It’s a tough question, especially in a bad economy.

The question really begs another question – what is your goal for your site?

If you are operating it as a real business where you hope to either supplement your current income or rely on it as your sole source of income – then you need to be prepared to invest in search (it’s often the foundation of your marketing and a consistent source of regular traffic).

You can invest time or money and in most cases, you usually need to invest both.

Top 10 People Who Influence What Americans Buy

As the effects of the global recession linger, consumers are changing the way they shop, becoming more budget-conscious, eco-aware and cause-oriented, while paying greater attention to what, why and from who they are buying. Arnold Worldwide has named the top ten public figures, across entertainment, business and politics, who are helping to promote the era of “mindful spending.”

 As I looked through the 

Forrester Research just released a report that suggests the tough economy will be the catalyst for more spending on social media marketing.

Non-travel spending during the 2007 holidays reached $29.2 billion despite a slow start in November.

With more Americans ditching their landlines, 2007 is on pace to be the first year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services, according to industry and government officials.

Online holiday spending between November 1 and December 14 increased 18 percent compared to the same time period last year reaching $22 billion according to comScore.

Monday, December 10 reached $881 million in sales (up33 percent versus last year), registering as the heaviest online spending day of the season and the heaviest online spending day on record.

In 2007, 37 percent of the U.S. adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That number will increase to 49 percent in 2011.

Online shoppers researched product information 11 percent and 27 percent more on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday respectively than they did on Cyber Monday, according to research from WebCollage.

Forget about Cyber Monday; December 6th easily topped the online sales of the Monday after Thanksgiving, as US consumers spent $803 million on the first Thursday in December.

Analysis firm comScore said the first 32 days of the US holiday non-travel retail shopping season topped $14 billion for a 17 percent gain over the same period last year.

Merchants affected by Yahoo’s system outage on Monday have more reasons to be upset, as US consumers parted with $733 million online for the day.

From Apple to Microsoft to Google, there is hot news written. Below are some of the more interesting articles involving eBusiness and search today.

Another obvious patent gets paid off by Apple. Apple has agreed to pay Burst a $10 million payment for infringing on its 1990 streaming video technology patent.

Advertisers are on track to spend $21.4 billion on the Internet in 2007, according to an eMarketer online ad spending report. By 2011 spending on advertisements online is estimated to hit $42 billion.

A project to construct a massive datacenter near Chicago complements Microsoft’s establishment of other centers in Washington State and near San Antonio.

The total online spending by small businesses is expected to reach $70 billion by the year 2012, up from $47 billion in 2006, according to JupiterResearch’s new report "US Online Small Business Market Category Forecast, 2007 to 2012."

There’s a new report out today that suggests online advertising spend will overtake US newspaper advertising by the year 2011, according to FT.com.

The federal Office of Management and Budget has made a couple of tweaks to the Earmarks database they maintain.

Spending on online video games will reach $13 billion globally by 2012, up from $4.5 billion in 2006, according to DFC Intelligence’s "Online Game Market Forecasts" report. For marketers that want to reach gamers that is welcomed news.

Google, as we know it, is pretty much an American corporation.  You hear things from Google India, and some pieces of news will originate in Google Australia, but otherwise, it’s pretty quiet out there.  Now things have picked up in one very calm corner of the world – Google is adding a second research and development center in Israel.

A few days ago, a report showed that Internet advertising was up 35% last year, hitting almost $17 billion. It’s been almost a year since we reported, “Web Advertising Spending Too Low,” and it looks like advertisers are starting to close the gap.

China’s online advertising market reached approximately $176 million in the first quarter of 2007, according to Analysys International.