There are easy ways of bringing traffic to your website, and there are hard ways. Most people focus on the hard ways. They spend hours playing around with their keywords and their Search Engine Optimization. They spend vast sums on AdWords and other forms of advertising. And they send out email after email in an attempt to swap links and create exchanges. That's fair enough. It's all part of the job of being an online... Continue Reading

Google's referral programs have never impressed me very much. Although the commissions are now fair, they started out very low. But even at the new(ish) rates, few sites are going to benefit from them. They're only good for publishers who aim their content at other publishers. That's always been the problem with Google's referrals: there were too few products aimed at too few topics. But Google has been working on a whole new referral system... Continue Reading

It's one of the biggest challenges of building a profitable online publishing business. It's also one of the most important. Generating traffic. There's no easy way to do it. Yes, you have to have good content. Without that, you're never going to get the sort of traffic that arrives naturally, comes back and gives you referrals. But even good content isn't enough. It doesn't matter how good your content is if no one knows you... Continue Reading

I've been pretty lukewarm about Google's referral products. They've been pushing them pretty hard but I haven't been impressed. I'm not convinced that the Google Pack contains anything worth writing home about. I don't care enough about Mozilla to recommend that everyone downloads Firefox. And the commissions that Google is offering for its downloads just aren't big enough to take up real estate on my Web pages. I'd rather put together a joint venture with... Continue Reading

I love the way Google works. The company has created a fantastic system for turning space on Web pages into fat checks. Even though it's got a bunch of competitors all with their own methods of delivering contextualized ads, Google is still top of the pile. But not everything Google does is as big a success as AdSense. Its referral programs, for example, never brought me a great deal of revenue. I haven't heard of... Continue Reading

I am extremely impressed with the folks at TextPayMe.com. Not only is their "send funds by cell phone" service ultra-cool, but they have made good on their free Xbox 360 offer in record time! Continue Reading

Yesterday I wrote about TextPayMe and their free service that allows you to send and receive funds from any cellphone. It's like PayPal, only more 21st century. I also mentioned that they have a cool referral program. Simply get 36 other people to sign up with their service and they will give you a FREE XBox 306. The people who sign up get paid $5 just for signing up as well. This morning I received... Continue Reading