Top 12 ‘Make Money Online’ Sites According to Google

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While doing some of my market research for the $100 a day blogging project, I compiled the following list of sites that deal with the topic of making money online by taking my targeted phrases and tossing them into Google and then sifting through the results.

I weeded out the spam and the sites that were not really on topic (for example there were lots of sites that were resources for offline businesses wanting to go online, which I removed, as opposed to information about starting or developing a web-based business, which I included.) I also removed sites that sucked :) of which there was a surprising number, considering that I only looked at the top 10 results for each of these coveted keyword phrases.

In most cases I used the site’s (or the page’s) title tag as the anchor text. This way you can see if they are actually targeting the phrase that they rank for.

Phrase: information products

Searches per day: 12

Phrase: Internet business

Searches per day: 952

Phrase: make money online

Searches per day: 1511

Phrase: making money online

Searches per day: 298

Phrase: ways to make money online

Searches per day: 223

Phrase: Internet marketing

Searches per day: 2931

Other Notables

Summary & Omissions

I’ve never spent this much time scouring the Google SERPs on a single topic before and I have to say that the results returned were much lower quality than I would have predicted (I can only guess what the Yahoo and MSN results would have looked like, but I assume worse.)

Either the phrases that I’ve searched on are somehow ambiguous to Google or there really aren’t many high quality resources for these terms.

I suspect there are a lot of other blogs and sites providing valuable information (without just pushing frantically on their own agenda.) If you know of any please leave a link in the comments, as I was really hoping to compile a relatively thorough list of sites with solid “make money online” and “online business” information.

Another part of the cause of the poor results is that a lot of people who do put out good information (Rich Schefren comes to mind, but there is also John Reese, Jay Abraham and others) brand their own names rather than targeting a keyword.

The other angle on this market that doesn’t show up in the list but is a part of the puzzle are the various high profile online business products: StomperNet, Click Flipping, Day Job Killer come to mind but there are many others, which try and target the same audience with a pay for info model.


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Posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 5:23 am In entrepreneurs, info products, internet business, market research |

11 Responses to “Top 12 ‘Make Money Online’ Sites According to Google”

  1. By Links - 16/05/07 « Krugergold Finance, May 16th, 2007 at 8:13 am

    [...] 16th, 2007 Webjunk , House Prices , Opportunity , Passive Income , Money , Entrepreneurship Gaming Google For Results(artofmoney) I’ve never spent this much time scouring the Google SERPs on a single topic before and I have to [...]

  2. By Rich Minx, May 16th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    Which keywords are you aiming to appear highest under, Jon? I guess “money blog” would suit me but so far I rank number #1 for “Rich Minx” (despite all the competition).

  3. By Jon, May 16th, 2007 at 11:24 am

    Congrats on the high rankings…time to start your SEO blog!
    I haven’t made my a decision about which keyword to make my final target. It will likely be one of the ones in this post, but I am still researching the products and services that I want to promote. Once I have them nailed down, then I’ll figure out which high level keyword phrase is the best match.
    When I started my research I felt very bold to even consider a phrase like “make money online” but (look out!!!) I’m getting bolder…thinking about “make money” and even, god forbid, “money” (I have a personal finance blog that I could migrate quite a bit of content from.)
    As it gets broader it becomes a bigger project, but they all support each other, so for example if someone can rank for “make money online” and “make money on ebay” and “make money at home” they will probably own “make money” by default.

  4. By Maki, May 16th, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    Jon,

    Do you mean to say that only monetized sites are trustworthy sources of ‘make money online’ information?

    Because thats what I’m getting from your comment on my blog … :)

  5. By Jon, May 16th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    Hi Maki, it was just a joke. I really like your site…how have you resisted trying to make money from it? (I’m hoping it’s because you’re already wealthy enough :) )

  6. By Maki, May 16th, 2007 at 5:39 pm

    Jon,

    Monetization for Dosh Dosh is really not a priority at all because I do have a bunch of other money-makers online. :)

    In any case, I am actually in the midst of a very slow and gradual monetization process.

    If you’re interested, you can click through on my name to see my post for that ^-^

  7. By Andy Beard, May 17th, 2007 at 9:12 am

    One big point, the people making massive money online don’t need Google search traffic for their primary money sites.

    They just turn the traffic tap on with their JV partners with email marketing, and some I am sure have 100K+ affiliates (I know 2 years ago IMC had 70k)

    I know Mike Filsaime for instance doesn’t even rank first for his own name, but I can bet he is making more money than 99% of internet marketers.

    His 1st listing is 4th, and I have one at 7th without even really trying.

    On my blog I actually worry about keyword research less than on my niche sites, and mainly go for subjects that are topical.

    Who knows, one of these days I will write some fresh content specific to creating a niche site.

  8. By Tyler, May 17th, 2007 at 10:56 am

    Good point Andy.
    But ranking high in the search engines wouldn’t hurt them either…would it?

  9. By Jon, May 17th, 2007 at 11:00 am

    Ya Andy, I purposely haven’t touched on the “list building” gang. Different model entirely, but I agree, it can be very lucrative. Requires a certain personality that I know I don’t have. Some of the things that guys like Mike Filsaime and his like will push out onto their lists make me cringe; I could never do it, but yes they make serious money.

  10. By Andy Beard, May 17th, 2007 at 10:57 pm

    I think long term it doesn’t make much difference to them. At the end of the day in most cases it is one of their affiliates who ranks higher than them, and if that is the situation they still make money.

    Sure it wouldn’t hurt, but many marketers like their affiliates making money, even to the extent of using noindex on their sales pages so they don’t rank at all, though this is partially because they are also heavily using a/b testing.

    There are benefits in having happy affiliates.

  11. By supermom_in_ny, September 26th, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    Thanks for the link love. I’m supermom_in_ny creator of the Squidoo lens Make Money Online on Squidoo. I’m actually an avid blogger, owner of 15 blogs, 7 Squidoo lenses ….and mommy to 7 kids and 9 pets. They keep me very busy. Ya think?

    I read about your $100.00 a day project. Very interesting. Although I’m listed on Google’s first page for the keywords:
    getting out of debt blog
    make money online
    hits4pay
    blockbuster customer serivce nightmares
    bank bonus
    and countless others…

    I still don’t earn what you earn monthly from Google Adsense. That shows it’s all about the high paying keywords.

    Great blog and thanks again!

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