That was good news for Google. The company had created a cash register that enabled it to accept money from companies that wanted to approach the millions of users it was picking up each day.
But the good news for everyone else was that Google also handed out cash registers free of charge to any Web publisher who wanted one.
The invention of AdWords, the system that Google uses to sell advertising space, might have made a deafening KaChing sound. But through AdSense (the publishing side of AdWords) that ring has been echoing around the Web ever since (Figure 1.2).
It’s a system that’s open to anyone with a web site. Sign up at www.google.com/adsense and you’ll be given a few lines of code that you can place on your Web pages. That code will automatically serve up ads from Google’s inventory, and those ads will be based on the content of your web site.
It’s an incredible thing.
You get relevant, unobtrusive ads, and you are paid every time one of your users clicks one.
It has to be the easiest KaChing in the history of commerce.
Sure, there are strategies you can use to maximize your earnings. When I first started using AdSense back in 2004, I made $40 a month. That’s not KaChing. That’s ker-splat.
But once I’d optimized my ads, blended them into my sites, and tested a bunch of different strategies, my AdSense income skyrocketed. Today, I regularly receive monthly checks from Google for more than $15,000.
Now that’s KaChing!
What’s important here, though, isn’t just the amounts. It’s the simplicity.
Web site templates, content management systems, and blogging platforms have opened up Internet publishing to anyone who knows how to turn on a computer and operate a keyboard. With Google AdSense, we now have a way of turning those sites into money that’s just as simple.
We have the store, and we have the cash register.
In fact, we now have lots of cash registers. We have different types of cash registers on our sites, and we can put them in different places. Google’s AdSense system is primarily a cost-per-click (CPC) program. As a publisher, you are paid every time someone clicks on an ad. But you can also use other services to be paid on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis: When someone buys, you earn a commission. You can also earn on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis: You receive a small amount of money for every thousand times your Web page is loaded and the ad shown, regardless of what the people who see it do.
And that’s just advertising. As you’ll see throughout this book, there are now plenty of other ways of generating a KaChing from a successful web site, including information products, coaching, and membership sites.
This is the New Web Order. It’s a place that’s open to anyone who wants to join. The pioneering days are over. The strategies, methods, and approaches have all been tested, proven, and simplified. The tools are available, they’re free, and they’re waiting for anyone who’s willing to pick them up, use them, and learn how they work.
Perhaps the best way to think of Web publishing today is to compare it to photography. Anyone can take a simple picture. A basic digital camera costs next to nothing and will let you shoot pictures of your family, your cat, and the sunset at the beach. When you take good pictures, you’ll get a little thrill of satisfaction that will encourage you to take more. It won’t be long before you’re thinking of upgrading and buying a fancy camera that will let you play with exposure and focusing and do all of the other things that fancy cameras do.
That will encourage you to learn about photography, and the more you learn and the more you shoot, the better you’ll get. You might never be commissioned to shoot the cover of Vanity Fair, but as long as you enjoy what you’re doing, your skills will improve to a level that allows you to perhaps sell the odd photo on eBay or iStockphoto, or hire yourself out for weddings and events.
On the Internet, anyone can get started with a simple web site or blog. You can plug in AdSense or one of the other Internet cash registers that are now easily available. You can begin making money—and you can continue making even more money as you grow and learn.
It’s not a process that takes place overnight. In fact, the learning process never ends. But the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll hear that first KaChing.
To get started though, you’ll need a topic. Just as store owners have to know what kind of products they want to sell, so publishers have to know what kind of content they want to offer.
It’s a vital question, and it’s something I discuss in Chapter 2.
2
Your Uniqueness Equals Cash
We’ve seen that the Internet has democratized opportunities in two ways. The low cost and ease of building a web site now means that anyone can own online real estate. You don’t need to know anything about the Internet to put up a blog or create a site. You can buy them almost ready-made, off the shelf. What flat-pack design has done for amateur furniture makers, templates, content management systems, and blogging software have done for web sites.
And you don’t have to waste brain cells trying to think up ways to monetize your site, either. With Google handing out cash registers, there’s always one very simple way of making money from your users. Once you are used to that method, it’s just a short step to all of the other strategies discussed in this book.
There is another way that the Web has opened up to everyone, though, and it’s no less important.
It’s made us all into experts.
Or
