Tuesday, May 15, 2007

4 Easy Ways to Get Advertisers on Your Site

Pump up your profit margin with these simple tips for attracting advertisers.

If you're just getting started on the internet or simply looking for ways to add new revenue streams to your business, you might be considering accepting ads for other companies' products on your website.

Who wouldn't like to make a few extra bucks without any effort? You just put up a few ads on your site and wait for the cash to roll in, right?

Not necessarily.

To make your site attractive to companies looking for ad space, you'll need to have a great niche market, tons of traffic and the promise of good ad placement on your site. However, if you don't have all these elements in place yet, there are still ways for you to make money from ads on your site. The easiest and often the most successful include:

1. Promote an affiliate product on your site.
Joining another company's affiliate program is one of the simplest ways to get started with internet advertising. While affiliate links aren't technically ads, they allow you to make money by promoting someone else's product. As an affiliate, you earn a commission each time someone you've referred makes a purchase. To encourage sales, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate site or publish a newsletter article about their product.

Different affiliate programs offer different payout options. Some might offer 10 percent commission for each sale, while others pay up to 50 percent of each sale. You'll want to shop around for the best deal for you and the best fit for your site. To find good affiliate programs, check out the following directories:

Associate Programs

Affiliates Directory

Refer-It

Some internet advertising pros are actually making all their income from signing on with multiple affiliate programs. They don't even have a product of their own! This isn't a strategy for beginners, however, so take some time to check out different programs before committing to this option.

2. Use targeted advertising with Google AdSense.
Google's AdSense program allows you to make money advertising on your site by placing targeted text ads generated by Google on your pages. The ads appear in rectangular boxes running down the side or across the bottom of a web page with the words "Ads by Google" over the top. These ads are paid for by businesses that use Google's pay-per-click program, AdWords. These ads reflect the content on your site, so if your site sells a book on how to recognize authentic baseball cards, for example, the ads that appear on your site might be for baseball card retailers.

As a Google AdSense publisher, you earn money every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the AdWords ads on your site. If you're getting a lot of targeted traffic--and if these visitors are interested in the products being advertised--that could mean a healthy new source of extra income for you.

Best of all, Google AdSense is free to join. It's easy, too. Google does all the work of finding relevant ads for your site--you just collect the payments.

A word of warning: Google ads don't work for all sites, so if you add them, be sure to test them. You don't want to lose credibility with your target market.

3. Approach companies directly to ask if you can advertise for them.
If your site is already getting lots of traffic, try looking for sites that offer complementary products and target the same niche market as you do. For instance, if you own a bridal shop, you could approach a local florist to see if they'd like to advertise their wedding bouquets on your site. An ad on your site would also be seen as an implicit recommendation of their product, and it could send a ton of brides to their site. And the more successful your ads are, the more you can charge for them.

Be sure to contact potential internet advertising partners in a professional manner. Call them on the phone instead of just e-mailing them so your communication is more personal and professional. Be ready to supply them with information about your business and your site traffic. The more information you can give them, the more likely they'll be to consider your offer. And above all, make sure they have a solid reputation. If you partner with a questionable company, their activities could reflect poorly on your business.

4. Sign up for a blog-specific ad program.
If you have a blog, consider signing up to feature blog-specific ads on your site. The key is to consider the kinds of ads your target audience will find valuable. Here are some great ways to attract advertisers to your blog:

Sign up with a context-based ad program like
Google's AdSense that will automatically generate ads for your site that you can put up within minutes of being accepted to their program. Crisp Ads offers a similar program, but only for blogs.
Place
Amazon Associates ads on your site, and feature ads for products you personally use or are happy to endorse. That way, your customers are responding to your recommendations.

Get advertisers interested in your blog with a link they can use to contact you for rates and requirements. This link can be a simple message saying "Click here to find out how to advertise on this blog!" That way, anyone visiting your site is free to discuss advertising opportunities with you.

Sign up with an advertiser-publisher connection program like
BlogAds or AdBrite, and get listed in their publishers' directory. One important note: With these types of ads, the advertisers look through listings of thousands of blogs to choose the right people to promote their products. Unless you're getting thousands of visitors a day, they might not be all that interested in doing business with you.
Making money from your site isn't a matter of putting up a few ads and grabbing a paycheck--it takes a lot of research and testing on an already established site to make even the best internet advertising strategies truly pay off.

Even then, you may find that your audience resists the presence of ads. If you're putting people off by placing ads on your pages, you could end up losing more customers and revenue than you actually gain. To make sure this doesn't happen, test every aspect of each new ad campaign you run.

Once you do discover the internet advertising strategies that work best for your site, you can try promoting another product, and then another. Soon, all those added revenue streams will combine to swell your profits.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

19 eBay Success Secrets


Secrets you can use to create a booming business on eBay.

1. Choose a User ID carefully. Be sure to choose a User ID that represents your business or the items you sell. This will become your eBay brand identity to prospective buyers.

2. Start With the "How to Sell" Tour. Watch the eBay selling demonstration video. Then, learn more at the eBay Learning Center.

3. Get ID Verified. You can use the ID Verify option instead of, or in addition to, giving your credit card information when setting up a Seller's Account. You might want to do it so you'll be given an ID Verify icon in your feedback profile, giving the eBay community more confidence to buy from you and allowing you to bypass some feedback requirements when selling in certain formats.

4. Get Computer Backup Disks. Power surges or computer crashes can wipe out your valuable data in seconds. Routinely save the business documents on your hard drive to disks. Label them, and file them in a safe place.

5. Use Accounting Software. Accounting software helps you know how your business is doing so you can make it more profitable. It's also going to make your life much easier come tax time. A bookkeeper can recommend the right software for your business, set it up and teach you how to use it.

6. Make Space for Inventory and Shipping Materials. These items don't have to be in your office, but they do need to be in a safe, dry place nearby. This helps you keep an eye on what you've got and what you need as your business grows. The U.S. Postal Service offers free eBay/USPS co-branded Priority Mail shipping boxes. Go to http://ebaysupplies.usps.com to order yours.

7. Write a Daily To-Do List. Schedule a time to follow up on opportunities that aren't part of your normal tasks, and use this time frame to respond to unplanned tasks that pop up that day.

8. Take eBay's Fees Into Account. Even though eBay charges a small listing Insertion Fee and a Final Value Fee, you may want to take these into account when you're pricing your items. Both of these fees are listed here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html.

9. Choose the Best Category. From eBay's home page, click the "Buy" button, and browse the categories to find ones that work for your items. Also see where competing items have been placed. It's a good idea to choose two categories for your listings to reach more buyers.

10. Spotlight Your Title. For an additional fee, you can grab buyers' attention when they search for listings by bolding your text (which has increased final item prices by an average of 25 percent) and using a color highlight or border on your listing. Also, say more about your item by adding a subtitle.

11. Consider Hiring a Trading Assistant. When your business on eBay starts booming, you might want help managing your listings so you can focus on other areas of growing your business and also enjoy a balanced work/home life. Hiring a Trading Assistant can free up the time you need and want. Find a Trading Assistant at http://pages.ebay.com/tahub/index.html.

12. Use My eBay. Make sure to use My eBay to monitor your listings and activity on the site. My Messages can also help you keep track of your eBay correspondence.

13. Attend Industry Trade Shows. Not only will you get a preview of product trends, you can also connect with manufacturers and discuss the opportunity of selling their products on eBay. Bring your business cards, and be ready to discuss your success as an eBay seller.

14. Donate to a Nonprofit Organization. Donate part of or the entire final sale price to your favorite nonprofit organizations. Support your community, and your charity listings will get additional visibility along with a blue-and-yellow ribbon icon. Search more than 5,000 charities at http://givingworks.ebay.com.

15. Beware of Unusual Buyer Requests. To help protect yourself from potential fraud, be wary of buyers who have unusual requests. If buyers ask to send partial payments, consider that a warning sign.

16. Ask eBay Consultants for Advice. Once you know how to sell on eBay and you've checked out the eBay Community, your head will be buzzing with new business ideas. Run your questions by the Seller OnRamp consultants for free advice on creating a profitable business on eBay.

17. Subscribe to the Chatter. Every month, get feature articles, tips, helpful links and member interviews. Share your eBay story, and you may be next in the member spotlight.

18. Sign Up for the PowerUp Newsletter. Get advance notice of upcoming events and promotions by e-mail at http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/newsflash.html. You'll get a heads-up on free listing days, feature discounts, seller sweepstakes and more.

19. Design Marketing Materials to Promote Your Store. Get business cards, fliers, letterhead and envelopes to strengthen your Store's brand and invite offline shoppers to check it out. Download eBay's marketing templates for free or visit NetPost Business Connect to create and mail advertising and promotional messages to your customers.


What is AdSense

AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.

Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

It currently uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). (Note that the Mediabot is a separate crawler from the Googlebot that maintains Google's search index.)

Many sites use AdSense to monetize their content and some webmasters work hard to maximize their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:

They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.
They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.
They use copy on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".
The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.