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By Mitchell Harris

The formula for making money in business is actually quite simple, you must make sure your customers find you and buy from you. This formula is dramatically simplified when you can simply attract customers to your business instead of having to go find them.

Fortunately, today’s entrepreneur has Google Inc, which offers a menu of- mostly free- services that gives the average person capabilities that major corporations use to pay billions of dollars for.   

No. 10: Google Adsense

For most people who want to use their website to publish advertising, Google Adsense is the perfect solution. There are plenty of advertising publishing networks out there but Google Adsense allows you to publish advertising on your website, search results, mobile websites and even your unused domain names.

Benefits: Publish ads on your website, mobile website, RSS feeds and site search results

No. 9: Google Checkout

In order to make money online, you must have the capability to process transactions online. While there are several payment processing applications available online, Google Checkout’s biggest advantage is that it’s a Google product. That is, since most searches begin on Google, having the Google Checkout badge on your advertisement or product listing has been shown to increase leads and convert more sales.

Benefits: Attract new leads, convert more sales and protect you from fraud

No. 8: Google Webmaster Central

Google Webmaster Central is one of those incredibly powerful free tools that simply wasn’t available to the average user prior to Google offering it. With Google Webmaster Central you find out how Google sees your website, analyze your search data, receive alerts about your website, check which websites link to your website and deepen your relationship with Google Search.

Benefits: Get data about crawling, indexing and search traffic. Plus, receive notifications about problems on your website

No. 7: Google Analytics

The truth of the matters is that there are no real secrets to success in business, there are only truths that you haven’t discovered yet. In order to discover these truths about your customer and your customer’s behavior online there is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a powerful, flexible and easy to use way to analyze your website traffic that allows you to make adjustments accordingly.

Benefits: Track sales and conversions, track web-enabled phones, and analyze traffic sources

No. 6: Google Website Optimizer

People who land on your website prefer certain layouts. Certain text, image and headlines bring more sales than others. Unfortunately, there are no formulas that work every time for every type of website. The only way to figure this out is to test the different combinations. Google Website Optimizer is a free testing and optimization tool that allows you to easily test different combinations of content on your website in order to determine the most effect structure.

Benefits: Increase sales and conversions, get more leads, and eliminate guesswork from web site design

No. 5: Google Admob

Recently acquired by Google, AdMob is one of the world’s largest mobile advertising networks. As far as the web goes, mobile devices dominate Macs and PCs. AdMob not only allows to you to target specific geographic locations, but also target specific cell phone manufactures, operating systems and device models with your advertising.

Benefit: Click to call, Click to map and iPhone Search ad types

No. 4: Google Product Search

Often, prospective customers know exactly what they want and are interested in comparison shopping against different retailers. As a seller, you can submit individual products to Google Product Search, allowing shoppers to quickly and easily find you site.

Benefits: Reach shoppers that are actively looking to buy the product you’re selling

No. 3: Google Places

If your business has a physical location, the most effective free way to generate new business is through Google Places. Google Places is a search optimized business listing service that works even if you don’t have a website.  So think YellowPages, but the listings appear at the topic of search engine results.

Benefit: Ranking and search results, coupons and mapping tool availability

No. 2: YouTube

Unless you live under a rock, you know that YouTube is by far the largest online video community. What you may not know is that YouTube is owned by Google and YouTube represents nearly a third of all search queries on the Google network (according to comScore). That essentially means that Youtube is the second largest search engine. By posting interesting videos and leading users back to your website you can have a dramatic impact on your sales for free.

Benefit: Increase traffic

No. 1: Google Adwords

If you want instant results, use Google Adwords. Your ads appear beside related search results, people click your ads and connect to your business online. Google Adwords integrates with Analytics, Checkout, Places, Adsense and Website Optimizer. Adwords also offers the ability to purchase TV ads.

Benefits: Reach more customers, cost effective

Mitchell Harris is the head of the business development firm MJ Harris Co and product manager of the company’s Tested Marketing Methods web property. Sign up for the newsletter to receive more business strategy information.

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