According to Ryan Beldham, founder of MyWebRevolution.com, Google is a monopoly. In this interview, I asked Ryan why he thinks Google is a monopoly and what he thinks should be done about it. As a libertarian and fan of free markets I still think people are free to do business with Google or go elsewhere. What about you? Do you agree with Ryan? Share your thoughts in the Comments.

Anna: Why do you consider Google to be a monopoly?

Ryan: This is not an easy question to answer and is really the basis of my entire argument. But to try and sum it up, you must first know how to define a monopoly. I define it as a product or service that has exclusive control in its market space, and, must control the prices set in that market. It is important to note that this is a two-fold definition and gives a set of criteria for determining what a monopoly is.

Reporting its financial results for the first quarter of 2011, Demand Media, Inc. has good and bad news for shareholders. The good news is that revenues have jumped 48 percent compared with those in the first quarter of 2010. The bad news is that the company’s loss has also increased.

Demand Media’s revenues hit $79.5 million in the first quarter of 2011, 48 percent higher than the $53.6 million earned in Q110. The company’s operating loss, however, increased by 31 percent – from $3.2 million in Q110 to $4.2 million in Q111. Its net loss climbed 37 percent – from $4.1 million in the first quarter of last year to $5.6 million in Q111.

Outsourcing service, Freelancer.com, recently surpassed one million projects posted on the platform, celebrating the milestone with meetup parties in cities around the world.

The projects total over USD $86 million worth of work and – based on Freelancer.com’s fee (the higher of $3 or 3 percent of the total project cost) – suggests the company has made around $2.6 million in revenues since its inception in 2004.

With revenues and profits down substantially in 2010, what will AOL do to turn itself around in 2011? According to the AOL Way, the company’s plan for ‘content, product, media engineering, and revenue management’, it will focus on boosting content production, page views, ad revenues and profits.

Business Insider recently published the leaked AOL Way and, as mentioned in Kikabink News (see Dissecting AOL’s Business Plan, ‘The AOL Way’), we’ll be going through the plan and discussing the key take-outs of interest to Internet marketers in a series of upcoming articles.

If you’re in the business of affiliate marketing or making money from advertising – as many Internet marketers are – you’ll want to take a look at the ‘AOL Way’. The AOL Way reveals AOL’s plans for its content publishing business, and was recently leaked to the Business Insider.

Indeed, thanks to the Business Insider, you can review the entire 58 slide presentation, ‘The AOL Way Content, Product, Media Engineering, and Revenue Management‘ at your leisure.

This week’s ‘I Love Internet Marketing’ podcast features an exclusive audio interview with The Challenge founder and 30DC, Inc. CEO, Ed Dale.

Ed Dale is one of the true thought leaders of Internet marketing. Five years ago Ed began the free Internet marketing training program The Challenge (then known as the 30 Day Challenge) which has since enlisted over 150,000 participants. Back then, Ed also started buying and selling web businesses… years before it was trendy.

Not all ideas are good ideas. Before you risk a lot of time, energy, money or other resources on a new idea, you want to make sure it justifies your investment.

But you also want to avoid prematurely dismissing an idea that could turn out to be good. You want to give it a chance to fly before you start shooting at it, looking for weaknesses.

Success and failure are part and parcel of building a business. You win some, you lose some.

Since, as an entrepreneur, you’re inherently forging a new path through unknown territory, it’s inevitable that you’ll sometimes make decisions that lead you further towards your goal… and others that lead to dead-ends. So too, it’s your ability to quickly turn around, try another way, and keep persisting until you reach your goal that will determine whether or not you succeed.

In other words, the better able you are to deal with failure – to learn from your mistakes and make better decisions – the better your chances of actually succeeding.

But dealing with failure isn’t always easy… so how should you do it?

It’s pretty rare for a digital clock to go too fast or too slow, as you might expect with a mechanical clock. If, however, a digital clock speeds up or slows down, it’s often due a malfunctioning frequency receiver. Since digital clocks are set to a 60 hertz frequency, any deviation from that will cause them to gain or lose time.

But that wasn’t why MY digital clock ran too fast. It turned out that something else was to blame. What was it… and why mention it on an Internet marketing blog?

Sadly, various fakes and other dubious characters have tainted the word ‘guru’ in the how-to Internet marketing niche. While there really are some highly qualified Internet marketing gurus (i.e. teachers) around, they can be hard to spot amongst all the fakes.

Funnily enough, though, while the fake gurus certainly hurt a lot of people with their B.S. products… ultimately the joke is on them.