AdMoolah News and Views

On one of my sites I have been running Google Analytics and have some custom JavaScript installed to allow me to track which visitors click on the ads on my site. On this site I run a combination of AdSense and YPN ads. I have also been running some AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns. Here is a chart showing the percentage of visitors who click on ads broken out by the major sources of traffic. Note that this isn’t a page CTR, it is the CTR of a user in the entire visit.

Traffic Source	Click Percentage
YSM	19.99%
AdWords	17.89%
AOL	17.56%
MSN	16.02%
Yahoo	9.84%
Google	9.01%
All Traffic	14.64%

Not surprisingly, people who come to the site by clicking a YSM or AdWords ad have a greater tendency to click ads on the site. What did surprise me was the huge variance between the search engines. People coming from AOL are almost twice as likely to click on ads as people who use Google. MSN users are also as likely to click on ads as AOL users, while Yahoo users were similar to Google users in click behavior. I think this is because AOL andMSN users are not as Web savvy as Yahoo and Google users, and less experienced surfers tend to click more ads then experienced web surfers.

This data is important in running CPC advertising campaigns. I can easily figure out an average Revenue-Per-Visitor (RPV) for my site, but I had no idea how much more valuable visitors from pay per click campaigns were from regular surfers. I can now take into account how much more money I make from visitors from the ad campaigns to adjust my minimum bids. For example, lets say my RPC is $0.10 (it’s not). I also know that AdWords visitors are 20% more likely to click on ads then regular visitors, so I make an average of $0.12 from them. This allows me to bump up my minimum bids a little in AdWords while still being confident I am making money from them.

I’m also thinking that this type of data might be good for fine tuning ad placement. If AOL and MSN users are more likely to click on ads, why not adjust the placement and color of the ads to make them more prominent for these users? Since Google and Yahoo users are a little more ad phobic, it might make sense to make the placement and color of the ads a little more subtle.

Digg This

This is a paid review of PaidQuick.com. (As usual, I only review products or services that are relevant to AdMoolah and that I would probably review anyway.)

ParkQuick.com is a site that offers recommendations and reviews of domain parking services. Domain name parking is used when you have bought a domain, but have not yet actually hosted a web site on it. The domain parking services put ads on the parked domain that will earn you money when people visit the domain.

There are a couple of ways people may visit parked domains. If you buy a domain name that used to have a site on it, but the domain name has expired, there will still be links to the domain, and people may still have the domain bookmarked. If you have not set up hosting at the site yet, they will simply see a “Server Not Found” message when they visit the site. The other way people visit parked domain is called “type in traffic”. This happens when people type the domain name into the address bar of the browser. If you sign up for a domain parking service, these visitors will see ads instead. Depending on the service, you get paid for these ads on a CPC or CPM basis. Usually the payouts are pretty low compared to the payout on real, active sites. Because the payouts are so low, people who use these type of ads usually either have a very large amount of domains (hundreds of them) or have domains that are often typed into the browser address bar.

What PaidQuick does is have a directory of all the various domain parking services that you can sign up for. If you have parked domains, this is probably a pretty good place to start investigating the monetization of these sites.

There are two sites that launched yesterday that seem to be getting some good results. Both are getting impressive statistics with different viral marketing approaches.

The first is ConquerYouNiche.com (affiliate link), which I mentioned yesterday. This forum allows user to display their own ads. When you post or read the forum you get credits which are exchanged for displaying ads. You also earn ad displays from people you refer. It seems like this idea has really taken off because they already have over 8000 registered users! This was a smart viral marketing plan by the forum owner. This type of incentive would be difficult to reproduce outside of the Internet Marketing world, however, because most people wouldn’t care about being able to display their own ads.

The second one is ReviewMe, which I also wrote about yesterday. They are using a more brute-force approach by paying bloggers to write about them. It seems to be working too, a Technorati search for ReviewMe shows about 140 blogs mentioning them in the last 24 hours. These are links that will be in the middle of highly targeted content. Their Search Engine Ranking should be going through the roof pretty soon.

These numbers are great for a 24 hour period. Viral marketing is great way to get a lot of people to your site quickly if you do it right.

SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers) are often described as White Hat or Black Hat. Black hat techniques are considered the dark side of SEO – things like cloaking, keyword stuffing, splogs and other tricks to fool search engine and users. White hat SEO consists of nothing but writing good content for users and getting natural links. Of course there are many shades of gray between white and black, and now Tim Converse has given a definition to eight different shades of SEO. Here are the shortened definitions:

Dark inky black: The SEO’s (or in this case the spammer’s) interests are totally divergent from both the engines and the users – the SEO wants to trick the search engine into handing over users who are ripe to be tricked themselves into a situation of malicious harm.

Charcoal: The SEO tries to trick the engine into showing the user something totally unrelated to the query, and possibly offensive, but doesn’t actually commit any illegal or fraudulent acts within five seconds of the first user click.

Dark gray: The SEO collects (aka steals) random text from other sites, and uses it to create thousands (or millions) of pages targeting particular queries.

Slate gray: The SEO creates thousands (or millions of pages), all of which point (by linkage, or framing, or redirection) to the same content, which might actually be interesting to the searcher.

Gray: The SEO reads the guidelines of search engines, and tries to juice up their sites just enough to fly under the radar on all dimensions – artificial linkfarms that remain small, automatic content duplication that is arguably not too abusive, etc.

Light gray: The SEO creates “original” content in bulk the old-fashioned way, thinking first of all of search engine rules, secondly of duplicate detection algorithms, and lastly of whether the text makes sense to human beings and is something anyone would ever want to read. Then the SEO experiments with all the parameters (keyword density, internal linkage) trying to move up for the queries of interest.

Off-white: The SEO ensures crawlability of the site, restructures it if necessary for size of pages and internal linkage, and then injects terms to specifically target the important keywords and queries.

White: The SEO starts (if lucky) with a site full of content you can’t find anywhere else, and that answers a need that searchers actually have.

Luminescent pearly white: This would be a case where the SEO designs a site to show up for relevant queries and not to show up for irrelevant queries.

There probably aren’t any webmaster who are luminescent pearly white or dark inky black, most of them fall somewhere in between. I tend to stay very much on the white end of the scale – I feel this is where it best to be if you are in this for the long run. I’d rather put my effort into creating sites that people actually want to link to rather than trying to stay abreast of the latest techniques to try and trick the search engines.

What color is your hat?

Google has announced a new Custom Search Engine.

Similar products have been available from other companies for some time. There is Rollyo, Eurekster’s Swicki and Yahoo Search Builder. They all basically offer a customizable search engine by allowing you to enter a series of URLs that will be searched. This allows for the building of verticalsearch engines. For example, if you wanted to build a custom search engine for remote control cars, you can enter the URLs of all you favorite remote control car sites, and the search will select pages just from those URLs.

Google’s offering has a pretty good combination of features, compared to the others, including:

• Unlimited URLs. You can enter in as many URLs to include in the search results as you like.
• The ability to monetize the searches. You can provide your AdSense publisher ID and the search will be just like AdSense for Search.
• It allows you to specify if you want to only search in those URLs, or gives those URLs preference over all the others.

For some more opinions on Google’s Custom Search Engine, see Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Aaron Wall and JenSense.

There have been a lot of new advertising networks popping up in the last month or so. With many people complaining that AdSense isn’t doing as well for them as it used to, I think many publishers are ready to look for alternatives. Here is a quick overview of five networks that have been announced recently.

Performancing Partners Ad Network
This is a advertising network for blogs. Advertisers can buy ad spots on you blog on a monthly basis. Performancing has an “Auto Pricing” feature which determines the price of an ad based on your blogs statistics. These prices can be overridden by the blog owner. You can choose to place anywhere from 1 to 6 ads on your blog. When there are no ads to display, an ad for Performancing is shown. The good thing about about these Performancing ads is you get a 5% referral program for anyone who signs up through them. I have signed up for this program and am testing it on my blog right now (you can see ad on the the right sidebar). It takes 48 hours for the auto pricing to kick in, so I’m not sure what to expect yet.

Performancing pays 70% of the revenue to the blog owner. They also have a 5% lifetime referral bonus for any publishers or advertisers who sign up through your ad.

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Text Link Ads’ Feedvertising
Feedvertising allows you to insert text ads into your blog entries. The interesting thing about this is that it allows you to insert your own ads for free, or if you like to sign up for their advertising marketplace so advertisers can pay for ads. I have not yet used the Feedvertsing program, but I am considering trying it out. I like the fact the ads are unobtrusive and are clearly labeled as ads.

Feedvertising is free to use for your own ads. Publishers get 50% of revenue generated from the sales in the advertising marketplace. They also have a referral program which pays $25.00 for any referred visitor that results in a sale or gets accepted into the publisher program.

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Texsy
Texsy is an ad program that inserts ads into the text of web pages. Texsy underlines product names on your web sites and underlines them. When users hover over the underlined words, an ad pop up. The ads that are shown are from Amazon, Ebay and Shopping.com. Publishers must sign up for these affiliate programs for them to show up on web pages.

Texsy inserts its own ads into the publisher sites 20% of the time.

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AdQuick
This is a new advertising program that I don’t know much about. The web site does not provide much information, there is no Terms and Conditions page yet, the FAQ page is empty and they provide little information about how the program works. I’ve sent a message to them asking for more information. I’ll make a new post if I find anything significant.
Update: They now have a FAQ posted on the site, see: http://www.adquick.co.uk/faq.php. Still no T&C though, so I’m not signing up for now.

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ReviewMe
Review me is a new advertising program from Andy Hagans. Bloggers are paid to write reviews about an advertisers program. The review will have full disclosure that reviewer has been paid, and the review do not need to be positive. ReviewMe is not yet open to the public, but should be shortly.

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I’d love to hear comments from anyone who has experience with these networks.

The PubCon Las Vegas 2006 conference is shaping up to be a great one. This is the first major web publishing conference I am attending so I am really looking forward to it.

The list of names of people I recognize that are giving keynotes and sessions is huge: John Battelle, Guy Kawasaki, Jennifer Slegg, Barry Schwartz, Rand Fishkin, Andy Hagans, Brett Tabke, Vanessa Fox, Aaron Wall, Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Greg Boser, and Danny Sullivan.

The price is great too; $489 USD for a 4 day conference is very reasonable. I’m used to going to software development conferences that are $500 a day or more.

The other thing I love about this conference is that it is in Las Vegas, baby! I’m already booked at the MGM Grand, which is just a quick monorail ride from the Convention Center. If your still looking for a good price on a hotel, try checking out Las Vegas Hotel Deals and Specials.

If you are going to be there, be sure to look for me, I’ll be the guy with the Mohawk (if I don’t have to go on a business trip between now and the conference). Email me at tlainevool [at] admoolah [dot] com if you want to arrange a time to meet and chat or have a drink.

I recently bought and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and I am very glad I did.

I’m not usually one to go out and buy e-books, but I had been reading Aaron’s blog for quite some time and found that he always has good sensible advice. The book is very similar. It isn’t full of hype and get rich quick schemes, and there are no affiliate links in the book. What it does have is solid information for the full length of its 256 pages. I came up with a lot of ideas while I was reading it and had to keep a notebook on hand so I could scribble down notes as I went.

The book covers a variety of topics that web publishers need to know: writing for search engines, link building, pay-per-click, overviews of the major search engines and more. Each topic has the in-depth coverage it deserves. The content is very current and covers the latest on every SEO technique.

The one small problem I did find with the book is that it did not always flow smoothly. Since the book is an ongoing work in progress (and you get free lifetime updates when you buy the book) it has become a little disjointed in places. It wasn’t disruptive enough to make understanding the book difficult, it just seemed a little clunky at times.

Overall, the book is great, and I highly recommend you buy it now so you can start increasing your traffic right away.

When you decide to create a new website what is the first question you ask yourself? Is it: How am I going to make money from this site? If it is, you may be asking the wrong question.

In a recent TechCrunch article, Venture Capitalist Paul Graham said:

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don’t do that, it won’t matter how clever your business model is.

Of course you have to have a business model eventually. But experience so far suggests that figuring out how to make money from something popular is a lot easier than making something popular.

Many people in the web publishing industry do this the opposite way. The webmaster forums are full of people asking What niche should create a site in? or What are the highest paying keywords? The question they should be asking is: What website should I build that people would want to visit?. The time to figure out how to monetize a site is after the visitors are there. This is one thing that makes AdSense so great. You can put it on a site, not worry about it, and it will generate money. Once you have more traffic you can start experimenting with different affiliate programs, or finding advertisers directly. AdSense is a good default business model until you can figure out the real business model.

Seth Godin has a recent blog entry about people who started doing something out of interest, and ended up being very successful and making a lot of money. The people who started Apple, Yahoo, Digg, and BoingBoing didn’t have a large paycheck in mid when they started up.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that pioneers are almost never in it for the money. The smart ones figure out how to take a remarkable innovation and turn it into a living (or a bigger than big payout) but not the other way around.

So the first question you should ask yourself when creating a new website should be What do people want in a website?

Here is a list of the blogs that I consider essential reading for any web publisher. I tried to be selective and keep it to a reasonable size.

AdSense/PPC

JenSense – Making Sense of Contextual Advertising – Jennifer always has the latest scoop on AdSense and other ad programs.
Inside AdSense – Google official AdSense blog.
inside AdWords – Google official AdWords blog.
Yahoo! Publisher Network – Yahoo’s official YPN blog.
Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense – Eric Giguere always offers good advice on AdSense and other publisher related issues.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO Book.com – Aaron Wall, author of SEOBook (aff. link) offers great SEO tidbits.
Graywolf’s SEO Blog – Graywolf always has an interesting tae on the SEO world.
SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog – Solid SEO advice.
SEO BlackHat: Black Hat SEO BlogShedding light on the darker side of SEO.

Search

John Battelle’s Searchblog – Author of “The Search” has excellent insights into the world of search.
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO – This Google employee always has good advice for publishers who are looking to keep clear of being labeled a spammer by Google.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/ – Danny Sullivan’s SEW is an authoritative site,
Search Engines News – Great source for search engine marketing news

General Publishing

Shoemoney – Skills to pay the bills – Jeremy is a very successful publisher and has some great insights and speaks his mind.
Copyblogger – Great tips on who to write to attract traffic and sell.
AdMoolah News and Views – Of course I have to add my own blog!

Blogging

ProBlogger Blog Tips – The resource for anyone who has a blog.
Sifry’s Alerts – David Sifry runs Technorati and has a good grasp one what’s going on in the blogging world.