All Posts Tagged With: "Advertising"

If you are planning to become an affiliate marketer, it can sometimes be difficult for someone starting out from stratch. That is why I shared my story and suggested people go through their existing content and add affiliate links to it. As a side note, if you are looking for an easy way to do this (which I hadn’t discovered until after I did mine manually, but now use on it on some of my websites), you can use the WP-Affiliate Pro WordPress plugin to search for keywords and replace them with designated affiliate links. It also does a variety of other things to manage your affiliate links from within your dashboard. You can see my recent review of this plugin here.

Anyway, I digress. The one area I’ve found that new affiliate marketers seem to either fail to learn or have a misconception of is that you become an affiliate marketer and suddenly you are rich. That is why in my previous post, I recommended people start by adding affiliate links to their existing content they’ve already written.   This way you get some seed money to start out with.

The main thing people have a hard time grasping is that you need to spend money to make money.  Without advertising, link building, and networking in general, you can still make a little income. With the proper advertising, you can truly make a fortune.

The problem is you can’t make money without people visiting your website, so you have to find ways to get people there. Google AdWords is a great and cost effective way to do this and probably my main advertising expense next to purchasing private advertising. I actually re-invest a large portion of my income into these areas to continue to grow and expand my websites/blogs.

Blog and website directories are also a great way to do link building and to get traffic. This has SEO benefits and will often give you a little bonus traffic as well.  Unfortunately most quality directories also have a cost associated with them, so that is another area where spending that money can help you make money.

If you find that you are making money online, what are you doing to grow your business?   How are you expanding your advertising reach?

As with everything, there is always one service that you either love or hate. Of the advertising services available to pretty much any bloggers, AuctionAds seems to best fit this description. It seems like pretty much everyone that has tried the service either is really successful, or very little success, giving people a wide variety of experiences with it. There are, however, steps that you can take to help yourself succeed with AuctionAds.

What is AuctionAds? AuctionAds is a pay-per-purchase advertising service that uses keywords to place targeted eBay auction advertisements on your website. You earn money from the service whenever an action is taken. An action is defined as a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now, or a confirmed user registration.

Why should I consider using AuctionAds? There are two main things going for AuctionAds at this time. The first is that it is not a contextually based advertising campaign, making it compatible with all other advertising services. The other nice thing is that there is no limit to the number of ad units you can place on your site.

Where is the optimal place to set my advertisements? As with all advertising services, there are several hot spots to place ads that will do the best job of catching the readers eye and get you the most clicks. The most successful method to finding success with AuctionAds in my opinion is to place a 120×240 AuctionAds vertical banner next to a well placed 300×250 Google AdSense medium rectangle banner. Be sure to differentiate them by using a different background color for one of the two. This will help you avoid taking up much room on your site while still allowing you to draw the readers eye to your auctions.

There are other things you can do to try to maximize your AuctionAds income, including setting a minimum/maximum price for your advertisements, so you get higher payouts when purchases are made. Scott Andrew Bird has come up with some additional recommendations that are worth a read.

When do I get paid? Currently, AuctionAds does their payouts at the first of the month via Paypal and has a minimum payout of $10.00. If you make less than that in a month, you will get paid once your balance reaches $10.00.

Can I get a referral bonus? You sure can! AuctionAds places a referral link on every Ad unit. You can also go to the Affiliate section and get the appropriate code to place a referral link on your website. You will make 2% of all revenue generated by that user for the first 6 months.

I have been running AuctionAds for a couple months now on this website. I have had some success placing them on my home page, as well as having them down by the comment form on single pages. If you decide to give AuctionAds a try, you’ll want to give it at least a week before you start measuring results, as it needs time to get cache relevant advertisements for your site.

Sign Up For AuctionAds

During the recent blogging boom, many people created blogs as a way to get their own web presence and to see what all the blogging hype was about. After awhile, as your writing skills get better and you start to build a loyal fan base of readers and subscribers, you begin to realize that you could be making some money (or at least offsetting blogging costs) while doing what you’ve already been doing. Once you’ve decided to start making money online with your blog(s), there are several options you can go with. One of my favorite ways to make money online is with Text Link Ads.

Why would I want to sign up with Text Link Ads? Text Link Ads serves as a go between for publishers and advertisers by offering a convenient location from them to come together and find each other. This allows many smaller publishers to get their sites found when they otherwise wouldn’t.

How do I sign up? Simply go and register for your free account on their website. They will then ask you a few questions and generate a Wordpress plugin to place on your website.

How do I set up Text Link Ads on my website? Once you’ve got your plugin, you will then need to go through the normal process of uploading and activating the plugin, then place the following code where you want your text link sales to appear in your sidebar:

<?php if(function_exists('tla_ads')) { tla_ads(); } ?>

Once that’s done, everything else is handled by Text Link Ads. When someone purchases a link, it will be placed automatically in your sidebar where you designated the links should go.

How do I get more text link sales? The best tip I can offer is to have good content on your website, but there are a few other things you can do. First of all, advertisers will want to see the location of where there link will be. You’ll want to place a header on that section of the sidebar where the links will go so they can see where there link would be. Try to stay away from using wording like “My Sponsors” or something similar because people will be less likely to click on it. Some SEO experts also feel that using the word sponsor can cause problems with Google, as they don’t like the idea of advertisers purchasing links. I’ve chosen to use the term “Featured Sites” for mine. You’ll also want to make sure it is placed “above the fold” and in a spot where it will get clicks. I’ve also noticed a correlation between my Alexa ranking and text link sales, so I would also recommend working on increasing your Alexa Ranking.

How do I make money with Text Link Ads? There are three ways to make money with Text Link Ads. The most common way is through the sale of up to 8 text link advertisements. The second way is through the sale of individual post links. These will automatically be available once the plugin is installed and will allow you to make some additional money once you’ve sold out your text links. The third way is through referring people to Text Link Ads. The website will allow you to generate a button for your site to place wherever you would like. When people sign up through that button and install the plugin for at least a week, you will receive a payment.

When do I get paid? Text Link Ads will do payouts on the first of each month, and they give you the option of receiving your full payment via Paypal (without Paypal fees), which is extremely fast and convenient.

That should just about cover everything you need to know about Text Link Ads. Sounds good? Give it a try for free.

If you’re an advertiser and would like to give Text Link Ads a try, you can currently get $100.00 in free links.