The Emotions of Color in Marketing

May 14th, 2010 admin Posted in Marketing, Make Money, Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

As marketers, we see it all the time… BIG RED LETTERS on landing pages to grab our attention. Different colors make people act differently. RED is usually seen as a “danger” or “warning” color… while BLUE or GREEN is more “soothing” and “trusted“. An excellent example of this was how in Star Wars, Darth Maul is RED and BLACK (representing his evil), and Yoda was GREEN… showing his “stability” and “safety”.In today’s post I wanted to focus on all of the main colors and how they should be represented in your advertising efforts. Believe it or not, the colors you place on your landing pages or web sites can drastically change your overall conversions and the user’s thinking process. Below is a break down from HP, on the main colors we use for marketing and how they are often looked at by others.

Primary Colors:

Red

Red is a very emotionally charged color. It tends to increase the respiration rate and can even raise your blood pressure. It creates excitement and can be associated with danger, war, power, strength passion, desire and love. It can even increase your appetite.

Yellow

Yellow is the happy color… it is the color of sunshine. It creates a sense of cheerfulness and helps to stimulate mental activity. When yellow is very bright, it can attract attention. It can also provide a very sharp contrast to dark colors. Yellow can have the appearance of being brighter than white if over used and can be disturbing if used too much.

Blue

Blue is a trusted color. It can provide a sense of tranquility and security. It tends to symbolize loyalty, wisdom, trust, faith, confidence, and intelligence. While red can help to increase the appetite, blue tends to have the opposite affect and can actually suppress the appetite.

Secondary Colors:

Orange

Orange is the combination of the happiness of yellow and the energy and strength of red. It symbolizes creativity, determination, enthusiasm and success. In addition orange indicates affordability. Because of its similarity to red, it is great to promote food.

Green

Green tends to suggest endurance and stability. It represents harmony, growth and freshness. Green indicates safety. Obviously, it is associated with money and wealth. With the interest in “green” products, it is the only color that can promote organic foods and products effectively.

Violet

Violet or purple combines the energy and strength of red with the stability of blue. It represents nobility, ambition, power and luxury. It symbolizes extravagance and wealth and is often associated with dignity, independence, wisdom and magic.

Others:

White

White is purity, goodness, light and innocence. It is considered perfection. White is generally positive and simple. Often it is the color of charitable organizations, low-fat foods and dairy products.

Black

Black is elegant, powerful and formal, but can also be associated with death. In marketing, it is dignified. In certain contexts, black is very negative (blacklist, black humor, etc). It can also denote prestige.

Next time you are working on your landing page or new web site, step back and look at your color scheme and see how your colors are targeting your audience.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Facebook Advertising Just Got Better

May 7th, 2010 admin Posted in Advertising, Make Money, Affiliate Marketing, General No Comments »

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.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Insider Secrets to a Making a Million Dollar Web Site!

May 7th, 2010 admin Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Make Money, Affiliate Marketing, General No Comments »

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.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Buying a Web Site vs. Starting from Scratch

February 19th, 2010 admin Posted in Advertising, Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

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.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Ideas for Monetizing Your Blog Footer

May 15th, 2009 admin Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Make Money, Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

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.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Hear and Play

October 8th, 2008 admin Posted in Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

Dear Fellow Musician,

What if you could lock yourself in a room and get 4.5 hours of
ministry-focused instruction from the man behind many of your
favorite gospel albums?

Would that excite you?

Well, you’re definitely in luck! Because I’ve found a resource
that’ll uncover tons of contemporary gospel secrets from one of
the baddest gospel musicians in the industry today, Mr. Jason
White!

You’ll get the opportunity to learn flavorful approaches,
chords, movements, patterns, “licks & tricks,” and real songs
from Jason White, but not only that…

You’ll learn the music ministry side of things too. This isn’t
just for someone who wants to steal a bunch of chords and sound
good, although you’ll get dozens upon dozens of chords and will
certainly sound 10 times better after devouring this course.
This is deeper than that though.

This is for the musician who truly wants to be used by God to
usher in His presence through music. The musician who no longer
wants to be a distraction or hindrance to the service but
actually be an integral part of the worship experience.

Jason is ready to show you what he’s picked up over the years as
he’s had the privilege to walk closely with prominent pastors like
Bishop Charles Blake.

This is a holistic course focusing both on the creative music
side and the ministry side. You will not go wrong with it.

To learn more, click the link below:
==> http://www.hearandplay.com/450572/gkministry.html

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Search Engine Ranking Factors

September 12th, 2008 admin Posted in Marketing, Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

Introduction to Ranking Factors

This article contains a large list of the factors that can influence a web document’s rank at the major search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves) for a particular term or phrase. Although it is impossible to say for certain which of these items affects which search engine or how important the factors are individually, I’ve created an estimated ranking importance scale as indicated by the following symbols:

Exceptional Importance Exceptional Importance
These factors have primary influence in ranking search results at the major search engines.

High Importance

High Importance
These factors have a high impact on modifying rankings of web documents in the SERPs.

Moderate Importance

Moderate Importance
These factors have a measurable level of affect on the rankings in the SERPs, but are not major contributors.

Slight Importance

Slight Importance
These factors carry some impact on rankings and could be important when in a highly competitive area.

Inconsequential Importance

Inconsequential Importance
These factors are of low consequence in changing the ranking positions of a web document. They may have some effect in certain queries or documents.

For each factor, the 13 individuals (myself and 12 others in the field) voted on each factor’s perceived importance. I then averaged these votes to come up with the scores you see listed next to the factors. In addition, the standard deviance (which measures how much fluctuation existed between votes) is also listed and a scale has been created to show if there was wide disagreement or general consensus on a factor’s importance.

Highly Disputed Highly Disputed
These factors have a wide variance of opinion on importance.
Somewhat Disputed Somewhat Disputed
These factors have some dispute as to their importance.
Average Agreement Average Agreement
These factors have an average level of dispute/consensus.
Some Consensus Some Consensus
These factors have some consensus on importance levels.
High Consensus High Consensus
These factors have a high level of consensus.

The factors listed herein provide a near-comprehensive list of factors which can positively or negatively influence the rank of a web document. If you have questions or would like to contribute additional ideas, please e-mail me.

List of Contributors

The following individuals made this project possible by submitting their opinions on each ranking factor, and adding comments where they felt it important. I have taken note of many of these comments in my description of the ranking factors and each score is representative of the group’s overall opinions. Many thanks to:

Danny Sullivan http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Dan Thies http://www.seoresearchlabs.com
EGOL Profile @ SEOmoz
Graywolf http://www.wolf-howl.com
Jill Whalen http://www.highrankings.com
Donna Fontenot http://www.seo-scoop.com
Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/
Bill Slawski http://www.cre8asiteforums.com
Ammon Johns http://www.webmarketingplus.co.uk/
Scottie Claiborne http://www.successful-sites.com/
2K http://www.2kmediat.com/kkmediat/eng/
Todd Malicoat http://www.stuntdubl.com
Rand Fishkin My votes are also included in the avgs

Most Important Factors

The following are the top 10 ranked factors across the 5 categories:

  1. Title Tag - 4.57
  2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
  3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
  4. Accessibility of Document - 4.3
  5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
  6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
  7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
  8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
  9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
  10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69

In-Document (on-page) Factors Affecting Ranking:

The following factors are on-page items that affect the ranking directly by virtue of being a part of the indexed and retrieved document. Many of these factors will not apply universally to all documents, while others are standard.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Cashing In on Your Own Niche Market Ideas

August 28th, 2008 admin Posted in Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

Whoever would have thought there was a whole niche market for funny pictures of cats with crazy misspelled captions! What started out as just some funny pictures of cats, has massively grown into a very profitable blog and business. How did it get this way? User generated content and being different, led the way. How many times have you seen a LOL Cat, yet haven’t been to icanhascheezburger.com? They are everywhere!The blog was launched less than two years ago, back in January of 2007 and is currently estimated at earnings of around $5,600 a month (Businessweek, July 2007). The site was then acquired by Pet Holdings, Inc. in late 2007 for $2 million. With massively increased traffic to the site, I’m sure these numbers are much higher now.

So what makes ICanHasCheezburger stand out from the rest? Taking a niche market and running with it. Instead of creating ICanHasCheezburger.com, they could have easily focused on creating a video web site or a general funny pictures site, but the competition is so fierce and broad, targeting something completely different and niche is where the money is at! To further support the blog’s growth, a community was built around the web site where thousands of their loyal followers can upload their own funny pictures to the site.

The group over at Pet Holdings, Inc. and ICanHasCheezburger understand how to conduct business, as they are now on their seventh web site focusing on funny niche areas, their latest being EngrishFunny. Other network sites include Ihasahotdog, Failblog, Totallylookslike, Punditkitchen and Graphjam. After visiting the sites, you will see they all focus in on tight niche areas…instead of having one big super site.

As reported by TechCrunch, “the family of sites is generating 3.3 million daily page views, and around 5 million unique monthly visitors. Total revenue per page is north of $0.80, he says.“.

What’s the next big niche market to come out of nowhere? They are happening everyday… is your idea next?

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

How to Promote a Web Site or Product without an Affiliate Program

July 20th, 2008 admin Posted in Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

What if you have a product that you really like and want to tell others about it, or even create a web site around it and attempt to try and earn a few dollars in the process. The first thing you would do, would be to visit their web site and see if they have an affiliate program. Let’s use Myoplex (energy / protein drink) for example. Before or after going to basketball everyday, I make sure to grab a Myoplex. I love the drink, so I don’t mind giving them some promotion… but when I visit their web site, I see that they don’t have an affiliate program…. what’s a blogger/site owner to do? Here are a few choices you have.1.) Find another Site with an Affiliate Program
Myoplex is growing in popularity fast, and one of the most popular places to buy the high protein drink is through GNC stores. Let’s head over to GNC.com and see what they have available. As expected, they have over 35 different products for sale on Myoplex. They have the product, but now we need an affiliate program to make it work. Yes, they have one! Now you can earn a nice 11% commission on every referred sale. Now, instead of that free promotion you were just going to give to Myoplex, (or any other desired product), you can now be earning a nice commission on all referred sales. (and not just on myoplex)

2.) Contextual Advertisers
Myoplex was a great example and luckily for this case study, the largest provider (GNC.com), had an affiliate program. What if you can’t find any sites with your product that have their own affiliate program? Visit Google.com and do a search for your desired product. When you search on “myoplex” you will see a ton of advertisers on the page. Instead of promoting an affiliate program directly, you can run Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. Based off your heavy content site, Adsense or YPN should trigger exact or related ads. (If you search “myoplex” on Google, you will see both GNC.com and the parent company, EAS.com, both advertising through Adwords. You may not be able to promote EAS.com directly through an affiliate program, however through adsense you can promote them on a per click basis.)


There are many retailers advertising on Google Adwords for “Myoplex”

3.) Direct Contact
If all else fails and the product or company you are looking to promote, doesn’t have an affiliate program and there are no relevant advertisers on Adsense… try contacting the company directly. The only thing you have to lose by contacting the company, is that they don’t reply back or they say “not interested”… and you are back where you started anyway. On the other hand, if they are interested, you can sell them advertising on your site, possibly work out a deal for any referred sales, or at the least, ask them to send you samples or some freebies for your time and promotion.

There is nothing better than a web site that offers a true testimonial. I have no problem telling others about the Myoplex protein shake because I actually use it and would recommend it to others. With the combination of a real testimonial site and information to back it up, the ability to push traffic and sales to the related advertisers should not be a problem at all. Not only is there a high demand for Myoplex out there, but since they don’t have a “direct” affiliate program, it may make it that much easier for you to succeed with promotion. Now think about what other type of products and programs are out there that you can take this same method to and apply it.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Creating Your Own Video Entertainment Web Site

July 15th, 2008 admin Posted in Advertising, Affiliate Marketing No Comments »

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.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button