Successful personal websites and small businesses are finding new ways to generate revenue from the Internet

Making money from your successful personal website has never been easier it seems. But losing a promised pot of gold is as easy too.

First, the upside.

From her blog (xiaxue.blogspot.com) alone, Wendy Cheng makes a four-figure sum every month from hawking advertisements of designer T-shirts to travel spots.

'Making three to four thousand every month isn't difficult, considering I don't even actively look for advertisers,' said the 21-year-old.

She began accepting the advertisements late last year - and for an additional fee, she writes advertorials too - on her three-year-old blog, which has a daily readership of 20,000.

Besides traditional banner spots and advertorials, technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have all developed do-it-yourself advertising systems for owners of popular sites.

Getting started is a simple two-step process: Register with the company and download the advertising banner.When people start clicking on the banner, the ad service provider automatically calculates your earnings.

Google, for example, uses a combination of the valid clicks on the ads on your site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content pages - to work out the amount due to you.

Users can check their account for how much they have made. According to the Adsense webpage, the revenue split between Google and its advertisers is confidential, so it is not disclosed to the user selling ad space on his site.

Convenience was what prompted student Tey Wei Kiat to sign up for Google's Adsense system. He wanted to earn pocket money with his popular brainteaser, The Wicked.

But last month, a week before he was due to receive his cheque for US$271 (about $435), he received a shocking message from Google. His account had been terminated and the monies confiscated. The e-mail alleged that the clicks for his site were fraudulent.

Wei Kiat is appealing against the decision 'but it's my word against theirs', he said. So, the 18-year-old has decided to personally source for advertisers for his game.

Google did not reply at press time on how they track click fraud.

For those looking to do some online marketing, the process today has become very simple, convenient - and more importantly, affordable.

When local online gifts shop Olive 3 wanted to generate some buzz for their e-business, they tried a variety of tactics from free ads on Yahoo! and posting on newsgroups to buying keywords on search engine Google.

So far, the best performer has been the paid Google ads, for which the shop spends 'a few hundred dollars every month,' said the shop's spokesman Kevin Shepardson.

Currently, about 50 per cent of the shop's business is generated that way, he said.

While things are going smoothly today, there were teething problems initially where he had to continually refine the keywords he bought, to ensure he did not pay for visitors from Siberia who would not actually buy from his shop.