Alex Dumitru / Sandossu

When building a website, you can’t just place random sections of it until you fulfill all the space. You have to think how is better for the visitor and how can you make him stay longer, read more pages and maybe buy your product or subscribe.

So, before building it think how would it be better so your visitor gets satisfied. Also, if you already have a site, visit all the pages, every side of it and imagine you are a visitors that sees it for the first time. See if you like the website, if you can easily navigate through it, read content and if it’s well structured and nice looking.

If everything is ok for you, you should also ask a few friends to do this for you, to be sure.

In the last few days i have seen on forums and blogs that people found a new type of Google Adsense Leaderboards. The Leaderboards seem to include link ads, that once clicked on, they show different ads.

Google seem to have integrated the link ads into Leaderboards to be more effective, but until now they stated nothing about it. We only have some screenshots and the word of people that saw the ads.

via DigitalPoint

Most people that start their own website or blog usually begin with a low budget and don’t choose a niche, but come into direct competition with reputed websites, because they see their success and think it’s easy.

If you want to start your own website, first think that the big, reputed websites have high budget and experience, that’s how they became successful. It’s not easy and it’s almost impossible to start by yourself a website that in short time will be valued at millions.

For a beginner, the best solution is finding a niche and learning the basics there, along with gaining experience. Niches are more easier to get successful into than generic websites and can also be very profitable.

Also, try to make a website that you like to take care of, write content on and make sure you like the subject, so you won’t get bored of it or write content just for the money you might earn, because you will probably earn nothing this way.

So, the main idea is, when you start a website think big, but start small.

I will be away until August 5th, while being at the seaside and probably won’t have an internet connection. So i won’t post anything until then.

I will present you an extremely evil marketing campaign i’ve seen, ran by an insurance company.

The company that runs the campaign is probably paying a lot of money to another insurance company’s employee that, when a client goes to him to make an insurance he exaggerates the price, making it sound like 2 times higher than the other company’s and then recommends him the other company. This is neither legal or ethic, because they were practically ruining that company, by driving all their clients to them.

Probably both that employee and the company that runs the marketing campaign will get a lawsuit. If they don’t get caught, that’s an extremely profitable campaign.

There are lots of link bait techniques out there, but the content is the most important factor. And it doesn’t have to be text, you can also use a video or image as content.

Content optimization for link baiting

1. I have started with the one I currently used. This means content formatting, with ( in this case ) bold subtitles and enumeration, but you can also do more, like italics, header, simply use your imagination and make your content easy readable and nice looking, so the reader doesn’t get bored with one block of plain text.

2. Use friendly links, both for search engines and human readers. A link like sandossu.com/?p=124127 is neither liked by the search engines, the reader doesn’t understand anything from it and surely won’t remember it, while something like sandossu.com/content-is-link-bait/ or sandossu.com/content-is-link-bait.html is understood both by the search engines and human readers and also the readers might remember it and can attract them to visit the page and read your entry if you follow my next tip.

3. Use attractive titles that may keep the visitor to continue reading the whole entry, attract the subscribers to read your post, those that see only the link, optimized as I said in #2 and more.

4. Don’t put ads all over the site, because readers may not like it and think it’s a junk site, without even reading the content and leaving directly. Put smart ads, placed so that the website doesn’t look full of ads.

5. When writing something, make it sound really big, like a very important thing, impress the readers.

6. Spread rumors. Rumors are a very good link baiting subject, but take care what rumors you spread, because you may get a lawsuit. Write something realistic, that people are willing to believe or try to write a rumor that may also become true, this would be the best you can get.

I have been using AuctionAds for the last weeks, without having much visitors, but from 25,000 impressions, 390 clicks I’ve earned $11.74. I don’t have a good ad placement for AuctionAds, but it has a decent CTR of 1.55%, that, unfortunately, doesn’t generate revenue.

About two months ago i was enthusiastic when after a few days of using it i got a $16.40 commission from a click, but since then everything seems to have been turned bad.

Also, their reporting graphs are wrong and have almost no relevance to the reports. Here’s an example where you can see that my $.78 commission is placed above the $1 point, but still at another $1 point. That really is confusing. See for yourself:

( click to enlarge )

Shoemoney definitely has a lot to improve until it can get good results and offer a high quality service. There are a lot of users complaining that they are getting extremely low CPM.

There also are moments when neither the website or the ads are loading, so my website has either an empty zone or a zone with “page not found” error. That’s very frustrating for us, the users and unprofessional for them.

So, at least for me, AuctionAds is not a good option for monetizing my website.

Shoemoney, no offence, this is my sincere opinion on AuctionAds and this is my experience with the system.

A few years ago, where there were much less blogs than now, a website made fast, with some copied content from here and there or with a writer that was showing no interest could bring you lots of money. Now, you need to do a lot of things to make your website successful.  I will not rewrite the tips you can already find on my blog, but things behind scenes, that makes a blog a bit different than other, tips more related to copywriting and to you, the blogger or webmaster.

Your reader is your client 

You have to thread your readers well and fulfill their requests. Well, you don’t have to jump off a building if he asks you too, but neither you should answer with “that’s none of your business” if he asks you how did you start your blog, made it successful or other things he may be interested in. You don’t have to tell them your biggest secret, but to act well.

Keep in mind that your reader is your client, because he may click an ad, he counts on CPM ( cost per mile ) banners, he may buy an affiliate product and if he doesn’t do it this time, he may do it next time, if you convince him to return.

Blog first for pleasure, then money 

You have to enjoy what you are doing, not to say “damn, i have to post on my blog again”, because your readers will read that into your posts, there’s a difference between blogging by pleasure or obligation. For example, I have some satisfactions when i see comments, more feed readers, more traffic and then I look at the money. Don’t get me wrong, money are important too, but you have to enjoy your job and make your readers enjoy what they are reading too.

So choose a niche you like and start writing about it, don’t just start writing about pills because they monetize better.

At any time, success is far away

You will probably reach a specified amount of traffic, reader or income where you say your website is earning you enough and it’s enough for you so you won’t work any more to improve it. That’s definitely wrong, because an unmanaged, not updated website or blog is dieing and it will be very hard to resuscitate it. It is better to keep working or hire someone to manage it, with you being a web CEO, so you don’t have this problem.

I’m waiting for your feedback on this.

I have recently read John Chow‘s Make Money Online Ebook and i can say it’s one of the best books i’ve ever read. He hadn’t tried to write hundreds of pages full of unimportant stuff, but concentrated all the important things in just 59 pages.

This book is great both for newbies that want to start earning money with their website or blog and for successful web entrepreneurs that already do this, to improve their skills.

There are a lot of tips about link baiting, website monetization ideas, content writing, branding and more.

Google has made a lot of improvements lately and it now continues by turning Feedburner’s paid features free. Yet, everyone can use MyBrand and Total Stats for free, that are very useful features for Feedburner’s users.

Both paid and free users can now enjoy the ex-paid features. Paid users won’t be charged anymore as of June.