A website is similar to the universe in many respects. All of the websites and web pages within the World Wide Web are synonymous to the stars, planets, and galaxies of the universe. A website may be quite useful with the information that it provides on a specific topic, however it takes time for this website to become recognized by the surrounding community. Everyday, new things are discovered in our universe, and we have barely touched upon the depth of our world; additionally, new websites are found and links formed. Having a great website with relevant information on a topic does not guarantee a high rank for keywords within search engines, which can help gain visitors and reputation. Advertising campaigns and spreading the word of your site (via user’s positive feedback) can help your website get recognized faster by search engines and related sites, but this process takes time. As the universe continues to expand, we learn more and more about our surroundings; likewise as the internet grows, new websites are found and brought into the light.
Why (or why not) use CPA?
•December 24, 2007 • Leave a CommentCPA (Cost Per Action) is when the publisher of the ad is only paid when the user clicks on the ad and preforms the desired action by the advertiser, which can be anything from purchasing a products to filling out a sign up to a newsletter. CPA ensures that the advertiser get the visitor to their final destination, whereas CPC only ensures that the visitor clicks on the ad. This means that CPA conversion rates will be much less than CPC conversion rates. In this manner CPA advertising is quite beneficial to advertisers because they are guaranteed that a visitor will end at their goal, otherwise no money is paid to the publisher.
With CPA advertising using Google’s Adsense (it is referred to as Referrals), you can actually choose which ads you want to be shown on your website. This means that you are able to select ads that are relevant to your visitors and pick the ones with the highest CPA values. CPA rates range from $0.01 to $153.85. CPA looks like it could be a much better choice than CPC because the higher revenue value and the ability to select what ads you show on your site; however, how much money will you really make with it?
Let’s say that your CTR (Click Through Rate) is ~5% for targeted ad on your website and that your CPC rate is ~$3.00. This means that you will be making ~$150.00 per 1,000 visitors. Now let’s say that you decide to use CPA advertising and that your CTR remains the same. Out of these visitors that click on the ad, how many of them will proceed to do the required action? Let’s assume that 10% of these visitors that click on the ad actually do the specified action. This means that you would need a CPA rate of ~$30.00 to make the same that you do with CPC advertising. In reality the rates of CPA ads are ranges or a low fixed value; for instance, Free File Hosting: $0.23 – 1.19, HDMI Cables: $2.31, or Pay per Click Management: $3.00 – 153.85. This means that unless the majority of your user’s are ending up on the high side of these rates, that CPC advertising will be the better choice for your website. Also, it may be beneficial to use CPAlead instead of Google’s Referrals depending on your websites structure. You really need to experience and look at the logistics before jumping to a conclusion about what advertsing method to useas they all can be used to generate more revenue in certain situations.
Popups, Popunders, Both, or Neither?
•December 22, 2007 • 1 CommentPopup and popunder ads through Adversal, especially, compared to other publishers can be an effective way to generate more revenue than CPM or CPC ads; the CPM rates range from $1 to $5. While comparing these values to nonpopups and nonpopunder CPM values, you will see that popups and popunders can earn you 5-20 times more than regular CPM ad campaigns. However, is this extra revenue really worth it?
Popups and popunder ads can be one of the most annoying things while a users is browsing the web. When deciding to use popups or popunder ad campaigns, it is important to consider the side effects on your website visitors. How negative will the effect be on your visitors? Will your new visitor bounce rate jump enormously when you decide to display these ads? Will your visitors be understanding and accept these ads because the site needs money to run? Balancing whether to use popups and popunders with the effects that they may cause is extremely important.
Even if the rates of popups and popunders look enticing, you may be able to generate the same revenue with less hassle upon your visitors with the use of regular CPM or CPC ads. I strongly suggest that you consider using alternative methods to popups and popunder ad campaigns before diving into that area.
If you have decided to use popup or popunder ad campaigns, there are some nice features for publishers. Popups and popunders can only be displayed when a users enter, exits, or views a specific number of pages. You can also limit them, so that you will only show a single popup or popunder per 6 hour, 24 hours, 1 week, etc. These features are useful with respect to creating conditions that make popups and popunders less of a hassle upon your visitors.
I have chosen to avoid popups and popunders ad campaigns on most of my sites because I feel that they will be too much of an annoyance upon visitors, which in turn will lose your website popularity and reputation. I believe that this trade off is usually not worth the additional revenue.
CPM vs CPC: Which to use?
•December 22, 2007 • Leave a CommentDeciding whether to use CPM (Cost per thousand) or CPC (cost per click) ad campaigns ultimately depends on your website users. An important factor is: does your ad service target your users with relevant ads? If your answer to that question is no, then you might as well use CPM ads because you will be unlikely to generate any (significant) revenue with untargeted ads. For instance, if your website is centered about a specific online game, then ads related to this online game will generate you revenue. If instead of seeing ads relevant to this online game, you see ads for get rich quick pyramid schemes or online dating services, then you will not receive many (if any) clicks on these ads. The likelihood that a viewer is interested in this topic is quite low, and the chance of them actually clicking on the ad is even lower. This is the reason that targeted ads produce more money than untargeted ads for both the publisher and advertiser.
Now if your ad service does target your users with relevant ads, CPC is a viable option. The next question to consider is: Will my users click on these ads? Remember that you do not need to receive a large amount of clicks per day to make money. A single click can earn you anywhere from $0.01 to $75 depending on the topic / keywords of the ad. With a small amount of testing you can easily determine if your users will click on your ads, but where do you fall when it comes down to CPC? Are you earning a measly $0.05 or will you be getting $12 per click?
Even if you only do earn $0.05 per click, this may still earn you more money than running CPM ad campaigns. CPM payouts can range from $0.01 to $1.20 depending on the advertiser. When trying to calculate whether CPM or CPC will make you the most money, consider all of these factors. Do not be rash in your decisions when deciding to use CPM or CPC, instead test each of them thoroughly (possibly a few days to a week), so that you can guarantee that you will in fact be getting the most money from your ad campaigns within your website.
Google Adsense vs Alternative Options
•December 21, 2007 • Leave a CommentUnfortunately for me Google’s Adsense did not generate any significant revenue while I used it. Here are the results of about one week’s use:
On the other hand, these are my results while using Direct Media Exchange‘s CPX Interactive as a publisher:
For whatever reason, my site performed quite poorly with Adsense and I made ~250% more profit while using CPX Interactive. Adsense’s ad targeting performed significantly worse than CPX Interactive’s . However, at the current time I am only using CPX Interactive for their eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions), but I will try out their CPC more extensively in the coming week(s) to gauge their performance with respect to that.
Direct Media Exchange’s setup for choosing advertisers is also preferable to Adsense. You are able to apply to an assortment of advertiser:
- Adtegrity
- Banner Connect Network
- CPX Interactive
- Oridian
- Remix Media (Direct Media Exchange) – Recently closed on 1/31/2010
- Vizi Direct
- Xtend Media
Once accepted by these advertiser, you can choose which one(s) you wish to use. In addition, it is important to decide which will be more beneficial with regards to CPM vs. CPC campaigns. After testing out each of the advertisers that accepted me for 2 days (1 day CPM and 1 day CPC campaigns) , I decided to use CPX Interactive as they provided the best revenue for both CPC and CPM.
Finding an company that fits your needs can be tricky. You must ask yourself a few questions? Do you want a to run CPM or CPC ads? What options do I have for advertisers (This is highly dependent upon page view per month)? What will be the most profitable in the short run and more importantly the long run? How many ads do I put on each page? To answer most of these questions, you will simply have to do some research and testing to see what works best for you.