Photo borrowed from here.

Hello fellow netizens!

There’s a new study by the Online Publishers Association or OPA that says web users spend 42% of their time online on content sites. OPA segregated all sites into 5 groups: Commerce, Communications, Community, Content, and Search.

Commerce sites include the like of Amazon and eBay. Examples of communication sites are Yahoo mail and Gmail. Popular community sites include MySpace and Facebook. Search is, of course, represented by Google and Yahoo Search. Content sites are what make up most of the web with giants such as wikipedia, CNN, and NatGeo leading this highly diverse category.

Here’s the breakdown of the time spent by surfers in the 5 categories:

1. Content = 42%
2. Communication = 27%
3. Community = 13%
4. Commerce = 13%
5. Search = 5%

People’s habit of reading content sites was quite a jump from 34% in 2003. The study suggests that the trend is most likely to continue in the future.

Bottomline, people are reading content sites like blogs. We are right where the action is. If anybody wants to try and earn some money online, the general agreement is to develop a topic we are passionate about.

Opinions?

Source: DNjournal.com

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., which this year falls on November 28. In spite of its ominous-sounding name, it’s one of the most awaited unofficial holiday by retailers and consumers alike since it heralds the the sales and buying sprees of the Christmas season.

Off-line stores were busy preparing for it the past few months and websites the past few weeks. Blogs that are indexed by the search engines can still churn out a keyword-laden article or 2 to get a slice of the big pie. It’s time to fire-up WordTracker’s Gtrends tool and see what people are specifically looking for.

Traditonally, the top sellers during Black Friday are toys. Any idea what are other shopping favorites.

Whenever we think of successful teen online entrepreneurs, Ashley Qualls of Whateverlife.com always comes to mind. Ashley’s business is mainly focused on that site. Cameron Johson is different, he’s both a serial and a super entrepreneur. Like he was born to make money off the web.

Cameron is now 23 but he made his first million before he turned 19. His money-making adventure began at the age of 9 selling greeting cards, then moved on at 12 to buying his sister’s dolls and selling them on eBay. His next venture was MyEZmail, which started giving him $3,000 a month after 2 years. Then came surfingprizes and certificatesswap, both sold later for hefty sums.

And it all began with greeting cards made for his parents’ parties. Cameron is not only a naturally gifted entrepreneur, he also has a penchant for saving his money and investing them into more and better ventures. His advice to us wannabe entrepreneurs is to put ourselves out there, to be not afraid of rejection, to be not afraid to ask anything.

“My son is now an ‘entrepreneur’. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job.”
- Ted Turner, broadcasting entrepreneur

The “Mouth of the South” doesn’t need any introduction. The above statement was probably meant as self-depreciating humor. But does it carry some truth?

We (the RMO team) did have our first taste of off-line entrepreneurship when we were both out of jobs around 5 years ago, hawking wares on sidewalks. Although the said event in our lives didn’t last long, it did provide a lot of learning experiences and our first taste of “blood” too.

At the moment though, online entrepreneurship is more of like a challenge for us rather than a career-replacement opportunity. Mind sharing stories behind our online money-making endeavors?

“Find a want, you’ve found a market. Find a market, then fill the want. Fill the want, you’ll fill your wallet.”

Ryan P. Allis, entrepreneur

Oh, those elusive niches. They are probably the most difficult to put a finger on in this online-business thing we do. But we don’t believe all niches are already covered as there are always emerging markets for new products.

Take Ultra-Mobile PCs for instance. Two years ago, nobody would have thought of serving such a niche despite talks about the One Laptip Per Child (OLPC) project. However, when industry leaders like Intel and Asus rolled out their own versions of cheap and low power mini-laptops, a new niche appeared that quickly got filled-up.

The only problem is how to find and tap a niche that falls under our expertise.

Care to share some tips?