I got sent a question via email…

Hi Tim I love the blog and have learnt a lot from you and others but my site while popular doesn’t get very many sales through affiliate links what am I doing wrong can you help?

A quick look at both the site (which sadly will remain anonymous as the original emailer has asked it be kept that way ) and its stats indicated it was indeed a pretty popular site with nearly a 1500 visitors a day, which for a news portal is pretty good going. One of the features I really liked was at the bottom of each article was a have your say section which had a simple poll.

Do you think Mclaren should have been fined over £50 million pounds for spying?
Yes|No

Each poll was a question and a yes no answer along with the results, most of the polls no one had entered however to help get this site out of the red they would make an excellent place to peddle our affiliate links.

Zip and Email submits

Many Affiliate companies have zip or email submit campaigns running these campaigns offer the chance for people to win free items like phones computers etc, in exchange for giving up some personal details. The person is then entered into the draw, the affiliate gets paid per lead, so every time some one enters the affiliate makes some money between $0.80 - $5 you are not going to get rich of these schemes but they can easily compete with adsense earnings if properly managed. Zip submits tend to pay out more then email submits and both tend to be very geographically targeted a quick look at the site revealed nearly 70% of the site came from the US while a further 21% was from the UK so we hunted down two suitable campaigns. In the end we found two geotargetted campaigns both through the Affiliate group Copeac one was a Win IPhone and $500 visa zip submit for the US the other a Win a Digital Camera for the UK. Both have appalling small print but hey they worked well for our needs, however before we could get started we needed to organise a few things.

Incentivised or Encouraged

With most Zip and email submits you will come across the phrase ‘This offer Can NOT be incentivized’ what this means is you cannot offer something to go with it. So for example you couldn’t click here to receive a free pen and a chance to win an IPhone for example. The line between encouraging and incentivised is simple you can not give away a physical or electronic product to lure a person into providing their information. While we did check that offering the chance to take part in the poll was not an incentive we also took some extra steps and included small print offering a link to the free iphone/camera offer as well.
Finally we added both an entry in the privacy statement about linking to a third party who may require information to conclude offers, a statement in the terms of service indicating that we are not responsible for offers on third party websites.
To give you an idea of what the poll looks like here is one of the early mocks

Geo-targetting

We knocked together 3 versions of the poll settings, USA, UK and international each with their own offer for the USA and UK they went to our affiliate site once voted via a timed redirect with a means to escape if they just wanted to vote. For international users we asked if they would be interested in doing an online survey to win $100 through yet another affiliate company. You can easily do the same thanks to posts by both Nick and Patrick from Blog Storm on the subject which we linked to just last week. Once this was done, we had checked out that all the links worked, via proxies we sent it live.

The results

The number of people taking the poll rose by 900% this initially sounds a staggering figure but remember we only had around 10 people a day taking the poll so in reality this means we increased the number of poll takers to around 90 a day.
Out of those 90, 50% were from the US, 41% UK and the other 9% international.
In terms of conversions

• 45% - From US resulted in lead payment well above average for this sort of submit
• 5% - From UK pretty much average
• 0% - Well technically not 0 1 person did take the survey but I think it might have been me via a proxy!

The result is that in the last 3 weeks the site has been earning about $24/day from its polls but these are already dying with the last week seeing a disappointing number of results, this is down to several reasons the very high US conversion rate is coming down, Lots of regulars have either stopped voting or more likey are not visiting the same offer. My job was done and I have left my new friend to find some more offers for his polls I have suggested that either run several offers and rotate between them or at least offer a new offer every couple of weeks seems to be a good balance.

Have you had success with Zip and Email submits? Do you think that using them this way is a good idea, perhaps you think its slightly manipulative let us know!

Selling advertisements in your site (links,banners,etc) is a cool way to make more money from your site. The best benefit in this business model is that you don’t have to wait for any third party to send you a cheque, so you can faster “recycle” the money you earn.

Selling text links

Selling text links is the easiest thing to do, as the requirements are not so difficult to get reached and there are plenty of places to find new customers. Bellow are my thoughts on this subject.

Put your links in a visible place

Most webmasters buy links for SEO purposes, but as Google wants to “eliminate” sponsored links from their algorithm, more and more people are actually looking for traffic. So make sure that the sponsored links in your site are visible, and that they exist on a high traffic web page.

Don’t use common phrases in your sponsors listings

Google can recognize sponsored links by the tag line you have before them. Instead of using the phrase “Sponsored links” or “Sponsors” you can use a graphic or a phrase like “Sites we like”. This will give more value to the links you sell.

Put some links there before start selling

People don’t like to be the first to use a service. If the advertiser see some links there he/she will probably like to follow more. But you should be careful on that as none wants to buy a link on a page that has 20 or more listings

Selling your banner inventory

A common thing I see in banner sales is that people sell their inventory on monthly basis. I am not really sure if this, or if selling on CPM basis is better, but I guess it depends on the site. In general there are a few principles for both ways.

Selling banners on monthly basis

In my opinion the best way to do this is by having a few small banners in the sidebar of your site, and a very small number of banners in the header of your site. A big mistake is to use 10 or even more banners in rotation in the header of your site. This way the value of your ad space is getting lower and the traffic/visibility is getting smaller and smaller as new advertisers come in. Make sure that you rotate no more than 5 banners, and rotate them on a random way so that each banner will get the same impressions with the others.

Selling your inventory on CPM basis

Selling banners on CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions) has the main benefit that you can reach bigger advertisers and that you sell ads by performance. So if your site have a big raise in traffic (eg. you got on digg’s frontpage) you will earn more money, while with monthly basis ads you should wait some time to raise your prices

If you use this model make sure that you are using a well known script to do the job because this will make you look more serious to your clients. A great choice is openAds (aka phpAdsNew) which is open source and you can download it for free.

Also be sure that you are not displaying too many times the same ad per session because this will cause lower CTR and your clients wont be satisfied. In general advertisers want to fill their campaign the soonest possible but they care more for clicks.

How to find clients to sell your ads

So you set up your ad platform, created some nice places in your site to display ads and you need some clients. Let me show you how this is get done

Is your site a good choice for an advertiser?

Ok you know that your site is the best advertising opportunity in your niche, but you should tell that to the possible client too

You should explain in your sales page why your site is good for advertisers. For instance you can define your visitors, or give some information on the niche that your site is.

Additionally you can add some graphs (traffic, alexa, pagerank buttons, etc.) Those will help them to buy.

Have an “advertise here” link in your site

I know this is so obvious, but believe me there were countless times I wanted to buy advertisements in sites and couldn’t reach such a page. You need to cross link your sales page from all your site, and make sure that this link is visible. I am emphasizing on this obvious thing because most of my in house advertisements are soled to regular visitors of the sites I own.

Post your ad in forums

As you know there are countless webmaster forums out there, and most of them have a marketplace where webmasters can buy/sell or even trade several webmaster related services and products. You can use them to post your ad, but be careful not to write BS in your thread

Get your site listed in AdBrite’s marketplace

Ok, that’s a little black hat, but as Mark Cook explains here, it is easy to get listed in AdBrite’s marketplace without using their system

Give incentives to your clients

You can always give some added value to your clients. For instance you can give some freebie to your advertisers like an ebook or a review in your blog. A great incentive that worked for me is giving a lifetime link to the donators of webdigity.

Final concusions

In general selling your inventory yourself requires some time in order to find out how to make the most out of it. But it really worths your time as you don’t have to wait for third party network cheques, and you don’t need to pay a big cut of your earnings to them just because they connect you with the “client”.

Are you a directory owner and are you ready for the day that Google stops telling users PR from the toolbar. Most directories make their money based on the PR value while we in the SEO world scoff at the childish mentality for directory owners it’s a 1 way ticket to profit, higher PR means you can charge more for your links. Other then people submitting links most directories receive little to none genuine traffic this makes having a high PR even more vital as its one of the few matrices that is known to many webmasters out there.

So when you see comments like this from Googlers

Given that many of you aren’t so fond of PR info in the toolbar, I’d love to know what feature you would like to see. Mandatory criteria:
- Would have to provide actionable info for webmasters
- Would need to be useful and interesting for the ~99.9% of users who aren’t webmasters

Source - SEO Round table

Its time to be thinking about how you and your directories will cope in the no PR era.

The options

The way I see it their are 3 options when it comes to looking at the future, do nothing, sell or evolve. The first I don’t really see as an option the other 2 are worth considering.

Selling your site

Now would be the perfect time to sell your site, except of course the next PR update is due soon could this be the last? If you sell now you might not get the same price you would have got if the sites PR has risen, but leave it till after the PR update and you will be competing with an array of sites that have just had a good push and the owners want to offload.
Site selling fluctuates just like any other market knowing when to sell can make the difference between a fair price and a good price.

A quick look at sitepoint and Digital Point forums today showed that a PR 4 Directory would go for around $800 a PR 5 in excess of $2000 while a PR 3 would barely make it past the $150 mark.

Therefore we can see that the difference between a PR 4 and PR 5 is quite significant (but so is the work)

A good rule of thumb is to look at the sites monthly revenue and multiply by 12-16 to get an estimate but not all sites reach their estimates.

Evolving

Still with us, then perhaps selling was not the answer then its time to evolve ultimately to stay in the market you will need to add services and value to your site.

Without PR you will need a new benchmark people will be looking to your directory less as a means to direct money earning but to traffic so what can you do?

• Set up a blog, and advertise featured sites on blog post
• Create link or link adsvertising services
• Go social and embrace web2.0
• Something else?

Setting up a blog
The idea is simple create and maintain a blog attached to your directory, instead of the usual google adsense pull featured listings from your directory. Now this only works if you maintain the blog, but a successful blog will encourage users to submit link (it also works for building up those inbound links)

Become a link broker
You have a vast quantity of links and people looking to be advertised why not get into the link brokerage game, offering to match links within the directory assisting in 3 way link building. This can be done on many levels but the simplest is to allow users to opt in to the link broker scheme and then provide them with a list and a controlled way to contact each other. Of course these schemes can get very complicated but just look at Text Link ads.

Going social the web 2.0
Have a look at mybloglog, blog catalog, digg, reddit what do you notice, they are all directories! At their heart the same ideas of directories are their sure the focus has changed but they are still offering links back to the users site. The difference is they do so under the flag of being a community they provide a sense of belonging even if you don’t want to go as far as installing pling or similar think of the ways you can bring the community feel to your site.

Something completely different
Hey its not all about my ideas their are loads of ways to turn your directory into something more, how about a CSS gallery site? what about site profiles and allowing user feedback?
Tell us what your going to do when the end of the world comes (at least for directories)

I’m sitting typing this by a windmill in Tuxford a small village just of the A1, the small cafe here serves some of the best scones and coffee for miles. I have just been to a town called Newark again just off the A1, it has two train stations, Newark Northgate which is on the outskirts of the town and is where the Intercity trains stop the other Newark Castle right in the town centre opposite the ruins of Newark Castle.

Why am I telling you all this?

When you look for a niche to start a site you sit down and struggle to come up with a subject most people start with big ideas and narrow down but you will find it easier to develop a site based on what you know. For example I have a very good practical knowledge of British railways not because I’m a closet train spotter but simply that I was and still am a heavy train user, I know for example which Inter city trains have wireless internet connections on them, though I can’t tell you if its working. This is pretty mundane boring stuff, but it might be useful to some one indeed a simple use of this knowledge would be to create a mini site dedicated to giving users information on which services have wireless internet and the associated costs.

Some more examples…
I drive a smart car, I know a fair bit about smart cars, I know for example that you need to keep the tire pressure correct and recommend doing so once a month this is particularly important as most smart cars do not carry a spare wheel, so if your tire bursts or something similar you will have to call a break down cover. A good use of this knowledge would be a site dedicated to smart car breakdowns the location of jack points as well as best places to buy breakdown kits (most smart cars don’t come with them) it could also include some myth busting sections of common myths surrounding the car.

Book keeping, before Venture Skills I did a lot of consultancy work, and spent many years doing my own accounts I learnt the hard way how to correctly do VAT and tax returns. While many accountants have sites they focus on larger business so perhaps a blog that focuses on sole traders who are discovering the joy of the Inland revenue for the first time and providing the been there got the t-shirt tips.

So do you still think you can’t find a niche, just sit down and think about all those small things you know, be it the location of the best burgers in your town, to how to build a model boat we all have niches what’s yours?