Prosper with Virtual Real Estate and Digital Assets – Part 1

A growing but underground movement is quickly gaining steam online. Others outside the Internet business world may be missing this expanding industry.

Since the dot.com boom and its bust many people outside the Internet marketing world have understandably been skeptical about the net being a realistic path to business and financial wealth. However, almost a billion people around the world use the net as an information gathering, ecommerce, or, more recently, social networking resource. This critical mass of worldwide Internet traffic means that billions of dollars in online business are being generated by a variety of different Internet industries.

Nevertheless, even some Internet business owners aren't really sold on the medium's potential. Despite the seemingly boundless potential online marketing opportunities, all too often many netpreneurs complain that they aren't realizing their dreams of a viable Internet business.

By contrast, many people choose to invest in real estate. Real estate is a stable, reliable, and usually profitable investment. The people invested in real estate would probably scoff at any comparison of the value of net-based assets against actual real estate.

Could you convince Donald Trump that internet-based virtual real estate might be as valuable as traditional real estate? But when you factor the billions of dollars Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo! are generating with their digital assets into the argument, even the Donald would give this booming industry another look-and probably already is.

With some savvy planning, many people may see wealth from online digital assets in the near future. In the next three weeks, I will reflect on how digital assets can begin to build a virtual real estate empire for you in some creative ways that may even rival traditional real estate. First, let's define virtual real estate and digital assets.

Virtual real estate, or a VRE site, is a term coined by the online sales success John Reese. Reese is known for his legendary one million dollar sales day during which he sold his Traffic Secrets course. He also covers industries with promising virtual real estate potential in his monthly membership site, The Reese Report. You can read my review of the Reese Report at... www.searchengineplan.com/seo-reviews/reesereportreview.htm

VRE sites, according to Reese, are websites that become valuable because they can carry and be monetized with Google Adsense(tm) or the Yahoo! Publisher's Network (or YPN advertising network). The Virtual Real Estate or VRE business sector is becoming a burgeoning industry online. This began in earnest once Google started to allow website owners or publishers to carry Adsense(tm) contextual-based ads on their sites.

In the past, if you had a site that wasn't a viable ecommerce site, you were out of luck doing business online. There were only a few other ways to make money online such as selling on eBay or promoting affiliate programs. Running a business based on ad revenue was really the domain of major traffic sites like the MSNs, Googles, and Yahoo!s of the world.

The tide has turned and now small website owners can make significant income by placing Google Adsense(tm) or Yahoo! Publishers Network (YPN) ads on their sites. The VRE industry is more than a cottage industry. I have read reports from reliable sources that claim Google presently generates about 40% - 50% of its ad revenue from Adsense(tm). According to investment and stock information reported on the Yahoo! Financial site, Google generated over $6.1 billion in 2005. Since Google is on target to be a $7.5 billion company, you do the math. A recent report by Business 2.0 magazine stated, "Adsense alone is expected to generate sales of $4 billion this year."

This means some savvy web marketers will become millionaires marketing and reselling Adsense(tm) ads and related services. One such person is the Adsense(tm) Go To Guru, Joel Comm. Comm is one of the most successful netpreneurs to profit and then leverage the earning potential of the Adsense(tm) windfall. Comm used extensive research on his sites with Adsense(tm) presentation to develop Adsense best practices to maximize the earning power of the ads.

Joel recounts how he started out only making less than 10 dollars a day in Adsense(tm) and later was able to make a six-figure income on Google's ad program. Next, Comm wrote an Adsense ebook that became a best seller on Click Bank. He then leveraged his knowledge to write a print version of the book to become an Amazon, New York Times, and Time magazine bestseller-moving over a reputed four million copies of his book! Joel Comm's insights are now standard Adsense(tm) conventional wisdom used by millions of sites to generate more click-throughs. You can read a review of Joel's Adsense Book at... www.searchengineplan.com/seo-reviews/joelcomm.htm

On the other hand, many Internet purists have disdain for the VRE gold rush and see it as fools' gold. They make a point that too many Adsense(tm) supported sites are cluttering up the Internet with useless, valueless, and duplicate content. Google's criteria even forbids people from starting sites just for the purpose of generating Adsense(tm) revenue. Furthermore, respected Internet marketers like John Humprey have opined in recent months that his Content Desk Team feels traditional Adsense sponsored sites are dead, and instead, he promotes what he calls "authority sites."

In the second part of this series, we will discuss Google's attempt to stem the tide of quasi-content VRE sites and YPN's rise to become a serious player in the publisher's ad reseller industry. We will discuss if VRE sites are a long-term business model that is here to stay or a temporary phenomena in online marketing. Until then, I hope and pray you are always on top in your business and personal life.

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Kamau Austin is a stay-at-home dad and Searchpreneur(c). He is the author of “Always On Top – How to Get Your Website on Top of the Search Engines Every Time!” See his book at: www.AlwaysOnToptheBook.com. He is also a nationally recognized writer who has been featured on the American Urban Radio Network (AURN) and XM Satellite Radio. He has also been featured in both numerous community newspapers and national magazines such as Black Enterprise and Fortune Magazine's Small Business. Find out more about Virtual Real Estate with Blogs, RSS, and search engines at www.SearchEnginePlan.com