Do you remember the first job you ever wanted? I do. For me, I was 4 years old in the car with my parents crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge (which I thought was the “Frogs” Neck bridge until about 8 years old). I looked around at all the cars and realized they all had to pay a toll to cross the bridge. I said “I want to be one of those guys that just sits there and collects the money - I want to be a toll booth collector.” I didnt realize at the time they didnt get to keep all the money. . .
What I do today isnt so radically different from my childhood dream: I collect money from traffic by setting up virtual toll booths. One way I have found to set up a virtual toll booth is by setting home pages.
There are many ways to get users to set a homepage. The most effective I have found is during a software, browser, or plugin install: but I am pretty sure a facebook app could do it too.
The key to making money off of the homepage portal is to make it useful, non intrusive, and familiar: always include a Google search bar with your adsense code.
During my travels I thought of another homepage that would be useful, non intrusive and could potentially go viral. At hostels, there are certain services that travelers always want: facebook, hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail, and to a lesser extent myspace. They also are always looking for maps, local information, train, flight and other travel services.
A facebook app that went viral to set the homepages of a good percentage of hostel computers could make a killing. A travelers portal that was on the browser on every boot could provide links to all the above services as well as a Google search bar that includes your adsense code. Tons of people click on the paid results when searching from hostels.
That is just one example: but when you start to think of how to get users homepage set with your affiliate codes more ideas always spring to mind. The more homepage users you own, the more toll booths you will have for traffic on the web. Get those toll booths set up, sit back, and collect the cash.
3 Responses to “Homepage: Your Toll Booth for the Web”
Great idea… Back in the day adult sponsor console chains would try to set your homepage via javascript, seems like a natural extension with more stable traffic potential.
Quadszilla! Welcome back? The next time you’re in NYC or when you plan on finally coming back, you need to let me know so I can take you to Peter Luger, get you drunk (GHB if it takes more than 4 beers) and jack all of your ideas! I love this one though, except that I have a feeling that Google knows a lot more about cookie raping and hijacking homepages with your Adsense codes. I mean, if they really wanted to get serious with someone doing this, all they have to do is match up the Adsense ID and poof, all of your info is shown, and they will either ban you (not the end of the world, getting new accounts is easy enough) or worse… make an example out of you, especially if there are complaints galore that “Google is hijacking our browsers/homepages!”
I’m sure you’re already aware that you and I share similar super shady ideas, but lately, I’ve been assessing the risk more than the reward ‘potential’ against one another, and maybe I’m losing my edge here, but I wouldn’t do it if there were any risk of me getting sued, arrested, or worse told I couldn’t use the internet for two years! (The Kevin Mitnick punishment!)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
haha, I also thought the Throgs Neck Bridge was “Frogs” when I was younger