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

Google Analytics is a fantastic product that can provide rich insights into your businesses strategy. For those businesses with websites, Google Analytics tracks visitors who browse your website. The product is so robust, it’s possible to segment your visitors and conduct a deep dive analysis of potential customers. In addition to segmenting visitors, you can also build a marketing funnel in which you can track conversions.

To marketers, this tool is almost like the bible. For those that can understand the complexities and capabilities of this software, can leverage it to their advantage.

In this blog post, I will specifically discuss the topic of analyzing who your visitors are. This allows you to focus on your business and develop pages that will cater to potential customers. Before we get started, it’s best to login to Google Analytics while I discuss some of the key features of the section “visitors”. Once you login, click the Visitors tab on the left hand side. For the purpose of this blog, I will simply talk about the overview page, and how we can use this information to build a better website. This blog will help build the foundation of understanding this tool, and will start to provide insights into who your customers are.

Right off the bat, we can see how many people have visited our website and how they have engaged with the content. The metrics listed on this page help illustrate this engagement. Here are some definitions if you are unfamiliar with the terms listed on this page:

Visits – The amount of people who have loaded your website with ‘fresh cookies’

Absolute Unique Visitors – The absolute unique number of visitors who have visited your site

Pageviews – The amount of pages that are loaded on your site by visitors

Average Pageviews / user – How many pages a user browses on your site

Time on site – How much time a browser spent on your website

Bounce Rate – What percent of people immediately leave your website after visiting only one page

New Visitors – The percent of new visitors to your website

After reviewing these terms, now we are ready to start understanding and analyzing this data.

Let’s start off by trying to answer a few questions regarding the use of the website:

Are visitors taking advantage of the website by viewing more than 4 pages on average?

Is our bounce rate higher than 40%? If so, our website may be overwhelming to visitors- or too difficult to navigate.

If we scroll down to the technical profile, we can then see which browsers our visitors use- and even their connection speed. This can help guide decisions regarding the structure of your website.For example, if you have a website that is mainly based in flash, yet most of your browsers don’t have flash…this could be extremely traumatic to your business. Understanding who your visitors are, and how they engage with your website, will ultimately guide the development of your site. Next week we will discuss analyzing how visitors browse your website, and how you can optimize your layout to maximize each visit.

Affiliate marketing is an internet based marketing practice that is rewarded for each “action, or acquisition” brought by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.  Affiliate Marketers use their skills to place these advertisements in locations that will not only get clicks, but achieve some end goal- such as a purchase.  The topic of today’s blog will be to cover the perspective of an organization who may be unsure where to allocate their online marketing budget.  Performance based campaigns are designed to generate leads, or sales for your business on a fixed cost.  Calculating the “cost per acquisition” (CPA) for your desired campaign is the most important step.  I won’t go into great detail on this matter, as your cost will depend on your particular business, and what your goals of the campaign are.  This blog will help you understand the components of the industry, and will give you clear insight that you can apply to your businesses online marketing efforts.

Example 1

Max owns an online t-shirt business.  He structures a campaign to pay out $4.00 per t-shirt sale.  He lists this ad campaign with a network.  This network is then accessed by ‘affiliates’ who will promote the ad on various websites, newsletters, or search engines.  The affiliate can either place the ad on their own website, or find web space available for purchase.  Theoretically, your affiliates will be doing the leg work, and will rigorously test various placements and text configurations.  In exchange, they get $4.00 per sale they drive your way- without managing the website or shipping any t-shirts.  You profit, depending on your costs and prices- what’s left over.

It’s easy to see why performance based ad campaigns would make sense- yet many businesses are reluctant to jump on board because of the shear nature of the industry.  Performance based campaigns need to monitored closely to ensure that all of your affiliates are acting in accordance to your campaigns rules.  Many performance based campaigns fail because the quality of leads are poor.  Back to example 1- if we paid the affiliate marketer the $4.00 for a tshirt that was sold- but the order was canceled before we shipped out the shirt- we would lose out on the $4.00.  Similarly, many businesses feel that affiliate marketers ride the fine line of ethical behavior.

Let’s step into the shoes of the Affiliate Marketer in the example above.  I am looking to promote t-shirt sales through various channels.  I decide I want to purchase ad inventory on a popular clothing search term, “Funny Shirts”.  The cost to me would be on a cost-per-click (CPC) level, in which I want to minimize in order to maximize profits.  I find that the term ‘Funny Shirts for Kids’ is nearly half the cost- so I buy there to start.  The cost to me is .01 per click, I buy 5,000 clicks = $50 buy.  In order for me to break even, I need to sell 13 shirts through this link.  13 / 5,000 = .0026 or .26% need to convert on this traffic.  If I convert at a higher rate, lets say 1%- I would be earning profit.  If it went below- I would be earning negatively.  Since this traffic is so cheap however, the quality of the consumer purchasing is lower.  Since this is also a keyword targeted towards kids, logically one would assume their purchase behavior to be quite different than an adult.  Are they likely to make a purchase online?  Do they have a credit card?  All of these questions are relevant in the buying decision for an affiliate marketer.  But costs are king in the industry.  To keep costs as low as possible, some may be willing to give up quality- in turn affecting the perceived value of your brand.

On either side of the transaction, performance based campaigns are surely on the rise.  More and more businesses are taking advantage of the solidarity of the networks and their trusted affiliates.  Understanding how you can integrate performance based campaigns into your online marketing strategy, could lead to more sales- and more profit.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your night.