Even if your business only requires a computer and an internet connection, you’ll need to know how to get the ball rolling and start generating income.

Here are five tips on where to start making money, plus a word of warning from someone who has experienced the battle of starting a business with an empty wallet. The best place to start is everyone’s least favorite, but ultimately the most effective opportunity:

1. Freelance job boards

Any Google search related to “starting a business” or “freelancing” and “financing” will turn up a plethora of freelance job boards.

Get started signing up for them, and be sure you complete your profile on each one.

Before you start building profiles, you should have a few things ready to go:

-Your business name and online/offline contact information
-A brief description of your business and the services offered
-Either a portfolio or a convincingly-worded description of your skills acquired elsewhere

You should know exactly what you’re offering and be able to convey it concisely. There are plenty of transferable skills learned through school, hobbies, and work that can be applied to satisfying a client’s needs – you just need to make them aware that you’re competent, regardless of whether or not you have a portfolio.

Apply everywhere, and apply for gigs or projects where you can be even remotely helpful.

Until you have a job, this is your job. Be religious about looking for updated project listings and following up on bids you’ve placed.

Remember: pricing doesn’t matter as much as the ability to say you have a client. Don’t lose that chance by getting hung up on the idea that your time is “worth” a certain amount of money.

So, know what you need, and aim for that, only go for more if your pricing can remain competitive.

Odd jobs/ Part time work

Sounds counter-intuitive, right? You’re trying to start your own business, not work for someone else.

But how badly do you want money? How badly does your business need financing?

If money isn’t coming to you easily, you scrape it together.

Look at it this way: if you were told you had six months to live and needed $10,000 for a life-saving operation, what jobs would you take and how many hours would you dedicate to getting that money?

That same urgency can be applied to your business, if you take your goals seriously.

$7 an hour is more than the zero you’re making sitting at home, reading business blogs. Get out and do something, then roll that tiny paycheck into ads, or buying leads, or creating your product.

Spend carefully, take on bit projects or odd jobs, save your change and have a clearly defined goal so that when you’ve done enough, you know it.

Family and Friends

For some businesspeople, this is the first line of defense, but I only recommend asking people you know for money as a next-to-last resort.

Put the time in elsewhere so that they can see your passion, dedication, and level of responsibility.

Talk about your work with your family and friends, share more if they seem interested. In order for someone close to you to feel comfortable investing in you, they’ll need to have a clear understanding of what kind of business person you are.

If they can tell you’re willing to do whatever it takes to become a success, they’re far more likely to help out than if they think you’re a financial gamble.

Creative Networking

I got my break in the business by chatting about work at a Superbowl Party a few years ago. All it takes is one client, one chance, one paycheck to give you an opportunity to get your business underway.

Be knowledgable, be confident, and be curious about other peoples’ lives and work.

Get out into the world, both the real world and the virtual world, and experiment with talking to strangers. The more connections you make, the more likely you are that someone will either a.) want your services for their business or b.) have you in mind for a recommendation when a colleague needs the services you offer.

Know the difference between friendship and a business relationship, and work to cultivate both via social engagements, webinars, meetups, tweetups, and other local business networking events.

VC’s, banks, etc.

I don’t have a lot of experience with these yet, because I was able to grow my business organically via odd jobs and creative networking.

I have researched the options and learned that it’s important for anyone relying on a VC to do their research. Not all loans, and not all financial institutions are created equal.

Just like getting started on freelancer boards, you’ll need to know how to convey your skills and abilities confidently. If you have a portfolio, make sure the information is organized, thorough, and demonstrates your capacity as a businessperson.

Again, you’ll need a presentation of sorts available. It’s better to have some basic financial projections and a business plan on file at all times, whether they’re needed in early phases or not. It would be terrible to get a shot at a short-notice meeting and not have the required documents handy.

Get a clear understanding of what their investment means for you in the long term. If they own a portion of your business, or your profits, determine how long that ownership lasts and whether you’ll be able to work with that down the line.

Word of Warning: Have a Plan

Money may be tight for awhile even after your business finds clients. Have a plan in mind (or written down) for where that money will go once it comes in. You should know the answers to these questions:

-Which financial obligations are the top priorities for your business?
-What specifically does your company need in order to have opportunity for growth?
-What are the minimum and maximum amount of income you will dedicate toward growing your business? (Percentages are easier to guarantee than actual dollar amounts.)

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, so please add any other thoughts on how you can make money right away to the comments below.

If that’s not you, leave now, this article has nothing for you.

However, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty, by the end of this article you will learn exactly what it is that separates the successful from everyone else.

The First Thing Nearly Every Entrepreneur Does Wrong.

Before we start on doing things right, let’s first look at what nearly everyone in business does wrong. Focuses too much on Technology.

You see it all the time, “I need to get on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Blogging/etc”

They think the technology will be the cure to the problem, when really focusing too heavily on technology can cause more headaches than it’s worth.

Without fail, when nothing comes from simply being represented on the platform, they either:

1. Claim their customers aren’t there.
2. Seek refuge on another platform, only to find the same outcome.
3. Give up entirely and curse the technology as a whole.

Here’s the thing about technology…

It’s just a device to communicate a message.

Blaming Facebook for failing to generate leads is like blaming a piece of paper for failing to make more sales.

I can almost guarantee you that at some point in history, there was someone who said “We need to make this telephone thing work for our business.” which of course is silly when you think about it. The telephone is only a device, and has very little to do with the actual income generating part of your business.

In short, technology is the least important aspect of your money making efforts. It’s important, just not as important as most people make it out to be.

The Second Thing Nearly Every Entrepreneur Does Wrong.

Next, nearly every entrepreneur thinks if they just have stellar marketing, they’ll sell a ton more product, and everything will be right in the world.

Don’t make this mistake.

Marketing by itself doesn’t make you money.

I recently had a guest post for chrisbrogan.com go viral netting 38k visitors in the first 2 days of being live, and eventually it got picked up by Google, and still, despite excellent marketing and exposure for myself and my business, it did not make me a single cent.

Now, it is true that a killer marketing campaign can lead to a ton of sales of a shitty product.

But the big money that’s made on the front end is usually lost on product returns, customer service issues, and in some cases, law suits.

In short, if you’re marketing a bad product and you make a ton of money, at some point karma’s going to come around and bite you in the ass.

The Most Important Thing Very Few Entrepreneurs Actually Get Right.

The most important thing that very few entrepreneurs actually get right is the product itself.

Sure, you put a product out, but how good is it really?

How above and beyond does it go?

It’s not about whether or not you’re able to set your personal best either,it’s about whether or not you’re delivering something that is of massive value to the market place.

Think about the iPhone for a second. Whether or not you’re a user is irrelevant, because when the iPhone came out, it was undeniably one of the coolest, and most useful devices on the market.

It allowed you to watch full length movies, surf the internet, listen to music, search for directions and more.

“Marketing” for the iPhone didn’t really have to do much beyond just show you what it did.

Really, that’s what makes a superior product. If you can simply put it in front of a person and they get excited about everything it does, that’s when you know you’ve created a superior product.

What separates the truly great from everyone else is that they’re putting the time in to understand their customers wants and needs, then delivering a product that far exceeds their expectations.

This is why Facebook killed Myspace, Twitter killed FriendFeed, and why Youtube still remains the Number 1 video sharing platform online in spite of countless imitators.

Want to make more money GUARANTEED?

Spend every hour of every day learning exactly what it is that keeps your customers up at night. Explore every aspect of their problem and understand it so intimately that it becomes a part of you.

You need to understand their fears, their frustrations, and their limitations, then deliver something that exceeds anything they ever thought possible.

When you want to create a superior product, spend your time listening. Not just to what’s being said on the surface, but read between the lines as well.

You also need to know what specific outcome customers will achieve by using your product, and how it can improve their life.

Only then can you truly understand how to create something that will be almost magical to the customer. Only then will they not be able to live without you. Only then will you make more money guaranteed.

If you sell your services at a single set price, get prepared, because your business is about to level up.

It’s no secret the most successful companies give a variety of options to appeal to a broad spectrum of customer’s financial situations.

But what you may not realize is those price points are planned to subconsciously direct people to spend a set amount, whether they realize it or not.

At a spa, there’s a wide range of services between the 15 minute facial or the all day relaxation package.

You’re not just stuck with the option of lawn seats or VIP passes at a concert.

And many consultants, don’t just limit their services to the one hour phone call, or the $30,000 full-service training package.

Multiple price points with benefits and add-ons at each tier gives your client more options, and if you’re strategic about your price points, you can very easily guess what the majority of people are going to go for.

Secret #1: Use Tiered Pricing to Play Ego against Logic.

Imagine for a moment you are considering buying SEO software.

You plan to blog regularly. Perhaps every day, at the very least a few times per week, and this software promises to boost your blog’s visibility by evaluating your articles for keywords, and give suggestions to improve your Google ranking.

You know you will use it at least a few times per week, and are estimating you’ll spend between $35 and $45 for it.

A click later, you see that the pricing options are:

Which do you choose?

If you said “professional,” well done. You did exactly what they wanted you to do.

Now despite the landing page design being very pointed in where you should click, you would have likely came to the same decision (the design just got you there sooner)

Why?

Their multi-tiered pricing creates a war in your brain between your primal instinct and your logical response to options.

The logical response says, “I’m one person… I clearly won’t need 300 evaluations a month. That’s far too much.”

But the primal instinct says, “I need more than the bare minimum to survive. I’m going to grow. I’ll need more next week. I need to stockpile, to prepare, ‘just enough’ won’t be enough.”

So why does simply offering more options create this response?

Because with a single price point a purchase decision can be either accepted or dismissed with a simple“yes” or “no.”

But when you bookend the choices, suddenly your customer is involved, however briefly, in imagining different scenarios for each level of ownership.

They start thinking, “What if the cheapest option isn’t enough?” They start seeing themselves as being unprepared because they bought the lowest-priced item.

Others are more optimistic.

They envision themselves achieving more and therefore justify paying more. They see themselves becoming more successful because they haven’t limited themselves to “just enough,” have room to move and grow.

Either way, the purchase has drama and more emotional investment when there are a limited set of options.

You can create these same subconscious, survival-based thought patterns in your clients by switching your pricing from a single option to offering different levels of pricing for your services.

Switching to a variety of options vs. a single price point is the first and most important step in guaranteeing more purchases.

Secret #2: Give A Lot More for Slightly More Money.

To the majority of people, the two central options will be where their attention focuses immediately.

For these groups, the highest and lowest prices are briefly considered and immediately dismissed as being “too much” and “not enough,” which means the battle is in choosing between the the lower-middle and the higher-middle pricing options.

These folks spend the most amount of time on their purchase.

They take the time to time debate the pros and cons of spending the extra few dollars per month, or per level, so set pricing to make it simple for them.

Do so by offering a value multiple times higher than in the lower-priced option, without changing the price by the same ratio.

Back to our SEO example, by purchasing the Professional package for $47 per month, a customer will receive four times as many evaluations as they would for the next option down, the Publisher.

But the Professional price is not the Publisher price, quadrupled.

Instead, it’s not even doubled. It’s an affordable step up with an immense added benefit.

Make it painfully, starkly clear that the higher-midrange price is where the really good deal is found.

Logic will win out in nearly all cases, as clients justify to themselves the great bargain they just got by buying from you.

Secret #3: There’s always someone who only buys the best.

We all know someone who enjoys spending money.

It’s more than a necessity, it’s a symbol of their self-esteem. When it comes down to it, money equals status and self importance, and that matters a great deal to a large percentage of business people.

You may never know it, but even Joe Handyman in the flannel shirt is saving his dollars for the creme de la creme of cars, tools, and blueprints.

Some folks who are pennypinchers at home will indulge on their business, because their work is their passion, and that is how they justify high-cost items.

Your highest price point should be something that seems indulgent.

The folks who want the best, who gauge value based on cost, won’t take you seriously if  “just anyone” could afford it.

They are out there, and some have already passed you by.

It’s all about the implications made by their purchase, and because they feel that more money means better quality, and they want only the best.

In your pricing structure, include a best-of-the-best, enterprise-level price point and you will convey the sense that you and your services are more than worth their time.

On the flip side, you want your lowest price to be reasonable, profitable for your company and helpful to your clients, but ultimately not a huge gamble on their part.

Thrifty clients want to feel that if their investment is a total waste of money, they haven’t lost too much. They want to get just enough because they plan to be frugal with their usage and get every bit of functionality or information from you or your product that they can.

Bonus Secret: It’s not that difficult.

Offering your services on a tiered price structure isn’t as difficult as you think.

Consider what it would take for you to go above and beyond all expectations, I mean everything you do and roll that up into one bundle to create your highest price point. Remember: it should offset a considerable amount from your next highest price point.

From there, take out the additional services that go above and beyond, leaving a really good option. This will be your third highest pricepoint, and likely what the majority of your business will be.

Then for the last two subtract services until you are left with just the very basic service at the bottom.

For Example: Let’s say you design websites, your structure could look something like:

(From MenswithPens.ca)

WordPress website including optional integrated blog
Custom-designed business logo
Customized social media section in sidebar
Attention-grabbing opt-in/sign-up section on website
Custom-designed Twitter page to impress followers
Custom-designed Facebook page that fans will love
Custom-designed newsletter design to stay in touch with readers
5 pages of copywriting for your website pages (Home, About and three pages of your choice)
25-page ebook: Full design AND content custom-written based on your outline and notes
Members-only site-matching forum. Great for courses and community building!
Professional site-matching business card design
Retail Rate	$4,999	$6,799	$12,999

Of course, there is no “Copper” package, but it’s easy to see how a simple wordpress setup could be the bottom tier option in this scenario.

A final word of caution: when factoring in the different values per cost, do not make the disparities so clear that one group or another feels taken advantage of. Your product or your service must be justifiably worth the cost, at any level.

Your turn…

How can you use a tiered price structure in your own business? What services do you offer right now that you might be undercharging for?

If you research multiples on auction platforms you will find an average of around 8-12 times monthly net multiples. On a site that makes $5,000 per month that is $40,000 to $60,000 at the close of sale.

While this this may be a respectable sum, you might be sitting there thinking about all the hard work you’ve put into your site and you deserve a better return on the sweat equity you have invested.

That is why you need to find a retail buyer not a wholesale buyer.

A retail buyer is an investor that is looking for better places to put their capital than earning low returns in the bank. They want assets that are relatively hands off and have good growth trends. You won’t find these retail buyers on many of the auction platforms because they want to deal with bigger sites with more established revenue streams (minimum 2 years) and pay a premium for them.

That is where a website broker comes in.

You may get $40,000 for your website from a wholesale buyer. Whereas with a retailer buyer you can fetch anywhere between 2-5 times yearly earnings, with the average around 2-3 times yearly net earnings.

Would you rather $40,000 or $180,000 for selling your website?

Website brokers introduce you to retail buyers.

What is a website broker?

Full disclosure here: I am a website broker, so I can answer these questions in full.

The primary function of a website broker is to help webmasters sell their web business.

Your site will get evaluated and then presented in a way to gain the highest possible price.

In that process there are a number of tasks performed to try and maximise price:

• Determine an appropriate valuation range
• Compile an information memorandum (sales memorandum)
• Market the website
• Present the website to potential buyers
• Draft and present offers
• Assist in negotiation on behalf of the seller
• Protect sellers’ confidentiality
• Look after paperwork
• Provide after-sales support.

How does it work?

The process is similar to that of a realtor (real estate agent). You approach a website broker looking to sell. You enter into a sales agreement with them. This is normally an exclusive agreement that is valid for 90 days. The broker will then prepare the information memorandum about the website to be used to show potential buyers. In this document is all the relevant information about the website, its financials, traffic stats and answers to general questions.

The broker will then go out and sell your website to potential buyers. Screen them with their screening process and present you the best offers.

The buyer will normally sign a letter of intent (LOI) and ask for  a set period for final due diligence. It is your choice as the buyer as to whether you allow this to be exclusive or not

They will make a formal offer after due diligence, you will either accept or decline that offer.

Then the transfer process happens. Money is normally transferred using an escrow service. That can either be the brokers trust account, a lawyers trust account or an escrow service. We prefer our own service or escrow.com. The site is then transferred to the new owner, the seller receives their funds and the buyer will take ownership of the website.

Why would you hire a website broker?

Brokers give you a wider reach of retail buyers and investors. Also they will usually have a unique marketing method of selling sites as well as processes and systems that support the sales process.

This includes marketing and contacts that the average Webmaster can’t access including their list of buyers, investors, entrepreneurs and subscriptions to business-classified sites.

An example of a recent site we sold. A general Webmaster blog on entrepreneurship and online business. The owner started the site back in 2005. It had over 3000 pages of content and was earning $69,000 per year in advertising revenue

He came to us wanting $80,000. We ended up selling it for $193,000.

What is the time frame?

Anywhere from two weeks to 6 months. Factors that influence timing of sales include getting access to the relevant website information from the seller, negotiation time and sellers getting finance available.

What do they cost?

A website broker will generally charge 10% of the gross sale price to sell your website.

Are fees charged up front?

They are 100% commission based.  They do not make any money until they sell your website so there is a low level of risk of listing your site with them.

What are the best sites for a website broker?

The best sites are established sites that are making solid monthly earnings. A good range is between $50,000 and $2,000,000 in value.

They also have the following characteristics:

• Established websites, not turnkey sites. 2 years plus income is a bonus, a community or strong presence in your particular niche is seen favourably.
• Sites with credible traffic in their market. Buyers prefer sites with multiple traffic streams.
• Premium money is paid for:

• With premium domains
• Have an existing active community
• Make recurring yearly income
• Have multiple income streams
• That are highly systemized
• Have strong earnings history

• What’s not good:

• Adult sites
• Pharmaceutical Sites
• Proxies, arcades, etc.

What if I can’t sell my website?

Normally they will ask for a 90-day agency period. Good brokers have a clearance rate of about 80%. Main reasons for a site not selling is generally price related and the seller wanting more money than the market will offer them.

The New Year is a fresh start.

The person you were last year no longer exists. All that matters is who you are on New Year’s Day and who you become by the end of the year.

January 1^st is a perfect time to make a personal change, but it’s also a perfect time for entrepreneurs to make big changes to their businesses.

The 12 resolutions below are for entrepreneurs hoping to help their business thrive in 2012.

#1 Resolve to Finish Every Project You Start

I’ve written previously about how most entrepreneurs have so many good ideas, that it can be difficult finish one project before starting the next one.

Don’t make that mistake this year. If you decide to develop a business, commit to seeing it through completely.

#2 Resolve to Start Charging Your True Worth

When trying to get your business on its feet, sometimes you have to charge less than your product or service is actually worth. It’s a good way to gain clientele and experience. But it’s not a good way to get rich.

Eventually, you’ve got to start charging clients for the actual value that you’re providing.

If you’ve been working for less than you’re worth, then 2012 is the year to make a change.

#3 Resolve to Keep a Clean Work Space

It’s hard to be productive in an environment that’s cluttered and disorganized.

Look around your work space right now. If it isn’t clean and controlled, then make a commitment now to maintain a focused work space for the next year.

#4 Resolve to Improve Work Systems

When Henry Ford implemented an assembly line in his factories in 1913, he completely revolutionized the automobile industry. By making the production system more efficient, The Ford Motor Company was able to produce more vehicles for less money – and profits went through the roof.

A business is only as efficient as the systems it employs.

Some systems are simple, like the way you organize your inbox. Others are very complex, like your step-by-step approach to completing a project over the course of a month.

We often create systems without much thought and then take them for granted once they’re established. As long as a system works, what’s the point in meddling?

But this is one thing where you really need to put in the extra time and make sure you’re doing things right. Take a step back and look critically at the systems you implement regularly with your business.

Systems are so important because their effect is cumulative. If you improve a system one time, that improvement continues to benefit you every time it’s implemented.

If you haven’t paid much attention to your systems lately, then make a point to focus on them in 2012.

#5 Resolve to Be Authentic

People are spending more time online than ever before. By now, they’re pretty adept at recognizing who’s being genuine and who isn’t.

2012 is a great year to tune out the voice in your head that tells you to pretend to be someone you’re not. Instead, communicate online with your authentic voice. People will take notice and respond.

#6 Resolve to Keep Track of Your Hours

How many hours are you putting into your business a week?

It’s not necessary to have a set schedule or to work eight hours every day. That’s part of the joy of being your own boss. But it is important to be aware of your work hours – and four hour days aren’t going to cut it (at least not at first).

When you begin to keep track of your hours, you start to understand where your time is going and how you could use it more effectively.

If you’re doing freelance work and you’re being paid by the project, this will also help you in pricing your services.

A Time Tracking Tool

There are many applications out there that help you keep track of how you’re spending your time on your computer.

Rescue Time is free software that automatically tracks which programs and websites you’re using throughout the day. Over the course of a few weeks, you begin to get a clear picture of how efficient your computer time is and how it compares to the work habits of others.

At the end of the month, take a look at the data. You may be surprised to realize how much of your time goes to work that doesn’t actually you earn you any income (like answering emails or being active on social media).

#7 Resolve to Redesign Your Website

Even if you’re website is up-to-date now, it won’t be in six months. The Internet keeps changing and the most successful online companies will continue to change with it.

Don’t risk becoming outdated. Make sure you update and improve your website at least once this year.

#8 Resolve to Eat Right and Exercise

Okay, okay – I know these are the two most cliché resolutions in the history of New Year’s. But they’re cliché for a reason.

Eating right and exercising are great resolutions for anyone who operates their own business. It will give you more energy and focus to make the most of your work day.

Of course, it will also make you healthier and it may even help you look better in the bathroom mirror.

#9 Resolve to Spend 20 Minutes Actively Learning Each Day

Solo entrepreneurs must be proficient in many different fields. In any given day, you may work as a designer, marketer, salesperson, and writer.

There’s not always time to master each of these skillsets. When you’re just starting out, sometimes all that matters is that the task is completed. Whether or not it’s completed perfectly is beside the point.

So entrepreneurs tend to become jacks of many trades, masters of none.

The good news is that means there’s a ton of room for improvement. And even if you’re getting by with your current ability-level, honing your skills will make for better and more efficient work.

That’s why it’s such a good idea to spend 20 minutes actively learning every day.

Ways to Learn

Podcasts

This is a great learning solution for the time-crunched entrepreneur. Maybe you’ve got a full-time job, run your business on the side, and you don’t have 20 minutes to spare.

Pop in a pair of headphones and start learning while involved in an activity that doesn’t require your full attention. Suddenly riding the bus, doing the dishes, and exercising are opportunities to become a smarter, better entrepreneur.

Video Tutorials

While audio is a great learning tool, actually seeing something is often the most effective way to understand it. There’s simply no substitute for watching a pro as they complete a task, talking you through every step of the way.

In the last few years, a huge number of quality video tutorials have been posted on YouTube. Simply search for a subject, press play, and start learning.

Video isn’t the best if you’re just looking for a few bits of essential info. You can’t skim a video like a written tutorial. But they’re an ideal method when you need to sit down and learn a process from front to back.

Books

Ink and paper may be old-fashioned, but a big “how-to” book is still one of the best learning resources available.

Even if all of the information within its pages is available online, that’s no replacement for having it right there in your hands. You won’t have to search the web for quality instruction and you can take it with you wherever you go.

A 500-page tome can set be pretty expensive, but the cost is small when you think of it as an investment in your business. Check out your local bookstore or Amazon to find a compendium on whatever subject you want to master.

Refresh, then Rest

If you really want to get the most out of your daily lesson, revisit it for a few minutes right before you go to sleep. If you read an informative article, skim through it again. If you learned a new technique in Photoshop, create something simple with it.

Not only will this reinforce what you learned the first time around, the new knowledge will sit at the fore front of your brain as you prepare for sleep.

Sleep is your brain’s opportunity to organize and store all of the knowledge it gains throughout the day. So you stand a better chance of actually remembering your daily lesson if you revisit it before you call it a day.

If you resolve to devote a little bit of time to learning every day for the next year, you’ll be see a huge improvement in the quality and quantity of your work by the end of the year.

#10 Resolve to Keep Your Resolutions

Every January, people across the world make resolutions to change the way they act.

Every February, many of those resolutions have been broken or forgotten.

It’s only over the course of the whole year that a change can have any real impact. But if you do stick to your resolutions, they will eventually become habits that will improve your life (and business) for years and years to come.

So, the most important resolution you can make is to really stick with whatever changes you decide to make this year.

What’s Your Resolution?

Let us know how you’re going to make 2012 the best year yet.

Warren Buffet isn’t a psychic, but he does have a knack for predicting the future.

His eye for savvy investments has earned him the nickname the “Oracle of Omaha” — along with a net worth of US$50 billion.

Buffett has never been shy about sharing his common-sense business strategies: he’s famous for writing shareholders once a year to explain his thinking. In the process, he’s left the world with a wealth of business knowledge.

Get inside the mind of a legendary investor with the lessons and quotes below.

Lesson #1: Choose a Good Path

Do What You’re Good At

“There’s a whole bunch of things I don’t know a thing about. I just stay away from those.”

We all have our talents. For his part, Buffett realized long ago that he was very good when it came to investment. Ever since then, he’s focused on that, staying within what he calls his “circle of competence.”

You should do the same. Identify your strengths and then stick to them.

Find and Follow Your Passion

“Do what you’re passionate about. If you do this, there will be few people competing or running faster than you.”

When you complete a task that you’re passionate about, you’ve got more energy than when you started.

Buffett doesn’t get tired of his job, because he actually enjoys what he’s doing. He has said, “I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year,” and that at Berkshire-Hathaway they enjoy, “the process far more than the proceeds.”

I know that you’ve heard it before, but there’s really no greater way to ensure the success of your business than by founding it on something that you are truly passionate about.

As Buffett said, “Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.”

Know When to Abandon Ship

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Every business will someday face adversity, just as every boat will eventually spring a leak. You should never let your business drown just because an unexpected problem arises.

But if your business isn’t getting any traction at all, maybe the underlying model is making everything more difficult than it has to be. Instead of expending all of your energy trying to keep a sinking ship afloat, seek out a better model. 

Lesson #2: Keep it Simple

Make things Easy on Yourself

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

People often make work more challenging than it needs to be. Have you ever spent hours and hours working on a project that you know you could have completed in thirty minutes?

Don’t languish with unproductive habits or inefficient systems. Find ways to work that makes your job easy.

Pick Low-Hanging Fruit

“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”

If there’s an apple within your grasp, you’re not going to reach for a ladder.

Buffet adopts a similar strategy while investing: he doesn’t make risky investments because he doesn’t have to. Good companies make him money, but great companies make him more of it.

Whether in investments or business, focus your effort on where you get the most bang for your buck. Pass on lofty challenges.

Simpler is Better

“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”

The day-traders who buy stock are making their job very difficult. They study pages of market analysis and work 40-hours-a-week just trading.

If you’re good with complicated data, you’ll make some short-term gains that way. But you could also take Buffett’s lead and tune that noise out.

Berkshire-Hathaway makes its stock purchases based on just one thing: the intrinsic value of the company. Buffett buys stock in companies that have good fundamentals and a track record of growth. Pretty straightforward.

People love to come. up with complex formulas, but most success in business is simple, common sense.

Two Simple Rules:

“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”

Lesson #3: Character is Good for Business

Don’t Swim Naked

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”

Before the global recession of 2008, financial institutions were making risky investments and pretending that they were safe. It worked for a while.

But the thing about the tide is that eventually it goes out. When that happens, the only thing that will matter is the true value of your investments.

Resist the urge to put up a faux-exterior. Conduct your business solid through and through, you’ll have nothing to worry about when the water gets shallow.

Look Out for the Customer

“Decide early in life to make your money by selling things that you really believe are good for the customers.”

Profit is a symptom.

It happens naturally whenever a company provides value to their customers.

The best way to make money is to offer a product or service that’s truly good for the people who use it. One way you’ll know you’re onto something is if you actually want to use it yourself.

Good People do Good Business

“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”

When Berkshire-Hathaway acquires a company, Buffett makes the deal in person and seals it with a handshake.

He likes to get to know a company’s management on a personal level because he’s only interested in buying businesses that are managed by good people. For Warren, personal integrity really matters.

He’s realized that being the good guy pays off. Taking shortcuts may pay off in the short term, but they always come back to haunt you eventually.

So act with good character and only associate with businesses that do the same.

Good Business is Contagious

“Hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

Don’t be intimidated to work with people who are smarter than you. On the contrary, surround yourself with the brightest and most productive people you can find.

Not only will they push your business to new heights, their good habits will spread to you. Few factors have a greater impact on our behavior than the behavior of our peers.

Lesson #4: Think Long-Term

Be Patient

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

We live in a world of instant-gratification.

But short-term thinking can only lead to short-term success. If you want the type of consistent growth that creates true wealth, you must recognize that real success takes time. No matter what you do today, you can’t build million dollar business before you go to sleep.

So don’t try to rush something that can’t be rushed. Instead commit yourself completely to the long-haul.

Look Ten Years Out

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

A stock’s holding period is the time between its purchase and sale.

When Berkshire-Hathaway makes a decision to buy stock in a company, they intend on owning it for the next ten years – and preferably even longer than that.

This long-term perspective gets them thinking about the factors that really matter, like the quality of the company’s business model and management.

Long-term thinking is more than just a good strategy for investors. Life is a long-term game, so start thinking about where you want your business to be in ten years.

Keep Your Reputation

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

A business’s assets will come and go, but a bad reputation is like a stain you can’t wash out.

All it takes to do permanent damage to your reputation is one slip-up. That’s a big problem, because people won’t work with a company that they don’t trust.

So don’t let yourself get sloppy. Cultivate an ethic of quality work.

Leave a Legacy

“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time.”

What’s the best part about building a successful business?

It isn’t the money and it isn’t the freedom. It’s the fact that you’ve provided a huge amount of value to a huge amount of people.

Starting a business is like planting a seed. With proper care, it will still be making the world a better place long after you leave.

Buffett’s legacy doesn’t stop with his businesses, either. Like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, he’s pledged to give half of his wealth to philanthropy.

Lesson #5: Develop a Mindset of Wealth

Plan for Success

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”

I’ve already written about how being totally confident can help you bend the universe.

Believing that you will succeed is the first step to making it happen.

Tune Out the Noise

“Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.”

The more successful you become, the more haters you’ll have. You don’t have any control over what other people say, but you can choose to ignore their negativity.

Know when to listen in and when to tune out.

If someone gives you constructive criticism, then you should do everything you can to learn from it. But when criticism is unfounded or fueled by jealousy, listening to it will only be a distraction.

Accept that You’re Not Perfect

“I’ve made lots of mistakes. I’m going to make more. It’s the name of the game. You don’t want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It’s too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.”

You’re only human. You’re going to make some big mistakes.

Even an investment genius like Warren Buffett doesn’t win them all. He has accepted that fact and he doesn’t beat himself up when things don’t turn out like he had hoped.

It’s exhausting to expect perfection from yourself. Be satisfied with your best effort.

Be Happy

“I am not inclined to make myself unhappy. I sort of accept things as they come.”

If every one of his businesses went bankrupt tomorrow, Buffett would still be smiling.

His happiness doesn’t come from seeing green arrows next to his investments. It springs from his unflappable optimism and buoyant spirit.

There’s no greater gift you can give yourself than personal happiness. But if you’re not happy now, no amount of money or success is going to change that.

Be thankful for what you have, live with passion and purpose, and accept things as they come. Happiness will follow.

Ad Injection

Ad Injection from reviewmylife makes managing your different ads even easier, as you can place them around your site, and within your content. You can use any type of ad that you want, including Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, ClickBank, TradeDoubler, etc. into the existing content of your WordPress posts and pages. You can control the number of adverts based on the post length, and it can restrict who sees adverts by post age, visitor referrer and IP address. Adverts can also be configured in the post (random, top, and bottom positions) or in any widget/sidebar area.

I personally found this this plugin to be incredibly useful as I was able to input ads where I had never had them before, and start to see an increase in my earnings. This plugin works especially well for me as I write very long posts, never under 1000 words, often exceding 2000, so it’s acceptable to include a small break, by using an advert. Ads are commonplace now, and so long as you don’t overdo it, no one is ever too offended by seeing them. You need to be careful that you don’t start to include too many ads because they will decrease the worth of each ad, and will actually result in lower earnings – it’s simply supply and demand. Experiment with your own website and you’ll soon come to a situation that maximises your ad earnings.

WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin

This is a premium WordPress shopping cart plugin, built by Tribulant that allows the WP blog admin to sell both digital and physical goods online plus any services the admin decides to offer. This if perfect for anyone who sells online teaching courses, hands on training, premium support, or any other non-product related sales that are service oriented. Using this premium wordPress plugin you can easily find ways to monetize your WP blog whether it’s through selling digital products like ebooks, online services, or any tangible goods.

You can set up your multiple products and categorize/organize them into multiple product categories. Add additional images to showcase your products so that users know what they are buying and add digital downloads to products if needed so that users can securely download paid files from your website.

With suppliers, shipping methods, payment gateways, product variations/custom fields, product inventory, affiliate products, discount coupons and many other amazing features, you can run a full featured online WordPress shop that suits your needs. The cost is just $54.99 for a single website licensee, but once you start to see a return, you’ll forget that you ever even spent that money.

Amazon Associate Filter

I don’t know about you, but I find the whole process of manually going in and creating custom HTML links for Amazon through the Associates Central, really laborious. That’s why I was so happy to find this plugin, which stops you from even having to login to your Amazon. You simply share a normal amazon like like you would any other link, and this plugin will pull your information and add it to the link when someone clicks on it. Now you don’t have to be bothered by spending ages putting together hundreds of links through Amazon, which will encourage you to link more often – I recently made 140 of the them hard way.

Another really good selling point is that people are always asking me follow up questions about products that I’ve written about, and I can’t include HTML code in the comments, so I’m losing commission when I help people out, by providing them with a specific link. Now, I don’t have to worry about this because not only is the plugin is doing all of the hard work for me, but it’s inserting links where I couldn’t have them before. 

WordPress-Amazon-Associate

You might be wondering why I’m suggesting another Amazon Associates plugin, when clearly there’s a plugin already out there that does the job just fine, and that’s true, to a certain extent. You see, this is more than just another Amazon plugin, because it does more than just provide you with links and commissions, it also comes with various advertising widgets, which help to improve sales. This plugin also fully supports amazon product localization to supported markets, such as Canada, Germany, France, Japan, United Kingdom (GB), and the Unites States.

The WordPress Amazon Associate plugin is designed to be your all inclusive source for enriching you website with Amazon Products and Widgets embedded with your unique Amazon Associate Tag. Widgets such as the carousel have been proven to provide better results and more commissions, as they’re more like adverts, than anything else. So long as you’re advertising the right products, to the right crowd, then there’s a good chance that your commissions are going to be much better than the space that would have been taken up by Google ads. It’s certainly worth trailing.

Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer

This plugin not only automatically changes any Amazon link on your site to use your affiliate ID, but it also changes the link to point to the user’s local Amazon store. This means that if your visitor is visiting from the UK they’ll get a link to Amazon.co.uk, and if they’re visiting from the US they’ll get a link to the same product on Amazon.com - All you have to do is provide all your affiliate IDs.

It doesn’t matter if the link is in your post, in your template or anywhere else on your page – it’ll be converted automatically. This can make a noticeable difference to your earnings, from a very small amount of effort. The last time I checked, 66% of my traffic came from America, and 10% came from the UK, so by simply installing this plugin, I can tap into the UK market and increase my earnings by approximately 15%. With the exception of checking that the plugin works after you make the odd update, you very much just install this plugin, and leave it to do its thing.

SEO Smart Links

If you’ve been following this site for a while, then it will be no secret to you that I love this plugin, as it’s easy to set up, and has numerous benefits. The idea is that you input different keywords, and you assign links to them, so that whenever these keywords pop up in your text, they automatically redirect to different content that you’ve preselected. Obviously, there are a great many uses for this when you’re trying to promote your own content, throughout your own website, as you can link to different articles, and keep your readers interested.

The beauty of this plugin is that you don’t have to just link within your website, you can link to anywhere on the internet, which can be used for affiliate marketing purposes, or even just to gain recognition from a source that you’re referring to. In my niche of photography, there’s a program called Animoto, which can be used to create video slideshows, and they have an affiliate program, which provides me with money, every time someone goes to their site, through my special link. This is nothing special or unique, as you’ll find that there are plenty of programs out there that offer a similar service, and I’m sure that you’ll have no problem finding someone in your niche too. All I have to do is to assign certain keywords, such as ‘animoto’ and ‘video slideshow’, and they will automatically send people to the website, using my custom link. Now I can start earning passive income, every time I write a certain keyword.

Cleeng Content Monetization

This is a very cool plugin, which allows you to sell articles, videos, images & downloads, whether it’s a single item, or a long time subscription, and anything in between. Cleeng (pronounced cleng) is designed in a similar way to cable TV, where you have to pay to see good content. You can limit access to certain parts of your website, which holds the information that someone is looking for, until they’ve paid for the access. It’s a really simple system, and the same used by large newspaper organisations, such as The New York Times, who insist on money to see the latest articles, and it seems to work for them. With Cleeng you can sell any individual piece of content directly from your own website.

It’s certainly a bold idea, but it seems to be working so far. This plugin could be considered a bit of a risk, depending on your niche, and how readily available the information is, but it’s been proven to work. The great thing about it is that you keep 80-90% of the money and there are no hidden costs; all payment fees, user support, software maintenance is taken care of. You just need to create the right content that sells.

In I975, he co-founded Microsoft – a computer software company that would eventually make Gates the world’s wealthiest man. He earned the money by masterfully guiding the world into the era of networked personal computers.

Today, Gates is no longer the world’s wealthiest, but he’s still worth a healthy US$ 59 billion.

He’s retired from his role as Microsoft’s CEO and instead devotes himself full-time to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Below, you’ll find 10 business lessons from the life of Bill Gates.

#1 Get Lucky

Gates is a very smart man, but he’s benefitted from more than his fair share of dumb luck.

In 1968, Gates was an eighth grader, attending a private middle school in Seattle called Lakeside. That year, the school invested $3,000 in a state-of-the-art computer.

13-year-old Bill joined computer club and was instantly hooked. He and a handful of other enthusiastic students racked up hours and hours on the machine, learning how to program through trial and error. It was the beginning of a journey that would propel Gates to astronomical success.

Here’s where the dumb luck comes in: in the 1960s, very few colleges had computer labs and a middle school with a computer was unheard of. The chances of a 13-year-old having access to a computer were pretty much one-in-a-million.

If Lakeside hadn’t purchased a computer, then young Bill might never have discovered his love for computer programming and he never would have started Microsoft.

#2 Make the Most of the Luck You’re Given

Bill may have been ridiculously lucky, but all the computer time in the world wouldn’t have meant anything if he hadn’t dedicated himself so fully to master it.

Ultimately, it was the thousands of hours of focused labor that made Gates into the type of computer genius who could start a successful software company.

We don’t always recognize it, but each of us is uniquely lucky. Whether through our natural talents, our circumstances, or our relationships with others, we’re all fortunate to have many paths to success in front of us.

Take in your luck for a moment – and then capitalize on it.

#3 Bite Off More than You Can Chew

Microsoft’s big break came from Bill Gates telling a fib.

eBooks are a really great way to make money and build a following. Not only can you sell them on your own website, but you can get other people to promote them by offering them a commission. Not only does this make both of you money, but it sends traffic to your website, helping to build a following. eBooks can be used to make yourself a lot of money, or as incentives for readers to join your mailing list. Whatever you do with them, it’s important to know how to write them.

Planning

I’ve always stressed planning when it comes to writing content online, and writing for a book that you wish to sell is no different, in fact it requires a lot more careful consideration – you can’t just get started and hope for the best. The first thing you’ll want to do is to come up with a title, and although this may sound obvious, it actually has a big effect of how you write your book. My latest eBook is called “Site Traffic Domination – How To Get 100,000 Visitors in Your First 3 Months”, but it was originally just going to be a case study of my website. Soon after starting, I found it hard to find a focus and direction, so I came up with a much clearer title.

Once you’ve settled on a title, it then becomes a lot simpler to come up with what you want to write about. For me, I didn’t want to go into more than about five different sections as it’s a good number to work within and I could cover everything in enough details through subheadings. The headings which I chose all had ‘Section’ written in front, followed by a number and then a title. The titles were clearly laid out in the table of contents and they were ‘How I Got My Start’, ‘Where My Traffic Comes From’, ‘Content’, ‘Promoting Your Content’ and ‘Making Money’, followed by a final ‘Summary’ section, but we’ll get to that.

I’ve studied my posts in the past to find out which were the most popular (something which I recommend you do), and I found that aside from the top lists, my post popular posts were the ones that would cover the basics and break them down into small and easy to manage sections. Because I structured the eBook the way I have, it’s clearly a lot easier for people to understand and to track their progress. With all my heading laid out, I knew what I want to include under those headings, so all I had to do is write it all down on a piece of paper and get to work. I always plan on paper, and I’ve filled up many notepads in doing so, but it’s much better as you have something to look back on and you can quickly write down new ideas so that you don’t forget them.

What To Write & How To Write It

The main differences between something that I write on this website, and something I include in an eBook comes down to the length and quality. If you’re expecting someone to pay for what you’re writing about, when usually, they get it for free, you have to make sure that your content is up to scratch or they won’t be coming back for more. When I’m writing an eBook, I forget the word targets that I usually try to set myself and just write the best that I can over all the sections and subheadings that I’ve laid out in my plan. My latest eBook is 39 pages long including the contents, but after my first draft it was only 25 pages long. This is because I went back and added more that I had thought up as I was going along and tried to improve on what I’d already written. Remember, if you want to make a living off the Internet, you need repeat customers who are satisfied with your content.

Most importantly, you should try to set yourself apart from all the other writing on the Internet by writing better than anyone else. If your content is the best that the customer can buy, the more likely they will be to buy it, and the more referrals you’ll make from other sellers. Your first eBook may not make a lot of money to begin with, but as your following and reputation grows, the sales of older books will start to pick up, similar to how old posts full of Amazon Associates links still makes you money.

Whatever you choose to write about, make sure that you choose something that couldn’t be covered in a couple thousand words in a blog post. Take a complete overview of a subject and explore as many different elements as you can. The fact of the matter is that you could possibly break all of this down into a series of blog posts, but you won’t earn nearly as much money from that. My next book is going to be on night photography, and I’ve started to explore some ideas that I’ve come up with that I don’t think have been covered in detail before, meaning that I can offer something a little bit different to my competitors.

Content

Let’s start at the beginning. You always want to include an introduction to your subject, as well as a few personal anecdotes. I try to include at least one anecdote about something that I’ve experienced in each section of the book and your first one should be in the introduction, telling people what makes you different from the rest. My eBook is based around my website and how it’s grown over the past few months, so I thought I’d share with readers how that came to be. This first section is entitled ‘How I Got My Start’ as shares what I did differently to other people in my niche, and explains to my reader why I’m qualified to be writing the book. Some people like to include a disclaimer at the beginning of their book telling the reader that it’s illegal to share, but I personally didn’t as I don’t think it go very far in stopping anyone from doing so.

To help stay ahead, include content which you wouldn’t ordinarily include, such as assignments, as well putting more time into graphs. For my blog posts, I usually use a screen capture of a Google Analytic page if I want to show my results, but for my eBook, I took some time, exported the results and made an original annotated diagram. This looks a lot better and makes the reader see the separation from website to book, which gives them a reason to pay more. Below is a comparison between the sorts of graph that I use online and the graph that I use in my eBook – the difference is clear.

It is okay at times to include content that you’ve already shared on your blog, just so long as it’s relevant and not just being used to bulk up the book. If I do this, I tend to remove certain parts that aren’t entirely relevant as well as replace images which are no longer in keeping with my book. In my most recent book, I used ‘6 Types Of Blog Posts That Drive Traffic‘ but I took out the last two on the list as they weren’t as relevant to getting lots of traffic. Just because I’ve used it elsewhere, doesn’t mean that it’s not still really great information.

If you’ve done your planning properly then it should be no trouble to write all your content in order, covering all your key points. This also helps to keep the content organized and mapped out in a contents page. I used headings throughout my book to show importance and relevance, and then when you insert a table of content at the beginning, all of your titles come together in order. Have a look at part of my contents below, and you’ll see that because I was able to follow my plan in order and use headings to show their importance, I was able make my book much easier to follow. What’s more is that all of the headings in the contents page will link to the headings further down in the book, even after I turn it into a pdf.

It’s one thing to write an eBook, but if you want to build on your reputation and sell many future ebooks then you need to start producing results. The best way to do this is to start writing assignments within your book that the reader has to follow, which in turn, will provide them with results. I wrote assignments such as ‘Open an Amazon Associates account and start using it today’ and ‘Claim your facebook profile name by getting 25 friends to like your page’. These little calls to action have a great effect and walk the reader through exactly what they have to do if they want to start seeing results.

Finishing Your eBook

When you’ve completed your book, it helps to read through it again so that it’s fresh in your memory and then summarize it so that anyone who was having trouble following will understand better. There is always going to be some readers that you have to spell it out for, so it can’t hurt to share it with everyone by creating an easy to read summary. I usually start with a couple paragraphs summarizing how I feel about what I’ve written and perhaps a personal anecdote about my learning process. Then what I do, which separates me from a lot of writers, is go back through my whole book and pick out all the important lessons that were learnt and list them on one easy to read list. This really doesn’t take much time as I do it while I’m proof reading it; I just jot it down on a piece of paper and compile the list in order when I’m done.

I won’t share the list I’ve used in my latest eBook because that would just be giving it away for free, so instead, here’s a list for this blog post which you can learn from.

• eBooks are a great way to make money and can also be used as incentives to get people to join your list.
• Come up with a clear title before you start writing as it will shape the content that you produce.
• Properly structured eBooks are much easier to read.
• The quality and length has to be noticeably better than what you write online.
• Only sell content that you’re happy with because if you customer isn’t happy, they’re unlikely to ever buy from you again, and the same goes with affiliates.
• Anecdotes make the reader connect with you on a more personal level and trust the content more.
• A working table of contents is a great way to help the reader navigate their way through your book.
• Assignments act as calls to action, to help your reader produce the results they’re looking for.
• Summaries at the end will leave the reader feeling satisfied, knowing that they’ve learnt something.

Finally, as you’re signing off, this is a great time to promote your own material to the readers, whether it’s links to your website and Facebook page, or links to other books that you’ve written that they might be interested in buying. If they’ve made it all the way to the end then they’re in a pretty good position to want to buy some more from you so don’t waste this opportunity.

Setting Up

The first thing you’ll want to do is set up your AdSense so that you can study it in more detail, in Analytics. To do this, when you’re viewing your report overview, just click the link to integrate Adsense with your Analytics account. It’s just one click and then a small amount of information on your Analytics account. You have to be an admin on your Analytics account, otherwise it won’t let you make the changes necessary, but if you’re the only person running the website, this shouldn’t be a problem. NOTE: Because you’re adding new information, GA will not transfer over details from the past, you will only see new results from when your join the two together.

Now that you’re set up, it’s best to have a run down of what all the terms mean, so that you can understand your results better.

AdSense Revenue is the amount of money you’ve made in your selected time period (2 weeks for me).

/ 1000 visits, is how much money you’ve made for every 1000 visits to your site.

Ads clicked, is the amount of ads clicked by viewers.

Ads clicked / visit, is the total number of visits, divided by the number of ads clicked.

CTR stands for Click Through Rate and this is the percentage of clicks you get for each ad impression.

eCPM stands for effective Cost Per 1000 impressions (M being a roman numeral). It’s the total earnings per 1000 impressions.

AdSense Ads Viewed is the total number of ads seen, from all multiple ads on all the pageviews.

AdSense Unit Impressions / Visit is the number of ads that are viewed by visitors, per visit.

AdSense Page Impressions is the amount of pages viewed that have AdSense ads on them.

AdSense Page Impressions / Visit is similar to pages viewed per visit, only it’s pages with ads viewed, per visit.

Tip #1 – Appeal To Your Top Referrers

By far, my favourite thing about using Analytics to look at your AdSense, is that you can then find out which of your referrers are worth the most in terms of AdSense revenue. My results were rather shocking for me. For quite a while now, I’ve been featured on the homepage of a photography forum with about 7000 active members, but that’s grown a lot more over the last month or so. I don’t get a massive amount of traffic from them, as I currently only have 1 link on their homepage, but when I do, it’s worth a lot to me.

Let me show you an example of what happened. When you go into the new GA, click on Content, then AdSense, then AdSense Referrers, this will bring up a list of all the websites that sent visitors who have clicked on an ad, as well as a timeline of your earnings. The results below are for a complete month, and unfortunately, due to Google’s rules and regulations, I’m not allowed to show you them, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. The most important part of the results isn’t the ads clicks, viewed, or even the revenue; it’s the Click Through Rate (CTR) and eCPM (effective Cost Per 1000 impressions).

As we discovered earlier, the CTR is the percentage of ads that are clicked, per impression, so you want that to be as high as possible. The reason the CTR is much higher than some of the other referrers is because of the quality of visitor that I’m receiving from that referrer. StumbleUpon has a particularly poor CTR, because the people who use it aren’t looking for anything in particular so it’s hard to get their attention, which may result in them clicking on an ad. UglyHedgehog on the other hand is a forum for photographers, so the people on that site are actively looking for content in my niche.

The eCPM is also substantially higher than the other referrers, which tells me that if I can increase the number of impressions that I’m getting from them, then I will earn a lot more money. The quality of Twitter user is usually pretty poor, as they don’t typically spend too much time on the site (00:01:47), and even though a link a lot to my website  around 10 times a day through Twitter, I still get less traffic from them than Facebook. Facebook on the other hand has a better quality of visitor, with people looking at more pages and staying for longer (00:02:29, but their eCPM is actually lower than that of Twitter.

From these findings I can conclude that very high quality traffic, such as forums in your niche (uglyhedgehog.com has an average time on site of 00:04:09 and 2.19 pages per visit), will make you much more money, just so long as you can get the traffic you’re after. People are less likely to click on ads when they’ve come from websites such as Facebook, as they’re more interested in the content that you’ve written. They provide a good quality of visitor, but their time on site is almost half that of the forum in my niche, so it’s important to find a good balance of visitor quality. Twitter users seem to behave differently to other users, as they’re in a browsing mode, and are clicking on content that they see in their feed before it disappears. It would appear that they treat the websites they visit in a similar way, by clicking on more ads. I actually get more traffic from Facebook, but my earnings from Twitter far outweigh those of Facebook, which is good really, because it’s much more acceptable to post multiple links on Twitter.

Tip #2 – Write Content That Links Within Your Site

This step produced shockingly good results for my earnings. If you look have a look at my graph below, you’ll see that on the 6th of November, there was a massive increase in earnings. The first thing I did was look back to that day to see which post I had published, and I found a post titled ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Photography’, and this was simply a collection of my tutorials. This meant that anyone who had viewed the page would have to click on another if they wanted to learn anything. This forced them to increase their pages per visit, which produces more ad impressions.

When I break down my earnings so that I’m only receiving information from the 6th of November, I can start to see which referrer is earning me the most money. T.co is the URL shortener that Twitter uses, so I can see clearly that a small number of page impressions has yielded very strong earnings. With a large number of clicks from 76 page impressions, I have an unusually high CTR. From this response, I can see that to earn money, this is the sort of content that I need to be promoting, though as many sources as I can. I’m currently combining this content, with the forum mentioned in the tip above, so that I can drive top quality traffic, to the content that earns me the most money. After just 2 days of doing this, I’m already starting to notice a massive improvement.

Tip #3 – Text and Image Ads

Enabling your ad units to display both text and image/rich media ad types, increases the number of ads competing to appear on your site. More advertisers in the ad auction drives higher bids and more revenue for you. On average, publishers see a 59% increase in eCPM earnings when they make these recommended changes. If you’re not already using both, then it’s as simple as going into the ‘My ads’ tab, and clicking on ‘Edit ad type’, next to the ad in the list. This will increase the cost per click, so even if you’re not improving the number of clicks that your website is getting, you’ll still make more money.

Tip #4 – Increase Ad Size

Advertisers prefer wider ad units for their premium inventory, resulting in higher bids for your ad placements. Though all sites are different, publishers typically see 0.35 eCPMs when using the wider ad size. You can start by simply changing single ads on popular pages to see how well they work, and if it’s not too intrusive, then you can start rolling it out across your whole website. I didn’t do this in my sidebar because I was aware that the whole width of the sidebar would have to change, and that would not only take a lot of time, but mess up the spacing that I had laid out for posts. Instead, I added a wider ad at the end of each post, that differs to all the other ads on my website, and this saw a good improvement in ad sales.

Tip #5 – Ad Placement

Where you choose to place the ad on your site will make a big difference to the amount of clicks that you get, because the more obvious the ad, the more likely someone will be to see it. It’s hard to judge on your own website because we look at our sites differently to how other people view them, so the best way to start seeing results, is to experiment with ad placement. When I first started, I had two ads on my website, one at the top of the sidebar, and one at the bottom. Since then, we’ve added another ad to the side bar, and reloated the bottom one to under the subscribe button, added an ad to the bottom of each post, and put a small text ad just below our header.

The small text ad below our header made the biggest difference to our results because it stands out the most to new visitors, and could even be possibly mistaken for a link within our own website. It’s a very simple ad, and less appealing than a flash one, but it’s much less intrusive, and in a better position. Overall, I don’t like to add too many ads because I don’t want to put off visitors or make my website look bad. I always find it odd when people choose to include an ad block in their header, because that makes me find their website much less appealing.