Web income: How do websites make money?

It's actually a very simple question, but most people have the wrong idea, it's not just having pageviews and you make money, it's more complex than that.

The most common way is through affiliate programs.
This means that you get affiliated with a corporation and you promote their products or the products that they want to advertise, the most common ways to get paid for that are through commission (you get a part of the value of a product you helped to sell by implementing an ad) through RPM (this means that you get paid a fixed value for each 1000 ad prints or 1000 pageviews or ad views) CPC (cost per click, it means that you get paid fr each click on one ad).

This is a very easy way to get money from a website and it's the one used for many websites, google came to revolutionize that with AdSense, that makes possible for everyone to make money online.

For big websites you have direct advertising, you rent a part of your website to a direct advertiser that pays you for that space so that he can advertise there, it can be on any of the forms that are practiced on the affiliate programs or simply a monthly fee.

Some websites also have products to sell, mostly ebooks, it's extremely normal to make a lot from these especially if you have great content or skills to share, curiously most of the ebooks online are about blogging.

If you want to make money from a website it's pretty simple and it comes down to just a couple of things.
You must have original content, continuously work on your website, promote your website and your content and try to make it engaging for users to come back, if you can do each of these steps well you should have no problem having a profitable website or blog.

General: Is the US still the center of the world?

A good 20 years ago the answer was simple, it would be a solid yes, but now the world has changed, there were wars, mobs, changes all around, crisis and it makes you wonder if the US is still the center of the world.

Well that depends where you are looking at, the US is no longer the most developed country in the world (the stats point at Canada for that), it's not the one with the highest standard of living, i could go on and on about this, the US is currently not the best country for anything good, there isn't a single positive statistic the set US as a top country for anything good, but it doesn't mean that it isn't the center of the world.

The US always has that energy and image that no other country has, it is an example for anything you want to prove, for a stat, as a base, inside that country ideas grow and spread in an incredible rate, a rate higher than no other, TV series are all set there, the film industry is all there and if you have a website you know that you will have more visitors from the US than from any other country, so what is the answer?

Even though the US is not the top country in the world i would have to say that it is still the center of the world, there are so many things based on it that you just can't refute that possibility, it isn't as clear as it was 20 years ago but it is still true, the US has a dynamic that no other country has, ideas and opportunities grow and spread in there like a wildfire and if you think big you think of it, if you are an important financial advisor you look at their financial sector, if you a tech fanatic you wish you'd live there, it's a flair that you can't find anywhere else and the cities like New York or LA that either make you the best or eat you alive are the heart of the deal. It's not all roses but when you think big you think of nothing else.

The American dream is no longer just for Americans, it has spread all over the world and everyone wants a piece of it. Granted, the US isn't what it used to be but everyone knows that in there are the most ridiculous opportunities and the big money, and for that there's no way around it, the US is still the center of the world and i bet that 10 years from now it will still be.