Glowleaf

Yes, I know. Adsense sucks. Adsense is for newbies. Adsense makes pennies. You can’t be a baller with Adsense.

All that is true.

But, an advanced affiliate must use every single tool in his arsenal, and honestly, it is dumb to neglect Adsense. You should never rely on a single method of monetizing your sites, and you should definitely not rely on Adsense alone to make money.

You should be multidimensional when monetizing your sites. Find all the tools online that can make revenue, try them all, master them all, and apply them to the appropriate circumstances. Sometimes, a site works well with paid links, like Text-link-ads. Or maybe the classic banner space. Affiliate links for the products you review. Whatever.

This post is not to discuss alternate monetizing methods, but to use a proven set-it-and-forget-it method. Many people (even me) have turned away from Adsense due to their ridiculous terms, the bans, the crappy payouts. But it is still a monetizing tool that fits the vast majority of sites.

I am not telling you to slap Adsense on every site you own, quite the contrary. Use it only on your sites that don’t perform well with other methods (no-one buys your links, or never converting banners etc). Every affiliate has some “dead weight” sites in his arsenal, that get little traffic and they wield no revenue by other means.

Anyway, here is an example of how I used Adsense. The site is Greek but you don’t need to read anything, this is just a screenshot to show you the layout.

This is a Thesis theme, 2 column setting. The sidebar on the right is thin, just enough to fit in the useful stuff. Under the image rotator on the top right, I put up an Adsense ad, which is the only monetization method used on the site. Yes, a single ad, no more. It is placed near the picture, but under a “sponsor” text to be TOS compliant. It is clearly above the fold.

This example is not a money site, so I did not want to create the classic adsense minefield. But here is what I noticed:

Having a single ad in a good ctr place has benefits. This setup has very good click through rates, averaging 2% but with spikes of even 5%. Also, the average cost per click is maxed out. Since there is only adspace for one ad, only the top bidding advertiser gets shown. By truncating all the low-bidding ads I got a great performance from this set-up.

I am not saying that this method rocks, or that it will increase revenue. I am just sharing what I stumbled on, and I suggest you try it out. Or at least, take this post as an excuse to try out things out of the norm.

Popularity: 2% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: adsense, ctr

Copeac has a special promo going on for this month. Push some traffic and earn prizes! Should be easy for all you money making geeks out there.

Popularity: 2% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: copeac

There are a ton of scripts and plugins to rewrite links, and hide affiliate links. Most “how to make money gurus” say that you absolutely need to hide the affiliate links in order to profit.

I say that is wrong.

There is a good reason for that. Lets see what happens:

1. You hide the affiliate link.
2. Your reader does not instantly realise that he got through your referral link.
3. If he signs up, you get credit.
4. You end up with more signups.

Now, lets see what happens when you don’t hide your affiliate links:

1. You show the technique, and link to the offer/service with your affiliate link in plain sight.
2. Your reader sees it is a referral, but voluntarily clicks on it.
3. He signs up at the service, uses it following your instructions, and sees that the technique works.
4. The reader is satisfied, and his trust in you is increased.
5. The next time you refer him to something, he will jump on the wagon with no hesitation.
6. You end up with more signups.

I prefer the second scenario. There are downsides of course. You will get a ton of emails saying “I signed up under you, now tell me this and that and the next”. Some will make legitimate questions, which you should answer. Others will paraphrase the demand “gimme your credit card info”, and thus you can ignore them.

The point here is simple:

If you don’t suggest shitty products, your readers will be more than happy to sign up under your link.

This is a fact, and I know it by experience. I have used every single one of the products or services that I have referred, and I have gained a degree of return from every one of them.

How do you like that for a make-money-blogging secret?

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: affiliate links, make money online blogging

Is twitter your playground, or are you trying to make it so? Are followers your e-peen, and bit.ly your nutrition source?

Then signup at my mailing list for tips and tricks of the trade.

No?

Then I bribe you with a free copy of Twitter Sniper for you to play with, hosted on my server.

Popularity: 1% [?]

written by Glowleaf

Using social media is a one-way street in today’s internet. What used to be a passing fad 2 years ago is now a serious marketing platform.

It depends on your site/product/service of course, but social media can push serious traffic towards you.

Facebook.

By hitting the 300 million milestone, Facebook is now a huge platform. Have you ever dreamt as a marketer “what if I could reach out a whole country? That would be awesome.”

Well, now you can. Facebook has the biggest userbase in the world. What used to be a fad, is now a must. The smart thing that facebook did was the notifications. A friend of yours signs up on Facebook? You get notified, because it parsed his email list. Someone added you as a friend? You get emailed. Someone tagged you on a photograph? The same. Someone replied on that comment on a photograph? Spam, spam spam. And the funny thing is, that it is never treated as spam. Facebook just lets you know that other people are doing stuff on your account. And since those people are your friends, you never get offended if they keep spamming you with sheep and mafia guns. Facebook is just the messenger.

Twitter.

Twitter must be the biggest fad of them all. Many have fought it and then fell in love with it. Even I did. In fact, it is so great, that its traffic must be the most valuable of them all. Twitter traffic comments on your posts, subscribes on your RSS and email list, blogs about you, retweets your tweets etc. You might not be able to directly sell something on twitter, but you are bound to get some exposure. And if your promo is worth it, that exposure will convert indirectly.

I think that twitter nailed it with the 140 word limit. People get spammed all day, every day, around the world. Ads, radio, phone calls, SMS, emails, billboards, leaflets, a whole blizzard of little spammy messages are fighting each other for your attention. And researches show that the average attention span of a person has been reduced significantly the last few years. Twitter fits that lifestyle perfectly. The way I see it, it is even better than RSS feeds. I used to go through my subscribed RSS blogs every few days, and had to read to whole posts etc. Now, I just have a twitter account, follow those people who interest me, and receive manageable chunks of info from them every day. It is a mashup of little shouts, and they stay non-intrusive because I chose to receive them!

Myspace.

Don’t neglect Myspace. Yea, its old. Yea, it sucks. But there are a lot of people on it. And the best part is, a lot of stupid people. People to whom you can sell stuff.

Ok then, how can we leverage these 3 social sites easily and effectively?

There is a little piece of software that does all that. It is called tweetdeck, and it rocks. It started out as a more useful GUI for multiple twitter accounts, but the newest version bridges Myspace and Facebook as well. I believe it is a marketer’s wet dream.

Once you set it up, you can manage each of your site’s social exposure on 3 social networks from the same interface. Lets say you have your personal blog, so you make accounts for it at Myspace, Facebook and twitter. You pass everything into tweetdeck, and voila, you can post and manage them from one location. Want to promote your service? 3 more accounts, set them up in Tweetdeck, and you can go back and forth between them all day inside tweetdeck.

Of course, setting up the accounts is an important step. Different social sites need different approaches to succeed in getting lots of victi… cough, sorry, friends.

Honestly, for Myspace I have no idea what to do to make an account popular. Google it, someone will know.

For facebook, I found this useful article on Mashable amongst the enormous pile of crap on that domain.

For twitter, a lot has been said, but it is all bloated bullshit. What you need to know is this: link periodically to interesting stuff in your niche. That is all, honestly. Either do it manually or automate it. An easy way to do this is to fire up tweetdeck (I told you it rocks!) and open a search tab. As a keyword put something in your niche, for example #php or #wordpress or #lol. Spend exactly 40 seconds every day, check that tab on tweetdeck, and retweet something that looks even remotely interesting, you don’t even have to click the bit.ly

Of course it is not as easy as it sounds. Creating a following through social media takes time, and there is no secret recipe for it. What is certain is that it does help your site, and it does help get exposure.

Now, what should you promote? Not everything works when you promote to the social crowd. Think about building/promoting:

• Viral content
• Video
• Interaction/Flash promo
• Polls
• Contests
• Interesting articles

How can you twist the above into sales? Well, that is for you to find out! It is different for every product, but there is always an angle of approach you can take to twist linkbait/socialbait into buying.  Use your imagination, and keep an eye open for what other marketers are doing on the same platforms.

Signup on my mailing list if you want juicier stuff than this.

Popularity: 3% [?]

written by Glowleaf \\ tags: facebook, myspace, social media, tweetdeck, twitter