Earn more with Adsense’s Firefox affiliates
Author: Nick PapanotasThe idea that I am promoting the best web browser, and in the same time help to make internet a better place was always fascinating me. The bad thing when you promote Firefox affiliates from the adsense program, is the low conversions. First of all let’s try to see what are the reasons that cause this problem.
Why people don’t install Firefox from your site
- People usually don’t submit an offer because of a banner. You need more than that in order to convince them
- Some of your visitors already use Firefox, why display the firefox advertisement to them?
- Lack of motivation. IE users already use a browser that works for them. You can’t explain to the average user that IE don’t follow W3C standards. This is information useful only to web designers and web developers
How to promote Firefox
In my honest opinion in order to promote firefox you need to be intrusive. The first rule is that you don’t have to promote Firefox to any other than internet explorer users. To do this you will need to use a small fragment of code in HTML like :
<!--[if IE]>
Show the ad here
<![endif]–>
or if you prefer the php way, something like :
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘MSIE’)!==false)
echo ‘Your firefox ad here’;
The second thing you have to think is how intrusive you are going to be. You can display a landing page to every IE visitor - instead of your regular content - and ask from them to install Firefox because IE has many security problems, etc.
This way works the best but you will lose a lot of loyal visitors that use IE. Of course this is your decision, and if you like to play with landing pages for IE users, then I will definitely recommend you to check the Explorer Destroyer, a web site dedicated to destroy Internet explorer 
Now if you want to be less intrusive, but yet having conversions, here is how you can do it. Open your template file and after the body add this line of code:
<!--[if IE]>
<div style="width:99%;border-bottom: 2px solid red;background:gray;padding:5px;color:#FFF;">
<strong>Warning</strong>: You are using Internet Explorer. <a href="http://getfirefox.com/">Get Firefox with Google Toolbar for better browsing </a>
</div>
<![endif]–>
Of course you will have to change the link code with your affiliate code. I’ve took this style from blows hard and it still has some good conversions. Bellow you can see how it looks like :
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Brock
from BrockAngelo.com2007-09-26 16:30:09
This is a really good idea - I never did care much for the Firefox banners, and you are right - a sure sell for firefox would have to be a review or a post - pretty much how everybody hears about and tries new stuff.
SiteVoter Link Community
2007-09-27 16:10:02
Earn more with Adsense?s Firefox affiliates
After selling links will end into some penalty by Google, webmaster need other sources of income vian their websites ;).
This article gives some nice ideas on how-to optimize your earnings with the Adsense - Firefox affiliate program. (I think I need t…
Simon Ward
from Pingable2007-09-27 20:00:58
I hate the banners, they don’t fit in with designs easily, and the Internet user in me gets sick of seeing them. From a publishing point of view I guess I try to keep my ads targeted, so if you have a site or blog that is talking about web browsers then you might be on to something, but then again if you read articles about web browsers you probably use ff anyway. Good article anyway Nick, food for thought!!
Tim Nash
2007-09-28 10:07:14
I had a very good success rate earlier in the year using a modal dialog box, I set the system up to display the advert for an IE user on their 3rd page view.
The ad blacked out the screen and presented them with the ad in the centre with a small closed dialog box.
You can do similar using either Tinybox or thickbox without to much trouble.
I still have the ads up on a site or two but they now bring in almost no money as most of my sites are technical orientated and IE usage is on some as low as 5%.
What Browser Do Your Readers Use? : Pingable.org | Blogging & Design
2007-09-30 18:36:20
[...] article by Nick Papanotas from Payment Blogger, Earn more with Adsense???s Firefox affiliates, gives you a clear method to show Adsense’s Firefox affiliate ads to your [...]
Website Development and Seo
2007-09-30 19:31:40
Adsense???s Firefox affiliates article from Paymentblogger Team
I love Sundays … you have a lot of time to spend reading your favorite blogs and find some really cool articles.
So the new article of Paymentblogger Team is a very easy and understandable tutorial on how to Earn more with Adsense?s Firefox affil…
IE Blowshard Admin
from Internet Explorer Blowshard2007-10-04 09:41:36
Hi,
Thanks for linking to my site. I like the adaptation you did on my code it looks good.
Thanks
http://blowshard.net/internetexplorer/
Mgccl
from Mgccl.com2007-10-05 22:28:46
yeah… I used something so it pops out the firefox ads when the user is not using firefox…
not many people click it.. xD… since ads like this is everywhere… any most of my visitors are tech savvy people…
Dylan
2007-10-05 23:17:18
Wow, landing pages huh. Welcome back to 1999. That’s not good practice at all; how can you be recommending this. You’re doing more harm than good It’s the users choice what browser to use. If they use Firefox, awesome! I’m not however going to force my opinions of which browser is better down their throat. I will say that I’m a strong standards advocate and know that Firefox conforms better to the W3C’s recommendations, but it’s kind of nice not having a browser monopoly anymore. So I won’t be encouraging Firefox to create one. Competition breeds innovation. So to everyone, use which browser is the most comfortable to you.
admin
from Webdigity webmaster forums2007-10-05 23:29:58
Dylan, landing pages is the #1 marketing technique since 99, and believe me it still works
Regarding the monopoly, you are probably right, but as the monopoly in most software products right now belongs to Micro$oft, I see ,many reasons to help another project, especially when it is open source.
In fact I would love to see a monopoly of Linux too
Anyway this post is about how to promote the adsense firefox affiliate, not what browser is better. Thank you very much for your comment.
Dylan
2007-10-06 00:12:40
Ok, so I didn’t mean to come off so harsh before, but I get easily fired up when I read something I don’t agree with.
I thinking I may have misunderstood your post. When you say landing pages, do you mean your typical splash page (i.e. Welcome to my site, Bob’s Stereo World (Click here to view site)), or do you mean a landing page in the sense of a navigational portal to the contents of the site? If you mean that latter then yes you are right the landing page is almost a necessity in today’s internet. If you meant the other, then that has been proven ineffective and more of an annoyance than anything.
A Linux monopoly would be interesting, but with so many different contributers I don’t think it would be a true monopoly, since the only people that would benefit would be the user :). But, I think Linux still has a long way to go to fully embed itself in the mainstream consumer market. It’s getting better with Ubuntu, but what I would really like to see is a more unified and streamlined platform. Similar to what Apple (NeXT) did for Unix.
Editor
from Firefox Is Better2008-04-14 03:08:49
I get really good conversions for Firefox…But then again my site is content oriented to Firefox.
Multimastery
from All Things Money Blog2008-06-16 09:35:39
I’ve recently converted from IE to Firefox! And let me tell ya…it took me a while to do so. For one, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I was so much in a comfort zone with IE that I really just didn’t see the need to change browsers. Then after seeing the excitement of Firefox hitting me over & over again from every direction, finally, I took the plunge to download it. My only regret is that I didn’t download it sooner. It’s absolutely wonderful!-) I guess people never understand the difference between good and Great until they actually experience it. IE may be good to many - but Firefox is Grreeaat! In order to convert more Internet users over to Firefox you may just have to keep hitting them from all angles until they FINALLY get the point. Firefox is not necessarily a one-click-close.