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When The Web Was Fun

December 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

As a 30 something, I remember back in college in the 1994-95 age when the Internet was fun.   I mean, REALLY fun.   One minute we had the same old small “web pages” that used form elements to link pages – which was a step up from the old gopher system, and somehow related to hypercard…   then bam!   All of a sudden we have this new way to put images onto web sites, then we could have background images… then our own domain name.   And it grew and grew.  There was always something exciting emerging, and it was fun to be a part of it.

From 1995-2001 I helped form the Internet.   I can say that with confidence and a bit of humility, but I know that somehow I had an effect on how the Internet grew – and then broke.   You see, during that time I made web pages and web sites because they were FUN.   Remember fun?

You like a certain band – put up a fan site for it.  A certain actor or actress?  I’ll do a page on them too.   TV show?  Movie?   I’ll do a web site for that too.   Hundreds of thousands of hours I spent making web sites just because I liked a particular subject.   And it was fun.

Then the dot com crash.  Suddenly, the web wasn’t fun anymore.  Oh sure, I had created web sites for the #1 online entertainment destination Warner Bros. such as Babylon 5, Third Watch, Drew Carey, Friends, Lois & Clark, La Femme Nikita, Rosie O’Donnell, and others.   But suddenly the landscape changed, and I lost that spark.

Until recently.

A few months ago I put up a fan site for a music group, well more of a show, and it currently ranks in Google higher than their official site so i get a good number of visitors a day without even doing anything.  A month or so ago I dared to put a few Google ads on it, and my earnings sky-rocketed.

It was something I enjoyed, and was a fun distraction from the sites I “have” to work on.

I resurrected a site I had started back in 1996, recoded it to css (it used tables at the time!) and it is again an OK site traffic wise, and I sprinkled a few ads in there which bring in a couple of dollars a day.

Over the past several years I have been reading ebooks after ebooks trying to find the right “pattern” for making money on the Internet via adsense.   Some say “write what you know” and some say “write what’s profitable” and some say “write a little about everything.”   After years of trying everything under the sun, I believe I have finally decided on the definitive answer:

You HAVE to write about what you enjoy or have an interest in.

Credit card consolidation or cancer lawsuits may have high click-through revenue, but you will never gain the trust of your visitors if you don’t have a sincere interest in the subject.

Now all I need is for my hero, Joel Comm, to suggest a real-live mentor for me to continue my adsense learning.   If I don’t hear from him soon, a singing gorilla telegram may just show up at his door.

From this moment on I will continue to do web sites that I need to do, but also will try and do more web sites that I “WANT” to do and that I will have fun doing.   Perhaps that is the magic I have been looking for.

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Adsense and Common Sense

December 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Detailed here on this blog over the past many years is an overwhelming sense of frustration trying to stake out my claim to “riches” on the world wide web.

Where many of my colleagues here in Des Moines are focused on providing services and businesses, I remain fixated and determined to create a stream of income from google adsense and affiliate programs.

I have spent countless dollars on $97 and up info products as well as adsense “engines” that promise to do most of the work for you… Nothing worked for me.

If there was one piece of advice I can give to other prospective affiliate marketers and adsense publishers out there it is this- do not buy and of the ebooks from clickbank! Why? Three reasons.

First, most of them are severely outdated and were written two or three years ago. Policies and tactics change, but ebooks generally do not.

Second, if you are going to purchase things from clickbank, get your own affiliate ID. You can earn back sometimes 75% of what you paid for the ebook. Of course you will need 5 separate credit cards buying through your ID before you can get paid.

Finally, I will reveal the secret almost almost all if the “make money online” sites hide inside their final chapters. In fact some ebooks exist only about the secret! So here it is: you plunk down $97 for the latest fast-cash ebook on clickbank, get through the fluff about setting up a website and domain name, and then you read the golden advice… The surefire way to make money on the internet is…

Write you own $97 ebook you can con others to buy on clickbank.

Sucker.

That’s it- that’s the big secret? In most cases, yep. Now there are some legit ebooks out there such as Joel Comm’s adsense secrets four (don’t buy The Adsense Code, his real book since he explained in a video it was his ebook’s third revision repackaged.)

So what do you do if you aren’t a salesman or seine wanting to dupe people into buying you latest info product?

That’s what I am still trying to figure out.

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Back in the Old Days Before Web Ads

February 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Many people like to believe there was a time in the olden days of the Internet when there were no ads on web sites.  While technically true since the ad serving technologies that exist today were many years to come, it can be argued that most web sites in and of themselves – were advertisements.   Warner Bros. advertised their movies,  Playboy advertised its magazine, etc.

What everybody can agree on, is that in the beginning – content was king.

We developed web sites because it was fun, because we enjoyed a subject, because we delighted in knowing that the more we put out there on this new playground, the more people will see it.  We loved seeing our stats rise and rise, not because our wallets were getting fatter, but because it meant we were reaching people.

Then, boom – here come ads.

There was a change.  Suddenly we weren’t making content just because we liked it anymore, we were making content so we had more pages to put ads on.   Instead of one HTML page for oua particular thought or subject, we split it into two, placing ads on the top and bottom, with a “read more” button down below to force more ad clicks.

And people responded by learning how to ignore ads.

Many people often ask “how can I make money on the Internet.”  The same can be said about writing a book, or finding fulfillment in your life… write what you know and love.  The rest will follow.  If you were around back in 1994/95 and part of the Internet explosion, remember what that felt like.  You can still put your Google Adsense ads or whatever on your site, but go back to your roots and write some real content.

You may  amaze yourself by the results.

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