To make money from their blogs, many bloggers have turned to sites like PayPerPost and accepted opportunities that paid them to post information and links about other websites. Google doesn't like this, as the links could be considered paid links. Google feels that paid links are less relevant and worthy for passing PageRank value than organic links, or links that are created due to non-financial reasons. Although Google didn't like it, many people were making a lot of money selling links through programs like PayPerPost and TextLinkAds. The higher your PageRank, the more valuable a link from your site became, so the more money you could make. Google suggested that you shouldn't sell links, but most people weren't persuaded. A couple of months ago, Google took action in an effort to reduce the paid link industry. It erased the PageRank of many blogs and sites known to get paid for links or posts.

So, imagine if you're a blogger with a PageRank of 5, and you are a member of PayPerPost. You get a lot of good-paying opportunities, because your PR of 5 is a lot better than the average blog. Then Google figures out you are selling paid posts, and erases you PR. Now you have a PR of 0, and the advertisers no longer value a paid post from you nearly as much as they did before. So you make less money.

PayPerPost had a system in the works to provide a similar metric as PageRank before Google got busy erasing PR, and it recently went active. It's called Izea RealRank.

Unlike PageRank, RealRank focuses on more than just links. It is like Alexa, in that it's really more a measure of traffic. Also unlike PageRank, RealRank is primarily for bloggers, and requires some javascript code to be placed on your blog.

Izea then calculates your RealRank based on things like unique visitors, page views per day, and visitors coming through links to your site (vs. type-in traffic). RR is to be used as an alternative to PR in the paid post marketplace. An advertiser can now say, "Oh, you've got a PR of 0, eh? Well, let's see what your RealRank is."

Some advertisers couldn't care less about RealRank, as it doesn't represent the link power that is evidenced by PageRank. However, others are more willing to consider a new system, as Google's actions with PageRank have made some people less eager to just accept PR at face value. It seems things are changing on the PageRank front, and although RealRank is considered flawed by some, it's a start in a new direction.

To get your own RealRank, you need some tracking code on your site, which you can get by creating an account at izearanks.com.

It seems that some sites have already noticed shifting PageRank values, as early as January 10th.

The last update happened in late October of last year. So maybe we'll be seeing updates continue until the end of the month.

With the changes put into effect to account for paid links, I don't think the update will hold entirely to historical trends. Paid links seem to be pretty widespread, and if every page with at least 1 paid link goes from PR whatever to PR 0, the collective PR of the entire net is likely to be affected.

Of course, going from a PR 0 to a PR 5 is like creating something from nothing. They say the more pages of content your site has, the more PR you've got. So as more pages are added to the net, the net's total PR will increase. But when Google arbitrarily changes the PR prerequisites (no paid links), it's bound to have an effect.

I see two possible outcomes. As some would say, "Paid links are here to stay," and so Google will eventually allow PR on paid link pages. On the other hand, Google is king, so perhaps the paid link, paid post, paid whatever industry will sink its claws into the ground and slowly get dragged toward an inevitable death that few want to believe is already underway.

Previously, I've explained how downloading the Alexa toolbar will boost your Alexa rank. Now I'm going to delve into how the redirect works.

It's pretty simple. You basically send traffic through Alexa's site, to yours. That way, anybody who gets redirected counts as a visitor, even if they don't have the Alexa toolbar. Using the Alexa redirect is a great way to make Alexa aware of all the visitors you have that Alexa usually can't keep track of.

This is the code for the redirect:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect? + your chosen URL

So to redirect to misinterpreted.org, the link would be:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.misinterpreted.org/

Great, so now that we have the code, how do we use it? There has been a lot of debate over whether it's a good thing to use it in links coming in from outside your site. Some people think the redirect will kill any transfer of PageRank, which would be bad. Others say that Alexa transfers PR no problem. But since the jury is still out, the risk is there. Another potential downside has to do with your ranking in the Search Engines. If you were to put a normal link somewhere out on the net, Google would eventually find it, and count it in your site's favor (usually). If you use the Alexa redirect, the theory (or fact?) is that Google wouldn't be able to see that link as being in your favor, and you'd lose out.

So, the Alexa redirect will boost your Alexa rank at the expense of PR and Search Engine placement.

But there are places you can use it where the negatives won't be a factor. Some bloggers change their in-site link to their home page, and use an Alexa redirect instead. There is some debate concerning whether the PR from all your pages can count toward your home page when you use a homepage Alexa redirect. My take is that there's probably not as big a risk concerning PR when using the redirect within your own site.

Another way you can use it is if you control a link that a lot of people use to get to your blog. If that link is very popular, you might try making it into an Alexa redirect. That way Alexa counts all the people who come through it, and you only have to change a single link.

If you decide to make use of this trick, keep in mind that every link you change will now rely on Alexa to work properly. So if Alexa goes down, the redirects won't work, and the links will be dead.

Update, 1-28-08: Looks like the Alexa redirect is gone for good.

I'll just run through a quick list of some solid ways to generate income on the web:

1. Build a web site that offers a valuable service, and run AdSense on it.
   

2. Build a web site with high Page Rank (PR) and Alexa rank, and sell Text Link Ads on it.
3. Build a decent web site or blog and sell it.
4. Start a blog and sign up with pay-to-blog programs. Each paid post will get you around $5 at the least, and much more if your blog has good traffic, subscriber numbers, PR, Alexa rank, and Technorati authority.
5. Get paid to write content for other web sites, blogs, and eBook sellers.
6. Write your own eBook and sell it.
7. Sign up with an affiliate program like Amazon or ClickBank and advertise their products.
8. Buy domain names with proven traffic and park them with a site like Sedo that pays you for every click an ad on your page gets.
9. Sell your stuff on eBay.
10. Sell your web design or coding skills on a job-by-job basis.

    Bonus:

11. Trade stocks or currencies (Forex) online.

Alexa is a company that tries to accurately measure web traffic to as many sites as possible. Their method is to watch user activity on browsers with the Alexa toolbar installed. So if someone visits your site without using the toolbar, Alexa doesn't know about it. But if someone else shows up, and they are using Alexa, your site will benefit. Here's how:

All websites start out with a crazy rank in the millions. A while ago it was around 5, now its closer to 10, and probably even higher. So if your site is brand new, it might rank at 11,000,000. That's the bottom tier, but it's better than "No Rank," which will happen if Alexa isn't aware of your site yet. What we want to do is improve our Alexa rank, because sites that rank higher are considered better, and more valuable in the eyes of potential advertisers.

There has been a great deal of debate about Alexa. Most people used to not care about the ranking system. It didn't really matter. Once advertisers started using it to judge sites, things changed, and many people began to complain because they believe your Alexa rank can be gamed. It is thought by some that there are definite ways to improve your rank. And that is true. One way is to download the toolbar. Another is to run a site geared toward webmasters.

On an episode of, "Family Guy," TV executives at a board meeting were discussing a recent problem on their network. Many people had phoned in to voice their protest. One executive summed things up: "We have received 20 phone calls from offended viewers. As you all know, each phone call represents a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended!"

The issue with Alexa is it works in a similar way. Since Alexa only knows how many toolbar users visit your site, they use that number to guess how many total visitors your site has. That's right, guess. Can you see where this could be a problem?

If you ran a site that specifically catered to webmasters, many of your visitors, maybe even the widespread majority, would probably already be running the toolbar. So Alexa says, "Your site got 20 toolbar visits, so let's do a little math, and… OK, you must have received 20 billion total visits! Congratulations, and welcome to the top tier! Enjoy your flashy high rank."

What if you don't run a site for webmasters? Doesn't this tip the playing field against you? Absolutely. The system is flawed. But Alexa has acknowledged that the ranks aren't that accurate until you reach the top: "Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes."

So how can you improve your Alexa rank in an honest way? By installing the Alexa toolbar on the browser you most use to visit your own web site(s). The toolbar could be considered a scorekeeper for the net. On your browser, it pays careful attention to the sites you visit, and essentially gives each site a vote on your behalf. So if you spend a lot of time tweaking your own sites, it will make sure to give them votes, too. But Alexa makes it clear that to keep things fair, a site will only get one vote per IP address per day.

People have learned that this tends to add up over time. If you consistently visit your site(s) with the Alexa toolbar, you'll likely see results.

However, some have also noted that the higher your Alexa rank is already, the less noticeable a change like this will be. If your rank is still in the millions, then you should probably see some improvement. However, if you're already in the hundreds of thousands, you might not get as big a benefit (if any). But my guess is that if you're doing that well, you've probably already got the toolbar installed!

People have tried to come up with other tricks to improve their Alexa ranks, but some are considered underhanded and risky. There have been stories about companies being banned from Alexa for trying to game the system. I view installing the toolbar so it can see your web site to be upright and honorable because it's a simple, non-deceptive one-step procedure, and because Alexa encourages people to download the toolbar.