PPC arbitrage is a very popular topic with webmasters. No surprise – it deals with a way to make easy and quick money with some spammy websites.

The idea: cost per click from a 2nd tier PPC engine (your expense) – cost per click you get from AdSense and YPN (your income) = profit (or loss). Your task is to make this margin positive. It can be certainly negative.

So:

a. Get traffic from the below PPC engines:

www.search123.com
www.enhance.com
www.searchfeed.com
www.goclick.com
www.7search.com
www.findit-quick.com
www.search.looksmart.com
www.kanoodle.com
www.adbrite.com

b. Place Adsense and YPN ads. Blend your ads into your content seamlessly (I guess there should be minimum of your content

c. Control your costs, make adjustments.

Summary: It sounds easy, but needs practice. I have tried a similar technique a year back playing with Google AdWords and Google AdSense. It was not wise on my part. I am sure one needs cheap PPC traffic (Google AdWords are not cheap) and spammy website (so that the visitor had no choice but click on ads).

If you find a way to be profitable – this is no doubt a technique to make a quick buck. How much can you scale? Not sure, but the potential is good.

[tags]arbitrage, ppc, pay per click, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

You work hard at your website: content creation, new features, new online tools, marketing. You need to know what works and what does not work and to drop those types of activities that do not bring the expected progress.

How do you know what works? How do you measure the progress of your web site?

The most important indicator is your bank account – you can see the progress checking your earnings with the affiliate networks or from other revenue sources (depends on the type of the website you run).

Another way that provides you with more food for analysis is your website logs. Web stats allow you to have more accurate visitor information like unique visitors, page views, visitor geo location, referrers, etc. instead of just information like hits.

As a rule, you have a free web stats program supplied by your hosting provider. Two free programs I use:

- AWStats – Free log file analyzer for advanced statistics
- Google Analytics

There are many more free and paid web log stats programs to choose from

What indicators should you pay special attention to studying web logs? It depends on the type of the website you run and your goals. Here is the list of indicators you should control depending on the website type:

CONTENT WEBSITE:

Conversion Rates: the likelihood users will sign up with you, subscribe, register or ask to receive information.
Length of Visit/Average Time Spent on Site: this metric helps measure your goal of wanting to increase the amount of time users spend on the site during a given visit
Average Page Views: the number of pages the visitor visited can indicate the strength of your visitor’s connection to the information you provide
Percent Returning Visitors: percentage of retained visitors returning to your site
Average subscription length
Active subscriber base (based on different time weekly, monthly, etc depending on model)
Visits per month (or quarter or week).
RSS Syndication
Blog Stats: (ie. Technorati, Digg etc)

E-COMMERCE WEBSITE:

Conversion Rate: the likelihood of successfully driving a visitor to purchase.
Cost Per Visitor: the cost of each site visitor to your business.
Average Order Value/Size
Percent New Visitors: the number of potential new customers landing on your site each month. Are these visitors qualified? What stage of the buying funnel are they in?
Ratio of New to Returning Visitors: the ratio of new to previously acquired visitors as well as a measure of customer loyalty and repeat online business.
Page “Stickiness”: the likelihood of successfully retaining a visitor who arrives at a key landing page
Customer Life Time Value: the likelihood that satisfied customers will tell their friends resulting in an increase in online/offline sales. This is more intangible and may be difficult to track.
Add/View Items in Cart: as well as cart abandonment
Conversion Path Analysis: how are users converting on the site?
New Account Signups: how much time and money are these new account signups spending on your site?

LEAD GENERATION WEBSITE:

New Account Signups
Percent New Visitors: the number of potential new customers landing on your site
Conversion Rates: the percentage of visitors that download white papers, sign up for mailings, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.
Ratio of Leads to Close: the likelihood a lead will complete the transaction – this is an offline ratio
Length of Visit: the amount of time a visitor spends on your site in a given visit
Ratio of New to Returning Visitors: the ratio of new to previously acquired visitors
Page “Stickiness”: the likelihood of successfully retaining a visitor who arrives at a key landing page (usually a PPC landing-page or product information page)
Percent of Visits by Entry Page: measures the efficacy of your marketing messages at driving visitors to the site
Conversion by Campaigns
Ad Clicks: measures how successful your PPC campaign is
Drivers to the Registration Process
Site Abandonment

Summary: How often do you need to check your weblogs? It is up to you. I check them on a monthly basis. If I implement any sort of a marketing campaign on a particular website I check the effect at that time – web log programs provide nearly real time stats.

[tags]web logs, web log stats, web log analyzer, log analysis, website logs, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

While making plans for starting my improved website network I spend most of my time on getting ideas for the future projects. I do not expect them to be great hits on the Internet business arena, but I do not want to run websites that will look like some sort of spam (I have a few of this sort in my portfolio – I think it is enough).

Also in addition to the ideas I think of the form. One easy option to go is to start blog network – all websites are just standard blogs. But to tell the truth it is boring and risky (for instance, you have no alternate traffic sources like forums). Blogs are good as a part of the website, not more. And I would like to try different things online.

What other options for a website do we have? What website types are out there? I offer you two sources to get that knowledge:

a. You can learn about it browsing websites for sale. I find this place the best one to visit.

b. Or we can turn to wikipedia and see how it can help us. And it is really useful in our research:

* Affiliate: enabled portal that renders not only its custom CMS but also syndicated content from other content providers for an agreed fee. There are usually three relationship tiers. Affiliate Agencies e.g cj.com Advertisers e.g ebay.co.uk consumer e.g Yahoo other combinations sole-x.co.uk

* Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive, which since 1996 has preserved billions of old (and new) Web pages; and Google Groups, which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.

* Blog (or Web log) site: site used to log online readings or to post online diaries; may include discussion forums. Examples: blogger, Xanga.

* Business site: used for promoting a business or service.

* Commerce site or eCommerce site: for purchasing goods, such as Amazon.com.

* Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards, such as MySpace.

* Database site: a site whose main use is the search and display of a specific database’s content such as the Internet Movie Database or the Political Graveyard.

* Development site: a site whose purpose is to provide information and resources related to software development, Web design and the like.

* Directory site: a site that contains varied contents which are divided into categories and subcategories, such as Yahoo! directory, Google directory and Open Directory Project.

* Download site: strictly used for downloading electronic content, such as software, game demos or computer wallpaper.

* Employment website: allows employers to post job requirements for a position or positions to be filled using the internet to advertise world wide. A prospective employee can locate and fill out a job application or submit a resume for the advertised position.

* Game site: a site that is itself a game or “playground” where many people come to play, such as MSN Games and Pogo.com.

* Humor site: satirizes, parodies or otherwise exists solely to amuse.

* Information site: contains content that is intended to inform visitors, but not necessarily for commercial purposes; such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia. Most government, educational and non-profit institutions have an informational site.

* Java applet site: contains software to run over the Web as a Web application.

* Mirror (computing) site: A complete reproduction of a website.

* News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.

* Phish site: a website created to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business (such as Social Security Administration, PayPal) in an electronic communication. (see Phishing).

* Political site: A Web sites on which people may voice political views.

* Pornography (porn) site: a site that shows pornographic images and videos.

* Rating site: A site on which people can praise or disparage what is featured. Examples: ratemycar.com, ratemygun.com, ratemypet.com, hotornot.com.

* Review site: A site on which people can post reviews for products or services.

* Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and the most widely known extended type is Yahoo!.

* Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers. Examples: rotten.com, ratemypoo.com.

* Sucks.com AKA “gripe” site, is, in popular Web jargon, a Web site devoted to the critique of a person, place, corporation, government, or institution.

* Vanity site (or “personal site”): run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include.

* Web portal site: a website that provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.

* Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia).

Summary: Well, I think the above list is a good source of ideas.

What website types to choose in your case? It depends on your personal preferences and experience. You should be aware that maintenance of different website types has its on peculiarities – you should be prepared. If you do not feel like experimenting then blogs or some other type of website you know perfectly is the option for you to choose.

[tags]website network, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]