There comes a time when every webmaster has to think about expanding their reach. When I first started out I ran a few videogame related websites. Down the road as I became involved with other things I ended up having opportunities to expand to other markets. There are some webmasters who prefer to focus in one one niche and just build build build. I’ve had some experience doing this back when I had just one site, but, as my interest grew I found it very hard to keep the one site focused while also trying to branch out. Eventually the site was becoming cluttered due to unrelated sections that I added. The only reason I did this was because I wanted to save some time by not having to set up a new site. I quickly found out that I had lost my niche traffic and had replaced it with untargetted traffic.

My advice to anyone considering expanding into new areas of interest is to carefully plan your “new construction”. First of all, if you can, it’s really smart to expand into markets that are related or similar to what you already have going. Why is this? Well, think about it. If you have a videogame website, for example, expanding into a movie review site would be a positive step because chances are that most of your videogame site visitors will also be interested in movies. You can use your videogame site as a launch pad to help get your new movies site off the ground. What if you go from videogames to a home and garden site? Sure there is a market for home and garden sites, BUT, you’ll have to start from scratch. Chances are MOST of the people on your videogame site are not going to care about home and garden things. Launching a home and garden site after your movie review site picks up could be a much better alternative. Everybody likes movies. You’ll be targeting your home and garden site to a much better audience that way.

I’ve sold a few scripts in the past and I have to say I’m starting to wonder if script sales are even worth it. I guess it all comes down to how good your initial public release is, but, your release almost always depends directly on how good of a testing team you have, how much time you put into testing, and how well coded the script is. Personally I’ve made good money with scripts, but, I have also lost a lot of sleep with scripts.

The other issue that is often brought up during script related conversations is encryption. Is it good, bad, or what? Well it has pros and cons like anything else. The pros are that your script will be protected from pirates and you can set up tamper proof licensing. The cons are that you will likely sell less scripts, and most encryption technology requires additional extensions to be installed on your server such as IonCube or Zend.

I’ve been using PayPal for years. I like the convenience that if offers, but, lately I’ve been starting to wonder if the trade-off is worth it. For example, by using PayPal you will automatically lose a small % of each transaction you receive to fees. When you receive a transaction for a few thousand dollars the fee can start to add up. As far as I’m concerned, PayPal is NOT a good option for receiving payment for services. I would much rather wait for a check in the mail than lose even a small percentage. You have to figure it takes a few days for the PayPal money to be deposited in your bank account anyway, so why not just wait for a check to begin with?

It’s funny because it’s really easy to lose track of just how much money you lose in fees because after all, who cares about a dollar or so in fees? Well if you have a few hundred transactions that take a dollar or so then that’s a few hundred dollars that you missed out on.

I received this an email from Yahoo a few hours ago announcing a new “quality” based pricing that they will be introducing as of today. Here’s how quality pricing works according to the email:

“Quality-based pricing will give us the ability to price traffic commensurate with the value that advertisers receive from each traffic source. We recognize that this approach may have an impact on how you operate your business, and as a valued Yahoo! publisher we wanted to let you know about this new feature, as you may notice fluctuations in your Yahoo! Publisher Network earnings.”

I am already not a fan of this. I’ve been on both sides of marketing for a long time now and from my experience it has always been the advertisers responsibility to spend their advertising dollars wisely. With this new system Yahoo will basically be guaranteeing advertisers their money’s worth while publishers are tossed around in the wind. I could have a highly professional site that I put a lot of time and money into and be using Yahoo instead of direct advertising. Well, even if my site is totally legit and NOT MFA (or in this case MFY), if the advertiser doesn’t convert on their choice of advertising keywords that put their ad on my site in the first place then they will get their money back and I will be left with nothing. Yahoo sees this differently, however:

Are you making good money with your websites? If not then you will definitely want to check out my latest project I’ve launched. I recently started an all new (and feature loaded) marketing forum devoted to helping new internet marketers get their new websites off the ground in every way that counts. The website is located over at  www.OnlineMarketingKnowledge.com and we are currently holding a launch contest for an impressive $10,000 in prize values. Be sure to check it out and join in on the discussion!

Another big draw and one of our main focuses with this new forum is to offer people personal assistance in their marketing endeavurs. We are currently running several 45 day courses tought personally by people who have been highly successful in the industry. Our first class started just a few days ago and already we are getting positive some great positive feedback.

Aside from classes, the rest of the forum is open to the public. We are aiming to turn this site into a knowledgebase of webmaster success tips and assistance. The community is growing quickly and so is the excitement. If you are new to internet marketing or if you aren’t making as much money as you would like, this site is for you!

As the popular saying goes.. “Webmasters don’t click ads”. I’ve been finding this more and more true lately as I’ve been branching out into several other types of websites. The funny thing is that I’ve been running webmaster sites for the past few years but my sites that get the most clicks are my videogame, entertainment, celebrity, and general related sites. I think this is either because webmasters are used to seeing ads, or they just don’t care about ads. I know that I hardly ever click on ads and I bet it’s safe to say that other webmasters don’t either.

So how do you monetize a webmaster related site? Well, you could always charge for memberships, but, I don’t recommend that. There are enough free sites out there that you have to compete with to begin with. Charging won’t make growing your userbase any easier. One way is CPA and CPM ads. Sure webmasters don’t click ads, but, they have to hear about their tech and web related products somehow.

What kinds of ads and services interest webmasters? Personally I’ve had a lot of success with programs such as Text Link Ads and Google Adsense Referrals. Some other really good affiliate programs are Azoogle and Click Bank.

I use a lot of different commercial scripts and will most likely end up using even more in the coming years. Part of staying ahead of the competition means using better scripts than them. If that means hiring a coder to design custom code for you then that’s fine. If it means you buy a script such as vBulletin, InvisionProBoard, etc, that also works. The one thing that always gets me though is when people are so adamant about displaying the script author copyright information on the bottom of their site.

First of all, people will still know what your site is running even if you remove the copyright. Even if they don’t know right away all they have to do is go to any webmaster forum and ask “What is this site running?” and they will have their answer. There are a few cases when copyright removal works out, but, that’s only when 90% or more of the look of the script is changed. If you are going to just buy a script and use the template that comes with it then why bother paying an additional fee to remove the copyright?

I’ve been using Text Link Ads for several months now. I’ve added it to many of my sites and the results have been worth every second it took to install. That’s right. If you haven’t used Text Link Ads before then you are in for a treat. The installation process is very simple per site. The money you will earn is even better. Now granted that you will need to have some good PR before you will make any money, but, even so that should just be more motivation for you to build your backlinks and SEO your site.

Maybe if I put it a different way you will pay more attention. I made several hundred dollars my very first day on Text Link Ads. I had several high PR sites and people had been telling me for the longest time to sign up for TLA. Well I finally did and I haven’t looked back since. I am a firm believer in TLA now from both sides, as a link buyer and as a link seller.

If you have been a webmaster or web admin for a while now, you most likely have had your ups and downs. One question to ask yourself if you find yourself tearing out your hair with one of your sites is are you just a dedicated admin or a desperate one? If you push and push and push but don’t get anything back, it’s hard to remain dedicated very long without becoming desperate. I believe a good way to put this is “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”.

Think about it. If you have one site that you want to see take off, and you put all your time and effort into that site but with no results, are you really making the best use of your time? If you spent less time on your sites that don’t produce at the moment, and more time on continued development and maintenance of the sites that are working for you, you will have a much better shot at achieving success.

Who would have thought it was possible to have big plans for a day and wake up and end up doing everything BUT what you had planned to do? Well that happened to me today. I was planing to work on several sites all day long and instead I woke up to a computer that pretty much decided to take the day off. To make a long story short, my computer is now twice as fast as it was this morning and I have a bunch of spare parts lieing around now.

It’s funny because I don’t usually upgrade my PC very often but I try to keep things fresh every two years. Well ironically, it’s been around two years since my last major overhaul and as everything turned out today I ended up replacing 95% of the hardware in my computer. The case is the same and the DVD-R drive is the same, but, that’s about it.