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 Okay, this story comes from the events happened about a one year ago and contains something I learned back then. Basically this is a story how I multiplied one my website income channels without increasing my traffic dramatically.
A small notice: I didn't store all the data about a year ago and cannot remember everything in detail, so forgive me if exact numbers aren't completely accurate, but they should be pretty close to what happened
My situation year ago
I had a blog I was happy about, but didn't monetize my site. Then at that time I happened to read somewhere that I could earn some bucks using some banner service provider (CPM stuff, which I had no clue what CPM meant back then). My blog had a pretty good audience at that time, but I never considered generating any revenue from it. I signed up for the program, and started displaying banners on my site. I selected some banner campaigns that I liked and went on.
Something like a week later (can't remember precisely because it was quite a long time) I remember seeing like $0.01 in my account after displaying those banners for 3 days. I thought: "no way I'm going to show these banners" - it just wouldn't make sense to earn like a dollar in a year displaying big banners.
How I went to $40 monthly earnings
After I realized that I wasn't doing as well as I wanted, I had a need to try a better program. The next lesson (which is pretty darn obvious probably most of you) I learned was this: Try different ad programs, you don't know works best for you until you've tried.
I started using Google adsense. I had heard about it, and I thought to give it a go. I checked how some other bloggers were using it and started displaying ads on my website.
Now I was getting around $1-2 per day (depending on the day) and I used the adsense channels to find out which ads people were clicking. I also carefully looked at the adsense tips and read about "blending ads" and different positions. I also put the search system in action, and threw some ads there.
After experimenting this I had mixed feelings: the adsense text ads was giving me a better income than graphical CPM banners, but since I couldn't customize adsense font and graphics the way I would have wanted - my site didn't look the way I wanted. The ads were bit poor for regular readers, and eventually I took them away. While I was making this decision, I accidentally noticed another income generating possibility:
How I reached the $440?
I started selling links
I don't know where I first heard about it, but I was lead to using Text Link Ads (TLA). I had no expectations, and I simply integrated it with my site while I was getting rid of Adsense. I also wrote a some blog posts such as "7 Witty Tactics for Funding Your Game Production" (notice how this blog post was targeted to my audience) where I mentioned TLA.
Text link ads offers you $25 for every client or publisher you get there. I gave the affiliate links in that blog post and checked my income after some days. While I was waiting for money to roll in I noticed that 2-3 clients actually purchased some links from my site. I was pleased to see this. I logged in and noticed that I had like some bucks rolling in: I believe it was close to Adsense income since I remember thinking "whether I should switch to TLA or not". I remember when I checked my paypal account and was very surprised to see $166 from TLA. I was thinking like: Whadda heck? I thought I should receive only some bucks, but as I wasn't paying much attention to TLA I was looking at "money earned" statistics on their site - missing the "affiliate income" (which is under different tab in their control panel). It was a pleasant surprise to see that I had several referrals that I simply had missed.
I got excited since I realized I now might have a good replacement for Adsense: text link ads could be 100% customized and they took only a small space from my site - yet generating much more than Adsense. I posted several blogs posts more and in just about 40 days I earned $440 by doing actually less than I used to do (since now I didn't have to try to optimize my link positions like I had done for Adsense: I just put the links in one spot in a visible spot and kept updating the site). The next month I saw more advertisers, and more referrals earning several hundreds.
And then I got "too excited" - and made a mistake from where learned one of the most valuable lesson in sales
I suppose I could say I was "excited" and decided to promote the system even more. I was doing a pretty good income from it (compared to the fact that I didn't have to spend much time on the system!), and I still think that recommending the system is okay - it was just the way I continued to promote it was wrong. After some months I wrote several posts in a row (scheduled them to appear in the next week) and gave affiliate links in each post, and went on a vacation (without seeing what people would say about the posts).
That's when I made the 2 big mistakes:
1) I wrote too many posts in a too short timeline: this pissed off some of my regular readers. I had heard about the sales saying "people like to buy, but they don't like to be sold at" - and I was experiencing this and really UNDERSTOOD what those sales people meant by that! Regular readers wanted to read about game production - not me promoting affiliate links day after day! While the program was good - I shouldn't have wrote about it one blog post after another.
2) I went on a vacation (and took one week completely off, didn't check the computer and I couldn't see the reactions of those people - boy were they angry). When I got back I noticed several people were angry and disappointed for seeing affiliate links day after day. If I hadn't took a vacation, I could have seen their reaction - and could have chosen a different way to promote the system.
While I was promoting a good system (I know it works for me, I know it works for lots of people - so naturally I wanted my readership to get in as well. If the system wasn't good for me, what would have been the point to promote it in the first place anyway?). The big mistake I did was promoting it too much, in a wrong way. I'm glad I learned that lesson back then, and have grown my site traffic and everything is okay now.
The bad thing that eventually happened that some people drop their links to my site and I got less referrals since then. I decided to forget promoting the affiliate system (even though I knew how good it was) to remain a loyal audience (which is very important in a long-term success) and got back to writing about my own topic: game production. I wrote a post where I apologized what I had done - and readers understood. I managed to grow the site traffic slowly but steadily, and pretty much gained the trust of those who were originally pissed off. I also got very encouraging emails from people who said that they actually liked my posts, but suggested I should write less frequently about the affiliate system.
I learned a lot in just one week.
Then I figured out a different way to get the income I wanted
I tried several things (excluding writing more blog posts about the system anymore), and placed links and banners on my site. After some time I took them away, but ended up doing the following things: (some of these I actually did right when I signed up for the system)
I set up a sponsor page and told people that I would mention sponsors in my blog
I set up a sponsor page, where I explained the following things about my audience:
- WHO my audience are (game producers, hobbyists, professionals etc.)
- HOW MUCH TRAFFIC I get (I wrote pageviews, visits, gave pictures from google)
- SITE INFO (I put pagerank, alexa rank, pagestrength, technorati rank - all kinds of ranks on my sponsor page)
- I wrote WHERE the sponsored link would be placed
- I wrote that the sponsors would be mentioned in a monthly BLOG POST (this was a very good thing which I'll explain in greater detail soon)
All this information was made visible so that potential sponsors could read exactly what they would get. I also explained how they could buy links via Text link ads (and placed a referral link there).
I placed a BIG "$100 in free links" referral banner on the sponsors page
TLA offers banners where they promote their "$100 in free text links" offer. TLA gives (at the time of writing) $25 referral fee for every referred client: that means, if somebody buys any links (even if they aren't from my site) I get $25 per referred client. Placing the big banner (both in the top of the sponsor page, and also in the end) has got me some client referrals now and then.
And notice: I don't have big sponsor banner on my homepage. I keep my homepage clean for my readers, but those who are interested in sponsoring are good & targeted visitors. It's good to show "get $100 free in text links advertising" banner for those people who come to buy something. It serves them: it's beneficial for them. It serves me (I get referral fees) and it serves my regular readers (they don't have to see the "annoying" banner when they read the stories).
I chose to mention my text link sponsors monthly in a blog post
First I mentioned new buyers in a blog post, but soon realized that as new buyers would appear... it would mean quite a lot annoyiance to regular readers. I decided to post ONE blog post about my sponsors per month, titled "sponsors of the month". I also usually wrote another blog post about game production for that day so that regular readers would get to see something else than ads on that day. I still mention every month my sponsors, and it seems to be a pretty good tactic: it doesn't annoy my regular readers, yet it gives valuable links for my sponsors.
I chose to give a detailed description about my website in the TLA catalogue
Text Link Ads gives you an option to write description about your site. It's quite typical to see sites describing themselves as "business blog", "gaming site" and that's it. I decided to write my unique visits & pageviews and tell that I have a daily updated site, and mentioned that "more information is available on my website". I gave a lengthy and truthful explanation and made sure it served the buyer as much as possible.
Think about it. If you would have to buy $20 a text link, from which seller would you consider buying it:
1) Somebody who says he has a "car blog"
or
2) somebody who says he has a "Daily updated car website, getting 30 000 uniques and 60 000 pageviews (google analytics, May2007) per month. Detailed information at yourfancycarsite.com/sponsor"
Naturally the 2nd option. And here's something important: don't just put "billion pageviews" if you don't really have them. Because... (1) You risk in getting banned from the system and (2) your goal is to get long term clients, not just 1 new who drops it after one month.
I currently have several link buyers who have been buying links from me for months! They are happy with my site since they pay a decent price for getting shown in a prominent place - and getting mentioned every month in a website with a high page rank.
In the end my income dropped from monthly $400-500 for that income stream since I wasn't getting much more publisher referrals any more. But thanks to getting decent number of sponsors (sometimes I had 10/10, sometimes 6/10 or 7/10) and client referrals (and still sometimes publisher referrals) I managed to get pretty good monthly income anyway from Text Link Ads alone.
Bottom line - and something to think about
Besides some of the tactics I mentioned, I really want you to think: Is your website generating revenue as much as it can? (without sacrificing long-term aims). When I was getting that 0.08 cent income, I didn't know that I could switch to something else and earn $400-500 by doing less. I didn't get much more traffic, I only chose to experiment different systems and chose to focus on making a win-win-win deal for everybody (win for me, win for my blog audience, and win for the sponsors) and I'm absolutely sure you can do the same. Don't just think yourself when doing the deal - focus on providing a good deal that everybody is happy about (without sacrificing yourself - naturally you deserve to get paid. Don't try to lure or trick people to advertise on your site: that won't last. Focus on getting perhaps less customers, but make sure they are long-term customers.
And notice: I'm not saying Text Link Ads will work for you. It depends what you do. If you have a site where people are looking for replacement for adsense (for example) then TLA publisher referral might be one of the greatest way to generate revenue. If you have a website where you tell people "where to advertise", then it would make a lot of sense to promote the "$100 free text links" using TLA.
On the other hand, if you have a soccer website generating hundreds of thousands of pageviews per month, I doubt it makes any sense to switch to promoting the referral program: your soccer readers want to hear about soccer - they are probably not going to be interested to know about "making money online". You could perhaps add the "link selling" option to your website, but I don't see much point promoting "make money online" to soccer fans.
Think about different possibilities. Perhaps you could dramatically raise your income by doing some simple things - working less than earlier.
That's it for now, hope you enjoyed the story - and perhaps you got an idea how to get more out of your site.
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