But online publishing isn’t like print publishing. If someone reads the New York Times, they’re not going to read the Washington Post as well. If someone reads a blog on your topic written by someone else, there’s a good chance they’ll still read your blog.

Even though you want to produce the best content you can — and content that’s better that anyone else’s — you should still be thinking of other people writing about the same topic as potential partners, rather than competitors.

These are people who can give you links, traffic, advertising and joint venture opportunities.

One way to make the most of those potential partners is to interview them for your website.

If you write a blog about photography, for example, and you know that someone else is running a site about Nikon cameras, drop them an email and ask if they’d like to appear on your blog. You’d send them a list of questions by email, they’d send you the answers and you’d edit them and put them up.

You get an original piece of content and your new friend gets a link and an appearance on your site.

And of course, when he tells his readers all about the interview, you’ll get a link back.

Google has announced on its AdSense blog that it’s now possible place ads between posts on Blogger. In the past, if you wanted to use Blogger’s automated AdSense system, you could only put your units at the top, bottom or side of the page.

Now you can put them between posts too.

But that doesn’t mean you should.

In general, each post should be on a separate page. That’s the best way to make sure that your ads are targeted. It also means you get more opportunities to show ads and you can even market each page separately if you want.

The only place then that you would be putting ads between posts is on a home page.

That can be a very effective strategy, especially if the home page consists only of teasers that lead to the rest of the post. Users are used to clicking links to read more on pages like these. In fact, they’ll be actively searching for the link that lets them do it.

If they see a link at the end of a post that appears to be taking them to a place where they can learn more, there’s a good chance they’ll click it. And you’ll earn more.

But like I said, it isn’t certain. Depending on the post and the subject of your site, you might be better off with one of Chitika’s eMiniMalls in those spots — or keeping your ads on the side of the page.

There are lots of AdSense strategies that sound good in theory. Many of them are good in practice too. But you can’t know for sure until you’ve tested it and seen the figures yourself.

The ads they serve are based on a combination of the site’s content, its sales record and the purchasing record of the user.

Or to put it more accurately, they’re based on the products the user has bought in the past, on the products the site’s users have bought… and just a very little on what the site’s about.

That’s the first important difference between Omakase and other contextualized ad systems: publishers are going to be serving different ads to different people. The publishers won’t be able to see all the ads they’re offering and it will be very difficult to try to bring up ads for expensive products or for popular items.

Omakase is apparently Japanese for something like “I’ll leave it to you,” and when it comes to the choice of ads you pretty much have to leave it to Amazon.

There’s another important difference between Omakase and other contextualized ad systems.

You don’t get paid per click. You don’t get paid per impression. You only get paid per sale.

So you could send a user to Amazon, he could surf around, see a different product, come back later to buy it… and you wouldn’t get a penny.

Sound familiar?

If you’re a member of any affiliate program – and you should be – it should be familiar. Omakase isn’t really a contextualized ad program like AdSense or YPN. It’s more like a kind of smart affiliate program. (Although with commissions ranging from 4 to 8.5 percent, it’s one with pretty low fees.)

Does that mean you should give it a try?

Not necessarily. If you’re already serving Amazon products to your users, then Omakase might help you increase your sales. The fact that the ads are going to be based on a lot more than what you think your users will be interested in could help you to increase your figures.

I don’t think that Omakase is going to worry Google. In fact, they let you use both. But as a source of supplementary income, it could certainly have its uses.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those me-too sites. I’m all in favor of competition and sometimes a me-too site can offer features that improve on the original. They might make less money than the original but even if they only make a fraction of the first site’s income, that can often be enough for the copycat site’s owner.

But when you come up with a brand new idea, you can really clean up.

As you might already know by the buzz here at Revenews, I’ve just launched a new site: www.500words.com. The idea is very simple. I’ve put 500 words on a page and publishers can sponsor a link from that word to their site. The links stay up for two years, give traffic and provide a novel approach for visitors and sponsors. For a slightly larger fee, publishers can also add their own keywords.

Within three days, 300 of the original words had been sold. I’ve also been inundated with requests for the script I used to create the site and will be launching the sale of this product shortly.

My point here is not self-promotion. It’s also not to debate the value of a site created by my software. That has already been done here, here and here.

The fact that people are interested and bought it is really the point. I happen to think it is a great idea.

Others think it is stupid and worthless.

Well, wake up folks. People buy stupid, worthless stuff every day. How many have supersized their french fries needlessly? (Even against doctor’s orders…) How many have spent hundreds on exercise equipment that ends up serving as a clothes rack? How many have bought stacks of video games at $50 each, playing them for a week and then letting them stack up to the ceiling? The point is that the free market is a huge place and there is room for all kinds of creativity. People are free to spend their cash on whatever they want. And if the market speaks, we had better listen. We are not the gatekeepers of other people’s money. We are the marketers. We are the innovators.

What I really want to point out is that there are great ideas lurking around every corner. I didn’t sell those words because they were particularly valuable. I sold them because the site had created a buzz – and that’s what happens when you create a new idea online.

The Web is a very gossipy world. Whenever something new and exciting happens, word gets around very, very fast. Links are posted, emails exchanged and people start asking each other if they’ve seen your site. In no time at all, you’ve got more traffic than you could have possibly imagined. That viral marketing is the real power of the Internet.

Coming up with innovative ideas isn’t that hard. The idea for 500words.com was inspired by derivatives of MillionDollarHomepage.com. I saw what I liked about those sites, recognized where they were weak and came up with a whole new idea. I produced something new.

As you’re surfing the Web, ask yourself what new ideas you can come up with. Make it exciting and innovative, and you’ll generate a ton of interest.

You can never have too much.

That’s why I also use affiliate networks.

I use them to promote my own products. And I use them to take commissions when I promote other people’s products.

If you’re not using affiliate networks, then you’re missing out on a very valuable way of monetizing your website.

There is one important rule that you have to keep in mind when you get involved in affiliate work though, and it’s particularly important for AdSense publishers.

You have to believe in the product.

This is important whenever you’re recommending a sale, but when you’re telling your regular users to go out and buy something, it’s vital. Your users come back to your site because they trust you. If they buy a bad product because you recommended it, you’ll lose that trust, and with it will go your sales, your traffic and your AdSense revenues.

The flipside of that though is that because people trust you, they’re more likely to buy a product you recommend.

If you write a blog about photography and in one post you recommend an ebook that teaches people to take better digital images, you can expect many of your users to take your advice. A recommendation is always a lot more powerful when it comes from someone the user knows and reads regularly.

Of course, if someone clicks on an affiliate link, they’re not clicking an ad, so here’s the trick…

You market the page with the affiliate link separately.

Sounds simple, right? And yet so many people forget to do it. They put an affiliate link on their site and pitch it to their regular traffic. But when you’ve got something new on your site, new people are going to want to know about it.

Instead of building the usual long sales letter, you could bring new users to an article on your site that includes both the affiliate link and AdSense ads. Only a small fraction of those people will buy the product but many of those who don’t will use the ads to click away.

You’ll have a chance to find more traffic and two ways of making money from the same page. Perfect!

That’s a great case study for anyone wondering where to put their ads on their blog. They’re beautifully optimized and they’re already bringing in money.

Now, my mom has never been much of a tech-head. She’s only now thinking of buying a laptop. But what’s impressed me is how fast she got up and earning with a blog.

I think that sometimes those of us who have been building sites and uploading content for years forget how frightening dealing with servers and finding domains can be for newbies.

Blogging is the ultimate solution. You can have your own blog in minutes and plugging in the ads is an absolute breeze. Heck, Blogger practically throw the ads at you.

The only possible concern with blogs is how you can get the maximum income from them. Once you’ve got the ads blended and positioned, all that’s left to do is play with is content. You’ve really got two choices here. You can either keep writing about the things that interest you and hope that those topics are interesting enough to interest lots of other people. Or you can focus your writing on products to bring up targeted ads with expensive keywords.

I think that the best strategy is to do both at the same time.

The reason that people read blogs is that they feel they have a relationship with the person behind the page. They like them. They trust them. And they’re interested in what they have to say. Create a blog that’s focused solely on bringing up high-earning ads, and you’ll get those ads. But you won’t have anyone to click on them.

Create a blog that interests you – and others – and use it to mention topics that are going to bring up good ads and you’ll get the best of both worlds. Again, my mom’s blog is a great example of this. When she writes about her travels, she creates some great stories that are really fun to read. But she also might mention the equipment she uses when she’s hiking down a mountain or skiing down a slope. That provides good information for her readers and good ads that pay for her blog.

Know which products you can work into your blog?

No, not starting…

Stopping.

I have the same feeling whenever I write one of my books. I’m always wondering if I haven’t forgotten something or whether I could give another example or if I could express what I want to say a little more clearly. Long after I’ve finished writing, I’ll be tweaking and editing and adding and who knows what else until I finally decide it’s time to put it out there.

But with a book, once the work is done, it’s done… until the next edition.

With AdSense, the work is never done.

I think I’ve got my sites pretty well optimized. It took me a long time and a lot of work to get there but they’re now bringing in a pretty impressive CTR and a good income.

And yet, I still want to play with them. I just can’t help but wonder if a little tweak here or a change there would nudge up my CTR an extra half a percentage point and give me a nice little bonus.

Whenever the urge gets too strong, I’ve really got two choices.

I can either sit on my hands until the urge passes so that I don’t mess up a good thing.

Or I can try out my ideas somewhere they won’t do my income any harm if they don’t work. I use a small site for that but you could also use a single web page, provided you used Channels to keep track of the income that page usually brings in and follow the difference.

Not all of the experiments you run are going to work, but I have to say, there’s only one thing that beats coming up with an idea, implementing it and seeing it push up your income.

And that’s having a site that’s so well optimized it can’t produce any more income whatever you do. T

he only thing better than having one of those, is knowing it.

Anyone think they’ve got one?

That’s pretty obvious, right? The more Web pages you have, the more opportunity you’ll have to show ads — and the more clicks you’ll get.

And yet a lot of AdSense sites on the Web are fairly small, just a few pages with ads on each.

If you’ve created a site to sell a product or discuss a topic that you find interesting, that’s understandable. Your site’s the thing and the ads are just a way to help pay for it. But for those sorts of sites, a magazine could be an excellent solution.

So, for example, if you had a website about mortgages to promote your lending business, you might only need half a dozen pages to describe each of your services. But you could also add a magazine that was filled with articles about interest rates or how to choose the right type of mortgage or buying a home or whatever you wanted. You could write those articles yourself, hire writers to do it for you or invite Realtors or other people in related businesses to submit pieces and receive some free publicity in return.

You’d benefit by offering your users more content. And of course, you’d make money by having more places to put your ads.

One option that might have made it easier for people to create their own magazines is the iJoomla Magazine component. If you used Joomla (the old Mambo program) to build your website, then you might be familiar with it already.

I have to admit, I haven’t used it. But I have heard that since it came out a couple of months ago, it’s been flying off the shelves. It’s supposed to make creating the layout for a magazine an absolute breeze. All you have to do then is slip in the content. If you can lay your hands on enough of that, you should have a bumper site ready to roll in minutes. It sounds like it could be a good solution for people with small sites who want more pages to place their ads on.

But like I said, I haven’t tried it so if any of you have, let’s hear the results!

The target of my case study?

My mother.

Now lest you think I am going to pick on my mom, just hang tight
as I am actually very proud of her!

My mom is a world traveler. She is one of those people who has a
wall map with pins stuck in it all over the place.

And she doesn’t just do the touristy stuff. Nope, not my mom.

My mother likes to ride camels in the desert and camp at the base
of Mt. Everest. She just got back from a week or so in Sri Lanka
and has many stories to tell.

Anyhow, I have been encouraging my mother to start blogging her
adventurous exploits around the globe. Not only do I believe that
people would be interested in what she has to say, but she also
has an opportunity to monetize her site with AdSense.

Ready to see her site? Here it is…

Travels with Sheila

Pretty cool, huh?

So let’s take a look at the steps needed to create this site.

1) Register a domain name. We did this at www.domainanything.com for $8.00

2) Select a web host. Since this is my mother we are talking about, I am happy
to host her site. However, usually you will get FREE hosting wherever you
registered your domain name.

3) Create your site design. We hired a designer to come up with her design.
You can find talented designers at any of these sites: