First a very quick lesson in business fundamentals.

There are only three ways to make more money with a business:
1. Increase the size of a transaction with your customer. (Get more money per transaction).
2. Increase the number of customers. (Getting more customers is often the wrong approach).
3. Increase the frequency of transactions with current customers. (Most important and usually ignored completely)

Written by Jay Abraham via Russell Wright at Theme Zoom

The first thing to notice about these 3 points is that they are principles, not techniques. They apply to any business. Not just online business.

Anti-commercial message: if you are about to purchase an e-book or a piece of software, evaluate it against these three points. If it isn’t clear to you why you are purchasing it, or the reason is, “so I can make more money, because the sales page says some dude made $24,000 last month” then give it a pass. Please.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled post…

To grow the earnings of your blog think in terms of a business and follow basic business principles to align your actions towards greater earnings.

1. Increase the size of a transaction with your customer.

AdSense is a probably the lowest transaction size. Especially if that is the only method of monetization.

When I was doing the craft show circuit in my previous business, I learned pretty fast that the top earners had a range of price points. There are lots of people who are just as comfortable (or more) spending $1000 as they are spending $20 and you want to give them that option.

Does your blog cater to big spenders in your audience?

You could put together:

• One-on-one coaching programs, or private consulting
• Site wide big ticket advertising or sponsorship packages
• The ultimate product for your niche
• A live event
• A teleconference

For the last 2 you wouldn’t even need to be the “expert” you could always partner or facilitate.

2. Increase the number of customers.

The blogging equivalent of this is to increase number of readers. Like it says above, this is the one everyone thinks is their biggest problem, or the solution to, “how can I make more money?” but most blogs leave a lot of money on the table even with the traffic they currently have.

The work of creating a profit rich site, one that really meets the needs of your readers in a way that you can benefit from financially, will attract visitors as well. Focusing on just getting visitors is usually misguided effort, since it isn’t client focused. If you create an über cool place for people to come to, with a lot of great resources, you’ll automajically receive lots of traffic.

Getting more traffic has been covered to death, so we’ll just skip it for this article. In case this is your first day online get more traffic by doing this.

3. Increase the frequency of transactions with current customers.

When it comes to blogging, increasing the frequency of transactions can occur in 2 ways. The first is to continually create great new ways for people who enjoy your site to create income for you, and the second is to encourage your readers to keep in touch via RSS and email.

Are you continually creating new ways to make money with your site?

• More money posts – I define these as posts with affiliate links in them, reviews of products that I actually use are usually the best money posts for me.
• Explore new (to you) income channels – have you signed up for post level text link ads for example
• Set up an Advertise page with options and rates
• Optimize your AdSense – for both positioning and layout. I’ve seen a slight tweak in link color double earnings from AdSense
• Create your own products. You know your visitors, what is it that they need? Make it and sell it to them. This is my favorite one.

In the blogging business RSS readers and newsletter signup’s are the stock and trade of encouraging repeat visitors and repeat actions.

Are you grabbing existing readers and making sure you can keep in touch?

1. Make sure people are encouraged to subscribe to your feed
2. Capture emails and send out a newsletter once and a while to encourage people to return to your site. Or make special offers

Admittedly this one falls into the category of “do as I say and not as I do” since I’ve let both of these slide a bit on Art of Money, but this is the best RSS subscriber boosting tip ever and this is the second best.

The Last Step

Requires some discipline. Align your efforts and intention to doing these three things.

Consistently focus on them and you can’t help but succeed. Anything that doesn’t support one of the three business fundamentals should be taken off of your todo list.

Finally, track your progress:

In blogging this would be the equivalent of increasing the amount you are earning per unique visitor.

It’s simple: visitor value = profit / number of unique visitors

You’ll measure all of the three business drivers with this metric. Tack it over time, and if possible begin to discover which activities affect it most dramatically and then further focus on those ones to accelerate growth.

3 Fundamental Ways to Make More Money Blogging is a post from: Art of Money

Yesterday I presented my 10 Reasons Why I Won’t Outsource and they are great reasons not to have anyone involved in my money making activities, but of course, following them would be stupid.

As I can clearly see they are based on the belief system of a 2 year old. Imagine the founders of UPS or Dell trying to execute their business plan by doing everything themselves.

While I don’t have any current aspirations to grow into a multi-billion dollar company there are, even for a very small-time entrepreneur some important advantages to hiring out work.

Here’s my objections from yesterday and what I believe to be a sound response to overcome the objection:

#10 What if it takes more of my time and effort, to tell the person what to do than to just do it myself?

The onus is on me to give clear instructions, which is a great skill to develop. For tasks that are more complex, especially ones that are done over and over, use a screen capture video tool and create videos as recommended in freedom business systems.

#9 The Employee Won’t do a Good Job

Being a control freak and a perfectionist are both inhibitors to making money. There is a quote in Guy Kawasaki’s book Art of the Start which goes something like; “If you aren’t embarrassed when you first launch then you waited too long.”

I can learn to get my ego out of the way and realize whether the stuff I do is valuable, is the important factor. Are you playing to the reviewers, or to the audience?

My experience has been that by giving people space to breath, most people I have hired will exceed my expectations.

#8 It’s Too Big of a Job to Set Up My Systems

It is possible, if you find an experienced person to perform that tasks, to have them document the procedures as part of their job. That way you don’t have to actually spend too long setting up the initial procedures, and you have something in place that the next person can follow (allowing you to hire someone with less experience.)

#7 What if I Can’t Communicate Properly With The Employee

Get a different person to work with; plain and simple a mesh in communication style and abilities is essential.

#6 Can I Trust Someone Hired Online?

No way to know at first. The best is to have a system of graduated trust. Start the person performing tasks that don’t require high trust levels, then as you get to know them and they prove their integrity, and they understand your business better, move them to higher trust positions.

#5 I Don’t Actually do Tasks That Can Be Clearly Communicated to Another Person

Time to de-clutter you working habits. This is a tough one for me, as I don’t think that I’m performing straight-forward tasks, but I know that I need to make an effort to break my business down into easily communicated processes and procedures.

Start small and take out the obvious ones first, is the best advice I can think of for this one. Also tasks that are repeated are easy to document and pass along to another person.

#4 What if a Person That I Train Quits?

This one is inevitable, so you must plan for it. Outsourcing services like Get Friday have a team structure designed to minimize turnover costs.

#3 What if the Employee Drives Me Nuts Asking Questions?

The goal should be that you hire people who know how to think, and follow clear instructions.

Ideally, if the instructions are clear, the procedure should be able to be done without asking any questions. Screen capture videos are excellent for this. With my own Real Blog Videos I have sold almost 200 copies and I receive very few support questions.

The videos cover setting up a blog, from keyword research, buying a domain, hosting, installing WordPress to making the first post and the target audience is people who are not experienced technically. The low question rate (less than one a week!) demonstrates the power of the screen capture video as an effective communication tool.

#2 What if I Don’t Make Any More Money?

Like starting any business, getting Cashflow is the primary step. Identify the tasks that will have the most and quickest impact on the bottom line and outsource them first.

First priority has to be to increase Cashflow enough to pay for the outsourcing! Once you know you can do that then set up a way to track the return on investment for the outsourcing.

At the very least make sure you are tracking profit in your business, if it isn’t increasing with the addition of someone else working in your system, then there is a flaw in your business model.

#1 Bosses are BAD. I Don’t want to be a Boss! Having to tell someone what to do is bad enough, what if I have to give them sh*t or heaven forbid fire them, I can’t handle that.

If you grew up in a family that came from generations of blue collar workers (like me), you may have thoughts like this lurking in the back of your mind. These attitudes can trigger all sorts of resistance to outsourcing and moving into a position of responsibility and power.

To others, this step is not difficult at all. Either way, being able to pull the pin on the guillotine is an essential leadership skill and I know I’ll always have a big limitation on my earnings and personal growth without that ability.

Why It’s Worth It to Outsource

In conclusion to my 2 part outsourcing Q & A, it is clear that for anyone wanting build a real business and to move beyond the scope of a regular salary, there must be other people’s time involved.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked myself into hiring a virtual assistant and to committing to outsourcing a major portion of my tasks. Here are the benefits that I expect to realize:

The ability to scale. If you believe what you are doing is profitable, wouldn’t it be better to create 3 or 10 profit channels, even if they only produce 50% of the income of the one you could complete by yourself?

Freedom. How can I ever go on a real vacation if all of my businesses are completely dependant on me for day to day operations. Isn’t freedom the reason that I wanted more money to begin with?

More money and more freedom, pretty good motivation to work my way from the limitations of a one man show to having a complete systematized business.

10 Ways of Overcoming Outsourcing Objections is a post from: Art of Money

This post begins with a confession: creating and following systems is something I truly suck at.

That’s why, in a desperate hope to free myself from the constant pain in my shoulders (from carrying the weight of my online ventures solely on my own back) last summer I picked up James Brausch’s Freedom Business Systems home study course.

I hated it. Too simplistic, too basic, not clever enough for me.

Then a couple weeks ago, after yet again realizing that I had created a non-scalable system (ie. the business needed me to do almost everything, therefore growth and success were limited to the number of hours I could work) with my blog network.

I’m Determined to Reform my Ways

I ordered a copy of Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week, and while waiting for it to arrive I decided to give James’ home study course another look.

Much to my surprise, it had improved dramatically in the 10 months that I have been neglecting it

What is a Business?

A good place to start is with a definition of a real business. This is what I want:

A company that produces a profit; and if I was to be exiled on a deserted island for 12 months, when I returned to civilization, the company would be thriving and worth more than when I left.

Freedom Business Systems Review

The question is then whether or not James’ course can provide a framework and guidance to achieve that goal?

Or at the very least a bit of hope in that direction for a die-hard control freak (the real reason folks have trouble with business systems and outsourcing.)

And yes, I do think a blog or a simple website can be a business system and be fully outsource and done by trained staff.

Creator’s Depth of Knowledge on the Topic

James gives some example of how he came to learn the importance of business systems from working in corporate software development and seeing the huge advantage that the systems provided on many levels.

Not only did the business systems that he witnessed provide ways to dial in on continuous increases in profit, but they created freedom for the owners and they increased the scalability and sale-ability of the business (it is next to impossible to sell a business that depends on you to run.)

The Difference Between a System and a Project

One of the fundamentals of the Freedom Business System course that I like is the re-framing of the concept of a project. In my mind I wondered how can a business ever run without me; won’t there always be one-off projects that need to get done?

The goal is to STOP the PROJECTS, the only projects should be to create the systems so you no longer need to have any more projects. Then your are free and your business can continually improve without your involvement.

The Meat & Potatoes

The course, like I said is very simple. It explains what the goals are with each component of a business system.

You start at the top with an overall diagram of your business (there is a good example provided). From there you outline all the processes used to perform every task in the business.

Then you create procedures, which are just step by step walk-throughs of all the tasks needed to complete the high level processes.

Metrics

Each procedure must have a metric that is used to measure it’s success. For example the overall metric for your business would most likely be “profit.” But each procedure that someone performs should also have a metric.

In the course, the example used is “article promotion” a procedure for submitting articles to article directories. The metric for this procedure is backlinks as a result of the article being distributed.

This metric should, of course, relate in some way to the overall goal of profit, but it may not relate directly.

Continuous and Never Ending Improvement

The other really important factor (if you look at my desert island test from above) is continuous improvement. Each process must have a method that insures it is reviewed and new ways of performing the same task are tested to try and improve the metric.

The course provides two ways to review processes and procedures looking; for increases in quality or reductions in costs. This is known as ratcheting your systems.

Other Factors Touched On

• Document management – the need for centralized repository of business records.
• Creation of spreadsheets to manage and review metrics.
• How to handle possible staff objections to being part of a business system.

What’s included in the Package

3 main screen capture videos that walk through the entire methodology and explanation of setting up a systematized business.

4 example processes, including the procedures in step by step text documents and screen capture videos that an employee would follow to complete the task.

The Cost

$100

In Conclusion

Like I mentioned it is a very simple course. That is the strength of it. You will get it; why you need to do all this documentation, and how to do it so that your business (or even just a simple website or blog) can run independently of your involvement.

If you’re like me and come from a long line of job slaves, you probably will find that you’ll start out creating these systems and then when you experience pressure or get I-can-do-it-better-than-anyone-else-itis you’ll probably revert back to doing things in the business rather than creating systems for others to be able to do the work.

At least then we can crack out the course and get back on track. That’s what it’s been like for me, maybe you’ll have an easier time at getting out of the do-it-all-yourself mindset. I know I’m not going to give up on my dream of having a constantly improving business that can operate without me breaking my back at a computer all day.

I think of the Freedom Business Systems (yes the sales page is butt ugly – James is an avid tester so the version I’m seeing currently has fluorescent green headline text…yikes!) as the blueprint for how things need to be in order for me to create that dream business and life.

Can I Work Less & Still Grow My Income? is a post from: Art of Money

This is the next action post in my $100 a day blogging series. Up to this point we have reached the point where you should have a basic list of high level keywords that you may want to target with your blog. Today we’re going to move on and take the step of gathering specific information about the theme that we’re interested in blogging about.

Competitor analysis is really a key for many different reasons.

1. Understanding what you’re up against.
2. Gather monetization ideas.
3. Frame your competitive advantage.

For each high level keyword in your list (you should have no more than 7-10) do a Google search and take a look at the top 10 or 20 results for each of them. Create a spreadsheet and make notes under each of the above 3 categories.

TIP: When you’re checking these keywords in Google, make sure sure you’re not logged in to your Gmail account (or any other Google account, like Reader) because you’ll get different results if you are. I usually use Internet Explorer for Google searching and then Firefox for my real browsing and checking Gmail etc.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

What Is the Quality of my Competition?

For each site you find in the search results:

1. What is their Alexa ranking and Page Rank?
2. How many pages do they have in Google?
3. What is it that they are good at (their competitive advantage)?
4. Is their site a good match for the keyword term?

As I did some of this research I was surprised to find that in quite a few cases, there were sites in the top 5 of Google that weren’t a great match for the keywords.

For example, for the term “make money online” ProBlogger.net comes up in the top 5 results. Now ProBlogger.net is a great resource for “make money blogging” but it really isn’t nearly broad enough to cover any decent portion of the “make money online” topic.

That tells me that Google doesn’t really have any enough sites that it considers authorities for that phrase, therefore it has put ProBlogger into that result, since it is a pretty good fit. If I can convince Google that I am a better fix (primarily with more diverse thematically related site content) then I may be rewarded with a great ranking for a high traffic keyword.

How Are My Competitors Making Money?

Make notes in your spreadsheet about ALL the ways that your competition are making money. Some possibilities include:

• AdSense
• Private ads
• Affiliate Links
• Text Link Ads
• Private Link Ads
• Sponsorships
• Pay Per Post
• Review Me

There are lots of others, of course. Make a list of them, but pay special attention to the prominent ones. Which ones are above the fold, promoted front and center…likely these are the big profit makers.

Look for a Competitive Advantage

As you are scanning these sites, remain open to find your competitive advantage. What are these site weak at? What can you do better than they are doing?

Make sure you read comments on these sites. Are commenters pissed off about things on the site? Or is there a theme in the comments that can give you ideas about what the readers of the site are wanting that the site isn’t providing.

Keep reading (or take some time to reflect once you have read them all) until it becomes clear what you can bring to this market that doesn’t exist already.

Other Ways to Scope the Competition

If they have a mailing list, sign up for it as well as downloading and looking at any free e-books, whitepapers etc.

Who do they link to in their blogroll? Check these sites out as well. There are usually lots of highly valuable sites in any niche that don’t show up in the search engine results.

When you do your searches for your competition, are any of these sites buying traffic on AdWords (look at the URL field on the ads on the searches you are making)?

One thing I discovered in my research was that John Chow has a promotion that encourages people to review his site and link back using the keyword phrase “make money online.” That’s a great idea. Not only as a technique for me to borrow (ie. do the same; encourage my readers to link to me using a targeted phrase), but also I could write a review of his site and be exposed to his readers (who are exactly my target market.)

Don’t forget, your profit potential is largely determined in the market research stage of blogging, so don’t rush or if you have already started your site, don’t neglect it.

Blogging Competitor Analysis is a post from: Art of Money

I am immersed daily in the community of people who are trying to make money online. And besides trying to carve out my out little piece of the pie, I like to occasionally sit back and observe the lay of the land.

If you asked me what the one thing is that separates the big earners from the ones who struggle to get a monthly $100 AdSense check, it’s strategy. Big earner have and follow one, strugglers don’t.

Goals, ??? & a Plan

You’ll hear a lot about goals (The Secret) and planning (Goal Mapping) when it comes to manifesting dreams in your life, but the one thing that I see overlooked, neglected and undervalued is a strategy.

The three points of the success triangle as I see it:

1. goal
2. strategy
3. plan

All three are essential.

Let’s take an example. Now I don’t know Darren Rowse personally so I can’t claim to know what went on in his head, but here’s my best guess at the process of a successful Blogger:

Darren started blogging as a hobby but I remember reading that at some point he made a deal with his wife that he would take 6 months to create a full-time income from blogging.

Goal: Create a full-time income from blogging.

Plan: Post 20 stories a day of valuable content to various blogs.

The part that is so often overlooked…

Strategy: Online advertising and commerce were just beginning to mature when he went pro, blogs were exploding in popularity and search engines were in love with blogs as a constantly updated sources of information. Therefore each blog post would have a present and residual value. Put enough little flakes of value online and the sum total would amount to a passive income system equal to a full time job.

The Easiest Strategy is To Follow Long Term Trends

The easiest way to make money or succeed at anything is to make a plan based on a long term trend.

Darren identified a trend and built his plan on top of that trend. If he had the same goal and the same plan 3 years earlier, he wouldn’t have made his full-time income goal in 6 months.

BTW, it is my belief that the same trend is still in effect. Meaning that someone with the same goal, strategy and plan could produce the same results as Darren did. However, since competition is higher, secondary factors like market research (choosing a profitable topic), communication ability and quality, and technical factors (search engine optimization) are now more important.

Take at Look at the game Monopoly

Who’s going to win most often in a game of Monopoly? The person with the best strategy. Typically you can win most of the time, just by having any type of strategy. For example: buy one high quality matching set of properties and develop them fully to hotels.

Monopoly is perfect for learning strategy since it rewards the grouping of properties of the same color.

A good strategy has a compounding effect on your efforts.

In the real world buying any property, over a long enough period of time and you are likely to make money. But buying a property in a great neighborhood or a city about to boom and you’ll make a lot more money.

If Darren had written 20 articles a day and submitted them to traditional publications rather than posting them on his blog, he’d probably still be a starving artist rather than a 6 Figure Blogger.

3 Reasons Why Strategy Matters so Much

1.) A well chosen strategy allows you to leverage the trend. An expression from my Grandfather, “when the tide comes in, all the boats rise.”

In short, it is easier to have success if you have a trend working in your direction. Identifying major trends is important.

2.) Strategy takes guessing and, more importantly, emotion out of the working of your plan. When you have built your plan on a strategy that aligns with a long term trend, all you have to do is to work your plan and pay attention to the macro events which may cause a change in fundamentals.

Your hunches and the day to day emotions should never influence decisions in your plan.

3.) Takes the guesswork out of it.

In my investment club, macro trends are always used to base decisions on. For example, about 2 years ago we asked the question…”how can you make money from the shortage of fossil fuels?”

The leaders of the club passed the question to a team of analysts who concluded, by proper research, that Nuclear, given the restraints of time and money and global warming concerns, is the most viable alternative to highly polluting fuels currently used to produce energy.

The best play on the solution to global warming trends = Uranium. Here’s a look at the chart of a typical junior uranium stock from the last year or so.

Some Trends that You Can Use to Build Wealth

• Near my city (Edmonton) there is $115 billion committed for expansion of an Oil Sands project over the next 5 years, which is driving housing prices up and up due to a huge demand for labor.
• See the uranium example above, as a response to global warming.
• More and more commerce is moving online, but if you look around, especially locally and in smaller businesses, you’ll see that there is a long way to go before e-commerce reaches its full potential.
• While approximately 1 billion people world wide have Internet access, that still leaves 5 billion plus, who are yet to get online.
• The middle class in China and India is expanding rapidly, causing huge demand side pressure on everything from concrete to autos to designer clothes.
• The United States government continues to be fiscally irresponsible, piling up a huge and possibly irreconcilable debt. Hedgers have reacted to this by driving up the price of gold from $290 in 2000, to $648 an ounce in 2007. 

There are probably many others that I haven’t listed, especially in smaller niches. Leave any you can think of in a comment!

Summing Up

Strategy is the key to big and easy wealth. Most people don’t stick to their plans because the plan is not built on a solid strategy, therefore once the emotion of hope and greed or discomfort come into the picture, they doubt, question or abandon the plan.

Every blog post is a little piece of revenue potential, feed them into the right strategy and they will compound to meet and exceed your goals.

The One Factor That Most Determines Success is a post from: Art of Money

Here’s a large forum thread with lots and lots of pictures of Guerilla Marketing. Some very cool ideas!

read more.

Great examples of Guerilla Marketing is a post from: Art of Money

Domaining is the online equivalent of a real estate investor speculating in raw land. Even though it can be one of the most lucrative and the simplest and easiest forms of Internet businesses it doesn’t get that much attention.

My guess about why that is would be that it is too simple. It doesn’t really take a guru to package up a $150 oops $147 eBook to tell you what to do. You can understand the basic concepts in about 20 minutes; from there it just takes a few tools a bankroll of some kind and you can be up and running in an hour.

In my own experience I once purchased the domain name rivercity.ca for about $10 and sold it 6 months later for $1500. That’s a killer return on investment. If you can do that with any kind of consistency, domaining can be very lucrative.

What is Domaining?

The most basic form of domaining is simply acquiring potentially valuable domain names. These undeveloped domains are then monetized in one of two ways:

1. By providing ads to people who visit the domain by typing the domain name directly into a browser (known as “type-in traffic”.)  You’re probably thinking that very few people would ever type most domain names directly into a browser, well it happens more than you think and with a domain name costing about $7/year, your domain only has to make about 2 cents a day to give you a positive cash flow. Once you can consistently pick up sites that more than pay for their registration fees, then you now have a money-making machine, requiring no maintenance.
2. By reselling the domains once they appreciate. Since it is unlikely that any established niches will have many new and valuable domains that haven’t been registered, domainers look for new ideas and breaking trends and register keyword rich related domain names. From there it is a matter of waiting for your new trend to break big into the popular culture (imaging you registered podcast.com 5 years ago.) Just on the Earth, there is a limited amount of prime Internet real estate (namely short .com names) and serious developers know the value of this real estate and are willing to pay for it.

Skills Required

The ability to understand the concept of type-in traffic and what sorts of domains or words that people type directly into a browser.

The ability to spot new concepts that are emerging in the world and to quickly turn those ideas into keyword rich domain names.

Tips For Buying Domains as Investments

• .com or other top level country domains to a lesser extent (.ca for Canada will receive some type in traffic).
• no hyphens
• no numbers

Often domains are sold in ‘portfolios’ which is a large (often 100s or 1000s) of related domain names. It is best to focus on niches and batch your purchases around your topic rather than buying many unrelated names.

You can buy existing sites that are expiring. If you do, make sure to check whois.sc and Archive.org for the history of the site. It is possible to completely trash a domain name (with black hat spam for example) so badly that it may never get indexed in a search engine again. A site like this might look like a great domain, so will even have a high PageRank, but beware.

The Pros for Domaining as an Internet Business

Low barrier to entry as far as skills go, all you need to do is pay attention to what is new in the world around you and attempt to snap up domains related to these topics.

The Cons for Domaining as an Internet Business

Profit on each individual name can be tiny and equity increases can be hit and miss. Which means that you could need to buy 1000′s of domains to make any type of substantial income or to begin to have a large enough portfolio to stand a decent chance of hitting a home run with a high-demand name.

Lots of competition from serious companies.

Some gray areas around trademarks can lead to being sued a lot. The more aggressive you want to be by cutting into trademarked words or phrases, the more risk you run, but the more potential profit as well.

Build out your Internet Real Estate

Build out your real estate a bit, create a page, or a WordPress blog, point a couple links at it and add AdSense or an affiliate offer to it.

As opposed to simple domaining where you use a monetization service (see resources below) you’ll require hosting (I use Hostgator because it me to host unlimited domains and has one-click WordPress installs for about $10 a month.)

Getting Serious about Domaining

If you are going to get really serious about domaining then you are going to get set up with a registrar, or become one yourself, so that you can practice “domain tasting.”

This procedure, of registering a domain for up to 2 weeks and then canceling the registration if the domain doesn’t receive any type-in traffic, allows the serious domainer to know that any money they spend on domains will result in a positive return on investment. It is a very serious tool for professional domains as it almost guarantees a profitable buy on every name they purchase.

Also, if you are going pro, you can begin to purchase domains that have already appreciated, hoping for further appreciation. In 2003 the domain men.com sold for $1.5 million. It was purchased in 1997 for $15k.

My Case Study – Think Like a Domainer

Here’s an example of the thinking that I go through with domaining. A while ago I was reading my copy of Wired magazine. I do a quick scan of it the day it arrives. I came across a story of a high school student who, at a science fair, was able to create about half the power of a regular AA battery by harnessing the power produced by “magnetic bacteria.” For about 10 seconds, I thought to myself, “wow is that ever cool…that could change the world by reducing the need for fossil fuels.”

Then I IMMEDIATELY RAN TO MY COMPUTER and registered magneticbacteria.com.

That’s the life a domainer. Fun life, get it right and you’ll be rich and it really is almost completely maintenance free business…just don’t forget to renew those domains

Domainer Resources

• Find trends – trendwatching, WordTracker hot searches, Yahoo Buzz, Wired magazine
• Sedo - learn what domains are selling for and understand why they are valuable. Not recommended as a parking service due to low payouts, but a decent place to list domains for sale.
• Hitfarm – parked domain monetization service.
• SnapNames – for backordering existing domains that are about to expire
• Domain Hunter – domainer’s domain name brainstorming tool
• Ultsearch who sold his domain portfolio for $164 million.
• Domainer Magazine

Domainer – The Perfect Internet Business? is a post from: Art of Money

Regular readers may have noticed that in my “Featured Links” section there are several links for payday loan companies.

Since my site doesn’t really rank for that phrase I’m not sure why, but I get quite a few companies wanting to purchase links for payday loans on this site.

One notable offer came in a few days ago. What made it interesting was that the person who wanted me to write a review of their site or service began their proposal assuming that I would be against payday loans and they felt that they needed to defend their business.

I consider myself a business person and someone who believes in personal responsibility so I feel that I could at least offer a balanced viewpoint on payday loans. I thought it would be fun to explore some of the issues around these loans in a blog post and see what others had to say.

The Payday Loan Bonanza

In my niche site days, I made quite a bit of money from the payday loan niche. I can tell you it is BIG business. Since most of it can be automated it is also the perfect candidate for serious money online. The foot traffic size of market limitations for the insta-cash store on the street corner disappear in cyberspace.

On my niche site, a payday loan company would pay between $20 and $30 just to have someone fill in a form just to inquire about a payday loan. They didn’t even have to actually apply and I made a big commission…that should give you an indication of the amount of money that these companies are making.

Fact 1: The payday loan business is very lucrative (but very competitive).

Who are the Clients?

When I did my market research for my niche sites, it became clear that no credit check payday loans were often used by poor people. Terms involving minorities, working poor and military were commonly targeted.

It was obvious that the clients of payday loan companies are primarily going after one type of people; the financially illiterate. To be able to offer such a lucrative payout to affiliates, the life-time value of a payday loan company has to be high, which means that most of their clients are likely repeat customers.

Fact 2: Payday loans are targeted at financially uneducated people.

Who’s to Blame?

I don’t really believe in innocent victims in situations like this. Since people are free to use or not use these services I can’t really see any reason to say that payday loan or cash advance companies are evil.

That said though, it does take a certain kind of mindset to make money from people by providing a service which is likely to contribute to solve a short term problem, and make them worse off in the long run. You’d only need to take a glance at the diet industry and much of the pharmaceutical industry to see how widespread that particular business strategy is currently used.

Fact 3: It serves the payday loan companies well to keep their clients financially illiterate.

How would I Run a Payday Loan Company?

I may be naive but wouldn’t it make more sense to view a payday loan client as someone who needs long term financial education and products rather than someone that you can make a few easy bucks from while you drive them deeper towards poverty.

By offering financial guidance in saving, budgeting and financial planning these payday loan clients could be converted into clients for personal loans, mortgages and investment accounts. In short educate them up from the desperate range of the financial product line up to the much more lucrative and empowered banking products.

Fact (okay Guess) 4: Payday loan companies could make more money in the long run (and sleep better at night) by moving into the financial education business.

What do You Think?

I’d like to hear you thoughts on these high interest rate loans. Would you allow them to advertise on your site? Ban the business altogether?

Are Payday Loans Evil? is a post from: Art of Money

Last week I attended a great presentation about goal setting. It was presented at the local business resource centre and was given by Dan McDonald of Business Improvement Solutions.

The presentation was specifically targeted to business goal setting and it was based on Dan’s extensive experience coaching businesses to set and reach their goals.

My past experience with goal setting books or talks has been that they didn’t sell the concepts well enough to my mind. In other words I was always left with a voice that could say, “that wouldn’t work, because of x, y or z.” But with Dan’s presentation, I couldn’t poke a hole in it. I was convinced that if I followed the twelve steps with honest and sincere effort, I would succeed in anything that I applied them to.

Here are the 12 steps for goal setting. Take your time and let them sink it a bit.

1. Make Your Goal Personal

You must make goals that come from you. I stumble on this one all the time with my blog network. I get caught up in the success of other networks and start to want those things (venture capital, millions of uniques a month etc) but they aren’t necessarily what is really right for me and my business.

Honesty is required since having goals that don’t align with your talents, skills and true desires will decrease the likelihood of manifesting the goal.

2. Make Your Goal Believable

Your mind has a certain sweet spot where it feels like the challenge is completely engaging, but entirely possible. If your goals are too easy or the odds are too remote the mind won’t engage fully in its pursuit.

Go over the goal in your mind and pay attention to your response. Try a few different ones to see what the various reactions are. For example, if you currently earn $30k a year.

1. 1. I will earn $30,200 next year.
   2. I will earn $3,000,000 next year.
   3. I will earn $60,000 next year.

I’m not trying to say that one is more possible than the others but #1 is not really a significant accomplishment; basically a waste of time. Roll up the coins in your change jar and you’re done.

Number 2 will be too much of a stretch for most. I believe it is possible to multiply your income by 10, but most people will lose interest or tune out the challenge before ever take significant action; the mind won’t engage if it feels the odds are too slim.

Number 3 will likely engage you because it is in the sweet spot of what is possible. It gets you busy!

3. Write Your Goal Down

Most people aren’t even brave enough to allow a dream or goal to clarify in to a thought in their heads.

Why?

• Fear of failure
• Fear of change
• Fear of success

Then to take the goal and actually write it down requires an even greater leap into the possibility of discomfort. But writing it down begins to activate the belief system.

A recurring theme throughout the talk was Dan’s emphasis on actions that “trained the brain” into believing that what you were doing or wanting was important enough for your brain to begin to devote some of it’s massive energy and power towards making it happen.

4. Ask Why You Want the Goal

“So I never have to feel pain,” or “so I can be in control of everything,” are not the best reasons for wanting to be rich. Your brain is smarter than that, it probably won’t co-operate with thinking that is that limiting. In my experience you’ll get infinite support for goals and activities that increase your overall life’s capacity, but very little support for ones that decrease it.

A lot of people think that they want to be rich but it is really a misguided belief that being rich will mean something else.

“Why do you want to be rich?”

…To have more friends

…To show people that I’m important

…To prove I’m not a loser

etc.

Honesty is required to get to the real reason but it is a necessary step since the planning and actions required to achieve a goal are unique to the goal. Having more money won’t get you more friends, but meeting more people and taking an interest in other people may.

5. Analyze Your Current Position

This is a surprisingly easy one to neglect and vitally important. I struggled for months trying to build my passive income up to the point where I felt I could afford to work full-time on my blog network.

Then one day I sat down and took a good look at where I was at financially with everything in my life. I realized that I could actually afford to go for a year just from my current savings. I never would have guessed it, if I hadn’t sat down with the cold hard facts.

The other part of current position analysis is that it has a big impact on the plan you will develop to achieve the goal.

6. Set a Deadline

Take advantage of “the final exam effect” where most of the results (studying) will happen right before the deadline.

There is also a power in working within an enclosed or limited amount of anything. A restriction focuses your inner resources. A lump of coal, lying on the ground isn’t going to turn into a diamond.

7. Identify Obstacles

List out all the obstacles that could keep you from achieving your goal.

Order them from largest to smallest impact on your success. Now forget about all of them except the one at the top of the list. Work only on that one until it is overcome. The reason is that it is quite likely that a number of the others are pinned to or dependant upon it. Once it is removed it is likely that your obstacle list may not require any more attention.

Important clue…it is likely that the biggest obstacle is inside of you (an attitude, belief or fear that prevents you from completing you goal).

8. Acquire Knowledge

In the workshop I really liked the reason that was given for making acquiring knowledge as part of your goal process:

It re-enforces your commitment and trains your brain that you are taking this seriously.

The real secret to the law of attraction is not dreaming or thinking about what you want, it is in taking focused action.

9. Find Your Customer

Since this was a business goal setting workshop, there was a component about clients and customers. The key point from this section was market research. Don’t assume you know what your customer wants. There is often a disconnect between what someone says they want and what they really want.

Take the time to ask questions. One of the most successful moves I ever made was when I decided to go back to school (my second career) for computer programming. There were 4 schools in my city offering similar training, all with slightly different lengths or options.

My goal was to come out of the training and easily get a job. I was clear about what I wanted, but all the schools promised that I would achieve my goal.

Not that I was skeptical but it was important for me to get it right. My wife was going to support me while I went to school and the last thing I wanted was to end up going backwards financially.

So I did market research. I called 6 companies and asked which school’s grads they preferred to hire. It was a slam dunk which one they would choose…they all told me they preferred grads from the same school!

Sure enough after my two year course I easily found an excellent job.

10. Make a Plan

Planning is another vital part of goal setting. I really liked the emphasis that the workshop gave on this section. All Dan said was that a plan needed to be filled with concrete ACTIONS.

When we think of a business plan especially, there is a lot in there that doesn’t really contribute to getting the business goals met. Pull out the real plan, the actions steps, and use it as a checklist of tasks needed to get to the goal.

11. Visualize

Seeing it in your mind can reduce fear.

Like the picture of the puzzle on the outside of the box, take time to create the picture and you can finish the puzzle faster.

This is another brain training step. What will it look and feel like when your goal is reached? Consider every detail in depth. It isn’t uncommon for professional athletes to spend as much time visualizing as they do playing their sport.

12. Determination, Drive & Desire

The keys to achieving goals is not talent. In the workshop Dan told a story of a study that was done on people who had achieved great success, and every single one of them said that they had met someone who had more talent than them, but didn’t achieve as much success.

The researchers speculated that the people with more natural talent, because success came easily to them, were eventually surpassed because they didn’t develop determination, drive and desire.

Achieving success is usually a long term process and during that process it is inevitable that you are going to feel completely hopeless, or become disillusioned or feel like a complete failure at least once, probably often.

Having the ability to get up, dust yourself off and continue on towards your goal is the most important factor to achieving something truly worthwhile.

Wrapping Up the Goal Setting Process

Like I mentioned off the top, this is by far the most comprehensive, in terms of covering all the mental loop-holes, guide for goal setting that I have encountered.

The only thing it doesn’t cover, which will doom most people is that you actually have to do the 12 steps to accomplish any goal.

Like I mentioned above the real secret is that focused action is required to move forward.

- Jon Symons
Goal Setters Anonymous

12 Steps to Set and Reach Your Goals is a post from: Art of Money

This hilarious video is part of a series by Cube News 1.

Some pratical tips for cube dwellers. You can check out the entire Cube News series on You Tube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

PS…get out while you still have enough sanity to know better

Cube News is a post from: Art of Money

I just discovered that Jim Collins’ site (yes that Jim Collins) has a whack of free .mp3 lectures by Jim that are available for free download.

Some good stuff there, including:

How do you do “Stop Doing?” 

Money is a commodity; talent is not. 

You don’t need to be big to be great. 

Getting people off the bus. 

GE and the process hedgehog. 

Give them a listen or download to your iPod at JimCollins.com 

Raid Jim Collins’ Audio Library is a post from: Art of Money

I’ve taught golf for a long time now.

As you might imagine, I’m somewhat unusual, a little different than your average pro.

I do things my way, like the first lesson I give.

Let me relate a true story, although not that unusual for me.

A lady came to take a series of lessons. She wanted to join her husband in their retirement and golf around the country.

The first thing I did was toss a ball on the ground and hand her a club, a five iron.

Then I told her:

“hit the ball”

She looked at me. Puzzled.

She smiled and replied, “I don’t know how, that is what I’m paying you to teach me.”

If you read the rest of the story, you’ll find out why having the attitude of a three year old is the most valuable tool you can have in your business. The lesson rang true for me.

My wife and I went to a friend’s house to pick his brain about real estate investing, something that he’s done really well at.

“If you’re making it more difficult than walking down the sidewalk, you’re probably not going to do well.” He said.

I believe him, us humans have an innate ability to accomplish things, we’ve just messed ourselves up so much that we think we need to take a $3000 course to learn how to swim…even though we were born as a fish.

Hit the Ball is a post from: Art of Money

One of the highlights of the Rich Dad weekend was a 3 hour presentation by Tom Wheelright of Pro Vision Wealth.

Tom shared a lot of material with us about creating wealth, but one nugget that made a very large impression on me was this formula, which was developed by Buckminster Fuller

“r” represents the number of relationships and “N” is the number of people that are involved in your company (or any other team).

Here’s a walk through of a typical situation (I’ve reduced some of the groups, like employees to one person for this example).

R in the example above ends up being 64 – 8 / 2 = 28 Relationships!!!

Geez, no wonder I’m not getting any work done.

In the example Tom presented the team he outlined was a wealth building team but the example of a business sure fits for me.

As anyone who has read the E-Myth Revisited knows the key to solving this time crippling situation is to get “You” out of the center of the picture.

In Tom’s example the new picture looked like this:

By placing someone who’s job it is to manage relationships into the center of the picture, you now have gone from managing 28 relationships to managing 1; the one between you and the coach or manager.

I’m seeing that this is a key strategy for building a real business and having success in almost anything.

Decrease Complexity by Reducing Relationships is a post from: Art of Money

Check out my appearence in Rich Dad’s Online Business School:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Good thing I just got a haircut

Thanks to Erin for the heads (LOL) up.

Jon’s Cameo at Rich Dad’s Business School is a post from: Art of Money

Jon had a great post about a month back on business planning. In it, he compared launching a business to taking a trip.  One of the things we need to figure out is who to take along with us.

There are the obvious answers, business partners, suppliers, customers, the moneymen, and yes, the much talked about…mentors but a group is often left out. 

The Fans. 

But, you ask, isn’t a fan the same as a mentor?  Nope, a mentor is the voice of reason.  Sure he builds you up but, when needed, he also squashes you back down.  He doesn’t let you dream the big, often unrealistic dreams powering most entrepreneurs.

For that, you need a fan and you do need at least one.  Having a fan provides a powerful psychological advantage.  Sports teams believe this so much that they even pay some of their fans (cheerleaders).  The home team advantage?  Largely due to the number of fans in the stands cheering.

How To Use A Fan

Note: fans are not for business or career advice.  Fans are for emotional support only.  When you get so beaten down, you can no longer stand up straight, you talk to your fan.  You don’t take action on her words.  She’s there to give you the confidence and hope so you can look for the answers elsewhere.

It should be clear to you and your fan what exactly her role is.  Tell her that you only need positive words, that you’re relying on her support.  I’ve played this game long enough that I ask outright “Am I a mentor or a fan?”  Once again, the roles are not the same.

Fan Knowledge

Does a fan need to know the ins and outs of your business in order to do her job?  Another no.  Want some examples?  Cheerleaders in the NFL spend the entire time with their backs to the field.  They don’t watch the game.  My hubby is my biggest writing fan yet he doesn’t read my blog posts.  It is actually easier to be a fan if you’re not an expert.

Yes, fans are an important part of your business team.  But don’t take my word on it.  Ask Stephen King.  He credits his number one fan, his donut making, poetry writing wife, for literally rescuing his career from the trash.  

***This guest post has written by Kimber who, as a fan of mine, has provided invaluable encouragement (and more) to me and my business ventures ever since the day we met. She blogs on No Limits Ladies and K’s Blog. 

The Fan is a post from: Art of Money

I’ve been watching the latest Rich Schefren video called Startup To Freedom: Prescriptions To Gain Momentum (free – no email squeeze). In a recent blog post Rich asked his readers, “What’s holding you back?“. Then he sorted through the 543 comments and broke them down into various categories.

You’ll need to watch the video to get the others but the one that really amazed me was, “not enough funds.” Actually the reason cited is common and doesn’t surprise me at all, many times while facing a problem with my blog network, or just wishing I could make things happen faster, I’ve found myself saying…”if only I had an extra $50k to put into this.”

Would You Trade 5k for 100k?

The reason most entrepreneurs don’t find the money they need is because they lack confidence in their business

The way Rich explains it on the clip is great. He asks the questioner if they could trade, guaranteed, $5k for $100k, if they could come up with the $5k?

Of course most people could; credit cards, friends whatever, most could find $5k for an automatic 20x return.

I know I could come up with my desired $50k if I was CERTAIN it would turn into $1m.

Rich points out then, that money is not the problem… as a lot of great (and even very large) businesses are started for $10,000 or less; the problem is lack of confidence.

The key part of the equation is that the entrepreneur doesn’t drop down their own money or struggle to find it because they lack confidence in their business. OUCH, too true.

Maybe Lack of Confidence is a Good Thing

When I first heard Rich’s assessment, and realized that it rang completely true for me, I was depressed. But then I thought about is some more and realized that is was just normal instincts. The fact is that I don’t really know if my blog network will produce any decent return for the money or time that I have invested into it.

It’s completely normal, to want to minimize my outlay give a weak possibility of return.

Prove your System!

Based on these revelations there are only two types of businesses: proven systems and unproven systems. Once the system is proven to produce: 1. revenue and then 2. profit, it is appropriate to increase the amount of outlay dramatically at each of those milestones.

The goal then is not to try and raise money to solve problems, the goal is to prove the system can produce money. If you don’t have enough money to prove your system, then scale back or simplify the prototype so that it can be developed and put into use with less resources.

This whole lesson is a great revelation. What I love about it is that it takes away one of my biggest excuses and puts me back into a place of empowerment with my business.

Prove the return and the money will follow…wasn’t that a movie?

Do You Really Need Money to Start a Business? is a post from: Art of Money

Since there are now so many domain names registered, it becomes harder and harder to find a great top level domain name for a new site. Since most webmasters won’t have the big bucks to purchase an existing high quality domain a new industry has sprung up: professional domain namers.

Usually these folks/services charge pretty big money to find a brandable quality domain for your business/website idea, but Picky Domains has applied the Web 2.0 spirit of collaboration to the concept of domain naming and created a brilliant business where you can get a pile of great domain name suggestions for only $50.

This is how the service works. You deposit 50 dollars and tell us about the site you need a name for. What the site does or will do. How many letters or words in your domain you want max. What keywords absolutely have to be in the domain. Dashes or no dashes. Dot com only or not. If we can use slang or not. Etc.

We dispatch this information to our contributors and you start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail. If you see a name that’s a perfect match for your website, register it and let us know the domain name, so we can pay the person who came up with the name. If you don’t like any of the domain names we suggest, we’ll simply refund your 50 dollars upon your request. Our domain namers get paid ONLY if we can find a domain that you register.

Now that’s a very cool idea and a great way to leverage the power of the connected world to provide a low cost solution to a problem.

If you are at all serious about you project or business, then $50 seems like a very nominal fee for getting a team of domain namers to spit out a bunch of cool ideas.

- Jon Symons
Finding meta services, so you don’t have to.

P.S. This was the second of a three part series about choosing domain names. We’ve covered keywords in a domain name, this article which is about domain name brainstorming and in part three I’ll show you a tool that claims to actually score domain name (and complete URLs to tell you which ones are most profitable).

How To Choose a Domain Name – Part 2 is a post from: Art of Money

I need a new logo for my city blog network, and I was going to use a traditional logo service like My Logo but I thought it would be fun to get the network bloggers involved in the process so I decided to go the SitePoint Marketplace and run a logo contest.

The process has been really interesting so I thought I would share my experience and the tips of what I’ve learned:

1.) Wide Variety of Entries

You’ll get a wide variety of entries, which is mostly a good thing. You can expect a wide range of quality too, but traditional logo companies often charge by the number of concepts that you will receive, so to get 25 or 30 original designs presented to review is a fantastic luxury.

2.) Put Up Enough of A Reward to Attract Good Bids

The base reward for a logo competition on SitePoint is only $100, but My Logo charges $199 minimum so I was afraid that if I went with the minimum that I wouldn’t attract any real pros, so I made my competition $160, which seems to have done the trick, as I have received some great entries.

3.) Review Existing and Past Contests

Check out the other current and past logo contests. While you look at them, take a look at the quality of entries (especially in relationship to the amount of prize money offered).

Look at the summary and detail descriptions of the project…borrow heavily from the ones that are really well done.

Pay attention to the feedback give to the designers, as this is a key area to getting a logo that is a good match to your business.

4.) Give Clear Instructions

Vague or loose instructions will ruin the contest. I could have spent more time defining what I wanted. It’s good to have a basic idea of colors, and even some examples of styles of logos that you are wanting.

The more you can narrow down the focus for the designers at the begriming the more energy they can spend refining design rather than struggling to figure out what you want.

5.) Communicate With the Participants

It seems like the designers are very eager and by providing updates as to your thinking and by quickly answering questions, you will encourage more and better quality entries.

Creating a logo is a process that involves the logo contest sponsor and the designer working together to hone in on a winning concept. The designer can’t do it without your participation.

6.) Get Other Eyeballs Involved In Your Decision

With the large number and wide variety of entries that you’ll get, it’s easy to dismiss a good concept based on your first impression, so get some other people to take a look and give you feedback.

I’ve had the bloggers on my network and my wife take a look at the submissions and I definitely discovered that a fresh perspective helped me see potential new directions that were valuable.

7.) Be Grateful

These people are doing quite a bit of work purely on speculation, so even if some of the entries are really lame, be kind.

It is likely they are students or even young kids involved (alongside seasoned pros) so really attempt to keep this in mind and offer constructive criticism.

Summary

The major thing to realize in comparing having a contest like this versus hiring a traditional logo designer is that you are going to have to be much more involved in the process, which means a lot more of your time.

The advantage of paying the price of more involvement is that you’ll get a much wider variety of concepts and points of view on your ideas than any one designer could ever provide, at a much lower cost.

The ideal I guess would be to use a contest like this to create and build a relationship with someone that works in a way that you can rely on and use over and over. I’m not sure that this method of getting work done is efficient enough to be used consistently, but it is fun and I’m sure that the quality of the final design will be much better than if I had use a traditional service.

You can see my logo contest,which is still in process and I’d love to hear any thoughts that you’d like to share about the logos being presented (which one would you pick?) or the process in general.

- Jon Symons

7 Tips for Running a Logo Competition is a post from: Art of Money

I’m writing this post to outline my efforts to find and implement an ad serving solution for my blog network. First I’ll take a look at what an ad server is and when and why you and I might want or need to implement a centralized advertising management system.

Then I’ll try and match up the offerings with my needs by taking a look at some of the common ad server companies and their products.

Hopefully by the end I’ll have chosen a server to install for testing purposes and created a plan for testing and I’ll present the reasons for my choices.

What’s an Ad Server?

In my mind, an ad server is a way of managing the advertising on one or many websites.

2 Types of Ad Servers

1. Ad Serving Service

This is what Google’s AdSense is. A service that supplies ads (and advertisers) to your site. You drop in a piece of code, anywhere you want and AdSense provides an ad every time someone requests your page. Most people think of AdSense as a way to monetize a website, which it is, but it is really an ad server, with built in advertisers.

2. Ad Server Software

Imagine Google’s Adsense system without the advertisers in it. What you’d have left is the code which calls a centralized location everytime a page is loaded. The ad server knows what page is calling it, what size format the adspace is, where in the world the person viewing the page is and much more information that can be used to determine the best advertising to present to the visitor.

The other component of an adserver is the back end which allows you to create and manage advertising inventory. Every conceivable type of ads can be thrown into the mix: pay-per-click, cost-per-impression, localized ads, site targeted ads, private ads and of course your own ads to promote your own sites.

Is an Ad Server Right for You?

If the only form of advertising on your site is AdSense, then you don’t need an ad server. But as soon as your needs get even slightly more complex or your traffic increases past a few hundred visitors a day, you may see advantages to running some type of ad server.

Another great reason to have an ad server is to centralize the advertising across many sites. If you have 10 sites and you’d like to change from AdSense to YPN, you could do it without having to change anything on the 10 sites…you just drop in the YPN code and disable the AdSense campaign on the ad server.

Things you can do with an ad server:

• easily manage advertising on multiple sites from one place
• easily split test on colors or ad formats without having to modify the code on your site
• rotate CPM and CPC ads on the same site without modifying your site’s code
• sell your own private ads
• track your own private ads – impressions, clicks, split tests
• geo-target your ads
• time target your ads
• optimize profitability

Advanced ad servers can really ramp up web site profits as they employ algorithms that match the most profitable ads in your inventory with the specific set of variables being presented by each page request on your site (ad serving):

For example if a web site has 10 different advertisers that have paid for a big square ad, the ad server must decide which one to serve (or display). One advertiser may have only agreed to pay for ads from 9am – 5pm. If it is after 5pm, then the Ad Server must not serve that one. Another advertiser may only have paid to show one ad to each user per day. The ad server must therefore see if a user has seen that ad before, on that day and not serve it again if the user has seen it. Another advertiser may have agreed to a high price, but only if the person watching the page is in the United States. In that case, the Ad Server needs to check the IP address to determine if the user is in the US and then decide which is the highest paying ad for that user, in the US, at that time, given what that user has seen in the past.

My Ad Server Needs

As my network become bigger and larger the needs will become more complex. Currently, with 14 sites it is mostly about having the ability to centrally manage ad code and to be able to easily test on ad color.

One of the long term needs is to be able to offer ad buyers a diverse set of targeting options. With an network of city based blogs I can foresee larger advertisers wanting to upload different ads to target a national audience and other ads for a local readers. Ford Motors when they introduce a new line of car, and also promoting the local neighborhood car dealer. An ad server is necessary to provide this type of flexibility for private ad sales.

Ad Server Offerings

I identified 3 ad server companies to compare for this initial investigation.

1. AdSpeed

• Offers a free 10 day trial.
• Reasonable monthly fees starting @ $9.95 a month for 100,000 impressions, which makes it affordable to try out an adserver, even for a small site.
• combines two solutions, a web analytics and an ad serving platform, into one comprehensive solution. You will be able to see more details about your visitors than just impressions and clicks.

2. Zedo

• ZEDO supports surround sessions where users can see just one advertisers’ ad for a day.
• ZEDO also offers state of the art opt-in targeting that increases the value of your inventory
• Don’t have an mention of pricing on their website – a bad move in my mind…their service looks interesting but with so many other options, I’m always skeptical when someone won’t tell me their prices up front.

3. OpenAds

• Open source software – free, but of course you need to install and maintain it yourself.
• Support for AdSense
• Section Targeting -Display advertising on specific pages of your site.
• Geo Targeting – Viewers from a certain country, region, or city.
• Time targeting – Only display ads at certain times of day, or days of week
• User agent targeting – Just show advertising to viewers with a certain browser or computer operating system
• Referral targeting – Advertise to viewers who have just come from a search engine, or from another site
• IP address targeting – Just show an ad to your computer or your office to see what it looks like on your site
• Frequency capping – Only show ads to a viewer a certain number of times per day or per session

Summary

This is just a preliminary exploration of the rather large topic of ad servers. The 3 presented represent only a small slice of the ad server universe. Primarily, these ones were picked based on simplicity and clarity of their presentation; some of the solutions were costing what would amount to a significant percentage of advertising revenue, so these were dropped straight away.

From this list I am drawn to Open Ads, but I’ve been around software development enough to know the hidden costs of using free software – they do have a forum setup with people who are willing to help out and even people for hire…a good sign. I will investigate further and may run a trial of all three services to get a sense of what they are all like.

It’s a steep learning curve, but for any kind of serious online endeavor an ad server is essential as it accomplishes two major tasks: centralized advertising management and maximization of advertising revenue.

If your business is advertising based you may want to look into this type of set up.

If you know about ad servers, please leave a comment regarding what I should look for and any other servers which may match my needs.

- Jon Symons
Ad Server Surfer

The Fascinating World of Ad Servers is a post from: Art of Money

1. Take the Business Out of Business Plan

In most people’s mind “business plan” has a serious connotation, but really creating one is no different than any other planning activity; think of it like planning a drive across the country.

Just like a long journey, you need to figure out what going to happen, where it’s going to happen and how much it’s going to cost.

Then ask yourself the same type of questions that you would for planning a long trip:

There really isn’t any difference between planning a trip and planning a business. One seems a lot more scary and complicated but that’s likely due to inexperience and fear around losing money more than anything else.

2. Take a Moment to Dream

Recently I took a business planning seminar and I surprised at one of the exercises that the facilitator did with the group.

At first I thought I had accidentally stumbled into a new-age workshop, but it turned out to be excellent.

Before we began any business planning, we were told to close our eyes, relax and imagine ourselves 3 years in the future. To run through an entire typical day, from the time we first woke up in the morning, to going to work (presumably in our own business) and to make note of some key elements:

1. how where you dressed? In a suit, or jeans and sneakers? This would help you determine the type of business that you were creating.
2. did you work at home or in an external office?
3. did you work at all? Maybe you have sold your business and retired in 3 years?
4. what activities did you perform?
5. what kind of house and lifestyle did you have? This would indicate the earnings you would need from your business.

I felt that this was an excellent exercise as it demonstrated that the purpose of any business is to work for you. To provide you with a lifestyle that you enjoy. Without this in mind from the very beginning it is easy to get lost in the business; and if this happens then you’ll be the slave of the business and not the master.

3. Take Baby Steps

There really isn’t any reason not to do a business plan, but it is easy to make the planning process so big that it gets in the way of the actual business. But business planning is not the “all or nothing” activity that it is made out to be:

Good reasons to do a business plan

• uncover potential problems with your concept while before you are committed to it
• the writing process forces you to evaluate, focus and refine your ideas

Good reasons not to write a business plan

• in the current environment, speed to market can be the difference between riches and bankruptcy
• can be costly to hire experts to create it, then you are forced to raise more money or spend important startup funds on the plan
• you can get caught in analysis paralysis. Business plans don’t create companies or bring revenue

When I posed this question to an experienced business person who had been involved in many startups and his answer was one that I really liked. The approach was one that I was familiar with, since when I worked as a systems analyst we used the same approach in software development.

The Iterative Method

Create the very minimal plan (or prototype in the case of software) then implement it in a limited manner. Assess what you have done so far. Then re-plan and repeat the cycle.

The solution is not to see the question as of whether to write a business plan as an either/or question. It is a cyclical activity:

1. make a small plan, just the basics
2. implement your plan in a limited way
3. assess the results
4. revise, recreate, or modify your plan
5. implement again

Keep repeating the process to grow the business. By comparing the results of each round of implementation you gather crucial information about what is working and what isn’t; this information is then fed into the next round of planning.

A Quick Recap

1. Business planning doesn’t have to be overly serious. It may have to be done professionally, if you are showing to your ever serious banker, but get started with a lighter approach and then refine as need be

2. Dream about what you want the business and your life to look like a few years into the future. This will help you make a business plan that integrated with your life plan, so you don’t end up as a slave to the business.

3. Plan in baby steps. Face it there is only so much you can actually know when starting a business, so start small. Try some stuff or launch a prototype and then assess your results, re-plan and go forward from there.

If you follow these 3 easy steps you’ll find it simple to move past most business planning hurdles.

3 Effortless Tips to Kickstart Business Planning is a post from: Art of Money