I Was An Adsense Dummy Are You

Writen by Mark Wallace

The ease with which webmasters can post the Adsense code made Adsense a very attractive way of monetizing a site. Google took care of coming up with the exact code - you just choose some color and other preferences - and you stuck the code on your pages to make money. Google improved the program substantially. They added new features, like AdLinks, which allowed webmasters to extract money from locations that were previously non-contributory; they added channels to allow monitoring of which locations were and were not pulling their weight. Like a lot of webmasters I made more from Adsense than I did from the day job and finally quit working to live the Adsense UPS club member life.

But, it's time for a radical rethink.

The problem with humans is that they like to take the easy way out. Google appreciates that and doesn't give you too much of responsibility for running the ads on your site. The general message is that you should trust them to serve the highest paying ads for the perfectly logical reason that as their earnings are a percentage of yours it's in their self-interest to maximize your ad revenue. And, that's the same expectation they have of advertisers: Bid high and trust us to adjust the bid downwards to stay just above your nearest competitor. Millions trust Google so let's assume they're trustworthy.

They then introduced smart pricing. Now this changes things in a lot of ways webmasters didn't appreciate earlier. The theory behind smartpricing is this: Google tracks which visitors are "converting" for the advertisers i.e. making purchases etc. Some publishers send visitors who convert, others send "low quality" visitors. Surely it's a fair system that rewards those publishers who send quality visitors? And to do that at the expense of those low quality sites with no original content who have visitors clicking on the Adsense links only to get out of the site? In theory, yes. But, let's step back a minute.

Previously Google's income was tied to yours; if you made more Google did too. Now, Google adjusts your earnings by a Smartpricing factor to take it down to ... well, whatever their formula tells them. That's a bit too convenient. Are we putting the fox in charge of the hen house? No, we're not! Remember, Google is an honest company and their motto is to do no evil. They claim that if you are smartpriced down then they lose money as well as they refund the difference to the advertiser. So why worry about smartpricing?

There are several good reasons but the primary one is the secrecy. As a publisher you have no knowledge of conversions: Google doesn't share that information. Further, some advertisers are good at converting traffic into sales, others have yet to learn that a landing page that doesn't work in Internet Explorer and Firefox is... pretty useless. Yet, even for the latter type of advertiser, you get penalised. The advertiser who converts well is not rewarded at the expense of the advertiser who wastes all the leads you send him. But, that's not all. Many advertisers do not or cannot allow Google to track their conversions. How those cases affect smartpricing is unknown but it wouldn't be stretching credulity to assume that there's some formula in some algorithm telling Google how much to penalise you for. So, even if your site is the highest quality site and your visitors are more likely to convert than visitors from almost anywhere else you could be ending up with the lowest payout because the formula says that your traffic is rubbish! Moreover, as you have no knowledge of the conversion rates you can't even work to improve your earnings.

How do you know that your earnings would be three times what they are now if it wasn't for Smartpricing? You don't.

This is what every publisher needs to do on a regular basis: Try the competition. Till now that was not easily done as there was no credible competition to Adsense. Now there is. Chitika is just one of the many contextual programs that's competing with Google Adsense and early reports suggest it's paying a lot more but only if you know how to use it. You may have thousands of pages and you may have Adsense served via an SSI or a Frontpage "include" page... or you have manually inserted Adsense into many locations. Isn't it too much of work to change all of that to test run a new program? It is too much of work... so don't do it. Pick a particular page or section, setup an Adsense channel for that section, monitor the payout for a few days - then try something like Chitika. The best pages for Chitika are product pages and the best ads they serve are where you choose the keyword/product to be advertised on your page (yes, you can do that with Chitika). Have a look at some Chitika tips here first and then conduct your trial run.

This may be the most profitable thing you did since you signed up for Adsense.

The author's website presents an extensive review of the Chitika program, and offers revenue enhancing ideas particularly in relation to using Chitika together with Adsense and staying within the legal agreements for both.

Benefits Of Being An Affiliate Marketer

Writen by Patric Chan

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online.

It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner.

The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme. Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing.

There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales. Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.

Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits.

Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home.

There are virtually no production costs.

The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate.

Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the least cost and the most comfort. You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the convenience of your own home.

In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping. These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.

Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing. By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn.

Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not making enough money.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business. With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential.

Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Copyright 2005 Patric Chan

Patric Chan is a direct response expert, internet infopreneur, international speaker and author. His latest product, Online Niche Secrets Audio Course reveals how he started an online niche business and makes it profitable in less than 48 hours at http://www.onlinenichesecrets.com

Affiliate Marketing Diary Posts Of A Budding Internet Entrepreneur

Writen by Richard Smith

Affiliate marketing on the internet is one of the biggest buzzwords today. All over the world, people are looking for ways to make money on the internet. Like many business owners, many have tried and most have failed and given up. This is the story of one budding internet entrepreneur in his quest for financial freedom and a review of the different forms of affiliate marketing.

The world of internet marketing is a vast one. All interested parties are looking for the same thing -- to make money and gain financial freedom. Some have little patience and others have a lot. There are opportunities for all personality types.

Below are examples of some such opportunities.

Google Adsense

By placing the famous "Ads by Google" on their developed websites, affiliate marketers earn what is called PPC, or "pay per click" revenue each time a visitor clicks on the ad. It is one of the easiest methods of earning revenue on the internet but the amounts are individually small and so volume is key. Increasing the number of visitors and their "click through rate" is the objective here.

Amazon Products

Amazon, the world's largest online store, allows internet entrepreneurs to place ads for books, DVDs and other consumer products on their websites. If a visitor sees a featured product on the affiliate marketer's website and then decides to buy it, the website owner will earn a tidy comission from the sale. Other retailers also operate a similar scheme to Amazon but the idea is the same -- to target the big ticket products.

Adult websites

"Sex sells" as they say. It always has done and continues to do so, even in times of recession in the general economy. Whilst most visitors to adult sites are looking for freebies, the traffic potential to an adult site is so high that even a tiny conversion of traffic into sales can result in large revenues for the affiliate marketer. Blogs are a recent foray and popular theme in the adult website world of the affiliate marketer and offer new and lucrative possibilities.

For more information, regular commentary, and in-depth analysis of affiliate marketing, visit Affiliate Marketing Diary.

Web Affiliate Programs Experiences From The Frontline

Writen by J. Morgan

After two years of relying on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, organic search engine results, web directories and word of mouth, I finally decided to give web affiliate programs a try.

From my research, I knew that there are a lot of affiliate marketers (as affiliates like to refer to themselves) who are making a decent to good living steering customers to online stores. When I'd investigated adding our site to one of the programs, I always felt that the reputable sites were too expensive and that the cheaper sites were too risky.

Recently, I read some good feedback about Shareasale and took a look. Shareasale is less expensive to get into than Commission Junction or Clickbank, but has developed a reputation for having a well-run program.

I'd also heard that most of the many of the major affiliates that produce results are signed up at Shareasale, so I was eager to see what results I could expect. I handed over my $150 signup fee and $50 affiliate payout deposit and hoped for the best.

The site I wanted to promote is a designer and manufacturer of women's fitness wear. From ongoing research, I was already familiar with most of the high traffic sites with a readership that would be highly targeted to our store. I didn't expect to see many (if any) of them signing up as affiliate marketing is not a major source of their revenue models.

What I've found so far is that coupon websites are apparently all the rage right now in affiliate marketing. Within a day or two of joining the Shareasale program, a dozen or so coupon sites had signed up as affiliates. Coupon sites collect information about "good deals" on products available at online stores and then disseminate that information to their website viewers and newsletter readers.

Some of the larger and more popular sites in this space include FatWallet.com and SlickDeals.net. In addition to offering up coupons and discounts for shopping, some of the sites have gotten into the "cashback" game as well. If you order merchandise from vendors on their list, they promise to refund to you a small percentage of your purchase price.

All of this is fueled by affiliate marketing. From the perspective of an online store owner, it works out to be a pretty interesting channel. A certain percentage of your shoppers are going to be more price sensitive than others. Finding ways to sell products at low prices to those that demand it while getting top dollar from customers that aren't as concerned about cost is one of the major strategic challenges that a retailer faces.

The goods that our store carries are upscale. While our average customer does not want to overpay for their clothing, their primary consideration is value. Does the merchandise fit their style, fabric, and quality requirements. As a result, we very rarely run sales. But, even in our market there are customers who demand a bargain. My wife is like that. She just hates buying non-essentials unless she can get a discount. She's also the type of person that likes to feel like she got the best possible price on something and is willing to do whatever research is required.

If we can reach that type of customer via coupon sites without affecting non-price sensitive purchasers, that could very well be a win for us. There are two goals most stores try to accomplish with affiliate marketing. First, gain access to customers they would not likely have reached on their own. Second, find a way to bring customers to the store cheaper than they could do themselves. Coupon sites seemed to satisfy the first goal and so was something we were excited about.

One thing that you need to decide before signing up affiliates for your online store is whether you will allow them to use PPC to send customers to you. In the past, there was a thriving trade where affiliate marketers would bid on PPC keywords and send traffic directly to a webstore with their affiliate ID attached. Depending on the circumstances, may or may not be a good thing. Affiliates might do a better job of writing ads that appeal to target customers and may be able to convert traffic less expensively than you could yourself. On the flipside, its also possible that you would be paying more in affiliate commissions than you would have in PPC charges for the exact same customers.

The first sale credited to an affiliate for our program actually came in this way. The affiliate cleverly realized that they could bid just slightly higher on our company name than we were and capture customers who were specifically looking for our brand. By far the highest converting keywords we have in our PPC campaigns are based on our company name, so this could be a goldmine for the affiliate. However, for obvious reasons, paying 15% commission to the affiliate on the sale rather than 0.15/click to Google's Adwords just didn't make business sense for us, so we modified our affiliate rules such that affiliates are not allowed to send traffic directly to our website via PPC campaigns.

We're still early in the program and its yet to be seen whether affiliates will drive a significant part of our sales or not. We'll be certain to add new articles to the archives as we continue to learn from our experiences.

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(c) 2005 Ecommerce-Daily.com

J. Morgan is a serial entreprenuer who has been involved in the cutting edge of Internet ecommerce since its earliest days. He is presently the VP of Marketing for an upscale designer and manufacturer of women's fitness wear. In addition, Mr. Morgan runs several content websites including Ecommerce-Daily.com.

Dear Affiliate Manager 7 Ways To Tell If Your Affiliate Program Stinks

Writen by Nicole Dean

Question: Why aren't my affiliates promoting my affiliate program? And, how do I get more to sign up?

Dear Affiliate Manager:

I can tell you in a heartbeat whether or not your affiliate program is attracting loyal, motivated affiliates. It's easy. Just put yourself in your affiliate's shoes. If you're not creating loyalty in your affiliates, they're going to look for a better program to promote, and you'll be left in the dust.

Now that I've got your attention, let's go through some key components of making your affiliate program attractive to affiliates, so they don't start shopping around.

1. Reputations are on the Line.

Of course, number one is quality. Do you have quality products and customer service? An affiliate's reputation is on the line every time we consider promoting a product or service. If your products are junk or you're making our referrals upset in any way – we'll drop you faster than something *really* hot.

2. Lay the Money on the Table.

It's not just about the percentage commission. That won't motivate and make loyal affiliates, but, it is a start. Are you talking 5%? Then, unless you offer millions of products at great prices and have a solid reputation, you're not going to be getting a whole lot of affiliates.

3. Who's getting credit?

Show your affiliates that you value them by setting long cookies and they'll keep sending you traffic. How long are your cookies? The longer the better.

4. Closing the Deal.

If your affiliates are sending you traffic, I hope you have a newsletter (or ecourse) on that sales page for two reasons. 1. It means you're smart and know how internet marketing works, and 2. It means that the affiliates get more than one chance to close the deal, because you're going to be following up with the lead and closing the sale for us. This shows us that you take your business seriously – a very important indicator.

5. Like Frosting on the Cake.

Assuming all things are equal, if your program is two-tier or residual, you'll have affiliates lined up to promote you.

6. Are you even trying?

There is nothing more frustrating than joining an affiliate program that you're really excited about, logging in and seeing … nothing but a couple of links. No content, no ebooks, no videos. Zip. This is especially disappointing if you know the author or owner is sending out a weekly newsletter. Share your articles with your affiliates, allow them to be rebranded, and I guarantee you'll get loyalty.

7. That's just Rude.

Almost more insulting than not providing any content is providing 'leaky' articles. Yes, I have seen affiliate programs that so "generously" provide articles for their affiliates. But, the articles had plugs for their other programs in the body of the article. Now, I'm not naming names, but I do feel that's pretty cheap to be stealing from your own affiliates.

Those are just a few ways to tell if your affiliate program stinks.

I hope you read and reread this advice. Treat your affiliates like partners and they'll plaster your link all over the web. You'll have affiliates lined up to promote every new product you offer, and they'll sing your praises every chance they get.

Nicole Dean is on a mission to find a few good affiliate programs. She's found a handful of programs that don't stink. Check them out at http://www.freeaffiliatearticles.com/free-affiliate-programs.htm and be sure to grab some Free Affiliate Articles while you're there.