Archive for January, 2010
Ok, so last time I talked about rotating banners and ads, but this is useless unless you know which banners are performing and which ones aren’t. So lets look at an example of 4 banners in rotation and see what the score is…
Banner 1
• Impressions: 1000
• CTR: 5%
• Conversion: 1:1000
• Payout: $30
Banner 2
• Impressions: 1000
• CTR: 8%
• Conversion: 1:2000
• Payout: $30
Banner 3
• Impressions: 1000
• CTR: 10%
• Conversion: 1:1500
• Payout: $20
Banner 4
• Impressions: 1000
• CTR: 10%
• Conversion: 1:2500
• Payout: $25
From these it’s difficult just by quickly looking at them to see which is the most profitable, the easiest way is to find out the CPM (Cost Per Thousand – Essentially how much money you’d make from every 1000 impressions your banner gets) of each ad, so we do…
(Payout ÷ Conversion) × (Impressions × CTR) = $ CPM
After doing this we see that…
Banner 1 = $1.50 CPM
Banner 2 = $1.20 CPM
Banner 3 = $1.30 CPM
Banner 4 = $1.00 CPM
After taking that info I’d ditch Banner 4 and replace it with another. Then let those banners run for a week, or until enough data has been collected, then repeat the process.
Doing things this way ensures you always have your best performing banners in rotation at any given time.
Until next time…
After weeks and weeks of putting it off I finally got round to clearing out and reorganizing. So nice to work in a clean and tidy space again. Let’s see how long it lasts this time…
So everyone who’s signed up with more than a few different affiliate programs gets those emails promoting the $100 day promos on such-and-such a day, but it’s a pain in the ass to go through all of your sites and swap out your banners for just one day in the hope of getting a signup. Well, that’s why you need some sort of banner management script. Many people just have a file somewhere on their server that they php include into every site so they can go in and change that file when they want to swap out all their banners. Personally I prefer to use OpenX.
I won’t go into details of how to install, configure and use every feature here as that would be about 50 posts on it’s own, but I will explain what features make this better than simply using the php include method.
So you get that email saying there’s a $100 promo day that starts on the 24th of the month, do you really want to have to go in and swap out your banners at 23:59 on the 23rd? Or you could be in a completely different timezone, who fancies getting up at 04:00 in the morning to change there banners over? No problem, you can add your banners into OpenX ahead of time and schedule them to be displayed at a certain time, and do this for multiple banners, so every promo day can be scheduled in weeks in advance saving loads of hassle.
Ok, so you’ve got OpenX installed, all your promos added and scheduled, but what to display in the mean time?
What I like to do is have 3-5 banners, essentially on rotation so every time one of your sites is viewed a different one of the banners is displayed. Then at the end of the week check the stats to see which one performs the worst and swap that out for a new one. Again, a week later do the same so you’ve constantly got your best performing banners being displayed.
Remember when determining the performance of a banner what you want to be looking at is how many impressions the banner had on your sites compared to how much $ it made at your sponsor. Ctr, conversion ratios, etc… are irrelevant here as one sponsor could be converting at 1:200 but if the ctr is lousy then you’re not gonna be making much money. More on how to assess the performance of ads/banners and sponsors to come in another post shortly…
Often overlooked by many webmasters is the traffic your images can bring in.
Labelling images correctly
The filename of the image should be a keyword and every image should be labelled correctly with alt tags containing a keyworded description of what the picture is.
<img src=”/pics/teen-sex-01.jpg” alt=”Big Cock Teen Sex” />
Google images
When somebody does a Google Image search and clicks on your pic your site will come up with a frame at the top containing a clickable thumb of your image which most surfers will just click on to view the fullsize image and they’re done. What we want to do is break your site out of this frame so the surfer is forced to scroll through your page, increasing the chance they click on one of your ads through to a sponsor.
Just add this in the <body> of your site.
<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”>
if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location);
</script>
Hotlinked images
Unless you’ve already done something to prevent hotlinking of your images chances are that anybody can just hotlink your images on their own site, forum, or anywhere surfers share pics. Rather than allowing this wouldn’t it be nice to show a pic with your own url on it? Just add this to your .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /hotlinked.jpg [NC,R,L]
Just replace mysite with your own site and /hotlinked.jpg with your own image.
Never leave open directories
There’s many surfers that will find themselves looking at a picture at http://mysite.com/gallery-name/img/pic-01.jpg and will try to navigate their way to http://mysite.com/gallery-name/img/ to get at all the pictures in that directory. Search engines can even index open directories. Don’t let them in! Add an index.php file in there with a redirect to your main page.
<?php
header(‘Location: http://page-to-redirect-to.com’);
?>
I hope that’s a few tricks you can implement on your sites and maybe squeeze a few extra $$$ out of them 
404 and other error traffic is something that every webmaster has and not many seem to do anything with. It may seem insignificant, but I can assure you there’s money to be made!
It seems alot of bloggers just leave the default wordpress 404 page – “Error 404 – Not Found” or something to that effect. Or with other types of sites and even worse, not having any 404 page whatsoever!
Up until recently I used to dump my 404 traffic to a fake TGP. I’ve now switched over to Weg Cash’s niched Tube4Free sites which payout up to $2 per free signup. It hasn’t been long enough to come to any conclusive decision but what is certain is that it’s making money.
So how do you set something like this up? Simple…
Wordpress
Go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/theme-editor.php and find the file 404.php In this file you want to put the following piece of code.
<?php
header('Location: http://site-to-redirect-to.com');
?>
Other types of sites
Open up your .htaccess file and add the following lines.
ErrorDocument 400 http://site-to-redirect-to.com
ErrorDocument 401 http://site-to-redirect-to.com
ErrorDocument 403 http://site-to-redirect-to.com
ErrorDocument 404 http://site-to-redirect-to.com
ErrorDocument 500 http://site-to-redirect-to.com
It’s not alot of work and it’s extra money in your pocket that you’d otherwise be throwing away. So try it out and you might be pleasantly surprised with the results.
So, I go to login to my Epassporte account to recieve the lovely welcome of being told they’re raising fees for ATM withdrawls from $2.00 to $3.00
Shit, a 50% increase?!
Looks like it’s gonna be cheaper to go with the ‘Withdrawal to Personal Credit/Debit Card’ at 1%.