The other night, I got a frantic call from one of my staffers, asking if I had looked at the analytics for one of our Blogger blogs. It’s a popular site that gets about 400-500 hits a day, but on that day we had over 4000 unique visitors to the site! It was already late, so I decided to look into the traffic spike the following morning.

My writer had posted a poll on the site, with a simple 4-word question as the title. For whatever reason, that post ranked #1 on Google, and #3 on MSN. (No idea where it was on Yahoo, but it wasn’t on the first page) The poll got over 1000 votes, and we made about $8 from AdSense. (The site generally makes about $0.50/day, as we just have a single ad)

It was pretty amazing. Being a Blogger site, there was no real SEO happening. No meta tags or descriptions, no huge keyword density for the phrase, nothing. My guess is that we were probably the first site to break the story, and because of that, we ranked #1 until other sites caught up and posted news of their own. 24 hours later, and we were no longer on the front pages of Google or MSN, and traffic went back to normal.

Truth be told, it was pretty exciting. It just goes to show you the power of search engines. Now imagine if we had planned this out in advance, and had a way to capitalize on the influx of traffic. Cha-ching!

What’s the point of this post? Post breaking news first! You’ll have a small window of opportunity, but if you do it right, you’ll be able to rank well for a popular search term, get tons of web traffic, and hopefully make some money from those visitors in one way or another. I’ve seen this happen time and time again, with topics ranging from Paris Hilton to Hurricane Katrina.. Try it out and see what happens!

Networking should be a key strategy in building your online business. Why? Because networking is an effective way of prospecting customers and seeking out people who can help your business grow. It is an effective and inexpensive way to grow your business by meeting the key people who could become your clients, suppliers and support systems. However, it also entails going out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself.

An established business has the luxury of satisfied customers spreading the word about the business. Until your business is self-sustaining, you need to start opening your mouth, spreading the word about your venture to all your friends, relatives, acquaintances, and even strangers.

Many start-up entrepreneurs have a hard time approaching other people - particularly strangers - about their business. It may be the fear of speaking out to a total stranger, or the fear of coming on too strong or aggressive. Others let their insecurities take the better or them, while some people fail to network simply because of laziness. As a result, many formal gatherings and social situations become lost opportunities to spread the word about their business.

Over the weekend, I was invited to a BBQ where I didn’t know many people. I started talking with the person sitting next to me, and later asked him what he did for a living. He tells me about his business, and then I tell him a bit about my e-commerce company. He asked if I had a card (I never give out a card unless someone asks for it, but I always make sure I carry them with me!), and we continued to talk.. Others heard us talking and joined in the conversation as well. By the end of the day, everyone there knew what I did for a living! Will it lead to future business? It’s too soon to tell, but it can’t hurt.

And with that, I’m off to another networking event..

How much time, effort, energy and resources are you putting into stuff you just plain suck at? There are certain things we do each day in our business lives that we just plain are not good at. We work very hard every time to get good, but we start as a 2 and now maybe we are a 4. Why not get someone else to do it, or just plain dump it.

Today, identify one thing you do that you just plain suck at and find another way to get it done. Try it and see what happens. Then spend the time you would have spend doing what you are not good at, doing what you are good at. Get great at what you are good at. Get even greater at what you are all ready great at.

Stop doing what you suck at, dump it to someone else. (Outsourcing is your friend!) If you work what you suck at, you will become average. If you work at what you are good at, you will become great. If you work what you are great at - You will become a super star.

A few days ago, I posted about how important it was to choose a good domain name. Today we’re going to talk about how to go about getting a domain name that’s about to expire.

It’s fitting that I make this post now, as I’m going through this exact process right now - I’ve had an idea for another website for quite some time now, but I’ve been struggling with finding the right domain name for it. I came across a name that was taken, but it looks like the owner had long since abandoned the site. I briefly considered soliciting the owner of the domain, to see if she wanted to sell it to me. But first, I checked the domain details, and saw that the name was set to expire in about 3 weeks. Rather than tip off the owner, I decided to wait and see if she’d renew the name or not.

3 weeks go by, and it turns out that she didn’t renew the name! I jumped onto GoDaddy and tried to purchase the name. “We’re sorry, but the name you requested is already taken.”

WTF? A quick Google search on registering expired domains led me to Mike Davidson’s post on the subject. It’s a rather long read, but it explains in great detail how the whole process works, and how best to hedge your bets to ensure that you get the domain you want. If you’re after a name that’s already taken, be sure to read Mike’s post!

I showed you how to get started with Google AdSense yesterday. It’s a great program to make some extra cash, but the majority of us won’t be getting checks for $132,994 each month like Shoemoney!

If you want to make real money, you’ve got to get involved in Affiliate Marketing. People make it sound complicated, but it’s really not. Here’s how affiliate marketing works:

1. You sign up to be an affiliate for a specific vendor, either through their website, or through an affiliate network.
2. You wait for the vendor to approve your application.
3. Once approved, they will provide you with “creatives” that you can use on your website to promote them. (Creatives = Graphics, Banners, Text Links, etc.)
4. You place these creatives on your website.
5. A visitor comes to your website, and clicks on one of these creatives.
6. You earn MONEY!

Ok, maybe I made it sound a bit too easy. Note that each vendor has different terms; Some will pay you for each person that clicks on their ad, which is known as Pay Per Click (PPC). Others will pay you for each lead you generate (a person that signs up for more information, signs up for a mailing list, etc), which is known as Pay Per Lead. But the majority of vendors will do what’s known as Pay Per Action (PPA), where you’ll only get paid if the person makes a purchase from the site you referred them to. Sometimes this is a flat-rate payment, and sometimes it’s a commission.

Affiliate Marketing is a win-win for everyone. The vendor gets the sale, and the affiliate gets paid for directing that visitor to their website.

Most companies run their affiliate programs through one of the major affiliate networks. In order to get started, sign up with the following networks as an affiliate:

Commission Junction is by far the largest affiliate network out there, with 2079 merchants! However, I also use the other networks listed above, as CJ doesn’t manage the affiliate programs for a number of merchants that I wanted to promote. Since you’ll be promoting multiple products from various vendors, you should sign up with all of the networks.. There’s no cost to you, so sign up today!

Google Adsense is probably the easiest way to get started making money on your site. For those of you unfamiliar with AdSense, here’s how it works:

1. A merchant trying to generate traffic to their website signs up for Google AdWords.
2. They create their ads, and set a price-per-click (PPC) that they’re willing to pay.
3. Google starts displaying their ad on their site.
4. The ads are also displayed on any related sites running Google AdSense.

So say a ticket broker is trying to promote “Bruce Springsteen Tickets”. He would go to AdWords and create a new campaign. He specifies that he’s willing to spend up to $2 per click.

Now you decide to create a Bruce Springsteen fan site, get some inbound traffic, and throw up Google AdSense. Google is going to serve you ads that are related to Bruce Springsteen, and more than likely, a few of them will be from ticket brokers. If that’s the market you plan on targeting, including words like “tickets” and “concert” will help make sure that you’re served with those types of ads.

Then you just sit back, focus on generating more traffic to your site, and hope that some visitors click on those ads. For each ad they click on, you get paid. Some niches pay better than others, so you need to do some research to find out what the best market to target is.

It doesn’t sound very lucrative, but it costs you nothing but your time. On my first AdSense site, it took me 3 months to generate $100. But it was a learning experience, and the goal of the site wasn’t to make money. But here’s some proof that with the right planning, you can really kick some ass. ShoeMoney is a legend in the SEO community, and he’s even been featured in major publications, including Fortune Magazine. Here’s a picture of his largest check from Google:

Today, he’s making even more money than that, but he’s switched to payment by wire transfer, so no more cool pictures for us. If that’s not motivation, then I don’t know what is!