Do you want to learn about how you can get rich making money online?  I thought so.  Today’s article will serve as an introduction to making money as a publisher within the internet marketing industry.  Let’s first start off by understanding who internet publishers are, what tools they use, and most importantly- how publishers can earn more revenue by making informed decisions.

Internet publishers are the people behind the scenes who operate a websites advertising inventory.  For some this may mean overseeing the performance of banners (on a cpm basis), text links (cpc, or cpa), rich media, pop ups, etc.  Basically, publishers are responsible for anything to do with generating revenue through advertisements on a particular website- or network of websites.

Internet publishers use an extensive array of tools.  These tools provide rich insights that guide you to make better decisions on your ad inventory.  The first tool I will mention, is a must have. Google Analytics is one of Google’s best products.  Analytics allows you to understand your websites visitors like you would have never imagined.  For example, you can see how many pages a visitor has seen, how much time they spent on your website, and exactly what they did while browsing.  In addition to using Google Analytics, I also use Compete.com to gain a better understand of my competitors.  Compete uses high quality data that other market research firms can’t even match *cough, Alexa*.  Understanding the composition of my competitors’ traffic enables me to build a robust strategy to demolish my competition. For example, if a competitor is generating 60% of their traffic through search engines.  For the sake of this blog, let’s say 90% of this traffic was coming from keyword x.  I would then target both on/off site optimization to keyword x.  Although this is indirectly related to ad inventory management, this is a great strategy to generate more traffic- thus improving the amount of impressions your advertisements will receive.  “This is a very simple and clear cut example- it will take your analytical mind to develop a strategy that will have a positive impact on your website”.  It’s often difficult to gauge competitors and where they are generating traffic from- this is why Compete is a great benchmarking tool that each publisher should have in their arsenal.  Lastly, the most important tools we as publishers use- are the networks that we belong to.  There are hundreds of networks out there, but these are worth noting: Google Adsense, Casale Media, Tribal Fusion, ValueClick, CPX interactive, Underdog Media, and Yahoo! Publisher network.  Within each of these networks there is a completely different user interface that we as publishers need to know inside and out.  This makes our job that much more complex, but hey- it’s not too bad.  The real challenging part of internet publishing is how you analyze all this data to make your decisions.

Internet publishers do not get rich overnight, it takes time.  You as a publisher need to own a website (or manage one) that offers some kind of original content.  This is how you are going to generate traffic, and transitively- these are the visitors you will be monetizing.  In order to earn more money as a publisher, you will need to make the right decisions on your inventory- based on the performance of ad units.  Analytically speaking- you need to digest data just as well as cookie monster eats cookies!

Mmmm, dataaaa

Here’s a practical tip that will help you structure your ad inventory.  Create channels for each ad unit you have, per page.  For example, if I have a 300×250 banner unit and a 728×90 banner unit- on my index page, I would create 2 channels.  One channel titled, BrightWebInsights.com 300×250 Index, the other BrightWebInsights.com 728×90 Index.  This will give you full transparency on your ad inventory, and will allow you to analyze performance.  When I am using the term “performance” regarding ad units, I mean the click-thru-rate, and the eCPM value per ad unit.  If you can see the performance of all of your ad units, you can see which is earning you the most- vs. which is earning you the least.

An example of a decision I made recently was whether or not we needed a second 300×250 on our index page.  I could tell from Adsense that this unit was performing very low, its CTR was 0.15%- so I tested another network.  The CTR was very similar, so I knew it wasn’t related to the campaigns that were displaying- it was the location on the site.  This helped me form a plan to integrate a 468×60 banner within the content, which is performing at an incredible 2.55% CTR (subsequently, $2.00+ ecpm).  If I did not have my inventory structured in this way, I would have been unable to isolate that campaign- and would have lost out on this additional revenue.

This is just one tip that can empower you to earn more money with your website.  I will be making some more advanced posts later- giving you more valuable advice on making money online .

Thanks for reading,

Kyle

This past November I attended the Content Revenue Strategies (CRS) conference at Ad-Tech: NYC.  This event was geared for publishers and advertisers within the internet marketing industry.  I was really attracted to this event as publisher for two reasons.  One- the prior year at Ad-Tech ‘08 there was no Google Adsense Representative present to talk to publishers.  I distinctly remember that they had a huge booth, with only reps for analytics and AdWords…with no AdSense rep to be found.  At the time I was really in need of some advice- and I wanted to hear directly from the source.  If you have ever tried to get in touch with Google, then you probably know this- but Google is nearly impossible to get a hold of.    At CRS, I got to meet directly with a Google Adsense Representative at their optimization lounge.  She helped me develop a better A-B testing model, and gave me some great insight into how I can easily analyze reports.  In addition to this, she also white listed my account for Google AdSense’s new beta interface.  Secondly- I was also attracted to CRS because of the amazing seminar schedule & format.  The topics ranged from an open AdSense publisher forum, to tips/tricks to improve your eCPM.  These seminars were helpful because they provided clear advice on how we can earn more as publishers.

In this blog post I will be exploring some of these new additions to the Google Adsense interface, and will also provide you with insight on how you can earn more revenue as an internet publisher.

New Additions to Adsense:

Analytics-like timeline

Google Adsense beta interface overview

As we can see by this screenshot, the interface is starting to look like Google Analytics.  The most significant upgrade to the new Adsense interface is the timeline.  I don’t know if anyone did this…but in the old Adsense- if we were to view a timeline like this, we would need to export > download as .crs > open excel > insert chart > select the cells > edit the grpah…and voila!  Now with the new interface it’s much easier to make decisions because you can visualize your earnings over a period of time.  In addition to this, you can also quickly (and I mean quickly) analyze the performance of your channels…

Click on performance reports…

Google Adsense new beta interface

Within performance reports, we can run a “quick report” from the beginning of the month aggregate- to the beginning of the month by channels.  If we break it out by channel we get to view on the default metric, estimated earnings.  What’s really a nice feature is that you can compare on all sorts of metrics, such as CTR, eCPM, and Impressions.  We can use this informaiton to help guide decisions on our advertising structure.  For example, if a 300 x 250 channel isn’t working on the bottom right hand column of my index page…I could see the click thru difference from this zone compared to my primary 300 x 250, which would prompt testing another ad unit size on the page.  Before I go too far with that…let’s move on…

Now that you’ve seen what the new Adsense looks like, I’ll share some advice on improving your Adsense revenue.

One Major Concept

The click-thru-rate does affect the eCPM value for your campaigns, but isn’t the only variable that will impact your eCPM.  Take a further look at how you can analyze revenue fluctuations @ the AdSense blog.

What does this mean?  Improve your CTR by placing ad units near where people are looking.  Common ad units such as the 300×250 and 728×90 will have more campaigns in the “pool of advertisers”, therefore the cost of your inventory will go up- as more advertisers are trying to fill that space.  It’s wise to include these ad units, but it’s also important not to overexpose AdSense.  If you have more than 3 units per page, you are effectively diluting your CTR and eCPM.  More is less; find the right balance on your page.  Just as Google reiterated several times throughout CRS, Test your ad inventory, and when you’re done- test some more.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to reading your comments

- Kyle