Paid Advertising

"I am currently making more off of paid and offline advertising than I do with free search result placement. Sometimes with some good serps, I make more that way. But my point is if search engines die, my business will still be there and flourishing.
Without search engines, I am making just below 1,000 a day profit.

When I see those update threads I just want to cringe.... Most people put their eggs in one basket and have no one but themselves to blame for that.

Its the free search engine traffic that got me started. But I did not let it stop there. I poured a lot of that back into paid online advertising and offline advertising.

I guess the bottom line, is to make your three year plan be as if free traffic is the thing of the past. That would be my advice.

I am doing so well in affiliate marketing that I am about to jump to the other side of the fence and actually have affiliates working for me.

Bottom line: DIVERSIFY Sites and Advertising Sources." JaySmith

Diversify

"As long as you diversify your sites AND your advertising sources, I can only see the money growing. You will never hear me cry in any of the SE update threads... The main reason I won't is that I treat those results as gravy." JaySmith

Watch your Back

"Continue to keep one, two or three steps ahead of your competition at all times. Ride new trends, even create some new trends. Always look back in the rear view mirror because there will always be someone there to take over your spot as 'hub' of whatever." davewray

Content with Personality

"Sites that put a unique spin on a topic or add personality tend to attract more repeat visitors." Margarita

Become a Niche Authority

"I fell into my niche by accident. I'm at the top of the serps not by SEO, but by simply having worked on my content, become an authority in my niche and generated a lot of regular traffic. In my case there is no shortage of quality advertisers willing to bid to be on my site. I'm also an adwords avertiser so I know what the keyword normally costs, and I'm getting WAY more than that!" david_uk

Niche is Evergreen

"It's my opinion that a carefully crafted niche site can run almost on autopilot, with very little, if any updating, and remain profitable for years." ken_b

A Content Source

"People email me info and I add it to my site. Works great, draws a bunch of traffic, isn't really that much work. Pays modestly well." ken_b

Write Articles on the Fringes

"But there may well be some aspects of your topic that are seldom discussed, or even thought about. Stuff on the fringes, stuff you might not see on every other site in your category.

Now go look at your site, are all those aspects you thought up there?

Now sit down and write, or rewrite, some relevant pages." ken_b

Good Keywords

" use your imagination.

What if you were an advertiser, for what kind of clicks would you be prepared to pay money?

The answer is that advertisors are likely to pay more money for clicks from people that are ready to order their products. People that are ready to order products are people that just have been informed properly by a quality content website and are satisfied by the information they received. So my advice would be to write an online article about something you are a real expert on. Really try to write the best article on the entire Internet about this topic. Be specific and targeted. The more you focus on very specific details, the better. In the meanwhile, be sure there are enough advertisers related to this topic.

If your article is ready, publish it and paste your adsense-code. You might find your high paying keyword this way. It worked for me..." humblebeginnings

Reinvesting AdSense

"All my money gets put back out to writers so they can write me more interesting articles." rj87uk

Motivation

"My cheques usually go straight in the bank.

I have just got back from a holiday to Greece, Italy, Switzerland and Dubai. I had a great time thanks to Adsense.

I think it was even better that I was making money while I swam, baked and had fun in the Mediterranean sun ;)" bts111

Reinvesting AdSense Money

" don't think this is quite what you mean, but my AS money goes on more and better hosting, development time, and new (photography) equipment to let my site(s) grow.

Through sound investment, all of these are really quite fun and things that I would continue to do more slowly as a public service and for fun if AS wasn't there." DamonHD

Defeat Smart Pricing

"Product reviews are another goody." Atomic

Present a New Angle

"You'll need to offer something different - an 'angle' in order to get noticed. When we started our site more than 5 years ago, we had a lot of content and features that weren't available anywhere else. So we got noticed, and linked to. You'll need to find something that we (and our competitors) aren't doing, if you want to make an impact.

We've got a small experimental site in another niche altogether (non travel) that earns more than 10 times as much per page view as our UK Travel site. As a result, we're currently diversifying into other things - we're finding niches that seem to have better earnings potential, and less competition.

Better to dominate a small area - and then branch out, than to fail to get noticed in a more general area." 7_Driver

Let Users Submit your Content

"My site (or network of sites) is a typical example of database driven, user submitted information. The key is to arrange the info submitted by users so others can easily find what they are looking for. It is not easy and certainly not just a few hours of work / day, it is an entire process, our job actually consists in programming, organizing, categorizing, validating and further optimizing the info submitted by users (members)." zoltan

Database Driven Sites!

"mine was a fluke, I had an 'in' in a specific industry, put the site online and it hit a nerve and took off like a rocket. Then it evolved over 7 years and I realized people weren't getting what they wanted easily just like they don't on the search engines so I started mining the data for them with one click search entries into the database and the search engine picked up on all these links and it just keeps escalating.

It all starts with a SUBMIT form tied to a database, my visitors actually built the database and I'm just the programmer. If you can find a way to get people interested enough to submit data to your site, you're half way to a database driven site as getting other people to do your work for you is the hard part." incrediBILL

Database Driven Site

"My site is actually a database displayed as a directory but I can organize and re-organize all my data into useful lists for my visitors based on narrowing the content displaying to more specific topics. I've pre-sifted thru most of the useful keywords and search terms and made 1 link searches so visitors can get very specific things with a single click.

Although my site may be about 'widgets' you can also find lists of 'red widgets' or 'alabama widgets' or 'new york widget repair' and on and on and on. Gives me a multitude of entry points into the search engine and everyone finds just what they want in a few clicks." incrediBILL

Enjoying Feedback Games

"The point is not that you need the most complex support system in the world, but that if you find ways to construct feedback systems for your writing, you'll likely find the task of writing more enjoyable, even for areas that are not implicitly interesting to you." ronburk

Enjoying Feedback Games

"The point is not that you need the most complex support system in the world, but that if you find ways to construct feedback systems for your writing, you'll likely find the task of writing more enjoyable, even for areas that are not implicitly interesting to you." ronburk

Make Work More Enjoyable

" Dividing the work to be done in different ways can have large effects on its enjoyability (e.g., 'mornings I do research and define work items, afternoons I build content to check off work items, and the last half-hour of the day is studying traffic trends.')." ronburk