AdMoolah News and Views

I originally posted my AdSense Revenue Sharing List back in February. Since then I have added at least a few more sites to the list every month. It has now grown to 50 sites. As usual, if you know of other, feel free to email me at tlainevool [at] admoolah.com

I recently bought and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and I am very glad I did.

I’m not usually one to go out and buy e-books, but I had been reading Aaron’s blog for quite some time and found that he always has good sensible advice. The book is very similar. It isn’t full of hype and get rich quick schemes, and there are no affiliate links in the book. What it does have is solid information for the full length of its 256 pages. I came up with a lot of ideas while I was reading it and had to keep a notebook on hand so I could scribble down notes as I went.

The book covers a variety of topics that web publishers need to know: writing for search engines, link building, pay-per-click, overviews of the major search engines and more. Each topic has the in-depth coverage it deserves. The content is very current and covers the latest on every SEO technique.

The one small problem I did find with the book is that it did not always flow smoothly. Since the book is an ongoing work in progress (and you get free lifetime updates when you buy the book) it has become a little disjointed in places. It wasn’t disruptive enough to make understanding the book difficult, it just seemed a little clunky at times.

Overall, the book is great, and I highly recommend you buy it now so you can start increasing your traffic right away.

When you decide to create a new website what is the first question you ask yourself? Is it: How am I going to make money from this site? If it is, you may be asking the wrong question.

In a recent TechCrunch article, Venture Capitalist Paul Graham said:

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don’t do that, it won’t matter how clever your business model is.

Of course you have to have a business model eventually. But experience so far suggests that figuring out how to make money from something popular is a lot easier than making something popular.

Many people in the web publishing industry do this the opposite way. The webmaster forums are full of people asking What niche should create a site in? or What are the highest paying keywords? The question they should be asking is: What website should I build that people would want to visit?. The time to figure out how to monetize a site is after the visitors are there. This is one thing that makes AdSense so great. You can put it on a site, not worry about it, and it will generate money. Once you have more traffic you can start experimenting with different affiliate programs, or finding advertisers directly. AdSense is a good default business model until you can figure out the real business model.

Seth Godin has a recent blog entry about people who started doing something out of interest, and ended up being very successful and making a lot of money. The people who started Apple, Yahoo, Digg, and BoingBoing didn’t have a large paycheck in mid when they started up.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that pioneers are almost never in it for the money. The smart ones figure out how to take a remarkable innovation and turn it into a living (or a bigger than big payout) but not the other way around.

So the first question you should ask yourself when creating a new website should be What do people want in a website?