Some Knowledge

Cyber Wyre has a pretty interesting website value calculator.  All you do is enter a URL and this widget looks up Alexa rank, Google page rank, counts backlinks on Yahoo, Alta Vista, and the web in general.  From these numbers the thing figures out how much you might make per month in advertising and affiliate sales, and calculates a sale value for your site.

I’ve been using this gadget to track page rank here for a while.  It’s very easy to use and doesn’t give huge inflated values for a site like some other website value calculators do.  Cyber Wyre makes an interesting tool for getting some idea of how a site is doing as far as ranking against other sites.

As an aside, another site I use to track ranking is Technorati.  Once again all you do is enter a blog URL and Technorati gives you a rundown on the authority and rank of your site.  I’ve noticed this blog slowly climbing up on both of these evaluations, which is maybe a good thing.  It might be helpful or just interesting to look up how your own site is doing with these simple tools.

I don’t think this question can be answered.  The net is in a continuous state of flux, with pages being created and deleted continuously.  The Internet is like a boiling sea of stuff that appears and disappears almost as fast as a person can point and click.  Just by typing up this page, I’ve increased the number of web pages by one.  There are millions of people blogging and making posts to forums and generating websites of stuff.  Every picture posted to Photobucket or any other content hosting site will be a new page.  Even the search engines cannot say how many sites exist on the net.

One thing is for certain, the Internet is huge.  I’ve seen estimates that there are over 500 billion sites on the web.  Those estimates were from a couple years ago.  Today, there could be far more.  Every time Google crawls a page the number of sites goes up, because Google caches sites on their own servers, copying content for their own records.  Nevermind the thousands of robots scraping content for splogs, there is a lot of automatic website creation filling up servers all over the world.

I have seen maps of internet connections for the world that look like some mad artist has gone nuts with colored pens and a ruler.  Starbursts of connections and designations for routers and backbone lines.  No person could singlehandedly figure all this out.  It’s almost like trying to diagram the nerve cell connections in some creature’s brain.  The star topology of the web branches out like neurons, connecting and bridging signals from one location to any other by a series of jumps.  Tracing the individual packets that make up any communication would be like trying to sequence the atoms paths in an ink drop dispersing in water.  Well, perhaps I exaggerate, but it is complex.

What have we created with this vast network of minds and computers?  A better system for merchandising?  The thought of all this technology being for nothing more than to sell shoes is ridiculous.  The net is like having the most learned institutions of higher education as your personal servants.  We can find out just about anything about anything that anybody has thought to post on a website.  The more people who take part in this exchange of knowledge and information, the more powerful the net becomes.  It is not just the servers and the wiring that makes up the Internet, it is the individual remote units, the PCs connected to modems all over the world, and the people who use these machines that gives the net its power.

There are so many different aspects to the Internet that it is almost hard to believe that it all runs on the same machinery.  This is the power inherent in the idea of a general purpose computing machine.  You can use one machine to watch videos, listen to music, read reports, email your friends, download programs, play games, write blog posts, meet people, find and solve problems.  There seems to be no end to the usefulness of this vast system.  Each day tens of thousands of people, probably millions, are employed in keeping the system operating and updated.  Think of all the people working in all the IT departments of all the corporations and universities and governments as working on what is basically one entity, the net.

The Internet is not just computers these days.  The net is taking over telephone communications.  There are many wireless devices like cell phones, IPhones, PDAs and any number of gadgets with web access.  There are refrigerators with net access.  This web of communication is moving into every facet of communications and technology.  The Internet has the power to unite the world in ways that were never envisioned by man when he formed his systems of government.  There is much potential in this technology.  Every day the world reaps the benefits of instant access to knowledge and information.  The future will be a very interesting place.

I read some interesting websites and blogs this morning about how social networks are supposed to replace Google and other search engines.  I thought about this for a second.  I mean, I’ve had a Myspace profile for over two years now and still don’t use it for a lot besides keeping a personal blog.  I occasionally look up bands or entertainers and see what they are doing.  I suppose I could use Myspace to get to know random people.  That seems to be what it was designed for.

Mostly what I use the net for is to look up information on some subject.  Yesterday I read a bit about black holes and used some of this information to write a blog post.  If I want to find out where to buy something, or what’s new, or where some place is located, the search engines are perfect.  I’m not going to wait around for a friend to come online to ask them where I can get shoelaces.  The very concept of that is ridiculous.

Saying that social networks will replace search engines is like saying the movies will replace libraries.  Yes, you can use both places for entertainment, but seriously, you are going to wait an eternity for a movie to explain quantum physics to you.  Libraries and movies serve different purposes.  Social networks are for socializing with people.  Search engines are for finding out about stuff.

With sites like Facebook and Orkut and Linkedin and hundreds of others all over the web, there is definitely some growth in social media.  A lot of people are finding out how easy it is to use the net to communicate with people all over the world.  If you want to meet people you do not have to pay a friend finder.com site to post your personal advertisement.  All you need is a free account with a social network and a bit of time and a photo.

Social networks appear to have grown out of the old personal home pages that people post on AOL and other ISP websites.  Instead of being a disconnected site, you now have messaging and other interaction capabilities like adding friends and broadcasting announcements to all your friends.  It is easy to leave comments and other messages on a friend’s page and you do not have to rely on only using email to get feedback on your profile.  There is also a blog function that can be used to write down your thoughts.  Social networks are a bit more functional than a network of independent personal home pages.  Their general purpose is the same though, to meet and stay in contact with people.

With the size of the Internet and the billions of pages that are on servers all over the world, I don’t think there is any danger of social networks completely taking over the Internet.  It’s just another feature of the online world.  People are already trying to figure out how to make money off the various social media, and social media marketing is a popular feature of many new marketing approaches.  Myspace and Facebook are never going to replace Google and Yahoo.  I think it is more likely that the search engines will take over the social networks, once the spiders start crawling the networks more effectively.

I’ve spent the entire day it seems just web surfing again.  I looked into article marketing some more.  I found a lot of sites that claim to know what they are talking about, but for the most part they want to sell you an ebook.  I got a free ebook on how to make money on the net.  Basically, you set up and promote a website with a product, a blog, and video advertising.  This reminded me of a news report I saw on CNN this morning about random people making viral videos on Youtube.  There must have been a shortage of news this morning.

I looked into the Amazon.com affiliate program for about an hour or two this evening.  I read all about how to set up links to various products and what I would have to do to apply for this program.  I even read the affiliate terms of service.  That was a bit of legalese to wade through.  I would have to think about setting up an affiliate site for a while.  I don’t enter into agreements that I don’t entirely understand.  Still, it might be a way to generate money.

Every once in a while I check the rankings of this site.  It has been steadily moving up the list as I write more posts.  Still, there is a long hard way to go to get near the top.  I’ve had a surge of traffic recently, mostly due to one post about a racing game.  It’s strange that one single post can get so much traffic.  I guess it was a popular search term and my blog got listed on Google Trends for a while in relation to that search.

I’ve found some small amount of interesting information on setting up an Internet business today.  I saw on one site that credit card companies pay out some of the highest commissions on affiliate sales of card registrations.  Other financial companies and travel companies also are supposed to pay well.  My blog is not so much about finance though.  It’s pretty much about whatever random stuff is going through my head on any given day.  If I were to focus on something though, maybe I could generate some more interest.

I think I am going to spend some time looking around WordPress for something interesting to read.  I haven’t left a lot of comments recently.  I guess it’s always a good idea to leave comments where people might follow the backlink.  It’s almost like trying to trap an animal though.  Set a snare in its path and hope it walks into the tripwire.  Then again, I shouldn’t compare random web surfers with animals.  People have their own reasons for clicking on links.

I didn’t really see anything interesting on Google Trends today.  In fact, I haven’t gotten a topic from that site in almost a week now.  That list has been flooded with nonsense and NFL draft picks for the last week.  I’m going to have to find an alternate source for popular material if this keeps up.  Yahoo has a list of popular searches.  I should set aside some time to find a good popular search page or three.

This will probably be the last post today.  So far, I might have gotten three hits on what I wrote today.  I need to find a topic for tomorrow that will be a good subject for a few short articles.  The short posts seem to get the most attention.  Hopefully there will be some more interesting subjects come along.  I haven’t even gotten any comments today.  I should just use my imagination and get creative.  I almost wrote up a nice post on the beer diet this afternoon, but thought better.

eBiz-U is a company that offers Amazon.com affiliate marketing websites.  They give you a selection of online stores and host the websites.  Right now they are having a Spring special, with the usual $75 setup fee being reduced to $40.  Hosting for your site runs $19.95 a month.  You can have your own domain name or use one from the eBiz-U site.

I read over the FAQ and some of the other info and looked into what kind of store this place sets up for their customers.  It seems they set up a site that sells just about anything offered by Amazon.com.  Amazon also handles the credit card payments so you will not need a merchant account.  The site includes Google Adsense ads, and you get revenue from clickthroughs on advertising as well as commission on affiliate sales.

If you are looking for a simple way to set up an online business, this seems to be a pretty good opportunity.  You will have to handle promotion of your site and the day to day running of finances, but pretty much everything else is included with this service.  Amazon handles all shipping and returns, and unless you sell your own products, which is also possible, you will not have to handle customer service.  You will of course have to take care of taxes and the subscription costs for this service, but aside from that this seems like a simple solution to going into business on the Internet.

Article marketing is distribution of articles to various websites, that republish the articles on user sites.  Basically, you write an article about some product, subject, or topic of interest.  You publish this article on an article distribution site, of which there are many.  Along with your article you have what is called a “resource box.”  In the resource box you put your name, your company contact information, and a link to your website.

When a person sees your article on the article distribution site, they can download an html version of the article that is ready to be put onto their own website.  Along with the article, they have to publish the resource box.  The resource box will supply a link back to your site from the website on which the article gets posted.  This is how article marketing works.

In article marketing, you write an interesting article.  You post your article where people can download it.  People copy the article and post it on their own site.  You establish yourself as an authority and generate back links to your website and business with article marketing.  There is a whole system of ezine article websites on the net just to distribute these articles.

Another meaning for article marketing is the use of little informative articles to promote some product or service.  An author might work with an advertising agency to generate these articles, which are then distributed to various markets like ezines and blogs.  The product promotion is done in a style that is not too unlike normal advertising, but there is no hard sell.  This is like a sneaky form of advertising that is just becoming more popular.

A person could use article marketing to generate more traffic for a website.  Also, a freelance writer might consider distributing free articles this way to promote their services as a writer to a larger audience.  The field of article marketing is relatively new, and the uses for short articles to promote some product or service is still evolving.

There are many social media websites on the Internet.  A trend in marketing that is becoming more popular is to use these sites to get publicity for your product or website.  This trend is not hard to understand.  Social media sites have a community of people who are all potential customers or viewers for a good or service.  There are tricks to marketing on these sites.  Simply spamming advertisements can get you banned from using some of these services.  Advertisements posted on Wikipedia will just get deleted.

Here is an interesting site that has a sample of some of the social sites and recommendations for using these places for marketing.  This site lists a number of social media services and gives some simple guidelines on using these services to link up to other users.  It’s pretty interesting to read about the different services, just as a general reference.

There is some potential in using social media to market things, but it takes some work.  You can not just wait for people to contact you.  You will have to go out and look for connections and find people with similar interests to what you are promoting.  A lot of the social networking sites run their own advertising.  Myspace, for example, runs banner ads on every page it displays.  If you are going to profit from being involved with a site like this you will have to actively look for connections.

The main principle of marketing is to simply get the word out about some product or service.  To do this you have to contact other people with your ideas.  Posting bookmarks for your website on one of the social bookmarking sites might be a way to reach some people.  Posting comments on forums or setting up free classified ads on one of the social networking sites might get you some attention.  What you don’t want to be doing is sending out tons of spam messages to random people.  Target your messages and you will not be seen as an annoying salesman.

I spent a good hour this morning looking at different websites that promise to show you how to make endless amounts of money.  There was one site that said I could make $250 a day giving away free websites.  If they are free sites, where does the money come from?  Apparently, it comes from my credit card, which this person needs to set me up in business.

Then there were the sites that offered me free information for my email address.  What the heck, more interesting email and free useless ebooks.  The last place had an ebook called the secret of magical moneymaking or some such nonsense.  This site was all about selling information.  At least this is partially honest.  You get information and they get money.  They sell you information on how to make money selling information.  They even sell you the information to sell to others.  How convenient.

Even looking for something like “blog traffic” leads to sites selling information products on how to generate more traffic for your blog.  The Internet is full of these long sales pitches for vaporous products telling people how to make money.  Making money is the bottom line in everything.  I look at these sites because I am trying to find one that is actually a real way to make money with the Internet.  It amazes me that there can be so much completely useless information lying around on servers.

I used to spend all my time playing games.  Games have a limited appeal to me now.  Most games are really similar to other games.  You always end up going nowhere in games.  Games are a lot like moneymaking websites, lots of promise and no delivery.

It was only a matter of time before the entire Internet went commercial.  I’m sure if I look hard enough I will find software that sets up advertising websites and promotes them automatically.  The whole net could become a product of robots written by robots for robots.  But there are people behind the robots.  People telling the robots what to do and who to get money from.  There must also be a lot of really gullible people online if so many of these useless non-business sites are making as much money as they claim to be making.

I seldom buy anything online.  If you look hard enough you can usually find lots of free stuff that people claim to be selling elsewhere.  I find this stuff all the time by signing up for the mailing lists that these different operations have.  It’s the old “here’s something for free, now feel guilty and buy something” trick.

My eventual goal is to turn this blog into a multi-million dollar corporation.  I want to have this run on autopilot with content generated by freelance writers in Pakistan.  Then, when I get about a million visitors a day, I will sell advertising for about ten grand a banner and totally capitalize on the free market economy.  Maybe in a hundred years I will have something running that pays the bills.  Maybe sooner.  I wouldn’t ask people to buy anything from me.  I might post free stuff that they can read, like I do now.

Does everything on planet earth have to revolve around money?  You look for any scientific article online and they give you an abstract and ask you for $40 to read the whole paper.  Why would I pay some place that kind of money when I can go to the library and use their Lexus/Nexus database for free?  Most of the stuff you will find in these fly-by-night moneymaking ebooks you can look up online for free.  I don’t understand how people can actually be making money off a system like this.

I did see one blog today that was monetized in a somewhat honest way.  He had paypal links posted at the bottom of all his entries with a “Buy me a beer” caption on them suggesting you donate $3 or $7.50.  What an optimistic person.  Why not just get a graphic of a hand reaching out for a donation?  Why not show a picture of some emaciated child saying “feed me” or some other ploy to the sympathies?  The begging thing is just not for me.

What I haven’t seen yet is cyber-busking, unless you count iTunes.  Have a picture of you standing there with your guitar and when you click on it a song plays, then a hat pops up below the picture with a link to a paypal donation site.  I’m surprised that something so obvious hasn’t been done yet.  There could be a whole slew of cyber-busking sites appear overnight after people start reading this blog.

I am just surprised that there are so many people trying to sell information on how to make money from the Internet.  Looking through the book store shelves there are even books in the business section on how to set up million dollar cash machines with a website and Adsense.  Do you need to read a book to do that?  I guess if the book promises you a million you might be tempted to spend the $25 for the book.  Is it useful information?  Not if you can’t implement it.  There’s a certain amount of luck involved in any business venture.  You can set up all the websites you want but it will do you no good if nobody visits them and buys stuff from you or your advertisers.  I wonder if there’s a Wikipedia entry on internet business scams.  I haven’t seen one yet.

I will probably continue to look at these different sites, just because I enjoy reading about hare-brained methods to make money.  It may be a waste of time, but who knows, maybe someday I will read something that might work.  In future, we might live in a society of people who all sell information on how to make money to each other.  Wouldn’t that be strange.

One way to generate traffic to your website is just to have lots of interesting, original content.  This is known as a method of passive traffic generation.  You are relying on the search engines to find your site and send people who are interested in what you post to you.  This is a fairly good method of generating traffic, and it only costs you the time and energy that it takes to generate content.

A completely useless way to get a lot of traffic is to run a bot.  Sure, you can have a program surf your site repeatedly, but what does this accomplish but to eat up bandwidth?  The robot is not going to read your articles.  The robot is not going to look at your funny pictures.  The bot is just going to download whatever you have and either save it or forget it.  Your traffic can be increased this way, but this is not actual people going to your site and perusing your offerings.

One way to get more traffic is to buy advertising.  You are essentially paying to promote your work to an audience that might not otherwise know about your site.  You can use Google Adwords or another outfit who will place your advertising link on the search results page of their home page or on third party websites that already get a lot of traffic.  The downside of this method is that it will cost you money.

You could always print out fliers and post them on bulletin boards around your neighborhood.  Stores often have free bulletin boards.  Schools and universities are full of the things.  There might be kiosks in your town where people post announcements for concerts or try to sell their items.  Good old paper and ink can get you a few visitors to your site.

The big time in any promotion is of course the news media.  If you can think of a reason your website is worthy of a news story, then go on and issue a press release to the editors of your local news.  You might try to get your site on TV if it is novel and interesting enough.  Maybe you are running some sort of a contest to attract attention.  If you have money to burn you can hire a PR firm to promote your site.

One way to generate links to your site is to leave comments on forums, blogs, and various reply sites you might find anywhere on the net.  This does not cost money, but it takes time to fill in forms and write a decent comment.  Chances are few people will check out your website this way, but the link will be there and will be available to whomever wants to follow it.

You can of course submit your site to search engines and directories.  Some of these places charge money for consideration.  As far as directories go, you should be able to categorize your site into one of the headings on their list.  If you have a site that is not targeted to some common specific category you will probably not end up in many directories.

Perhaps the best way to get a lot of web traffic is just to have a lot of information.  Popular sites like Wikipedia have millions of words of information on many different subjects.  The volume of information causes the search engine to rank these sites highly.  There are also many cross links in the Wiki that generates a high authority for the pages that are hosted there.  It takes time and effort to have a large site, and you will probably need to get material from outside sources if you hope to generate much traffic this way.

One method of generating web traffic that is not used a lot is to become famous for something.  You can record an album and get famous for your music.  You can make friends with a celebrity.  You might run for office on a major party ticket.  Even if you do something stupid like sell yourself to a politician you can still get some sort of fame that will cause people to seek out your website.  Be sure to have some kind of identifying information on your site that allows people to find it based on your name, or the name you are using when you become famous.

There are plenty of places that will attempt to sell you web traffic for your site.  They all have some gimick like redirects from popular sites or advertising or something that gets them people.  What you have to remember is that you’re trying to get a person’s attention and trying to give them something that is valuable to them.  People look for things that they think will be beneficial, not things that are a waste of time.

If you have a good website with a lot of interesting content you are bound to get some traffic.  If you have a boring site with nothing interesting and a lot of just wrong information, there is really nothing you can do to promote your site, because once people get there they will click away fast because there is nothing for them.  Concentrate on building something useful, and the search engines and people will find you.

Here is how you make money on the net.  You sell information.  Copies of information cost you nothing.  You will need to follow this procedure exactly:

• Pretend to be rich
• Write as if you can’t spell
• Offer secret information
• Set up a site to take payments
• Be rude and obnoxious
• Call yourself The Rich Moron
• Offer a discount on your ebook
• Get your ebook from a PLR site
• Offer a money back guarantee
• Promote your website
• Make your money selling information on how to make money.

Any variation in this procedure is fine.  You don’t have to know anything about making money on the Internet.  The fact that you can’t write only proves you are a regular guy.  Look out for the authorities.