Money Online

It all started in the summer of 2005 when a young guy called Alex Tew was trying to figure out a way to make money to pay for his studies. At that time he couldn’t even dream that we was soon to become a millionaire in a very short period of time; probably the fastest first million dollars anyone has ever made without winning the lottery
One day he had the idea to make a webpage and sell the advertising space (haven’t we all?) So far so good, but he did not have basically nothing to write about and no money to invest in promoting his website. So how could a website that has no content at all make money? Most of us would say that it is impossible…
Surprisingly, after only 4 months, all the pixels were sold, and Alex made his first million. Further more, the last set of 1000 pixels was sold on ebay for a lot more than 1 dollar per pixel.

How could this work?
In my opinion the ingredients for his huge success were a combination of an original idea, smart naming and good word of mouth advertising.

The first step to his huge success was the name of his webpage “The Million Dollar Page” and the slogan “Own a piece of internet history“. As an advertiser, I believe that I would want my company to be advertised on a page with that name, but I wouldn’t probably be the first to pay for advertising there, without knowing for sure that it will be a success; Luckily for Alex, others did not think like me, and after having sold his first 400 px, it all went smoothly. When I think of it, it is normal that a page with such a title would attract interest, and when visitors come by, they click on the ads to see who has bought advertising space there. Judging from the testimonials, the traffic of the advertisers increased exponentially so everybody was happy. Pretty soon, more and more people rushed to buy pixels so that they could “own a piece of internet history” themselfs and Alex could not believe that things were going so well.
The popularity oh his website was growing faster and faster and he has generated a lot of press and television interest which resulted in tons of traffic that were making his clients really happy.
After 4 months of answering thousands of emails, phone calls, interviews and encountering several technical issues (which he has managed to take care of) he has sold everything and became a millionaire.
You can read the entire story on his blog.

Another great idea

Some people say that a such a successful idea only comes ones in a lifetime. Again, the young genius Alex Tew has managed to prove this wrong. At the beginning of December 2006 he has launched another project that looks to be at least as big as the million dollar page. It is called pixelotto and it works like this:
There are 1 million pixels available for sale (same as for the million dollar page), only this time the price is 2 dollars per pixel. The reason for this price increase is that Alex is offering a 1 million dollars price to one lucky winner who clicked on the ads. You heard me wright! “A month after all the ad space is sold, one ad is selected at random and a winner is chosen from all those people who clicked that correct ad. A millionaire is made! The winner will also get to nominate a charity of their choice to receive $100,000″

In the end I just want to say that against all odds, Alex proved that it is possible to make a ton of money without any content and with no funds for advertising… just a great idea! Don’t be in a hurry to copy his ideas though… there have been thousands of attempts so far, and none that I heard of had any success at all.

Technorati: Internet millionaires, online success

The Facts,
It is a well known fact by every webmaster out there that blending the adsense ads with the overall design of your website results in a much higher CTR.
Here are some points that will help you integrate your ads with the layout:
1- Make the background of the adsense ads the same color as the background of your website
2- Also, make the border of the ad box the same color as the background, so it will appear that you have no border
3- The colors of the fonts in the headings and description of the ads should be the same as the colors in your content.
4- Don’t isolate the adsense ads in some corner of the layout; place them where your people would expect to find navigation elements
5- Lately, webmasters have been experimenting something new. They placed images next to the ads, so they would make them more attractive. There has been a lot of debate about this but Google stated that this not against their TOS, as long as there are some visual elements that separate the images from the ads (such as bars, borderlines, etc.) Even Google has been testing something like this but so far this type of ads are still in beta testing.

Is it trickery or not?
As I have stated above, it has been proven the adsense ads that are well blended with the website’s layout generate a lot more revenue due to a much higher CTR, but WHY?
Basically, by following those steps, you will actually trick your visitors into clicking on the ads. Some are saying that this is not true, and by blending the ads you will have a nice harmonious design. Although I can agree to that to some extent, I really think that you can have a pretty good design even with accentuated ads, by using complementary colors that will probably give you more contrast to the composition of the layout, but still this will result in a lower CTR.
I believe that it all has to do with human nature. Many visitors don’t even bother to read ads, while others don’t click on them just because they feel like your taking advantage of them; as impossible as it may seem to some of you I have seen it with my own eyes.
Having this said, my personal opinion is that blending the adsense ads with the layout of the website is still a trickery, but it is for sure something you must do if you want to monetize your website with google adsense.

Technorati: Blending adsense ads, Adsense

Probably the most important ingredient to monetizing your site with adsense is the content. Although everybody agrees to this, many seem not to pay attention to some aspects that actually make the difference between “good quality content” that google in general and adsense in particular, loves, and mediocre content.
1 - Don’t write “posts”, write “articles”
When you write about something, make sure you have a comprehensive review of that specific topic and not just a 3-4 sentences “mini article”. It is easier to fall into this trap if you own a blog-type website. Many bloggers out there tend to think that posting every day is a must, not only for keeping their readers entertained, but to profit from pinging the blog directories to let them know how often they add fresh content.

Don’t get me wrong, updating daily is really a good thing, but don’t do it just for the fun of it. Small posts will eventually affect your credibility and eventually, your readers will find a better place to hang out. Well written documented articles will give you credibility, people will link to you, your site will attract more traffic and you have a better chance to become an authority in the field.
You may probably ask “ok, but what does adsense has to do with all that?”. Well besides, generating traffic to your website (which is the dream of every webmaster, especially if he uses adsense), comprehensive articles have a lot better chance to trigger targeted keywords that will interest your users and make them click on them; and that is what you are after, aren’t you? Which brings us to the next step:

2 Write with keywords in mind
If you want to maximize your chance to trigger better targeted keywords from adsense, you have to anticipate a little.
First, write your article without thinking of adsense at all; make it sound good and coherent to the reader and when you are happy with the outcome, save it as a draft.
Take a short brake and think of the keywords that you are trying to trigger from the adsense ads with your article and write them down on a sheet of paper. Re-read your article and place the keywords where you think they fit. You may also want to replace some words in your article with the keywords that you have written down (where they match, of course) but it is very important that you don’t abuse it. You still need to keep it sound good to the users, and repeated keywords, if they are not place properly, may sound very annoying.

3 Don’t mix the topics
With the points mentioned above in mind, it is almost obvious that you have to concentrate on a single topic on each page, in order to trigger targeted keywords from adsense ads. Again, bloggers, due to the nature of the blogging platform, seem to make the mistake of having a really long welcoming page filled with posts on different subjects. This not only bad for adsense, but it also harms the search engine positioning, not to mention that is not esthetic either.
There are 2 solutions to avoid this:
a) Allow only one post per page.
b) Make static html page for your home page. This tends to be a better solution because it will allow to show more posts within each category, which will actually be a positive thing, since the subject of all post in a category should be the same.
No matter if you have a blog or a website, the main idea is to keep each topic on a single page with an appropriate titles and headings.

Technorati: Adsense content, Articles