified.
The elements of the Internet which are searched.
It seems almost automatic these days to regard the phrase 'Search the Web' as a synonym for 'Search the Internet'. Of course, while that is understandable, given the hype and attention surrounding the World Wide Web, it behoves us to remember that there are a number of other aspects of the Internet which deserve consideration as well, such as Usenet newsgroups, or individuals email addresses and so on. Multi-search engines are at the mercy of the search engines they choose to reference, but given that there are a good number of these which concentrate on specific aspects such as those just mentioned there is no reason why they should not be made available for searching as well.
Any words, all words, phrase searching.
Again, there is little that the Multi-search engine can do directly about this since they are unable to affect the internal workings of individual search engines. However, it is an option that should be offered to the end user; if one search engine can search on a phrase out of the list available it seems short sighted not to offer this. Other engines on the list will simply ignore the phrase aspect and search on the words using an implied OR. If this is not given as an option though, it reduces the effectiveness of those search engines which can undertake phrase searching. It seems to be an obvious point, but is one which was overlooked by some of the Multi-search engines which I looked at
Boolean operators, truncation and proximity searching.
The very same comments can be made here as just given above. A Multi-search engine should provide and reflect the variety of approaches made available by the engines it references, but all too often this was not the case.
Focussing a search.
There are of course many occasions when the user will not wish to do a global search, but will want to focus on one aspect specifically, such as searching in a specific domain (such as .com) or a geographical area (such as Europe). Yet again some search engines allow the user to focus the search this way, but this is not always reflected in the interface offered by the Multi-search engine.
Choice of subject area.
This approach is very familiar to anyone who has ever used the Index approach to search engines, by taking a broad subject area and choosing various subheadings until the specific subject is reached. It is well known to all of us in the information profession that much of the time we will not want everything on a subject, but will wish to focus on the medical or legal aspects for example. Some Multi-search engines did offer the ability to choose a specific subject focus or indeed provide a subset of search engines which cover a particular subject area, and the The Big Hub deserves to be singled out here for being quite superb in this approach.
Time taken and hits returned.
Two important elements here which both approach the problem of the amount of time that it takes to run some of these searches. A major disadvantage of using a Multi-search engine is that you are very much left in the hands of the engines referenced. If they decide to take a long time to return a result, or they are particularly comprehensive you may be sat twiddling your thumbs while they work. By limiting the search either by number of hits or by getting the search to end after a particular period of time you are able to exert at least a little control over the whole process. The danger here of course is that you are not going to get the same level of comprehensiveness that you might get otherwise, but at least you are being given the choice
Display
Many search engines will allow you one of three display modes; brief, normal or verbose. Your choice is likely going to depend on what you actually want from the search, and the variety can be quite helpful in some circumstances.
Collate results.
When using a single search engine it is not uncommon to find the same site turning up as a hit several times - de-duping does not seem to be that much of a priority for a lot of developers! This problem is exacerbated when you do a multi-search; it can be annoying to retrieve what appears to be a reasonable number of hits, only to find that there are a great many duplicates in the list. In my opinion, one of the keys strengths of a good Multi-search engine should be that it is able to collate the results, de-dupe and then display. Unfortunately however, it appeared to be very uncommon to find one which did.
Help screens/FAQ's
It is slightly distressing to see so many Internet retrieval engines attempt to give users the impression that searching is a very simple process, when of course we know that its rather more complex than that. All too often I would log onto a Multi-search engine page to find no instructions, no hints on how to create a better or more effective search, and no way of identifying how many search engines were used. Indeed, the lack of such information was quite astonishing. Perhaps its just me, but if I'd taken a lot of time to create a Multi-search interface, I'd want everyone to know who I was, how I had done it and why it was effective. Its possible that the producers of these facilities have rather smaller egos than I, but I tend to think that it is related rather more to laziness than anything else.

-How do Multi-search engines work?

2008-02-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

From the explorations that I have undertaken, there appear to be 3 different approaches which are in operation at the moment:
A straightforward list of different search engines
Searches which take place one after another.
Searches which take place simultaneously
Each of these has their own advantages and disadvantages, so lets examine them in a little more detail.
A straightforward list of different search engines
These work by simply copying the appropriate URL for the cgi script onto the web page. This is not particularly difficult to do and the user then simply inputs the appropriate search term(s) into the dialogue box and submits the search. This is then run by the search engine in particular and the user is presented with a list of results in exactly the same way that they would if they had gone to visit that particular site directly.
The advantage of this approach is simply that you can reduce the amount of time you spend going from one site to another in order to complete your search.
It might also suggest other search engines for you which you had not considered using before. It is almost impossible to keep up with all of the different search engines which are available, and if someone is happy to do this on your behalf, it makes sense to take advantage of it.
However, the disadvantage of this approach is that, strictly speaking, these sites are (in my opinion) misleading the user. They are not offering a multi-search engine, but have simply collated the work of others onto a new home page. Thats not to say there is anything intrinsically wrong with this, and the Webmaster will have had to have done a reasonable amount of work to set the page up, but its really nothing more than a slightly more sophisticated list of links.
These are by far the most common sites offering a multi-search facility and examples of sites which take this approach are:
Find-It at http://www.itools.com/search/
Searches which take place one after another.
This is much closer to the concept of a multi-search engine. A site of this nature will usually have a single entry line where you input the search just as you would with a single search engine interface. You may then have the opportunity of deciding which search engines you the search to run under (usually from a list given in a check-box type situation) and the multi-search engine then transmits the search simultaneously to all of the search engines you have indicated.
Once the search has been run, the results will be displayed on the screen for you in a list, commonly separated into the results as provided by the different search engines. However, the main disadvantage of this type of approach is that before the list can be generated on the screen all the different search engines have to have sent their results back to the multi-search engine site. Consequently the speed of the search is dictated by the speed of the slowest search engine.
An example of this type of search engine can be found at:
Dogpile at http://www.dogpile.com/
Searches which take place simultaneously
This type of search engine is very similiar to the previous approach, the main difference being that searches do not have to wait until each search engine has completed its work - as soon as results are available from one search engine, they are displayed on the screen for you to view. The result is therefore that much faster, and while you are browsing down through the list of hits, others are being added to the page even as you view.
An example of the multi-search engines which take this approach are:
Ixquick at http://www.ixquick.com/

-Why use a Multi-search engine?

2008-02-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

At the time of updating (February 2003) there are at least 150,000 different search engines (you can view the ones which I use most by visiting my search engine page) available which cover both general and specific subjects, or which search specific elements of the Internet such as Web pages or Usenet.While some of these are particularly effective and sophisticated none of them are entirely comprehensive. They may only use a small database from which to create your set of results (Yahoo for example only indexes a very small proportion of the 3 billion pages indexed by Google), or they may not be updated particuarly quickly (Alltheweb is updated every fortnight or so, while Google is updated monthly). Their spider programs may not be very fast, which means that their currency might not be a real reflection of the state of play on the Internet.Consequently, even if you have a favourite search engine, or even several of them, to ensure anything like a comprehensive search you may need to use several of them before you are satisfied that you have found everything you require on a particular topic. A Multi-search engine may save you the trouble of going to a variety of different sites in order to run your search, or it may suggest a search engine which you had not considered, or perhaps did not even know about!