FindTheBest.com (FTB) launched in May 2009 and after 2 years they are getting more than 1,5 million monthly visitors.

According to the founder Kevin O’Connor they don’t pay for the traffic – it’s all search engine traffic and referrals.

So they must be doing something right.

What could we – “normal publishers” – learn from FindTheBest.com’s approach to online business?

1. Provide value

FTB is not really great in the content department – by that I mean the quality and content of the written text. If you scroll down on the baby stroller page you’ll see a very simple intro text which could be outsourced for maybe $5.

So the textual content is not really the secret of success of FTB, it’s the usefulness of other features.

FTB allows you to narrow down your research by immediately getting a list of best baby strollers (and gazillion other things of course).

The filters on the left allow you to narrow down your choices even more. Each product page offers tons of information which is very well presented and easy to understand.

So the main value of FTB is in many different ways of comparing different products and services, you can even find which bottled water has the most Chloroform for example.

The possibilities seem to be endless as each category may have different comparisons and different features to look for – and yet FTB is looking to cover most of them.

2. Be credible

The reason why FTB is becoming more and more popular is because they are working hard to get their data from reliable sources. These include government websites and authority websites like Amazon.com and others.

They also list them on main category pages and link to official websites on specific pages. You’ll also find phone numbers and addresses of stores that sell these products.

Since so much information online is rehashed and rewritten without any credits given to original author, listing the sources gives you extra credibility and builds trust.

3. Offer value before looking for profit

FTB is building massive amount of pages and providing tons of value – and not making a dime. Mr. O’Connor plans to keep it that way for a while.

I  imagine Google Adsense team must be phoning him quite often.

But since they’re from the USA where profit seems to be the main reason for getting up in the morning, I am sure they will monetize heavily at some point.

I just hope they’ll be more useful and transparent with ads than consumersearch.com for example.

4. Offer something unique

There are many product comparison sites and this part of FTB is not so unique. But did you know you can even compare tennis clubs?

I haven’t seen anything like it online and I am quite familiar with the tennis niche. There are tons of other unique topics and I invite you to spend some time on FTB and see how you can benefit from all the categories and filtering options.

FTB also allows you to add and edit your own content,  embed their content on your website and much more.

In the end, see if you can learn something new from a slightly different approach to providing value to online visitors.

It’s not only tons of text – useful comparison engines and filters can be the reason why visitors like your site and help increase its popularity.

And you don’t need a few millions of dollars of startup money – you can easily outsource a more simple (similar) software for a few hundred dollars.

The difference and the key advantage of design contest websites and the usual outsourcing through freelancer.com or elance.com is that you get multiple designs to choose from.

When you’re using the freelancer, you choose one of the providers based on their portfolio – but you cannot really know if they will »guess« what you had in mind for your site design.

With a design contest website, you’ll get multiple designs (logo, website, wordpress theme, …) and you can ask every provider to tweak their design until you like it or you can simply ignore and dismiss the ones you don’t like and eventually choose the best one.

It’s obviously a tough job for the providers as they have to work without a guarantee that they will be paid – but that’s life.

I’ve so far used two design contest websites:

1.  48hourslogo.com

I decided for a new logo and chose 48hourslogo.com for my test.

The minimum price you can set for a logo is $89 but I set mine to $99.

In about 6 hours the first logo samples started coming in. Some providers will upload a few variations of the logo while others only one.

Since the project ends here in 48 hours it’s crucial that you check your project often to give feedback to your designers and to see if there are any new designs.

I got over 20 logo designs in just over 24 hours and eventually chose one as the best one.

I am very satisfied with the quality of the offers I got and also with the short time to get my logo completed.

2. designcrowd.com (affiliate link)

Designcrowd.com is one of the top design contest websites where you can request different types of designs – see image below.

As you can see website design options range from $340 to $1040. I chose the default one for $740 which I upped to $850 and chose guaranteed payment.

Designcrowd.com offers full money back guarantee if you choose non-guaranteed payment – but they urge you to choose guaranteed payment as only that will attract the best designers.

I haven’t tested non-guaranteed payment but if someone did please share your experiences.

After you select the payment, you need to define your project – the more detailed info you share the better the chance that you’ll get a good design.

You can also select the duration of the project – the default time is 10 days.

Eventually you complete payment and your project is live and open to submissions.

I got designs from 11 designers – but the best two actually submitted their designs in the last 2 days.

These two were very good, about 5 or 6 were ok and a couple were poor.

The cool thing about designcrowd.com is that they also offer you a poll option where you can select certain designs, create a poll and then email your friends with the poll link or Tweet and share it on Facebook.

Here’s how nicely the poll looks in my account where I can see ratings and comments of everyone who shared their  vote.

Once you choose the winning design you still have 7 days to request any extra modifications to it before the project really ends.

One thing to keep in mind here is that you’ll receive ONLY a design – which means a picture or two (depending how many different pages you wanted designed) in png or psd format.

You’ll still need a coder to create a HTML + CSS for you. The coding cost me around $150 – I emailed one of the freelancers I worked with in the past.

Overall – I am very satisfied with the quality of the design I received from designcrowd.com (aff. link) but of course there’s no guarantee that you’ll get your perfect design.

The more examples of websites you include in your description, the better the chance that you’ll get what you want.

If you’re considering other design contest websites, then you might want to check some of the more popular ones like:
-    99designs.com
-    Crowdspring.com
-    Hatchwise.com
-    Designcontest.com
-    Logomyway.com

Or simply Google “design contest websites”…

The reason I wanted to use a password manager was because I often travel and my laptop is basically my office with all the information and passwords to my sites, logins (Google, Amazon affiliate program, …) and emails.

If someone stole my laptop, they would have easy access to all my login info.

Sure, you can protect your Windows with a password but that can be hacked rather easily.

After some researching and testing I’m now an official fan of the LastPass password manager.

What’s So Cool About LastPass?

The LastPass website explains all the features really well and simple so I’ll just describe in my own words how it works for me…

1. LastPass removes passwords from Firefox and Internet Explorer and encrypts it on your PC.

As you know, Firefox and IE and other browsers can store your passwords so you don’t have to type them every time you access your email or other login.

Of course, in case of a theft, that makes it even easier for a thief to get into your accounts and emails.

When you install Lastpass for the first time, it asks you if you want passwords removed from Firefox and IE and stored in LastPass Vault.

When you do that, all passwords are now encrypted with the 256-bit AES and stored on your computer.

2. I enter only one password daily – the Master Lastpass password.

All other logins are filled in automatically as soon as the login page appears on the screen. If I have multiple logins for one account, I simply select the one I want from the drop down list.

When I close my browser, LastPass is closed too.

So in my typical day, I start my laptop in the morning, open my Firefox, enter the LastPass master password and access all accounts during that day very easily.

In the evening, I turn off my laptop and the LastPass is turned off too. If someone steals my laptop, they would need to know the LastPass master password to access all other passwords.

I did not write my master password anywhere – I only memorized it. And since I enter it ever day into my Master password fields, I am quite sure I won’t forget it.

3. I can access LastPass  – and all my passwords – even from another computer.

LastPass also stores your data in their center – encrypted of course. If you are at internet cafe and want to check you email (or even better your earnings!), then you can go to the LastPass website and sign in.

You can then access your Vault, find the password you need and copy it into the login fields of the website your need to access.

This is now a manual process since LastPass is not installed on an internet cafe browser. Just make sure that when you’re about to quit your session in the cafe to copy some random text so that it replaces your last password from the clipboard memory!

Or copy the password first, enter it, then copy the username and paste it – so even if you forget to remove the clipboard the next person won’t have your password to enter one of your accounts.

Sure, they would need your username too but these are much easier to guess…

Lastpass has tons of other great features that can come handy – like synchronizing between computers, mobile phones, protecting your USB keys and others.

You’ll find all the info on the LastPass website – so if you’re interesting in protecting all your passwords with a simple and easy to use system, give LastPass a try.

You would usually do this if you wanted to get in touch with the other webmasters and establish some kind of cooperation.

Pagerank is a quick way to see how trusted the site is in Google’s view but of course is not the definitive answer. You’d still need to take a look at their estimated traffic and the quality of content.

I’ve always wanted to have a tool that would quickly scan those links and tell me which sites are worth checking out.

Now I have it.

My friend Goran has created such a tool and he has explained everything in text and with a video example.

If you’d also like to get your hands on this time saving Pagerank tool, then just follow the link.

He has won my trust through no BS tips and information on how to succeed online.

But what Michael released today trumps all the free stuff I have seen so far.

It’s a free report – the Ultimate Heatmap – which shows where the visitors are most likely to look and most likely to click.

I am sure you’ve seen a similar heatmap when learning about Google Adsense – but this one is much more detailed.

But Michael goes one step further – and that’s the key value you’ll get from the PDF report: you’ll actually get to see the best converting templates!

What’s really interesting is the comparison between 2 column and 3 column templates.

Anyway, just wanted to share this great resource – so jump over to Michael’s blog where you’ll find all the details.

I’ve been very lucky to have found Thomas when I first started my Internet adventure. He was able to design the header of my Tennismindgame.com website exactly as I have wanted.

He of course designed all other graphics and ebook covers that I needed for my tennis site, including the sales letter Order Now button and the newsletter graphic.

Because I was so impressed with his skills, affordable prices and very quick response time, I stayed his loyal customer and EVERY new site that I started had his trademark cool looking design.

Thomas can design custom website templates (2 columns, 3 columns), ecommerce web templates and he can also modify AJ’s 3 column SBI template which I use on several of my websites.

Once you compare his response time, the price and the beautiful design you’ll get, you’ll feel that you have been ripped off by other website designers if you have used them in the past.

One of the reasons why I am recommending Thomas’ services is because I recently needed a modified ebook cover for my tennis strategy ebook (since I plan selling it in Hungarian language) and Thomas sent me the modified ecovers in the same day as I emailed him.

He impressed me again and I thought I’d return the favor here and of course help you get a great looking website template for your online business.

His professional design and customer service is unmatched in my 5 years of internet marketing and I highly recommend that you contact him through his website or at info@ecoverdesign.com in case you need a new template or any professional graphic design service that you might need for your site.

And if you have already worked with Thomas then please share your experiences below.

Rats supposedly have such a fantastic sense of smell that they can detect unexploded landmines and the early development of tuberculosis.

The show mentioned an official website and I checked it out. I really liked the idea and I liked the rats.

The official site HeroRat.org allows you to donate by a single donation or by “adopting” a rat for the donation of 5 EUR per month payable by Paypal.

I chose the rat Ziko for adoption and yesterday received an official certificate of adoption which you can see above and a letter from Ziko saying thanks and explaining what he does.

I find this a great idea and I invite you to check the HeroRat.org website and consider helping Bart out with his amazing project that saves lives.

I rarely buy anything internet marketing related lately because I have bought quite a lot of ebooks and courses in the past and in the 90% of the cases the information was crap or just a rehashed information from someone else.

The Adsense Masters Course has a few different views and approaches to earning money with Google Adsense and online business in general.

I first came across the author, John Xfactor at warriorforum.com where he openly shared lots of his tips and ideas on how he earns over $300 per day with Adsense. (you’ll find a link to that thread on the sales letter)

There were tons of questions and eventually John decided to compile an ebook (and a few videos) based on his system and the Q&A he shared.

What The Adsense Masters Course Is About

John has developed a system of building very small and very tight niche sites that primarily target just one keyword which he uses in the domain name.

He may add 5 more pages to the site with related keywords and build a few links to it and that’s about it.

The key to his system and his success is:

• how to find high paying Adsense keywords with some demand and low competition
• how to design the site to get highest CTR on Adsense
• how to get links to those sites

That’s the core of the Adsense Masters Course and it works well for John.

How I Benefited From The Course

I don’t build sites like John and I don’t intend to.

I learned an interesting thing about getting links with article submissions. John doesn’t give you any new secret article submission sites but he has a different approach to writing articles for those sites.

I can see the logic of that and while I haven’t tested this approach I definitely will in the future.

I also learned something about site design that produces high CTR for Adsense and I have already modified a template on one of my test sites which shows promising results.

The Adsense Masters Course ebook is 95 pages long and 93 pages for me were really not something new, but the 2 tips that I got from the book are something really refreshing in the area of Internet marketing which just bombards you with fancy and “awesome” new products which don’t add anything new to the online business knowledge.

Whether a few tips are worth $77 is your call. If you follow through and don’t just read the ebook and earn at least $77 by applying new ideas, then the ebook is worth the money.

If you don’t follow through, then it’s not.

My Thoughts On The System

John’s approach is different than mine in two major ways.

1. I build just a few large sites that eventually become the authority in that niche. That has several advantages:

a) Every page posted on the authority site gets a boost in the rankings and quickly ranks well in the search engines.

b) Every link acquired for that site helps ALL the articles on the site rank better through more link juice. John has to acquire links for each of his small websites and one new link helps only one of his websites. (or maybe a few just a little bit if he interlinks them)

John’s sites will almost never get any organic links in the future because they are really bad looking (he knows exactly why but that’s the fact most people will agree on) and they don’t suggest authority on the topic. My sites get organic links because they eventually become the top dog in that niche and are very large with lots of visitor interaction thanks to C2 module of SBI.

So they are talked about and linked here and there from other top sites in that niche. That gives them even more ranking power and even less chance that they will be penalized or lose rankings for one or another factor in the future.

2. I don’t focus that aggressively on getting the highest CTR by throwing the Adsense block directly in the face of the visitor. I think there are probably 90% of websites on the Internet that use Adsense and I and probably many others are frankly sick of these Adsense ads.

I give visitors the choice of reading the text or clicking on the ad and while the site’s main objective is similar, I am quite content with lower CTR while at the same time providing the visitor with something useful.

You have to realize something: most people (I dare to say over 90%) have no idea what Adsense ads are and how they work.

They don’t really make a choice whether to click on an ad because they know it’s an advertiser offering something or to keep reading below (or beside) the ad because the main gist of the article is still ahead.

No, actually they just click on something that is aligned with the intention they have mind – and that is usually the Adsense ad that stands out in their face.

They click on it almost instinctively without really knowing what will happen – and voila, you’re earning money because people don’t know how this Internet things works.

Most people don’t even know what a browser is, can you imagine? Do you think they know what Google Adsense ads are, how they look like and how the whole system works?

It doesn’t really give me great pleasure earning money tricking people. While I know that Adsense above the fold is a must if you want to get at least a decent CTR, I wrap text around it to give people a choice of a click or reading the text.

I’ve talked to many friends about Internet marketing and Adsense and when I surfed around the net showing the examples of Adsense ads they had no idea whatsoever that those were Adsense ads AND that the owner of the site earns money through clicks.

So while I don’t recommend John’s strategy of slapping Adsense ads right in the face of unsuspecting visitors, I did learn a few tips on how to improve the CTR which I will adapt to my sites and still give people the chance of another action besides just clicking on that ad.

Final Words

I recommend John Xfactor’s Adsense Masters Course because there are a few good tips and ideas that I haven’t read before (and I read a lot ) which you can use and implement into your existing sites.

But I definitely do not recommend you build sites like John because they are maximized for best earnings with Google Adsense and do not have the visitor’s satisfaction in mind.

There is no emphasis on the quality of articles or how to write them in order to provide easy-to-follow tips or advice or reviews for someone who is looking for info on the Web.

In fact, there are tips on how to write as fast as possible rewriting the existing info on the web.

I also don’t think this system can work in the long term with Google. Getting your main keyword in the domain name and taking advantage of Google’s algorithm flaw that currently allows those domains to rank realy well cannot last in my opinion.

It’s easily exploitable and you need just a few poor links to get that keyword focused domain into the top 10. I personally think this won’t work in the next few years…

The sites also look bad (because that gets the highest CTR) but if all sites on the Web looked like that, it would be really a nightmare.

I personally recommend you build nicer looking sites, give the visitors a chance or reading the text or clicking the ad and build interesting and informative websites with lots of videos, pictures and ways of interaction (C2) for visitors.

One more things that I really liked from John’s ebook is his mindset and his approach to work. You can see that I even quoted him (with his permission) at the top right of this blog.

John has the right attitude to success and you can also learn from that even if you don’t apply any of his tips and tricks to your site.

The ideas from the Adsense Masters Course can add to your overall knowledge of Internet marketing but I really recommend you just adapt them to your websites and stick to large content sites and develop them into authorities on the topic.

I’ve been following Wiep.net for quite some time and I strongly recommend you subscribe to their feed if you’re serious about your online business.

I hope that by now you know that getting good rankings in Google and therefore lots of free search engine traffic requires quality content + quality links.

And while you can outsource content and get quite good articles written for a good price, it’s very difficult to get quality links by outsourcing the work.

In fact, that has never happened to me and I’ve tried 5 or 6 times in the past.

So while you’re checking out Wiet.net make sure to read the latest post on What if link requests were honest?

You might bookmark that post and send a link as a reply to the next crappy link exchange request you’ll get in the future…

Disclosure: I received CuteRank free of charge to test it and possibly provide a review for my readers if I happen to like it. I do – so here’s the review… (I don’t receive any compensation if you buy it.)

CuteRank is a software tool that allows you to track rankings for specific keywords across different search engines.

The tool is installed on your PC (Windows) and then you need to set up a new profile where you enter your site’s URL and select the keywords for which you want to check your rankings.

You can also select tons of search engines like Google.ca, Google.co.uk and many others but the default option is to select Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com, Ask.com and Aol.com.

Once you store the profile, CuteRank will start the updating process and check your current site’s rankings for your chosen keywords.

You can then see the rankings in the report screen:

At first you’ll of course see only a red dot on the graph but when you check your rankings daily, you’ll start to see how your rankings have changed over time.

Note to all SBI-ers: Site Build It also provides rankings report (in the Search Engine HQ) for ALL of your keywords (which is better than CuteRank – where you have to manually enter them and you’ll probably check just a few) but it doesn’t provide you with historical graph. (which CuteRank does)

This tool helps you understand the outcome of your work – how you optimize the content and what happens when you get internal links to certain pages and what happens when you get quality external links to certain pages. (and what happens if you don’t do anything. )

In time, you will get a better understanding how search engines rank your content and what it takes to get higher in the search engine rankings results.

One more thing though; no matter what you do, you’ll never get 100% consistent results.

I for example uploaded 2 articles in the same day and linked to them from the same T2 page and they didn’t get any external links. They also both passed Analyze It.

One article’s rankings are improving and the other one’s are getting worse.

But still, the majority of your ranking results will show some consistency based on which you can deduct what needs to be done to rank higher.

There are a couple of editions of CuteRank which differ only in the number of supported websites. The free edition supports only one website which should be enough for you to test drive CuteRank and see how it works.

I also spotted that CuteRank offers a 20% holiday discount if you buy the Standard or Pro edition this December.

Thanks again to Kevin from the CuteRank team for letting me test the CuteRank Pro edition for free. It’s a cool tool that helps you see what’s going on with your site’s rankings in the long term.

Update: Here’s the latest press release on the latest version 2.2.0:

CuteRank.net has released CuteRank 2.2.0, a free rank checker software which allows webmasters to check and track their keyword positions on major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL.

CuteRank.Net – Jan 4, 2010 – CuteRank.Net, an innovative provider of easy-to-use SEO software, recently released an upgraded version of its free keyword position checking software called “CuteRank”. It allows webmasters to check multiple keyword positions on multiple search engines, saving their time, and boosting their efficiency.

“Being a webmaster myself, I always know how important keyword ranking means to us,” said Kevin Zhou, marketing director of CuteRank.net. “and I also know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to check keyword positions in a browser, needless to say checking keyword positions on multiple search engines. So the idea hit me and our team started building this software. Then I figured out that we can provide this software for all webmasters, free of charge.”

Key features of CuteRank include:

• Check keyword positions on multiple search engines, and in different languages.
• Record keyword position history so you can track your keyword ranking performance in a long time, in vivid graph;
• Scheduled updating, fully automatic process, update your keyword positions on your scheduled time;
• Export keyword ranking data in multiple format including csv, HTML, and pdf;

CuteRank is free for download on http://cuterank.net. There are 3 different editions of CuteRank, the Free Edition, complete free but limited to one site; the Standard Edition for serious internet marketers who have no more than 5 sites; and the Professional Edition with no site limit, ideal for SEO companies or consultants.