Archive for the ‘Making Money Online’ Category

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Can You Make Money With Kontera?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

 

If you are planning on becoming a full time Affiliate Marketer any time soon. Then you need to be on the constant look out for different ways and methods to earning additional online income.

Pay per click affiliate programs should be of particular interest to you because all that is required is the installation of a simple script or, as in my case. A  wordpress plug-in.

Websites such as Kontera, Adsbrite, and Chitika give you a chance (providing that you own a website) to earn money from their contextual advertising service.

How Does Kontera Work?

Kontera is an In-Text advertising solution that automatically converts specific keywords on your website into monetized links.

Like Adsense, you’ll earn money according to both Cost-Per-Impression and Cost-per-Click. If you currently reside in the USA, Canada, or the UK, and have a content website.

You should not have any problem being granted membership into their program.

Is Kontera Right For You?

Before I wrote this article, I did quite a bit of research. Which mainly involved my reading of quite a few blog posts from other bloggers.

 Based on this information, and my own personal experience. I would say that Kontera will be right for you providing that your website has. Regularly updated original content and it is focused on one topic.

People who use Kontera, often complain about their ads not being targeted enough. Once again, based on my own personal experience

I found that their ads were generally on the topic of my website.

Topic selection plays a big part on how much money you earn on Kontera. If your website is about a low quality subject.

Then you will earn less money.

Traffic is another factor. that comes into play. You can earn a lot of money from Kontera, on the sheer volume of traffic to your website alone.

However. If your website is in its very early stages. It is highly unlikely that it will get the amount of traffic that generates large amounts of wonga.

 Will Using Kontera Annoy Your Visitors?

Due to the nature of the ads displayed on your website. Which are usually small pop up boxes.

There is a good chance that a small percentage of your visitors will be annoyed.

 Especially if, the ads are not related to the actual page content.

You should also consider if having contextual advertising devalues the content,

Not every website is suitable for Kontera.

Let’s say for instance. That your website is about Politics. Having un-targeted pop up ads appearing all over the place will certainly put off a lot of potential voters who you are trying to get support from.

Why I Don’t Use Kontera On This Blog.

I installed the wordpress plug-in in the beginning of August 2010. Less than 24hrs later I had to un-install the Kontera plug-in.

My reasons for doing this was.

 1) I just got to many ads.

 2) Bad Ad Placement.

“I’m not blowing my own trumpet on purpose but”.

 This blog is SEO (search engine optimised) which means that I got targeted in context ads shown on my website very quickly.”

But, Unfortunately for me I just got to many of them, and they were all badly placed.

Those 2 reasons were bad enough.  

 

But…

 

there was a third reason. That ultimately helped me come to a decision not to use Kontera.

The plug-in seriously slowed down my web page loading times, To the point where I almost lost my whole blog.

Please understand, that I am not saying to you to avoid Kontera at all cost.

Just because I had a bad experience with them. It does not necessarily mean that you will to.

The only way to know for sure is to try them yourself and carefully monitor the results.

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 3 Comments »

Are you ready to blog?

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

 

 Starting your first Internet business using a blog is a great idea. Especially when you consider the start up costs, which are virtually zero.        

Having your own blog gives you the opportunity to ramble on about anything that takes your fancy, And if you’re lucky.

Your ramblings could end up being seen and read by millions of others.    

Thanks to today’s technology you do not even have to write the content for your blog, it can all be done automatically. Blogging is fun,easy to do, and best of all its “FREE”  

 “OK, its time for me to give you a reality check.”      

Running your own blog is not as easy as I’m trying to make it sound. some work is required. Sometimes a lot of work.

You can forget all that crap about blogging only 2 hours a day, “or is it only 2 hours a week to making a hundred grand a year.”  


Actually, it is possible to earn the sum that I’ve just mentioned above, doing only 2 hours a day blogging.  

 But for you to acheive this, your blog has to hit critical mass.    

 “What does critical mass  mean?    

Basically it means that your blog has grown so much that it is almost beyond your control.  

 Critical mass means that your blog has become so popular, you no longer have to pay for any advertising cost.

You no longer have to check on a daily basis. How many people are visiting your web site, because you know that your traffic is guaranteed.  

 And finally, you don’t have to worry, or wonder about. If your website is making you money, because you know that it is

If your lucky, you’re blog can snowball by accident, but in most cases it will require some hard work by yourself.  

So, if after reading this. You still fancy blogging your way to a fortune.    

 My advice to you is to treat it like a Business right from the start.

Don’t fall into the mindset of 95% of bloggers online.  

Who only see it as a hobby. Taking that approach is a sure fire way to ultimate failure.

Just because you can blog for FREE. It doesn’t mean that you should be un-professional.

I use a fREE blogging service provided by Google called Blogspot.

Which I highly recommend that you use if you are just starting out online.

You can get advice on how to get the best from this wonderful service by simply visiting YouTube.com and watching a few videos.

WordPress.org is another popular “PAID” blogging service that I use and love.  

But it took me a number of years before I got the confidence and experience to blog consistently. This is why I am recommending that you use a free blogging platform first.

You can make mistakes using a free service that will not cost anything to yourself except time.  

  I’m not saying that “TIME” is not important.    

 Of course it is.    

“It is probably the one thing that everybody in the world needs more of”

But…

Speaking in monetary terms. I am pretty sure that you would rather lose time than money.

 There is a old saying “patience is a virtue ”

You need to remember this when you start blogging.  

 Because it will take a lot of time to make your blog a success, and even longer before you see any real profits.  

But, if you Focus your time and energy into making a blog built on quality rather than trickery. You will be rewarded in the end.

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Posted in Making Money Online | 2 Comments »

How To Lower Your Bounce Rate

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

 

It has been often said by many Affiliate Marketers, that the key to having a successful online business is driving a lot of targeted real visitors to your website.But, If you just happen to be starting out online. Then you will find this task almost impossible.

And thats only part of your problem because, as hard as it is to get visitors to you’re website. It is even harder to get them to stay there.

Bounce rate is a measurement of how long visitors are staying on your web pages,

Get Google Analytics

To truly understand bounce rate you will need to have installed Google Analytics on your web site.

 Once you have done this, you will have an amazing amount of statistical information at your finger tips which will enable you to better understand your customer needs.

“Now, lets move on to lowering your bounce rate.”

Related Content

Probably the most important thing you must have, “In fact, I will go even further and say…

 “CONTENT” is the number one thing that must always be present on your website.”

Your own originally written informative content is far and away the best method of keeping low bounce rates…

But if writing something for yourself totally freaks you out.

You can always stick a couple of fREE articles on to your web site from Ezine Articles.com or Go Articles.com

Note: If you decide to follow this route, make sure that the writer of the article is given full credit for their work.

Using the search engines is how most people will find your web site. If you’re site does not match what they are searching for.

 “BAM” they’re gone, and you’ve just lost another potential long term customer…

and received your first high bounce.

Now, just imagine. That the same thing happens 1000′s of times a day on your web site.

You will have a 100% Bounce Rate. Which is not a very good thing to look at.

You can prevent this occurrence from happening by simply doing basic KEYWORD RESEARCH first before you write anything  on your website.

“Ok, now that you understand the relationship between good original content and lower bounce rates.”

Lets move on to the next stage which is your “LANDING PAGES”

It is no good having great content on your site that nobody else can see.

“How does this happen, I hear you ask?”

This can happen when you send all of your traffic to the main domain name only.

Let’s say,(for example) your website is about oranges, and your domain is www.oranges. com

You would rightly start telling your friends,family, and everybody else about your brand new website.

In the beginning sending all of your visitors to the main domain will be ok.

But, as you begin to produce more content. Your website becomes larger. This means that there will be more web pages for your visitors to look at.

The only thing is,  that they won’t be able to see it.

Because, You keep sending them to  www. oranges .com

 instead of www. oranges. com/Spanish-oranges  or

www. oranges .com/navel-oranges

Don’t expect your visitors to go looking for your web pages about

Tangerines,Satsumas, and the multitude of different variations of oranges that you have written about.

Remember that visitors to your web site are usually in a hurry. They want to see the information that they are looking for instantly.

They do not want to click on 3 different links to get to their destination, and they definitely will not want to scroll down a very long web page.

“You see. Your average visitor is not only in a hurry they are also very lazy.”

So, always send them to the web page that is the closest match to their search enquiry.

Quality Traffic Sources

There are three different traffic sources that you should be concerned with. Search,Direct,and Referred.

 I think that you already know enough about how search engines work…

So, I will concentrate on the other 2 types. Direct Traffic and Referred Traffic.

Both of these are easy enough  to understand.

Direct traffic is from visitors who found your web site via a bookmark or they typed in your web address directly into their browser.

Referred traffic is from visitors who found your web site after visiting another site.

Ideally you want a mixture of all three.

 Never rely on one traffic source only.

Your overall bounce rate will always go up and down. That is just the nature of the Internet and the way people  use it.

But you can easily keep your bounce rate around the 70% mark providing that you…

1) Do Your keyword research first before you write

2) Write informative and original content

3) Get your traffic from quality sources

4) Send all visitors to the correct landing pages on your web site.

There are some variables that you can never control.

Such as the fact that most of your traffic will always go to the home page of your website.

The reason for this is because your domain name is usually the easiest to remember, and your visitors. Will  nearly always choose what they consider to be the quickest route to your web site.

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 16 Comments »

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