Microsonic Development

So I get many inquiries about how to make money on the web. Obviously, my first (and instinctive) response is to say, “Oh, it’s easy! Just develop.” But then, when I come down from cloud nine, I realize that not everyone is a developer (thus the reason I have work). Yes, anyone can certainly do it, but it is a skill acquired over a long period of time to get really good at. So what can the “average joe” do to make money on the web?

Well, really, there are many things users can do. With the recent boom of open source programs (and if you’re willing to invest, the paid programs normally are worth the extra bucks) you can open all different sorts of sites. If you’re not selling any particular product, you have to make your site appeal to the masses. The name of the game is traffic. It is the most important aspect to any successful site on the web. With no users, there is no revenue.

Let me explain. I write this blog to help people, however, I have ads. Now, they do not generate much money for me (hardly anything really), but for a site with major traffic (like myspace or facebook), these ads are generating thousands per month. The more traffic you receive, the greater than chance your ads will be clicked. The more clicks they receive, the more money you earn. That’s the basis to internet revenue if you’re not selling something.

Now, there are many great kinds of sites. Blogs are useful if you have unique content. Directories are nice if you can get your PR (Google Pagerank) up high (do this with backlinks).  But among the most effective traffic generators (not to mention the most CPU intensive and generally require a dedicated server of Virtual Private Server) are web proxies. People love these, so load these with ads and allow more or less unrestricted web access and you will probably be getting a nice chunk of change in return.

So I’ve been mainly discussing Google adsense and generally ad generating services, but do not forget keeping stats on your own (awstats is pretty good) is an always valuable technique. If you have proof (like the awstats page) of high traffic, you can sell ads directly to interested users. Say you have 1 million unique hits a month, you can sell a top banner ad for $X,XXX per month or more.

As I mentioned before, traffic is the name of the game. It bears repeating because it is the only reason for internet web site success, on all levels. Whether you are selling a product or just serving free content with some ads, the more users you get, the more products you will sell or ad clicks you will get. This means, however, you must invest time and money into advertising yourself to get your site known.

For those of you who would like to claim that advertising doesn’t really work, I challenge you to then explain to me what companies have the best sell quantities. The most heavily advertised businesses are simply among the most profitable due to the advertising and offering a (in most cases: fairly) decent product. So get out there, make sure your site is presentable, and get to advertising!

Regards,
Dennis M.

Too many domains today are registered and then simply setup as parked pages, or even worse: duplicates of some other big site. This is an atrocious mess. It takes all originality out of the web itself! If one is simply going to reproduce content that another site already has, the reasons to go to multiple websites are lost.

Now, many of you may try to argue: “Your blog has content that can be found elsewhere,” or the great, “Your blog isn’t original either.” Well, the fact of the matter is it’s true; my blog is not original (there are many programming blogs out there), and yes the ideas of my posts can probably be found elsewhere. However, I write my blog to address your (user’s) questions directly focusing on specific questions you may have. Now there is no doubt some of my content is completely unique, but other things (such as my last post) have been posted over and over again. Now why would I do this? Simply to give another perspective, but I digress; duplicating content with hardly any change to it’s original format is what I am talking about and that’s not how this blog operates.

When I say unique content, I don’t mean you must only cover completely unique concepts. In fact, that is not what I am saying at all as you can see by the premisis of this blog. However, you do want to make sure you thoroughly understand your topic and can completely reproduce it yourself with little or no reference (Now be reasonable with yourself. You need to learn somehow anyway, so don’t shun outside sources!). If you can reproduce content all by yourself, it’s generally unique giving your perspective on your topic. As you very well know, people learn differently, so maybe your way of explaining the topic was better than the content giants of slashdot or a site similar in nature.

From an SEO standpoint, however, unique content is very important. It’s what gets your site noticed in the web. More unique content means (generally) more backlinks which lead to more traffic. To the average person, SEO means nothing coherently, but in terms of them ever finding out about your site it means almost everything. Good SEO means it’s easier for the average person to understand navigation of your website (e.g.: using static page links and deep links) and a higher popularity rating on (sometimes) search engines and other sites.

So as you can see, unique content plays a huge role in getting your site recognized. Without a userbase, a website ends up being wasted space on the web with stuff everyone already knows or doesn’t care about. So before you write that next article, make sure you’re not just copy and pasting (for reasons other than plagarism ).

Regards,
Dennis M.