HOME BASED MARKETING BUSINESS

Treat your website as a home based marketing business to make some additional revenues. Three ways exist of at least covering hosting expenses:

1. Google Ads

By displaying the ads that Google automatically sends through paste-in code, your website joins the tens of thousands that act today as a home based marketing business. Commissions depend on a. number of click-throughs your pages achieve, and b. intrinsic value of the ad (which in turn reflects what customers are paying Google for the keywords concerned.) AdSense is easy to set up, and the service created a few millionaires among those who got in early. Not all ads carry much intrinsic value, however, and they have to be relevant. You cannot earn money by doing the clicking yourself, moreover: Google has software to stop payment in these cases, and will drop your site, pocketing proceeds to date.

How does AdSense work? You apply, remembering that Google does not like sites with profanity, drugs, pornography, or gambling, and will also reject personal pages, sites with excessive advertising or other content-targeted or text-based ads, or with incentives for clicking on the keywords. But a few days later, all being well, you'll get from them a few lines of code to paste into your pages, after which you can be earning in a few minutes. To make serious money, however, you'll have to:

create many pages displaying AdSense ads.

choose the AdSense words that pay well and craft pages accordingly.

increase click-through rates by adjusting sales copy to the AdSense ads likely to be displayed.

increase traffic to your pages, either through the natural or pay-to-click search engines.

How do you choose the AdSense ads that pay well? Your best bet is to become a Google AdWords advertiser, and experiment with their free tools. Otherwise use:

1. Programs that return keyword suggestions:

Keyword Spider. Free software to find keywords on the web.

Keyword Tumbler. Free software that builds large keyword lists.

Keyword Difficulty Tool. Measures the relative difficulty of optimizing for a keyword on Google.

Thesaurus. Simple online thesaurus.

KW Map. Returns an alphabetical list of relevant keywords.

2. Programs that return keywords and search popularity

Overture. Enter a keyword and get a list of keywords with searches on them the previous month.

Google Sandbox. Suggests Google Ad alternatives for the keywords you enter.

Nichebot. Lists top 15 matching keywords, with Google searches over 60 days and competition.

Good Keywords. Free software that lists keywords and their popularity on Overture.

Digital Point. Lists keywords and their popularity on Overture and Wordtracker.

Miva. Lists relevant keywords and their popularity on Miva.

3. Programs the return keywords and bid prices

Pixel Fast. Lists Overture's keywords, popularity and bid prices.

7Search. Lists relevant keywords, searches and bid prices on 7Search.

Iotaweb Returns relevant top-paying keywords from Adsense and Overture.

4. Or, best of all, but not free, proper keyword research tools

  Product
 Price
 m=month
 y=year
Ranking by Criteria (1 is poor, 10 is excellent)
Niche Miners
SEO
PPC Advertisers
AdSense
Publishers
Useability
Value for Money
Wordtracker
$50.50/m
8
10
6
4
6
8
Adword Equalizer
$97
7
4
8
6
10
7
Niche Finder 2
$77
7
6
6
4
7
6
Ad Word Analyzer
$67
7
4
6
6
8
8
Keyword Locator
$87
9
6
10
8
10
10
Keywords Analyser
$97
10
7
10
9
8
10
Niche Key Analyzer Pro
$29
6
4
6
4
8
8
Keywords Results Tracker for Wordtracker
$67
10
10
4
4
10
10
The Dowser
$97
7
6
7
6
4
6
Site Build It
$299/y
9
6
6
6
6
9
PPC Toolkit
$99
5
4
9
7
8
8
Pay Per Click Galaxy
$97
2
2
8
2
6
4
Rapid Keywords
$67
6
6
8
6
6
8
Keyword Discovery
$50/m
10
10
8
6
8
9
Web CEO
$189-389
8
10
8
6
9
10
Keyword Intelligence
$90-190/m
5
6
6
4
8
4
Keyword Country
$74/month
8
3
8
10
9
9
Adword Accelerator
$20/m
8
2
6
6
10
10
Keyword Burner
$47/m
7
2
8
9
8
8
Instant Keyword Research
$297
6
2
4
5
8
5
The Keyword Bible
$495
7
2
6
3
6
5
Keyword Elite
$167
9
7
10
9
10
10
AdSense Dominator *
$79/3months
7
2
7
8
10
8
Keyword Cruncher
$37
8
8
4
4
8
6
Cash Keywords**©
$150
8
2
8
10
10
8
Top Keyword Lists**
$37/month
8
2
8
9
10
10
Top Keyword Data**
$97
7
2
7
9
9
9
AdSense Accelerator**
$47/m
4
4
8
9
8
9
Click Ad Equalizer **
$97
9
2
8
2
8
7
Keyword Intelligence **
$90/month
8
2
8
2
6
7
Market Research Wizard **
$97
9
2
7
2
6
9
Niche Finder **
$77
8
2
8
2
6
8
Product Idea Profitabilty Evaluator **
$147
9
2
8
2
6
8

** indicates products not listed in Keywords Workshop. Rankings are ours.

* includes free AdSense Analyzer

© Now amalgamated with/replaced by AdSense Accelerator: entries no longer apply.

How much can you make today? Most sites make $20 to $100/month, but there are websites making that and more every day. For more information:

About Adsense. Introduction to Google's AdSense, with course and excellent resources.

AdSense Free Web Tool. Enter your page URL to see what Google AdWords may be offered.

Cheap Keywords. Free directory of cheapest keywords for Google Adwords.

Google Adsense. Google's online tour of the service. Apply here.

Google Blogspot. Brief articles on Google's services.

Keyword Research. Good listing of tools for keyword research: many free.

2. Selling Advertising

You can get companies to directly advertise on your site. Value, individuality and utility are the key words. Your site has to be truly special and offer visitors what they cannot easily find elsewhere. That means providing some mixture of unique content, comprehensive links, online games or entertainment, free software and/or services.

Naturally, you won't get the better companies to give your site a second glance unless it's a professional-looking affair that enjoys undoubted status and heavy traffic. Advertisers have their good name to protect, and agreements that don't bring appreciable numbers of new customers aren't worth the management time. With current glut in advertising space, companies can afford to be choosy.

You will need something more than 25,000 visitors per month to interest advertisers, and that level of traffic is not easily achieved without considerable outlay in build time and marketing expense. You have to shell out a good deal before you can expect much to come in.

Many sites do cover their hosting expenses with Amazon ads, however. If your pages achieve a 2% click-through rate to Amazon Books, and 5% of these click-throughs convert to sales of $15 books for which Amazon pay you a 5% commission, your takings will be 0.02 x 0.05 x $15 x 0.05 per page displayed, i.e. 0.075 cents/page, or $7.50-month for a site with 10,000 page views per month. For more information on selling advertising space generally:

Advertising Age. News and views of the advertising industry, with numerous references.

Burst Media. Advertising network dedicated to specialty-content publishers

Media Bids. Helps you buy print advertising in newspapers or magazines.

Media Buyer. News, tools and tactics for the media buyer.

Yahoo's List. Look in Media Buying and Planning.

3. Online Affiliate Marketing

Here you're not selling advertising space but acting as a representative selling actual products or services through your website. There are many ways of proceeding, but the following sites will tell you more:

100 Best Affiliate Programs. Lists rates and services. Also useful coverage of web-hosting, ecommerce hosting and merchant account providers.

Affiliate Marketing. Articles, guides and free newsletter.

AffiliateMatch. Articles and affiliate program recommendations.

Affiliate Tips. Articles, listings and free newsletter on affiliate programs.

Associate Programs. Over 5,700 affiliate opportunities listed, plus helpful newsletter.

DoubleClick. Good advice on affiliates, marketing strategies and industry research.

HowToWeb. Look in Webmaster's Corner for listings of affiliate solution providers and banner exchange programs.

ReveNews. Keep up to date on the standing of Affiliate Solution Providers by following these message boards of Opinions section. Also free research articles and newsletter.

Top 100 Affiliates. Look in the referral section of this site, devoted to earning money on the web.

Before indulging in dreams of avarice, however, you should remember that online affilate marketing is now quite difficult. Each of the more popular products is promoted by thousands or tens of thousands of affiliates, some 95% of whom make little or no money at all.


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