I think the last industry conference I went to was SIGGRAPH in 1997. It was about the same time that I was learning the magic of <tables> and 1-pixel gifs. So I’ve been to a conference or two in the distant past, but in recent years I’ve hermited myself away in my own little corner of the internet and done my own thing fairly successfully. When I read that Web Directions North was coming to my hometown of Vancouver I was excited but also trepidacious. None of my local web friends were going and I’m not active in the online design community so I’d basically be flying solo. Some of the listed session topics interested me, but I learn by doing… I wasn’t sure how much I would absorb by sitting in an audience being spoken to. Would I get my $1200 worth?

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At its peak, a front page story on Digg will send dozens of visitors per second to your website. Is it ready for the traffic?

Having a link on the front page of Digg.com presents websites with one of the fastest influxes of traffic possible. Similar waves of traffic might come from Slashdot.org or a national media website like HowardStern.com. When the story first hits, you will receive hundreds of uniques per minute, all grabbing the same page. How can you prepare your website to stand up to the crushing wall of visitors? Follow below for a few easy steps that you can take either before or after being ‘Dugg’ to make sure that your site stays online and responds quickly to each page request.

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Before you make any money on the web, you must have traffic. Of course, free traffic from the search engines is better than paying for your traffic. To keep your top rankings and the free traffic flowing, you must watch your positions diligently. Seeing fluctuations and trends in the datacenters allows you to react to changes in Google’s algorithms and rankings.

One indispensible tool for watching your Google rankings used to reside at McDar.net. That site has mysteriously disappeared from the web (and we all wish Caryl the owner well) leaving many search engine optimizers without their daily fix of DC watching. Here is a site with a replacement for the popular McDar Google Datacenter Watch tool that functions in nearly the same way:

KZAY Google Datacenter Tool

Nothing powers SE listings faster than getting additional backlinks from lots of varied sources. In a smart post at DP, Arizona Web Design makes an offer to all bloggers– review his site and he’ll pay you a commission. If you have a quality site and post an interesting review, you can get a bonus. That is a fast way to make a quick buck! For the new bloggers out there, it could double your weekly income with just a post.

Post a site review, make easy lunch money.

The dot-com internet gold rush made a lot of people very rich and a lot of other people just as bankrupt. In the late 90s, there seemed to be millions of free startup dollars floating around the internet. All it took was an idea… it didn’t have to be your own… buy a domain name, hire a few java programmers, and Bacchanalian Venture Capitalists would literally queue up to dump buckets of money on your head while you played foosball.

Did you have to produce a product?

Hell no!

Did you need a sustainable business model?

What’s a business model?

Money was plentiful and well-funded companies spent it like there was no tomorrow. No one seemed to really produce anything useful but at least there were comfortable chairs. A few large behemoth companies emerged and continue today (Amazon, eBay, the GOOG) but the vast majority have long since closed up shop. I was part of that boom and bust; I actually worked for a failed offshoot of one of the successes. I helped sell new cars on Amazon.

Brilliant, eh? I’ll let that sink in a moment.

New cars… on the web. What a great idea! We even got our own tab. I produced front page teaser graphics and banners on Amazon as well as integrating the look and feel of the order process with our monster parent.

Those days of instant VC funding disappeared but with (oh no, I’m going to say it) Web 2.0, the money available on the web is once again growing. Bright ideas that must actually have traffic and a profit are being bought left and right by the previous bubble holdovers. Is there any room for the little guy to make money online?

ABSOLUTELY.

Even the small sites that go huge are mainly monetizing their content in only a few ways. Most of them utilize text ads served up contextually… you know, Adsense. I also work in another area; in fact, I prefer it, and I’ll gladly show you why– Affiliate marketing. Selling something for someone else.

I don’t keep any stock, I don’t deal with any customer service, I never pack an order… yet if I have the traffic, I can make the same percentage on the sale as the retailer who actually sells the product. I’ll show you how, step-by-step, using real world examples. That is the reason we’re here– I will take your site, review it, and show you how to make more money with it:

• Improve ad clickthrough
• Advice on interface design and ease of use for your target audience
• Remove the blocks that stop people from checking out their carts
• Show you what you might be missing by marketing other products

If you’d like help with any of these things, for free, all I ask in return is that you let everyone here know if the advice has helped you monetize your site. Making more money yet? Why not? Email: money@merged.ca

Who am I and why should you care? Here is a little more about me.