Since its inception about a year ago, Newmediaist.com has used the open-source Wordpress content management system.

Today marks the changeover to a new open-source CMS, Drupal. Why the change over? In simple terms, Drupal is significantly more flexible than Wordpress, and will therefore allow the introduction of some new features to this website which would otherwise be impossible.

If you're an old school web guy, you would have learned to design web pages in a grid-system using tables. This can be problematic for a number of reasons, the most basic of which is your website will load slower as a result, as although each page may contain the same design elements, the web browser has to download the design at every page.
Enter Cascading style Sheets (CSS). CSS seperates the display layer from the content layer of the website - in other words, you load the website's design once, and then only load new content at each pages.

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Wild - right out of Minority Report. And available for purchase TODAY! Check out http://www.perceptivepixel.com/ for more info.

One interesting point up for discussion is there are no standards established yet when it comes to multi touch interfaces - therefore moving your hand on the iphone could have a different effect than moving your hand around on a perceptive pixel display. This introduces an interesting design problem, akin to having different key layouts on the first keyboards. Dan Saffer first wrote about this concept on his blogpost A Call to arms for interaction designers.

This is part 2 in a series of posts exposing some of the more common "get rich quick" schemes people use on the Internet. Check out part 1, Keyword and adsense arbitrage.

How to make money on the Internet:
Part 2: Linkfarming

Ever wonder how Google chooses which sites to put on the first page of its search results?

It's actually not that complicated. At a very basic level, Google looks at which websites get the most links from other websites, and then says to itself "Hey, if all these thousands of people are linking to this guy, he must be pretty good". Hence, those websites with the most incoming links ranks highest on Google (Ok, this is an oversimplification, but this article isn't about SEO)

So, if one could command thousands of links on different website, one could - hypothetically - place any website they want on the first page of Google search results. Hence link farming was born.

Link farming is the process of creating a large quantity of websites (sometimes in the tens of thousands). Because it would be prohibitively expensive to actually create tens of thousands of websites, link farms are usually created with an automated process, which copies ("scrapes") content from other websites (Such as Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers). Advertisements are also place throughout the content as well, so the website can be monetized.

But an advertisement is useless if no one sees it / clicks it. Aye, here's the rub:

Once these thousands of websites built with copied content are created, they are then interlinked to each other to increase their "authority" in the eyes of the search engines.

So to review, thousands of websites are created using copied content embedded with advertisements. The "authority" of those websites is artificially stimulated via interlinking, thereby allowing them to appear fairly high up in search engine results page. Hence, they get visitors (as people may search for the content which was copied), the visitors see the ads, and the link farmer gets paid.

Another method of link farming is to use the farm to increase the positioning of a legitimate website. In these cases, advertisements are not necessary put on the link farm sites. Instead, each site has a link to the one external website which the linkerfarmer wants to increase the search rankings for.

How much money do people make from link farming?
Link farming used to be significantly more profitable than it is today. The major search engines have all adjusted their algorithms to make it more difficult to maintain a profitable link farm. That being said, due to the rising popular of text link advertising, many link farms are getting a revival, generating thousands of dollars per day.

Are link farms bad?
Like adsense arbitrage, link farming makes the Internet a worse place for everybody. It's also fairly easy to catch, as most link farmers do not have the resources to spread their websites over a large number of unique IP addresses, making it easy to identify them as "part of the same network".

Another issue with link farming is the "value" of a site's link is determined by that sites popularity: one link from the Internet's most popular site is more valuable than 1000 links from the least popular. Therefore, a giant link farm alone may not be enough to get to the top of the search engine result pages.

Finally, link farming is plainly against the rules of all the search engines. If you're caught, your website will get banned. With many alternative link building methods available, link farming is not the most effective way to increase the popularity of your website.

Why didn't anyone tell me the kid from Arrested Development has his own web tv show? Well, now you know too:

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Check it out @ Clark and Michael

I am regularly asked questions about online get-rich-quick schemes: how they work, why they work, and naturally, why don't I use them and then go retire in a Costa Rica villa. As this topic is a pretty sexy, I thought I'd dedicate my next few blog posts to some of the more common online money making schemes.

So, without further delay,

How to make money on the Internet
Part 1: Keyword Arbitrage

Let's start with the basics: what does "arbitrage" mean?
Arbitrage is a term used when someone exploits inequalities between markets to make profit. For example, let's say I am in the Canada, and want to go shopping in the USA. I go to my local bank, and discover the exchange rate is $00.98 CDN = $1.00 USD. So I take $98.00 CDN to the bank, and in return get $100.00 USD back.

I then take a flight into the US to go shopping, and notice that the currency trader at the Airport is paying $1 CDN for every $1 USD. So I give the currency trade my $100 USD, and get $100.00 CDN back.

I just made $2 CDN via arbitrage!

Now, Bring it online: Let's say I am advertising on Google, and they charge me $00.50 every time someone clicks my advertisement for web design services.
In order to try to find a better deal on advertising, I visit Yahoo to see their prices, and notice Yahoo charges $1.00 every time someone clicks an advertisement for web design services.

See the money making opportunity? If I buy clicks on Google for $00.50, and then send people directly to a page where I sell advertising on behalf of Yahoo for $1.00 / click, I could make $00.50! If I do this on 100,000 keywords, I could make $50,000!

That's the very basic concept between google adsense arbitrage / keyword arbitrage.

Now for a few quick question/answers:

Is it really that simple?
Nope, its not. There are a number of issues which have to be considered - for example, when you show ads on your website, you only receive a % of the click cost. Furthermore, the price you pay to buy click is not fixed, and can fluctuate based on a number of factors such as the content of your website. Therefore, if your website just contains advertisements, you may have to pay more money per click, which in return shrinks your spread. And these issues are just the beginning...

How is it possible such significant pricing discrepancies exist?
At the end of the day, even online markets aren't perfect. Some of the big issues are differences in pricing algorithms between PPC advertising providers and ignorance/laziness on the side of the advertiser.

For example, when advertising using Yahoo's Search marketing program, US & Canada traffic are lumped together as "North America". Many American online advertisers have therefore been advertising to Canada users by mistake, as they were too lazy to set their Yahoo accounts to do otherwise/unaware that they were doing so. Having US advertisers on Yahoo Canada artificially drives up the demand for advertising, and therefore the price as well.

In Google, US and Canada traffic is separate by default. Because of this, US advertisers don't generally show their ads to Canadians. Less advertisers in Canada mean less demand and therefore lower cost-per-click rates. Therefore Google Canada clicks were cheaper than Yahoo Canada clicks. Hence, you could buy a click on Google and resell it to Yahoo and make a profit.

How much money can people make from arbitrage?
I've heard stories of "friends of friends" making in the millions in profit per month, but haven't personally verified them. I have seen examples of individuals pulling in $10K + / month

Why don't the search engines / PPC ad networks stop keyword arbitrage?
Some of the big boys (i.e. Google) are now beginning to official discourage arbitrage. As to why they didn't sooner, its likely because keyword arbitrage makes them money. At the end of the day, their business is collecting a % of every ad transaction - Arbitrage artists not only increase the number of transactions, but also the price per transaction. Long term, too much arbitrage seriously harms user experience, which in return would lower revenue - hence why I believe they have recently begun to crackdown.

Why didn't/don't you do it?
Because money isn't everything. PPC arbitrage makes the Internet a worse place for everyone involved. It artificially drives up the cost of advertising for businesses (a cost which ultimately is passed onto consumers), as well as makes it harder for internet users to find what they are looking for.

I like to compare PPC arbitrage to that old scam where you remove a sign from the highway, and instead re-route everyone 2 minutes out of their way to your little gas station which sells maps. Sure, you're going to make a killing, and you're only going to be inconveniencing the drivers a little, but how are you adding any value to society? And if everyone did what you did, the highways would become useless, as no one would be able to get where they want to go on them.

And now, for a short off-topic rant:
I bike to work everyday, but not when it rains, as the area of Toronto where I work (Spadina and Wellington) smells like a combination of cat piss and dead fish whenever it rains.

So, as it was raining today, I took the TTC - Toronto's Public Transit System. It's gosh-darn expensive these days, clocking in at $2.75 for a ride that takes me - oh, maybe 20 minutes by bike to make otherwise. On weekends, its cheaper for me to drive and park (on city streets) in the downtown core than it is to take public transit.

As I normally ride, I didn't have any TTC tokens today. So, I went to a machine to buy tokens.

Red light flashing, machine not functioning.

I move to the next machine, same problem, but this time, there is a note taped to it! What's this? Ticket prices are going up again, so the TTC is limiting the number of tokens I can buy to prevent me from stockpiling?

Not only is this incredibly frustrating from an operational perspective (shut down machines = longer lineups at counters = longer wait time = more frustrated customers, like me), but what business in its right mind tries to PREVENT its customers from paying them in advance? I would love it if you would pay me cash for consulting services months before you use them. There are even some hugely successful businesses based purelyon that model. Time value of money people!

Now I know what all you economics/finance guys are thinking: maybe they don't have enough tokens in the system to allow for stockpiling? Maybe the fair hike is greater than the opportunity cost of not being able to put the money from stockpiled tokens in short term investments. Frankly, I don't have the spare time to try and calculate that out - but I encourage you to.

Also, please reply with anything else that peeves you / you admire about our otherwise beautiful city's public transit system.

Check out the new Toyota Truck/World of Warcraft video. Talk about a TV commercial "designed" to go viral!

$9,250 for each of the 24 songs, or a $222,000 fine total for a Minnesota woman guilty of 24 counts of copyright infringement. The RIAA has sued about 26,000 people over the last 4 years, in an attempt to discourage people from using peer 2 peer services to pirate content.

Considering downloading pirated music is on the rise, this doesn't come as much of a surprise, but I can't help but feel this may be more of a knee-jerk reaction than a long term strategy.

If they keep suing customers, who will ultimately be left to buy their music?

The news today was all about Microsoft considered an equity stake in Facebook. At the "rumored" valuation, facebook was placed in the $10 billion range.

Now I'm pretty confident to say it is impossible facebook's current income statement/balance sheet justifies a $10 billion valuation - in other words, big expectations are factored into that number.

This got me thinking: what features could facebook implement to generate more cash? (I know the possibilities are endless, but humor me).

Here are two of my favourite:

#1) Instant messaging software w/ contextual ads embedded. Many people already use the facebook wall/message system as an instant messenger - why not just make it official?

#2) A virtual currency / loyalty points system : I have a soft spot for loyalty point systems - they introduce a whole new form of corporate participation, such as sponsored events, "branded" merchandise or profile pages, etc...

What's your favourite facebook billion dollar addition?