Five Ways To Make Money With eBay

Ebay users traded $52 billion worth of merchandise last year. While some folks are content to make a few bucks cleaning out their closets, nearly one million people depend on the auction web site for all or part of their income.

Whether you're a novice or a "PowerSeller," here are five tips to help boost your eBay profits.

1. Choose Wisely

Anyone who's trolled around on eBay knows that they can find everything from blenders to toilet paper. But peddling mundane household products isn't necessarily a winning strategy. The best eBay businesses sell unusual, hard-to-find items at a discount, says Marsha Collier, author of 'eBay for Dummies.' By sticking to this approach, you'll cut down on the competition and the ensuing price wars that could eat into your profits.

Fortunately, you don't need to know anything about antiques and collectibles to fulfill Collier's requirements. One idea is to look for items unique to your region and sell them at a discount. If she lived in Manhattan, for example, Collier says she would regularly shop at Century 21, a famous designer discount store, and then resell the hard-to-find name-brand clothing at a markup on eBay.

2. Keep Your Costs Low

Nothing eats into your profits faster than high overhead expenses. That's why experts agree that you should start off your eBay business by hawking stuff that you already own. Once you've depleted all of the goodies in your basement, move onto your neighbor's. Take out an ad in a local paper and offer to sell other people's possessions on consignment, says Cliff Ennico, author of 'The eBay Seller's Tax and Legal Answer Book' and an instructor at eBay University, which offers instructional DVDs and classes on selling on eBay. Other than your time, your costs will be virtually zero. And, according to Ennico, your efforts and expertise are worth anywhere from a 30% to 50% cut of the sale.

Once you're ready to graduate to the next level and start your own eBay business -- even if it's a small one -- Collier recommends getting a sales tax number or business license (if you live in a state with no sales tax). This will allow you to contact manufacturers directly and buy items at wholesale.

3. Perfect Your Title

If you do nothing else, make sure the title on your listing gets straight to the point. "It's the most important piece of real estate on the Web site," says Jim Griffith, a dean at eBay University and author of the 'Official eBay Bible.' A common and damaging mistake even experienced users make is thinking that their title should read like a sales pitch and include empty descriptors such as "rare" and "beautiful." Instead, just list the facts, including a brand name or model number. This strategy will help serious buyers find your item more readily since the search engine scrolls through titles when trying to match key words, says Griffith. As for the marketing, leave "one of a kind!" for the description inside your listing.

4. Build Trust

Gaining the trust of the eBay community is one of the biggest hurdles new sellers face. It's critical for you to generate a high positive feedback score or else other users won't even touch your auction. The score tells potential bidders that you don't falsely advertise or exaggerate when describing your merchandise and that you ship your items quickly. Your goal is to eventually get at least 100 positive responses from other users, says Ennico. (Read our story to learn how to avoid hurting your score.)

Even if you've never sold anything on eBay, you can still work toward building up your reputation. Your score is based on the feedback you receive as both a buyer and a seller. So before listing your first item, buy a handful of inexpensive things just to get the feedback, says Collier. Then, once you start running your own auctions, make sure every person you interact with has a good experience. And finally, be sure you accept PayPal for payments since it offers buyers some purchase protection if a deal goes awry.

5. Grab Eyeballs

EBay is a numbers game. The more people who bid on your item, the higher the price it sells for. That means boosting the number of eyeballs that see your listing is crucial. If you're selling a high-ticket item, you should consider spending an additional $19.95 to "feature" it, says eBay University's Griffith. This ensures that your listing gets some prime real estate on the first page of a given category. That way you not only catch people searching key words, but also those folks who like to scroll through category pages.

"Once someone is looking at one of your listings, you can then promote other [listings]," says Griffith. EBay allows sellers to directly link to 12 of your other listings. Better yet, a serious seller could also direct buyers to his eBay Store, where one can customize a virtual "store front" and list his entire inventory. An eBay store is one of the best ways to develop a loyal customer base since users can bookmark your page and hopefully return often to see what you're selling one week to another.

5 Tips to Boost Your Adsense Revenue

Google AdSense program has made it easier for webmasters to make money through a website. Webmasters who run an AdSense campaign will display Google's contextual Ads relevant to the content of their sites and thus encouraging visitors to click the ads and earn money for each ad click.

However you will earn very little AdSense revenue if you don't know how to optimize your AdSense ads on your website. Here are some tips to increase your AdSense earning:

1. Focus on one Adsense ad format. The Large Rectangle (336X280) ad format seems to work better than other ad formats because this format tends to result in higher click through rates (CTR). Another reason is that the ads will look like normal web links that visitors use to click on them. It doesn't matter whether the visitors know that they are clicking AdSense ads or not, as long as there are clicking, you earn AdSense commission.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Select a color that matches your website's background. If your site's background is white both, the color of ad border and background should set to be white too. Also the color of the ad title should be similar to coloe of the links in your website. This is to make your AdSense ads look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will boost AdSense CTR.

3. Don't place your AdSense ads at the bottom of your webpages because it is proven to be less effective. Displaying your AdSense ads at the bottom is like hiding your AdSense and thus leads to low CTR and AdSense revenue. Try to put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Try to place your AdSense ads near rich content as visitors main focus usually are your content. There are several ways to insert AdSense ads into your content and one of the ways is place your AdSense just after the end of your content.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, name it as “AdSense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then use SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. There are other ways to optimize your AdSense that produce high CTR also. You can learn more tricks by reading in AdSense and webmaster forums.

7 Ways To Make Money From Ad Using Only Free Tools

There is really no doubting that there are amazing incomes currently being made on web adand the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their web sites every day.

Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on your earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what’s even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used don’t cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.

1. Make money by distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists

Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from ad clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can thus give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.

Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message amongst the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your site feeling cheated. And believe me, you don’t want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from Adsense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your site.

Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily earnings increased seven-fold.

2. Make money by distributing free articles to high traffic article sites

Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I don’t. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.

Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when folks find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.

The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from ad clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one one of the ads posted there.

3. Make money using articles and a viral marketing website

Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.

When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.

There is one of the very simple ways to make money from ads by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anybody who signs up at your site will have to visit your site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your site.

Find more details on this at my blog whose address you'll find in the resource box below.

Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this free tool more than makes up for this.

4. Make money with your email signature

People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forwarded all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.

Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your sites.

Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.

5. Make money by asking questions at discussion groups

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me whether there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than by trying to sell his own advice.

There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money.

These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.

6. Make money by bartering your online skills for valuable keywords

In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; “What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. More so online where people have plenty of skills but are slow to trust others enough to send them money for an item they need.

You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable keywords. Keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense and most other ad networks. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money.

7. Make money by sending teaser emails

To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You’ll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your fare share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is “gold” lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out “teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. The whole objective of teaser emails is to get people to visit your site. For instance if I were to send out teaser email on this content here is how I would construct it;

Subject: Free Tools Currently Being Used To Increase Adsense Earnings

Hello,

Just thought you might be interested in this subject, since so many folks online use Adsense these days. If not please accept my sincere apologies. Details are at my site.

www. your site's address .com

Regards, Afriend.

I am sure you can write an even more effective teaser email. It would be a better idea to have a different message for your close friends, a different one for your business contacts and yet another one for those nasty guys SPAMMING you.

Does exchanging links really help build traffic?

So, you have been considering joining a link exchange network to boost your Google PageRank, and is wondering if it is a good idea? The short answer: it is, but you have to know your goals before you can set up a plan.

Option #1:

Is your site full of automated rubbish and junk content that you can't expect for the life of you to get any legitimate linkage data? Are you simply interested in spamming MSN and Yahoo for a few quick bucks in profit? If so, then it might be advisable to push hard on the link exchange front. Outsource it if you can. Once you have set up a profitable system you can replicate it as long as you are paying someone from another country dirt cheap wages. If you do this to a certain scale you won't have enough time to do it all yourself, at least not if you value your time, which you will if you are in this for the profits.

Reciprocal linking may still be a useful idea, and you should link out to some quality sites even if they don't link back, but typically most sites in link exchange networks are shit.

Option #2:

If you are doing spammy link exchanges for months and months and are seeing no results, it may be time to think about plan B. Do you spend hundreds of hours to create what you consider to be an useful original resource? But you can't get any traffic because your site is new and you are still learning the web? Do you want your site to do well longterm? If you fit more in this camp then I think it is probably a waste of time to join reciprocal link spam networks.

Polarization:

Much is lost in polarization and pigeonholing groups of people. But in this case, I think it is an important distinction where you really only need to classify your site as belonging to one group or the other.

My SEO teacher once said he was partial to quality sites, but spam can make a lot of money too. Most people mess up when they piss around in the middle.

Sure it is ok to have spam sites. It is also ok to have good ones. But never a hybrid site. With each site either spam hard or create good stuff. Don't make a site that has a foot in each pond.

Introduction to Widgetbucks

WidgetBucks is a new way to monetize web sites, which is primarily bloggers-oriented. As usual, people tend to get quite excited when all they have to do is throw another JavaScript code in their web page. But I think the appeal of WidgetBucks is likely to be fairly limited. This article will introduce to you the good and bad of the program.

WidgetBucks is mostly geared towards product websites. I don't think that any "information" style site could benefit from them. That said, if you have a product-oriented site, it is definitely worth a look.

The Good

* WidgetBucks pays very well if your traffics are primarily from United States (CPC + CPM ads).

* Ads are animated. At least, the ads are willing to attract attention. This could help gain a decent CTR.

* Registration is very simple and you seem to be automatically approved. You can have the code up and running on your website in a few minutes.

* The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

* WidgetBucks works well with Google Adsense.

The Bad

* WidgetBucks pays very poorly if your main traffics are NOT from United States. (CPM ads only)

* Ads are garish and somewhat overwhelming. These are certainly not the most attractive ads, and don't blend in with your website.

* Ad loading is slow. In fact, your page will likely loads before the ads do.

* The categories are limited. You may not find something that will fit your website.

To see if you like it, make sure to sign up and find out for yourself.

Tribalfusion: The highest paying CPM ad network

Tribal Fusion is one of the few firms that grow on the CPM (cost per thousand) advertising campaigns, which is not very difficult to get into. The advantage of CPM ads is of course that you do not need to think much about your advertising and layout unlike CPC (cash-per-click) ads like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. You get paid a fixed amount of money depending on the type of banner ads that appear on your site. The range is generally between $0.50 to about $2 per 1000 impressions on your Web site that can sum up nicely if you have a lot of traffic.

Tribal Fusion accepts only sites that meet certain criteria, the most notable being that your site needs at least 2000 unique visitors per day. The others are an active community, regularly updated content and a professional site design. I would definitely give it a shot if I ran a blog with at least 2000 unique users each day. Furthermore, it is possible to run Tribal Fusion CPM ads on the same page as Google Adsense ads.

Tribal Fusion offers almost the same size as Google Adsense advertising offers. You have a choice of 90x728, 468x60, 120x600, 160x600, 300x250 and 336x280. One great way of raising revenue with Tribal Fusion is to activate the so called Variable Size feature. This displays similar ads if they are higher priced than the initial one that you have selected. For example, it is possible to choose the large rectangle as the default size for your ads and use the variable size option to allow 300x250 display ads in the same position if they pay more.

You have more option for some ad sizes. You might opt for popunders with certain types of ads but I found this option unappealing. Could be an option on sites that do not care that much about their visitors. Tribal Fusion also makes it possible to display alternative ads if they can't serve them for a particular user/page.

The main topic that you are writing about is also important for the revenue that you can make with Tribal Fusion. I hope this article gives you an impression of what you can expect from services like Tribal Fusion which could be a good source of revenue for your site if you meet their requirements.

How to generate income with a small site

So, you have a small site, you have about 5000 page views per day, and you start thinking to yourself, "Hey, this would be great if I could make some money out of my website." Then you begin to shop for advertisers and quickly get the sense that all small sites work primarily with Google. Now, why would this be? There are four main ways in which advertisers can monetize your inventory:

1. Branded Display - e.g. Ad.com, Niche networks -
2. Context - e.g. Google Adsense, Yahoo, Quigo
3. Behavioral - e.g. Tribal Fusion, Tacoda
4. Performance Display - e.g. Fastclick / Valueclick, CPA Empire

Before diving into these in more detail, everyone has to understand this: advertising is all about reaching relevant eyeballs. Whatever the method used, the ultimate goal is the same - if I sell sexy shoes, I want people to buy sexy shoes. I can go about this a couple ways but at the end of the day, I will compare the amount of money that I spent on advertising and the amount of profits that I made from the sexy shoes that I sold. The smaller and the easier it is to buy my good, the more likely it is that I will be focused on the ROI and performance. If I am selling Netflix $ 4.99 subscriptions, it is easy to follow who signed on where I will have that tens of thousands of people enrolling each month. On the other hand, it is difficult for Ford advertising campaign for tracking performance… it is difficult to prove that you bought a new Ford F150 because you saw an ad for the automotive.com.

Ok... so eyeballs it is... lets look at the four methods above now:

Brand: If your site is good enough to be on the brand wagon you’re in luck. Branded advertisers have high standards in the inventory they run on. They demand that it is relevant to their campaigns (i.e. Ford will want to run only on sites Auto), and they are willing to pay a premium to get there. CPM campaigns usually have little or no concern for performance. The problem here is that, unless a site's users are highly desirable, it is difficult for a site with low volume to get onto a branded site list. Ford wants to sell cars - to do that they want to find buyers of cars and associate the "Ford" brand with their target audience. They might run campaigns for a new sexy sportscar on gaming sites and ads for more fuel efficient sedans on the New York Times travel section (who knows?).

Contextual: Thanks to this Google has become the big mama of online advertising. Contextual engines scrape your content pages and choose advertisers that match the content. You have a site on shoes? Expect to see shoe advertisements. Now, going back to eyeball idea, if I sell shoes, I want people interested in shoes. If you have a site that reviews the latest and most sexy shoes, but I want my ad on it. On the other hand, if you have a personal blog and complain about the manner in which the seller of shoes felt ill at the mall today, I probably do not want my ad on your page. Contextual rocks on relevant page content and sucks on most Web 2.0 sites. When was the last time you saw a relevant text ad on Myspace.com?

Behavioral: Contrary to Brand and Contextual, this is the first type of ad where we don't care much at all about the content page. We have an idea of what the users eyeballs are like and want to show him ads that he is going to enjoy the most. The biggest challenge here is for a site to get INTO the behavioral network. Even though for the purposes of serving one ad they don’t care what your site content is like, they will most surely want to use your site and your users to expand their reach & user information databases. Tribal Fusion, for example, requires 2k unique visitors per day, "professional site design" and a "very active user-base".

Performance Banners: Ok, so I save my favorites (and perhaps worst for a small site) for the latter. Performance based advertising means that somebody is tracking clicks and/or conversions (actions) on their campaign and either only paying out on an actual “action” or adjusting bids on different sites according to the performance. Do not be fooled by the networks that you pay on 'CPM', unless the ads they are showing are brand advertisements, somebody somewhere is tracking ROI & performance, and it’s impacting the CPM you’re getting paid. So why doesn’t this work for small sites you may ask? Well, long story short... small sites suck. Ok, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, small sites suck for performance would be a more accurate statement.

Lets go back to eyeballs. Your site has eyeballs, and I will pay you every time one of your eyeballs buys a pair of sexy shoes. Let's say that the shoes cost $30, my production cost is $0.50 (for sweatshops yay!) so I am willing to pay you $14.50 for each person from your site which buys one of my pairs of sexy shoes. Now, there is another advertiser in the network I'm working with, he is selling sports gear (hats and stuff), and is willing to pay $10.00 to the publisher for each purchase. Now, when a user arrives at your site, which ad should the network show? Let's say your site is brand new in the network. Well, this network has no contextual technology to tell me what the site is about and it also doesn’t have a behavioral engine, so what can the network do? The only thing it can, test ít campaigns on the site and learn what the performance is like.

Ok, for the upcoming 5000 impressions (1k unique users?), The network chooses randomly between the sexy shoes and sports accessories. Now, what do you think the chances are that someone actually buy a pair of shoes or a hat? On the average site, I would imagine, right around 5-10%. Think about it, if the average CPM on your site is about ~$0.50, and this offer should be competitive, you must not expect a single conversion run until you have at least 30000 impressions. For a better statistical accuracy, think instead to 300000 impressions. Starting to see why small sites suck? The amount of volume required to "maximize" the media campaign is simply too much for the measly 5k impressions per day. Imagine if it included 500 campaigns. How can we do 500 campaigns with just 5000 impressions per day?

Of course, there are various techniques to limit the amount of learning that needs to be done, but the fact is that the volume must be sent to an advertiser performance before we can get a good idea of real performance.

So what should us little guys do? Think about your eyeballs and page content. Is your content very relevant to the eyeballs? Then go contextual. Do you have particularly valuable eyeballs? Go behavioral or brand. None of the above? Try networks based on performance, but do not expect good CPM until you get the volume high enough for some sort of learning to be done.

An essay on weblog

There has been a recent retread of weblogging phenomenon after a few articles in PC Mag, Time, and The Morning News. After posting my own little list of things that should be banned from weblogs, I realized that the list of things to be encouraged would be more useful. Some people are new to weblogging. Others want to raise the bar. Ultimately, everyone wants better sites, and some of these suggestions might help.

Much of this advice is focused on writing, which is usually at the heart of weblogs. Each of them are obvious, but often ignored, at the expense of both readers and writers. They are intended for people trying to improve the overall attractiveness of their weblogs, but folks writing in private to friends and family can also find useful. We start with an example.

Amateur vs. Professional

The professional writer wrote:

New York is beautiful in the spring.

The amateur writer wrote:

I know that this is a cliché these days, especially after 9/11, but I live in New York, which is much cleaner and safer now because of Giuliani, which should really be president after handling the crisis so well, and I know that I've had some problems in the past with the mayor, managing the NYPD with regard to African-Americans and its war against the sacred art of religious icons and feces (Hello!? Freedom of expression?), but when all is said and done, New York, as perhaps the best example of the "melting pot", etc etc, is a big city, especially when it starts getting warmer and more people come out, as around March or April.

The amateur reads the professional and cannot bear the understatement. The professional reads the amateur, gives up after the word "days", and decides that he or she has been to video-gamed idiocy, the amateurs are hopeless, this new wave will be the last.

Not true. Amateurs write as they have always writing. Awareness of the self, self-doubt, clumsiness, or excessive are perennial features of the beginning writer. The reason why amateurs today seem less profound perhaps just a matter of exposure.

It was once impenetrable guards. Now, CNN roundtables, documentaries, independent films, MTV, and the web that has no guards in most countries are broadcasting every poorly crafted phrase and half–cooked idea imaginable. Patience, readers. All is not lost.

Great writing can not be taught, but the atrocious writing is entirely preventable.

The Rules

There are, in fact, rules-even online. The rules are not restrictions. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, rhythm, focus, syntax and structure are not particularly romantic, until you get to know them. Writers want to make sense. They want to move the reader. It is not going to if you got busted paragraphs, punctuation and wrong, bad rhythm, not to mention "kreative" spelling: see? Clarity is essential. Learn the rules. Break 'em later.

The best rules can't be declared, but you can learn by reading excellent writing. Develop an ear. If you know what works, you can begin to imitate it. Conversely, it is worth exploring the truly horrendous language, stuff that makes you embarrassed for those responsible. You will find your mortally afraid of, and automatically, avoiding the same mistakes in your own writing. Hemingway said: "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in anti-shock shit-detector." (They are cheap if you have not already received one.) This is especially important for Web writers, most of whom are publishing without the benefit of editors.

Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand pith.

Bold statements are dangerous, but they will not kill you. Shyness will, or at least your traffic. Everybody has a foggy opinion or two. The author's objective is clear. Vague feelings or ideas do not have to be vaguely written. Imagine two similar sites with descriptions of an indescribable feeling. Which do you remember:

A: “Her physical affections made his world feel somehow different and indescribably alive.”

B: “She kissed him with her tongue until the leaves on the trees, the soles of his shoes, and even his thoughts, felt like happy tongues.”

First-person point of view is not the only point of view. "I" should be necessary, or avoided. This is not to condemn first person, but to suggest that it need not be the default. If first person perfectly suits your subject, try it. But maybe second or third person is more efficient. Consider your options.

The advice "only write what you know" increases the likelihood that you will always write the same things.

Give something new

And are you trying to produce quality materials, or simply killing time? If you are killing time, OK, but do not be surprised if your audience is small and no one links to you. Instead of publishing disconnected diversions (by the way, look at this, check it out, here you go, really cool), connect the dots or offer an opinion.

Better yet, take the Nick Hornby Challenge. In High Fidelity, the narrator is described as a professional critic. He is good at it. Music criticism is what he was doing. Then he started an independent label and produced a record made by a couple of talented, shoplifting skate punks to, as her friend said, "put something new in the world."

The Web is a huge jumble of media. There are sites on books, music sites, and sites about sites. Plenty of weblogs centre consuming and criticize the work of others, and all of this, recycling and redistribution has its place - a very important place that we will act in the suite. But why not do something new? Instead of a link to a few articles each day, write. Instead of presenting and discussing the latest designs, design something. You’ve got this absolutely batty opportunity of instant global publishing. Publish! The world is your oyster!

Amuse your readers

If you want to share a story of your life, pretend the readers were not there. Because they weren't. "You needed to be there" never makes a funny joke.

Readers crave your anecdotes and stories. They really do. So give 'em the whole megillah. Instead of: "The party was a riot!" or "I am depressed today," carefully explain why. Elaborate. Parties and depression are very well written subjects. The Great Gatsby, for example, has plenty of both.

Anything that makes a good subject, as long as you take your time and crystallize the details, tying them together, and actually tell a story rather than provide a simple list of facts. Do readers really want to know how you are unhappy? Yes. But they will want details, the smells of your room, why you have not in the shower per week, or how exactly somebody broke your heart. One-liners will not suffice.

At the same time, you don’t want to over–explain yourself. Understatement can be thunderous, or humorous or heartbreaking. Or all three.

Have a sense of humour. Everything is funny. Being gay is funny. Being funny is straight. Being American is bizarre. It's good to laugh at things. Making light of serious situations or emotions need not be disrespectful or hurtful. And just because something is funny does not mean that it should be light. Example: "When the kidnapper called the blind woman, he told her that she’d never see her son again." Some of the best humor is heavy.

Being a writer is funny. Do not take yourself too seriously.

Have a thick skin. If your site is under attack by some malicious web devil, relax. You've gone public, and you must expect both rational and irrational criticism. Listen, people rag on Shakespeare all the time. If you are a true talent, there will be plenty of people compliments your efforts. If someone has a bona fide gripe with something you’ve produced, pay attention: it deserves consideration. If someone has a small gripe or simply gets nasty, let it go. Back in the production of your site. If novelists spent their time responding to negative comments, we would be fresh out of novels.

Beyond Wired

A popular complaint about weblogs is that they all have a link to the same sites over and over and over. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it is not. But if you do find yourself connecting to a Wired article, which has already been noted in ten other sites, you might consider finding something else.

Sharing great discoveries is largely why weblogging was so hot and torrid in the first place. Big, heavily funded sites did not recognize the grace notes and hidden talents of the web, so it was up to the bloggers. For some bloggers, it still is. Wired does not need your help as much as unknown sites, which may be offering equally good (or better) material.

Successful Weblogging

Producing a successful weblog, however you define that, is tough. Rather than money, fame, and a jacuzzi full of sexy nude readers, you will probably feel that you are scream in space. And you probably will be. In 1994, you could hook a thousand readers if you wrote about the mold underneath your refrigerator. Now, you are lucky to get a hundred or so regulars, even if your work is excellent.

Whatever the size of your audience, you have to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There's no need to pander. Force them to re-register!

As the beginning of this article noted, the general public is not the goal of everyone, and most of these suggestions are intended for people who work to expand their readership. The task of achieving this expansion, it is back to the hard sell.

Gone are the days when simply having a website is equivalent to more visibility. The average citizen does not even know to look for weblogs. When someone does, there is a range of choices so extensive that finding your site will be largely a stroke of luck.

Links and word of mouth can do a lot, but do not expect a big following right off the bat. You could never get a following. More than ever, you’d better be doing this to satisfy yourself, because it could be your only reward. But if your goal is to satisfy the readers, satisfying yourself is a good start.

URGENT: Google Adsense's new policy regarding privacy!

From Google Adsense blog:

Every now and then, we update the AdSense Terms and Conditions to make sure they're in line with policies across Google, and to prepare for future changes to the products and services we offer. As part of these regular updates, you'll soon sign in to your account and see that the Terms have been updated, prompting you to read through and accept them. This time around, most of the changes to the Terms and Conditions fall into two broad categories: 1) future products and features and 2) privacy requirements. Specifically, one of the main changes is that the terms anticipate future products that may become available in other advertising formats and mediums, for example Gadget Ads. As we look forward to monetizing more online and offline content, we've re-worded some portions of the terms to make them applicable across a broader array of media and formats -- anticipating, for example, that future products may be priced, paid, or managed differently than current ones. We've also added some specific requirements that make it necessary for publishers to post and abide by a transparent privacy policy that users see. According to this policy, publishers must notify their users of the use of cookies and/or web beacons to collect data in the ad serving process. This change relates to advertisers' use of innovative products and features like Gadget Ads and other offerings in the future. The changes aren't limited to the areas above, however; we've made small changes throughout, so it's a good idea for you to review them thoroughly before accepting.

This means if you want to continue working with Google Adsense, you will have to post a privacy statement regarding your collecting the visitors' cookies and other information. It's a bit ironic since Google collects all sorts of info on us without telling us and they want us to be open with our viewers, but they are the big boss after all.

Here is an AdSense-friendly version of a privacy policy that Schemelessmoney's readers are welcome to use on their own sites.

This is privacy policy for YOUR WEBSITE If you need any more information about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us. We can be reached via YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS At YOUR WEBSITE, the privacy of my visitors are very important. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information we receive and collect and how do we use it. Part 1 : For each visitor to our Web page, our Web server automatically recognizes information of your browser, IP address, City/State/Country. We collect only the domain name, but not the e-mail address of visitors to our Web page, the e-mail addresses of those who communicate with us via e-mail. The information we collect is used for internal review and is then discarded, used to improve the content of our Web page, used to customize the content and/or layout of our page for each individual visitor. With respect to cookies: We use cookies to store visitors preferences, record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors’ browser type or other information that the visitor sends. With respect to Ad Servers: To try and bring you offers that are of interest to you, we have relationships with other companies like Google (www.google.com/adsense) that we allow to place ads on our Web pages. As a result of your visit to our site, ad server companies may collect information such as your domain type, your IP address and clickstream information. For further information, consult the privacy policy of: http://www.google.com/privacy.html If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us at the above email address. Part 2 : If you subscribe to our RSS feed with your email address, your email address will be saved at feedburner.com or feedblitz.com and we will have access to those email address. Those email addresses will be used ONLY for sending the Rss feed from our web site. These email addresses will never be sold, disclosed or rented to any third party. Part 3 : We are not lawyers or accountants. Any legal or financial advice we give is our opinion based on our experience. Always seek the advice of a professional before acting on something that we might say. You should assume we have motivation for linking to everything on this page and will benefit from it somehow. You should assume we are no better then you are and your opinion has just as much weight as ours. You should question everything. You should come up with your own thoughts and opinions and not trust everything you read on the Internet. Sincerely yours.

Don’t forget you now need to have a privacy policy on all your AdSense sites, this isn’t something that is optional, and when you agreed to the new terms, you agreed to do this too. I don’t know how strict they will be policing this new change to the terms, but it is always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting your AdSense account. You don’t want a black mark against your account because you haven’t done this, I will be making the changes to all mine this week.