Effective Referral Linking

Mar 192009
 

There are a ton of webmasters out there that make a descent living off of referral or text link ad income. Some do it better than others. There are several factors that can play into how successful their sites are, are they optimized for search traffic, is the target audience being reached, and the methods they used to get the ads clicked.

Integrating Ads Into Content

Check out Online TV. Here is a great example on how to link to sites with your affiliate code. When you look at the site, you will probably see the Google ads. They are hard to miss. The part that I am talking about is the top right menu.

tv

What makes this menu great is the fact that it’s not really a menu at all. It’s links to another site, and when you use it, the site owner starts making money. A great method to get visitors to click on your ads is getting your ads to blend with your content. On this site, it’s done on a superb level, minus the Google Ads.

Redirects

Another great way to keep from people from editing your referral link, and also make it appear to link to your site is by using a htaccess redirect. By editing your htaccess file you can have a link on your site point to a specified folder, and your htaccess will 302 it (redirect it) with the referral link.  Online TV uses this method as well on their Watch Movies Online page. It’s in the form of a  text link in the main content.

To accomplish this all you have to do is create a folder on your site, put nothing in it besides your htaccess file, and make the access file read like this:

Redirect 302 /[subdir]/[filename] http://affiliatesite_example.com/?id=123

There are a ton of tutorials out their on how to do this, and to do it with several affiliate links. The whole process is very easy though. So next time you think about putting an ad or an affiliate link on your site, think how will this effect my visitors, and how effective will it be. If it’s not worth the time to blend professionally with your site, I say don’t do it at all.

DIV ID = Promotion on Twitter

Mar 162009
 

twitterIt could be an innocent little thing that Twitter is doing, but I am betting ads are soon to come on their site. Twitter users have been wondering when it will happen, and I am guessing very soon. I noticed today, a neat little text box that they created defining a couple of Twitter functions on their own site. So I decided to peek at the code.

The div tag surrounding it, is titled “promotion”. Is it to promote their own products and services? Maybe, I am guessing at least “yes” for the next few day anyhow, but don’t be surprised if you start seeing non-Twitter links there. I’m guessing they are just days away. It’s time to start refilling the investors pockets.

Do you think this is a future Twitter ad spot? Yes or No?

Facebook, Not Afraid of the Ads

Oct 122008
 

Like many of us, our friends are joining Facebook. I was one of them, and have been slowly adding friends to my list. Honestly though, I am already sick of it.

It’s Not That I Hate

It’s not that I hate Facebook’s layout. No layout is perfect, though I could spend a week writing blog posts about why I hate theirs. It’s not that that they scour all of my information to target their ads at me more. It’s not that it’s an aggressive tell your friend marketer, and it’s not that they charge for virtual gifts. What a rip that is. What I am beginning to hate is that I am seeing design for greed, not design for use.

Greed

facebookWhat really bugs me is what I saw today. A link to “More Ads” underneath an ad. Enough is enough, and how greedy can you be? What possible value could this offer to a visitor, and what kind of visitor would actually click on it? Are they going for accidentals? Maybe if they sold it as “Additional Resources Based on our Research of You”. It would be kind of true. I just try to imagine this as if my local newspaper were trying to get away with this crap. I can hear the sales rep now, “For an additional $4.95 a month we can also set you up to have a telemarketer call you on a daily basis. ” Any takers? I doubt it, and the ones that do I am sure only do so out of accident.

Think I’m already done using Facebook. I’ll give it a few more weeks.

Ad Distractions

Sep 082008
 

filescope1When I do my Basic Usability and Design Analysis, there are two particular items I check for. Does the site stay on topic, and if it has  advertisements, do the advertisements interfere with the visitors use of the site.

Here is a good example of staying on topic. The site File-O-Scope does two things really well on this site. They skipped trying to make money from advertisements, and they kept the site on topic. They want to sell  LAN file search software and not ad clicks. Ads are distractions, and if you use enough of them, they could start working against you.

The Numbers Against Ads

Imagine the File-O-Scope site with just a couple of Google text ads running. Now imagine it gets 1,000 visitors a day. If ten a day click on those ads, generating say, $0.20 a click, they could make a whopping $2 a day. Over a month that is $60. That $60 also just cost 300 visitors from buying their product. If their marketing guys have been doing a good job, and sending them a quality target audience they should be getting at least 1% of their visitors to make a purchase. 1% of 300 is 3 sales. Their product is $39.95, and that times those three new sales is  $119.85. No ads, double their money.

You could argue that you could make more than $0.20 a click, but I could also argue that I did not count the cost to get those visitors to the site. I could also argue that because the site has less distractions without the ads, the sales increased for the group of visitors that did not buy or did not click on an ad. More people were likely to buy. If total sales increased by just 0.5% from overall traffic, that could be five more sales. Revenue from ads on a site like this just don’t add up enough to make sense.

A Signature of Slop

When I see excessive ads on a site, it’s an automatic signature to me that site owner is either desparate, making some serious money, or does not really see the purpose of their own site. Usually it not the case of  the first two, but a signature of slop. The sites main idea has been lost, or was never fully developed to begin with. These sites are typically full of distractions, or what I like to think of as “good ideas that don’t belong”, and ads, ads, ads. Why isn’t my site making enough money they think, or I just haven’t sold enough ads. Sorry, that’s not the problem. The problem is their distraction.

Good ideas can also be just as damaging. I have a good idea, I will add another widget to my site. Yikes, don’t do it! Here is a little hint on how to focus your site, and get visitors loving it. The Hint: “One of the greatest inventions for the computer is the delete button.” Don’t go deleting the site though, just the distractions!

Ad Bombardment

Mar 312008
 

Quick, find an advertisement on this site. Oh wait you can’t, because there is none to be found. The value of my services far out weighs any money I could make from a banner on this site. Banners are a distraction from content, and text ads are designed in intent to deceive a visitor as content. Ooh, you made 5 cents from a one in a hundred visitors for that click. Was it worth it? If it happens sixty more times you might be able to buy one gallon of gas.

Too often I find blogs littered with Google ads. They push the content down, sideways, and all over the place. Content plays second because ad location is key. If you read any webmaster forum you can always find posts about “How do I get more hits?”. They want the traffic so they can make more with their ads. With little effort you can get a site that has 100 visitors a day. The problem though, is out of those 100 visitors most of them do not come back. The sites purpose is lost by “Ad Bombardment”, and the visitor experience is identified as “Annoyed”.

After attacking a visitor with ads, I can only assume the visitor will most likely never talk about the site, let alone bookmarking it. They are busy bookmarking the site they just went to using your ad, not your site. Are you getting better than 15% in return visitors over a course of a month? Imagine if you got 25%. Lets use the theory that  your marketing generates 1,000 new visitors a month. The difference between 15% and 25% is nearly double in the course of a year, and that is assuming those returning visitors are not helping your marketing efforts. My traffic x 2, I like that, who wouldn’t. Looking at the numbers for this ad free site, 39% of my visitors are return visitors. Yes, my numbers are growing, and so is my work load.

It’s o.k. to use ads to generate revenue, just be more careful in placement, and try not to get greedy. Ad Bombardment can kill a site.

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