I know many aspiring web entrepreneurs face this dilemma all the time: should I build a single site that makes me $200 a day from Adsense or 200 smaller (mini) sites that each makes just $1 a day?

The truth is, it’s not that easy to have a site that makes $1 a day. You can’t spend just 20 minutes setting up a made-for-adsense site, submit it to the search engines, and expect it to earn $1 a day for the rest of your life. More likely, the site will languish in cyberspace, earning a few pennies here and there, but it will never get enough visitors to average $1 a day. To have a site that makes $1 a day requires a fair amount of content-building and promotion. That’s not even to mention the costs of registering, renewing, and hosting 200 domain names.

Most of us will probably end up doing something in between– building a handful of quality sites that can be maintained and promoted on a regular basis. It would help to focus on topics that interest you, so that the tasks of content- and link-building will not become too much of a burden.

The bottom line: whether you decide to build one big site or 200 minisites to earn $200 a day from Adsense, don’t expect it to be a cakewalk. It’s getting tougher and tougher these days to make money through contextual advertising networks like Adsense and YPN. But then again, I know people — too bad I’m not one of them– who are raking in over $10,000 a month from Adsense. These success stories are a great source of inspiration (if not income) to me.

Sharing knowledge on the web can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to article directories to be read by the general public and possibly re-published on other web sites.

Appended to the end of your article is a resource box containing a brief promotional message linking to your web site. Webmasters who wish to reprint your article on their sites are required to include your resource box along with any live links to your site.

For example, an article written by me might have the following resource box:

Article by Oudam Em. Oudam is the webmaster of UnlimitedTraffic.net, a site that offers a wide range of effective and affordable website traffic building solutions. Visit his site for more free tips and tutorials on optimizing and promoting your site.

The benefit that you get from your article is two-fold. First, your article will be read by visitors to the article directories. If they find it helpful and interesting, they will likely visit your web site to see what else you had to offer. Second, webmasters who find your article useful to their visitors may re-publish it on their sites, giving your article additional exposure.

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By Jim Hedger (c) 2006

Don’t be evil. That is the kernel of Google’s public corporate ethics statement from front to finish. While it is a three word chant of a corporate policy, it is, nevertheless the three words Google uses to differentiate itself and its decisions. Those three words set Google apart from its ethically wordier competition, holding itself up to scrutiny under a higher standard. When the majority of Internet users think search, they immediately think about Google.

As the world’s most popular search engine, Google is, for the most part, thought of most kindly by most of the people, virtually all of the time. People trust it. Businesses are built around it and in business, trust is everything. So what would a reasonable person think when the largest entity in search advertising is said to betray the trust of its advertisers from time to time?

If history is to be a guide, the answer is a rhetorical nothing. Though countless articles have appeared in the mainstream media and tech-press, most reasonable people have absolutely no idea that clíck fraud is an issue.

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