When you sell a product or service you need someone to make a purchase so you can make money. The most important principle in business is that there are two different types of people involved in your business; customers and clients.

While both of these may appear at first to be the same they are critically different and concentrating on one over the other can be the difference between success and failure.

This concept, what I call the $1 Customer, I teach to clients in order for them to focus on building relationships that last.

The difference between a customer and a client is repeat business.

For every link you exchange, promotion you run and ad you place to attract customers to your business or website there is a cost involved. It can be something as simple as your time, but the cost reduces your profit immediately.

For every $1.00 someone spends an initial customer will cost you something; regardless of whether that cost is $0.15, $0.25 or $0.50. With a customer you never get your full $1.

A client, in comparison, is a returning customer to your business and can cost you nothing. They may purchase something because of a promotion, but clients are the most likely to return to your business because of their positive first experience or because you have a value proposition (like Daily Blog Tips) very few others do. In the online world clients are what attract advertisers and build your email list. Clients are highly targeted high value customers.

Very few businesses can survive on customers alone; a successful business needs to concentrate on turning any and all customers into a client.

High value clients are also the most likely to refer your business to a friend or acquaintance providing you with another $1 customer and prospective client.

Email lists are the best way to stay engaged with your clients as you can inform them of promotions, new products or services and announcements related to your business. A customer is a one-time transaction or visit with no loyalty; a client is someone whose repeat business can be forecasted, expected and maintained over a long period of time.

Are you paying enough attention to your customers and turning them into clients?

Brad Ferris is a marketing consultant and writer of Triage Investing Blog where he authors content on business fundamentals and successful investment practices.

Simon blogs at SimonBlog.com. As you might have guesses it started out as a personal blog, but after a while Simon started focused on the iPhone, and today his blog is one of the most popular in this niche.

Another interesting fact is that Simon is not located in the US, and yet he’s making a nice living thanks to his site, proving that you really can do this from anywhere around the world.

1. When and why did you start your blog?
I started simonblog.com in June, 2007. At that time, I just wanted to learn about blogging, WordPress and AdSense. So I registered the domain and started my personal blog. At the very beginning, I had no idea what to write. I only published a few short posts related to my personal life. Rather, I focused on testing out different WordPress themes and plugins.

2. When did you decide to focus on the iPhone?
I bought the original iPhone in October, 2007. You might know that the first generation of iPhone was not sold globally. You had to jailbreak it and use special software to unlock so that it could be paired with any SIM card. I bought one through a local store in Hong Kong. The iPhone was already unlocked and it worked pretty well with my carrier. I loved the iPhone but after five days, the iPhone hung with an iTunes error shown up. That really scared me up. As a tech guy, I started researching solution to fix the problem. It took me a few hours to bring my iPhone back to normal. I wrote up a detailed post sharing my experience and how the problem got fixed. It turned out the post received quite a lot of feedbacks. From that time onward, I occasionally wrote articles about jailbreaking and iPhone hack. One year later, my blog was devoted to iPhone covering jailbreak tips, hacks, news and app review.

3. Were you planning to make money with the blog when you started it?
Yes, absolutely. Like many bloggers, I hoped to earn some side income from the blog. But honestly, I had no idea how I could make money from it, other than putting up AdSense on the blog.

4. When did you decided you should monetize it, and how did the first few months go?
As I mentioned, one of the reasons I started blogging is to learn about AdSense. I would like to know how easy it can be integrated with WordPress and to see I could really earn a few bucks. So right after I put up a few posts, I implemented AdSense on my blog. Without a good traffic, the initial result was, of course, disappointing. I earned two dollars for the first month. My site’s traffic sucked at that time. I got 10-30 visits per day when the blog was first launched.

I thought there should be something to do with the AdSense. I tried out different ad position and adjusted the theme layout. Obviously it didn’t help. I still got a few cents each day.

Finally I decided to devote my time writing up useful guides and tips about iPhone. Since Apple released iPhone 3G in July 2008, the blog traffic kept increasing. People started searching for guide about jailbreaking and unlocking. Luckily, some of my blog posts ranked pretty high in Google and received decent traffic. After that, I regularly earned the AdSense minimum every month.

5. How did you promote the website, and what strategies worked well to increase your traffic in the past?
I do not promote my website using Adwords or other types of ads. From my experience, the best way to promote the blog is to keep writing good content regularly. People love good content and Google loves it too. As I put up more useful articles on my blog, the traffic keeps increasing.

I have to highlight the word “regularly”. Even when I first decided to focus my blog on iPhone, I didn’t write regularly. Sometimes, I put up daily article for a whole week. But when I was busy with my day job, the blog was not updated for over three months.

I came across an article on problogger.net. Don’t ask me for the link (I already forgot it) but the key message is that you have to publish article regularly. It can be daily or weekly. Having a regular publishing schedule, your reader knows when you’ll have fresh content. Most importantly, Google prefers websites with consistent update frequency.

Since then, I wrote a daily post. Even I was on vacation, I prepared the posts in advance and scheduled the posts. This “Write Regularly” strategy did work for me. The traffic improves gradually.

6. How did your earnings change after you joined the course?
I was already making over a thousand dollars when I joined the course, so I had some experience with AdSense and was curious to see if the course could help even someone relatively experienced like me. It turns out that it can, as my earnings jumped by around $200 monthly after the course, so my investment paid out pretty fast.

7. What concepts and strategies you learned in the course that you liked the most?
The best part is Daniel’s personal advice. In the first week of the course, he personally reviewed my site and offered detailed suggestions. I’ve optimized my blog title and it turned out the traffic improved indeed.

Honestly, I wasn’t new to AdSense and the optimization techniques as I mentioned above. But I still learn some thing new from Daniel such as his own technique for split testing, link building and keyword research. These techniques can help you improve both site traffic and revenue.

8. What tips do you have for those who want to get started with AdSense?
Tip #1: Don’t focus too much on AdSense optimization when you first start your blog. Focus on the content! Over time, as you build up your audience and traffic, it’s easy to receive a monthly check from Google.

Tip #2: Find a niche that you truly love. Remember you have to write regularly if you’re serious in making money from blogging. It’s very difficult to create good content if you’re not passionate about the topic.

9. What plans do you have for your blog, and how much do you expect to reach in terms of earnings?
I want to add more content (e.g. iPhone development). I also want to add a forum to the blog.

I think the blog might potentially earn several thousands dollars a month when the site traffic keeps improving.

The AdSense Profits Course re-opens on February 14. Stay tuned if you want to join!

Today’s interview is with Adrian Roman, who owns How-to-Hide-IP.info. As the name implies his blog is all about learning how to hide your IP address as well as how to protect your privacy online. It’s a perfect example of a niche blog, so the interview should be interesting.

1. When and why did you start your blog?

I started the blog in December 2007 and to be honest I had no idea what a blog was about. I just liked the idea of having one. The topic was not important at that time, but, after about a year, I found out that the niche was good and I started to invest more time writing articles and promoting the blog.

2. How did you choose your niche/topic?

I was interested in the online anonymity field, so I started writing about it as a hobby. I never thought I would write on the topic for years, though. It’s probably more fair to say that the niche chose me.

3. Were you planning to make money with the blog when you started it?

When I start building the blog I had no idea that it was possible to make money with it. For a while I believed that only “serious” sites with huge traffic could significant amount of money. Luckily this was wrong: it turns out that even small and targeted sites can make decent money!

4. When did you decided you should monetize it, and how did the first few months go?

The first WordPress theme that I used (back in 2007) included some ad spots. I created a Google Adsense account and added the code to my blog. In the first months, there revenues were about $30/month. Not much, but for someone who was not expecting any revenues it was a really nice surprise.

5. How did you promote the website, and what strategies worked well to increase your traffic in the past?

I have to be honest: for a long time I had no strategy at all. My only concern was to write articles and learn as much as I could about the niche, transmitting that information to my readers.

After a while, I run into the Online Profits course, and that opened my eyes. Learning about SEO, keyword research, link building helped my blog and my earnings a lot.

6. How much were you making before you joined the AdSense course? (i.e., March, April and May).

About $300-$350 per month. Here’s the breakdown:

March 2011: $355
April 2011: $360
May 2011: $282

7. How much did you make in the months that followed the course? (i.e., July, August and September).

The revenues got significantly higher:

July 2011: $475
August 2011: $588
September 2011: $569

That’s an average of $545 per month, equivalent to an 80% increase in earnings.

8. What concepts and strategies you learned in the course that you liked the most?

I wasn’t new to AdSense when I took the course, but when Daniel looked at my blog and suggested a few changes the revenues went up by 30% instantly. After that I kept readers the lessons about ad placement and other optimization techniques and the earnings got even higher. Thank you, Daniel!

9. What tips do you have for those who want to get started with AdSense?

In order to make money with AdSense you need targeted traffic. The more targeted traffic you get, the higher the revenues, because your visitors will be interested in your ads (Google does a good job to only display related ads) and they will naturally click on them.

For this you need a good niche (the course explains how to pick one) and high quality and unique content. If these two are checked all that remains is optimization.

10. What plans do you have for your blog, and how much do you expect to reach in terms of monthly earnings?

The online anoynimity is a hot topic these days (see the SOPA issue) and there is a lot of buzz about it. My blog gets a good share. What I plan to do is to continue writing useful articles (I still believe in “Content is King”). Of course, with a little of SEO and other optimisations. In terms of revenues it would be really nice to reach the $1000/month threshold.

The AdSense Profits Course re-opens on February 14. I’ll post more about it here, so stay tuned.

1. When and why did you start TucsonOnTheCheap.com?

I’m a freelance writer and belong to quite a few online writing groups. About three years ago, an online friend in one group starting writing about her blog, Atlanta on the Cheap. Her inspiration was to post bargains and deals attractive to Atlanta visitors. Well, a bunch of us thought that sounded like a great plan–especially since this economy is rough on freelancers–and we formed a group. We call it Cities on the Cheap (http://CitiesOnTheCheap.com), and it’s a network of hyper local bloggers. All of that is how TucsonOnTheCheap met the world. Here’s one interesting gem we all learned: we may have started by thinking our blogs were intended for visitors to our individual cities, but we quickly learned that our true customers were local. It’s good to be flexible and observant. We found our niche.

2. What goals did you have for it initially? Were you planning to make money?

To answer the second question first: You bet. I knew exactly nothing about making money from a blog, but I knew it had been done. Initially, I wanted to post only ephemeral sorts of deals (a dinner bargain at a local restaurant good for only three days etc.). I later learned that people were using my blog to find fun things to do in Tucson that don’t cost a lot. So it became a blog that highlighted not just passing deals but also inexpensive ways to have a blast (festivals, cheap but good Mexican restaurants etc.). A tip: Try to make your blog useful to someone. That’s the key element that determines what I post. Is the information useful?

3. When did you decided you should start monetizing it, and did it go for the first months?

I put up AdSense ads about two months after starting the blog. Nickel after nickel rolled in until I had earned a whole dime. I’m kidding, of course, but quite seriously it didn’t go well. I recall that I didn’t earn my first check from Google until about four months after putting up the AdSense ads (Google only sends out checks after you earn at least $100). After that, I regularly earned the minimum each and every month. So AdSense has been kind to me after a slow start.

4. Do you know HTML/CSS? What other technical knowledge do you have?

I do know HTML but not CSS. But I cheat: my husband is a computer guru, and he helps when I need something special. I try not to bother him too much. Knowledge of CSS would be a plus, however my blog is on WordPress, and CSS is not essential.

5. How do you promote the website?

For a while I put up AdWords, but I stopped when I realized that AdWords is a better tool for people with an actual product to sell. In my case, I give away information and hope people will click on my ads or buy from my affiliations. I do regularly tweet and make Facebook status changes. I try to engage with my readers on Facebook and have become friends with some. Twitter and Facebook are huge for me. StumbleUpon is ok, but the people who come via that route are not my target audience and they don’t stay or come back. So Twitter an Facebook are fine traffic sources, but organic search is better. Some people may not understand that good SEO is also good website promotion–in fact, it’s vital to getting the word out. What good is an excellent blog on any subject if nobody knows your blog is there? Most of my visitors come from organic Google search.

6. How much were you making before you joined the AdSense Profits course?
Here’s the breakdown on the months just before I took the course:

March 2011: $355.36
April 2011: $418.87
May 2011: $328.35

The average was around $360. As for traffic, I was receiving around 15,000 unique visitors per month.

7. How did your earnings increase after it?
On the months that followed the course I noticed a big increase in earnings. Here’s the breakdown:

July 2011: $855.94
August 2011: $669.95
September 2011: $713.39

The average is $740, so you can see my earnings pretty much doubled in a matter of months. My traffic increased as well.

8. What concepts/strategies did you learn from the course that had a positive impact on your earnings?

I had not understood the value of ad placement and size until I took Daniel’s AdSense class. Daniel personally looked at my site the first week or so of the class. He made personalized suggestions that I implemented immediately (talking about ad placement & size here). I kid you not: within maybe two or three days I had earned so much more than usual that the entire cost of the class was covered. My AdSense revenue has remained solid since then.

But that’s not all I learned. I had no idea about the world of buying and selling websites/blogs. I was simply stunned. Not only that, but I have decided to sell Tucson on the Cheap soon and plan to use methods I learned in the course. Who knows? I might wind up buying and selling websites for a living now!

9. What tip do you have for beginners that are just getting started with Adsense?

Tip # 1: The more specific your blog niche, the better Google will be able to target your site.

Tip #2: Learn where to place your ads on the page. It matters. Really.

Tip #3: STUDY the AdSense rules. Google takes its services seriously and will throw you out if you do not follow the rules. So sit down, read them, and learn.

Tip #4: Grow your audience before placing ads. In the first place, Google shows preference to older sites, and it also shows you to be a reliable blogger who isn’t looking for an easy buck. All that matters to Google–and to you, too.

10. What plans do you have for TucsonOnTheCheap.com, and how much do you think it can potentially earn per month?

I think TucsonOnTheCheap can be a highly profitable blog, and someone can make decent money with a couple of hours of work per day. That someone should be a person who understands marketing (not one of my strengths). I think my blog might potentially earn several thousand dollars/month. But I am ready to move on, and I am hoping to sell TucsonOnTheCheap soon as I mentioned.

For instance, would you rather have a website that receives 200,000 monthly visitors and makes $1,000 monthly in profits, or a website that receives only 20,000 monthly visitors but that makes $3,000 monthly? I am sure the second, and this gap in the traffic/earnings ration happens in real life, too.

That all being said, traffic remains a very important metric online. It’s not more important than profits, but it probably comes in a close second place.

The reason is quite simple: unless you have people visiting your website you won’t be able to engage them, to spread your message, to gather feedback, to sell your products/services and so on.

And you could go a step further: even if the money you are making with your website is pocket change right now, as long as you have traffic, you can always change your monetization strategy and perhaps improve your earnings.

In fact I both got burned and profited with this rule of thumb in the past.

When I got burned: I bought a website that was making around $1,000 monthly, despite having only 15,000 monthly visitors or so. I figured I would be able to increase the traffic and consequently the earnings, but within months of my purchase traffic dried and the earnings almost disappeared, probably because of fluctuations in search rankings.

When I profited: I bought a website that was making only $300 monthly, but it was receiving over 100,000 monthly visitors and it had some strong search rankings. I figured the low profit margin was probably related to a poor monetization strategy, and a couple of months after the purchase the monthly earnings jumped to $1,500 monthly.

So remember: where there’s traffic, there’s hope.