Surf the Mind

Archive for the ‘Monetizing Traffic’ Category

I got an email a week ago from Google Adsense asking me to place more 300X250 size ads, text and image enabled, on one of my sites.

Apparently, this is the size most preferred by large advertisers, and they’ll pay a higher price for above-the-fold ads in this size format on quality sites.

So, I’m changing large rectangles that are text only to medium text and image ad units to see how things work out.

The email also recommended using the “ad placements feature” to define the new slots, so I made new channels for each, even though I’ve got no idea how this is supposed to work.

Has anyone else tried this? Am I shooting myself in the foot by changing ad unit sizes from one that has been a cash cow till this point?
Below is an excerpt from the email I received…

After a recent review of your site, we would like to include xxxxxxx.com in our custom placement packs program.  Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers.   

 We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300×250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit.

 The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites.  They require that the units be placed “above the fold” on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site’s visitors without scrolling down.

 If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages.

Sadly, one of my favorite WordPress plugins is a little less useful after Google decided to get tough with its rules on putting images beside adsense blocks.

The really sad thing is that I really like the way Adsense Beautifier made my post pages look… regardless of the increase in clicks.  So, rather than get rid of the beautifier altogether, I changed the image to one solid block of a windsurfer, which I thought looked pretty cool too.

Will clickthroughs suffer? Maybe. Does it comply with the new rules? The image isn’t lined up, or related to, the Adsense ads, so I believe so, but I’ve asked Google via email to confirm.

Sigh. So long funky beautifier pictures.

I was skeptical, to say the least.

In fact, I was convinced these sites wouldn’t bring in more than a few pennies a day in Adsense revenues.

But I put a bunch of them online anyway.

The stats below show a domain where I placed 23 of Joel Comm’s Instant Adsense Templates. The domain, just to reveal all, has been around for many years, and has a Google PR of 4, so I wasn’t starting from scratch. Still, this surprised me:

I took this screenshot just after noon on Tuesday, and I see I’ve broken the $100 mark on those 23 sites.

So…. to what do I owe this success?

1) The pre-existing domain, and choosing subfolders instead of subdomains.
It would have taken much longer to get in Google’s SERPs if I had chosen a new domain for each site, or a subdomain which also would have gotten sandboxed.

2) The sites I chose were all tech/computer/gadget related, which make the best candidates for Tag and Ping traffic. I have been bookmarking one page from each site per day with 22 bookmarking services (the lesser known services providing the best traffic… but that’s a post for another day).

3) I was wrong, and these sites are particularly well designed to encourage AdSense clicks.

So, now that I’ve learned something, I’m going to apply it. The next few sites I build are going to :

• Be on tech topics
• Be hosted in folders of established and indexed domains
• Be tag and pinged regularly.
• Be modeled after these dorky looking templates.

I’ve spent the last few days experimenting with John Reel’s new product, GoTryThis. I’m playing with the BlackHat version, which is stunningly easy to use, and works great, and which isn’t so blackhat that white hat marketers won’t want to use its features.

I have to admit I’ve never used link cloaking software before, so I wasn’t sure how it would work, but I am very, very impressed at this point.

First of all, the install was just plain cool. It’s a php script that is installed on your server, but rather than giving you a script to download and leaving you stuck with the task of trying to install and configure it yourself, GoTryThis can install itself on your server with a few bits of information about your FTP and Database logins. Very slick, and very easy for technophobes to deal with.

Once the program is installed, you can head straight to your own site and log in to start creating links. You’ve got a number of choices:

If you just fill out the first two lines, you get a basic cloaked link from YOURSITE.COM/DIR that redirects to your affiliate URL.

If you add a Title, Keywords and Description, you’ll get a cloaked link that puts the affiliate url in a Frame. If you’ve checked the Viral checkbox, that frame will have an icon and ad text for GoTryThis that includes your affiliate URL, so you can earn commission from either your affiliate link OR from GoTryThis if you so choose.

And, if you want to link to pages other than the main affiliate page, there’s an option to embed cookies from the affiliate link while redirecting to a different page.

You can track your links in even more detail by adding a suffix to your tracking link when you paste it into your website or newsletter. So, if you create a link from yoursite.com/test you can test the response from your mailing list and your website simply by adding something like -web or -mail at the end of that url, so in your newsletter your affiliate link would be yoursite.com/test-mail/ and your website link would be yoursite.com/test-web and GoTryThis will track each differently.

The last cool feature that GoTryThis has when creating cloaked links is more for organization than anything else. If the affiliate program you’re linking to has a login for the stats, you can add the login url, username and password to the link, which will give you one-click access to your affiliate stats while checking your GoTryThis stats.

From the link managment area, you can see stats on your link referrers and number of clicks for each link, and from the Stats menu, you can see general statistics for all your cloaked links to see which are performing best and total clicks on all your links.

The graphs are live, generated by Flash, so you don’t need any special PHP modules to see them, and your stats can be exported to Excel format with a click of a button.

As I said, I’ve never used a link cloaker before, so I can’t compare features with other packages on the market, but based on my experience, the ease of installation, ease of use, and great functionality of this software makes it something I know I will get much use out of, and something I won’t hesitate to recommend.

You can check it out at GoTryThis.com

PS. I’m bumping this up today because GoTryThis is now available for purchase. I’ve been using it more and I still heartily recommend it. If you can afford it, get the Black Hat version, but if you’re strapped for cash, the White Hat version is extremely affordable and well priced for all the functionality it will give you. There’s a limited number being sold, so don’t miss out!

I have just signed up for a new service (currently in beta testing) called Text Link Warehouse. The concept is simple. You paste some code at the bottom of your web pages, Text Link Warehouse sells text links to other publishers, and you and TLW split the revenue.

The appeal:

To publishers, the appeal is simple. Anything that will add a source of monetization to your site without causing you a whole lot of headaches and work is a good deal.

To advertisers, the appeal is having lots of text links pointing to your new site, speeding up indexing (hopefully) and boosting traffic.

BUT…

There’s the Google PageRank issue.

Lots of people are under the impression that a high Google PR is a super great thing to strive for. I personally haven’t seen PR correspond to revenue or traffic, but the fact is that people will pay for high PR links. They won’t pay, at least not much, for low PR text links.

So, one question that needs to be addressed by TLW is whether advertisers will be able to buy only high PR links, or whether they just buy impressions… and the related issue of whether publishers will get extra revenue from their high PR pages or they’ll just get a flat rate per impression.

This, actually, is a vital issue, since if it’s not handled well, and publishers can get more from selling their own text links on their high PR pages, then they’ll only list their low PR pages on TLW, which will make the service less attractive to advertisers, which will lead to fewer buys, and less income all around.

The second issue that needs to be addressed is how much control publishers will have over the ads displayed.

Google has made clear that it will be penalizing sites that link to ‘low rent’ areas of the web, which means that it could seriously hurt your site to link to online pharmacies, casinos, and many of the other types of sites that would be common advertisers for TLW.

Also of concern is the issue of the service leaving a fingerprint… since Google frowns upon buying and selling text links.

SO

While I’m interested in how this will work out, and may add many of my higher traffic and high PR links in the future, right now I’m only going to play with TLW on this blog.

Stay tuned if you want more unbiased, common sense reaction once the links start showing up.