There are 540 million directories printed in the United States each year. That’s 1.7 directories per person, assuming just over 300 million people living in the US.  There is not one “yellow pages” company, so it’s many companies printing many books.

The average yellow pages book weighs 3.62 pounds.  Multiply that by the 540 million directories printed each year and you get 2 BILLION pounds of paper.  It takes 24 fully developed trees to make a ton of paper.  So you’re looking at 23 million trees each year being cut down to make these books.

The yellow pages industry is a $26 billion annual business, bigger than Google’s $20 billion in revenues for 2008.  The yellow pages are profitable and are not dying anytime soon.  Most publishers have recycling programs, to quell the environmentalists that protest the waste– but almost none have an opt-out program.

Online advertising programs are cutting into offline revenue.  I don’t believe web advertising would ever fully replace print, TV, radio, magazine, and other forms of media– but it will become a growing share over the next 5-10 years.

What say you?

(in other words, how to NOT have a blog that gets no traffic)

Every few days I go into Google Analytics to see what’s driving traffic to my site.  If there’s a sharp spike, it’s usually because of a guest blog post or speaking at a conference.  If it’s a gradual increase, it’s because I’m ranking on some organic keywords.  The number 3 keyword driving traffic to my blog over the last few days has been “facebook application promotion“, and that’s been driving new consulting business to BlitzLocal.

So when you see that you’re getting traffic on an organic keyword, the next thing you should do is search on that keyword and related keywords.  So I did that search.

And found that I was ranking #2 out of 58,300,000 results, with the #1 result being Facebook themselves.  Here’s what I’ve learned: if Google thinks your blog is good enough to rank on a competitive keyword, then by all means you should blog more about that keyword and related keywords.  Maybe you rank on a term that is not ultra competitive, such as “cell phones suck“.  Well, with some work, maybe you can eventually rank on “cell phones”. Think of it like winning in junior varsity before moving to varsity or pro.

There are 4 things to consider here:

• How many hits you’re getting: Don’t worry about the terms that you give only a few hits a month– look only at your top 20 terms.
• What position you rank: 10 hits a day could be due to ranking #1 on a low volume term or ranking #35 on a high volume term.  So you need to assess how much room there is to grow.
• The quality of those hits: If the bounce rate is greater than 70%, you have a problem.  It means that people aren’t getting what they’re looking for– and you know that Google notices that bounce rate, too. In search, it’s called bounceback rate– the percentage of folks who “bounce back” to the search engine results page to keep looking.
• Whether those keywords have economic value: How much are those users worth via AdSense or some affiliate program?

Thus, if you listen to Google, they will help you make more money.  I hope these tips helps you get more traffic– and more earnings– to your blog!

Update: Looks like dennis-yu.com is not ranking #1 on “facebook application promotion” on Google.

Got 60 seconds?  Check out the 24 funny pumpkin carving images here– they’ll make you laugh.  Here’s my favorite one:

Ok, fine– it’s not technically a “carving”, but it’s still hilarious!

Not much more needs to be said about this. Gotta wonder how this ad was approved by Facebook. The guy is naked and she probably is, too. What do you think the advertiser was targeting– old guys who say “creeper” in their profile? This is worse than the “date a cougar” ads from a few weeks ago.

The following is a guest post by an affiliate who has being creating websites and doing various affiliate marketing for over 8 years.

I could be making 10 times more money than I am right now. So why aren’t I? Because I enjoy what I’m doing. I’ve done a lot of affiliate marketing in the past and I must say, it is incredible how much money you can make, the problem for me is I don’t enjoy doing it full time anymore. What I do enjoy is blogging on work at home scams.

I’m not saying don’t do what makes you good money (because having money allows you to do the things you love), but if you don’t fully enjoy it try mixing in other things that you do enjoy. I still do various affiliate marketing every day but not anywhere near the level that I used too.I make less money doing what I enjoy and I am much happier because of it. Think about your future, will your current job or career make you proud? Maybe you don’t care yet, but someday you will. Someday you will realize that money isn’t everything. As the legendary Biggie Smalls put it, “Mo money mo problems”.