A lot of people have approached me about making it big on the internet. They’ve heard of the Jerry Yangs, the Jeff Bezoses and others who have made billions on the web.

Truth be told, these are the very tiny, almost non-existent, exceptions to the rule. Most people who enter the business never make it, especially when they enter a niche not related to porn or gambling. The web business is dynamic and challenging endeavor that requires an enormous degree of creativity and luck. There is no magic formula, and a lot of trial-and-error is necessary.

But not to get discouraged! While few people, including this blogger, have struck it rich, many have been able to make a decent living off the web. In fact, tens of thousands of people make a living selling on eBay and other marketplaces.

I think the key is stop looking for an easy way to make a lot of money. Instead, do what you love. The online business is fiercely competitive, where you have to go up against people from all over the world. It takes an incredible amount of learning, tedious work and inspiration to gain the edge over your competitors. It’s hard to get inspired if you don’t do what you love and, instead, focus on getting rich.

This is a question that has often crossed my mind. There are many online valuation tools that attempts to estimate what your site is worth based on its Google PageRank, traffic rankings, niche, age of domain, and so on and so forth.

These tools, while interesting and entertaining, are mostly useless and should not be used, even as only one of several factors, to appraise a site.

It goes without saying that a site is worth only as much as someone is willing to pay for it. But how do you know how much to ask for your site? What is the ballpark figure?

One method is to price it as you would a brick-and-mortar business. You could, for instance, price your site at 3 times your annual net profits. At 3x net profit, you could ask for $36,000 for a site that earns $1,000 a month (minus all advertising expenses).

But a website isn’t a brick-and-mortar. It does not have tangible assets that you can liquidate to recoup some of the loss should your online business fail. Therefore, the value of a website should be adjusted (i.e. downward) accordingly.

Another consideration is that the web business is generally much more fluid than a brick and mortar one. More than the current profit, one should also consider the ever-changing nature of the internet technology. A site that is useful to a lot of people today may become a thing of the past the next year. So, one must take into account the risk associated with this and the amount of work needed to keep up with the trends so that your site does not become obsolete. Therefore, the price should be adjusted downward further.

I have dozens of domains registered Godaddy.com. If you’re like me, you probably get a notice every week from Godaddy telling you which domains are coming up for renewal. Here are some codes that could save you some money for new registrations and renewals. Some work and some don’t. Please report through the comments.

gdp1013a - 20% off on order $75 or more

OYH3 - $2.50 off, $7.45 any .COM

BTPS7 - 20% any order of $50 or more

BTPS255 - 25% off any order of $100 or more

OYH1 - 10% off whatever

OYH2 - $5 off a $30 purchase

BTPS50 - 50% off .co.uk domains

BTPS4 - 10% off anything

chill1 - 10% off

chill2 - $5 off $30

chill3 - $7.45 .coms

hash1 - 10% off

hash2 - $5 off $30

hash3 - $7.45 .com registration

Many internet marketers advise against outlinking as it provides an opportunity for visitors to leave your site. The idea is to get people to stay on your website as long as possible by reducing the number of doorways for people to exit. With billions of web pages competing for only millions of eyeballs, this would seem like a reasonable advice.

The other school of thought is to link freely to other sites, without regard to how long people are likely to stay on your site. The idea of not linking to other sites is contradictory to the spirit of the internet.

So what is the correct approach?

I suppose it all depends on the nature of your site. For commercial site, you only compete for people’s eyeballs but also their pocketbooks. Therefore, it’s prudent to avoid linking to other sites unless when absolutely necessary. If you own a network of sites, link it to another one of your sites ensures that the potential stays in your network.

For informational sites such as blogs, the rules becomes less stringent. If the main objective of the site is share information, one should be less stingy about linking other sites. On this blog, for example, I have no qualms about publishing other people’s articles (along with links to their site) when I feel that they would be useful to my visitors. Of course, I’d rather have you reading my blog rather than someone else’s, but if you adopt the view that your blog is a hub to share idea and connect with other people, you should not be stingy about linking to other sites. If your motive is simply to share and socialize, rather to preach or stand out as an authority on some topic, you may win more friends by adopting a spirit of sharing.

That’s not to say that you should go overboard with outlinking, even for an informational site. That there are billions of pages on the net does not mean that they should all be looked at. A good rule of thumb is to link only when you feel that the resource can enrich, deepen or broaden your visitors’ understanding without overtaxing their brain cells. From an SEO standpoint, excessive linking dilutes the value of each link on a page, and if you are trying to make some money selling text links on your blog, some advertisers may be turned off by them.