Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
What is the simplest way to make passive money online?
Everyone knows that there is LOTS of money being made online by people all around
the world on a daily basis. Every year the amount of money made online grows exponen-
tially and hasn't showed any sign of slowing down, even during this terrible recession. And
even though everyone knows that money is being made online, they don't understand HOW
money is being made online.
So how exactly are people making money online?
To understand one method of making money online, let's examine one of the most profitable
companies in the world: Google. Google commands the most search engine traffic in the
world, and as a result is in a very powerful position. Why?
Well let's pretend that we are Nike. Because we are Nike, we want our website to rank #1
for shoes. If we rank #1 for shoes, we are going to get a lot of traffic for people searching for
shoes to our website (roughly 42% of searchers to be exact). If we rank #2, we will only get
about 25% of that traffic. At #3, about 10%. After that, the numbers start to get pretty low.
You may as well not even exist on the Internet if you are on page #2 of the search results.
The exact search item "shoes" is searched for roughly 1,160,000 times per month. If Nike
is at rank #1 in Google and getting 42% of that traffic, that is going to translate into almost
500,000 visitors to the Nike website that are interested in the word "shoes". That is going to
translate into A LOT of sales. If it is sitting in spot #3, that would be a little over 100,000
visitors. Still a lot of sales, but MUCH lower. If they aren't in the top 10, they are missing
out on a lot of action, and their company will miss out on a lot of potential sales.
And because Google controls where a website ranks, they are in a position of power. If they
decide that Adidas is a more relevant search result for shoes than Nike is, Adidas will make
much more money online than Nike does on the Internet. And Google has that power over
every industry in the world!
So how does that ranking power translate into money for Google? Well, if you ever search
for anything in Google, you may notice that the top two or three results have a slightly dif-
ferently colored background. This is because those are paid search results (as opposed to the
natural results below them, which are referred to as organic results). These top (differently
colored) results are paid for by those companies so that their links can rank at the top of
Google search engine results. Google is basically a lead generator to lots and lots of com-
