What are the ways of making money online that do more or less fine in my case now?

-    dropshipping. Yes it took me months to get where I am now and even now I work hard at searching for new products to dropship and setting relations with dropshipping merchants. I currently dropship books, dvd’s, audio books, video games, baby products. Next on my list – office supplies. I sell the stuff through eBay and my own websites.

-    AdSense. A few months ago it was my focus. All my websites were optimized to generate income with adsense (except e-commerce ones). But that stage is in the past, luckily. I like a comparison I have found in one forum: AdSense = AdCents. I agree with that 100%. But AdSense remains a nice addition to other monetization ways.

-    TLA (or: text-link-ads.com). Nice and easy way to get extra cash. Though Google threatens to add sellers to the lists of the websites that can’t pass their PR to other websites they (I mean Google does sell the links). Other similar, but less popular services (I did not try them): LinkWorth, LinkAdage.

-    Amazon. It used to bring me just a few dollars per month in the past, but as my websites become more established and after a few simple optimization steps (individual keyword researched titles, unique articles on product pages, store closely integrated into the content – product categories, bestsellers, etc) the sales have increased dramatically.

-    PPC (pay-per-click) resulting into CPA (cost-per-action) sales. I do PPC with top 3 engines (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter). The hardest task is to find the niches that will make you money. The competition is tough here and you need PPC skills, niche knowledge and some luck to find that balance when you make more than you spend.

-    Freelance sites (Getafreelancer, Scriptlance and Rentacoder for now): writing content, getting links and promoting websites. But as a rule, the projects I get are in the range of $100-300.00 and they take time to communicate with your customers and meeting their requirements in full. Not the most profitable method.

-    Direct advertising sales. To tell the truth, I was very skeptical I will sell any adv spots on my websites. I was wrong! After a week of sending out the messages to the websites that might be interested to see their ads on just one of my websites I have signed three advertisers for long term campaigns for the amount of $500.00.

-    Inline ads. I was sure that I would make good money with them – the results of my first trial month with Kontera were so promising, but then the earnings dropped quite low (summer slowdown?). Now when I target direct advertisers I think of removing inline ads from those websites completely.

-    Pay per post services. I have been aware of these for many months, but did not pay attention to this way to monetize those websites that are not quite profitable. After some experiments I am sure that it is also a way, and an easy one, to earn extra cash – but for that you need some decent websites to be approved by the services and advertisers. Recommended: PayPerPost, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Blogvertise. Not recommended: LoudLaunch (in fact, I have completed one review and posted it, then I receive a notice that the advertiser has no funds in the account), BloggerWave, Smorty (two latter quite new and have just a few advertisers). Now and then I think of becoming an advertiser myself for ptromoting some new web projects – these services are a nice way to get permanent one way links of good quality.

-    Next on the list: a) software sales (my partner has developed a nice product for eBay sellers) and b) some paid online service (have some vague ideas)

[tags]make money online, affiliate marketing, ppc, tla, ppp, amazon, ecommerce, advertising, freelance, ebay[/tags]

I have recently discovered that the algo to discover new website ideas I used to apply in the past does not work as efficiently as I would like to.

So, what other ways can you use to get ideas for the websites that will be competitive? One of my greatest discovery of the latest time (that seems so obvious) is to focus on new and emerging products, services and trends.

I certainly use a few of the ‘old’ discovery ideas, but you should remember that it is a hard task to complete with websites that people started years back in all those popular (and profitable) online niches – mortgages, credit cards, insurance, making money online, real estate, health, etc.

I do not say that you should not try, I just want to say that you will have much better chances to succeed if you focus on some new trends that are happening in those industries (a real estate sample – zillow.com)

What are those new sources of ideas I currently use? I have a list of trend, innovation and futurist websites that give me ideas:

PFSK
Influx Insights
Agenda Inc.
SpringWise
Trendwatching
Nowandnext
Corante
iftf
Plausiblefutures
Shapingtomorrow
Trendcentral
Ginthinking
Imaginatik
wfs

I also use top news and business portals: Forbes, CNN, Economist, TechReview, NYtimes, etc. and websites focused on new online technologies, applications and services (techcrunch, readwriteweb, programmableweb)

Summary: These new sources do not do miracles – I mean do not expect to discover a load of new cool ideas after reviewing them just once. I keep visiting and reading them practically every day scanning for something new and promising, making notes and then adding new notes, keeping an eye on one industry, product or service waiting for some proof from more than one source.

All ideas go through WordTracker demand check – if the search volume is low at this time – it does not mean that I send the idea to the trash basket. I just make a note that it is not the correct time to develop this topic right now. Next is a look at Google SERP first page – who are on top?

Monetization is the next issue on the list. Certainly, there is always contextual advertising (YPN, AdSense), but it is much more profitable to run some CPA program along with that. If you expect many eyeballs, CPM is also a viable option.

Contextual ads from my experience tend to be less frequently clicked (visitors get blind to these units as they once got blind to banners) and less profitable (there is too much online property now aiming at a limited number of advertisers).

[tags]website ideas, seo, affiliate marketing, internet marketing [/tags]

What do you need to earn good income online? You need:

much online property,
much traffic,
content,
links,
a few established websites (or at least one) to feed your affiliate ventures,
and profitable affiliate programs joined.

Yes, this is the approach I am testing over a few past weeks.

I have hired a group of college students that are generating keyword targeted unique articles (keyword research is one of the subjects that we should research deep – I have spent much time playing with WordTracker tool these days). I get one original posted article per 1.00$, not bad price in my opinion.

I have joined a few CPA programs with Azoogle, Millnic and CJ networks and generated landing pages on my established websites – now I count the days when I will get some organic traffic to these highly optimized pages.

I have started a few PPC campaigns for these landing pages using MSN AdCenter and Google AdWords. The results are positive and growing. I have made a sort of PPC guide that I practice at this time.

My next move is to optimize my music website that gets good traffic, but very few ad clicks, for CPM networks.

My e-commerce activity sucks at this time – the suppliers grow prices for the products I sell online and the customers are unwilling to accept the increased price for now. But I know that my competitors’ prices go up as well – so I hope my customers will be active shortly again.

Yes, I spend less time on webmaster forums and less time posting on this blog, but all of a sudden I have discovered that there are more profitable, not so crowded niches (compared to these niches – making money online, SEO and similar stuff) that I can easily conquer relying on my experience with dropshiparea.com – this is my impression after a few weeks of my new working algo.

Summary:  My idea is simple, not new – let’s do things in bulk and diversify. I review all my affiliate marketing archives (I guess I have about 20-25 big folders with prints of articles, interviews and forum discussions I have made in the past two years) scrutinizing them for the ideas that I might test – datafeeds, long-tail keywords, cloaking, comparison websites, etc, etc.

All money I am getting at this time is re-invested into new projects and staff. I have a deadline to grow and the income level I would like to achieve by the end of the year. I am not sure yet if the goals are likely to be fulfilled, but I think I will detect a few techniques that really work online now.

One of the past mistakes was my doing the same stuff month after month with very modest results. I put an end to that practice and that was probably the smartest move I made in 2007 so far.

[tags]ppc, cpm, cpa, cpc, cpl, affiliate marketing, internet marketing[/tags]