Build in Metrics and Reporting

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Brian

You need to determine the metrics of success for your business, then what drives them, then design your site to assure you can achieve them efficiently.

As an example, if you wish to have people register for a free service then later subscribe via PayPal to a monthly subscription to obtain additional features (a freemium model), you should plan out an optimized registration process and build it into your site as soon as possible.

Therefore, where do you promote the registration and how. What is the call to action, the registration path, and the path of least resistance in terms of collecting information to assure high conversion rates. Define that, build it in, and create your reporting.

Do not let reporting become an afterthought. Reports on your key metrics should be built in. How many registrations do you have per day, how many subscriptions, how many unique visitors, how many went to the registration page, how many converted, what percent. Then you can test once you have basic statistics. You may have to generate some information from your system and add information from a statistics package such as Google Analytics.

At the very least please determine what your metrics are, just take a look at your business plan. You can usually look at 1st year projections, or 2nd and 3rd and back into quarterly, monthly, daily goals. Then determine what metrics from your site/service need to be tracked to determine the progress in relation to the goals. Next create a simple reporting interface, then comes your dashboard and now you can run your business.

Start the above as early as you can and as early as makes sense, not 90 days after launch when the board questions your progress only to scramble and throw the office into chaos mode.

In my past 10 years of online start-up experience I have seen too many start-ups spend 90% of their time on development and features only to later realize that they need revenue and reporting on metrics to evaluate their business progress.

Take the time to evaluate your business metrics and design them into your site as well as create the necessary reporting to gauge progress.

Ooh yeah and don’t forget revenue

Ad Optimization for Maximum Revenue

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Brian

Instead of adding code to your pages for each ad network, swapping code every couple of days, and attempting to determine which ad network you make the most money with, why not let someone else do it for you? Try one of these three services as they are free.

Recently three advertising optimization networks have appeared and each one received funding as investors seem to believe these are valuable services: YieldBuild $6 Million, Pubmatic $7 Million and Rubicon Project $27 Million.

I was first made aware of PubMatic and wrote about Pubmatic here.

Each service will run multiple ad networks, rotate them, and optimize them for your site. The goal is to obtain the greatest eCPM for you. An eCPM is an effective CPM, the amount you receive per 1,000 advertisements. Some ads may be sold on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or CPL (Cost per Lead), these will yield an effective CPM as more ads are run.

The following are free services and I suggest you try them all to determine who can optimize best for you and your site.

Make Money with eBay Affiliate Program by Building a Niche Store : BANS

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Brian

I ran across and interesting script for maximizing your eBay affiliate earnings. This script is very well thought out, with excellent documentation and features.

The script creates an entire website for you and pulls in eBay listings while using your affiliate ID. The listings are updated in real time and therefore the content (eBay listings) of your site is automatically changing for you. After visiting eBay you choose the category you would like the site to focus on and all the subcategories are automatically pulled in as well.

You may choose from a couple templates and if you would like, you can even modify the templates. You are also able to add code to pages easily using their admin tool and templates. For example, I added advertising code using the PubMatic tool I wrote about.

The sites are search engine friendly and you may add text and other content to every page of the site. You may also enter unique meta tags and descriptions for the search engines as well.

I bought the script and am testing installation, usability, and whether the site is indexed on search engines and whether any money is made.

After an hour I have the site up and running, take a look at Purchase the Script Here.

Maximize Revenue for Your Site Automatically with PubMatic

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Brian

You can past code onto your website to show Google Ads, AdBrite Ads, or any other ad network. Determining which will be most profitable for your site is next to impossible. Therefore let someone else do it for you automatically. PubMatic does just that, they determine which ad network is the most profitable for any advertisement size you choose.

PubMatic aggregates ad networks and optimizes to provide your site with the best performing ads. PubMatic allows you to place code on your site once for a particular size and receive the benefit of multiple ad networks filling that advertising space.

You simply join PubMatic for free and then link the account using your names and passwords to other ad networks such as Google AdSense, ValueClick, Advertising.com, BlueLithium, and others. You then place code on your site for your advertisements, standard sizes such has 300×250 728×90 and more, just as you would for any of the ad networks above. The difference is that you are placing PubMatic code and PubMatic will serve ads from all the ad networks you are a member of.

PubMatic will then optimize by placing the ads from the best performing network. Awesome technology and wonderfully executed. I have created an account and am testing their technology on this site. I find their interface to be easy to use, intuitive, and was up and running in minutes.

Then take a look at PubMatic here and join for free.

Make the Most Money with Google AdSense and Niche Websites

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Brian

Making money with Google AdSense can be an excellent source of income for your site. I tested a generic site using Google AdSense and a niche site to determine which is more profitable.

The benefits of implementing Google AdSense is the fact that it is:

easy to sign up,
does not require a minimum amount of traffic
to your site,
you can place multiple advertising units on the same page, and
you can begin earning quickly and effortlessly.

Many factors can determine how much you earn, such as:

placement of the ads on your site and pages,
average revenue per click, and
relevance of the advertisement to your content and to your visitor

The average revenue per click depends on two main items, your content and the associated ads. If your site is focused on life insurance and another site is focused on cellular phones, then the ads placed on the sites will reflect life insurance and cellular phones respectively. Google matches your content with their advertisements. You can only attempt to control the type ads on a page with the content on the page. Therefore the ads will match your subject matter. By the way, you can always obtain utilize seo services to rank well and the average cost per click will be averaged over the cost of the services and over time will probably pay off.

The average revenue per click will depend on the worth of the keywords that are being bid on by advertisers. How words obtain different prices from advertisers depends on multiple factors and is a subject for another story. Typically if those selling life insurance products and services make more per sale (assuming equal click through and conversion rates) than those selling mobile phones then the site with life insurance content will make more revenue per click.

Test of Generic and Niche Site Content Revenue

I created a site due to my passion for Venture Capital and those that are funded, called Venture Capital Update and implemented Google AdSense. This is a niche site focused on Venture Capital fundings, Venture Capital firms, and entrepreneurs.

This site Longest.com is more of a generic site. While the focus is on learning what does and does not work in the realm of making money online, the stories and subjects can vary greatly.

Here are the results after 2 months of running Google AdSense on both sites.

Venture Capital Update

Venture Capital Update

.68% Click Thru Rate
$2.83 eCPM

Longest Screen Shot
Longest.com

.17% Click Thru Rate
$.36 eCPM

The implementation of Google AdSense was as close to exact on both sites as possible. The eCPM is an effective cost per thousand, meaning for every 1,000 pages the ads appeared on that is the amount earned on average. Above you can see that the click thru rate was better on the Venture Captital Update site and the earnings per page denoted by eCPM were also higher. The earnings per page are a factor of both the price bid on keywords that match your pages content as well as the click thru rate, the more that click per 1,000 pages the more revenue you will earn.

The conlusion here is twofold, the higher click thru rates denote advertisements were more targeted to the content and site visitor on the niche site of Venture Capital Update. It may also be the case that the keyword prices that were bid on related to the niche site were higher as well. As this test is not perfect, it was over a period of 2 months and the difference in revenue was large as the niche site earned much more. If you wish to optimize your Google AdSense earnings I suggest you create a niche site as I did for Venture Capital.

Click below to sign up with Google AdSense:

Make Money with LinkWorth

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Brian

LinkWorth provides advertising for your site. You can sign up as a partner and generate revenue from your site. There are many many ways to make money with LinkWorth.

There are services that provide one of the following products, selling text links, paid blog reviews and more but I have yet to find one that provides all of these products.

Their products consist of text link ads, paid blog reviews, in-text links, in-content pay per click ads, rotating text ads, hosted content pages, article submission, directory submission and many more.

You can sign up for free here at LinkWorth.

What is nice about LinkWorh is that you can utilize many of their products to increase your revenue faster. As with all services have a minimum amount you must earn before paying out, you are more likely to reach that payout threshold must faster.

Publisher Benefits

Sell ads and monetize your site with relatively little maintenance
Earn up to 70% of ad revenue recurring monthly in most situations
Get paid to blog and write reviews for products & services
Tons of advertisers, from Fortune 500 to small businesses
The more websites you list, the more money you earn
Manage all of your published ads and websites with our Control Center

You can sign up for free here at LinkWorth.

Revenue from Blogging

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Brian

A program I am just now trying myself is the SponsoredReviews site and service. There is an excellent interface and review ordering system. Those that wish to post on your site ask you through their interface.

The individual that wants the review will list the topic and any specifics of their posting request. You can agree to accept the post request or not. You are paid for your post and both parties benefit.

Take a look at the Sponsored Reviews site to sign up as a Publisher and list your site information.

Make Money with ClickBank Promoting Publishers

Posted on November 17, 2007 by Brian

ClickBank is an affiliate program that allows you to either sell your own products or promote others. I will discuss selling others products in this how to article.

ClickBank focuses mainly on information products and an easy way for individuals and small businesses to sell their products. These sellers rely on you and others to promote their products. Because of this they offer large commissions, some as high as 75%.

There is an excellent and easy to use tracking system through basic URLs. ClickBank claims over 100,000 affiliates, with over 10,000 products to sell.

It is easy to get started, simply sign up as an affiliate here. Then find products you may want to promote, and a unique link (called a hoplink) is created for you to promote.

As an example, here is what you see within ClickBank:

ClickBank

A unique link is created for you that looks like this: http://longest.tmlcom.hop.clickbank.net/, which you can then cut and paste the into your web page. And they also give you code to create a link such as this: Click Here!

Calculate Commissions
Here is how they calculate commissions, if you are promoting a product that offers a 55% commission:

Retail Price: $29.95
Subtract 7.5% + $1 -$3.25
Net Sale Amount: $26.70
55% of the Remainder: $14.69

Therefore, as the referring affiliate for this sale, you would earn $14.69.

Tracking Code
They also have the ability to let you track all your efforts to promote any one product. For example, by using their TID variable you can track a link you place on page X and a link you place on page Y to see which may have a better conversion ratio.

This tracking code is implemented throughout the ClickBank system as “TID” or “tid”. The format of the hoplink URL with a tracking code is located below.

http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net?tid=XXXXXXXX

Make money with Pictures AdBrite’s BritePic

Posted on October 6, 2007 by Brian

AdBrite’s BritePic allows you to make money with your pictures. You simply use their code for each picture and AdBrite places text advertising around the picture. Clicks earn you money. Your pictures do not take up any more space than they normally would.

Some of the features of BritePic are:

Link to this image
Embed this image (you still get the ad revenue, even if your pic is embedded elsewhere)
Zoom in and out (see demo)
Captions that slide out when you hover over the pic
Link the image to another URL
Subscribe to RSS

Here is an example of a picture I took and the BritePic ads:

Tech Coupons

Technology Deals, Coupons and Promo Codes

Tag Archives: revenue