Hi

DREAM TO START YOUR OWN SOFTWARE & WEB DEVELOPMENT COMPANY ?

iubagzb@yahoo.in (Gopal Krishnan) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:13:00 -0800

"We help you to setting up your won name Software & Web development company.."

DO YOU HAVE A DREAM TO START A SOFTWARE & WEB DEVELOPMENT COMPANY IN INDIA OR ABROAD....

Who we are?

IUBA-INDIA is an experienced & leading Software & Web Development Company located in Capital of India, NCR-New Delhi. As of now we have completed more than 100 projects across 7 countries, 35 plus business associates & 50 plus web hosting resellers in different parts of the world.

We help you in setting up software & web development company under your own name and also assist you how to manage the company, how to market the product & service, how to get software & web development projects, pricing details & how to manage customer queries & billing solutions, In short we will help you to make good profit returns very very easily, We also outsource software & web development project for your company to make sure you wont incur any loss after joining this process.

Who Can Start?
Any individual as well as small business owners can take this opportunity, If you have already business no problem, you do this business as part of the existing one, No technical knowledge skill needed, No experience required, All you need is a dream to start software development company. If you have a team its fine, or else will provide support for you as well as for your customers

What we Give
1. We will provide a world class software & web development 45 page website under your company name which will showcase your product & services, company profile customer & admin log in area including free domain name registration & free triple web hosting space, PAYMENT GATEWAY TO RECEIVE PAYMENT FROM CUSTOMERS ACROSS DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, automatic invoice & billing process, we take care of the entire content of the website, logo & header designing, We will provide the layout for approval with 4 to 6 hrs.
2. Complete training through email, chat, voice messenger, telephone orelse visit our NCR-Delhi office for getting more details backed up with excellent support
3. Free search engine submission like yahoo, google, msn, altavista, rediff etc
4. 250 free classified & web directory website for business promotions
5. Business strategy & marketing tips - We will help you in getting software & web development projects for your business, if you have technical skill, you can complete the project by yourself or else we will complete the project for you
6. We teach about the service & pricing, so that you can interact with the customer directly / No product & service knowledge is required, we also provide huge video & knowledge base for you as well as your customers
7. Free 7000 email leads for getting projects
8. Live chat will be integrated within the website
9. All business transaction will be done under your company name, You will have the direct contact with the customer regarding queries & payment mode. We high recommend 50% advance payment for you from customers, so that you not be having any problem after taking the project, In short you will receive 50% before taking up the project.
10. Keyword & meta tag insertion for major search engine to list your website.
11. If you want to register your company, we will also help you in that, This is not mandatory while starting the business.

Benefits & Advantages for you
1. You will start a software & web development business with a very low investment.
2. You will start a software & web development business in India without any experience needed or technical knowledge
3. No risk / No Tension, Since we will take care of the entire business operation
4. You will start a software & web development business from any part of world within 2 days without any hassle
5. You will start a software & web development business without office space or big infrastructure
6. We will help you in getting software & web development projects from the market.
7. No Technical Knowledge Required to start the business.
8. Sell the demanding products & service, below retail, which will keep your customers coming back over and over again with excellent back up tool
9. You don't need to purchase in bulk, no advance deposit, All product & service can be instantly purchase & sold
10. Sell the product & service from the leading service provider in the world
11. If you don't have a technical team we provide support for customers under your company name.
12. Accept payment across the world through credit & debit card, no set up, easy transaction & accounts management

What will be the investment
You need to have software & web development business website to promote your company online, It has been proven by all business segments that best sales & marketing tool at present & future era is to have a website, so we are charging Rs 14,999/= or 350 US $, This is an one time investment amount, There will not be any other charges apart from this. you can consider this as capital for your business, no hidden charges, no service tax or set up fee. we make sure all our business transaction are 100% true & transparent.

We are collecting this money to build your website & also to promote your company, This will also allow us to know how seriously your towards the business. One of the lowest investment you will ever get in life time to start this software development business in India. We have started this campaign not to earn profit but to create entrepreneurs across the world. As of now we have created more than 25 plus business associates across different countries. All our partners are doing an excellent business. we are only company in India to list 150 client details with contact information in our company website home page. For more details call us at mobile: 91-(0)9313487754 or land line: 0120-4133279 or mail us at iubagzb@airtelmail.in or company website: www.iubagzb.net or visit our NCR-Delhi office.

Suppose If you don't have any investment, you can promote this business to someone who is interested in starting a starting a software development business & earn Rs 2,500/- as commission from us. Please make sure he/she is explained clearly then if interested proceed

Our Company Profile - WWW.IUBAGZB.NET
Company Name: IUBA-INDIA

Address: Plot-160, Door-G2, Sector-4, Vaishali, GHAZIABAD. (U.P), (Near-Annand Vihar & Opp-Dabur Factory) NCR-NEW DELHI.

Land Line: 91-120-4133279
Mobile Line: 91-9313487754
Email Id: iubagzb@airtelmail.in
Yahoo Chat & Voice id: iubagzab@yahoo.co.in Google Chat & Voice id: iubagzb@gmail.com
MSN Chat & Voice id: iubagzb@hotmail.com
SKYPE: "iubagzb1"

HOW TO PAY?
Please use the following details for mode of payment
Bank Name: ICICI Bank
A/c Num: 629401500360
A/c Name: GOPAL KRISHNAN
Branch Name: Nehru place Branch, New Delhi

*******************************************

Bank Name: HSBC Bank
A/c Num: 094-203635-006
A/c Name: GOPAL KRISHNAN
Branch Name: Greater Kailash-II, New Delhi.

Amount: Rs 15,000/=
1. You can transfer the amount through internet banking through ICICI or HSBC.
2. You can deposit the cheque or DD in favour of GOPAL KRISHNAN ICICI-A/c No:-629401500360. to any ICICI bank ATM counter in India.
3. Send the cheque or DD to our NCR-New Delhi (Ghaziabad)office address mentioned above.
4. Pay cash directly to our Ghaziabad office.
5. We do accept paypal account through "gopalkrishnan64@yahoo.com"
6. You can also send money through western union money transfer.
7. Transfer funds through credit or debit card :-We Accept All Major Credit/Debit/ATM Cards, PayPal, Google Checkout, Checks, and Bank Wire Transfer through online payment gateway for free of charge with our Paypal ID:-"gopalkrishnan64@yahoo.com"

(You will be redirected to our secured ordering page)

How to Make Money with Blogs / Website

iubagzb@yahoo.in (Gopal Krishnan) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:03:00 -0800

How Bloggers Make Money Online without Blogging

Some of the comments on the launch post of this poll revealed some of the ways people are making money online from sources other than blogging. They include:

Website Design

Flipping (selling) Websites

Selling ebooks

Youtube Partnership program

Freelance writing, graphic design

Teaching and Consulting

Owning other types of websites (directories, forums etc)

Business Documentation site

Developing web applications

Online Surveys

Paid to Click Sites

Selling Products and Merchandise

Affiliate Marketing

Writing on User Generated Content (Revenue Sharing) Sites

Make Online Games

Online Store - Selling Products

eBay

Selling Art

Business Referrals

Market Research

Software Development

Working as a Transcriptionist

Membership Sites

Generating Sales for Off-line Business from Websites

Lots of good ideas there and a nice reminder that there’s plenty to explore outside of blogging.

My own list of online money making sources that are not directly blogging include running a forum (advertising revenue), newsletter lists (affiliate marketing and some advertising), consulting (limited), selling a course, job boards, working at b5media (very part time)… and that’s about all I can think of.

Which are the best and most effective ways to make a profit on your blog or independent news site?

Photo credit: Georgios M.W.

Prompted by Make Money off Your Blog, a recent editorial article from The Washington Post contributor Mike Peed, I would like to share my discoveries and recommendations on how to make money with online content while keeping interruptive ads (banners, pop-ups, flashy ads, etc.) off your site.

On February 1, 2005, as promised, I turned off the rest of the banners and sponsor promo boxes appearing on my mini-network, as current revenues no longer rely on traditional, in-your-face, interruptive promotional messages. As the road to successful online ad promotion is indeed another one.

But these are unique, effective revenue channels you might want to consider to boost the sustainability and profit potential of your micro-publishing enterprise. If used right, these channels help any serious online publisher move her news site from a part-time passion into a serious, competitive business.

You can't do it overnight, but with enough nose, patience and dedication you can make good content pay back for itself and then some.

1) Google AdSense

AdSense is by far the best, most rewarding monetization resource for blogs, news sites and small, content-rich information sites. Google offers AdSense, a service that lets independent publishers, bloggers and news site owners to publish text-based, context-relevant ads next to the content on their sites. This is done automatically without you, the publisher, having to worry about anything else except putting small-sized code inside each of your Web pages.

For every click on Google AdSense contextual ads, the publishing sites receives credit for a small amount of money, while Google keeps an undisclosed amount of the total advertising share. Though many lament lack of relevance for the ads and little return for the increased info clutter on their pages — many silent publishers — probably the ones who consciously make less noise about this, are making serious money with this program.

What few understand, is that to make AdSense work for you ($$),it involves strategic work. Just placing the code on your pages isn't enough. The focus of your site, the way the content is organized, the way web pages are coded, the titles you use and the color and position you select for placing your AdSense ads on your Web pages all make a difference to the results you get. Significant.

What is important is that different rules apply to different types of pages and content. So no set of rules equally apply to all sites. The key is for the publisher to keep questioning the integration of contextual, text-based ads by doing systematic, ongoing testing, experimentation and optimization. For a focused blogger, this can mean from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. For a dedicated publisher covering high-paying information areas, it is possible to get into the 5-digit range without any major investments and with a relatively short time-to-market. I am not talking about a blogger in the traditional sense, but rather to focused and very professional independent information resources like SearchEngineWatch.com or Paidcontent.org, for example.

AdSense offers also the opportunity to monetize site searches while providing a powerful, lightning-fast search engine for your own site at no extra cost. By providing search-relevant ads on your site's search results pages. Google AdSense adds another great opportunity to monetize premium service and access with relevant text-based information about products and services.

Too bad Google AdSense doesn't let you select your contextual advertisers from its inventory.

Here some great examples of AdSense at work.

Alternative solutions to AdSense: Chitika, Kanoodle, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Publisher Network (in beta).

2) Blogads

Blogads is an effective solution for taking control of your advertisers and comparing your profit share with your online ad agency. As the name clearly implies, Blogads is an advertising service for blogs. When the service first came out, As I mentioned that Blogads offers a great opportunity for small, independent publishers, blogs and news sites to sell their ad space in a direct and useful way. Blogads keeps 20 percent of your net revenue and sends you the rest by Paypal or check as soon as you reach a predetermined amount.

For your advertisers Blogads provides a great bonus in terms of speed and simplicity: "Ordering an ad takes just two or three minutes. Submit your image and/or text ad. Define its duration. Pay with Paypal's secure forms. You are done. After the blogger approves the ad, return to tweak and optimize clickthroughs, renew or order on new blogs."

In the case of Blogads the publisher has control over which ads to accept and which ones to reject.

Alternative services:

Crispads is an advertising network focused on blogs. Crispads allows publishers to place ads in blog entries so that they're included in their RSS/ATOM feeds to generate revenues for syndicated content.

grokAds - an advertising clearinghouse for both buyers and sellers which works with any type of site. Offers quick and easy advertising to a specific market.

Tagword - Much like Blogads, Tagword also lets you to select which kinds of ads you want to sell to your site visitors as well as setting the prices you want to charge. Add the code provided to your selected web pages and you are selling text ads on your site! Users can create their text ads directly and submit them in minutes. Purchased ads appear on your site as soon as you're ready.

Create your own Text-based Ads service

TextAds is an open source text ad management system for web sites using PHP. It's been deployed with content management systems like PostNuke and should work with any PHP-based website.

The Idya AdSystem is a text ad management solution for web sites. It supports keyword-driven text-ads and PayPal payments. Installing takes a few minutes. Simply upload it to your site, use the installer to install it, and your site is ready to show text ads. You can check the entire list of its features. The AdSystem uses PHP 4 and MySQL, though it port to other DBMSs. The AdSystem has been undergoing re-engineering for version 2, however, it looks like the site is at a standstill and hasn't been updated since 2003.

3) Amazon Associates

The Amazon Associates program lets independent online publishers with the opportunity to promote any product in Amazon's inventory as affiliate agents. All it takes is adding a small, identifying code to the links that take your site's visitors to a specific Amazon product page (books, DVDs, electronics, etc.). If the visitors who clicked on your link buy an item even if it's not the item you point to — you earn a small commission.

Though the amount of return with the Amazon Associates program is small, nonetheless, it is another way to get income without adding clutter or not-relevant disruptive information to your valuable content. References to relevant books add to the user experience as it helps those who want to search for more information on a topic to see immediate and hand-picked recommendations.

As a matter of fact, it is possible to earn as much as 10 percent per sale as an Amazon Associate.

4) Text Links

Text links are controversial for some purists, but for those seeking a way to monetize content without adding clutter and intrusive ads — it is an interesting opportunity to explore further. Text links are an emerging advertising market that brokers small, text-only links, which often don't need prominent placement (the payback is not on the clicks) on your site pages.

What the advertisers want is a link presence on your site to gain extra "authority" (like the Google PageRank indicator) in an artificial way. This is why you may have noticed many of these text links being placed at the bottom of content pages or in other non-premium positions. The goal is to increase a site's value in search engines. The good thing is that as this market grows, the independent publisher has more and more options from which to select. Also, the publisher can approve and accept text links that are complementary and relevant to the site's content.

Though many text links point to second-rate services and products (online casinos, poker, Viagra, etc.) — this marketplace is growing and becoming more visible, therefore more advertisers of mainstream products and tools are popping up in numbers. Since you are the one accepting such advertising contracts, the selection of what you display is up to you.

To play this game, it is helpful to have a Google PageRank of 4 or more. (Here is an article where you can find out how to measure Google PageRank). For those having a PR value of 6, 7 or more, there is great opportunity for serious monetization. As an indicator, five or six text ads can easily bring in a few hundred dollars every month on a PR 6 site/blog.

A Google generated list of companies brokering text link ads: http://tinyurl.com/66pc4

The example above: FaganFinder
(check the bottom of the home page to see what I mean)

Other online text link agencies: LinkAdage Auctions - Offers blog owners the chance to sell text links on their site at market value through a private online auction.

Text Link Brokerage

Paid Text Links

See also: Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule? (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

5) Premium Content Sponsorships

Selling sponsored space is another option for the independent publisher. While this was associated with prominent flashy banner ads, this is changing and expanding in many ways. In my view, the successful strategy is to use selected and relevant sponsors to introduce, give access or extend the value offered by premium content.

A relevant product or service can sponsor a news channel or RSS feed. Sponsors can also sponsor a rich section of additional related content to a standard article. Having a resourceful bibliography or annotated resources section in your next ebook or mini-guide is also fertile ground to effectively showcase relevant sponsors.

X-events, podcasts, live and recorded web conferences, online interviews are great unobtrusive and relevant sponsorship opportunities.

6) Related Reports

Another opportunity should see more in the near future is affiliate marketing of related research reports. For sites that cover specific industry or niche topics, this is an opportunity to play an effective marketing role for research clearinghouses and large publishers of intelligence reports, analyst insider briefings, white papers and research findings.

These types of reports usually carry a higher price tag than normal ebooks and physical publications. The reason for the high price tag is because their content is focused on specific industries and topics, and it has information that's hard to find elsewhere.

The technology that makes this possible is available from 21Publish (the blog hosting provider) in partnership with Market Research.

7) Affiliate Sales

A good monetization channel for select products and services is affiliate sales. This approach involves signing up to become an affiliate reseller of specific products.

As long as the affiliate products do not affect the publisher's credibility and provide pointers to useful, high-value products that the publisher fully endorses, affiliate sales are a rewarding monetization channel.

The commissions received for these sales vary depending on the product and the original vendor sales and marketing strategy. LinkShare and Commission Junction are two of the largest affiliate program brokers. Check out their catalogs to get a good idea of what products and commissions are available.

If you write and publish your own e-books and other premium content publications, you may want to consider using an affiliate sales program to give your products greater reach and exposure.

My preferred provider for this is Share-It!, which offers full payment and an ecommerce infrastructure to online publishers while integrating a customizable affiliate program. You can set the commission and the products that you want your affiliates to manage. Share-It! automatically takes care of payments and accountability of the transactions; it sends updates and timely sales reports both to you and to your registered resellers. The system even automatically creates content pages that the reseller can link to from her own site.

8) Online Guides and E-Books

Self-published books, e-books, mini-guides, tutorials and other types of premium content generate a respectable source of income for those with relevant and useful content to share. Focused guides and reference publications in niche areas are a growing demand from qualified customers, especially when these products can be easily pre-evaluated in some form.

For bloggers, news sites and small independent publishers' ebooks and online guides should make a natural monetization channel. Much of the content written for a site is easy to re-edit and re-purpose for commercial use. Reviewing editors, topic-specific bloggers can use their writing talent to put together the best content they have on a specific topic.

Selling ebooks requires good online marketing skills, lots of exposure, visibility and honest testimonials from satisfied buyers. A little army of affiliate resellers can go a long way in helping your ebook get extra exposure and visibility. Plus partnering/bundling your product with those who are already the best in your class helps get more copies out the door.

9) Bookstore Distribution and POD Publishing

You can also increase profitability and exposure of your e-books by using a company like Lightning Source, which can distribute your digital content on Amazon bookshelves while allowing you to offer printed versions of your masterpieces using POD technology (print on-demand).

10) Merchandising

Selling your branded t-shirt or baseball cap makes sense when your publishing project has a strong brand, a powerful message or an issue that it stands behind.

Why would people shell out USD $20 or more to buy a branded t-shirt promoting a web site? If a bold tagline spells out a strong message or slogan about something of which many are passionate, readers want to support the cause by wearing them.

I think this works effectively where a) the personal brand is good enough to create a desire in readers to "stand" for it (few bloggers or news sites have this kind of charisma, but I people like Joi Ito or Howard Rheingold most likely can command some of this), or b) the author or blog / site stands for something clearly identifiable. It may be an overarching mission or a number of changing issues that make effective marketing themes for such products.

CafePress offers an extensive catalog of shorts, caps, calendars, mugs with over 80 customizable merchandise products waiting for your logo and tagline to be printed on them. CafePress provides the raw merchandise that you can customize by uploading your artwork and interactively adjusting it on through its online command center.

While CafePress charges a base cost for the material (e.g.: USD $13.99 INR Rs.650/-base price for T-shirts), you can price your branded merchandise however you like and CafePress dutifully manages the transaction, payment, shipment and your monthly payments for your hard-earned commissions. In the process CafePress, also creates a full web-based shopping center that can be customized to match your Web site's design.

11) Collections, Anthologies, Compilations and Curated Content on CD-ROM

Thanks to CafePress and similar services, independent online publishers also have the opportunity to deliver vast amounts of content such as aggregated anthologies of articles, reports, audio and video files, or research collections on CD-ROM. All with complete infrastructure support for the mastering, duplication, labeling and shipping of these.

Again, the publisher pays a wholesale cost for the production of each CD-ROM ordered and the profit comes from the markup that the publisher decides on for each item sold. CafePress clears payments from customers, prints the CD, packages it and ships it to your customer. It sets aside your profit margin and cuts a check for you at the end of the month.

The publisher base price is USD $4.99 INR Rs. 200/- per CD (excluding shipping). You can mark up the price as much as you want and CafePress collects payments and sends your profit margin to you.

More info: CafePress Data CD

12) Paid Assignment

While many find this very controversial, more companies are using bloggers and independent sites to talk about, promote or cover specific products and issues. The Marqui program, in which I've participated, is a good example. But there are other ways to go about it. A person can go to a company and become its official online blogger. A person can take specific assignments for prominent sites and work for them, with or without credit, covering specific issues.

The important thing here is to be clear and upfront about it. People are inflexible about this because they're afraid that the people they trusted and read without question before may now write articles because they are paid for it.

From my point of view, I say the following:

a) question your sources, no matter how good they are and how fanatical you are about them.

b) take that ham away from your eyes: there is no objectivity, outside of the transparency of the reporter, blogger or news reporter. Everyone is influenced in one way or another. You don't need to take money from a customer to be influenced. What about all those journalists and bloggers who routinely receive free evaluations of gadgets and software that everyone else has to pay for? Doesn't that influence them? Invitations to press dinners? Product launches? Come on.

What counts, and what I think readers value the most, is being upfront, transparent and credible. Assuming you have been, like everyone else, "exposed" to cover certain issues rather than others — what matters is how "transparent" you are about revealing your driving motives, interests and goals while writing on that topic. Can you be influenced while remaining true to your opinions? I believe you can.

Taking money per se is not a disreputable act, neither is getting paid to write about a certain topic: isn't this what newspapers command their editors to do?

What the critics of paid assignments have underestimated is the large demand out there for this. If the paid writers are transparent, accountable and professional with their assignment, then this is as legitimate as any other activity.

I guess you only need to decide if you are in it for the art or the part.

Marqui paid USD $800 INR Rs. 3650/- to the bloggers who did the assignment. Each one was required to write four articles a month that at least mentions and links to Marqui.

13) Donations

If you support a cause that goes beyond the mere reporting of news in your areas of interest, why not consider asking your readers for support?

People like to take a stand for the people whom they think can make a difference, so why not use this strategy to finance some of your effective communication campaigns? PayPal Donations, Amazon's Honor System and BitPass all offer a simple way to add a snippet of code to your site to make it easy for people to donate.

Depending on the system adopted, you may opt to receive money in euros, U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, pounds sterling and other currencies.

If all of the above fails:

a) Join a publishing network
If you are just starting up with your blog or small news site — and need either more traffic, exposure or experience before you feel you can do any of the above on your own — then joining a group blog may work for you.

Metafilter, Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome Channels, Blogcritics, WikiNews, Blogit or any of these group blogs, if not at my own MasterNewMedia, MasterViews and Kolabora.com, where I am always looking for additional contributors.

Working in a group blog can ease the pressure of having to post on a daily basis, gives you greater exposure in less time and exposes you and your ideas to an existing community of interested readers and other writers.

In some cases, like at Weblogs Inc., Creative Weblogging, Squidoo and elsewhere, contributing bloggers are also paid a share of the advertising revenue their blog generates.

Another great alternative is to look into the creation of local news sites and Get Local News has a smart idea ready to be picked up.

b) Blog your best without worrying about making money in any direct way. Money comes as a consequence of your extra exposure and visibility. Blogging creates extra income by allowing you to enter in close contact with relevant people in your areas of interest, and by facilitating exchange and contact with prospective customers through your online presence.

Simply blogging with no strings attached increases your credibility and authority in the field and earns you extra income when you are called to give advice. Having a blog to showcase your ability to review, explore or analyze issues and products is the best way to market yourself and to provide a living showcase of your talents and abilities.

Listen:
Making Money - session from Bloggercon III
Doc Searls leads the Making Money session at Bloggercon III. Audio from IT Conversations. [runtime: 01:24:31, 38.7Mb, recorded 2004-11-06]

True Voice: The Business of Blogging
Session hosted by Stowe Boyd at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle on January 24, 2005, with Robert Scoble and Get Real contributor Greg Narian.

Read:
Make Money off Your Blog
The Washington Post - January 30, 2005

The Blogs' Long Tail: Blogs And RSS Profit Potential

All of the above are non-exclusive strategies that can be used in parallel with other activities to create multiple income streams for bloggers, news sites and other content-focused online resources.

A few guiding principles have stood out from my own experience in the search for creating multiple income streams for an independent online publisher, blogger or small news site:

Relevance, Value
People want to see relevant information. Related to the main subject. If they like what they find, what better opportunity to give them more of what they want? Make your readers kings and queens at your site! The products and services a publisher selects should fit the editorial line of the blog/site as much as possible; this ensures a true continuum between articles and promotional messages.

Complementary
The additional ad or sponsorship information has to bring in value to the overall content. Selling prestigious and prominent content space for money without considering the relevance of the sponsoring firm to the sponsored content is a wasted opportunity for both sides. Given that no one enjoys being distracted by brand x or product z when trying to find something unrelated — why not leverage this natural and reasonable defense mechanism and match sponsors to relevant events and content spaces? Why not allow sponsors to provide extra value to the content/event offered by providing access/integration to premium-quality complementary resources?

Visual unobtrusiveness - Non-interruptiveness
Sponsorships, text-based ads, promotional messages don't have to scream for visual attention. If they complement and enrich what is already out there, they only need to be properly and intelligently juxtaposed, formatted and legible, scannable and printable, just like any other content on their hosting page. A site's web developer should have full control over the layout and positioning of these items by using CSS.

Publisher Control
The publisher must be king (or queen)
This is what I think. It is the publisher and not the advertising agency or some obscure algorithm that should control which ads show up on my web pages. It should be the publisher who takes the role of information director in full; not just in respect to what is written, but also about what is promoted. Separation of editorial and marketing offices is not an advantage in the type of new-media universe I envision.

Services like Blogads and the text-link clearinghouses facilitate this by allowing publishers to maintain full control of who are going to be their advertisers.

Google AdSense provides some control of which ads are displayed by letting publishers filter out up to 200 advertisers that may not complement their content. Ideally, as I have advocated, a publisher should be able to select from a large inventory of relevant and complementary advertisers in the ads he wants to carry.

Endorsement
A publisher should also in some way endorse the products she advertises as a way to provide value to her readers with such "recommendations." I have repeatedly refused to be a well-paid affiliate reseller or advertiser for products that I didn't believe in, while many times I have offered my space for free to companies and products which I thought deserved my readers' attention (proof is available, if needed). A sense of personal ethics and editorial coherence is all it takes.

Which monetization strategy to use?

Diversify income streams
Don't bet all your money on one horse and think like a coffee shop where money is made with many small transactions across a good variety of (generally low-cost) related offerings.

What I am learning is that you can make money by creating and cultivating multiple, small, income streams. Relying on one big source of income is always dangerous. If that resource disappears, so does your ability to survive.

Photo credit: Elliott Scott
What are other blog / site monetization ideas that small publishers can utilize to make their passion a full-time job?

ChartGizmo is a free tool that lets you create chart online. With a free signup, you can start creating charts of any type (Pie, Bar, Line, Ring, 3D Pie, 3D Bar, 3D Line): just select the chart type, provide a title, select the size, choose the background color and whether to provide a legend or not, and add your items. When your chart is ready, you can easily save it locally or embed it anywhere. Free.
http://chartgizmo.com/

Color Schemer is a free online service that enables users to get a color scheme out of any JPG or PNG image. After you upload an image, the software will automatically analyze it and provide you with the list of colors that appear in that image, with their relative HEX color code. The application is free to use without any registration.
http://www.atalasoft.com/31apps/ColorSchemeGenerator/default.aspx

Picfont is a web based app that you can use to easily add text on any picture. Just upload a picture from your PC or URL, input the canvas size and background color, and start adding text to it. You can modify the text-size, color, find and even position and, when done, you can download the final image in JPG format. Free.
http://picfont.com/

VTubeTools is a set of online video applications that allow you to download YouTube videos or embed them in custom players. To create a custom player, provide the video ID, customize the settings (player size, color, border, quality and loop settings), click OK, and the HTML embedding code will be shown to you. Else, if you just want to download a video, paste its URL into the box and get the FLV file (works also with other video sharing sites). Free.
http://www.vtubetools.com/

Increase Online Ad Revenue: Professional Web Publisher Guide To Online Ad Optimization

The vast majority of web sites today are not monetizing their advertising to their fullest potential.

Here is a company, a rare one I must say, that not only has spent serious time trying to understand and match my needs with their specific services, but has had enough integrity and courage to openly recognize its strengths and weaknesses and to provide me with the very best monetization advice I have received from a supplier in a long time.

Gopal Krishnan, CEO and Co-founder of IUBA-INDIA, a company that specializes in optimizing ad network serving for web sites has just released an essential guide to ad revenue optimization, after having looked for a long time at what other the opportunity points to be leveraged in the fast-changing ad serving and optimization marketplace. He writes:

"Never before have Web site publishers like you had such an accessible opportunity to improve the performance of your advertising; ad serving costs are down and the explosion of ad networks has created an opportunity to get highest possible price for your inventory."

The Essential Web Site Publisher’s Guide to Ad Revenue Optimization

by Gopal Krishnan

Introduction

The vast majority of web sites today are not monetizing their advertising to their fullest potential.

In the U.S. alone that accounts for billions of dollars per year that could have been made with improved advertising performance. While there is no panacea to improve all of the underperforming parts of all the web sites with one swift fix, savvy web site publishers can take steps to improve their advertising performance, which will directly increase the ad revenue they make from their web site.

I created this guide for the same reason I started iubagzb.net - to help web site publishers make more money.

Web site publishers are content creators first and foremost, and creating good content takes a lot of time and energy. Improving a website's advertising revenue can also take a lot of time and energy.

Iubagzb.net offers a solution that simultaneously saves web site publisher's time while increasing their advertising revenue. In very simple terms, IUBA-INDIA helps manage web site publisher's relationships with ad networks, and uses a sophisticated, constantly improving algorithm to ensure the best performing advertisement is shown at the highest price paid to the publisher. IUBA-INDIA's service and technology improves the ad serving decisions for web site publishers; and that is perhaps the most complex and revenue effecting part of online advertising (which of course we make simple for web site publishers!).

However, there are still many other improvements a web site publisher can handle on their own hands without the help of IUBA-INDIA.

If you are a web site publisher that wants to increase your ad revenue, following the tips in this guide will help you achieve that goal. I intend on updating this guide, so please check back often or subscribe to iubagzb.net mailing list for all the latest news from us.

Optimization Tips

1) Diversify of Your Ad Networks

What: All ad networks are not equal. In fact, most ad networks differ in seemingly subtle ways that are actually quite varied: targeting approaches, geographic focus, vertical focus, mix of advertisers, and ad campaign targets (branding, clicks, conversion, keywords) are just a few examples. Them result is that different ad networks will determine relevancy of ads relative to a publisher’s web page differently.

Take the popular Web site ad network might conduct site-level demographic or behavioral targeting and determine that the site appeals to moderate to high-income business travelers, and show a life insurance ad. A third ad network might be looking at the users who views the site, rather than the site itself, and identify a given user as an in-market auto buyer and show that user a Lexus ad.

Benefits: By diversifying your mix of ad networks, you as the publisher, can determine what the most valuable aspect of your audience and content is, and therefore, determine the best mix of ad networks that can monetize your audience.

Travel ads might be a source of high-income advertisements, or alternatively the audience that is interested in travel might be high-income and therefore can be sold higher value financial products with related financial ads.

What to do next: Look at the mix of ad networks you are using, and classify them along the lines of behavioral, contextual, and demographic targeting capabilities. Depending on the size of your site, look to get one to three ad networks in each area and identify which targeting mechanism works the best for your site.

2) Implement a Segmentation Strategy

What: Smaller Web sites that are more targeted in content and are niche-oriented tend to have a higher eCPM than large, broad Web sites (The June 2008 Google AdPrice Index reveals small Web sites had an average eCPM of $1.14 vs. 0.21 for large Web site.

The reason for this is that advertising on these smaller Web sites have a more targeted audience, and therefore, they typically perform better for advertisers than broad Web sites, and so advertisers are willing to pay a higher rate.

So what can you do if you are the owner of a large, broad Web site like times.com?

You can carve your large Web site into a collection of smaller Web sites. By making your large Web site appear like a bunch of small Web sites, you can get the benefit of large Web site scale along with higher advertising rates.

Doing this is easier than it might seem. For example, if you have a Web site that covers a variety of subjects, you may have a navigation bar that includes News, Politics, Opinions, Local, Sports, Arts & Living, and a City Guide. Instead of creating one 728 X 90 ad tag to go across the top of every page on the site, create six of them instead – one for each navigation area on the Web site.

Once that has been done ad networks can better target your Web site’s ad inventory. Callaway can show ads only in the Sports section of the Web site while American Express can show ads only in
the Arts & Living section of the Web site.

You can extend this strategy even further by carving up each of the six areas into smaller areas (Men’s sports vs. Women’s sports, for example).

Benefits: Smaller Web sites enjoy ad rates that are up to three times as high as large Web sites. You can significantly raise your monetization rates if you can present a more targeted advertising opportunity to the advertiser. And you can do this by limiting the scope of a single ad tag to the most relevant areas possible.

What to do next: Check out the navigational areas of your Web site, and use that as the basis for carving up your large, broad site into a collection of smaller sites. Create one set of ad tags for each smaller area of your site, and use those ad tags with each of your ad networks to get more targeted advertising.

3) Monetize International Traffic

What: For a typical U.S. web site, 30-40% of the web site’s traffic comes from outside of the U.S. We all know the Web is global, but on top of that, English is often times the language of the Web in foreign countries. For example, the vast majority of Web users in India are visiting English language Web sites, which means your content and services on your U.S. based Web site may be readily consumed by a Web surfer in India. The same is true in many parts of Southeast Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe.

On top of this strong foreign contingent on many U.S. Web sites, the weak U.S. economy and dollar can lead to higher monetization rates outside of the U.S. resulting in up to half of a Web site’s revenues based on foreign visitors. If you’re not making a significant stream of revenue from your foreign visitors, it is time to re-evaluate your monetization strategy.

What to do next: Check your server logs or Google Analytics reports to identify your top 5-7 geographies outside of our country. You will likely be surprised by the amount of foreign traffic. Then determine if your current ad networks can monetize inventory in these geographies. You need an ad network that can reach advertisers in these foreign countries. A U.S. ad network will often default (show blank or empty ads) to visitors from foreign countries, and you typically have no way to know this because you’re sitting in our country, and won’t see the default ads! Check if your ad networks have a sales office in the foreign country. If not, do a bit of research to find an appropriate ad network in that country and start working with them right away.

4) Monetize Every Impression

What: Nothing frustrates a publisher more than a default (empty or blank) ad. Defaults occur when an ad network does not have an ad to show to a user on your site. Web site publishers leave an estimated $1 billion on the table annually as a result of default ads.

There are two main problems that cause this:

• Problem 1: Not having an ad to show. A network runs out of ads for your site, they have reached a frequency cap, or they don’t have ads for the geography of the user. This means you get a $0.00 eCPM.

• Problem 2: When an ad network does default. That means they are not reselling that impression to the highest paying ad network. This problem is just as bad; publishers often setup static daisy chains of ad networks based on historical pricing data in case one ad network in the chain defaults. With a static chain, there is no way to ensure that the highest paying ad network will fill the impression.

How big of a problem is this?

In a study showing that, on average ad networks default 56% of the time, and can default as much as 87% of the time. That’s over half of a publisher’s ad inventory! This is an important one to get right.

The solution is a dynamic marketplace in which default ad impressions are collected and then routed to the highest paying ad network.

What to do next: See how often your ad networks are defaulting. If it is more than 10% of the time, consider a dynamic default optimization solution.

5) Sell New Inventory

What: Consider selling new ad units on your Web site that can be incremental to your existing ad revenues. There are numerous ad units that you may not already be selling, such as page takeovers, in text ads, or pop-ups.

Of course, you don't want to annoy your user base but at the same time most users realize that your wonderful content is paid for via advertising. As long as you stick to ad units that your users have seenbefore, the annoyance factor can be minimized.

Benefits: New ad units can lead to entirely new revenue streams. For example, in text ads can pay $1 CPMs and up, as can page takeovers. This is new revenue that is almost entirely additive to your Web site. Moreover, you might find that these new ad units are so beneficial that you can remove some of your existing ad units. Best of all, trying out these new ad units won't cost you any money as you can leave your existing ad units in place.

Be open with your readers and let them know that you're testing new ad options to bring them more of the content they love, and they will probably help you in the process.

6) Call Your Ad Network Representative

What: Despite all of the automation in the online ad industry, there is still a lot of manual work that is done to sell ads on a Web site. Media buyers need to know what inventory they can secure from publishers, what the characteristics of that inventory are, in terms of content and audience, and how long that inventory will be available to them.

By calling your ad network representative, you can better understand how they target ads to your site and you can better inform them about what is unique about your content and audience. When a new ad campaign comes in, you and your site will be on the top of their mind in terms of where to run that ad campaign.

Benefits: By being on the top of an ad network representative’s list of sites to work with, you can help ensure that you get first crack at new ad campaigns. This means more advertising dollars can flow to your Web site, and you will see higher monetization rates.

What to do next: Identify representative at each of the ad networks you’re working with. Call them up and spend 15 minutes getting to know them and how they work, then explain some of the differentiating aspects of your Web site content and audience. Set a regular check-in period – once per month for example – and keep in touch.

7) Experiment with CPA

What: CPA (cost per action) offers can sometimes outperform traditional ad network advertising. CPA offers work like this: you select a relevant offer to appear on your Web site, such as a credit card offer, cell phone offer, or similar; if a user clicks on the offer and fills out a qualification form or application, you get paid a fee that can be anywhere from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars, depending on the value of the offer. Advertisers like CPA offers because they transfer risk from them to you – if the user doesn’t fill out the form, the advertiser doesn’t pay for the ad.

Benefits: Depending on your site and audience, CPA offers can often times outperform regular advertising. If you are seeing low monetization rates (10, 20, or 30 cent eCPMs), then you may want to consider adding some CPA offers to the mix on your Web site.

The key is finding relevant offers that will be attractive to your audience and will pay you a significant amount each time a user completes the required action.

What to do next: Identify the lowest paying ad spots on your Web site. Then find some appropriate offers. This might take a bit of research but there are affiliate networks out there like Commission Junction that can provide you with a broad array of offers in one place.

Put the offers on your Web site, be open to experimentation, and see if you can raise your monetization rate.

8) Email Your Users More Often

What: Many Web sites email their user base periodically – often times once per month or once per week. If you do not email your user base, you should consider it. It is an easy way to stay in front of them, it creates ad inventory in your emails, and it often brings them to your site for a new session they may not otherwise have had.

If you do email your user base already on a monthly basis or less, consider emailing them slightly more often. Emailing your users once every three weeks is not uncommon and can have many benefits for them as well if you provide worthwhile content. And instead of getting that traffic pop 12 times in a year, you will get it 16 times in a year.

Benefits: There are three major benefits to emailing your user base on a more frequent basis: First, the email typically generates a pop in terms of traffic to your Web site. People may read something interesting in your email and click through to your Web site, increasing the number of ad impressions for you. Second, the email itself contains valuable ad inventory that you can monetize. And third, it increases your mindshare and engagement level with your readers.

What to do next: If you are already emailing your user base, see if you can make it slightly more frequent – once every three weeks instead of once every four weeks. If you’re not emailing your user base, put a subscription box on your Web site and start collecting email addresses -- then get your email list going as soon as possible.

9) Create a Media Kit

What: The quickest and easiest way for a potential advertiser to learn about your site is if you have a readily available media kit.

A media kit describes your Web site to a potential advertiser who might buy directly from your Web site rather than going through an ad network.

Most advertisers are looking for the following information:

• What your site is about – what category does it fall into, how unique the content is

• Your site’s traffic numbers – how many people do you reach, what your Alexa or equivalent rank is, how many ad impressions per month you have

• Your site’s demographics – male vs. female ratio, income level, geographic distribution, ethnic makeup

• What ad units are available – what sizes of ads are available, what creative limitations you have

• What you charge for advertising – how you calculate what your site is worth

• Who to contact – Ad buyers want easy access to the right person.

Benefits: Direct sales can be very profitable for you because they do not involve the typical ad network fee (30-50% of advertiser’s rate). Part of the reason ad networks are used is to aggregate audience, but if you have a large enough audience, it might be more cost effective to do that on your own.

Even if you do not want to sell advertising directly, having a media kit makes your Web site appear much more professional and credible. Other ad networks or ad buyers do not know that you are not selling directly.

The media kit will give your site the professional look it needs to get those first few buyers in the door.

What to do next: You can manually create a media kit by using media kits from sites you like as a guide. You can also create a media kit in just a few minutes by using PubMatic’s automated tools at www.PubMatic.com/MediaKit. PubMatic has partnered with Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete, to bring relevant data to your media kit instantly.

10) Speed Up Your Site

What: The faster the content loads on your Web site, the faster ads can appear on your Web site. This gives users more chances to see your ads and to click on them. By speeding up your site you can improve you site’s ad performance.

Benefits: The sooner your visitors can see and click on your ads, the more revenue you will make. A slow Web site with poorly loading ads will end up driving down the performance of ads on your Web site. Ad networks will notice and pay you less as a result. Anecdotal evidence shows that each second of increased time to download your page can reduce advertising revenue by approximately 10%.

What to do next: Measure your Web page download speed and then set yourself a goal to speed it up.

You can use measurement tools like WebSitePulse or Keynote to measure your page download speed. Next, analyze your page to see what items take the most time to load. There are several great, free tools out there like Firebug for the Firefox browser and YSlow from Yahoo. Identify and eliminate or correct those items that take the longest to load.

11) Re-examine Your Ad Server Options

What: Many publishers have an ad server that they pay for to help them manage creative, ad campaigns, flights, and even ad networks. These ad servers are typically hosted by third party companies, so Web site owners do not need to pay for the infrastructure themselves. The cost of ad serving has come down significantly in the last 10 years.

The marginal ad serving cost is estimated at a roughly 0.5 cent eCPM, down from 10 cents 10 years ago.

The decrease in ad serving cost is being driven by lower bandwidth, server, and software costs for ad serving providers. The cost of virtually every component of computing infrastructure has dropped, and therefore, so has the cost for service providers.

Benefits: While the cost of providing ad serving has dropped, uninformed publishers continue to pay the same rates for ad serving that they paid several years back. As the cost of ad serving has come down, you should consider re-negotiating your ad serving contract annually, and ensure that some, if not most, of those savings are accrued to you.

What to do next: Check your contract to see when you last negotiated your rate. You likely do not want to switch service providers, as this can be disruptive, but check with other publishers who have recently switched to your ad serving provider. Get a sense for the market rate, and then have an open discussion with your service provider. You may be able to save a few cents on your eCPM.