I do actually purchase on the Internet on a fairly regular basis, from companies like Amazon and other large Internet retailers.  I also purchase things on eBay on a fairly regular basis.

I live in the Philippines, though, and to be honest, it’s been a long time since I tried out any e-commerce purchases from Philippine sites.  The last I recall was back about 10 years ago when I bought something on MyAyala, which has now changed names.  The experience was just “OK,” and in many ways it was not all that great.  The payment system was poor, and required that I go to a bank to deposit money, etc, something that could not be completed online at the time of purchase.

Manila Soles Shoes

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was watching TV, a show about business on a local Philippine News Channel.  They were featuring a Philippine Company that makes shoes out of recycled materials.  The company is called “Manila Soles,” which I found to be a cute name too.  The shoes looked very stylish and comfortable and were priced very reasonably too, around $20 per pair.  I decided that I wanted a pair.  I searched in my local malls and shoe stores, but was unable to find any shoes from this company here in Davao where I live.  We are about 700 or so miles from Manila, and it seems that Manila Soles has yet to move into the Davao marketplace.  Because of this, I was looking online for their shoes to see what I could find.

I found that Manila Soles has an e-commerce site, which is on Multiply.com.  My past impressions of Multiply were somewhat negative, but dated back a few years.  Last time I looked at what Multiply was doing in the way of e-Commerce, it was not a mature solution – no real payment system, and all seemed to be rather loosely put together.  I was certainly unimpressed.  About 6 months ago, or so, I met the Country Manager of Multiply Philippines, Jack Madrid.  Jack and I were both speakers at a conference in General Santos City.  I liked Jack and found him to be a pretty intelligent guy, so I wanted to watch Multiply and see how they progressed in the area of e-Commerce.  So, when I saw that Manila Soles was using Multiply, I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how Multiply has matured in the e-commerce business.

My friend, Jack Madrid of Multiply

So, on a Tuesday afternoon, I decided to order a pair of Manila Soles shoes through their online Multiply store.  To be honest, I was a bit leery about making the purchase, but since the price for shoes was quite low, I decided that the risk was low.  I chose my shoes and went through the checkout process.  One thing that made me quite happy was that one of the payment options is through Paypal.  I like to use Paypal for shopping online, it is convenient and safe.  During checkout, everything went smoothly, and I was pretty happy with my shopping experience.  The only downside to me was that they did not e-mail me an order confirmation or receipt for my purchase.  After I completed the purchase, there was a confirmation on the website, but I was looking for an e-mail confirmation.  I decided to print out the website confirmation, just so that I would have some evidence that I had made the purchase and paid.  I had decided that if I did not have my shoes within one week, I would file a claim with Paypal and get the charges reversed.

On Thursday morning, my son came to my office with a package, which turned out to be the shoes that I ordered!  Wow, less than 2 days after ordering, and they had already arrived.  I was impressed.  Not only that, but when I checked out the shoes and tried them on, I was further impressed.  The shoes looked great, were comfortable, and fit me well.  What more could I ask for.

Good job, Manila Soles, and Multiply too!  You have impressed me with the great service and smooth process of ordering online.  My only recommendation would be an e-mail order confirmation.  Other than that, it was a perfect online shopping experience.  I am actually thinking of ordering a few more pairs of Manila Soles in different colors and styles!

What is the debate?

Who do you write for?

Do you write for Google, or do you write for human readers?

What do I mean?

Writing for Google

Those who write for Google are very big on researching everything before they write at all.

1. What topics does Google like, and pay a premium for?
2. What keywords should I feature in my article, and especially in the title, to capitalize on what I can earn from Google?
3. What other “white hat” tricks can I employ to squeeze a bit more money out of Google?

Do you write for Google?

These types of considerations are very important for those who “write for Google.”  You may have a hard time what I mean about “writing for Google.”  You see, because Google advertising (AdSense) is featured on many blogs, a lot of people concentrate very deeply on what they must do to make Google happy, and maximize the revenue that they get from Google through their advertising program.  Of course, real live humans have to come to their blog for them to earn anything, but many people have the attitude that their first concern is to please Google, and that will maximize the earnings when real people come to their sites.

Writing for humans

The opposite consideration is to concentrate your writing on what your readers want to read.  To write information that is entertaining or informative to the people who visit your site.  I am a big believer in writing for humans.  The way that I see it, if I write articles that are interesting to read, that will bring more traffic to my site, and the earnings of the site will take care of themselves.

Of course, there is a balance that must be considered.  You can’t, in my opinion, go 100% in either direction.  If you write 100% for Google your articles might be very dry, and uninteresting.  If your articles are not interesting, nobody will visit your site, and thus you will make nothing from advertising.  On the other hand, if you totally write for humans and don’t even consider what is good for your revenue, then a lot of people may read your site, but you won’t make any money.  You have to find a balance, and capitalize on it.  I prefer to lean pretty far toward the “human” side, and I don’t concentrate much at all on what Google wants.  I often tell people that I don’t write for computers (like Google’s web crawlers), I write for my readers.  The truth is, you still have to put a little effort into making sure that you will be in line with Google’s policies though.

Remedies

Truth is, if you concentrate more on your readers, you might, and probably will, get a bit of a ding from Google, and make less than if you really concentrated all of your efforts on doing what Google’s computers want.  But, there is a remedy for that, one that I have found to be very effective.

What are those remedies?

Consider writing an eBook

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  Find other ways to monetize your site, other than just Google advertising.

What I have found to be very effective is selling my own products and services.  Selling eBooks on the topic that you write about.  Writing and selling books on the topic of your site.  Truth is, these products are much more profitable than advertising in most cases.

I am not saying that you should eliminate advertising on your site, but what I am saying is that you should not count on it for 100% of your income.

Think about this, most pay per click advertising pays a very small amount.  Based on my contractual commitment to Google, I cannot give specifics in terms of how much you get when somebody clicks on your ad, but let me say that most publishers make only a small amount from pay per click advertising.  Yes, there are some people who make thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands.  Such people are rare, though.  Some people only make $1 per month or so.  I don’t know what the average is, but I would guess that the average blogger makes less than $20 per month from pay per click advertising.

Now, I have a lot of eBooks that I have published.  I have eBooks that cost from $9.99 up to $49.00.  If I sell one of those eBooks, I have made more than a lot of people make for a whole month.  And, on average, I sell more than one eBook every day.  Sometimes I sell way more than one book in a day.  But, it is rare that a day goes by that I don’t sell at least one book.  I also make a “way above average” amount from advertising on my sites.

My motto is to make sure that I don’t do something that gets me penalized by Google, but other than that, I write what my readers want (at least that is what I try to do, of course some articles are more successful than others). I find that it works for me.

How can you get penalized by Google?  By breaking their rules.  Some things that Google will penalize you for are simple mistakes like having poor spelling or grammar on your site.  Of course, nobody has perfect spelling, everybody makes mistakes, but just try to minimize the mistakes.  Don’t publish duplicate content, that will get you on Google’s bad side.  What is duplicate content?  Having the exact same article on your site that appears on other sites too.  It’s not hard to stay on Google’s good side, just make a commitment to yourself that you are going to do that, and you will likely come out just fine.

So, my advice is to write for your readers, follow Google’s quality policies, and aim for a mix in revenue sources for your site.  If you do this, and keep doing it over time, it is likely that you will experience some success in publishing on the net.

Good luck.

To be honest, ServInt really offered me bulletproof hosting the entire time that I was with them.  My reasons for leaving were kind of stupid, in retrospect.  I left because:

1. HostGator was cheaper
2. I felt I didn’t have the technical skills necessary to manage a server at ServInt

Servint T-Shirt

Really, these reasons were not good reasons to leave a good hosting company.  But, I learned my lesson, and now I am back with ServInt.  It would take a lot to make me consider leaving again!

Yesterday, I got a surprise.  My son came to see me, and he had a package in hand.  I asked what it was, and he said it was a package that had been sent to me from the States.  I am an American, but I have lived in the Philippines for the past 12 years.  Hmm.. I thought, and could not think of anybody who would be sending me a package.  I had not ordered anything.  Nothing was expected for deliver, so I was really curious when I opened the package.

It was a nice t-shirt from ServInt!  They also included a card that read:

Robert -

We are thrilled to welcome you back into the ServInt family.  Thank you for your trust, loyalty, and kind words!

Sincerely,

Lauren Frankiewicz
Customer Relationship Mgr.

Wow!  What a nice gesture.  I am shocked that they would go to the expense of shipping a t-shirt all the way to the Philippines!

Thank you so much, Lauren, and all of the ServInt team!  I have been very happy since my return to ServInt.  Yeah, it’s a few bucks more than I was spending, but the quality of service is well worth it!

Cheaper hosting is not necessarily any cheaper if you think about it.  I make money from my websites, and just an hour or so of downtime each month would make up the price difference in lost ad revenue, sales revenue and such.  Penny wise is almost always pound foolish!

I love the t-shirt, ServInt, and I sincerely thank you for that!

Lack of variety and interest; tedious repetition and routine.

I am a strong believer in having a routine.  I like having a regular set of things that I do daily, weekly, or on some regular schedule.  This is true in my personal life and also my business life.  Today, I am primarily talking about my business life, though, since the subject matter of this site is about business, money making and such.

The problem with having a firm routine is that it can become monotonous.  So, the question becomes, how do you combat monotony?

Monotony

If I get into a period in life where I think things in my businesses have become too monotonous, I sit down and look at what I am doing in my businesses, and I change things.

One of the things that I believe is that if I am feeling a sense of monotony, my customers or readers probably are too.  Probably not to the extent that I do, because I am deeply involved in “my world” on a daily basis.  Readers or customers probably only devote short and infrequent periods of time to “my world,” and thus don’t sense the monotony as much as I do.  But, if I am feeling it, I am betting that others are too.

In my publishing business, I publish lots of websites.  How do I combat monotony on my sites?  Well, first, let’s look at what parts of the business can become monotonous:

• Your writing style or topics that you write about could be monotonous, and it can feel like you are writing about the same things daily
• The looks of your site can get boring, or tiresome
• If you are selling products, the same old products day in and day out can become boring

So, how to you combat these three areas that I’ve identified?

Writing

As I said, your writing style, or the topics that you write about can become the same every day.  There are a number of ways to address this:

• Look for new topics to write about
• Write from different perspectives to change up your style
• Bring in some guest writers to your site to shake things up a bit
• Read more.  The more different writing you read, the more things you can change about your own style

See, you can do things to shake things up on your website, and make things interesting again.  Interesting for you and for your readers!

Site Design

Which direction are you going?

From time to time, it’s a good idea to redesign your website!

For me, I prefer to not make too radical of changes.  Try to keep at least some continuity between designs.  Maybe you will at least keep the color the same or similar.  Maybe the design will be similar, but a change of color.  Whatever you choose, making design changes can kind of “wake up” your readers and make them take a second look at the site instead of just reading the article.

I have found that when I make a site redesign, my ad revenue picks up significantly.  Have you hear of “ad blindness” before?  Basically, it just means that because everything is the same day after day, people don’t really recognize your ads any longer, and thus they don’t click on the ads, even if the product being advertised is something they really want.  By changing your site, people need to “re-acquaint” themselves with the site, look a  little closer and they often rediscover things that were there all along!

Sometimes, some web publishers change the looks of their site seemingly on a daily basis!  Maybe not every day, but truly, some people go with radical changes to the site design very often.  Personally, I do not believe in doing that.  I try to re-do my main sites on an annual basis.  One new design per year is enough, in my opinion.  It’s a personal choice, though, and only you can decide how often is often enough.  I find that the more time I spend concentrating on the content of the site, rather than the looks of the site, the more successful I am.  Your mileage may vary, of course.

Products

I sell products on almost every site that I own.  What kinds of products?

• eBooks
• Instructional courses
• Consulting
• Gift products for delivery

Selling the same old products day after day, week after week, can certainly be monotonous.  Even if it is not monotonous for you, it will be for your customers.  If somebody wants to buy something from you, but they already own everything you are selling… well… you probably just lost a sale.

No matter what you are selling, try to add new products.  Maybe you can just write two new eBooks per year, no problem.  Write those two, and add them to your selection.  Another thing that is nice about adding more selection is that over the years your efforts add up, and soon you have a whole store full of products to offer instead of just one or two items.  You’ll be surprised at how your sales will add up when you have a larger product selection.

It’s easy!

So, it’s very easy… if things are getting monotonous in your business, change it!  Shake things up.  You can do it easily, and you will likely find that your customers and readers like it too!  Your pocketbook will thank you!

The product launch went over very well, with many sales.  I was quite happy with how that went.  It made me realize that I had been missing the boat on these courses, as I had been procrastinating on launching the products for at least a year.  I should have done it earlier.

Today, though, I got a bit of a surprise.  Somebody named BobW left a comment on my site, saying this:

Hi, Bob.
I was just reading your article/ad for your language courses, as I’m considering moving to the Philippines. The only question I have is, why are they priced in US dollars, as opposed to local currency?

Currencies

Well, my first reaction was why would he care what currency I use for pricing?  I mean if you purchase my course, and pay with a credit card that is denominated in Pesos, you will be billed in Pesos by your credit card company.  If your credit card is from the UK and denominated in Pounds, you will be billed by your credit card company in pounds.  It simply does not matter.

BobW’s comment got me thinking, though.  Why do I price my products in US Dollars?

Let me think of a few reasons:

1. The most important reason is that about 75% of my customers that I deal with are Americans.  Americans use US Dollars for their currency.  Since the vast majority of those who purchase from me are Americans, it is logical to bill the products in Dollars.  Don’t you think?
2. My businesses are US Registered.  For record keeping purposes, it is much more simple to bill and do business in US Dollars.  There is never any question about the conversion rate and such.
3. Another big reason is that under Philippine Tax law, foreigners who live in the Philippines must pay Philippine taxes on income that is derived from the Philippines.  If you derive your income from another country, the USA in my case, there are no Philippine taxes due.  If I price in Pesos, it may be construed to mean that I am intending to attract people in the Philippines as my customers.  Truth is, I try not to do business with people in the Philippines for the express purpose that I do not want to expose my income to Philippine taxes, and the hassles that come with taxes due in multiple countries.

Those are few of the reasons why I price my products in dollars.  There are other reasons too, but these are the most important reasons.

A few years ago, when the US Dollar really started sliding in value, I tried a bit of an experiment.  I started pricing on just one of my websites in Euros instead of US Dollars.  I did it for about two years.  The experiment went bust big time.  One thing I found out what that my customers who were largely Americans didn’t understand what a Euro was, or the whole “different currency” thing.  It was not natural to them, and a lot of my customers went away without buying because they simply did not understand what was going on with this “Euro” thing.

After trying that experiment, and seeing how it all worked out, I decided to keep it simple, and always price in dollars.  Yes, I live in the Philippines.  My customers are Americans mostly, though, and I believe it’s best to do things in a way that is most convenient and understandable for my customers.  I don’t see a problem with that.

What about you… what currency do you price your products in?

What do I mean by “multiple streams of income?”  Well, it is fairly self explanatory.  What I mean is that it is a wise strategy to grow a number of different business ventures to the point where they make an income for you, even if it is only a small income.  Let’s say that you grow 6 or 8 different businesses into such small streams that produce income.  Perhaps none of these streams produces a “river” of revenue that would support your lifestyle completely, but by combining each stream, the revenue you are able to generate is ample to cover your needs.

Wow, this stream has really grown

Additionally, over the years, you can and will likely come up with new streams that will present yourself.  Even if these new streams are small, as they combine with each other, they will produce a larger river for you to feed from.  On top of that, your river can become larger even if you don’t add any new ideas.  The fact is, that if you are managing each stream of income properly, the streams will grow and have more income flowing from each.  As each stream grows, your river of income will grow exponentially.

Sometimes things don’t go as we plan though.  Let’s say that one of your streams dries up, or becomes much weaker than it once was.  Of course that is not good, but if you live by my theory, you will still be OK, because each of the other streams is still producing for you, and likely some of the streams are growing in size.  Still, though, it is important, in my opinion, to not allow any of the streams to grow so large that you give up on your other streams.  Of course, the bigger your streams get, the better for you, but you also have to remember to maintain the less productive streams in case that river hits hard times down the road.  Always remember to keep your multiple streams of income at the forefront, and keep your income healthy by keeping the income production from multiple outlets.

Always looking for my Mississippi River

Off the top of my head, I don’t really know how many different “streams” or businesses I have.  I have a lot, I know that.  I will estimate that I have at least a dozen different streams of income, and likely 15 to 20 in all.

Over the past 5 years or so, I have one particular stream that I have been paying very close attention to, and hoping that it would grow into a river.  Many of you who are reading this probably think you know which of my streams I am talking about, but I would bet that you would be wrong in what you are thinking.  I am not going to name which stream I am talking about either, because that is really not that important for this discussion.  But, let me say that 5 years ago this stream was more like a small creek.  It made a little money for me 5 years ago, but only a trickle.  Certainly not enough to pay my bills or keep my family living well.  But, of all of my businesses, this was the one that I really wanted to be successful at, and to the my “river” among all of my streams.

I have managed this stream carefully, spent a lot of effort on it, even though the amount of income was relatively small over the years.  However, I have been happy that I have seen this creek grow into a stream, and the stream has continued to grow.

Just a couple of days ago, I realized that this stream has grown to the point that it is nearly a river of income.  I believe that if I continue to grow it wisely, carefully manage it, that within a year it will be a river indeed.  I believe that by one year from now, this stream of income which was once so small will be large enough that I could comfortably live on that river alone.

So, what will I do?

When the river is mature, as I say in about a year or so, what direction will I take.  I will I close down my other businesses and rely on this single river?

Not a chance.  Ain’t gonna happen.

Why?

Because that would totally negate my theory of multiple streams of income.  Yes, I will have a river on my hands, but it’s still nice to have a few streams feeding the river and keeping it strong.  Also, almost all of my streams are inter-related, and what I do with one stream will affect the other streams.  So, if I close down one of my streams, it will weaken the overall river that is created.  So, instead of having 15 or 20 streams, I will have one or two rivers that will merge together, and maybe a dozen streams to feed the rivers and keep them strong.

That is my theory that I have lived by for many years now, the multiple streams of income.  So far, it has worked well for me.  I don’t intend to dam any of those streams, no, I will manage them wisely and keep my river strong. You never know when one of those streams will emerge as a river of it’s own.

But, is that really the case?  Let’s look at what is going on here.

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

You see, over the years, since eBooks came into existence, the writer of the book, or the publisher has set the price of the eBook.  Several years back, Amazon came out with an eBook reader called the Kindle.  These days, Amazon offers several different models of the Kindle reader, and I must say, some rather nice units.  I really like the Kindle a lot.  That said, though, I don’t really like part of Amazon’s strategy when it comes to the Kindle.

You see, the eBooks that can be read on the Kindle are a special format that is only for the Kindle.  It’s easy to publish your book for the Kindle, using software that Amazon will provide for free, but the fact is that you need different version of the book for the Kindle and for other platforms.  No biggie, just pointing that out.  The kicker, though, is that Amazon dictates how much you can charge for an eBook on the Kindle.  If you want to sell your eBook on the Kindle, you are not allowed to charge a price greater than $9.99.  To me, that is not fair.  In my opinion, you should be able to charge whatever price you want, and whatever price you feel is best for earning you the most profit.  I mean, if you charge $300 for your eBook, your potential audience would be very small.  Certainly, if you keep your price at $9.99, or even lower, you have a larger potential audience, and will attract more buyers for your book.

For example, let’s say that you offer your book at $79.99, and another person has a similar book that they offer at $3.99.  Let’s say that the high price guy sells 300 books over the course of the year, so his gross sales would be $23,997.  Let’s say that the low priced guy sells 5,000 books over the course of a year, his gross sales would be $19,950.  The high price guy would make more money, even though his number of books sold is very small.  Of course, this is an extreme example, no doubt, but it drives home a point.

In the DOJ lawsuit against Apple and the publishers, the Government is saying that Apple and the others are trying to drive up the price of eBooks.  I don’t see it that way.  Apple and the others simply want to be allowed to sell books at the price that they choose, instead of having Amazon force them to sell books at an artificially low price that is being dictated.  Apple just wants to be able to continue marketing books at non-fixed prices as has been done over the years, instead of prices that are being dictated and imposed on the writers and publishers  For me, I’m with Apple, and I am no fan of Apple products.  I, personally, would want to publish my books for the Kindle, for the iPad, iPhone, Smartphone, Windows Phone, whatever platforms are available, and I want to be free to set my own prices.

I looked in to publishing for the Kindle some time back, and I didn’t like what I found.  Firstly, Amazon forced me to charge no more than $9.99 for my books.  Not only that, though, they dictated to me all of my other costs as well.  In other words, I had to pay Amazon for this and that.  I had to give Amazon a fixed percentage of profit, etc.  Personally, I would be more comfortable with a system where I say, “here, Amazon, I have this eBook and I am offering it to you for $17.50, you can decide what price to sell it for, set your markup, etc.”  That system makes more sense to me.  Under the system they are using now, I can charge a retail price of $9.99, then after all of the other costs involved, I might make $2 or $3 on the eBook, Amazon gets the rest.  That’s not for me, sorry, so I decided not to publish my eBooks on Amazon.

Some books are worth more than $9.99.  Some are worth less.  If I write a book and I feel it’s worth $30, I should be able to charge $30.  If readers don’t feel the book is worth $30, they won’t buy it, and I won’t sell many copies, but it should be my choice as to what price to charge.  If people don’t buy at my preferred price, I can change the price, I can offer a “sale price,” or I can give some bonus stuff with the purchase.  But, not with Amazon.

Sorry, US Department of Justice, but I think you are barking up the wrong tree with this lawsuit.  And, I’m sorry, Amazon, but I believe that you are losing out on a lot of books for your Kindle by forcing prices on writers and publishers.

Oh, I can hear a certain subset of readers of this site saying to me:

But, Bob, I am not passionate about anything really, at least nothing that would make for an interesting blog.

Well, my first reaction to that is that there is no topic, in my view, that you should shy away from.  I mean, if you have a passion about the distance that the average Llama can spit.. well, there are a few other people out there in the world who likely share that interest.  I’m not one of them, but there are some, I feel sure of that.  If you are passionate on that topic, I feel that you really should set up a blog and write about it.

As I said in the previous article, if you don’t have passion for what you are writing about, you will soon lose interest and give up on the blog.  I’ve seen that happen hundreds of times with people whom I’ve mentored.  Perhaps I’ve seen it thousands of times.

Maybe I spoke too quickly in my previous article, though, when I said that you can’t make money with a topic that you don’t enjoy.

Actually there is a way

Yes, you read that correctly, there is a way to do it successfully.

How?

Hire a staff of writers.  If you are bootstrapping the startup and don’t have money to hire staff, then it would be my advice to shelve the idea and move on to a more suitable topic.  On the other hand, if you are not adverse to spending a few bucks, then go for it.

You need to find and hire at least one person who write blog articles on the topic of your choice.  Get somebody to write at least two articles per week on the site, and I would actually recommend 7 articles per week, yes, one article per day.  Let them do this for at least a couple years until you have 500+ articles on the site, and I would recommend getting at least 1,000 articles on the site.  One thing to watch out for is that it is possible that as you start earning a bit of money, and expose yourself to the topic, you may actually develop a passion for the topic yourself, and if you do, you can start doing the article writing yourself.

One of the nice things about something like this is that you don’t need to hire somebody locally, or somebody who can come to your house or office to do the work.  Because of the nature of the Internet, you can actually hire somebody from anywhere in the world, as long as they have access to the Internet.  In fact, if you outsource the work to somewhere like India or the Philippines (where I live), you can hire somebody pretty cheaply.

You know, when I originally started writing this article, I had no intention to write what I am going to write now.  It just was not even on my mind.  But, through my Web-Earner service, I offer people who do just what I am talking about.  It started 2 or 3 years ago, I don’t recall, when I person in California hired my company to blog for him.  He has between 50 and 75 websites where we product the content for him.  So, I do know what I am talking about here.  Over that time, we have had other such clients too, and have written for their blogs.  This fellow in California (I feel confident that he will read this, and I thank him for his business) is still going strong and we are still producing content for him on a weekly basis.

So, if you are looking for the right people who can produce content for your site, and produce that content for the right price, please let me know, we can come up with a plan for you.

So, to a point, I stand corrected when I said that you should not choose a topic for which you have no passion.  You can indeed hire the work out and get it done.  Having passion is still important, but perhaps it’s not as necessary as I was thinking earlier.

I am sorry, my friends, but the number one thing is that you need to do a website about something that you are passionate about.  Choose a topic that you love, and one on which you have expertise.  With that combination, you will make money.

But, even if you choose a topic which has the right nix of passion and expertise, you still need to run the site for a while, show readers your passion, before you start trying to make money.

There are a lot of ways to make money, but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s think about using Google AdSense to monetize your site.

A lot of the same people who write to me wanting so badly to make money online also tell me that they have been trying for a few months, and they have made only a dollar or two from AdSense.  They can’t understand.

Can you make your AdSense account look like this?

Can you make money with AdSense?

Many of these people who are unable to build up their AdSense earnings to a decent level come to the conclusion that you simply cannot make money with Google AdSense.  The truth is, in my opinion, you are not going to make money with any type of monetization in only a couple of months.  It takes time.  In fact, I would advise you to forget about making money altogether for a while.  Go six months, or even a year, without even trying to make money.  Use your time to concentrate on making your site the very best it can be. Use it to show your readers that you have expertise that will be valuable to them.  Put in your best effort to convey knowledge and passion to your readers before you think about or concentrate on money.  It will pay off for you.

Reviewing my AdSense Account

I stumbled into this line of thought last week when I was reviewing my AdSense account to see how I have been doing in growing my earnings over the years.

I first started as Internet Publisher in 1995.  Basically, for the 11 years from 1995 until 2006, I had only one website.  If I had others, I cannot think of any, and if I did have any that I can’t remember, they were small sites.  I had one big site, and I still have that site today although it is not anywhere being my “big site” today that it was back then.

It so happens that I first signed up as an AdSense publisher in September 2006.

Now, realize that you must earn $100 from Google AdSense before Google will issue you a payment.  If you make less than $100, they will carry your balance forward until you reach that goal of $100 at which time they will issue the money to you.  If you never reach $100, you won’t ever get the money, it’s that simple.  Fact is that many new publishers take months, even years to reach the $100.  A lot of folks give up before they ever reach the goal, and thus never get anything.

Passion is important in business!

The first month that I had an AdSense account, I earned more than $400.  I can’t say exactly how much I earned, because that would violate Google’s terms of service, but I’ll just say that it was more than $400 in the first full month that I had an AdSense account.  Not bad, huh?

How, or why did I earn that kind of money in my first month?  Because I put AdSense on a well established site that I had a passion about, and had been publishing for some time.  I had already built an audience on the site.

Now, I have dozens of sites.  Can you earn from AdSense?  I can assure you that you can.  I know, because I make a decent amount from Google AdSense.  That said, though, AdSense produces only about 5% of my overall Internet income.  So, it’s not a “major” player, but it still makes a nice chunk of change for me.

What I am saying applies to any kind of money making from your website.  If I were not talking about AdSense, I could be talking about eBook sales, Text Ads, Affiliate Commissions, whatever.  But, what I am trying to drive home is that you will do much better in making money if you are publishing information about something that you are passionate about and that you are knowledgeable about.  And.. if you take the time to show an audience that you have those things going for you.

Can you earn money online?

You better believe you can.  Just don’t start a site today and expect to cash in next week.  It doesn’t work that way.  Also, don’t look for what niche earns the most, whether you like it or not.  Always look to write about something that you love.

Google has a program where they monitor websites.  If you have a virus or some kind of malware on your site, when your site shows up in Google search results, there will be a big warning there that “This site may harm your computer.”  Additionally, if you decide to go to the site anyway, when you click on the link to go to the site, a warning screen pops up to make sure you realize that the site may harm your computer.  If you still want to visit the site, you can click on a button that says “Visit this site anyway.”  Frankly, few people will push that button when they are warned that going to your site could harm their computer.  To be honest, most people will never return to the site, because they are afraid to do so.

Oh no, I've been hacked!

Yesterday, I happened to visit a friend’s website and the warning came up.  His site was infected with malware, and my harm my computer.  I called my friend on the phone to let him know.  He told me there was no malware on the site, and I should not worry.  He said that when the warning first started happening, he checked the site and found nothing, so it was wrong.  I’m sorry, my friend, but if Google makes such a warning, you can bet that they know what they are doing.  If they put up such a warning on a site that had no problems, they would be opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit.  I advised my friend that he should really dig deeper because he could count on the fact that there indeed was a problem with the site.

The important thing on this situation for my friend was that this was his business site!  When your business is involved, you have to be double vigilant and keep the site healthy.

What to do

So, if you site is identified by Google as a site that has a problem, what should you do?

Well, obviously, the first thing to do is to check the site very closely and determine what the problem is.  This may not be easy to do, but it is very important that you find the malware or the hack to your site, because if you don’t, you won’t get the warning removed from Google.  You can bet that you will lose at least 90% of your site traffic if you don’t take care of this.  For a clue, check Google’s Webmaster Tools, as sometimes they will give you a rundown of what problems they found on the site.

If you are using something like WordPress or Joomla or some other such system for your website, check the plugins especially for malware.  This is often where hackers find a security hole in your site, and when they find such a hole, you can bet that they will take advantage of the opening.

After you have identified and fixed the problems, again, you should go back to Google’s Webmaster Tools and there you can report to Google that the problem has been fixed.  Google will then re-scan your site, and if they find that it has been cleaned up and is now safe for visitors, they will remove all warnings and your site will again be in Google’s good graces.

Take this seriously

If you have websites, and particularly if your sites produce your income, or part of your income, you really need to take this very seriously, because having such warnings pop up can really damage your site’s popularity, and your reputation.  It will certainly scare potential visitors away, and many will never return.