Associate Programs Newsletter #50
This week I look at wonderful things ad-serving software can do, at Marty Foley's 13th publication, and at a FREE service that you can use to spy on companies.
CONTENTS:
1. Ad-serving software will tame your banners
2. Spin Cycle free and easy
3. Free AdsRotation a “great deal”
4. Bannermaster free or $25
5. Central AD built for speed
6. You can pay $999 – or $5495
7. WebAdverts gets most votes
8. Tracking those $3,500 text links in e-mail
9. More next week on text links in e-mail
10. FREE “inside info” on public companies
11. Powerful marketing success strategies
12. Psssst! Want to hire a banner?
13. Anaconda DOES boost sales
14. Want to advertise? No more than 3
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1. Ad-serving software will tame your banners
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As my websites grew and I was tempted to join more and more revenue sharing programs, at least a couple of things started to go wrong.
1. I had half-forgotten, non-performing banners tucked away on half-forgotten pages, so I was losing potential revenue.
2. I was showing my regular visitors the same banner, time after time, losing its effectiveness. (I still do, if that's what an advertiser wants.)
One way of coping with these problems is to use ad-serving software or an ad rotating service to keep things tidy and under control.
You could, for example, have a dozen different ads rotating on each of your most popular pages, to test the ads or just so your visitors will see something you.
You could also have Mother's Day or Christmas ads kept ready, programmed to be displayed automatically at the right time.
I asked what ad-serving you recommend. Here are the answers:
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2. Spin Cycle free and easy
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Spin Cycle is a free ad rotation service. Ruben Meyer, who uses it at Unexplainedworld.com, says it's very easy to use. “You get a username and password for your control panel. Then you can add as many banners as you want without updating your website. You do it all from Spin Cycle's website. Spin-Cycle stays free by taking 10% of all your banner views . . . I highly recommend Spin-Cycle.”
[UPDATE: Spin-Cycle has vanished.]=================================
3. Free AdsRotation a “great deal”
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AdsRotation is another free service, simple to set up, and takes only 5% of your ad space.
Frank Nordberg of home.sol.no/~fnordber/ says the AdsRotation people are very nice and cooperative, it gives very good statistics of impressions and click-throughs, and it's highly customizable (you can set up a different set of banners for each page). “All in all AdsRotation is a very good service,” Frank says.
Another vote in favor of AdsRotation comes from Tom Brown, of https://www.all-internet.com and ishopkeeper.com .
“They're reliable and fast – no downtime, and I can't see any difference in load times between banners served through them and those from my server. Plus, they have a user-friendly interface which makes adding, pausing, restarting and deleting banners easy. At a cost of 5% ad space, it's a great deal,” Tom says.
[UPDATE: AdsRotation disappeared.]===========================
4. Bannermaster free or $25
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The Lookie Here Directory – intergo.hypermart.net – uses the Bannermaster script. It's free if you leave ads for Interactive-Web in rotation – or $25 if you remove them.
Chris Bunting says he's not a professional webmaster or programmer and the script doesn't have the best online help but he caught on with using it fast.
“The script can be used to rotate ads with SSI (server side includes) and non-SSI. The non-SSI has HTML code as well as a Javascript code for randomly generating numbers so ads don't get cached. It also allows you to have unlimited groups or categories.”
Each group could be a separate sponsor or page including 10 to 20 ads per group or so.
“I use the script for a targeted banner exchange,” Chris says. “I have separate groups for each category in my directory and I also run just regular ads that are 468×60, 400×40, and 85×60. No extra set-up was needed for the different banner sizes. I just created separate groups for each size.”
It's a low-cost affiliate URL shortener, and “really comes in handy for me without needing multiple scripts for every set of ads,” Chris says.
Bannermaster will also track text links, and you can even combine text with graphics.
[UPDATE: No longer available.]=============================
5. Central AD built for speed
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Riyaj Shaik of Associate-it.com says Central AD is one of the best. “It is not free, but it is worth its cost. It is written in C++, not Perl, so it is faster than other CGI/Perl based ad serving software.
“We don't use the Central AD Pro, which is a full fledged version with all options. We are testing the 30 days free trial shareware. The shareware won't rotate banners, it only shows one banner at all times. We use WebAdverts.”
Stuart Hochwert uses Central Ad Pro at Clapper.com. His verdict: “Under $200. Very professional. Uses HTML or SSI. Full features.”
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6. You can pay $999 – or $5495
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Brian Clark of https://www.gmdstudios.com says they have a freeware solution that isn't particularly flexible (fully functioning statistics tracking, just lacking all the complexities of “page to page targeting” and rules and stuff.) It's called AMS Lite and is available for Unix and NT.
radiation.com/products/ams/ams_lite.html
“Our fully functioning AMS software retails at $999 and falls in the midrange category – not as cheap as many of the shareware options (most under $200 with not much more functionality than our freeware version) but a fraction of the high-end products (like Accipter, which is $5495!) . . . it is also available for NT and Unix.”
[UPDATE: This product has been discontinued.]=============================
7. WebAdverts gets most votes
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“After fumbling with trying to track which ads were where on my site for the past few months, I finally found an ad rotation script that seems to be working well,” says Troy McDaid, who uses WebAdverts on ezwinnings.com.
“We're using it to rotate banners at the top, bottom, and in the margins of our pages. So far, it seems to be working VERY well,” Troy says.
He found it at https://www.cgi-resources.com/ which has a whole category of CGI scripts for ad serving.
“This particular software is getting very high reviews at the CGI Resource Center from nearly 600 users who have rated it, and I'd have to agree. It allows you to run ads of different sizes, for a set number of days or impressions and tracks impressions, click-throughs, ratios, etc. It supports both IMG tags and SSI (server side includes) which makes it pretty flexible. It is definitely better than doing it all by hand,” Troy says.
Paul Lang of SellItOntheWeb.com has been using WebAdverts for nearly a year and is very pleased with it. “They recently released version 2 and this now allows you to track clicks on text links as well – so for the first time I am able to count click-throughs from my newsletter.” Paul reviews WebAdverts at https://sellitontheweb.com/ezine/product008.shtml
Mickey Argo uses WebAdverts at Aobusiness.com . “It allows for unlimited accounts,” Mickey says. “Account owners can check their own daily stats. You can also set up zones for your web site and have ads appear in certain zones only. All in all, it's by far the best one that I looked at, plus you can download and try it free.”
At https://www.freecenter.com/ and https://www.humorplanet.com/ Jim Reardon also uses WebAdverts and highly recommends it. “It's shareware ($50 registration) yet has a lot of great features,” Jim says.
https://awsd.com/scripts/webadverts
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8. Tracking those $3,500 text links in email
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I've been selling Marlon Sanders' “The Amazing Formula” and I'm delighted by how easy it is to sell – a truly amazing 86 copies sold in March and 89 in April. (Did you take those figures in? That's about $3,500 a month.) If you can just get people to Marlon's site, there's a good chance they will buy.
I successfully use a little teaser on the main page at AssociatePrograms.com.
However, until tonight, I didn't know how many people I was sending to Marlon's site to achieve those excellent sales.
Unlike statistics I get from some companies, Marlon's stats tell me only how many sales I've made. If I'm curious, I have to track the click-throughs myself, so that's what I've started doing.
One way to do it is with ad-serving software. This clever link will take you to AssociatePrograms.com, find Marlon's banner, click on it, and give me a trackable click-through to Marlon's site.
AssociatePrograms.com/cgi-bin/search/click.cgi?account=am
https://www.associateprograms.com/amazing ]
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9. More next week on text links in e-mail
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Text links in email provide associates with wonderful ways to promote products and services – and lots of ways to upset companies which seek tight control over how their products are promoted.
If you're using text links in email in imaginative, weird or wonderful ways – all purely LEGAL – I'd like to hear from you for an article in next week's newsletter. If you're running a revenue sharing program and DON'T like seeing your links in email, I'd like to hear from you, too.
allan AT AssociatePrograms.com
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10. FREE “inside info” on public companies
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Among the new programs listed this week is Company Sleuth, which provides free, legal, easy “inside information” on public companies.
Company Sleuth is provided by Infonautics, which gave us the wonderful Electric Library – elibrary.com. Anyone who has written a book on the Internet – or anything else – has probably discovered that the Electric Library is a fantastic source of newspaper and magazine articles.
[UPDATE: elibrary has closed.]Company Sleuth is “the Internet's top covert information specialist”. With a few clicks you can have a free, legal, inside look at your investments, competitors, partners and clients. At this stage, Sleuth tracks only US-based, publicly traded companies.
The ClickTrade-run revenue sharing program pays 50 cents per sign-up.
You can see the eye-catching Company Sleuth banner at AssociatePrograms.com/search/new/ . If you don't see the correct banner, just click Refresh and a different banner will appear. Isn't ad-serving software wonderful?
(Chris Bunting of intergo.hypermart.net generously gave me helpful advice on setting up the email link.)
[UPDATE: Company Sleuth disappeared.]==========================================
11. Powerful marketing success strategies
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The title of Marty Foley's new book – his 13th information product – is a bit of a mouthful: “Internet Marketing Goldmine: Proven, Step by Step Strategies, Tactics and Insider Secrets for Building Your Business and Making Real Money Online.”
I've put in my order for the 288-page printed book. I'm looking forward to reading it because I know Marty writes well and does intelligent, useful interviews.
Marty is a successful full-time Internet entrepreneur, writer, publisher of ProfitInfo Newsletter, and syndicated author of “how-to” articles (including large-circulation national magazines).
“A few years ago, as I started doing business online, I made it a personal challenge to myself to stop paying for advertising and to pursue more creative ways of marketing my business – mainly just to see if I could do it,” Marty says. “The result? I've successfully built my entire online business without ever paying a single penny for advertising.”
In the book you'll discover real-life success stories of successful Internet entrepreneurs, with emphasis on what works and what doesn't.
https://www.associateprograms.com/goldmine
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12. Psssst! Want to hire a banner?
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The Better Internet Bureau just got worse. It has a new service: members wanting to use a banner ad to promote the bureau can hire one for $65 a year. That's right. You can HIRE one.
“We consider this to be a very reasonable cost of doing business, and if used for business purposes the fee is tax deductible, as an advertising cost,” says a wisely anonymous representative of the non-profit organization in the latest newsletter.
Perhaps this will be the start of a whole new trend in revenue sharing programs. Imagine if Amazon.com charged its 260,000 associates $65 each…
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13. Anaconda boosts sales
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Gary Lang of https://www.Makura.com has noticed a dramatic 69% increase in sales through his Amazon.com bookshop since he installed the Anaconda Search script. The full story: AssociatePrograms.com main page.
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14. Want to advertise? No more than 3
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I've reduced the maximum number of sponsors per newsletter to three. If you want to advertise in the Associate Programs Newsletter, you'll probably have to book ahead. Send a blank email for details to:
classads AT AssociatePrograms.com
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All the best
Allan Gardyne
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