Budding Mompreneurs who choose to take the e-business route to financial gain can make good use of a myriad simple and automated advertising system, which take the leg work out of attracting paying advertisers to publish their banners and links on your site. Many of these systems can be up and running on your site in next to no time, and often require little technical know-how. Here, we outline some of the options available to you, and give some advice on how best to approach your automated advertising campaigns.
There are many different types of adverts available to Publishers, which vary in terms of appearance, function and pricing. Basic text ads are available in a wide range of block sizes and configurations, as well as full-size banners and interactive ads which use images and animation when rolled over with your mouse pointer. Dependant on your site design, there should be something which will blend into the aesthetics of your pages. In terms of pricing, most ad systems offer the classic PPC (Pay per click) or PPS (Pay per sale) method, whereby you are rewarded financially for sending potential customers to an advertisers site (PPC) or for sending a referral which results in the sale of a product or service (PPS).
Contextual advertising is the term used to describe automatic advertising systems that essentially “read” the information on your web pages, scanning the text for keywords, and displaying ads which are relevant to the subject matter. This is beneficial both to you as a Publisher and to the advertiser, as the person reading your page is more likely to be interested in products and services related to the subject he or she is already reading about. This means a higher click-through rate (the percentage of visitors who click on a contextual ad link).
Adsense and Adwords
One of the most popular contextual advertising systems is Google Adsense. After setting up an account with them, you simply retrieve a piece of code to insert into your website’s HTML. When viewed by visitors, the code retrieves appropriate ads to display in the format you have chosen; anything from a small, single-ad box to a tall, skyscraper-style block of multiple ad links. You can choose the text and background colors, as well as placing borders around the blocks. There are many published tips and hints on where to place your Adsense ads on your page, and which color schemes are most successful in bringing higher click-through rates. Try a few designs for yourself and see what works best for your site.
Chitika eMiniMalls
EMiniMalls provide a way of advertising products to your site visitors in an interactive, visually attractive way. The ads are automatically generated by software so they appear on a Web site next to an article or product review about the same or similar topic, in the same way that Adsense and other contextual systems work. If your page contains a review of a GPS system, the EMiniMall will display a similar product, with a link to buy that item. This system works best with reviews of products, as visitors will often be pre-conditioned to buy that product (unless it’s a bad review!).
Amazon Associates
Amazon provides a pay-per-sale system for referring sales of their books, DVD’s and other products from their site. After signing up for an Associates account, you choose the categories from which you would like to provide ads. This allows you to match Amazon products to your target audience. There are a range of attractive ad styles to choose from, and every time a purchase is made, a referral fee is paid into your account.
There are many “experts” out there with their own views on which contextual ad formats work best and create the most click-through success, but the following simple tips should give you a good start position, from which you can run a campaign and tweak your ad layout:
- Use text color which closely matches your site. This allows the ads to blend into the main content of your web pages, and give a professional impression to visitors.
- Use the classic blue for links. The success of using this color for links is well-documented. Users are familiar with blue hyperlinks, which are used in many office applications as well as on the Internet, and are more likely to click on them as a result.
- According to Google, a wider ad block is better because it holds more content and makes it easier to read the ads without the need to scroll down. The most effective sizes for click-through's are 326x280, 300x250 (inline rectangle) and 160x600 (wide skyscraper).
- Place your ad block in the top left of your web page. Human nature tells us to read from left to right and downwards, so this ensures that ads are seen early and often.
If you plan on running campaigns suing multiple advertising systems, it makes sense to keep a handle on which accounts you have set up, and on what sites and pages you are using them. Keep a spreadsheet handy, containing your account information and login credentials, and be sure to visit your account pages on a regular basis to review your campaign success. If revenue is falling, maybe you need to review your ad design and placement. Only by monitoring your accounts will this become apparent.
Automated advertising systems are great for getting started with a monetized site. Clearly the advertising model isn’t for everyone, and I wouldn’t recommend using extensive ads if you plan on retaining some business for your e-commerce site (after all, you don’t want people linking away before they make that purchase), but tools like contextual adverts are great for Bloggers and informational Publishers who want to generate income from their sites. These systems are free to sign up to, so experiment with them. You’ve nothing to lose.