Also included in this realm, but not within this post are Google Video, Pictures, News and Blogs which most users will already be familiar with so we have not included them in the list below.

Google Patent Search

Its amazing that a database like this exists, but most people don’t even know about it.   Google has taken it upon themselves to fully index and cross-reference over 7 million patents of past and present.   Complete with drawings, cross references and similarities to other patents, there are many lifetimes of explorations to be had.

For example, you can see Albert Einstein’s patent application for a blouse or John Logie Baird’s application for the device which would later go on to become the world’s first television set.   There are many more.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an interesting experiment with mixed results as it can bring you information about books and academic articles related to your topic of deep query.  However sometimes the results that it finds will either be behind an academic password/pay wall or be a link to a book which is not available online. Nevertheless it is a great research point for deep interest on a subject.

Google Books

Already known to many, Google Books has taken the liberty to scan and partially make available online thousands of books.   Their system is very interesting as they allow you to view certain pages of a book at any one time (usually about 20% of the book).

However if you really want to see the book and not buy it through one of Google’s affiliate links then you can reload the page from a different IP address and different sections of the book will show up.   Keep doing this until you get the whole work.   Also note that they have quite the database of magazines as well under similar terms.

Google Catalogs

Yes they are mad information monsters.  Google has went ahead and scanned almost every print catalog they can find.   Need to check that Sears Catalog and don’t have your copy handy?  Don’t worry Google has it all ready for you online.

Google Products

Yes, Google has a price comparison engine as well.   Enter any product that you are looking for and Google will show you hundreds of places to buy it and the lowest price.  They just want the whole pie.

Google University Search

Not as much as a custom database as the others, but more of a help for students and faculty.  Google University Search allows easy filtering and searching of resources from various US Universities.

US Government Search

Not of much use to our friends overseas, though don’t worry, I am sure they are indexing as we speak.  Google has a specially filtered US Government search engine to help you find that information you need without all the noise.

What sources do you use (can be non-Google) to research and find specialty information?   Do you use a source that does the job better than the engines mentioned above?    If so please leave it in the comment section.

Google picture by Gonzalo Fernández

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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When building your new website or blog – having the best possible domain is a key factor that adds to your success. When selecting a domain, people generally will take the following factors into account :

• Easy to remember.
• Standardized spelling (except for this whole Web 2.0 thing).
• Keyword rich (though this generally only applies to professional marketers).
• Represents and creates an image of your site or product.

It is well known that dot.com is the gold standard in domains with everything else coming after.   However with all of the crazy TLDs out there, it is possible to create cool blends in order to gain branding.   Look at Last.fm or current.tv if you need to know more.

So the actual act of finding that domain is a perilous process to be sure. You could go to a registrar and keep typing in names and searching until you come up with a match. OR you could use one of these great tools and get creative.

Instant Domain Search

This one is my personal favorite and I use it to quick check any domain I think of on the fly.   It will search out domain availability as fast as you can type for .com . net and .org

It’s great for brainstorming sessions where you need to check lots of domains within a short period.   Even better, it has quick links to whois and other information for quick lookup.

Similar to this is Domize which lists out less character spellings of the search as well and has an iPhone app.

Geek.Name

A very strange and very useful service that creates a constant stream of available domain names that you can sort via certain criteria. Great for explorations and getting new ideas as it incorporates various TLD’s in its creations.

DomainsBot

This is a very useful brainstorming application which lets you type in a word or phrase and it searches related and synonyms.  You can get some pretty good filtering and suggestions if you turn off “for sale”  in the search results.

BustaName

Previously covered in detail on MakeuseOf, BustaName allows you to combine various words, prefixes and suffixes and check domains on the fly to find that perfect match.

Domain Hacks

For those that don’t know, a Domain hack is using either sub-domains or unusual TLD to create a word out of the domain. Probably the most famous domain hack was del.icio.us which was actually registered as the domain www.icio.us and then added a subdomain. This tool by Xona allows you to search for a word or domain and it will recommend various hacks to get you to where you need to go.

Obscure TLD Registrations

Old hands will have their preferred register of choice, but others won’t know where to go to register that obscure TLD from Micronesia. Who to use is your preference, but I like the Moniker registration as they have over 140 TLD’s ready to search and register with just a few clicks.

Finding that perfect domain is like sifting through an antique store looking for that Van Gogh. It is there and can be found. Remember that the value of a domain is not in how much it is appraised at, but rather what you can do with it.

To that end, we would like to ask our readers if there are other cool domain search tools out there that we have missed. Leave your answers in the comments section!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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If your website or blog goes over a much broader subject and user base, then “contextual advertisements” are most likely the best option.   For the sake of this article we will define “contextual” as you simply enter a single snip of code in your site and the ad network does the rest, displaying ads that will more or less match up with your content.

Google’s Adsense is the most famous contextual ad network with a large share of the market. The issue is that this lions share also means that sometimes publishers do not get the revenue that they deserve. This is a starters list of the 3 best contextual ad serving networks on the web that you can use to either replace or complement your income from Adsense.

AdBrite – Full Scale Ad Network

AdBrite is probably the best known alternative to Adsense. They got their start by accepting all the publishers that Adsense would reject. Nowadays they have morphed into quite a large operation serving over 300 million ad impressions per day. They have a very refined targeting system that allows advertisers to either bid via category or to place ads specifically on your site.

Ads that are shown can come in a number of formats that include:

• CPC (Cost per Click) Text and Banner Ads
• CPM (Cost per impression)  Banner Ads that are actually bid on by advertisers to see who gets to display
• Full Page Overlay ads.  (can be annoying, but if you are just gleaming search traffic it can pay well)
• BritePic Photo Ads (just insert some code and they overlay ads on your photos)
• Inline Ads (they automatically set links up in your content text- same like Kontera which we will review below)

Some things that you need to keep in mind when using Adbrite :

• For good paying returns, advertisers will review your site manually.
• Sometimes the text ads are not the best. For best and matched content, make sure to set it to manual review of all ads.

All in all it is a huge network that takes some exploring to find the right speed, but it is proven to be profitable in the end. They will work with ALL types of websites from every country and if your website has less than wholesome content, they also host Black Label Ads on the same network.

If you like Adbrite, also make sure to check out Australian-based AdToll.

Kontera – Inline Text Advertising

We mentioned above that Adbrite has inline text advertising. However if you are going to go this route, we have found better monetization and targeting from Kontera. The basic premise behind inline text advertising is that you put a snip of code on your page and it will determine the content of the page and highlights individual words and links them out on a CPC basis.

Kontera works across all countries and most types of English language content (no adult or warez etc…)  It is a good match for sites that are text heavy and need a small boost of monetization with little effort.

Other alternatives are SNAP which offer popup screen shots of outlinks with CPC ads, though has been criticized for being slightly annoying.

For those publishers with over 500k page views a month may also wish to check out Vibrant Media which is similar to Kontera and offers multi-language support and nice payouts.

Chitika Premium – Contexual Modules for Search Engine Traffic

Chitika Premium is one of the coolest and most cleverest little tricks a network has come up with in a long time.   It is a snip of code you place on your page and whenever a user arrives at your site via a search engine, they display contextual CPC text ads.

Why this is cool is that most website publishers know that search engine traffic has very high bounce rates meaning that for your regular readers, they will not see the ads, however readers that come from search engines will get a big ad block in front of their face, with highly targeted CPC ads ready to be clicked.

This helps you to monetize your bouncing search engine traffic, while not alienating your loyal readers with excessive advertisements.

This is compatible with Adsense as it is technically not contextual and just taking the original search engine query to display the advert. The only drawback is that they will only display their ads to US traffic with other country support coming soon.

In Closing.

As a website publisher, the thing to remember that there is no magic bullet for instant success in monetization.  However, trying various methods and internal bucket testing, you will eventually find the result that brings you the best flow.

To close I would like to ask our readers to make suggestions of other ad networks that they have found success in using and in what particular niche and circumstance?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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However, if your blog is pretty niche-focused, meaning that your reader base is expecting similar sorts of subjects with each post, then you may actually be able to dramatically increase your revenue by selecting targeted CPA (Cost Per Action) advertisements for your reader. CPA meaning that you are NOT getting paid by the click, but rather by the action such as a purchase that a user may take after the click.

A typical CPA is basically referring a user to a website and they buy a product and you get a set percentage. Other valuable CPA’s are for example referring a user to a subscription for Netflix and you get paid a considerable bounty.

These 5 networks may give you dramatically increased monetization. They are worth a look!

eBay Partner Network

Good ole eBay.   What most don’t know is that they offer a massive affiliate program for website owners.   Anybody who clicks through on your eBay link will get a 7 day cookie and you will receive 50%-75% (for US traffic) of the final value fees of any product that the user buys from eBay within the next seven days.

Now to get eBay integrated, the easiest way is through the eBay toolkit which offers geo-targeting, custom displays and RSS feeds. However I have found that when using the toolkit, the click-though is rather low because nobody wants to click advertisements blaring eBay.

To solve this, you could spend considerable time in development or grab the free version of PhpBay Wordpress Plugin which takes the RSS feeds and formats them in an visually pleasing way. For the power user there is also a premium version which will give added functionality.

Payments on EPN are via Paypal or Direct Deposit.

Amazon Associates

The great thing about promoting Amazon is that people are always happy to buy. They will give you 4%-8% commission depending on quantity shipped on a 1 day cookie. There are so many ways to use this service, but a great place to start is a recent article on MakeUseOf on how to turn your traffic into Amazon Cash

Personally one of the coolest things they have is the MP3 widget which you can dynamically call MP3s and albums from their DRM free catalog to be advertised to your users. That and also make sure to check out the UnBox and Carosel Widget.

Commission Junction

CJ is one of the big daddies in the industry sporting advertisers such as Apple, Dell and players from almost any niche you can think of. After being accepted by CJ, you will have to manually apply to many of the advertisers who will hand review your website for quality before determining whether to accept you or not. Anybody seriously into CPA should get with CJ as they are the best.

Linkshare

One Word about LinkShare. iTunes. That is right. Among other outstanding programs, the iTunes affiliate program is run through LinkShare. What does this mean? It means that with a single click on your iTunes affiliate link you get a 365 day 10% cookie. Meaning that you will get 10% of anything that users purchase on iTunes for the next year.

Why is this a goldmine? Well because just think of everybody that has an iPod or iPhone and how much they spend. Wouldn’t you love 10% of that?

Neverblue

Last but not least we have NeverBlue Ads. They are one of the better mid-level CPA providers. You will generally find a different type of promotion here than on the big boys. Expect to find more promotions for ringtones, insurance, dating, online universities, auctions and those sort of things. If your audience is inclined, then this may be a potential goldmine.  Payments are via Paypal.

In Closing

As we mentioned above, CPA networks are not for everybody. The first thing to note is that international traffic will be lost on many of them, with you having to pick your country for the promotions. So unless you are using some sort of geo-targeting such as OpenX and have time to tinker then you may wish to look elsewhere.

Other things are that you only get paid if your user does an action. Meaning that certain types of audiences are more than happy to click on Adsense to get you paid, but would never actually buy anything. You have to determine this yourself.

Lastly, most of these networks require some sort of approval either by location or quality of site as they are only looking for the best of websites to represent their advertisers.

We might follow up in later posts about other ways to replace Adsense with alternative CPC (Cost per Click) and CPM (Cost per impression) networks.

What are your thoughts on these networks? Have you had any positive or negative experiences with any of them? Would you recommend a network not on this list? Is there one on this list that you would not recommend? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• FleeQ – Take Your Site’s Search to The Next Level & Earn Money (3)
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