Associate Programs Newsletter #34
CONTENTS:
1. How to get more clicks
2. 200 a day good enough for WebSponsors now
3. Enticing clicks to Amazon.com
4. Shock! Gasp! AOL Goes MLM
5. Snippets
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1. How to get more clicks
=========================
As owner of the TeknoSurf AdWave network, John Ferber sees a lot of struggling web sites – and some excellent ones. Here he offers an article jam-packed with excellent advice on how to get more visitors, and how to persuade them to click. How many of these things are you doing right?
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How to get more clicks
by John Ferber
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1) Use as FEW links as possible on your web site. The more ways you give surfers to get out of your page/site the less likely they are to click on your advertisements.
2) Use banners in unique positions. Don't restrict yourself to a consistent layout. Often surfers will tune out all but your content if you have a special layout and thus fewer clicks. Use additional advertisements in the bodies of articles, etc.
3) This is one some people don't like but it works very well. Place banner coding on the top of the page with no image size coding, then place a one pixel by one pixel image that would appear directly underneath it. This will slow down the loading time of the rest of the page a bit and thus expose the surfer strictly to the advertisement for a longer time. I have also seen this done using cgi, where there is a deliberate five-second delay from the advertisement loading on top to the display of the rest of the content on the page. The longer the delay the higher the chance of a click. Of course, this increases the risk that a surfer will not be very happy with your site . . .
4) Put your highest paying banners on top. Time and time again I've seen people use LinkExchange or affiliate program banners superceding per click banners. With rare exception have I ever seen anyone earn a higher CPM from affiliate programs than from CPC programs.
5) Use good Alt Text links… remember a significant number of people surf with no images turned on, so in that case an exposure is just a waste but the alt text will at least help define more as to what the image was supposed to be.
Don't necessarily say, “Please Click here to visit our sponsor, or Sponsor Ad”, etc. Be creative, be personal, be original.
6) Get traffic – don't lose yourself in site design and content development. Once you have at least a decent shell of a site up, the key is then in promotion. Banner exchanges are a good way to get some reach, so are webrings, search engines and the like. Of course these are all not new concepts but the real trick is in mastering them all. Some of our most successful webmasters are those who have simply gotten great domain names and gotten them registered in the search engines.
For instance one of our clients owns a great number of something-chatrooms.com names. Each of the pages is nothing more than a free zoom chat page with our banners on top and bottom. He gets about 3+ million hits a month.
7) Networking – Just like in the real world it's crucial on the Internet for long-term survival. Go to all the search engines and find sites that are similar to yours and email them with your URL and a page on your site where they can find their URL already listed. Make sure you already have their site listed, because it will greatly increase your chance of having them list you. If they don't reciprocate then take theirs down after a week or so.
It's long, tedious work but it's the most rewarding by far. Some of our sites have links on other sites established years ago and still receive thousands of hits weekly from them. There are some programs/sites, like Free-for-Alls, etc. but it's just like search engine spam software, basically just a piece of junk. The only way to do it is to manually and humanly make these contacts.
8) The right place at the right time, stay on top of things, monitor your stats, experiment, etc. It's not just my responsibility to ensure you get the highest click-through rate possible, as a website owner you must experiment with all of the various companies and means of using advertising on your site to create revenues. Be methodical and ORGANIZED in your approach, set up some spreadsheets and record your daily/weekly ad reports/revenues. Sooner than you think you will have a great amount of information from which to refine your attempts and generate more revenues per visitor than previously.
9) Make every attempt to ensure that the web surfer will come back to your site: the use of “site update reminder” services, mailing lists, questionnaires, bookmarking, using time/date sensitive content, announcing upcoming events, changes, etc.
10) Collect as MUCH data as you can, because information is king and a one-eyed man in the land of the blind is king. Those who will do best will be those who can learn the most from the data they collect and react to it in the best possible manner. Use web site statistic programs, chart trends. I've gotten hundreds of e-mails from webmasters who report dramatic increases in earnings after they noticed that a banner performs better in spot A rather than spot B, etc, etc. Optimization is KEY!
Wow! Thanks, John. If you were impressed with John's advice, you'll also be very impressed with his TeknoSurf ad network, which pays out in FOUR ways: $5 for referrals, $2 when THEY get people to sign up, pay-per-click up to 20 cents, and 1 cent per click on all those sites you referred. It also intelligently works out which banners work best on your site and serves more of them. Only very serious e-marketers need apply, please.
[UPDATE: TeknoSurf is now Advertising.com.Here's a more up-to-date article on how to get traffic:
How to get traffic to my website?]
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2. 200 a day good enough for WebSponsors now
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WebSponsors has a new, generous referral program.
If you investigated WebSponsors last year when your site was getting less than 500 visitors a day and found you weren't eligible, it's time for another look. WebSponsors now accepts sites with 200 to 500 visitors a day.
WebSponsors has dozens of offers you can promote, including one that pays $US16 simply for getting people to try a FREE trial of tax software. You can see that offer on the main page at AssociatePrograms.com today.
Whatever the theme of your site, you'll probably be able to find offers that will work well.
In WebSponsors' new referral program you earn 10% “of each referred account's eligible earnings” for the first year, 7% for the next year, and then 5%.
Most people who join two-tier programs try to make money simply by signing up other webmasters and hoping those people will do the work. So those webmasters copy the technique . . . and so on.
The clever people at WebSponsors have figured out that fault and intelligently structured their program accordingly. If you want to earn 10% of everything the people you sign up make, you have to be earning a minimum of $15 a month. So as long as you can persuade people to join an excellent network you're just about guaranteed to make money. The people you sign up will have both the traffic and the incentive.
WebSponsors says some sites will make thousands of dollars from referral fees alone. I believe them.
Joe Hyde, President of Badcompanyrodeo.com, told me that when he suggested an improvement to WebSponsors the suggested change was introduced very swiftly. I've had the same experience. I reported a minor coding fault and received an e-mail seconds later, saying it had been corrected.
I highly recommend WebSponsors. If you find this newsletter useful, I hope you'll sign up using my URL.
[UPDATE: After a takeoever, this program was closed.]================================
3. Enticing clicks to Amazon.com
================================
Heath Boutwell of https://www.betstart.com has come up with a clever way of encouraging click-throughs to Amazon.com.
Heath attached this:
amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/002-9696266-3415864?
tag=thedailyspread&keyword=sports+betting
to the text:
Amazon.Com lists over 100 titles under the search term “sports betting”
“I have been able to make about a sale a week (not bad for my little bit of traffic) with this at the bottom of my site,” Heath says.
Replace the “tag=” with your affiliate name, and the “keyword=” with the words you want to use. “It looks like this exact text phrasing really works well – does a good job of enticing clicks.”
Heath says: “Anyone who has affiliate programs that may interest webmasters in my targeted group can enter their URL in our search engine at: https://www.betstart.com (A Start Up Page for Sports Bettors).”
[UPDATE: Amazon.com says there's a better way of doing that. See next week's newsletter.]============================
4. Shock! Gasp! AOL Goes MLM
============================
When America Online announced its multi-level marketing program I received a flurry of excited emails from people desperate to sign me up. One even said: “I didn't even stop to think…” And that was meant to convince me?
One of the more temperate, informative messages came from Scott Kaas, so I invited him to write this article, which is probably the last MLM article I'll ever publish.
———————-
AOL goes MLM
by Scott Kaas
———————-
AOL and Monument Communications have formed the strategic alliance, AOL Select. As they roll out the new company, they are looking for initial field leaders to serve in the “founder” positions at the front line of the company.
Opportunity like this knocks only once. Right now you can get in on the ground floor as one of the pioneering leaders of the AOL Select Team!
One of the main benefits is a share of the leads from a massive marketing campaign that will include banner ads in main areas of AOL and in Welcome Screen promotions. It will also be promoted on major web sites, major portals, and Netscape's “NetCenter”. You can get the basic starter kit for $20 or get a full blown web site with 1 year Internet management for $US499.
For further information email scotkaas AT bellsouth.net
[UPDATE: Did AOL REALLY go MLM? Don't ask me. Multi-level marketing is not my field.]===========
5. Snippets
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1000 miles from Tampa
The amazing Leonard Farneth keeps on giving away his secrets on the Associate Programs Message Board. Now he tells how he set up a city page for Tampa – 1000 miles from where he lives. At the message board, just do a keyword search for “1Tampa.com” and you'll see some advice you can probably use wherever you live in the world. Thanks again, Leonard.
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
No more MLM nasties
Some very nice people are involved in multi-level marketing, I've often been told, but I haven't met many like that. Most of them feed me half-truths and force me to wade through miles of hype to get to the facts. It's all too tiresome. I'm not listing any more MLM programs.
Adguide even better
Adguide's commissions will now be earned from any sales resulting within 90 days of the customer's visit, instead of 30, and also from phone orders, if the customer can remember your site, says Steven Rothberg, of Adguide.
Adguide's College Recruiter Employment Site
CollegeRecruiter.com
Latest winner
Bryce Grimsley of B & D Gourmet Coffee is the latest winner of free banner advertising for a year on AssociatePrograms.com . Thanks for giving me a link, Bryce. Just tell me where to find your banner.
Don't trust cookies?
My article last week, “Don't put your trust in cookies”, drew a couple of fascinating responses. “How much longer until affiliates smarten up?” asks Ken Evoy, who sees SQL-database matching as the answer. Cliff Allen reckons cookies combined with bookmarks is a good combination. Full story: Tracking affiliate commissions
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