I hope Jerry Alonzy does not take this post personally but after reading about this retired Boeing engineer in a recent USA Today article I thought I’d point something out.

Both of his websites, smpstech.com & Natural Handyman.com are ugly! And when I say ugly, I mean 1995 ugly.

That’s not stopping Jerry Alonzy from making $120,000 a year from the ads he places on his sites.

So what’s the trick? How is Jerry making this much money?

Screw Usability, it worked for myspace.

Just browse his sites and see how his ads are placed. Check out the use of the “navigation” bar which is really Google ads. Notice the placement of the 2 block ads running down the left site of the page.

I’ve seen this approach work with quite a few friends who earn all their income from adsense.

Just make sure your content is unique and make sure your ads are placed in the most common clicked areas on a website and you can make money with adsense.

Side note: It’s nice to see another friend mentioned in a major publication. Jennifer Slegg (JenSense) was cited in this article.

Greg has launched a private initiative supporting quality blogs who have altruistically turned off their “No Follow” tags.

Help Greg and company build an updated Do Follow OPML listing of worthy bloggers who continually contribute to the Internet by writing fresh original content. Those who use their blogs as a vehicle for selling text link ads or MFRB’s need not apply.

Part 2 of Avinash Kaushik presentation which he goes over several lessons he has learned over the years doing Analytics.

His first rule is the 10/90 Rule. If you had $100 to spend on a web analytics implementation, you should spend $10 on the cost of “analytics tool & professional services” and spend $90 on the required investment in “intelligent resources/analysts”.

Installing analytics reporting and reviewing those reports is not the same as analysis. You got to analyze and interpret the data. Take advantage of multivariate tools.

Analytics Evangelist for Google and Blogger of Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik makes a solid point for people who are new to web analytics. Do not focus on Averages.

I’ve been watching these newly released videos by Google Conversion University

GCU is part of the Google Analytics program:

“Learn about marketing and content optimization and read web analytics tips from industry experts at Conversion University, the Google Analytics companion site.”

These videos are part of a test pilot training program by Google. Introduction by Brett Crosby. Run Time: 22:37

Once upon a time you could make a lot of money being an affiliate marketer or using Adsense by dynamically creating keyword rich topic targeted content pages. There is one tool I know of that allows you to create 1,000’s of unique pages based upon a topical list of keywords.

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What should a webmaster do when he finds that their content has been duplicated and posted on another site?

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I quickly screen captured this funny KillerApp Google advertisement shown on my blog. (more…)

Recently I’ve been reading about the highly successful 1999 launch of Half.com. Half.com is a website which sells books, movies, music and video games. Out of all the companies I could be reading about, why am I focusing on Half.com?

Going back to the heights of the dotcom boom when billions of advertising dollars were thrown down the drain, Half.com took a completely different approach. It was an approach so novel and it worked so well that they ended up being purchased from Ebay for nearly $300 million dollars six months following the launch of the business. (more…)

When they say: “You will never find anyone better than me!”
I tend to respond with, “Give me ten minutes and I will show you at least a dozen people whose work is much better than yours. The only reason we are talking now is because their work is so good, they are not for hire.” (more…)