Looking for New Niches? Try Current TV

I was going through my bookmarks this morning, which exceeded the length of the screen (which I hate because I've been just too lazy to organize them on my home computer) and I came across Current.TV. Current.tv is a unique website that does little TV shows about Google's Zeitgeist. If you don't know what the Zeitgeist is, it shows what's hot and what's not in the world of keywords. If you're in the need for new niches and are just fresh out of ideas and don't want to pay someone to cook you up some freshy's, go to the Zeitgeist.

Suprisingly, you can find Current.TV on your local cable provider (actually, maybe that's not that suprising). Either way, some of the skits they put up are hilarious and you get to find out what keywords are pulling searches in the world. Good job guys.

I have some pretty cool stuff in my bookmarks, so I'll be checking it out a little bit more and post some other neat sites I've found over the years.

Do make the most from Adsense?

Interesting post over at the DP forums where Twan asks: Do you make the most from Adsense? Out of the 27 pollers, almost 75% said they do.

My next question would be why? Why do you only have one revenue stream for your sites. What if Google decided to shut-down adsense? What if you had your account closed? What if...

Why not diversify? There are so many other methods to make money online, its ridiculous. I once started a membership site and made $10,000 in 24 hours. That was fun and had nothing to do with adsense.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand Adsense's place and I personally have adsense on a decent amount of sites, but to say that adsense is where I make most of my money would be completely false. Think outside the box a little bit here. The reason adsense is so popular is the monkey like work it involves to make money from it.

Try making money from:

- Text Link Ads
- Pre-Sell Pages
- Content Deals
- Memberships
- Other Contextual Networks
- Affiliate Marketing
- Dropshipping
- Your Own Product

I'm sure there a lot ton more, but those are just some of the ideas I had right off the top of the 'ol nogun.

Importance of a Catch-All

I can NEVER understand why business don't have this setup. Ok...ok...I can see the obvious - more spam, but that's not always true. Let me vent a little bit about my frustrations.

I was emailing a few local web design firms, seeing if they'd be interested in a mutual partnership with my company, SEM Inc. After the first 6 emails I sent out, 2 of them returned. 1 of them was the actual email listed on the site, the other was under the WHOis information.

I understand needing to remove people from your company email list, but if you do so can you PLEASE either setup a forward or have, at the least, someone to get all the emails that are sent your website, regardless of what is put in-front of the @.

What these firms don't realize is they're potentially losing out on a lot of money. Very sad.

Get started, no matter what time it is

I've posted this before, but it always urks me, so I always bring it up. How come more people don't continue to build, build, build?

SO MANY PEOPLE still consider the internet as just a quasi-get-rich-quick scheme. Throw up a site, get traffic to it - who cares about design, quality or anything else. The first person to a million bucks win.

I continue to build my network of sites because I know that the internet is here to stay. In 5-10-15 years from now, wouldn't it be nice to have a network of 500 sites in every large niche possible? Why not? Even though you might not know how you're going to monetize it know, you'll still be able to leverage the content and authority of the site.

I recently just launched MakeUp Journal. It's a blog about Makup...duh! :) But more importantly, its another website in the arsenal. Another site that will make money in time. Right now, I'm pumping money into it, plus a ton of other sites and applications. In 5 years, I won't be even 30, but I'll have a huge network of sites I can leverage to build out offline profits.

So get started building your VRE network. And when I say VRE (Virtual Real Estate), I don't mean shit sites built only for adsense, but quality sites that AOL, Yahoo! or another large corporation would want to purchase over time.

Why I do It

At one of my forums a poster asked me why I created the site. I told them that firstly, I was a fan of the band, but secondly, I like to create social sites that let people interact with each other.

At the core of the internet is the interaction and social aspect of it. I mean, how cool is it to be in a time and place in the world where we can learn so much from places so far away from us. I could be reading a fascinating person's blog that lives in India, learning new PHP codes from someone in the Philippines or reading about someone's EuroTrip in Italy. It's endless.

I do like making money and I always try to monetize every site I start. That being said, every site I start I try and provide something valuable to the people visiting them. If its free tickets to a concert, free ebooks or free advice, I'm always trying to provide something to my visitors.

If you're new to making websites online, always remember that. Provide quality information, services and designs for your visitors. Make your sites as easy as possible for people to interact and socialize with others. Every site I start has some sort of social interaction integrated into it. It's one of the most important parts of your site and you should never neglact adding it.

Nine Inch Nails Forum Launch

I've launched another forum recently - Nine Inch Nails Forum.

This one isn't taking off as fast as the Incubus Forum is, but I have faith that in a couple months, it will be a great resource for fans on NIN.

I'm planning on a few more band forums launching in the next couple months and also have started a blog network. I've in the works right now of developing a Make Up blog and Knife blog. Those should launch by the end of next week. By the end of this year, I hope to have a nice little network of 100 sites, ranching from blogs, forums and general information sites like my Cruise Ships site.

Carpe Diem!

Incubus Forum Launched

Monday, I lauched the Incubus Forum. So far, its starting to gain a little traction, because of a of some creative thinking. I started a "Most Posts" contest for whoever had the most posts by August 1st. The response has been excellent and should really continue to grow as the weeks go by.

I see so many forums launch that are completely empty. Most of the time, the forum is on a broad topic that already has huge forums offering great information already. One way to get more visitors to your forum is to offer some sort of compensation for sticking around and posting.

When launching your next forum, really think about what the forum members would really like to have and try and offer them that. Even a little bit goes a long way.

Linked In is cool

I FINALLY got setup on LinkedIn. It is actually pretty neat site...like everyone was saying. I sent out about a hundred emails to friends, family and colleagues and I received a decent response back from everyone, even a few recommendations! :)

What's so great about LinkedIn?
It really is an excellent tool to find people. I'm definitely going to use it to find quality designers, as that's what on my agenda for the next few months.

If you're on LinkedIn and want to get in my network, go ahead and go to my account and request it. If I've worked with you in the past, I'd be more then happy to do one of those neat recommendations for you!