So, what should you add into your privacy policy page?

Google has already provided a guideline about this here.

Because publisher sites and laws across countries vary, we’re unable to suggest specific privacy policy language. However, you may wish to review resources such as the Network Advertising Initiative, or NAI, which suggests the following language for data collection of non-personally identifying information:

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

This is an example provided by Google so that we have something to refer to when we make our own privacy policy. You may just copy, paste and modify to suit your website’s needs.

You may also refer to what I’ve written in my privacy policy page:

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. We also use third party advertisements on it4money.com to support our site. Some of these companies (such as Google through Google Adsense Program) may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by Google, click here.

What is Interest-Based Advertising as new system for Adsense?

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category.

In short, it works by collecting information of what types of webpages the visitors has visited, basically through cookies and use this information to provide interest-relavant ads to the visitors no matter what site they visit next.

For example, if you surf more on gaming, you will see gaming ads everywhere then.

It’s an extremely great idea, isn’t it?

Step 2 – Research on the popularity, competition and profitability of your chosen topic and decide whether you should continue with the topic or not. I would recommend you to use Adwords Keywords Research Tool.

If lets say your topic is not in demand or perhaps there are many competitors providing the same information about this topic, you should go back to Step 1 and think again for another niche topic.

Step 3 – Purchase a domain name and hosting space. I would recommend Lonex Web Hosting, offering package as low as 4.95 per month.

Step 4 – Install a Blog. I would recommend Wordpress.

Step 5 – Choose the most suitable theme for your blog.

Step 6 – Research what plugins are required and install all of them that suit your needs.

Step 7 – Create an email subscription form for readers to subsribe to you. You can either use feedburner or some other email subscription plugins. Why do you need this? You can always keep track of your readers once they have subscribe to you, and you can also promote your product or affiliate’s product regularly via your email list.

Step 8 – Create appropriate pages such as about page, contact page, archive page and sitemap. Your first post of your blog is also very important. Read How to Write Your First Blog Post or About Page.

Step 9 – Start writing contents.

Step 10 – After you have written 10 posts, you can start monetize your blog, by PPC such as Google Adsense, affiliate programs such as ClickBank, or other ways of monetizing your blog.

Step 11 – Key step to success! – Market your blog. Promote your blog. Drive traffic to your blog. There are hundreds or even thousands of ways to market your blog. Basically bloggers promote their blogs through social bookmarking, link exchanging, leaving comments in other blogs, forum posting, search engine optimization and many others. The strategies mentioned above are all free. If you willing to pay, there are many ways to buy traffic such as using Google Adwords. There is no 100% guidelines to this step. Some bloggers may even have their own secrets in generating traffics. It’s the key to win your competitors.

Step 12 – Once you have sufficient traffic, test your monetization with all types of ways that can make you money. Try all PPC(Pay Per Click) programs, affiliate programs and direct ad sales and observe which give you the highest profit. You can run PPC programs and affiliate programs together in your blog, but make sure you have read their Program Policies. For instance, Using Adsense with ClickBank will not be a problem as long as their ads do not look similar to each other.

Step 13 – Your passion of blogging! – MAINTAIN, maintain and maintain. Keep writing useful articles in your blog. Be creative and unique in both writing and marketing your blog. Find new ways to generate more traffics. To make money effectively and efficiently, always test your blog with latest monetization programs.

This is what I do to make money online. If all the steps are followed properly, I can guarantee you that the first thousand dollars will be soon falling into your pocket.

New Generation of Keyword Research Tool

The commission given can be up to 75%. Repeat, it’s 75%! Why? Because a vendor who willing to pay that much commission don’t have to think much on how to market his/her product. Those who promote the product will do his/her job allow him to make money without putting a finger on his/her keyboard.

Four most dominant affiliate programs available for us are as below:

ClickBank

– Alvin’s choice –
Commissions as much as 75% per sale. Also earn recurring revenue from subscription products. Up to 10,000 products you can promote and earn money from. Easy purchase system – Single-page order form optimized for digital product conversions. Real time sales stats, with ROI and campaign management tools. Direct deposit of your earnings, now with weekly payouts! For more information, visit ClickBank.com.

Google Affiliate Network

It’s previously named DoubleClick which was one of the largest affiliate networks. It was then acquired by Google in March 2008. It’s so new and I have yet to try it out. I will try it very soon as one of the top bloggers, Darren Rowse is currently using it as one of his affiliate programs. More information on Google Affiliate Network.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction is a global leader in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, and Search Engine Marketing. More information on CJ.com.

Amazon Affiliate

On the banner of its Amazon Affiliate page, there is phrase “earn up to 15% in referrals by advertising Amazon Products”. However, there are still many people making lots of money from this affiliate program.

Conclusion

Earning from affiliate programs is totally different from direct ad sales or PPC. Most of the bloggers will quit direct ad sales and PPC when they find that affiliate programs are actually generating better profit for them than the other two. There are many other affiliate programs I’ve not mentioned such as Market Leverage and Hydra Network. You should try every single one of them to determine which gives you the highest profit. For those of you who have not try any affiliate program yet, I would truly encourage you to give ClickBank a try as it has very easy-to-use user interface and convenience transaction system.

Affiliating is another field of knowledge in the portal of Internet business. I’m so agitated to study more about it. Leave me comments if you have any opinions on affiliate programs.

If I am a reader of your blog, I will want to look for:

What topics will you cover in your blog?

Tell your readers what you will be blogging about. Will you be blogging about your lifes? Or perhaps about your business or certain topics of interest? Tell them.

For it4money.com, as what I have written on my title banner, I will be blogging about tips in making money online, featuring tips on blogging, affiliating and ebook marketing.

Who you are?

From the reader’s point of view, I would want to know who you are, how old are you, what is your current occupation and what qualification you have acquired. It is crucial to tell who you are so that your readers will trust you better. Showing your face in your first blog post or often in the about page can also increase the credibility of your blog.

Why should your readers listen to you?

Show some proofs or tell your readers what is so unique about your blog, so that they know why they should listen to you. Most of the readers are very realistic indeed. If they don’t see any reason why they should read your blog, they will just leave and most probably won’t come back to your blog anymore. Show as much proofs as you can to prove your strengths and familiarity of your blog’s topics. Be sure you write them honestly. You will probably lose your readers forever if they find that you are actually cheating them.

How to subscribe to you or contact you?

Show links of your blog’s feed so that your readers can subscribe to you to receive the latest updates of your blog. Create a contact me page for readers to contact you easily. Always accept their suggestions, stories and questions.

Look at your first blog post and about page now and see if they are suitable for your current blog’s status. It doesn’t matter how old your blog is, you can always edit them to see if they suit your blog.