Based on my research, this seems to be the basic principle that website owners have been following to get passive income online:

• Get many people to come to your website
• Get them to click on your Adsense links

Sounds simple enough. Get people into your website from Google search, then link out to an Adsense Ad. Search In, Adsense Out.

Practically applying it to get sufficient commendable income, however, can be quite a challenge.

The first problem is how to get many visitors to your website.

That’s where Search Engine Optimization comes in. However, this is really easier said that done. It’s a bit of an artwork. You basically have to read the mind of an Internet user. What keywords would he use? Why would he visit your website? Do you have the content go get people interested enough to get to your website?

Basically, your goal is visibility. You have to be seen. You can do this using SEO or using traditional brand-building methods. Tell your friends, family and colleagues. If they have websites, politely ask if you could link with each other.

For those lucky few that are already on top of the search engines, this is not a problem. Others (including myself) would have to work hard at it. Look at FilipinoLinks.com. It’s been around for a very long time and has made quite a foundation. It would not be too difficult for its owners to tweak the website for SEO.

Experts have varied opinions on what to put in a website. Some say, put relevant important content, with around 500-1000 words on each of your website. Some say provide simple 300 word news posts.

Another option to get clicks would be to advertise online for keywords. Adwords is an example of a tool that can allow you to do this. There will be marketing expenses in this scenario. The goal here is to get more Adsense income than Adwords Expenses, which is really basic business sense. This is easier said than done, I tried it and got dismal results.

The next problem would be how to get visitors to click on Adsense links.

Well, the first thing that needs to be done is to get an Adsense account. It’s pretty easy to setup. After that, you need to put the Adsense links on your website. There are people who say make it blend it when the rest of your pages. Here, on my website, you can see my Adsense Ads that seem to be part of the overall theme.

Other experts say the more noticeable the advertisements, the more they will be clicked. In this case, the Ads stand out prominently, with a different, and sometimes contrasting color scheme. One tip given was actually position the Google Ad right next to an image/picture. Viewers tend to click on picture links, so more income potential income there.

What does this all mean for a Filipino Entrepreneur?

In my point of view, it means opportunities. Although I have just started experimenting on all of this myself, there seems to be a real possibility of gaining a little revenue. For example, I started this website (last January) and have,in my first month I gained US$7 from Adsense.

It’s not much but consider this:

• My expenses so far have been the webhosting (US$4 monthly), and domain name (US$3 for one year, got it at a discount).
• If I continue getting US$7 a month, that would be, US$84 a year.
• My year’s hosting would be US$48
• My theoretical income for one year would be US$33.

There are other costs, of course, from writing the content for this website, electricity, less time to do other things, etc. I didn’t include it yet. If you had pre-existing content, this wouldn’t matter to you. Just upload it and you should be ready.

For example, if you had a song lyrics database, you could find a pretty reliable web developer, have him upload your database, and include AdSense. Optimize it for search and you should soon get some revenue. It will probably not be big, but enough to get you interested.

I remember on my last test with the wordtracker application, “Pinoy Ako Lyrics” were some of the top keywords I found. People were actually looking for lyrics of Filipino songs. Since new songs come out every month, whoever gets the lyrics out soonest would be found earlier.

If you had a database of all Philippine Lotto Results ever since it began, you could probably have a statistics analyzer custom-made from your website. It could give suggested lotto numbers based on historical info. That would be something a lot of people would go to.

There are probably other more interesting opportunities for the web-savvy Pinoy entrepreneur. As long as you get people to your website, and get them to click on an advertisement, there will be revenue.