Are Your Ads Not Performing?

Advertisements


It doesn't matter if you are running advertisements from Google Adsense, an affiliate network, Amazon, or ads as a e-book affiliate or creator. If you are hosting advertisements on your site, then you want them to perform by converting to sales or clicks so you can earn your commissions.  Sometimes your readers will become blind to your ads, so you have to keep them fresh.


Are Your Ads Not Performing?


Try logging onto your site as a visitor.  Look at the site as if you were a new reader.  

• Does your site look cluttered?
• Are you running too many ads?
• Do you ads compliment your site's colors and design?
• Are your most important ads placed above the fold?

Try to minimize the number of ads that are placed on each page of your website.  Sometimes less is more.  Having too many choices on each page can create a chaotic and unorganized feel to your site.  People don't like to return to cluttered, scattered, sloppy sites.  They like easy to follow, easy to read, easy on the eyes sites.

If your ads aren't performing try some of these options.

• Change the colors or the Images.
• Replace some ads with fresh ads altogether.
• Change the location or the pages that each ad appears on.
• Try a newer advertising option, like AdClickMedia or Chitika.
• Change the size of your ads.  The 3 best are usually 728x90 leaderboard, 300x250 banner and 160x600 skyscraper.
• Trying blending your ads colors with your site's colors.
• Set up an ad rotation to check which version of your ads perform better.

Reinvesting Your Google Adsense Profits

Try AWeber's Email Marketing Tool Risk-Free

Blog Monetization

If you are reading this blog entry, then profiting from your blog or website probably is one of the goals of your site.  One source of monetizing your blog comes from the AdSense Ads that you can display on your site.  Whether you are using Google's AdSense or another affiliate network like AdClickMedia, you probably have some monthly income coming in from these advertising networks.  What do you do with those profits?  Do you spend it or re-invest it into your site or new ways to make a profit?

Another great option for monetization, other than the Pay Per Click advertisements, of your site is to get involved with affiliate marketing.  You can sell others products and get a commission for the sale.  This is a great second step to making money on your blog or website.  Creating your own product or e-book to sell is also a great tactic as you get to promote your own creation.  You can also create an affiliate program for others to sell your product just like you have been selling the products of others.

If you really want to start making real life money, then you really need to consider another form of delivery - email marketing.

E-Mail Marketing With AWeber

The use of an email marketing and autoresponding service is awesome!  I love AWeber's email marketing tools.  Check out the AWeber site and see what they have to offer.  The email marketing strategy works with the other 2 sources of monetization to increase the benefits, conversions, and profits.  Setting up your AWeber account to automatically send broadcasts of your blog posts to the inboxes of subscribers will help increase your traffic and number of readers.  You also can set follow-up messages that trigger at certain time intervals.  This allows for the easy delivery of recommended products and extra advertising to occasionally be sent to the subscribers.  You will see much more sales of affiliate products and also increase add revenue since you can ad your adcode to the mailings that are sent to each subscriber.  This will also increase the daily exposure and the clickrate as you have a new source to add the ads to your newsletter or daily broadcasts.

I can't afford $19 a month!

When figuring out if using AWeber's email marketing program will be affordable, you can look at it how I did.  You can pay for AWeber's services without coming out of pocket at all as long as you are making money with your ads and affiliate guide sales.  AWeber is $19 a month (First month is only $1).  As long as you are already making over that amount from ads, then you can simple choose to re-invest that ad money. 

If you make over $19 a month in advertising, then you can set up a direct deposit to a bank account.  You can also ad the AWeber services to draw from the same account.  That way your monthly checks get deposited into the account and Aweber draws from your advertising funds that you already earned.  This way you can justify joining and spending on the AWeber email marketing program.  You can also have your affiliate guide sales deposited within the same bank account.

So instead of blowing that advertising revenue, how about re-investing it into your site to make even more money.  Since using AWeber, my sites monetization has exploded.  Won't you join AWeber too? 

One tip I would give is that if you start to use AWeber and a newsletter / blog broadcast / auto-responder mailing list, then be sure to add an identifier tracking note to any affiliate links or referrals from within the newsletter mailings themselves.  This way you can easily track how many of your sales are coming from newsletter refferals versus off of your site.

Since tracking what sales come from where, I can safely report that the newsletter has more than paid for itself each and every month that I have been using it. 

Above The Fold

Above The Fold

What does "above the fold" mean?  "The fold" is the lowest edge of a webpage viewable before scrolling down.  So everything that is in plain view on the landing page is considered "above the fold".  This fold can vary depending on what device the web page is viewed on and is also effected by things out of your control, like the viewer's browsing toolbar set-up.

You want to try to place certain things above the fold.  Anything that is displayed "above the fold" is going to be part of the initial impression of any new visitors to your site.  Use this space above the fold wisely.  Be sure that your site.   Certain things should always be above the fold.  Your page title, header, navigation tabs, subscriber links, contact info, and the title of your current post should all be visible above the fold.  If you are a blogger, having easy links to some flagship articles or most popular posts above the the fold can help to increase your visitor's time on your site.  If you are selling something, you definately want your product, store, or shopping cart to be easily found above the fold. 

Any advertising you place above the fold will have a much better chance of being clicked than those listed below the fold and down the page.  Depending on what type of site you have will determine what is most important to place above the fold. 

Stop and take a moment to view your page and what is above the fold.  Do new readers understand what your page is about without having to scroll down the page?  Do you have your most prominent items and articles placed above the fold or are they hidden down the page?  Think of all the information above the fold as highlighting your site, with a few advertisements mixed in.  Anything that is linking to another site or blog can go below the fold as you want to highlight your site above the fold.