A Quick Tip on Optimizing Your Websites Profits
| Category: Online Promotion | Date: 2003-05-21 |
A ton of people have been asking me, “How do you make money using the ad space on your website?”
Well – here’s the low down on what I do to pull in advertising profits!
Of course, there are several ways that a website can be profitable – most likely your main source of profits comes from the product or service that you sell from your site. But, for many people who sell their own products, and more especially for those of you who are running portal sites or information sites where 100% of your income is based on sales of the ad-space on your site, it is important to know how to optimize the
responsiveness of ads on your site and, in turn, your profitability.
Statistical Tracking is the Key.
To effectively run advertising on your site, you are going to need a system that provides good statistical tracking. You need to know which ads are pulling the best response, at what time they are pulling good response, in what format they are pulling the best response so that you can then arrange the advertising on your site in a way which is most profitable to you.
This is also key for customers, as they should be able to monitor their ad views and click throughs in a real time basis so that they can keep on top of their campaigns. By not monitoring and optimizing your advertising campaigns, you are just creating an environment where your advertiser’s campaigns won’t pull response, and
you will quickly find your advertisers looking for other, more effective sites to advertise on.
The days where big time advertisers were willing to pay for a “Month of Banner Exposure” on your high traffic site are over. Advertisers want to know EXACTLY how their ads are performing, and they don’t want to waste money on the places their ads don’t perform well. Many advertisers will now only pay for campaigns on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) basis. This way they know exactly how many people are seeing their ads, how many people are responding, and if they are smart and have their own tracking in place, how many of the people that come to their site from each ad are buying the product.
Because advertisers have become so savvy at statistical tracking, you, as the ad space provider, need to keep up with the times to prove to your advertisers that your space is profitable and worthwhile.
Sound like a headache? Well it is! I have run banner exchanges and many sites that have experimented with different forms of selling off 3rd party advertising, and at some point I nearly gave up on trying to offer other’s advertising at all. You can take my word that I’ve been around the block once or twice doing this!
So, are we all destined to spend hours analyzing our ad stats to make sure that we retain advertisers, and therefore the ad dollars that come in with them? NO WAY!
Fortunately for us, because of the growing demand for ad serving solutions, a new industry has come into being – the ad server management industry –and what a blessing it is!!
My personal favorite for managing ad space is a company called PlugInSales (their publisher’s page
is located at http://www.pluginsales.com/home.cfm). These guys are great – they really cover the spectrum. They are one of the only ones out there still hand managing campaigns, and they constantly test, analyze, retest, and optimize which advertisements are performing well on your site to ensure the highest quality of service for their advertisers and the highest profits for you – the ad space provider.
They actually look at what industries, what style of advertisements (i.e. banners versus text), and what times of day are most effective for your site and serve up advertising accordingly – pretty amazing for a completely free service!
You can of course manage your campaigns by hand, but I could write a whole book on the intricacies of that – If I were you I’d just go get a free account with the folks at http://www.pluginsales.com/home.cfm or give them a
call at 225-387-8700 – that way you can stop worrying about your ad space entirely except when you need to go to the bank to deposit the checks you’ll be getting!
Best of Luck!
Justin B Handley
Justin Handley is CEO of Narasopa Marketing and Design – a small design and marketing research firm located out of Western Massachusetts.
jbhandley@narasopa.com
http://www.narasopa.com
Well – here’s the low down on what I do to pull in advertising profits!
Of course, there are several ways that a website can be profitable – most likely your main source of profits comes from the product or service that you sell from your site. But, for many people who sell their own products, and more especially for those of you who are running portal sites or information sites where 100% of your income is based on sales of the ad-space on your site, it is important to know how to optimize the
responsiveness of ads on your site and, in turn, your profitability.
Statistical Tracking is the Key.
To effectively run advertising on your site, you are going to need a system that provides good statistical tracking. You need to know which ads are pulling the best response, at what time they are pulling good response, in what format they are pulling the best response so that you can then arrange the advertising on your site in a way which is most profitable to you.
This is also key for customers, as they should be able to monitor their ad views and click throughs in a real time basis so that they can keep on top of their campaigns. By not monitoring and optimizing your advertising campaigns, you are just creating an environment where your advertiser’s campaigns won’t pull response, and
you will quickly find your advertisers looking for other, more effective sites to advertise on.
The days where big time advertisers were willing to pay for a “Month of Banner Exposure” on your high traffic site are over. Advertisers want to know EXACTLY how their ads are performing, and they don’t want to waste money on the places their ads don’t perform well. Many advertisers will now only pay for campaigns on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) basis. This way they know exactly how many people are seeing their ads, how many people are responding, and if they are smart and have their own tracking in place, how many of the people that come to their site from each ad are buying the product.
Because advertisers have become so savvy at statistical tracking, you, as the ad space provider, need to keep up with the times to prove to your advertisers that your space is profitable and worthwhile.
Sound like a headache? Well it is! I have run banner exchanges and many sites that have experimented with different forms of selling off 3rd party advertising, and at some point I nearly gave up on trying to offer other’s advertising at all. You can take my word that I’ve been around the block once or twice doing this!
So, are we all destined to spend hours analyzing our ad stats to make sure that we retain advertisers, and therefore the ad dollars that come in with them? NO WAY!
Fortunately for us, because of the growing demand for ad serving solutions, a new industry has come into being – the ad server management industry –and what a blessing it is!!
My personal favorite for managing ad space is a company called PlugInSales (their publisher’s page
is located at http://www.pluginsales.com/home.cfm). These guys are great – they really cover the spectrum. They are one of the only ones out there still hand managing campaigns, and they constantly test, analyze, retest, and optimize which advertisements are performing well on your site to ensure the highest quality of service for their advertisers and the highest profits for you – the ad space provider.
They actually look at what industries, what style of advertisements (i.e. banners versus text), and what times of day are most effective for your site and serve up advertising accordingly – pretty amazing for a completely free service!
You can of course manage your campaigns by hand, but I could write a whole book on the intricacies of that – If I were you I’d just go get a free account with the folks at http://www.pluginsales.com/home.cfm or give them a
call at 225-387-8700 – that way you can stop worrying about your ad space entirely except when you need to go to the bank to deposit the checks you’ll be getting!
Best of Luck!
Justin B Handley
Justin Handley is CEO of Narasopa Marketing and Design – a small design and marketing research firm located out of Western Massachusetts.
jbhandley@narasopa.com
http://www.narasopa.com
Copyright © 2005-2006 Powered by Custom PHP Programming