Advertising

3 Non-Scammy Ways to Add Advertising to Your Website

by Melvin · Aug 16, 2013

This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

To ad or not to ad, right? For most website owners, that is the question. If you’ve got a highly visible website with a regularly-updating blog, you probably know that your increased web presence brings hundreds if not thousands of visitors to your site every day. (Even more, if you’re using SEO properly.)

So you’re well aware that adding advertising to your site can turn those pageviews into cash, but you’re probably hesitant to pull the advertising trigger. You’re a designer, after all. You like clean lines and unified themes. The last thing you want is one of those scammy “Take 6 inches off your belly with one weird trick” ads cluttering up your right sidebar.

Luckily, there are a few tried-and-tested ways to gain ad revenue without having to add weight-loss scams or dancing mortgage men to your beautiful, carefully-crafted website. If you’re averaging more than 100 pageviews per day, you’re leaving money on the table unless you implement one of these options.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords are those tiny ads that appear on the sides and bottoms of webpages. They’re visually discreet but can earn you a large chunk of money if you have a regular following. Unlike the other solutions in this article, there’s very little you get to choose about Google AdWords; you get to decide where the ad is placed on your site, but Google does all the rest. You barely notice the ads are there until you get an email from Google with the subject line “You’ve Been Issued a Payment.”

AdWords uses suggestive advertising, so if you write about using Photoshop to create a logo, it’s likely to generate an ad for a Photoshop tutorial. This is good for your readers, because they are able to read your blog and then find relevant information by clicking on the AdWords links.

Like most aspects of advertising and SEO, Google AdWords changes its algorithms regularly. This means you need to stay up-to-date by following people like Rich Gorman, the SEO and advertising guru who regularly reports on new AdWords developments. That way you can continue to write posts that generate the best suggestive AdWords, which in turn earns you the most clicks and the most money.

Amazon Affiliates

The Amazon affiliate program works in two ways. First, it pays you every time someone buys a product by clicking through a recommendation on your site. Second, it pays you every time someone clicks through a recommendation, doesn’t buy the recommended product, but buys something else instead.

The easiest and cleanest way to use the Amazon affiliate program is by including Amazon affiliate hyperlinks in your blog posts. Write a post about how much you love Edward Tufte’s book series, and then hyperlink every time you mention a specific Tufte book. Readers click on the links and are taken to Amazon’s page to buy the Tufte books immediately. Whether they buy their own copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information or they buy something else, you get paid.

Amazon also creates clickable icons you can embed either in blog posts or on your sidebars. Each icon shows the image of a specific product, and it is possible to create a carousel of icons under the header “Tools I Use” or “What I’m Reading.” These are great ways to gain additional revenue without covering your website in garish ads. (They’re also a great way to answer the question “what tools do you use,” because I get that question all the time.)

Project Wonderful

Suppose you’re the type of designer who doesn’t want ordinary ads. Suppose you want artistic ads, created by design artists just like you. That’s where Project Wonderful comes in. Created by Ryan North, the man behind Dinosaur Comics, Machine of Death and other uber-projects, Project Wonderful allows artists to design their own ads and bid to place them on other sites.

You get to choose the size of the ad, the placement of the ad, and the types of ads you will accept. Maybe you only want web developers to advertise on your site. Maybe you’re fine with webcomics or musicians advertising on your site. Whatever you choose, you’re guaranteed to get a striking, well-designed, often quirky ad that reflects your own commitment to artistic work and creative thinking.

Use these three ideas to get some non-scammy advertising on your site and start earning more money. The next time you ask “to ad or not to ad,” you’ll know the right answer.

Word of Mouth Advertising isn’t Dead; Altered Maybe but not Dead

by Melvin · May 25, 2013

This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

In the days of the internet and social media, word of mouth advertising has altered a bit. This doesn’t mean it is dead just because it has changed shapes. In fact the opposite is true. Personally, I think it is stronger than ever. There aren’t any statistics to prove this, or at least I haven’t found any. But I am one to pay attention to marketing and the strategies that businesses take and the success each approach offers.

Think about your Facebook or Twitter feeds. How many times do you come across a post that shares a deal or a new item that was recently purchased? Well, my friend, that is word of mouth. Better yet, how often do you see one of your “friends or followers” ranting about a product that just irked them when they tried it? I see it at least a few times a day and between work and play, I don’t spend as much time on social media as most.

Just a few weeks ago I updated my profile picture on Facebook. This new picture wound up with 117 likes and 70 plus comments. I was impressed, thought I must have really looked good. But the truth is that picture was taken by an aspiring photographer. She is a good friend and needs to build her online portfolio. Always one to help I sat through the awkward session and let her snap away.

Through my picture she gained recognition and booked a wedding and a few pregnancy sessions from people that would have never known about her otherwise. This too is a type of word of mouth advertising in our current world.

Giving away free gifts is another twist on word of mouth. No it’s not simply saying, “I love such and such company and I think you should love them too.” But if you are forcing people to share information essentially it falls into the same category.

Another story that comes to mind happened a few months back when I was looking into renting new office space. I was given a pen by a lady who worked in one of the buildings. I love pens. It is maybe somewhat of an obsession. As a writer, I soak in the moments I get to take it back to my roots and put pen to paper. So for me this was the perfect way for me to not only remember them but to talk about them to my friends later.

Today I am working in that space, and while the pen isn’t the sole reason for that… it was definitely a selling point. They made me remember them and now I have an item that I use regularly and has been the start of many conversations.

If you don’t have branded office items that will start random conversations you may want to change that. InkHead is where we purchased our customized pens, apparel, and electronic accessories and they had everything we wanted plus some. All of which came without breaking the bank.

Marketing comes in many forms, but without doing the little things that cause people to talk about you randomly, you will not find the amount of success you are really looking for. Even bad publicity is still publicity. While you are always aiming for positive feedback, just be thankful when people are talking about you.

Cost-Effective Ways to Market Your Online Business Offline

by Melvin · Feb 27, 2013

A lot of people these days are so focused on marketing their businesses online that they tend to neglect the offline part. Sure, promoting online is much easier, gives us wider reach and most of the time, is cheaper as well. However, this doesn’t mean doing offline promotions is not worth it.

In this blog post, I will list down some cost effective ways to market your online business offline. These offline marketing techniques should just complement your current online strategies and should still allow you to reach more people without spending too much money.

1. Giveaway items

There’s already plenty to choose from here however you don’t really need to spend too much. A simple BIC stic pen with your web address in it can easily promote your website. And these pens don’t cost too much at all so you are literally getting more bang for your buck already.

You can also give away more expensive items like T-Shirts, mugs, mouse pads, even a discount coupon for what your business is offering. The key here is to gauge people’s interest and make them curious enough about your business that they would check out your website no matter what.

2.Flyers and brochures

There’s a reason why so many businesses are still doing this and its due to it being still effective. Here you just need to have flyers and brochures made and those simply need to have information about your business what it is all about. You can even go into as specific as listing down the different products or services that you’re selling and the corresponding prices for each of them. You can also combine this with the first method which should entice people more since you’re giving away something.

The key here is targeting the location carefully. If your business provides services that are related to university students, then it totally makes sense to give flyers near the universities. Or if you’re someone who’s providing freelance services, then go to places where small business are located. Overall, you want to target as many qualified prospects as possible so it’s not entirely about the quantity.

3. Yourself and your resources as a marketing vehicle.

Are you traveling daily to places that are crowded? Or do you drive for more than an hour a day? If yes, then you can make use of yourself in promoting your business.

For example, if you’re commuting and riding trains, you can wear a shirt or anything that mentions your business. That can easily be seen by hundreds, if not thousands of people per day. If you have a car on the other hand, you can put out signs or even have decals on it and make it look like as if it’s a moving billboard. This will reach a lot of people especially during rush hours.

Those are just two examples and as I said, the sky is the limit here. Why not take a look of what you have and start from there?

4. Sponsor events and competitions

If you want to take your offline marketing efforts to the next level, then you must consider taking part into events and competitions as a sponsor. With events, you can easily make use of all the three things that I just discussed. The good thing with sponsoring events is that you are given some good exposure as well since the MC’s mention the sponsors frequently throughout the event. A lot of times (and depending on the sponsorship package that you would avail) they also give you time to talk and promote your business. And this is best time to not just tell participants about your business, but also give good valuable information that would make them interested enough to learn more about you.

Sponsoring events is the most expensive among all however if done right, it can easily yield better and quicker results. Just make sure to plan carefully here as the risk is definitely much higher. Don’t forget to consider the audience of the event too. If the target age of your business is 40 years old and above, then it might not be wise for you to sponsor a university event.

Offline marketing can be as powerful and cost-effective as online marketing if done correctly. Its important here to do your homework first, plan things carefully and then execute that plan to perfection. Then simply just rinse and repeat.

Do you have any other cost-effective offline marketing techniques that you want to share? Feel free to let me know through the comment form.

How I (Literally) Doubled My Blog Advertising Income

by Melvin · Jun 7, 2010

In one of my featured posts, I discussed about how this blog currently makes money including all the tools and the reasoning behind the monetization tactics I use and how I do it. The post was received so well that I got some questions asked privately asking for some more additional clarifications. I love helping people out so I did walk them through as much as possible but of course time is so limited that I can’t do that to everyone.

In the last post, I did make mention that direct advertising sales is highest source of income for this blog. I know a lot of bloggers have this as their primary monetization model as well but also I realized that a lot of other bloggers are having so much trouble with it.

In this another lengthy post, I’d like to discuss how I literally doubled my advertising income through the past few years. And here we go:

Pre note: This is not, at all, a walk-through on how to do blog advertising. Its mainly a post where I share how I doubled my advertising income. That being said, consider this post as a post targeted to intermediate to advance users who may probably be already making money with blog advertising. Also there’s no traffic tip in this post.

Getting the right tools & technology

When I started, I installed OpenX on this blog primarily because I have been using it on my other blogs created before this one. And OpenX is really an awesome free tool because they have all sorts of features that are available on so many other paid tools.

Not too long, I realized that I have to jump on the OIO Publisher bandwagon. Again in case you don’t know, OIO is an advertising manager platform that handles the advertising for you. This means that you no longer need to manually accept payments, add banners, track expiring date and stuffs because OIO does that all for you.

It costs $47 with an unlimited use so you can pretty much use it on every of your site. It’s beneficial first because, you can manage ads literally with your hands tied back (heheh, a marketer’s usual hype) and second because it pretty much works alongside any other networks and integrates well with almost all payment processor. It does also have tons of features like geo-targeting and stat-tracking.

Note: If you still does not have OIO Publisher on your blog, you are very fortunate because OIO gave me a coupon code that entitles everyone to a $10 discount. By signing up with OIO Publisher under me, you get the unlimited usage license for just $37 which is definitely a huge steal. Click this link now and make sure you enter BLOOM-MELVS to claim your discount.

Alternatively there are other third party networks that you could look as well like BuySellAds and AdvertiseSpace.com, both of which sell your space for you in exchange for a revenue cut (50%). Some people do well with those networks and while other prefer using OIO to keep profit 100%.

Setting Up the right Advertise Now Page

It’s funny but one of the most viewed pages in this blog is the advertise now page which goes to show that potential advertisers really care about the stats. The mistake that I mostly see with other bloggers advertising page is that the statistics are not as comprehensive as it should. Usually they just put paragraphs with no proofs at all or worse they don’t even use any screenshot from Google Analytics and other logs.

You have to understand that advertisers spend soooo much money in their campaigns and as a wise person, what they want is to get a good bang for their buck. Oftentimes they buy space from as much blogs as possible and then track what’s doing well and what’s not. By having a “proper” advertise now page you’re giving them a clear and concise information of what to expect in your blog.

Don’t Direct Link to the Payment Page

Most people who use OIO Publisher or other third party tool does the mistake of linking their Advertise now box directly to the payment. Why is that a problem? It’s a problem because there’s really no value from the advertiser’s side. I mean if you put yourself in their shoes, you don’t want to buy an ad space without knowing the stats first right?

I conducted an test last year and found an interesting result to where a lot of advertisers will buy an ad space when you direct link it to the payment page while a good number of advertisers will buy but then subscribe for future payments when you send them to the advertise page. You see, a good advertising page builds trust and I have some advertisers here who are advertising ever since last year which I thought was pretty cool.

Giving them reasonable pricing

I understand that all bloggers value their traffic as much as they could but sometimes you have to bent a bit to make things work. It’s not really that you’re selling yourself cheap but its more of determining how the marketplaces prices it. Jeremy Schoemaker even told us before that he is selling initially his ad spots for like 2/10 the price.

Another reason is that you want to build relationship with these advertisers. A lot of times when an advertiser talks with me, he usually asks for an initial month discount and most of the times I accept it. I understand that banner ads have very poor clickthroughs and as a blogger, you want to establish that relationship where you can let people know what they can get from you and how they can benefit.

Stalk, look around

The one thing that’s so good (or so bad depending on where your siding) about online business is that it’s very transparent. You can easily stalk on what others are doing, how they are doing it and stuffs.

Just the same with direct ad sales. One of the tricks is to always look on blogs within your niche and observe who are the advertisers advertising. Then contact them up and tell them you’re offering advertising as well. There’s a good chance that they will respond since most of them are just small business owners and chances are they’d negotiate with you to push their campaign through. That’s because they understand it’s all about market penetration and branding. Once a brand gets through these markets, it’s amazing how it spreads like fire without that much effort at all.

Outsource

I have pretty come to a point now where I have already appointed someone to do things for me. For instance, every two week or so a person I hired would go to all webmaster forums, find advertisers looking for related advertising and offer them the space. He also does a listing on big boards highlighting advertising on my blog and the benefits of it.

If you’re going to chase advertisers (there’s no need to when you have a nice blog like me. 😉 ), it’s almost essential to have someone working for you, contacting advertisers, flaunting the benefits and such. That makes the process very automated at the end.

Blog Advertising is STILL hit & miss.

In this post I didn’t hold back anything, I completely shared to you how I grew my blog advertising income. But still at the end of the day, it’s still a hit and miss income opportunity. A lot of people still claim it as an unstable way to make money from blog and that’s true. If you’re into making more, you would want to definitely work more on a more “in-house” and consistent money maker w/c can bring you more money without having the need for tons of traffic.

But of course if you’re like me and you have those wide sidebars and nice spacings, you might as well just leverage your traffic too and benefit from selling these spaces. After all, probably 80% of blogs still make money from blog advertising. And do take note that they are doing it, without really sacrificing their more profitable monetization ways.

Great Blog Design & Why it Can Make or Break your Business

by Melvin · Feb 19, 2010

Most of my readers here treat blogging as a business and if you’ve already read my Blog Marketing for Fame report (w/c is free!), you can see how much I emphasized good blog design as one of the keys in blogging success. Just by simply paying attention on the top blogs in any niche, it’s easy to spot that no one in them sports an ugly design. That being said, you can’t expect people to read your content (even if its a good content) if your design is crappy.

As always the best time to get the perfect design is at the start or at the earliest time possible. The reason is you don’t want to waste new readers by leaving a bad impression to your blog.If your design alone can persuade them to subscribe then why not! But what is a good blog design?

Great Blog Design

If you are thinking that a superb design is synonymous with the price tag, then you’re wrong. I’ve seen a lot of custom-designed blogs that sucked while others simply use a free tweaked theme and it looked awesome.

To achieve a good design, you don’t really need to pay for a custom unique theme from a certain company. All you need to do is grab a design and then lay out your brand properly and clearly. The key here is lasting impression and brand awareness. Of course the basic things are important as well like readability, typography, cleanliness and etc but these days one way that people can remember you is through your design.

For instance here in my blog, people (imo) do realize that I am using a custom theme when in fact it’s just a premium theme. Why? Because I don’t think anyone using Colormatic Theme (my theme) has done good branding for their blogs enough for people to realize them. In short, when people see my theme, they know I’m the only one using it.

Importance

Two things I’ve mentioned above is lasting impression and brand awareness. For me design is neither a part of content nor marketing, it’s actually a part of both. People won’t read your content if your design sucks (debatable) and on the other hand I’m amazed to see how a lot of big firms have used attractive design as a major marketing strategy to boost their business! All together it speaks both of content and marketing.

How do I know I have a good one for my blog?

This is actually a pretty opinionated question but all I can say is your readers will tell you. I’m sure you all do forum reviews for your blog. If it’s your first time to hear it, its basically when you solicit reviews on large forums for your blog.

Funny thing is that most people view that strategy as a traffic generator but the real key in there is still the review itself. I, myself seek for tons of those forum reviews and it has really helped me out in improving the design of my blog.

You can also do so by observing the top blogs in your niche and see what they have. Although one can say it’s just a time-waster, you can still gain something because blogs from different niches accomodate different layouts so that may probably be useful as well.

All up to you

Tackling blog designs, how to have one and how to maximize it, is a HUGE topic. In fact there are blogs who are solely dedicated in writing about it. I’m no expert and heck no good designer (I always seek opinion).

What I intend to share here is the importance of good blog designs and how it can make you ahead of those so many lame bloggers sporting stupid crappy designs. 😉 What say you?

What I Learned in Doing Paid Reviews

by Melvin · Feb 9, 2010

Last month, you probably have seen me accept a couple of paid reviews here in my blog and to be honest I know you don’t like seeing two paid posts in less than 10 days especially that this blog rarely does paid reviews.

The truth about paid reviews is that you rarely pass on them. Practically, it’s the most expensive form of advertising one can avail and for the bloggers; it’s the most lucrative one. And again, I don’t think most bloggers would pass for the opportunity of getting paid. As long as it’s related to what your blog is, then I don’t think there’s any problem with that. Of course, it can hurt your blog in a way or another.

I have learned some few lessons on doing sponsored reviews but before I talk about that, I would like to share with you how I really discourage advertisers from purchasing a review from this blog. First is I price my review too high. Ok, although it seems like $50 is a small amount for the audience I have, it actually is $50 way back when this blog is in 200K Alexa (w/c means I need to raise). Another thing is that my blog is pr0, meaning you don’t get organic boost. And worst, I even no-follow the links! And lastly, I don’t let it last too long in the front page. Doing this sponsored post is really painful in my ass BUT for the money-sake, you obviously do it as long as it’s relevant.

Anyways here are the key tips that I learned in doing posts that are paid:

Tell them everything – I always tell people to tell your client/advertisers what to expect. After I learn that someone has purchased a paid review, I usually personally contact them with the details, along with how long the review would be there and the nofollow thing. And besides, I believe I clearly stated in my advertise page.
Adjust quickly – If you’re like me then you have a ton of drafts that you are planning to publish anytime soon. So imagine everything is planned already and all of a sudden somehow requested a paid review, how would you react? Adjust rapidly! Make sure you don’t alienate your posting frequency by breaking it. On the other hand, also make sure that the advertiser realizes his post will not be posted immediately but on a scheduled date.
Tell your readers you’re paid to do that – There will be times when you would get consecutive review requests or even 3-4 requests in one week. I’m sure it would cross your mind not to disclose some of it because you’re worrying your readers might get annoyed with those reviews. Listen, disclose it! Don’t even think, just disclose it and talk in such a way that you’re still doing your normal posts.
Be honest – This is an ancient tip with paid reviews yet still many bloggers are afraid to do it. When you’re paid to review someone’s product, you either get your reputation tainted, or get the advertiser’s expectations not met. I would rather get the second one. With my last review about PasteWeb, I was constructively critical with the program itself but I can tell that the advertiser was not mad with me. Here’s one key tip: You know your audience, you know what type of audience they are so think of them when doing your review. Conclude the review based on whether it can benefit your readers or not.

Obviously as I was mentioning this, I still have a couple of paid reviews on the way but I can assure you this will not bore you to death nor will it make you not want to visit this blog again. How about you? How do you deal with sponsored reviews?

AdvertiseSpace.com, Anything New to Offer?

by Melvin · Jan 3, 2010

Since late last year, I’ve been quite seeing a small buzz around a startup advertising network that simplifies the process of buying and selling ads which is called Advertise Space. I’ve seen them advertising on big blogs around the blogosphere and was quite intrigued about them.

Ultimately I signed up on their service because it’s free and there’s nothing to lose. Now as I was navigating their whole site I wondered “does this site have anything unique to offer?” I mean since blogging has emerged there are sure tons of third party networks that present themselves to “automate” the process of selling ad spaces on our blogs and obviously most of them have just died in the process.

Unfortunately I really haven’t seen anything new about their platform. You sign up with them and get approved (or not) and you can start displaying the script and their ads. Obviously, there’s nothing in their system that I find appealing. When you click on a blank ad space you are redirected to page like this:

And when you click on the buy now button you are redirected to a paypal payment page. So frankly speaking, I find it absurd. I mean sure they’d find the advertisers for you and in exchange get like 60% of the revenue but these days that isn’t anything that can make us get excited. BuySellAds does have the same program BUT they have better features like showing site metrics and also takes small percentages. Obviously OIO Publisher has been still one of the leaders and gets NO cut at all (and you’d be crazy not to take advantage of their $15 off promo for this month seriously!)

To end this one, should you still give AdvertiseSpace.com a look? Definitely! It’s free, there’s nothing to lose, and you get to blame no one when you don’t make money. 😉 Again that was just my sheer opinion in it and you should not base your decision on it. How about you guys, what do you think of this new startup platform?

P.S. This is not a sponsored review or whatever