There are plenty of ways to make money online. In fact, a lot of people are doing it already. But online marketing is not a walk in the park career. There are many things that an online marketer or business owner has to take into account and master to maximize profits. You can always use services such as Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website, but that’s not where the story ends. You’ll also have to watch your analytics data to see how others are interacting with your website, and how you can get more out of your traffic.

Web Analytics is one of the most underrated aspects of making money online. Without it, you are essentially operating blind, and that is not the way to run a business. Before throwing money at your problems with your online business, you want to make sure you have all the data you need to figure out ways to improve your business’ online performance. That is precisely the reason the below 4 analytics books are must read:

Web Analytics 2.0: one of the most exciting web analytics books in years. It shows you how to conduct advanced analysis on the data you get from your analytics software. Best of all, it teaches you how to develop actionable strategy from that data.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is being used by many bloggers and website owners these days. Even some of larger organizations rely on Google analytics to optimize their online campaigns. This book covers everything you need to know to get started with Google Analytics. (more…)

The art and science of landing page optimization is not something that you can master in a day or a year. No matter how optimized your landing pages are for conversion, there are plenty of ways to test things out and improve on your existing results. Whether it’s offering multiple choices on a landing page, optimizing your font, or adding conversion friendly images to your landing pages, you almost never run out of ways to optimize your landing page and improve your conversions.

One of the most popular ways to improve conversion rate on landing pages and web pages in general is by targeting your traffic based on the place from which they come to your website. Let’s say someone is searching for something on Google and just happens to land on one of your blog posts. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reach out to them, give them an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, or share something exclusively with them?

There are obviously more ways to use this tactic to increase conversions. Many top affiliate marketers have struck deals with their affiliate programs to display a logo or brand on the top of the merchant’s landing page when people click on their landing pages. These marketers have spent time building a brand, and they want their visitors to go about completing landing page forms with more peace of mind. Implementation could always be an issue, but if you have a decent coder, it’s pretty easy to get it done with server-side scripting.

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You may have heard about Google cracking down on advertisers who are not using their “real” URLs in their display URL. A few years ago, Google was a bit lenient when it came to dealing with people who were using redirects or other addresses in their display URL section. But that would open Google to a lot of liabilities, which is why Google is tightening the rules and adding new guidelines for advertisers.

When it comes to choosing a URL for your business or landing page, you want to make sure it’s something that is brandable, catchy, and short (with emphasis on short). A domain name that is too long and contains too many words is just tough to remember and hard to push through Google Adwords and other advertising websites. I have found that many marketers just get too greedy when it comes to choosing their domain name. They not only go for longer URLs (with keywords), they don’t even register their own domain. Running a business using blogspot is not too ideal these days.

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If you thought Google was getting annoying with all its new policies, you are going to have to brace yourself for even more guidelines from Google. Google is trying awfully heart to cover itself against liabilities and protect consumers in the process. Whether that has helped small businesses that make money off of Google is another story. While I am not a big fan of a lot of policies that Google has adopted in the past, I actually agree with the latest move by Google to address issues caused by hosted domains (e.g. those on blogspot or Wordpress). There are plenty of people who are spamming on Google by using free hosting services or hosted portals such as Wordpress. The new URL policy addresses that.

Here is what Google is asking its advertisers to do: display the full URL of your website if you are on a domain that hosts multiple websites. Here are a few nuggets from the announcement:

all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations….

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

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As someone who has worked in the advertising space in the past, I can tell you that a lot of people are hurting by all the changes that Google has made to its Adwords program. We are not talking about the major changes. Everybody knows that your ad ranking depends on your CPC and your quality score. We also know that there are plenty of things that Google doesn’t tell you when it adjusts your quality score or slaps your campaigns altogether. But most often, people are blaming Google or keyword tools for things they are responsible for.

A lot of people believe Google Adwords is some magic service that will help drive traffic to your website and convert them at the same time. So they don’t pay enough attention to how they are putting their feet forward with their landing page. Getting slapped by Google can be an eye opener for a lot of folks. I have seen so many companies that have poor quality flash landing pages up and hope for some miracle. Some companies don’t even have a product yet, but they don’t even use their landing page to collect names or give people a way to find out more about their future products.

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Website such as Twitter and Facebook have caught fire in the past few years. I still remember when I joined Twitter only 2 years ago. In those days, a lot of top marketers were talking about how Twitter was a fad and was not going to go anywhere. Some even called the idea stupid and pointless. I was somewhat in the middle at that point. We were not realizing too much value from Twitter in those days, but at the same time, the community’s growth was giving us hope that at some point we may be able to monetize our efforts.

These days, there are no more doubts that social media is here to stay. Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter doesn’t really matter in the end. But the channel is going to be there for anyone who is brave enough to take a chance and invest in it. Keeping up with the social media may be more daunting that traditional media, but that’s a huge leveler, especially for small businesses. 2010 is going to be the year that social media networks finally start monetizing their work, and that could lead to more sophisticated advertising platforms and more solid communities. (more…)

Recently, I had a chance to write a piece on our sister website about Sponsored Tweets and how twitters are paid to post sponsored messages to their Twitter accounts. Twitter is one of the fastest growing communities on the Internet, but the community is firmly against spammers and those who are there to only market and provide little value. Sponsored Tweets is not about spamming. If you are an advertiser interested in this service, you can think of the whole deal is a sponsorship opportunity. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could sponsor some of the top tweeters around?

The service is still in early stages, but it certainly opens up another door for advertisers to reach out to those engaged on social networking websites such as Twitter. You can define how much you want to pay for your sponsored tweets, define the minimum number of followers you are looking for your partners to have. You can even filter out spammers who follow a lot of people without getting followed in return. (more…)

There are a lot of marketers out there who prefer cutting corner and taking short-cuts to achieve their business goals. You may be a gifted marketer and manage to make a decent living online without getting down to the nitty gritty with your online marketing campaigns. But if you are working for a large corporation or are accountable for someone else’s results, you are going to have to deal with the issue of landing page optimization sooner rather than later.

Businesses are not in it to make $10 profit per transaction when they can make $20 profit doing that. So landing page optimization will have to be at the top of your agenda if you want to keep your CPA manageable and keep growing business for your employer or clients. By improving your conversion rates, you can not only lower your costs but increase your profits as well. So it’s a double whammy.

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Believe it or not, there are still people out there who make a living out of Adsense and Adsense alone. It’s true that the market has become more competitive and the game has become more difficult to master, but as long as you approach the process methodically, there is no reason you can’t make a living from Adsense with your portals. Before you do anything, you are going to need the right keyword tools to get you started. We are not talking about free tools here but rather tools that let you dig deep and find the keywords that help you drive more traffic to your website for cheap.

If you are looking for keyword tools that will help you take your Adsense game to the next level, here are 5 keyword tools you should try:

Keyword Spy: the best keyword research tool around for affiliate marketers and Adsense professionals. It has something for everyone. It’s not cheap by any means, but whether you are an affiliate, a PPC professional, or an Adsense expert, this tool comes in handy.

Keyword Country: another kill tool for niche marketers. Lets you analyze your niche, competition, and keywords more effectively. It’s used by both Adwords and Adsense experts. Great way to put the right foot forward in a new niche.

SpyFu: the best tool to get some spying done on your competitors and find new good keywords to target. Comes with a set of tools that enable you to find out more about what other people are doing.  (more…)

Online advertising is one of the best ways to drive traffic to any business and generate more leads. But there is a science to it all. It’s true that mastering Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing services gives you a leg up over your competitors. There are a lot of online marketers that focus on learning all these nifty advertising tricks on search engines, but it always pays to go beyond that and learn the science behind advertising. If you are an online marketer hoping to learn new tricks and take your business to the next level, here are 5 killer advertising books you should read:

Creative Advertising: one of the best advertising books I have ever read. The book won’t make you creative but it shows you how the creative minds work. If you do have an open mind, this book can be a game changer for you.

The Online Marketing Inside Out: you learn how to use your web site to generate income. It shows you the ins and outs of what it takes to take your online business to the next level by marketing your website properly.

Search Engine Advertising: addresses many areas that you need to master to grow your business online. Covers search engine advertising, your ad copy, and every other aspect of your online advertising campaigns. (more…)