Easy2Earn Dollars

As if Facebook advertising wasn’t awesome enough, it just got better. Earlier today I received an email titled, “Announcing New Facebook Advertising Metrics“. Now usually when you receive an email from an ad network or stats place that they have improved their stats tracking… it’s usually nothing big, or just some new crappy stats. With Facebook, they actually have provided some value here.

Here is a breakdown on the different new reports you can pull from your Facebook advertising account:

“Responder Demographics” report: Facebook users spend a lot of time connecting with friends and family on Facebook – uploading photos, writing on each others’ Walls, posting notes. Now you can find out who is interacting with your ads. This report provides the aggregate age, gender and geographic location of the users who have clicked on your ad.

“Responder Profiles” report: In addition to age, gender and geographic location of the users who have clicked on your ad, we’re happy to provide psychographic information of these same users. This data is aggregated from user profiles and shows common interests, favorite TV shows, movies, books and music.

“Advertising Performance” report: This report will give you a downloadable version of the performance information you already see online– impressions, clicks and click-through rates—as well as a new section for performance data by unique user and performance data specific to your ads that contained social actions, if applicable.

So what does all of this mean? Basically you now has an amazing amount of new data to work with. You can download the files and open them up in excel and breakdown the type of visitors your ads are attracting. To see that Facebook has opened up and allowed this information to be accessed through your account is simply awesome.

Being able to see what your users are interested in, and what they are doing within Facebook, will give you even more of an edge to making your ad campaigns more successful.

In the announcement email, Facebook also says “these reports are only the beginning“. It will be interesting to see what they offer next.

A few days ago I released my first post on “How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months!“, along with the picture of my $306,373.24 check. Due to the massive exposure and questions generated from the post, I thought I’d bring you the second installment to How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months! This time we will go with a Q&A theme.

What is the web site you made all this money with?
The site I was able to have so much success with is MySpaceNow.com. There is no programming on the site at all, and it’s made up of over 10,000 pages of content, such as images, myspace layouts and social networking applications/flash. Yes… you can imagine how long that took to put together. However, when you are seeing results, you just want to keep making your project bigger and better!

What is the current status of your site?
My myspace resource site is still running and still turning a decent amount of profit each month. The traffic is lower than it used to be, but that’s expected. I was one of the first to get into the “myspace resources” niche, and now it is more saturated than ever.

What is/was your site traffic?
I first started the site from scratch and with no traffic. The first method of advertising, were a few text links on a couple of my other sites. Next was to get the word out on MySpace and other social networks. Once the users started to grab content and link back to my site, it was golden. The high point for site traffic was around 185,000 uniques per day. Currently the site receives around 15,000-20,000 uniques per day. Yes, this is quite a drop… but as mentioned above, I haven’t focused on this site in over a year now.

Having Multiple Dedicated Dell Servers to Manage Traffic was a Must.

When was the last time you updated the site?
I’ve been quite busy with many other projects, so realistically, I haven’t touched or updated the site in nearly a year. Meanwhile the site still receives several thousands of visits per day, while also earning several thousands a month. My only maintenance is monthly servers fees, which are much lower than they were back when I was working on the site full time.

How did you make so much profit over costs?
The myspace site I created was a huge viral success. Once a few sites picked it up, the traffic was tremendous, and search engines were sending me a ton of traffic as well. Since I did not have to worry about marketing costs, I could focus on providing content, managing ad space, and making sure the site was always accessible. The main costs in running a site like this (outside of the hundreds of hours of time spent), are server costs. Over $100,000 was spent on shared hosting, buying new Dell servers and hiring a server management team to make sure everything was always running.

What were your advertising and hosting costs?
As mentioned, the site was pretty much all viral. After running the site for several months with no advertising costs, I decided to give Google Adwords a shot. I was able to target towards some pretty cheap traffic, since my Quality Score was super high, and this was a niche market that wasn’t oversaturated (yet) and click prices weren’t insanely high. Marketing through Google Adwords brought in over an additional MILLION clicks. Even after $27,721.89 in adwords cost, the site still had no problems clearing seven-figures. Hosting costs ranged per month from $300 (when first starting out), to up to $10,000 a month, before buying my own Dell servers and hosting myself.

I was able to generate over 1 MILLION clicks using Google Adwords!

What other ad networks did you use on the site?
In my last post, I focused on some of the big earners from the site, which were Yahoo Publisher Network, NeverBlueAds, CasaleMedia and ValueClick Media. Other earners on the site were InterClick (which is another cpm banner network), Miva (which provides screensaver/wallpaper downloads), Google Adsense (generated nearly six-figures in revenue), AuctionAds (I posted multiple times on my earnings with them), WidgetBucks (another new program, which I also posted earnings on)… along with a few other networks. All of these advertisers combined generated over seven-figures in revenue for the site… which clearly covered the hosting costs, making this a seven figure profitable site.

You made a lot with Yahoo, but what about Google Adsense?
Originally I had no expectations for the success of this site. I was providing a service and it exploded quickly. Once the traffic was flowing through the site, it was time to test different ad placements and to see what worked. Luckily, the Yahoo Publisher Program had come out (and accepted my site), just a few weeks after my site went live. I was originally running Google Adsense, then started running Yahoo Publisher Network instead. After comparing numbers, Yahoo was providing much better numbers. I would continually rotate advertisers on the site and see which performed best. While Yahoo earned nearly seven figures alone on the site, Google Adsense accounted for nearly six-figures in revenue as well.

Google Adsense in itself generated almost $100,000 in Extra Revenue.

Would you have sold your site if you had the chance?
The opportunity to sell this cash cow of a web site did come into play around the 7th or 8th month of it’s existence. I wrote a post about this a while ago, which was called “To Sell or Not to Sell“. While I was offered nearly a seven figure package deal for the site (more/less depending on performance), I’m still glad I never accepted their offer. The parent company that was interested, was purchasing up a bunch of Social Networking Resource & Entertainment sites… which they then all turned into crap sites. I also heard that this company screwed many of their “partners” on payments owed from their buyouts.

Why did you wait until now to post your check?
I’ve never been one to look for attention, or brag. The intention of posting my check was not to impress anyone, but to stress to everyone the possibilities before you. Yes, the check was received back in 2006. However, keep in mind… this blog is still less than a year old. I have literally spent the last year debating on whether or not I wanted to be put in the spotlight, if I was to post this check. But I decided to take the risk… my intention is the same as always, I want you to succeed, make money online and live the dream that us affiliates and ppc marketers are living.

Why didn’t you post your resource site in your original post?
The main reason why I didn’t like my resource site in my original post is because this is a blog, and it’s purpose is to keep people coming back and giving them more. A lot of people were leaving comments, asking what my site was. You were not being ignored… you were part of the process. Not only have I released my site information, but also how I promoted the site, my advertisers and actual earnings numbers.

Is this your only big and successful web site?
I’ve been making money online for over 11 years now, since I was 15… and have never had any other job. A one-hit-wonder I am not. Over the years I have adjusted to every market change there has been. I’ve done freebie sites, permission based email marketing, ran my own ad network along with my own network of entertainment sites. Was this site one of my biggest and fastest money makers? Yes! I saw an opportunity here and made the most of it. I am now focusing on several other different niche areas and projects.

Aren’t you worried people will copy your site idea now?
They say being copied is one of the highest forms of flattery… well, when you own a web site, and you’ve been copied… IT SUCKS… but, I’ve been copied plenty of times before. There is still plenty of money to be made in this market, but it’s also plenty saturated! You want to make a resource type site? I say “Go for it!”.

As mentioned before, I’ve been making money online for over a decade now, (since I was 15!) and have some close friends that advise me on what I should post and what I should not post on my blog. There are risks associated with everything. Some have warned me about giving away too much information. However, if I didn’t meet up with these people in the past, that took their time to help me along the way, I wouldn’t be where I am today… I only wish to do the same for you and all of my blog readers. Yes, it may be risky providing the amount of information that I do, taking risks and trying different things is how I got to where I am today. I’m willing to take that risk to benefit my blog readers.

If you had the choice between having $10,000 to build a web site from scratch, or to buy an established web site that is generating $500 a month, which would you choose? The market for buying established web sites has always been hot, but it’s always a tough decision as the auction clock counts down… especially if you get into the high five and six figures sales! The million dollar question is, if you took the time and had the resources, could you build something better, vs. buying a web site, or are you just wasting time?After buying  few established sites over the past several months, I’ve had my fair share of stressful moments and going over the numbers time and time again to make sure I was making the right decision. Through my experience, I’ve broken down my decisions to a few major factors.

Here’s a list of my top reasons why I would rather purchase a solid established web site for 20+ times earnings, then build my own from scratch.

TIME IS WORTH MORE THAN MONEY

We all have great ideas. Unfortunately we get side tracked, have problems executing and get overwhelmed… which leaves most of our ideas on the back burner. Hence, time is more valuable then money. If you are already established and making money online, you may already have the resources and money to purchase a web site, which saves you the time from starting from scratch. If you buy an established web site, the design, infrastructure and establishment is already there.

IMMEDIATE BRANDING, AUTHORITY AND DATA

Depending on the size of the web site you purchase, you may be paying for the branding and authority already associated with a site. One of the biggest problems with starting a web site from scratch, is having to get people to your web site and building a solid presence. This can easily fall into the “time issue”, but is actually a whole set of problems/solutions in itself.

The data from picking up an established site is also a huge benefit. These days every site has a mailing list, a twitter account and a social appearance. While these advantages usually don’t have a dollar figure on them, they definitely do contribute to the growth and exposure of your site. The time itself to build up traffic, collect newsletter subscribers and study these numbers is quite a hefty number.

OUTSOURCE YOUR NEW SITE COMPLETELY

How is your business doing financially? If your numbers are doing great, picking up an established site that is already generating a few hundred/thousand a month in revenue is a good idea. Actually, if it’s a site that you can completely outsource and keep profitable, then it’s a great idea! Web sites that may fall under this category are media/video entertainment sites, blogging and web forums. Even if the cost of outsourcing is 75% of the profit made from the site, you are still earning a potential 25% profit while increasing in size month over month, while not having to manage the site.

PUTTING YOUR EXPERTISE TO GOOD USE

The last and most important factor in deciding to buy an established web site, or create your own… is if you can put your expertise to use. Whether you specialize in affiliate marketing, social media, web design or search marketing… it’s tough to find an established web site that is doing their best on all of these, and that is your advance. Find already profitable web sites, what they are lacking, and most importantly what you can improve upon.

PLACING THAT WINNING BID!

In the end, it all comes down to a few deciding factors on whether or not you are going to be the TOP BIDDER when that auction clock counts down. (I hate that 4 hour extension on Flippa!) In realistic terms, it might come down to the size of your wallet, but if that’s not the case… then it’s the following. Do your research and make sure the site is legit. Think really hard if this is a site/niche that you want to dive into. If you’re going to drop a few thousand or more on a site, make sure you are ready to take it to the next level… or you may find yourself putting out a fire, losing money and cost yourself even more time than before you picked this site up.

WHERE TO BUY & SELL WEB SITES?

There is a huge demand for the buying and selling of web sites, but also a big lack of competition. So where is the best place to buy and sell web sites? Right now Flippa.com (formerly SitePoint) is leading the way… and by a mile I may add. Since their launch, Flippa has done over $28 million in web site sales. Where is all of the competition for Flippa? Sure, you have sites like ebay.com, that usually have crap sites. Then you have a bunch of “in the mix” sites, that just don’t compete. Right now Flippa is KING.

Earlier in the year I came across a new site called OfferVault, which helped you compare cpa offers across a bunch of affiliate networks. Mark Roth, the owner of the site, recently contacted me and let me know about some of the changes and improvements to the site since then. If you saw the previous site design, you will notice a huge improvement right away. The old design didn’t have much of a color scheme, and I found it a bit confusing on where to signup or access the search area for current members. The new design puts all that confusion to rest and provides much more.What’s new and what’s better?
The original concept for the site was mainly to provide a search database of affiliate offers across networks. Since I last checked out the site, Mark has doubled the size of the networks he lists in his database. The majority of names to choose from, are ones you probably already know Clickbooth, Market Leverage, and Rextopia. I feel the main attraction OfferVault, is there affiliate offer search, but new additions have been added to the site as well.

Live Member Search Tool and Keyword Function
Ever wonder what other people are searching on, or just need some inspiration to get in a niche? A cool feature of OfferVault is the “scrolling search feed” when you are at the “compare offers” page. It doesn’t tell you how others are pushing offer, just what they are searching, but it still may help you find that next niche you were looking for.

Once you come across an offer worth looking at, you can click on the “KW” option next to the offer and it will bring up a listing of relevant keywords. This usually takes around 30 seconds to pull a report together. It’s not just a few keywords, but it shows “keyword groups”, advertiser competition and search volume.

Full Offer Breakdown
Everything is in place on OfferVault for you to find the offer you are looking for. In the past, you could find the offer, but then it was a hassle to see the landing page and you would end up opening new windows, etc. With the platform, once you make a search and find an offer, click it and everything is there for you. A quick offer/network description, payouts and the landing page right on that same page. An excellent looking setup, and big improvement to their site.

The “NEW” OfferVault
As explained, all of the improvements are here to make this a really great resource site, and that’s exactly what it is. The goal of the site is to make it easy for you to find new affiliate offers, at competitive rates, and while offering a bit of resources and training along the web. Over the past few months, OfferVault has also added a weekly webinar series. Once you are a member, they are free to watch and cover everything from PPV traffic, Facebook Advertising and Google Adwords. Some of these videos go well over an hour, and are free to all members.

Here’s the part of the post where I’m supposed to throw out a kicker or trial offer. Fortunately that’s not necessary. OfferVault is FREE! There is no upsell and you gain instant access to their directory. After being a member, and if you decide to join a new network through their site, OfferVault may get a referral commission. With this structure in place, they can offer you a free member.

It’s usually the last place you visit when you are on a web site or blog, but still… lots of people see your footer. For web site, it’s usually just a few links, contact info and a copyright symbol. For blogs, it’s become a whole new playing field. With fancy custom designs and easy widgets and plugin installs, what you can do with your footer is limitless. SpyreStudios put together a list of “48 Excellent Examples of Blog Post Footer Designs“. Below I will highly a few that I found most impressive.

The UpSell
Once your site visitors are at your footer, there’s a good chance they are going to either click something, or leave your web site / blog…. so why not try and sell them something! Something I’ve seen a lot more of recently, is blogs posting what theme they are using on their blog, then offering others to buy that same theme. Usually, blogs doing this will receive a commission on all referred sign ups. A great example of this can be seen on Chris Brogan and CopyBlogger’s blogs.

Example Footers: Chris Brogan, CopyBlogger

Keep Them Reading Your Site
Another great resource for your blog footer, is to keep the reader interested and let them know about key points or areas of your blog that they may have missed.

Example Footers: UX Booth, Mashable, Search Engine Land

Having Fun with Your Blog Footer
Not all footers need to be an upsell, or a source for driving visitors to different areas of your site. It’s always nice to see blogs get creative and come up with their own designs and layouts for rss, bookmark buttons and subscription forms. I took a liking to the blog designs below.

Example Footers: Spoon Graphics, CSS-Tricks

These are just a few samples, but I know I’ve seen some other great blog footer designs in the past, and just can’t remember the site names. Be sure to take a look at the full list, and leave any other cool blog footer designs in the comments section.

When looking for new ways to make money online, the decision to create your own site and build up a member/visitor base is always a good one. Today I will show you how to create a video / entertainment site of your own, while setting up the necessary advertising to turn it profitable. Way before there was all of this video content available, one of the first areas I started making money online in was with freebies, celebrities and video entertainment area. Now, putting all of these methods together and utilizing the free resources at hand, you can create your own money generating entertainment site.

To give you a basic idea of how you can setup your new video entertainment site, I will use the CollegeHumor layout as an example. The key points I will focus on are Building Your Site, Adding Fresh Content, CPM Advertising, Tell a Friend Forms and Newsletter Subscriptions. I have marked several advertising and viral linking methods on the image below.

Building Your Site & Adding Content
For this article, we are going to focus on building a site around funny videos. There are already hundreds, if not thousands of funny video and humor sites out there. The main purpose of all of them is to gain the attention of the user and keep them coming back to the site. In the end, they make money by offering free content and getting paid every time banner ads are displayed. The longer a visitor stays at a web site, the more money there is to be made.

We all know that everyone loves watching videos online and there are already several huge sources that can provide you with free content. Just head over to any of the big video sites like YouTube, DailyMotion or MetaCafe and start grabbing content. These video sites want to get more viewers, and are giving you their “embed” code to place the banners on your site. Since you are grabbing content directly from their site, you don’t have to worry about copyright issues from videos or having to host them on your servers. To make your life easier, these sites already have the videos indexed and broken down into categories, you can easily create multiple categories or new sites based on each different category.

To keep your web site updated with new videos, simply visit these video site often and add new content, or visit the “What’s Hot” categories and add the most popular videos to your site. As your site continues to grow and gets spread around, you should start seeing some nice free traffic coming in through your free search engine listings. Once your site gets larger and established, you may want to host your own videos.

CPM Advertising on Your Site
Once you create your video entertainment site, you are going to try and build the site around your content, along with premium placement for advertisements. In the CollegeHumor.com example above, you can see they have a 786×60 skyscraper on top and a 300×250 banner on the side. Because of the massive traffic and branding of CollegeHumor, they are able to sell their advertising direct and on a CPM basis. Not all of us have this same branding and traffic power, so the next best solution for us, is to place CPM banner advertising on our sites from companies like CasaleMedia, ValueClick Media and CPX Interactive. If you are unable to get approved by any of these CPM networks, you can also place your regular affiliate network offers on the site. (In addition to cpm advertising, you can also play around with contextual advertising, such as Google Adsense. Placing adsense above or below video content has proven to perform well.)
- CPM Networks I Use: CasaleMedia, ValueClick Media, CPX Interactive
CasaleMedia is a more premium network and hard to get approved with. ValueClick Media is one of the largest and easier to get approved with. CPX Interactive is the easiest to get approved with, but also offer the lowest cpm rates.

Tell a Friend Forms & Social Network Marketing
Below the main video content, you should have the option for users to embed the video (if you are hosting your own videos) or link back to your web site. Offering your users the ability to link to your content, will not only give them something to add to their MySpace page, (thus sending more visitors back to your site) but it is also one of the greatest reasons to create a video site… people love to send funny stuff to their friends. In addition to social bookmarks and linking, you should also add a Tell a Friend form, which enables the visitor to send an email to a friend, with your web site url and funny video link. There area few TAF affiliate programs that will pay you to add a tell a friend form onto your web site, where you will get paid every time the form is sent. The ideal placement for a tell a friend form is right below the funny video or funny picture content.
- Tell a Friend Networks I’ve Used: TafMaster & OptMedia

Building Up Your Newsletter
Creating a newsletter for your web site is crucial to it’s growth. In most cases, people will visit your site for a few seconds, then leave. If you offer them a newsletter subscription, you can have them coming back to your site daily. In addition to sending out the latest content added to your web site, you can also feature ads or free content of the day. In most cases, this can be any type of freebie or trial offer from an affiliate network. You can send out mailings daily, once a week or once a month. Sending out daily would be best for traffic as long as you are providing quality content and mailings.
- Mailing Provider I Use: Aweber

In addition to the methods I listed about for earning revenue and increasing traffic, you can also link with partner web sites (check webmaster forums), run “free stuff” (cpa offers) sections on your site, create a forum around your site where users can submit content or even offer your own image/video hosting service. The options are limitless, and each will help in establishing your new web site’s presence.

Before jumping into the video entertainment area, make sure that you spend some time to research other sites and what may be your next competition. There are thousands of sites out there fighting to get top position in search and trying to build a visitor base. If you can create a unique or useful service around video entertainment, you might just be able to create the next hot video portal like CollegeHumor.com, Break.com or EbaumsWorld.com.

I get questions all the time about landing pages and what are the best ways to create them. Instead of writing a post on what you should focus on, I will simply take an existing ad campaign from MarketLeverage, and made a real landing page out of. I also made the base template design for the landing page, so you can save it and use it for any future campaigns you want to test. The campaign that this landing page is going to focus on, is for NiteTrim, which is currently paying $25 per lead through MarketLeverage, and you get paid on the user paying for shipping and handling.First, let look at the default template and what we are going to do with it (below). What I did was create a default landing page that can be used for almost any offer you want to promote. All you need to do is rewrite the text to make it apply to the actual offer.

Now that we have a base design, all we need to do is modify the design to match the NiteTrim offer and make it appeal to the visitor. After adding a new “targeted” picture and content, you will see the custom landing page template now looks like a full dedicated offer landing page for NiteTrim. Play around with colors and wording for the best visual effects.

Golden Tips for Testing Landing Pages

- Rotate & Test Images: Right now I have an image of a girl measuring her waist on the landing page. After I would go live with this ad campaign, it would be smart to build several other landing pages with a different picture of images. Possibilities include, actual product, other weight loss pictures, different girls and more.

- Add Testimonials or Legitimacy to Your Campaigns: On the landing page created for NiteTrim, you will also see that I created an image to show the product was features on several well known tv shows and new sources. To stress the product even further, I added a full testimonial and before/after pictures.

- Call to Action: Probably the most important feature of your landing page, is the “Call to Action“. What text are you going to use to convince your users to click further and hopefully convert them into a sale. “Lose Up to 10lbs. in Just 7 Days” is an excellent header right in their face. Then the “Claim 1 Month FREE Supply Now!” and the “Try It Free Today” are stressing the point even further.

FREE LANDING PAGE TEMPLATE
I already showed you how to make an awesome landing page out of a template design, now it’s your turn. Click here and download/save my custom default template and create your own landing page.

Also included in the download is my NiteTrim landing page. I’m also going to extend this landing page post, by allowing you to use the “NiteTrim” landing page that I created, to promote the campaign yourself. If you aren’t already an affiliate with MarketLeverage, join now, then grab the “NiteTrim” offer (Pays $25 per free trial) and start promoting the program using the landing page I created, or change it up and test what different image and text changes can improve your campaign performance.

Article Links:
- Download my Custom Landing Pages ZIP File

A common question (and frustration) when performing keyword research is determining the expected amount of traffic a given ranking will produce on a particular keyword. Thankfully, with that leaked AOL search data from 2006, SEOBlackhat built a spiffy estimating tool.

The only trouble is that Overture no longer reports exact numbers, or particularly accurate ones. However, you can still use estimates from Google Adwords’ traffic estimator and plug them into the tool with reasonably good accuracy (by my estimates, it’s not usually off by more than 25% + or -).

My advice is to give it a spin, then track the actual numbers and refine the process in your niche and for your keywords until you’ve got a good idea of what works. From there, you’ll be able to more reliably estimate keyword traffic in the future. Just FYI, CTR to given SERPs generally look like this:

• Number 1 receives 42.1%
• Number 2 receives 11.9%
• Number 3 receives 8.5%
• Number 4 receives 6.1%
• Number 5 receives 4.9%
• Number 6 receives 4.1%
• Number 7 receives 3.4%
• Number 8 receives 3.0%
• Number 9 receives 2.8%
• Number 10 receives 3.0%

In other words… Get that number 1 spot!

On Wednesday night, pepperjam founder Kris Jones made a very long rant (2,000+ words) on his PJ blog about recent activities between CJ and the newly released pepperjam Network. The post was titled “Did Commission Junction Act Fairly, Break the Law, or Simply Overstep its Power Against Pepperjam?“. With the release of their new network, it seems many networks have wanted to start working more closely with PepperJam, while others (specifically CJ), see them as being a major competitor. Within the post Kris talks briefly about his past, how he got started, built up the PepperJam Network and more importantly, how merchants/advertisers on the PepperJam network “were being aggressively contacted by Commission Junction employees and delivered an ultimatum“. So what Kris wants to do, is let everyone aware of the situation and let you decide if CJ was acting fairly, break the law, or act outside of it’s boundaries.This is a very long post, so I advise you to go and read it yourself, or you can head over to Scott Jangro’s blog, where he did an excellent recap on the original blog post, which makes it easier to read and more understandable. For more opinions and responses this article, you can also read Search Engine Journal, AffiliateTip and Revenews. I’m sure this will be a heated topic over the next couple of weeks, as more and more blogs cover the story and more information is released.

Lastly, even though I’m not personally making a killing off the PepperJam network as of yet (I currently have way too many projects going on). I’m loving all of the new merchants/offers that are continually being added to the network. I can’t wait until things cool down a bit and I get some projects finished, so I can start focusing on marketing these offers. This isn’t some rant of mine to impress or suck up to the network, nor to get you to signup. Right when their network went live and I had access to the network, I was thrilled to see brand names I was never offered anywhere else. Every time I log in, it’s a surprise to see what new offers are on the network. Below are just a few of the brand names available on the network.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you join the PepperJam Network and take a look at some of the new offers they have added. The network went live just over a month ago and they already have well over 100 offers! Most of which are offers you won’t find on every other network.

Every once in a while a new network pops up, but not as often as they were a few years ago, when everyone and their friend had a network running of the DirectTrack System! Today I will walk you through a new network called ads4dough. With so many networks now available, does ads4dough hold up against the competition? Let’s take a look.

Overview:
If you are currently an affiliate of many other networks, you will notice some of them share the same backend system to manage their network, and sometimes the same look. ads4dough is run off the DirectTrack system, which also powers some of the other major affiliate networks out there. Right now the admin area is very simple and bare bones, but I was in contact with my affiliate manager Rick, and he said a new site design and admin area is in the works. A great looking site design is always a nice feature, but the selection and quality of ads is where the money is at. ads4dough currently has over 330 different ad campaigns for your to choose from.

Ease of Use:
As mentioned, ads4dough is in the process of a redesign, so I’m looking forward to what changes and improvements they have in store for us affiliates. Right now, once you log into the network, you are shown your affiliate manager information along with info on the rewards program. In the new design, I would like to see some features which highlight new offers added to the network, top converting offers (sorted by search, email, web), along with some detailed and running earning reports (today/month/alltime).

Profitability:
Even though Ads4Dough is a new network, they are starting off on the right track, as they currently have over 300 ad campaigns, which vary in commissions and beat out plenty of the other networks. I would recommend you join their network and compare their commission rates with any other networks you are currently earning with. With this many ad campaigns available, I’m sure they have at least one offer you are currently promoting elsewhere. If you can provide the volume, get in contact with your affiliate manager and negotiate a commission rate that works for you. Everyone should be able to find a profitable niche market with the amount of offers that are available on this network.

Quality of Ads:
With over 300 offers on the network, you can easily get lost in the list. Some of the premier well known names available from Ads4Dough are BlockBuster, Date.com, Jamster, NetFlix, Nutrisystem and Scholastic. One thing I noticed was a bunch of these offers have the option to promote the campaigns through email, search or banners. Some networks carrying these offers are limited to only banners on campaigns like Blockbuster and Netflix. You will also find that Ads4Dough has a decent amount of “incentivized” offers, which is great if you can target to these offer types. To view the master list of campaigns available, just click “Campaigns” on the main menu bar, “Submit” on the next form, then click the link titled, “List All”.

Just a preview of the many offers available through Ads4Dough

Stats Tracking:
The stats reporting area is pretty generic and easy to understand. You can pull stats reports based on campaign, date and sub-id. A working stats chart is shown below, which shows key stats such as clicks, leads, epc and your total earnings.

Quick stats tracking makes it easier for you to find what’s making money

The option to sub-id track your ad campaigns is also available. Since Ads4Dough is using the DirectTrack system, they already have a system in place for you to easily setup sub-ids. Two different methods for setting up sub ids are:
1.) http://affiliates.ads4dough.com/sw/2280/601/subidhere
2.) http://www.cpaclicks.com/redirect.asp?a=601&b=2279&d=0&l=0&o=subidhere&p=0
Simply replace the bold “subidhere” area with your own name or code. Sub id reporting will appear in your statistics when you click “Download Optional Info”.

Rewards Program:
Having a rewards program is always a great incentive to network affiliates. Knowing that you can earn an extra $50 gift card is sometimes the difference between an affiliate pushing an offer casually, and maybe trying a little harder. I would suggest that Ads4Dough offers one or two lower gift card amounts, as hitting the $25,000 mark within a month’s time, may be very hard for some of their affiliates. Even just a tshirt or some promotional stuff after an affiliate earns their first $100-$500, might help in motivating the affiliate to use the network more.

Why Do I Like This Network:
I think this network has the potential to make a decent amount of people, especially because of their selection of ad campaigns and payout rates. While I was browsing through the list, I did come across a few offers that I used to promote, but haven’t seen on a many other networks lately. If you are able to provide volume, or focus on a niche area with their offers… this one could be a good money maker.

Final Review:
After final review, I rate Ads4Dough with 3 out of 5 “Zac Stamps of Approval“. Since this is a NEW network, I have not yet had the opportunity to run any of their offers, or even try them out. I mentioned I did see a few offers that drew interest, so I would like to try and test these on some ppc campaigns soon. It’s also tough to review a new network because they have a coming redesign in place. As I’m very familiar with the DirectTrack front and backend, it’s a little barebones (though I’m looking forward to their coming custom changes), but as mentioned… it really just comes down to the offers available, which they seem to have covered. I recommend you apply for their network and see if there is anything you can work with, and also look forward to what their new redesign as in store.

Join Ads4Dough and Increase Your Revenue!

by zac