Making Money on the Internet
There are lots of ways you can make money on the Internet. You can sell things via classified ads, auctions or even create your own web site to sell your products or services. Creating and selling your own e-books is one excellent idea.
What to sell
One thing that can be sold on the web is access to information! This usually comes in the form of subscriptions to newsletters, or sales of books or reports. Check out these report titles for example. One advantage of selling information, or access to the information, is that these can be delivered electronically. This means there is no product to manufacture or ship. All you need to do is set up a mechanism for delivering the content, such as a web site, and everything (except marketing) takes care of itself.
People crave information that appeals to their basic needs and will somehow educate or enlighten them. Simply by putting your own specialized information into e-books, manuals, reports, e-zines or newsletters, you can start putting a hefty price on information you have no doubt been giving away. Makes sense doesn't it?
If you are able to communicate an idea to another person, then you've got what it takes to be an e-author. All you have to do is write down that idea (or a couple of them) and publish it as an e-book. After that, just set up a website and start marketing your product. That's it! You could be making a lot of money in no time! Sounds good right? Click here for more information.
There's a great new report called The New Age Work at Home Plan: "Internet-Based Financial Independence in 10 Simple Steps"which you can get for free by clicking the link above and thenclicking the GOLD KEY at the bottom of that page.
Marketing
Besides selling products, you can make money by selling advertising to people who want traffic sent to their web site from yours. Banner Advertising and Affiliations are two types of programs that fall into this category. These programs pay you from a few cents for each click on their banner to a large commission for the sale of their product or service.
Here's a sample report, from our Valuable Information section, entitled How to Get People to Visit Your Website.
Here's an important free report on The Top 10 Internet Marketing Blunders! Make sure you don't commit these common errors.
"Nothing But Net" shows step by step, in plain English, how Michael Campbell generated $750,000.00 in Internet revenue, selling real world products in less than a year, without paying for any conventional advertising of any kind, not even a business card! Click here to learn from the master.
Here's a free report for Windows users - 164 Ways To Attract Customers And Make Money With Your Website! Your Free Guide to Online Success!
Here are some good Internet marketing resources:
Make Your Site Sell
Selfpromotion.com
Tools for making money on the Internet:
Adwords and Adsense
Affiliations
Site Build It!
Autoresponders
Banner Exchanges
E-commerce
E-zines
Link Exchanges
Mailing Lists
Merchant Accounts
Pay Per Click Advertising
Submission Services and Software
Adwords and Adsense
These two Google programs are very popular ways to both advertise and make money on your website. Adwords are ads that you pay for each time someone clicks on your ad. You create Adwords ads based on keywords that you think people will type into the Google search engine, when looking for your product or service. When people search for your keywords, your ad appears on the right hand side of the search listings.
Adwords also appear on websites that are signed up in the Adsense program. Each time a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the advertiser pays an amount and the website owner collects part of that amount from Google. Some website owners make thousands of dollars a month from Adsense.
For more information, click one of the Google ads at the bottom of this page.
Affiliations
Affiliations are a good way to make money on the Internet. There are hundreds of affiliate programs available to choose from, representing many different kinds of products. The first, and probably most famous, affiliate program was Amazon.com's. The great thing about affiliate programs is that you don't need a product, or even a web site, to make money on the Internet. Many affiliate programs give you a web site to advertise, and that's really all there is to making money this way. Promote, promote, promote!
Things you should look for in an affiliate program are reporting capabilities (so you can see what sales you've made, what commissions are due you and whether they've been paid), multi-tier programs (so you can get paid commissions on the sales of affiliates that have purchased from you), and perhaps most importantly, contact information, should a question or problem arise. High commissions are a big bonus too.
Site Build It!
SBI! is more than a Web host. It's a one-of-a-kind blend of content, process and tools that drives success (domain name and hosting included). SBI! grows Top 3% Traffic Sites that generate substantial income... and freedom. Here's an easy way to build a successful website on your passion.
[Tools menu]
Autoresponders
Autoresponders can make your advertising efforts easier and more lucrative. With an autoresponder, when a potential customer wishes more information about your product, they are automatically sent an e-mail with all the pertinent information. Check out this report from our Valuable Knowledge section: E-Mail, Autoresponders, Information-on-Demand.
Some web hosting services provide autoresponders, or you can sign up with one of several free services (that add and advertisement) such as Getresponse.com or a pay service such as AWeber.
[Tools menu]
Banner Exchanges
Banner exchanges are a good way to attract visitors from other web sites. The idea is that you put a banner for another web site on one of your web pages in exchange for that site putting one of your banners on one of their pages. A good banner exchange program is run by WorldProfit.com.
Banners are cool, but in many ways links are better. People tend to be on guard when they click on a banner. You can position your site better with some well chosen words and a link.
Here are some free Banner makers available on the Internet
angelfire.com/createabanner
bannercreator
crecon.com
members.tripod.com/createabanner
mediabuilder
E-commerce
E-commerce is what everybody's talking about these days. Basically it refers to setting up an electronic storefront. You can use forms or shopping carts to take your orders. It is best to accept credit cards or electronic checks for payment, but you can have the customer mail or fax an order in too.
The "Electronic Business Kit" offers Internet entrepreneurs an instant online business, which includes their own revenue-generating Web Commerce Site and an opportunity to make money three (3) ways. The Web Commerce Site is fully enabled with real-time, online credit card processing, toll-free 800 live operator service. AIS Media handles all order processing, product fulfillment and customer services.
[Tools menu]
E-zines
E-zines are electronic magazines or newsletters that get sent as e-mail to a list of subscribers. They usually except advertising, so this is a great way to promote your web site or product. In fact this method of advertising has become one of the best way to get targeted visitors to your web site. Just pick a newsletter that appeals to your intended audience. While we're on the subject, please sign up for our newsletter, What's new at about-the-web.com. A good book on this subject is The E-zine Marketing Machine.
Here are some Directories that list E-zines you might want to advertise in:
BestEzines.com
Ezine Adsource Directory
Ezine Directory
Ezine Directory Free Marketing News
Ezine Search
Ezine Seek
Ezine Universe
Ezines Plus
Foxcities Ezine Directory
Mailing Lists
Mailing Lists are another way to advertise on the Internet. You must be careful when using these lists to make sure the people on the list want to receive email about the product or service you are advertising. Otherwise you might be guilty of Spamming which can get you banned from many servers.
However, it is an excellent idea to get people to sign up for something (a newsletter, free report, etc.) on your website, so that you can create a mailing list of people to send your offers to. Click here to learn how you can safely market to your clients with beautiful html email.
Link Exchanges
One advertising model is called a link exchange. This is where two or more web sites exchange advertising banners and/or links in order to promote each other's site. Some websites have taken this to an extreme. Links on sites with hundreds of links on a page are probably useless to you. Make sure your link will appear on a page on the site that will actually be found by visitors and is not buried on a list with too many other links.
[Tools menu]
Merchant Accounts
If you're selling things on the Internet, you can increase your sales by 30 to 50% by accepting credit cards and electronic checks. There are several ways to do this. You can set up a merchant account with your bank, you can set up a merchant account on line with a company such as QuickCommerce. This site uses the #1 merchant account provider Charge.com to sell it's Valuable Knowledge.
MERCHANT ACCOUNTS FOR THE LITTLE GUY - Even without a Merchant Account, you can start taking credit card orders online. I DO NOT RECOMMEND ClickBank. If you're selling just a few small ticket items, set up an account with 2checkout.com . They handle everything for you. Nothing to buy, no monthly fees, plus an affiliate program!
If you are a small business, a new business, an Internet Business, a Mail Order Business... If your credit is not so good, or have been turned down before, you'll be fighting a long uphill battle and you'll be paying extraordinary fees to obtain a Merchant Account... Until now! AIS Merchant Services makes getting a merchant account quick and easy.
[Tools menu]
Pay Per Click Advertising
A great way of getting qualified traffic to your website is to pay for small ads that appear alongside regular search listings on many search engines. This is called Pay Per Click advertising and typically costs advertisers somewhere between $.01 and $9.99 per click. Advertisers have considerable control over how much they spend and can even determine when and where their ads are displayed.
Here is a list of Pay Per Click search engines to advertise on:
ABC Search
Enhance Interactive
goClick
Google Adwords
SearchFeed
Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture)
Submission Services and Software
There are many submission services and programs that you can use to promote your site with. Most of these will submit your main URL to many search engines. You can also submit classified ads easily with these services or programs. A good service is MGAWEB's Super Submission.
My favorite submission service is Selfpromotion.com. You can have them submit your URL to hundreds of search engines and directories, use all their other great resources, and then pay them what you think it was worth to you.
Monday, September 10, 2007
How to make a website and make money on the Internet: The basics
How to make a website and make money on the Internet: The basicsToday it seems that everybody has a website and is making money on the Internet! Here are a few tips to know before you create a web site of your own and how to get started.
Different types of websites:There are a few different types of websites on the Internet. Some very simple to build and maintain, others extremely complex and expensive. Understanding the differences and knowing what you want to accomplish in advance will help you choose which type of web-site is right for you.
Free Internet Website hostsThere are several companies that provide free web hosting on the Internet. This means they will provide a web server and allow you to create your own web page. Free web hosts usually provide only a small amount of storage, meaning you can only create a small and simple website, and they usually make their money by forcing pop-up advertising whenever someone views your web page.
RECOMMENDED: Virtual website hostsA virtual web hosting company provides web servers and an internet connection shared by more than one customer. They provide full functionality and usually large amounts of storage for your website. Virtual web hosts are usually the best choice for most non-commercial web sites.
Because of the balance of low-price and high reliability, grownupgeek.com began on a virtual web host. Our first host, Powweb is highly recommended as a low-priced ($5-$8 per month depending on the plan and promotion), easy way to start your own website. You can click the Powweb icon on the left to see what they offer or sign up for their low-priced services. PowWeb offers pre-made website templates, they are very easy to setup, and have very good customer support. You can even choose your domain-name with PowWeb all at the same time. If you want to get your new website online fast and don't want to spend a lot of money PowWeb is a smart choice. Click here for more info about PowWeb.
More recently because of the size and popularity of our website, we were forced to change to a "Dedicated host".
Dedicated website hostsA dedicated web-hosting company provides highly reliable and high speed web servers and dedicated internet connections. These services are extremely fast and reliable, but can also be very expensive. Companies like iPowerWeb offer good priced dedicated web servers.
iPowerWeb Dedicated Servers from $79/month Click Here
Self-hostingHosting a web server of your own requires a high speed connection to the internet and expertise in firewall and security configuration, and can quickly become a full time job. Because of the level of expertise required and because most internet service providers prohibit the use of web servers on non-business internet connection accounts, trying to host your own web-server is not recommended and highly discouraged.
Web page creation softwareSome web hosts such as PowWeb allow you to easily create web pages using simple web-based editing tools, know as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. This type of page creation is very easy and all you need is a web browser (such as Firefox). The trade-off is that the type of pages you can create is very limited. Most virtual web-hosting companies including PowWeb will allow you to use web-page creation software of your own such as Microsoft Front Page, Dreamweaver, or other site-builder programs. You will need to purchase and learn how to use your web-page editing software, but this will give you more control and capabilities in the long term. Hosts such as PowWeb offer great pre-made and easy to setup website templates that make creating your website quick and easy. Click here for more info about PowWeb's easy website setups.
The fun part: Make MONEY with a website!The two common ways to make money with your website are selling products or selling advertising. We will focus on selling advertising since it's easy, and ANY website can do it.
Google AdSense
Google's AdSense has revolutionized the way people make money on the Internet and is by far the easiest way to make money online. Now virtually any website can make money, with virtually no limits to what you can earn! Google Adsense automatically delivers "targeted" text ads to your website giving your readers what they are looking for. For example: If you have a website about how to make money on the Internet, Google Adsense will display advertisements about creating websites, making money on the internet, or web hosting solutions.
Google Adsense is FREE and easy to use!Signing up for Google Adsense is absolutely free and takes only a few minutes. Simply fill out a form online to create your account and you're done. After your account is created, simply copy & paste your ad-code onto your website and start making money online! It is literally that easy! Of course how well you do and how much money you make depends on many factors, mainly the amount of traffic & visitors that come to your website. A website that gets a #1 or #2 search result in Google or Yahoo can easily get many thousands of visitors per day, and earn thousands of dollars per month.
Sign up for AdSense.
AuctionAds
AuctionAds is a newcomer to the game, but it is already showing a lot of potential, and many website owners are generating significant earnings with it. We have decided to list Auction Ads here because it is by far the easiest "affiliate" program there is to make money on the internet with. AuctionAds allows you to display eBay auctions on your website based on keywords that you specify. Anytime someone wins one of those auctions or uses the eBay "Buy it Now" option, you collect a commission. Even better, if someone signs up as a new eBay member within 30 days of clicking on one the ad-links on your website, you earn up to $25! AuctionAds is completely free and very easy to implement. To learn more about AuctionAds CLICK HERE or go to www.AuctionAds.com. To read a little more about how to make money on the internet with AuctionAds, see my recent blog post: How to make money with AuctionAds.
After building your website make it easy to findThe key to making money with your website is traffic. The more people that come to your website, the more money you can make with affiliate advertisers. They key to getting people to your website is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimazation (SEO) is the process of getting your website into search engines (such as Yahoo and Google) and getting it listed at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you build a website about Widgets, you want to be sure that anyone searching on Yahoo or Google for "Widgets" sees your webpage at the number one position, and not somebody else's webpage.
Basic Steps of SEO
Submit your website to DMOZ.ORG. DMOZ is the 'mother' of Internet Directores
Submit your website to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. All the major search engines allow you to submit your site so they can start adding your pages into their search index.
Solicit links from other websites to your website. When a site links to your site, it's like a 'vote' that your website has good content. Search engines take into account how many other sites link to your site when deciding what to list in the SERPs. Links from other sites also make it easier for search engines to find your website
Read and learn! There are entire books, websites and forums dedicated to making websites "search engine friendly". Two good sources are www.webmasterworld.com and www.digitalpoint.com.
Add new content and lots of it, then waitAfter creating your website and learning SEO, the next step is to wait. It can take anywhere from weeks to months for the search engines to begin listing your website. Use this time to add unique and interesting pages and information to your website and keep it growing.
Earning money with your website might take a few weeks: Use the time to your advantageAs we said above, it can take time before you start getting traffic to your website and making money on the internet. Use this time to learn more about making your site better, and make it better. Making money with a website is not a get-rich scheme, and it takes hard work, dedication and patience, but the payoff can be well worth it.
Different types of websites:There are a few different types of websites on the Internet. Some very simple to build and maintain, others extremely complex and expensive. Understanding the differences and knowing what you want to accomplish in advance will help you choose which type of web-site is right for you.
Free Internet Website hostsThere are several companies that provide free web hosting on the Internet. This means they will provide a web server and allow you to create your own web page. Free web hosts usually provide only a small amount of storage, meaning you can only create a small and simple website, and they usually make their money by forcing pop-up advertising whenever someone views your web page.
RECOMMENDED: Virtual website hostsA virtual web hosting company provides web servers and an internet connection shared by more than one customer. They provide full functionality and usually large amounts of storage for your website. Virtual web hosts are usually the best choice for most non-commercial web sites.
Because of the balance of low-price and high reliability, grownupgeek.com began on a virtual web host. Our first host, Powweb is highly recommended as a low-priced ($5-$8 per month depending on the plan and promotion), easy way to start your own website. You can click the Powweb icon on the left to see what they offer or sign up for their low-priced services. PowWeb offers pre-made website templates, they are very easy to setup, and have very good customer support. You can even choose your domain-name with PowWeb all at the same time. If you want to get your new website online fast and don't want to spend a lot of money PowWeb is a smart choice. Click here for more info about PowWeb.
More recently because of the size and popularity of our website, we were forced to change to a "Dedicated host".
Dedicated website hostsA dedicated web-hosting company provides highly reliable and high speed web servers and dedicated internet connections. These services are extremely fast and reliable, but can also be very expensive. Companies like iPowerWeb offer good priced dedicated web servers.
iPowerWeb Dedicated Servers from $79/month Click Here
Self-hostingHosting a web server of your own requires a high speed connection to the internet and expertise in firewall and security configuration, and can quickly become a full time job. Because of the level of expertise required and because most internet service providers prohibit the use of web servers on non-business internet connection accounts, trying to host your own web-server is not recommended and highly discouraged.
Web page creation softwareSome web hosts such as PowWeb allow you to easily create web pages using simple web-based editing tools, know as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. This type of page creation is very easy and all you need is a web browser (such as Firefox). The trade-off is that the type of pages you can create is very limited. Most virtual web-hosting companies including PowWeb will allow you to use web-page creation software of your own such as Microsoft Front Page, Dreamweaver, or other site-builder programs. You will need to purchase and learn how to use your web-page editing software, but this will give you more control and capabilities in the long term. Hosts such as PowWeb offer great pre-made and easy to setup website templates that make creating your website quick and easy. Click here for more info about PowWeb's easy website setups.
The fun part: Make MONEY with a website!The two common ways to make money with your website are selling products or selling advertising. We will focus on selling advertising since it's easy, and ANY website can do it.
Google AdSense
Google's AdSense has revolutionized the way people make money on the Internet and is by far the easiest way to make money online. Now virtually any website can make money, with virtually no limits to what you can earn! Google Adsense automatically delivers "targeted" text ads to your website giving your readers what they are looking for. For example: If you have a website about how to make money on the Internet, Google Adsense will display advertisements about creating websites, making money on the internet, or web hosting solutions.
Google Adsense is FREE and easy to use!Signing up for Google Adsense is absolutely free and takes only a few minutes. Simply fill out a form online to create your account and you're done. After your account is created, simply copy & paste your ad-code onto your website and start making money online! It is literally that easy! Of course how well you do and how much money you make depends on many factors, mainly the amount of traffic & visitors that come to your website. A website that gets a #1 or #2 search result in Google or Yahoo can easily get many thousands of visitors per day, and earn thousands of dollars per month.
Sign up for AdSense.
AuctionAds
AuctionAds is a newcomer to the game, but it is already showing a lot of potential, and many website owners are generating significant earnings with it. We have decided to list Auction Ads here because it is by far the easiest "affiliate" program there is to make money on the internet with. AuctionAds allows you to display eBay auctions on your website based on keywords that you specify. Anytime someone wins one of those auctions or uses the eBay "Buy it Now" option, you collect a commission. Even better, if someone signs up as a new eBay member within 30 days of clicking on one the ad-links on your website, you earn up to $25! AuctionAds is completely free and very easy to implement. To learn more about AuctionAds CLICK HERE or go to www.AuctionAds.com. To read a little more about how to make money on the internet with AuctionAds, see my recent blog post: How to make money with AuctionAds.
After building your website make it easy to findThe key to making money with your website is traffic. The more people that come to your website, the more money you can make with affiliate advertisers. They key to getting people to your website is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimazation (SEO) is the process of getting your website into search engines (such as Yahoo and Google) and getting it listed at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). If you build a website about Widgets, you want to be sure that anyone searching on Yahoo or Google for "Widgets" sees your webpage at the number one position, and not somebody else's webpage.
Basic Steps of SEO
Submit your website to DMOZ.ORG. DMOZ is the 'mother' of Internet Directores
Submit your website to the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. All the major search engines allow you to submit your site so they can start adding your pages into their search index.
Solicit links from other websites to your website. When a site links to your site, it's like a 'vote' that your website has good content. Search engines take into account how many other sites link to your site when deciding what to list in the SERPs. Links from other sites also make it easier for search engines to find your website
Read and learn! There are entire books, websites and forums dedicated to making websites "search engine friendly". Two good sources are www.webmasterworld.com and www.digitalpoint.com.
Add new content and lots of it, then waitAfter creating your website and learning SEO, the next step is to wait. It can take anywhere from weeks to months for the search engines to begin listing your website. Use this time to add unique and interesting pages and information to your website and keep it growing.
Earning money with your website might take a few weeks: Use the time to your advantageAs we said above, it can take time before you start getting traffic to your website and making money on the internet. Use this time to learn more about making your site better, and make it better. Making money with a website is not a get-rich scheme, and it takes hard work, dedication and patience, but the payoff can be well worth it.
How to Make Money on the Internet Full
How to make money
The title of this piece is an answer to the most frequently asked question I heard at Davos, both in the hallways and in the sessions. Yes, the Internet is cool, but how do you make money? This is the question that the Have-Nots ask those that Have, or another way, that the Get-Nots ask those who claim to Get. I am so smug in the belief that I can answer the question that I'll ramble my way there, knowing that it's so pregnant that you'll read all the way to the end to hear what I learned and experienced at Davos just to get an answer to this question that has so many people wondering.
But first, several stories from Davos.
Klaus Schwab
Klaus Schwab, the Swiss professor who is the host of Davos, is a medium-height man, fit, always well-dressed, bald, formal in his mannerisms. Dr. Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum and is the moderator of the most important sessions at Davos.
He has an interesting way of introducing speakers, one which I've never seen before, that I will try the next time I moderate a panel. He addresses the speaker not the audience. For example he would say "Tony Blair, you are the Prime Minister of Great Britain. In your six years in office you have had many successes in bringing your country into the new global economy. You were a Global Leader of Tomorrow, inducted in 1989. We are very proud of our association with you."
The speaker is beaming by the time he or she takes the microphone. The audience feels as if they are party to a private conversation. It may be an old-fashioned way of doing intros, I have a feeling that Mr. Schwab is old-fashioned in all his mannerisms, even if his ideas were and continue to be revolutionary.
Mit de Cherman agzent
An aside, Dr. Schwab reminds me how to speak with a German accent, a skill I learned from my grandmother Lucy Kiesler, who was as German as they come. I learned a phrase and tried it out on many of my fellow Davosers. "My name ist Klaus Schvab and I shpeak Englisch mit de Cherman agzend." When people hear me say that they say "You'll get in trouble!" (It vouldn't be ze firszt dime.) But it makes me laugh. I can totally visualize Schwab as I say it. I like phrases that reach deep into my memory in a clear way. This one touches my funny bone. Everyone else laughs too because I do it so well. I mean no disrespect to him, and if he reads this (I hope he does) this is the way we do things in America, perhaps with less outward reverence than the Swiss, but with no less respect.
Clinton
US President Bill Clinton gave a great speech at Davos on Saturday at noon. The multiple tracks of Davos merged into one. Clinton, who had little sleep in the previous three days looked tired, with big bags under his eyes. He spoke softly, but his message was powerful.
Longtime DaveNet readers will know that I am not a big fan of Mr. Clinton. I called for his resignation several times. Have I been turned around on Clinton? Perhaps.
Recall that in my last piece, Two Days at Davos, I concluded that the message of Davos, globalization, was exactly equivalent to the message of the Web. Mutual respect, inclusion, digging up the old wires and replacing them with bigger ones that go different places.
I wasn't sure that Clinton and I were talking about the same thing until Schwab asked him a question after his speech. "Mr. President," Schwab said, "do you have a message for the business leaders here at Davos?"
After a long pause he said "Find a shared vision." He expounded, telling the story of trade negotiations and economic imbalances between developed and developing nations. I felt he was stating the problems of the Internet industry using terms that made sense to him. My interpretation: Without a shared vision, something we agree on, growth can never really happen. As soon as a layer of progress is complete, the wars begin, and years of stagnation follow. This is the cycle of the software-slash-Internet industry, and it looks (thanks to patents, more on that later) as if we might be about to loop around once again.
So, a shared vision? I thought about this for a few hours. I tried to imagine the leaders of the Internet industry sitting in a room and arriving at a shared vision. Is it possible? I thought about Steve Case and Bill Gates. Case is clearly trying to steer the users into the proprietary AOL world, instead of pushing them to the Web. Gates wants to emphasize the power of desktop computers, with all their RAM and disk space, and of course Microsoft's 20+ year investment in operating system software for desktop software.
Could Gates and Case get on a stage and share a joint vision that's anything more than lip service? Not now. Maybe in a few years, but certainly not in time to make a difference in the battle to keep the Internet open and free. Add the other personalities of the industry, Andy Grove, John Chambers, Scott McNealy, Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, John Doerr, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on, and it seems clear that nothing less than an external redefinition of the purpose of technology could get these men into agreement.
Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP, HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision. All that remains is for two or more of the leaders of the Internet industry to get what Clinton, Schwab and Davos are asking them to do.
(Shimon Peres, a longtime Cabinet minister and former Prime Minister of Israel would expound on this idea later, in a very eloquent way, at the end of the Davos 2000 annual meeting. "Peace is hard work," he said.)
Media leaders
After the Clinton speech, on Saturday afternoon, I walked to the Hotel Rinaldi for the first meeting of the Club of Media Leaders. Everything in Davos has an official upper-case kind of name. The members of the Club are CEOs, publishers and chief editorialists at media companies from around the world. I was the only web guy at the lunch.
We went around the room, each person says what their main challenge was in 1999 and says what their main challenge is for 2000. The most popular answers were The Internet and The Internet.
When I spoke, I said my main challenge for 1999 was ease of use and my main challenge for 2000 is to start 1 million websites. I encouraged my fellow media leaders to embrace the web fully and not look back. Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet. Follow this simple rule and you can't go wrong.
Of course the "How do I make money?" question dominated, as I expect it will at Seybold, and I have an answer for the media leaders that works, as I expect it will work in non-media operations. But that will come at the *end* of this piece. ;->
The demonstrators
Now flip back to the Saturday Media Leaders lunch at the Hotel Rinaldi. We finished going around the room. Klaus Schwab appears briefly to give us a peptalk. Barbara Erskine, the leader of the Media Leaders takes the mike and says that the President of Argentina won't be able to join us because his hotel is surrounded by demonstrators. Wow! "Where?" I ask. She says the Seehof. I'm out of here, now.
I walk out the front door of the Rinaldi and immediately to the left is a police barricade with several thousand banner-waving demonstrators throwing snowballs mit firecrackers and charging the barricades. I climb on a snowbank to get a better look. Several polizei grab me, stick hard things in my ribs and push me back. The Clinton press entourage is there in force. A scene from Forrest Gump, all the publishing CEOs, editors in chiefs, CNN film crews, demonstrators crashing barriers, and it starts snowing hard, big wet flakes. On one side the haves, the people allowed inside Davos; on the other side unknowns, the ones who want to be heard. What are they demonstrating for? I never found out.
But I did document it, with the best pictures I've ever taken, which isn't saying a lot because I just started using a digital camera a few weeks ago. I think it's like writing. The first step is to have something interesting to say. The second step is to have good supporting technology. In this case a rich story of puzzles, color and contrasts appeared before my lens. All I did was click the shutter.
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/stories/storyReader$187
Gates
The next day, Sunday, was Sports Day at Davos, but it was also Blizzard Day. The demonstrators were gone, thanks to the polizei, and the departure of the Clinton entourage, so there was nothing else to do but attend the media leaders lunch with former Microsoft CEO, now chief software architect, Bill Gates. He gives a brief speech, followed by questions and answers from the cream of the journalism world.
Gates echoes many of the ideas you've heard in this column, the power of the personal computer must not be overlooked in the rush to the Internet. He debunks the "myth" of Network Computing as promoted by Sun and Oracle, he says we should check with their customers to find out if their vision had materialized. Gates is confident that it hasn't. I am too, but Bill, don't be so quick to write off Network Computing. It's the engine behind the growth of Yahoo. And while the web browser is a very limited user interface environment, it's not so limited that you can't build a powerful easy to use publishing system around it, as we have. It's good, perhaps, to promote your own company's products, but not at the expense of what's real. Network Computing is great because I can update my site from an Internet cafe in Amsterdam as easily as I can from my office. However, to write an essay like this one, I want great editing tools on my laptop. The Yin and Yang. Of course there's room for Microsoft and other software makers in the world of the Internet. It's not an either-or thing. Hey Bill I'm using your browser right now.
Before the meeting I prepared a couple of questions for Gates and was lucky to have the final word, my question came last, and believe it or not (Forrest Gump again) I had a conversation with Bill in front of all those editorialists. It can be hard to remember all that we said because I was in the middle of it, thinking a step ahead as I engaged with Gates before all those powerful people, but I'm going to try.
I referred to the previous day's challenge from Clinton to business leaders. Bill, can we find a shared vision? His eyes lit up. A well-rehearsed story. Our consistent vision for 25 years has been to bring the power of the personal computer to millions of people. "That's the past," I said, "What about the future?" With fist-pounding enthusiasm, he said that was their vision for the future too. I wasn't satisfied. "What about a *shared* vision Bill?" I kept hoping that he would say The Web, The Web that's the vision we share! In my wildest dreams he would say Ask not what the Internet can do for you. But he didn't.
He talked about SOAP, and said that the audience wouldn't understand it, and they shouldn't have to. I said it can and should be explained. He tried, I think half-heartedly and asked if that was OK. I said no. The audience laughed. He offered me the chance to do it, I did a quick mental calculation, it would take at least two minutes to explain, and this was not my forum, it was his, so I declined.
Gates closed by recommending that everyone in attendance read my column, which is one of things I find very dear about Bill, it's so hard to be critical when he's so enthusiastic about DaveNet. Anyway, before I move on, Bill I'd like to visit you in Redmond to talk about the shared vision thing. You've done something revolutionary in opening up your network to the standards of the Internet. But like the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove, it does no good if people don't know about it.
I'd also like to visit with Bill Clinton to talk about the same thing. But he doesn't read DaveNet. Yet!
Dezterous
Later in the Annual Meeting, Steve Case, Bill Gates, Sumer Redstone and MIT professor Michael Dertouzous would talk about the future of the Internet. Dertouzous asks us to focus on all the new people who will show up on the Web in the coming years. An A-plus for the professor. This is where the action is, in the million websites that will start in 2000, and in the millions, if not billions of websites that will come in the next decade. That my friends is what globalization is about. A voice for anyone with something to say.
$750 million for immunization
In the Plenary Hall on Monday, Bill Gates is on stage with the head of UNICEF, the chairman of Merck, the President of Mozambique, the top people from the World Bank and the WHO, announcing that the Gates Foundation, funded with $21 billion of his money, is making an investment in worldwide child immunization. This is laudable, but weird. I felt sad that we, in the software business, might lose the spark of Bill Gates. It's rare for the sponsor of such a fund to be alive while it's being disseminated. It's also a wonderful thing. Gates, the richest man on earth, is the ultimate trial and error guy. His first ventures into philanthropy will be toe-dips, as this $750 million grant is, for sure, but this is just version 1. When Gates finds a killer app, it's nothing until you get to version 3. Stay tuned.
Patents
As you know I am very interested in Internet patents, most people aren't yet, so I was the only real dissenting voice at a lunch on Monday to discuss the subject. They had an earnest but friendly dissenter scheduled to speak, representing people from indigenous cultures whose herbal medicines are being patented by opportunistic scientists, but I was not friendly, I was horrified by the absolute, irrational, smug, unsupportable, open greed present in the room.
I learned a lot in that session, so my position against Internet patents is even stronger now. First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-grab business. In normal times this might not be such a big deal, but the magic of the Internet, which Walker is exploiting, comes from being free and open, as Joel Klein says, a public space.
How will the patent economy effect open source projects? I was the only member of the open source world in that room. And I was shattered by the greed. After all, isn't there enough money for people who create successful Internet startups like Priceline.Com? Why do we have patents anyway? Is this system, designed for industrial processes, still applicable given the instant gratification reward system for Internet entreprenuers? When your company has a market cap in the billions, is it anything other than unmitigated greed to ask for even more money, for filing a piece of paper with a government?
It might be possible to negotiate with them, but we're going to have to gather some power. I want to be clear on this, I'm outside, I want to charge the barricades, but I don't want to do it alone. If patent madness is allowed to continue without restrictions, the Internet could die, open source or not.
Feed
If you want to read more on this subject, check out this article on the situation in wireless web access:
http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy020300_master.html
"WAP offers a chance to rebuild the Web, without all that annoying freedom, and without all that annoying competition." It's just one example, and is so true.
King Abdullah of Jordan
Back to politics and the Middle East.
When I went to see King Abdullah of Jordan on Sunday, I was prepared to see an immature shadow of his father, the distinguished if short King Hussein, who died last year.
Instead I heard a beautiful speech about peace and friendship. He called the Israelis and Palestinians his brothers. Then he said something that gives me goosebumps to remember. "It's not enough to strive for peace for our children and grandchildren, we must have peace for ourselves." Ahhh the perfect contribution from a young man with most of his life ahead of him. There is nothing wrong with selfishness in the cause of peace. It's beautiful.
Shimon Peres
Fast-forward to Tuesday evening, the closing session of Davos 2000. Shimon Peres, the distinguished Israeli cabinet officer in charge of the peace process says "Peace is hard work."
No doubt! He recalls with affection many late night sessions at Davos with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "That man just won't accept a night cap," he says with a big grandfatherly twinkle in his eye. We all laugh. I can't tell you what a relief it is to me, an American Jew, to see peace in the Middle East. The wisdom of the Peres' years contrasts the youth of Abdullah. This is what a shared vision looks like. This is something the high-tech industry has yet to get. I hope I live to see that day too.
Mr. Son
Softbank's Masayoshi Son is one of the least-known and most powerful people in the high tech world.
An early investor in Yahoo and the largest shareholder in E-Trade, Son also owns one of the richest VC firms in the world, and Comdex and so much else, including the Seybold Conference that I'm going to keynote on Monday.
I had never seen or heard Son until Davos. He's got the biggest damned grin I've ever seen. What's behind the smile? He's winning the game he plays, he's the perfect foil for the fear at Davos and Seybold, on stage is the man who Gets It in a 36-point font.
He asks the audience a question. How many of you believe there is an Internet Bubble? 70 percent say yes. Now, how many believe the Internet industry will be worth more than the PC industry? Every hand goes up. Now he points out the contradiction. All the dot-com companies represent $1 trillion in value. The PC companies are worth $6 trillion. So if you believe your own logic, the bubble won't happen at least until stock values go up six-fold. Of course the trick is to pick the winners, but it's sure that Son-San will win. Not only is he long on E-Trade, he's also starting his own all-electronic stock market! No trading floor. He doesn't pause to catch his breath. Right on.
(An aside, I attended an excellent panel on electronic stock markets, including Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He said there's no time to waste in building the all-electronic trading floor. Developers in Europe and Asia are moving quickly. I also had drinks with the chairman of the Warsaw stock exchange. He asked for advice on firewalls and NT versus Unix, which I gladly gave.)
Fear of the Internet
One of the last sessions at Davos, A Values-Added Century, was a totally inspiring and heart-grabbing set of stories told by people who are not rich or very famous, who have made a contribution to the world by helping children and refugees, or providing inspiration to women or entrepreneurialism in the developing world. A distinguished heart surgeon and the chairman of the Special Olympics were there too.
The stories were so incredible, the thoughts so deep. We learned about the aspirations of refugees, they want choice, freedom, hope. These were recurring themes throughout my Davos experience. I had lunch with media leaders from Russia, received a bear hug from a man who came in third in the Russian presidential election. They want free speech to remain in Russia, but they're not too sure about it.
I ate dinner with two women journalists from Poland who lived through the transition to freedom. I heard a stirring talk by Abdurrahman Wahid, the new Prime Minister of Indonesia, one of the largest countries on earth. He says it's not all about money; and he says it in a folksy way. "I am a poor man, but look, I'm president of my country!" Another deep laugh and sigh of relief. Indonesia, a country that needs a leader, has one.
The message of Davos is the message of love mixed with fear, which is to say it's a real message. The Internet provokes fear, I think largely because the message of the Internet comes to them from people who are scared. I heard concerns on the stage at the Values-Added session, fear of the Internet, and I asked for the floor and gave one of the best, most impassioned speeches of my life.
"I have something important to say," I said, and all the faces in the room turned to me. "The Internet is not about money. I've been inspired as you have by what I've learned from people on the Internet, from their creativity, humanity, hopes and frailty. Don't give up on the Internet, it is for you."
I said a lot more, but I honestly don't remember what I said. It was probably fairly typical DaveNet stuff, but they hadn't heard it before. I hadn't heard it in this context either. There is an Internet that wants to enable all the voices in the world, to empower people *and* help them create new businesses. I believe that the Web is not only the vision that's shared by technology leaders, it's the vision that we can share with political and economic leaders too. Just think about the Middle East. There are a few bumps, we can all make money on the Internet, and yes I do believe the soppy stuff about the Internet being the next step in the path of evolution of our species.
But now, finally, the part you've been waiting for, how you will make money on the Internet, so you can stop wasting time asking the question and get busy getting rich.
How to Make Money in the Internet
Suppose you run a newspaper in Singapore. This defines a community. Open a new server that allows people in your community to create their own Web sites. No editorial policy on these sites, except some obvious ones, don't support illegal activity as long as it doesn't relate to free speech. (I have no idea how the web can work without absolute freedom of expression, but we don't accept pornography or illegal trade on UserLand servers, and don't recommend that others do.)
Make it easy for your community members to sell goods and services on your servers. Provide a service bureau for accepting major credit cards. Of course, as a faciliator of this commerce you're entitled to a commission on each sale. But that's just half of the value equation, and I'd argue it's the less interesting half.
Encourage your community members to gather facts, draw conclusions, state opinions and organize others into action. Read the sites yourself. Require that every editorial person in your workforce read the sites. Have internal meetings where you only talk about what's happening in your community of websites. Have face-to-face meetings where you invite the leading webmasters in your community. Learn from each other. Get down in the trenches, in a sense, and listen, and then write about what you learn. Listen listen listen.
As you get to know your community, stars will emerge. Give them space on your home page and run ads on their sites. Be clever in choosing the ads. Link together problems with solutions, some commercial, others just for the good of your community. What's good for your community? You decide.
What just happened? You grew by an order of magnitude. And you grew into the Web, a business that pays a premium market cap, unlike the paper-based publishing system, and the emulation of paper publishing that most publishing websites employ in 2000. The people who run your home page are free to link to stories produced by the print publication, or not. My bet is that within several months, the community web sites will be producing content that's as interesting to your community as the copy produced by your current editorial staff.
Meet with the chairman of your local stock market, if he or she isn't already beating your door down. Issue a tracking stock, or, even better, spin out your new web operation. Collect several hundred million dollars, possibly more, to capitalize your new venture. With that money, buy infrastructure.
Wire up your best new editorialists with broadband connections. Buy them the latest digital cameras. Build a warehouse to stock goods that people can buy from your server. Lease a fleet of delivery trucks to make fulfillment virtually instantanous. Grant stock options to the best editorial people, including ones that come from your old print pub, and also give them stock that they must pass on to people whose sites they support.
Further, think in terms of a global audience. How many people want to know about Singapore? How many people in your city might want to host visitors from far away? Find a sister city in a land far away and find out what makes your communities similar and what makes them different.
Spread the new wealth around. And never ask what the Internet can do for you, always do things that just do one thing, grow the Internet, help it reach into the community you define. If you follow this formula, you can't lose, in my humble opinion, unless there is an Internet bubble that bursts before you get the money, but as Son-San says, there are good reasons to believe that there is no such bubble.
Who loses?
Again, in my humble opinion, no one has to lose, but no one gets to keep doing the same job they were doing before the transition to the Web. If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
How this effects publishing
In the publishing environment, columnists and reporters will share their space with the people. The pros have to become ordinary people again, and let their writing and ideas compete with the expressions of amateurs. The old publishing standard "Everyone needs an editor," will soften in the age of universal publishing. "Editing can sometimes improve the effectiveness of writing" is more accurate. People who can self-edit, or have less formal editing processes, will not be held back. Judge the process by the end result. Some people can write without filtering.
We may sacrifice a little quality, both in terms of writing style and factual accuracy. This column is a good example. When I wrote for Wired the copy may have been cleaner, but the ideas were sanitized. It's inevitable when you prepare copy that must pass tests of political correctness. Let's say I was writing for a big publication whose CEO wanted to go back to Davos next year. Out goes the stuff about Speaking English mit de Cherman agzend. Now you might not miss that, but what else would you miss? Would my publisher let me reveal to all our competitors the blueprint for our growth? If I'm untethered, as I am, I am free of those kinds of concerns. If my host doesn't point to my column because of it's limited political correctness, perhaps his or her competitor will? And since I have my own community, I know in advance that this article will get flow. Even so, I don't go out of my way to insult people I like, and I will generally reveal my business model at a moment's notice because I practice the Ask Not What the Internet Can Do For You philosophy.
If the market places a high value on the cherished attributes so prized by print-era editorialists, then they will be proven right. But you must have the courage to put your ideals to the test. This isn't a choice you have. Your principles *will* be put to the test, your only choice is whether or not you want to bet against the Internet here. I recommend at least a bet-hedge. and if you really jump in, I think you'll see that the web has its own mechanism for quality. If you want people to return, you have to take the high road, the main person whose reputation you tarnish with weak opinion and incorrect fact is your own.
A case study
If you want to see this idea in action, compare Scripting News and Davos Newbies with the Davos site that Newsweek produced. This is a fair A-B comparison since we were covering the same story. We all had limited resources. Newseek had a group of writers and photographers and production people (today they're webmasters and HTML coders) -- a traditional publishing organization that dates back to the 1940s at least, perhaps earlier. Scripting News and Davos Newbies were written by sole practitioners, one the ultimate insider, Lance Knobel, and the other by an outsider who had been invited to have a look at what goes on at Davos, me. Judge for yourself. To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done before.
I think you'll find that Lance and I captured a personal view of the conference that goes into some depth, but there's room for improvement. While Newsweek had more resources, the result was more traditional, human interest color pieces, the kind of stuff you could get from watching CNN and reading Reuters.
I envision a Davos, maybe not in 2001, but certainly in 2002 or 2003, where every participant can have their own site, and many do. I imagine that out of 3000 possible sites, there will be 30 excellent ones and 100 very good ones. People outside Davos will be able to experience Davos real-time, from a dozen perspectives (no one person can read 130 different quickly updating sites). And the Davos process will continue year-round, as the community defined by EditThisPage.Com is 24-by-7 and roams the landscape of the web, morphs and grows, and never runs out of ideas for connecting different cultures with each other. As I understand the Davos philosophy, this is totally consistent with it.
This is at the heart of what I want to show at Seybold. We can all grow together, but first there has to be respect. At the heart of each print publication is a brand and a team that can lead a community into the web. It's completely human to not want to jump into the unknown, so being scared is OK, it's rational. But inevitably change comes, and you can't take it with you. So take off the parachute, forget what you know, and go ahead and jump. That's where fun comes. That's what we're all doing. None of us get out of this alive. It's later than you think.
The title of this piece is an answer to the most frequently asked question I heard at Davos, both in the hallways and in the sessions. Yes, the Internet is cool, but how do you make money? This is the question that the Have-Nots ask those that Have, or another way, that the Get-Nots ask those who claim to Get. I am so smug in the belief that I can answer the question that I'll ramble my way there, knowing that it's so pregnant that you'll read all the way to the end to hear what I learned and experienced at Davos just to get an answer to this question that has so many people wondering.
But first, several stories from Davos.
Klaus Schwab
Klaus Schwab, the Swiss professor who is the host of Davos, is a medium-height man, fit, always well-dressed, bald, formal in his mannerisms. Dr. Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum and is the moderator of the most important sessions at Davos.
He has an interesting way of introducing speakers, one which I've never seen before, that I will try the next time I moderate a panel. He addresses the speaker not the audience. For example he would say "Tony Blair, you are the Prime Minister of Great Britain. In your six years in office you have had many successes in bringing your country into the new global economy. You were a Global Leader of Tomorrow, inducted in 1989. We are very proud of our association with you."
The speaker is beaming by the time he or she takes the microphone. The audience feels as if they are party to a private conversation. It may be an old-fashioned way of doing intros, I have a feeling that Mr. Schwab is old-fashioned in all his mannerisms, even if his ideas were and continue to be revolutionary.
Mit de Cherman agzent
An aside, Dr. Schwab reminds me how to speak with a German accent, a skill I learned from my grandmother Lucy Kiesler, who was as German as they come. I learned a phrase and tried it out on many of my fellow Davosers. "My name ist Klaus Schvab and I shpeak Englisch mit de Cherman agzend." When people hear me say that they say "You'll get in trouble!" (It vouldn't be ze firszt dime.) But it makes me laugh. I can totally visualize Schwab as I say it. I like phrases that reach deep into my memory in a clear way. This one touches my funny bone. Everyone else laughs too because I do it so well. I mean no disrespect to him, and if he reads this (I hope he does) this is the way we do things in America, perhaps with less outward reverence than the Swiss, but with no less respect.
Clinton
US President Bill Clinton gave a great speech at Davos on Saturday at noon. The multiple tracks of Davos merged into one. Clinton, who had little sleep in the previous three days looked tired, with big bags under his eyes. He spoke softly, but his message was powerful.
Longtime DaveNet readers will know that I am not a big fan of Mr. Clinton. I called for his resignation several times. Have I been turned around on Clinton? Perhaps.
Recall that in my last piece, Two Days at Davos, I concluded that the message of Davos, globalization, was exactly equivalent to the message of the Web. Mutual respect, inclusion, digging up the old wires and replacing them with bigger ones that go different places.
I wasn't sure that Clinton and I were talking about the same thing until Schwab asked him a question after his speech. "Mr. President," Schwab said, "do you have a message for the business leaders here at Davos?"
After a long pause he said "Find a shared vision." He expounded, telling the story of trade negotiations and economic imbalances between developed and developing nations. I felt he was stating the problems of the Internet industry using terms that made sense to him. My interpretation: Without a shared vision, something we agree on, growth can never really happen. As soon as a layer of progress is complete, the wars begin, and years of stagnation follow. This is the cycle of the software-slash-Internet industry, and it looks (thanks to patents, more on that later) as if we might be about to loop around once again.
So, a shared vision? I thought about this for a few hours. I tried to imagine the leaders of the Internet industry sitting in a room and arriving at a shared vision. Is it possible? I thought about Steve Case and Bill Gates. Case is clearly trying to steer the users into the proprietary AOL world, instead of pushing them to the Web. Gates wants to emphasize the power of desktop computers, with all their RAM and disk space, and of course Microsoft's 20+ year investment in operating system software for desktop software.
Could Gates and Case get on a stage and share a joint vision that's anything more than lip service? Not now. Maybe in a few years, but certainly not in time to make a difference in the battle to keep the Internet open and free. Add the other personalities of the industry, Andy Grove, John Chambers, Scott McNealy, Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, John Doerr, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, the list goes on and on, and it seems clear that nothing less than an external redefinition of the purpose of technology could get these men into agreement.
Then I realized that such an externally defined vision had already been forced on the technology industry. The standards of the Internet, HTTP, HTML and URLs; and perhaps XML, which is a simple formalization of HTML. To go to the next step the leaders of technology merely have to agree to stop struggling against these standards, and to share the knowledge they have developed around them. The web is ready-made for a shared vision. All that remains is for two or more of the leaders of the Internet industry to get what Clinton, Schwab and Davos are asking them to do.
(Shimon Peres, a longtime Cabinet minister and former Prime Minister of Israel would expound on this idea later, in a very eloquent way, at the end of the Davos 2000 annual meeting. "Peace is hard work," he said.)
Media leaders
After the Clinton speech, on Saturday afternoon, I walked to the Hotel Rinaldi for the first meeting of the Club of Media Leaders. Everything in Davos has an official upper-case kind of name. The members of the Club are CEOs, publishers and chief editorialists at media companies from around the world. I was the only web guy at the lunch.
We went around the room, each person says what their main challenge was in 1999 and says what their main challenge is for 2000. The most popular answers were The Internet and The Internet.
When I spoke, I said my main challenge for 1999 was ease of use and my main challenge for 2000 is to start 1 million websites. I encouraged my fellow media leaders to embrace the web fully and not look back. Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet. Follow this simple rule and you can't go wrong.
Of course the "How do I make money?" question dominated, as I expect it will at Seybold, and I have an answer for the media leaders that works, as I expect it will work in non-media operations. But that will come at the *end* of this piece. ;->
The demonstrators
Now flip back to the Saturday Media Leaders lunch at the Hotel Rinaldi. We finished going around the room. Klaus Schwab appears briefly to give us a peptalk. Barbara Erskine, the leader of the Media Leaders takes the mike and says that the President of Argentina won't be able to join us because his hotel is surrounded by demonstrators. Wow! "Where?" I ask. She says the Seehof. I'm out of here, now.
I walk out the front door of the Rinaldi and immediately to the left is a police barricade with several thousand banner-waving demonstrators throwing snowballs mit firecrackers and charging the barricades. I climb on a snowbank to get a better look. Several polizei grab me, stick hard things in my ribs and push me back. The Clinton press entourage is there in force. A scene from Forrest Gump, all the publishing CEOs, editors in chiefs, CNN film crews, demonstrators crashing barriers, and it starts snowing hard, big wet flakes. On one side the haves, the people allowed inside Davos; on the other side unknowns, the ones who want to be heard. What are they demonstrating for? I never found out.
But I did document it, with the best pictures I've ever taken, which isn't saying a lot because I just started using a digital camera a few weeks ago. I think it's like writing. The first step is to have something interesting to say. The second step is to have good supporting technology. In this case a rich story of puzzles, color and contrasts appeared before my lens. All I did was click the shutter.
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/stories/storyReader$187
Gates
The next day, Sunday, was Sports Day at Davos, but it was also Blizzard Day. The demonstrators were gone, thanks to the polizei, and the departure of the Clinton entourage, so there was nothing else to do but attend the media leaders lunch with former Microsoft CEO, now chief software architect, Bill Gates. He gives a brief speech, followed by questions and answers from the cream of the journalism world.
Gates echoes many of the ideas you've heard in this column, the power of the personal computer must not be overlooked in the rush to the Internet. He debunks the "myth" of Network Computing as promoted by Sun and Oracle, he says we should check with their customers to find out if their vision had materialized. Gates is confident that it hasn't. I am too, but Bill, don't be so quick to write off Network Computing. It's the engine behind the growth of Yahoo. And while the web browser is a very limited user interface environment, it's not so limited that you can't build a powerful easy to use publishing system around it, as we have. It's good, perhaps, to promote your own company's products, but not at the expense of what's real. Network Computing is great because I can update my site from an Internet cafe in Amsterdam as easily as I can from my office. However, to write an essay like this one, I want great editing tools on my laptop. The Yin and Yang. Of course there's room for Microsoft and other software makers in the world of the Internet. It's not an either-or thing. Hey Bill I'm using your browser right now.
Before the meeting I prepared a couple of questions for Gates and was lucky to have the final word, my question came last, and believe it or not (Forrest Gump again) I had a conversation with Bill in front of all those editorialists. It can be hard to remember all that we said because I was in the middle of it, thinking a step ahead as I engaged with Gates before all those powerful people, but I'm going to try.
I referred to the previous day's challenge from Clinton to business leaders. Bill, can we find a shared vision? His eyes lit up. A well-rehearsed story. Our consistent vision for 25 years has been to bring the power of the personal computer to millions of people. "That's the past," I said, "What about the future?" With fist-pounding enthusiasm, he said that was their vision for the future too. I wasn't satisfied. "What about a *shared* vision Bill?" I kept hoping that he would say The Web, The Web that's the vision we share! In my wildest dreams he would say Ask not what the Internet can do for you. But he didn't.
He talked about SOAP, and said that the audience wouldn't understand it, and they shouldn't have to. I said it can and should be explained. He tried, I think half-heartedly and asked if that was OK. I said no. The audience laughed. He offered me the chance to do it, I did a quick mental calculation, it would take at least two minutes to explain, and this was not my forum, it was his, so I declined.
Gates closed by recommending that everyone in attendance read my column, which is one of things I find very dear about Bill, it's so hard to be critical when he's so enthusiastic about DaveNet. Anyway, before I move on, Bill I'd like to visit you in Redmond to talk about the shared vision thing. You've done something revolutionary in opening up your network to the standards of the Internet. But like the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove, it does no good if people don't know about it.
I'd also like to visit with Bill Clinton to talk about the same thing. But he doesn't read DaveNet. Yet!
Dezterous
Later in the Annual Meeting, Steve Case, Bill Gates, Sumer Redstone and MIT professor Michael Dertouzous would talk about the future of the Internet. Dertouzous asks us to focus on all the new people who will show up on the Web in the coming years. An A-plus for the professor. This is where the action is, in the million websites that will start in 2000, and in the millions, if not billions of websites that will come in the next decade. That my friends is what globalization is about. A voice for anyone with something to say.
$750 million for immunization
In the Plenary Hall on Monday, Bill Gates is on stage with the head of UNICEF, the chairman of Merck, the President of Mozambique, the top people from the World Bank and the WHO, announcing that the Gates Foundation, funded with $21 billion of his money, is making an investment in worldwide child immunization. This is laudable, but weird. I felt sad that we, in the software business, might lose the spark of Bill Gates. It's rare for the sponsor of such a fund to be alive while it's being disseminated. It's also a wonderful thing. Gates, the richest man on earth, is the ultimate trial and error guy. His first ventures into philanthropy will be toe-dips, as this $750 million grant is, for sure, but this is just version 1. When Gates finds a killer app, it's nothing until you get to version 3. Stay tuned.
Patents
As you know I am very interested in Internet patents, most people aren't yet, so I was the only real dissenting voice at a lunch on Monday to discuss the subject. They had an earnest but friendly dissenter scheduled to speak, representing people from indigenous cultures whose herbal medicines are being patented by opportunistic scientists, but I was not friendly, I was horrified by the absolute, irrational, smug, unsupportable, open greed present in the room.
I learned a lot in that session, so my position against Internet patents is even stronger now. First, you should know that there are organizations whose sole purpose is to define and patent new business processes that build on the Internet. Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.Com, has 60 full-time people working in teams to do nothing more than generate patents. No engineering, no scaling issues, no customer satisfaction requirements (although Walker's company appears to be good at this too), they just a file a claim at various patent offices, and wait for the engineering of the Internet to catch up. A land-grab business. In normal times this might not be such a big deal, but the magic of the Internet, which Walker is exploiting, comes from being free and open, as Joel Klein says, a public space.
How will the patent economy effect open source projects? I was the only member of the open source world in that room. And I was shattered by the greed. After all, isn't there enough money for people who create successful Internet startups like Priceline.Com? Why do we have patents anyway? Is this system, designed for industrial processes, still applicable given the instant gratification reward system for Internet entreprenuers? When your company has a market cap in the billions, is it anything other than unmitigated greed to ask for even more money, for filing a piece of paper with a government?
It might be possible to negotiate with them, but we're going to have to gather some power. I want to be clear on this, I'm outside, I want to charge the barricades, but I don't want to do it alone. If patent madness is allowed to continue without restrictions, the Internet could die, open source or not.
Feed
If you want to read more on this subject, check out this article on the situation in wireless web access:
http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy020300_master.html
"WAP offers a chance to rebuild the Web, without all that annoying freedom, and without all that annoying competition." It's just one example, and is so true.
King Abdullah of Jordan
Back to politics and the Middle East.
When I went to see King Abdullah of Jordan on Sunday, I was prepared to see an immature shadow of his father, the distinguished if short King Hussein, who died last year.
Instead I heard a beautiful speech about peace and friendship. He called the Israelis and Palestinians his brothers. Then he said something that gives me goosebumps to remember. "It's not enough to strive for peace for our children and grandchildren, we must have peace for ourselves." Ahhh the perfect contribution from a young man with most of his life ahead of him. There is nothing wrong with selfishness in the cause of peace. It's beautiful.
Shimon Peres
Fast-forward to Tuesday evening, the closing session of Davos 2000. Shimon Peres, the distinguished Israeli cabinet officer in charge of the peace process says "Peace is hard work."
No doubt! He recalls with affection many late night sessions at Davos with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "That man just won't accept a night cap," he says with a big grandfatherly twinkle in his eye. We all laugh. I can't tell you what a relief it is to me, an American Jew, to see peace in the Middle East. The wisdom of the Peres' years contrasts the youth of Abdullah. This is what a shared vision looks like. This is something the high-tech industry has yet to get. I hope I live to see that day too.
Mr. Son
Softbank's Masayoshi Son is one of the least-known and most powerful people in the high tech world.
An early investor in Yahoo and the largest shareholder in E-Trade, Son also owns one of the richest VC firms in the world, and Comdex and so much else, including the Seybold Conference that I'm going to keynote on Monday.
I had never seen or heard Son until Davos. He's got the biggest damned grin I've ever seen. What's behind the smile? He's winning the game he plays, he's the perfect foil for the fear at Davos and Seybold, on stage is the man who Gets It in a 36-point font.
He asks the audience a question. How many of you believe there is an Internet Bubble? 70 percent say yes. Now, how many believe the Internet industry will be worth more than the PC industry? Every hand goes up. Now he points out the contradiction. All the dot-com companies represent $1 trillion in value. The PC companies are worth $6 trillion. So if you believe your own logic, the bubble won't happen at least until stock values go up six-fold. Of course the trick is to pick the winners, but it's sure that Son-San will win. Not only is he long on E-Trade, he's also starting his own all-electronic stock market! No trading floor. He doesn't pause to catch his breath. Right on.
(An aside, I attended an excellent panel on electronic stock markets, including Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He said there's no time to waste in building the all-electronic trading floor. Developers in Europe and Asia are moving quickly. I also had drinks with the chairman of the Warsaw stock exchange. He asked for advice on firewalls and NT versus Unix, which I gladly gave.)
Fear of the Internet
One of the last sessions at Davos, A Values-Added Century, was a totally inspiring and heart-grabbing set of stories told by people who are not rich or very famous, who have made a contribution to the world by helping children and refugees, or providing inspiration to women or entrepreneurialism in the developing world. A distinguished heart surgeon and the chairman of the Special Olympics were there too.
The stories were so incredible, the thoughts so deep. We learned about the aspirations of refugees, they want choice, freedom, hope. These were recurring themes throughout my Davos experience. I had lunch with media leaders from Russia, received a bear hug from a man who came in third in the Russian presidential election. They want free speech to remain in Russia, but they're not too sure about it.
I ate dinner with two women journalists from Poland who lived through the transition to freedom. I heard a stirring talk by Abdurrahman Wahid, the new Prime Minister of Indonesia, one of the largest countries on earth. He says it's not all about money; and he says it in a folksy way. "I am a poor man, but look, I'm president of my country!" Another deep laugh and sigh of relief. Indonesia, a country that needs a leader, has one.
The message of Davos is the message of love mixed with fear, which is to say it's a real message. The Internet provokes fear, I think largely because the message of the Internet comes to them from people who are scared. I heard concerns on the stage at the Values-Added session, fear of the Internet, and I asked for the floor and gave one of the best, most impassioned speeches of my life.
"I have something important to say," I said, and all the faces in the room turned to me. "The Internet is not about money. I've been inspired as you have by what I've learned from people on the Internet, from their creativity, humanity, hopes and frailty. Don't give up on the Internet, it is for you."
I said a lot more, but I honestly don't remember what I said. It was probably fairly typical DaveNet stuff, but they hadn't heard it before. I hadn't heard it in this context either. There is an Internet that wants to enable all the voices in the world, to empower people *and* help them create new businesses. I believe that the Web is not only the vision that's shared by technology leaders, it's the vision that we can share with political and economic leaders too. Just think about the Middle East. There are a few bumps, we can all make money on the Internet, and yes I do believe the soppy stuff about the Internet being the next step in the path of evolution of our species.
But now, finally, the part you've been waiting for, how you will make money on the Internet, so you can stop wasting time asking the question and get busy getting rich.
How to Make Money in the Internet
Suppose you run a newspaper in Singapore. This defines a community. Open a new server that allows people in your community to create their own Web sites. No editorial policy on these sites, except some obvious ones, don't support illegal activity as long as it doesn't relate to free speech. (I have no idea how the web can work without absolute freedom of expression, but we don't accept pornography or illegal trade on UserLand servers, and don't recommend that others do.)
Make it easy for your community members to sell goods and services on your servers. Provide a service bureau for accepting major credit cards. Of course, as a faciliator of this commerce you're entitled to a commission on each sale. But that's just half of the value equation, and I'd argue it's the less interesting half.
Encourage your community members to gather facts, draw conclusions, state opinions and organize others into action. Read the sites yourself. Require that every editorial person in your workforce read the sites. Have internal meetings where you only talk about what's happening in your community of websites. Have face-to-face meetings where you invite the leading webmasters in your community. Learn from each other. Get down in the trenches, in a sense, and listen, and then write about what you learn. Listen listen listen.
As you get to know your community, stars will emerge. Give them space on your home page and run ads on their sites. Be clever in choosing the ads. Link together problems with solutions, some commercial, others just for the good of your community. What's good for your community? You decide.
What just happened? You grew by an order of magnitude. And you grew into the Web, a business that pays a premium market cap, unlike the paper-based publishing system, and the emulation of paper publishing that most publishing websites employ in 2000. The people who run your home page are free to link to stories produced by the print publication, or not. My bet is that within several months, the community web sites will be producing content that's as interesting to your community as the copy produced by your current editorial staff.
Meet with the chairman of your local stock market, if he or she isn't already beating your door down. Issue a tracking stock, or, even better, spin out your new web operation. Collect several hundred million dollars, possibly more, to capitalize your new venture. With that money, buy infrastructure.
Wire up your best new editorialists with broadband connections. Buy them the latest digital cameras. Build a warehouse to stock goods that people can buy from your server. Lease a fleet of delivery trucks to make fulfillment virtually instantanous. Grant stock options to the best editorial people, including ones that come from your old print pub, and also give them stock that they must pass on to people whose sites they support.
Further, think in terms of a global audience. How many people want to know about Singapore? How many people in your city might want to host visitors from far away? Find a sister city in a land far away and find out what makes your communities similar and what makes them different.
Spread the new wealth around. And never ask what the Internet can do for you, always do things that just do one thing, grow the Internet, help it reach into the community you define. If you follow this formula, you can't lose, in my humble opinion, unless there is an Internet bubble that bursts before you get the money, but as Son-San says, there are good reasons to believe that there is no such bubble.
Who loses?
Again, in my humble opinion, no one has to lose, but no one gets to keep doing the same job they were doing before the transition to the Web. If you define success in terms of continuing to do the same old thing, you will lose. This is the message that causes so much dissonance at Davos and at Seybold. The people who had a good thing going before the Internet are angry. If they draw a line in the sand, as Sumner Redstone of Viacom did so insistently, sorry it's off to glue factory. But if you're willing to risk it all on your intelligence, experience *and* your enthusiasm for the Internet, you will win. But you have to be willing to change.
How this effects publishing
In the publishing environment, columnists and reporters will share their space with the people. The pros have to become ordinary people again, and let their writing and ideas compete with the expressions of amateurs. The old publishing standard "Everyone needs an editor," will soften in the age of universal publishing. "Editing can sometimes improve the effectiveness of writing" is more accurate. People who can self-edit, or have less formal editing processes, will not be held back. Judge the process by the end result. Some people can write without filtering.
We may sacrifice a little quality, both in terms of writing style and factual accuracy. This column is a good example. When I wrote for Wired the copy may have been cleaner, but the ideas were sanitized. It's inevitable when you prepare copy that must pass tests of political correctness. Let's say I was writing for a big publication whose CEO wanted to go back to Davos next year. Out goes the stuff about Speaking English mit de Cherman agzend. Now you might not miss that, but what else would you miss? Would my publisher let me reveal to all our competitors the blueprint for our growth? If I'm untethered, as I am, I am free of those kinds of concerns. If my host doesn't point to my column because of it's limited political correctness, perhaps his or her competitor will? And since I have my own community, I know in advance that this article will get flow. Even so, I don't go out of my way to insult people I like, and I will generally reveal my business model at a moment's notice because I practice the Ask Not What the Internet Can Do For You philosophy.
If the market places a high value on the cherished attributes so prized by print-era editorialists, then they will be proven right. But you must have the courage to put your ideals to the test. This isn't a choice you have. Your principles *will* be put to the test, your only choice is whether or not you want to bet against the Internet here. I recommend at least a bet-hedge. and if you really jump in, I think you'll see that the web has its own mechanism for quality. If you want people to return, you have to take the high road, the main person whose reputation you tarnish with weak opinion and incorrect fact is your own.
A case study
If you want to see this idea in action, compare Scripting News and Davos Newbies with the Davos site that Newsweek produced. This is a fair A-B comparison since we were covering the same story. We all had limited resources. Newseek had a group of writers and photographers and production people (today they're webmasters and HTML coders) -- a traditional publishing organization that dates back to the 1940s at least, perhaps earlier. Scripting News and Davos Newbies were written by sole practitioners, one the ultimate insider, Lance Knobel, and the other by an outsider who had been invited to have a look at what goes on at Davos, me. Judge for yourself. To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done before.
I think you'll find that Lance and I captured a personal view of the conference that goes into some depth, but there's room for improvement. While Newsweek had more resources, the result was more traditional, human interest color pieces, the kind of stuff you could get from watching CNN and reading Reuters.
I envision a Davos, maybe not in 2001, but certainly in 2002 or 2003, where every participant can have their own site, and many do. I imagine that out of 3000 possible sites, there will be 30 excellent ones and 100 very good ones. People outside Davos will be able to experience Davos real-time, from a dozen perspectives (no one person can read 130 different quickly updating sites). And the Davos process will continue year-round, as the community defined by EditThisPage.Com is 24-by-7 and roams the landscape of the web, morphs and grows, and never runs out of ideas for connecting different cultures with each other. As I understand the Davos philosophy, this is totally consistent with it.
This is at the heart of what I want to show at Seybold. We can all grow together, but first there has to be respect. At the heart of each print publication is a brand and a team that can lead a community into the web. It's completely human to not want to jump into the unknown, so being scared is OK, it's rational. But inevitably change comes, and you can't take it with you. So take off the parachute, forget what you know, and go ahead and jump. That's where fun comes. That's what we're all doing. None of us get out of this alive. It's later than you think.
Make money from the internet
Making money from the internet is no longer reserved for IT whizzkids. Now anyone with a good idea or a hobby can create an online money-spinner that works round the clock. Read on to find out how.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
TIPS: How to save £5,000 in a year
TRADE DOUBLER WEBSITEOpens new window
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Other ways This is Money can help you make money
OTHER STORIES
0870 numbers are Britain's biggest rip-off
Get a free laptop with your broadband
Cheaper home-delivery shopping
£129 flights to New York
Prices cut on a million holidays
Developments in the way online businesses make money mean that you don't have to spend all your time selling junk on eBay. Even amateurs such as bloggers or those running special-interest websites can make money.
The secret is what is known as 'affiliate marketing'. It sounds complicated, but the premise is simple. You have a website, you put on it links to other websites that offer goods or services for sale. If someone clicks from you website to one of these, and then goes on to make a purchase, you receive money from the other website.
It may have once been the case that this type of commercial relationship would need face-to-face negotiations and complex contracts. But not any more.
Websites can now register with affiliate marketing networks that match up affiliates – that's you and your website – with advertisers – that's the online sellers of goods and services that will pay to get people onto their sites.
Your website can sign up to be an affiliate for free. You will receive a list of advertising sites willing to pay for customers put their way. If you link to one of these sites, you stand to make money for every sale that is subsequently made by people who have clicked through from your site. The network handles the collection of fees from advertiser, and the payment of commission to the affiliate.
The process means anyone with an interest they are passionate about - or even an entertaining blog - has the chance to create an income from a website. Experts say incomes of £1,000 a month should be possible, even for sites run on small scale. Here's how it's done.
What's your passion?
Be clear about what you want to achieve with your website. Successful examples of amateur sites are those that are genuinely interesting or useful to other people.
You might have a particular interest in, say, travel, but would you really be able to add anything useful to the thousands of other travel resources on the internet? Better to concentrate a specialist area – for example, travel around a particular foreign city, or eco-friendly travel.
Setting up a website
The thought of setting up a website might be daunting but the process is relatively simple nowadays. Use a guide like the one here.
If you optimise it, they will come
People make whole careers out of advising on how to get websites to feature prominently on search engines such as Google. The process is called search engine optimisation, but it doesn't need to be complicated.
Duncan Jennings started his first website when he was 17 and he has launched a number of successful sites using affiliate marketing. At the age of 24, he is now managing director of www.econversions.com.
'All websites want to appear at the top of the list when someone searches on Google. In response to a search, Google will take all the websites that are relevant and rank them according to the number and quality of other sites that have linked to them', says Duncan.
'If you can get links to your site on lots of others, you will be ranked higher and you will get more traffic. It builds from there.'
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
TIPS: How to save £5,000 in a year
TRADE DOUBLER WEBSITEOpens new window
COMMISSION JUNCTION WEBSITEOpens new window
Other ways This is Money can help you make money
OTHER STORIES
0870 numbers are Britain's biggest rip-off
Get a free laptop with your broadband
Cheaper home-delivery shopping
£129 flights to New York
Prices cut on a million holidays
Developments in the way online businesses make money mean that you don't have to spend all your time selling junk on eBay. Even amateurs such as bloggers or those running special-interest websites can make money.
The secret is what is known as 'affiliate marketing'. It sounds complicated, but the premise is simple. You have a website, you put on it links to other websites that offer goods or services for sale. If someone clicks from you website to one of these, and then goes on to make a purchase, you receive money from the other website.
It may have once been the case that this type of commercial relationship would need face-to-face negotiations and complex contracts. But not any more.
Websites can now register with affiliate marketing networks that match up affiliates – that's you and your website – with advertisers – that's the online sellers of goods and services that will pay to get people onto their sites.
Your website can sign up to be an affiliate for free. You will receive a list of advertising sites willing to pay for customers put their way. If you link to one of these sites, you stand to make money for every sale that is subsequently made by people who have clicked through from your site. The network handles the collection of fees from advertiser, and the payment of commission to the affiliate.
The process means anyone with an interest they are passionate about - or even an entertaining blog - has the chance to create an income from a website. Experts say incomes of £1,000 a month should be possible, even for sites run on small scale. Here's how it's done.
What's your passion?
Be clear about what you want to achieve with your website. Successful examples of amateur sites are those that are genuinely interesting or useful to other people.
You might have a particular interest in, say, travel, but would you really be able to add anything useful to the thousands of other travel resources on the internet? Better to concentrate a specialist area – for example, travel around a particular foreign city, or eco-friendly travel.
Setting up a website
The thought of setting up a website might be daunting but the process is relatively simple nowadays. Use a guide like the one here.
If you optimise it, they will come
People make whole careers out of advising on how to get websites to feature prominently on search engines such as Google. The process is called search engine optimisation, but it doesn't need to be complicated.
Duncan Jennings started his first website when he was 17 and he has launched a number of successful sites using affiliate marketing. At the age of 24, he is now managing director of www.econversions.com.
'All websites want to appear at the top of the list when someone searches on Google. In response to a search, Google will take all the websites that are relevant and rank them according to the number and quality of other sites that have linked to them', says Duncan.
'If you can get links to your site on lots of others, you will be ranked higher and you will get more traffic. It builds from there.'
Make Money Online (Without Spending a Dime)
Even with no product and no Web site, you can get paid for what and who you know
Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.
But it's hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on "make money online" and "making money online", and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, "Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?"
So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:
Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
Don't require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
Don't involve any hard-selling
Aren't just promoting more Internet marketing
Give a good return on your time investmentIn the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.
Help friends find better jobs.
Sites like H3.com and JobThread connect employers with prospective employees, many of whom are already employed and not actively job-hunting, via networking - the people who know these qualified candidates. Rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $5,000 - not chump change. This is a great way to break into the recruiting business with no overhead. JobThread is intriguing in that they can set up a job board for your site or your organization (you don't even have to have a web site) at no cost to you -- no merchant account required. You determine the posting fees and split the revenue with them.
Connect suppliers with buyers.
Referral fees are a common practice in business, but they haven't been used much in online networking sites because there was no way to track them. InnerSell provides that. Vendors set the referral fees they're willing to pay, then when a deal happens, you get 70% of the referral fee.
Provide business contact information.
One of the greatest challenges in sales is getting accurate contact information about prospective customers. A growing number of services have launched in the past couple of years to help address this, but most rely on members to maintain their own contact information. Jigsaw, on the other hand, pays members to help keep information up-to-date on the people they know, not just themselves, and pays them to do so ($1 for each unique new qualifying contact you put into the system). According to Jigsaw, in their first payout after launch, the top ten point-earns each received more than $750.
Become a semi-pro reporter.
Creative Reporter is a new program from Creative Weblogging that lets just about anyone become a paid reporter/blogger. They're looking for people to create original, but non-exclusive, blog posts / articles of 250-500 words on topics including parenting, celebrities, travel, mobile technology, and more. Pay is $10 per 1,000 page views on your posts (that's excellent pay for Web writing, although there's no telling how much traffic/money you'll actually get).
Related: Professional Blogging
Write your own blog.
You don't have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You'll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you're off to a good start.
Related: Monetizing Your Blog
Advertise other people's products.
If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands - they're easier to sell. To promote those products:
Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site
Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control
Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular productThey all work - it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.
Related: How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site
The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.
Suggested Reading
How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate SiteInternet Marketing ArticlesBlog Profit Tips - Make Money From Weblogs
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Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.
But it's hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on "make money online" and "making money online", and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, "Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?"
So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:
Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
Don't require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
Don't involve any hard-selling
Aren't just promoting more Internet marketing
Give a good return on your time investmentIn the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.
Help friends find better jobs.
Sites like H3.com and JobThread connect employers with prospective employees, many of whom are already employed and not actively job-hunting, via networking - the people who know these qualified candidates. Rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $5,000 - not chump change. This is a great way to break into the recruiting business with no overhead. JobThread is intriguing in that they can set up a job board for your site or your organization (you don't even have to have a web site) at no cost to you -- no merchant account required. You determine the posting fees and split the revenue with them.
Connect suppliers with buyers.
Referral fees are a common practice in business, but they haven't been used much in online networking sites because there was no way to track them. InnerSell provides that. Vendors set the referral fees they're willing to pay, then when a deal happens, you get 70% of the referral fee.
Provide business contact information.
One of the greatest challenges in sales is getting accurate contact information about prospective customers. A growing number of services have launched in the past couple of years to help address this, but most rely on members to maintain their own contact information. Jigsaw, on the other hand, pays members to help keep information up-to-date on the people they know, not just themselves, and pays them to do so ($1 for each unique new qualifying contact you put into the system). According to Jigsaw, in their first payout after launch, the top ten point-earns each received more than $750.
Become a semi-pro reporter.
Creative Reporter is a new program from Creative Weblogging that lets just about anyone become a paid reporter/blogger. They're looking for people to create original, but non-exclusive, blog posts / articles of 250-500 words on topics including parenting, celebrities, travel, mobile technology, and more. Pay is $10 per 1,000 page views on your posts (that's excellent pay for Web writing, although there's no telling how much traffic/money you'll actually get).
Related: Professional Blogging
Write your own blog.
You don't have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You'll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you're off to a good start.
Related: Monetizing Your Blog
Advertise other people's products.
If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands - they're easier to sell. To promote those products:
Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site
Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control
Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular productThey all work - it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.
Related: How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site
The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.
Suggested Reading
How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate SiteInternet Marketing ArticlesBlog Profit Tips - Make Money From Weblogs
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How To How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site
You've probably heard before a lot of hype about how much money you can make with affiliate programs. Maybe you've even set up a site yourself, only to find that after buying the domain, a few bucks a month in hosting, software or a web designer to design your site, etc., that the piddly affiliate fees hardly even covered your cost. Well, here's the hype-free way to really make money with an Amazon.com affiliate site. And it'll only take a day to make the site. The secret? Low cost, low effort.
Difficulty: Hard
Time Required: One day
Here's How:
If you don't already know it, learn some basic HTML. You have to do this to keep your costs down and still get what you want. Even if the site is basically laid out for you, you're going to need to know how to insert images, create hyperlinks, and do some basic text formatting. Our HTML Guide offers a free 10-week HTML class and a great collection of beginning HTML tutorials. Get over any anxiety you have about this. Just do it. You'll thank me for it later.
Decide on your topic. You're going to be doing product reviews and recommendations, so pick a topic that you enjoy and know something about. If you can't stay passionate about the topic, that will show, and it also won't hold your interest. Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive, e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists, music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of a certain religion, books about arts & crafts, etc.
Choose your domain name. Make it keyword-rich, not clever. Think how people will find your site in the search engines. Here are some ideas (all available, by the way):Music: BandsFromTexas.com, BandOutOfBoston.com, SouthpawGuitarists.com, ClassicPsychedelia.com, Non-Stop-Hip-Hop.com, Merengue-Music.comBooks: Mormon-Authors.com, Arts-and-Crafts-Books.com, Books-by-Stephen-King.com, ClassicBusinessBooks.comOthers: Best-Baby-Toys.com, MomsMags.com, FelliniMovies.com
Register your domain name. If you're not technically inclined at all, register your domain wherever you set up your hosting in step 5. Otherwise, you can save a few bucks by choosing a lower-cost provider. Not a big deal for one or two sites, but it can be for ten or twenty. I use GoDaddy, who have great domain management tools and are less than $10 a year. The least expensive I've found from a reputable source is 1&1, whose price is under $6 a year (last I checked).
Set up your web hosting. This is where most people get burned. For this kind of site, you do not need $10 a month web hosting! Check out Discount-Hosting.com for no-frills hosting with adequate functionality and bandwidth, for around $10 a year! If you want more features, or especially if you're planning to run multiple sites, see GeekHosting.com or Multidomain-Hosting.com.
Install weblog software. "Weblog, you say?" Yes. It will give your site all the structure you need, plus make it easy to quickly post new content. My pick is WordPress, which is open source (i.e., free), easy to install and use, and yet very powerful. Download it and follow their installation instructions. Turn on notifications to Weblogs.com and Blo.gs. In WordPress, this is under Options RSS/RDF Feeds, Track-Ping-backs.
Make it pretty. Free templates for WordPress are available at Not That Ugly. Choose a style you like and then tweak it to suit your tastes and the theme of your site.
Set up categories. Most blog software allows you to create sub-categories to help organize your entries. This will help visitors narrow in even more specifically on their interests. For example, BandsFromTexas.com might have one group of categories for genre — rock, country, blues, etc. — and another for city of origin — Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.
Sign up as an Amazon Associate. It's simple and free. Just visit Amazon and click on the Join Associates link at the bottom of the page (here's a direct link for your convenience). Your site should already have at least the basic setup done, even if you don't have any content there yet.
Create your blog posting bookmarks/links. There are two links that are going to be essential for you to make this easy. First is the blog posting link. In your blog software, on the posting page (see their instructions), at the bottom of the page there should be a "bookmarklet". Click on the link (and hold the mouse) and drag it up to your Links toolbar in your browser (assuming Internet Explorer), or your Favorites menu. This will allow you to blog a product with one mouse click.
Create your Amazon Build-A-Link bookmark/link. This will make it easy to build the link with your affiliate ID built in. Log in to Associates Central, look in the left navigation sidebar, go to Build-A-Link, and under Static Links, find Individual Items. Click and drag this onto your Links toolbar or Favorites menu.
Build your first link. Go to Amazon and find the product you want to review. Scroll down to Product Details and find the ASIN or ISBN. Double-click on the number itself to select it, then right-click and choose Copy. Click on your Amazon Build-A-Link link. Right-click in the search field and choose Paste. Change the selection from Served Link to You Host. Click Go. Your selection should show up. Click Get HTML. Choose the kind of link you want, select the highlighted text and copy it.
Blog your review. Now click on your blog posting link (Press It! by default in WordPress). If you're using WordPress, you should now see two pieces of link code in your posting form, the first one ending with "Associates Build-A-Link >< /a >". Delete through that point. The second part is a link to the product with your Amazon Associate ID built in. Now just write your product review, choose the appropriate categories for it, and hit Publish.
Build out your site. Before you promote your site, you want to have some substantial content there. Write several product reviews. Have at least 2-3 in each category you've created. You may also want to make a categories for articles, news, and commentary about your topic. The more content your site has, the better. And the great thing is that while you're writing all this, the search engines are getting notified automatically, assuming you turned on the notifications mentioned in step 6.
Promote your site. The best free way to do this is to communicate with other bloggers writing about similar topics, and to participate in online communities where your topic is discussed. See the Online Business Networking category for ideas, as well as the Internet Marketing category.
Tips:
You have to learn some basic HTML and basic concepts about running a web site. It's just not that hard. If you have to rely on purchased software, you won't be able to get exactly what you want, you won't know what to do when things go wrong, and you'll end up spending money you don't need to. Spend the time to learn it. It will be well worth the investment.
I slightly recommend music over books and other products, mainly because you can listen to the clips of an entire album in about 10 minutes and get a good enough feel for it (without buying it) to do a short review. If you have another topic that you're passionate about, great, but make sure you have a unique angle on the topic. People can get reviews about a lot of those consumer products anywhere. You need to give them a reason to come to your site.
To draw repeat visitors, create a newsletter. Frequency should depend on how often you're posting new content. Start with monthly. EZezine will let you send up to 1,000 messages a month for free, with no ads. By the time you exceed that, you should be able to justify paying for the service.
To pick up some extra pennies, sign up for Google AdSense. It probably won't generate a lot of revenue, but it's free to sign up and completely effortless to maintain.
Set reasonable expectations for earnings. You've only invested $20. You're going to make 5% on most products. That means that you need to sell $400 worth of stuff to make back your investment. To make $20 an hour, what you write must generate $400 worth of purchases. You get credit for other purchases made while at Amazon besides just the product you linked to, so it's not as hard as it may sound. It won't make you rich, but it's not hard to be profitable, and it builds over time.
What You Need:
A credit card with about $20 available
More How To's from your Guide To Entrepreneurs
Suggested Reading
Amazon Associates ProgramCase Study: Using a Weblog to Achieve #1 Rankings in Google4 Elements of a Successful, Profitable WebsiteMore Affiliate Programs
Related Articles
Internet Business ModelsMake Money On Your Web Site With AffiliatesWhy Do You Want a Web Site?Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and PromotionsMaking Money From Affiliate Programs
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Difficulty: Hard
Time Required: One day
Here's How:
If you don't already know it, learn some basic HTML. You have to do this to keep your costs down and still get what you want. Even if the site is basically laid out for you, you're going to need to know how to insert images, create hyperlinks, and do some basic text formatting. Our HTML Guide offers a free 10-week HTML class and a great collection of beginning HTML tutorials. Get over any anxiety you have about this. Just do it. You'll thank me for it later.
Decide on your topic. You're going to be doing product reviews and recommendations, so pick a topic that you enjoy and know something about. If you can't stay passionate about the topic, that will show, and it also won't hold your interest. Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive, e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists, music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of a certain religion, books about arts & crafts, etc.
Choose your domain name. Make it keyword-rich, not clever. Think how people will find your site in the search engines. Here are some ideas (all available, by the way):Music: BandsFromTexas.com, BandOutOfBoston.com, SouthpawGuitarists.com, ClassicPsychedelia.com, Non-Stop-Hip-Hop.com, Merengue-Music.comBooks: Mormon-Authors.com, Arts-and-Crafts-Books.com, Books-by-Stephen-King.com, ClassicBusinessBooks.comOthers: Best-Baby-Toys.com, MomsMags.com, FelliniMovies.com
Register your domain name. If you're not technically inclined at all, register your domain wherever you set up your hosting in step 5. Otherwise, you can save a few bucks by choosing a lower-cost provider. Not a big deal for one or two sites, but it can be for ten or twenty. I use GoDaddy, who have great domain management tools and are less than $10 a year. The least expensive I've found from a reputable source is 1&1, whose price is under $6 a year (last I checked).
Set up your web hosting. This is where most people get burned. For this kind of site, you do not need $10 a month web hosting! Check out Discount-Hosting.com for no-frills hosting with adequate functionality and bandwidth, for around $10 a year! If you want more features, or especially if you're planning to run multiple sites, see GeekHosting.com or Multidomain-Hosting.com.
Install weblog software. "Weblog, you say?" Yes. It will give your site all the structure you need, plus make it easy to quickly post new content. My pick is WordPress, which is open source (i.e., free), easy to install and use, and yet very powerful. Download it and follow their installation instructions. Turn on notifications to Weblogs.com and Blo.gs. In WordPress, this is under Options RSS/RDF Feeds, Track-Ping-backs.
Make it pretty. Free templates for WordPress are available at Not That Ugly. Choose a style you like and then tweak it to suit your tastes and the theme of your site.
Set up categories. Most blog software allows you to create sub-categories to help organize your entries. This will help visitors narrow in even more specifically on their interests. For example, BandsFromTexas.com might have one group of categories for genre — rock, country, blues, etc. — and another for city of origin — Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.
Sign up as an Amazon Associate. It's simple and free. Just visit Amazon and click on the Join Associates link at the bottom of the page (here's a direct link for your convenience). Your site should already have at least the basic setup done, even if you don't have any content there yet.
Create your blog posting bookmarks/links. There are two links that are going to be essential for you to make this easy. First is the blog posting link. In your blog software, on the posting page (see their instructions), at the bottom of the page there should be a "bookmarklet". Click on the link (and hold the mouse) and drag it up to your Links toolbar in your browser (assuming Internet Explorer), or your Favorites menu. This will allow you to blog a product with one mouse click.
Create your Amazon Build-A-Link bookmark/link. This will make it easy to build the link with your affiliate ID built in. Log in to Associates Central, look in the left navigation sidebar, go to Build-A-Link, and under Static Links, find Individual Items. Click and drag this onto your Links toolbar or Favorites menu.
Build your first link. Go to Amazon and find the product you want to review. Scroll down to Product Details and find the ASIN or ISBN. Double-click on the number itself to select it, then right-click and choose Copy. Click on your Amazon Build-A-Link link. Right-click in the search field and choose Paste. Change the selection from Served Link to You Host. Click Go. Your selection should show up. Click Get HTML. Choose the kind of link you want, select the highlighted text and copy it.
Blog your review. Now click on your blog posting link (Press It! by default in WordPress). If you're using WordPress, you should now see two pieces of link code in your posting form, the first one ending with "Associates Build-A-Link >< /a >". Delete through that point. The second part is a link to the product with your Amazon Associate ID built in. Now just write your product review, choose the appropriate categories for it, and hit Publish.
Build out your site. Before you promote your site, you want to have some substantial content there. Write several product reviews. Have at least 2-3 in each category you've created. You may also want to make a categories for articles, news, and commentary about your topic. The more content your site has, the better. And the great thing is that while you're writing all this, the search engines are getting notified automatically, assuming you turned on the notifications mentioned in step 6.
Promote your site. The best free way to do this is to communicate with other bloggers writing about similar topics, and to participate in online communities where your topic is discussed. See the Online Business Networking category for ideas, as well as the Internet Marketing category.
Tips:
You have to learn some basic HTML and basic concepts about running a web site. It's just not that hard. If you have to rely on purchased software, you won't be able to get exactly what you want, you won't know what to do when things go wrong, and you'll end up spending money you don't need to. Spend the time to learn it. It will be well worth the investment.
I slightly recommend music over books and other products, mainly because you can listen to the clips of an entire album in about 10 minutes and get a good enough feel for it (without buying it) to do a short review. If you have another topic that you're passionate about, great, but make sure you have a unique angle on the topic. People can get reviews about a lot of those consumer products anywhere. You need to give them a reason to come to your site.
To draw repeat visitors, create a newsletter. Frequency should depend on how often you're posting new content. Start with monthly. EZezine will let you send up to 1,000 messages a month for free, with no ads. By the time you exceed that, you should be able to justify paying for the service.
To pick up some extra pennies, sign up for Google AdSense. It probably won't generate a lot of revenue, but it's free to sign up and completely effortless to maintain.
Set reasonable expectations for earnings. You've only invested $20. You're going to make 5% on most products. That means that you need to sell $400 worth of stuff to make back your investment. To make $20 an hour, what you write must generate $400 worth of purchases. You get credit for other purchases made while at Amazon besides just the product you linked to, so it's not as hard as it may sound. It won't make you rich, but it's not hard to be profitable, and it builds over time.
What You Need:
A credit card with about $20 available
More How To's from your Guide To Entrepreneurs
Suggested Reading
Amazon Associates ProgramCase Study: Using a Weblog to Achieve #1 Rankings in Google4 Elements of a Successful, Profitable WebsiteMore Affiliate Programs
Related Articles
Internet Business ModelsMake Money On Your Web Site With AffiliatesWhy Do You Want a Web Site?Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and PromotionsMaking Money From Affiliate Programs
if(zp[11].d){w('');Dsp(zp[11],'ip');w('')}if(zp[12].d){w('');Dsp(zp[12],'ip');w('')}if(zp[13].d){w('');Dsp(zp[13],'ip');w('')}
zISblo=this.zISblo?this.zISblo:0;if(zSbL
Sponsored Links
I'm Laughing to The Bankbecause my ads are free learn with
www.GoogleMoneyPro.com
Earn Money BloggingBlogging To The Bank 2.0 Clickbank Top Earner!BloggingToTheBankSite.Blogspot.com
Making money onlineReview the top selling programs that guarantee your online successwww.SMendoza-Ochoa.com
Making Money From HomeSimply Follow 3 Easy Steps to Earn Massive Residual Income From Home
www.pluginprofitsite.com
$7 Software SolutionsWhy Pay Mega Bucks For Software Market Your Business Sensibly
www.The7DollarMall.Com
Google AdWords
The online world of Internet marketing is always changing and so are the methods for making money online. Google Adwords or Pay-Per-Click advertising has become one of the most popular ways to make money online. The concept is easy to grasp but if you don’t get the details right using Google Adwords it can drain your bank account.
There are new books appearing every day and they are all claiming to tell you how to make millions of dollars on the internet. Below are internet marketing products that have been around for a while and have proven the test of time. The ebooks listed here will help you get started and save you time and money when it comes to making money on the internet using Google Adwords.
you can search for this books :)
Beating Adwords Kyle and Carson
Beating Adwords walks you through the process of using Google Adwords to your advantage as an Affiliate Marketer. If you do not have experience with Adwords, DO NOT try to learn on your own as you WILL lose money. Google has implemented many changes to their Adwords system and if you do not know the right techniques to use when setting up your campaigns, you'll be in for a harsh reality check.
Beating Adwords by Kyle and Carson is hands down the best book written to date on making money using Google Adwords. There is simply not another source that gives as much useful detail on creating and running successful Google Adwords campaigns.
In addition to Beating Adwords, Kyle and Carson also run a coaching website called Wealthy Affiliate. This supplement is another way to stay on top of current practices and successful strategies in affiliate marketing.
The combination of Beating Adwords and Wealthy Affiliate are must have resources for beginner to advanced affiliate marketers. Use them both to create high return Adword campaigns and keep ahead of your competitors.
Google Cash Chris Carpenter
This is a great book on how to make money promoting affiliate programs by using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines. He breaks the marketing down into four easy steps. He explains the concepts by revealing campaigns that have been successful.
SpeedPPC
This is not the product to start with if you’re new to PPC marketing. If you want to get into PPC marketing I strongly recommend starting with a really good book on creating landing pages, Google Adwords, and running Google Adwords campaigns, such as Beating Adwords by Kyle & Carson of Wealthy Affiliate.
This product is not for the beginner doing Google Adwords campaigns. The system requirements are pretty extensive. You need Microsoft Windows, Flash 8, PHP Webhosting account that has access to MySQL, Micosoftt Excel or OpenOffice, Ebay Image Integrator. You really need to be serious about doing PPC before buying SpeedPPC.
Once you have a good understanding of PPC marketing and you still want to go deeper into PPC then this is a very good product to buy, but not until you know and understand the PPC marketing arena.
The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords Perry Marshall
Perry Marshall has established himself as one of the leading experts on how to use Google Adwords effectively.
The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords is a self help course on how to pay less for each visitor using Google AdWords pay per click. Basically, he teaches you about the good and bad sides of Google Adwords. It's not the greatest book in the world but it's one of the better books on Google AdWords that's available.
Google Profits Wade Winger
At $9.95 this is a great deal. Google Profits is the first book I bought on how to make money using Google Adwords. The focus of the book is using Google Adwords to make money promoting Clickbank products.
Google Profits provides a realistic view on how to make money using Adwords. Wade walks you through setting a test campaign, finding products, and how to identify a profitable campaign. Google Profits is easy to read and understand
There are new books appearing every day and they are all claiming to tell you how to make millions of dollars on the internet. Below are internet marketing products that have been around for a while and have proven the test of time. The ebooks listed here will help you get started and save you time and money when it comes to making money on the internet using Google Adwords.
you can search for this books :)
Beating Adwords Kyle and Carson
Beating Adwords walks you through the process of using Google Adwords to your advantage as an Affiliate Marketer. If you do not have experience with Adwords, DO NOT try to learn on your own as you WILL lose money. Google has implemented many changes to their Adwords system and if you do not know the right techniques to use when setting up your campaigns, you'll be in for a harsh reality check.
Beating Adwords by Kyle and Carson is hands down the best book written to date on making money using Google Adwords. There is simply not another source that gives as much useful detail on creating and running successful Google Adwords campaigns.
In addition to Beating Adwords, Kyle and Carson also run a coaching website called Wealthy Affiliate. This supplement is another way to stay on top of current practices and successful strategies in affiliate marketing.
The combination of Beating Adwords and Wealthy Affiliate are must have resources for beginner to advanced affiliate marketers. Use them both to create high return Adword campaigns and keep ahead of your competitors.
Google Cash Chris Carpenter
This is a great book on how to make money promoting affiliate programs by using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines. He breaks the marketing down into four easy steps. He explains the concepts by revealing campaigns that have been successful.
SpeedPPC
This is not the product to start with if you’re new to PPC marketing. If you want to get into PPC marketing I strongly recommend starting with a really good book on creating landing pages, Google Adwords, and running Google Adwords campaigns, such as Beating Adwords by Kyle & Carson of Wealthy Affiliate.
This product is not for the beginner doing Google Adwords campaigns. The system requirements are pretty extensive. You need Microsoft Windows, Flash 8, PHP Webhosting account that has access to MySQL, Micosoftt Excel or OpenOffice, Ebay Image Integrator. You really need to be serious about doing PPC before buying SpeedPPC.
Once you have a good understanding of PPC marketing and you still want to go deeper into PPC then this is a very good product to buy, but not until you know and understand the PPC marketing arena.
The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords Perry Marshall
Perry Marshall has established himself as one of the leading experts on how to use Google Adwords effectively.
The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords is a self help course on how to pay less for each visitor using Google AdWords pay per click. Basically, he teaches you about the good and bad sides of Google Adwords. It's not the greatest book in the world but it's one of the better books on Google AdWords that's available.
Google Profits Wade Winger
At $9.95 this is a great deal. Google Profits is the first book I bought on how to make money using Google Adwords. The focus of the book is using Google Adwords to make money promoting Clickbank products.
Google Profits provides a realistic view on how to make money using Adwords. Wade walks you through setting a test campaign, finding products, and how to identify a profitable campaign. Google Profits is easy to read and understand
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