In our last post we discussed calculating value-per-visitor. This calculation is fairly straightforward when it comes to “front end” money to your website. However, when you start dealing with “back end” money, such as revenue from your opt-in email list, things get a touch more tricky.

Essential to this discussion is the concept of “discounting the future”. It’s an economic concept based on the idea that a dollar in your pocket today is worth more than a dollar you might receive a year from now, due to inflation.

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The following post about extra ways to make money online was submitted by Marsello Oentoro. 

During tough financial times, like the recession we currently find ourselves in, many of people try to find creative ways to make some extra income.  Some take part time jobs bagging groceries or working at Target, but is that the most efficient way to make extra money? 

I’ve been guilty of such short sightedness myself, committing my time to a mundane translating job at a law firm.  Even though the money was pretty good, the gruesome hours I put into that job finally took its toll in the form of sleep depravation, which ultimately affected my full time job.

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A lot of site owners that have Google AdSense ads on their site debate with themselves whether or not they should put AdSense ads above the fold on their sites. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, “above the fold”, it refers to the portion of your webpage that a user first sees after landing on your site, before scrolling.

This portion of your website is extremely valuable since many first time visitors to your site will take one look at this portion of your site and take one of three actions. Either they will scroll down further, click on a link, or leave the site.

Because of the chance that a new site visitor will never see any of the content below the fold many site owners decide to place AdSense ads in this portion of their site. Taking such action will often have the effect of increasing your site’s click-through rate (the percentage of viewers that click on an ad).

When deciding for yourself where to place your AdSense ads, it is helpful to ask yourself a couple of questions. First, is your site content driven? When I say “content driven” I don’t mean do you have content on your site? If the primary reason that you have content on your site, is so that you can host AdSense ads, then your site is not content driven.

If your site is not content driven, then I would definitely advise placing some of your AdSense ads above the fold.

If your site is content driven then I would suggest asking yourself three more, related questions. Is building an opt-in email list important to you? Are you interested in creating brand recognition for your website? Do you want your website to be viewed as an expert source of knowledge on a particular topic?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions then you may want to think twice before placing any AdSense ads above the fold on your site. One of the best places to place an email list opt-in form on your site is… you guessed it, above the fold. Putting advertisements of any kind in this space causes competition between the ads and your opt-in form.

Visitors who opt-in for your email list have the potential of becoming life long customers. If a new visitor lands on your website and clicks off your website by following an ad, you may have permanently lost a long term customer in exchange for a little money today.

If you are trying to build your website into a brand or to have your website viewed as an expert source of knowledge you should seriously consider not putting AdSense ads at the top of your site. Sites with AdSense above the fold can be perceived as “spamy”, therefore run the risk of visitors taking your site less seriously as either a respectable brand or a valuable source of knowledge.

If you are interested in this subject you may enjoy our post on how web traffic can be monetized.

Tags: AdSense, Email Opt-In, Above the Fold, Internet Marketing, Email Marketing

Sometimes just reading text can be a boring way to learn. But it’s not just text, boring webinars hosted in monotone voices can put us to sleep just as quickly. So the question becomes how can we keep our audience interested and transmit information at the same time.

Enter the Internet Marketing Rap Music Video. I recently came across the YouTube video of an artist that goes by the name “Poetic Prophet”, entitled “Paid Search 101 rap”. If you check this artist’s user page, you will find 2 more Internet Marketing inspired rap music videos.

This guy has defiantly created an interesting viral marketing campaign using viral video. So far it looks like this video has received about 15,000 views so far, it will be interesting to see how much this number grows.

Paid Advertising: Paid advertising includes, but is not limited to PPC advertising, which was the subject of our last post. In addition to PPC, an online marketer may choose to pay for banner ads on a specific websites. For an example of this type of add, check the TurboTax ad just below the fold of the Get Rich Slowly Blog.

Organic Search: This term applies to all unpaid search engine query results. This field of web traffic generation is what Search Engine Optimization seeks to master. Search Engine traffic is often referred to as “free” traffic. But this of course is NONSENSE, since we know that “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

To get any kind of sizable amount of search engine traffic serious hours of optimization work will most likely be required. SEO is an ever evolving field, so in addition applying optimization techniques; the savvy online marketer needs to keep up with his SEO research if he wants to remain competitive. It would be much better if people, instead of calling it “free” traffic simply said… It is traffic that is usually cheaper than PPC.

Social Networking: Using social networking such as MySpace, Facebook, as well as scores of other sites, for the purpose of online marketing is what I like to call “pounding the online pavement.” It’s kind of like going door to door as a sales man trying to get induce someone to buy. Only here you are going from website to website trying to generate some traffic. Social networking sites can be used to do more than just post links to your website.

Social networking sites often allow the formation of groups to discuss specific topics. These groups can be an excellent soap box from which to market yourself. In addition to groups, profiles on social networking sites provide mountains of information which can be mined for marketing purposes. By viewing profiles you can determine which members of the general public might easily become prospects for your offering and which are probably not worth your time.

Viral Marketing: Viral Marketing is the process of creating any type of marketing campaign that will spread itself. In other words once someone comes into contact with part of a viral marketing campaign there is more then a negligible chance that that person will feel the need to tell someone else about that particular product or service. In theory just about any product, service, or content could become viral.

An interesting recent example of viral marketing is an email sent from John Hopkins University with interesting tips on preventing and fighting cancer. The email seems to have done an excellent job at spreading itself all over the internet!

The best part is, this viral campaign does not market a product, it markets a public service message! The email informative, provides information that I for one had never heard of before, and ends with this elegant yet powerful last sentence… “This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life.” To see a copy of this email click here.

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Taken together the fields of online Paid Advertising and Organic Search are often lumped together by the term Search Engine Marketing (SEM). There is a fifth source of web traffic that we have intentionaly left out of this post, it is what we refer to as “the hidden source of web traffic” and will be the subject of a future post.

PCP, is a powerful narcotic which was originally developed as a tranquilizer for elephants. It has nothing, what-so-ever to do with PPC, which stands for Pay-Per-Click advertising. PPC ads are advertisements which can show up on search engine result pages and as well as webpages whose content is somehow related to whichever keyword the advertiser has chosen to market for.

PPC advertising revolves around keywords. The higher the demand for a particular keyword the more that a top position for that keyword will cost. Paying for the most expensive keyword in your niche seems to rarely be the dominant strategy for making money with PPC advertising. Instead careful analysis is required to determine which keywords might be profitable. More…