BookCrossing.com - Great for Book Lovers and Givers

I was creating a new literature focused search campaign for the Web site this morning and stumbled upon a Web site called BookCrossing - The World’s Biggest Free Book Club. The site was created in 2001 by a guy named Ron Hornbaker. He saw a need for people to share books, and that the Internet was a great way to do this. It is a beautiful grassroots idea, that has really taken off over the past couple of years. While I was browsing the site, I came across a Google Adword ad for a site called PaperBackSwap.com who claim to be “the source for free paperback books”. Very exciting! It is cool how it works, and the only cost is the shipping which they claim to be under $2 per book. I don’t want to explain the process here, so go to the site and check it out.

How is this relevant to search? BookCrossing.com sells advertisement on its site through Google AdSense. When you visit the site you will see on the right-hand side “Ads by Google”, and then three ads that look identical to what you would see in Google’s search results. This type of advertisement has kept several small Web sites up and running, and has made some people a lot of money. The more traffic to a site, the more money the site makes. Bloggers, small businesses, large corporations, and online libraries are all using AdSense as a revenue generator. This is just one more example how search engines allows everyone to benefit. The site owner makes a little extra money and the visitors are served up ads that are relevant to what they are interested in.