| By Jeff Baker | November 17, 2008
|
It is good to know who your target audience is for your website. That is where Web statistics comes in. It can tell you where your visitors are from, how they are finding your site and what time of day your website is getting the most traffic.
The following web stat services are free:
With StatCounter you can have an invisible web counter or a hit counter that tells users how many visitors you have received since a certain date.
Pros:
- Ease of use
- Keeps track of how many visitors are visiting your site every day.
- Can tell you how the last 100 visitors came to or found your site.
- Can tell you what state or country each visitor is from.
Cons:
- Only keeps statistics on the last 100 visitors to your website unless you pay for the service.
Google Analytics is a more powerful web statistics service but also a more confusing service. It does not include a hit counter, but has many options that you, as a webmaster can use to see who your audience is and what they are doing.
Pros:
- Free.
- Has charts and graphs.
- Keeps track of how many visitors are visiting your site every day.
- Can tell you how visitors found your site.
- Can tell you what state or country your visitors are from.
Cons:
- Somewhat difficult to use.
Here is a quick rundown of the affiliate advertising programs I have tried. This is how it works: You sign up with an affiliate program as a publisher. The affiliate program then gives you some code to put on your web page where you want their ads to be. There are generally two ways to make money:
PPC - Pay Per Click. With PPC you get paid a few pennies for each visitor that clicks on an advertisement from your web page. This is also sometimes called CPC (Cost Per Click).
PPA - Pay Per Action. With Pay Per Action you get paid, not when a visitor clicks on the ad, but when the visitor does an action such as: purchase something from the advertiser's website, sign-up for a newsletter, etc. You usually get paid a few dollars when the visitor completes the action. This is also sometimes referred to as CPA (Cost Per Action).
CPM - Cost Per 1,000 Impressions. With this type of advertising you place a banner ad on your website and the company pays you a certain amount for every 1,000 times the ad displays. It could be something like $4 for every 1,000 displays. So if you have 5,000 unique and "qualifying" visitors a day you would make about $20 a day at $4 CPM. This type of advertising could also include displaying pop-unders or pop-ups.
I have tried PPC, PPA and CPM affiliate programs. Here is a list of the programs I have tried and a rough estimate of the money I earned with the programs:
| Program | Website | Type | Money Earned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Adsense | PPC | Much more than enough to get a check every month* | |
| Yahoo Publisher Network | http://publisher.yahoo.com/ | PPC | Just barely enough to get a check every month* |
| Amazon Associates Program | http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join | PPA | Not enough to get a check every month* |
| Commission Junction, Befree | http://www.cj.com | PPA | $0 |
| Linkshare | http://www.linkshare.com/ | PPA | $0 |
| Fastadvert | http://www.fastadvert.com/ | CPM - $1 per 1000 banner impressions | $0 |
| Lightspeed Affiliate Program | http://affiliates.lightspeedresearch.com/ | PPA | $0 |
| Performics | http://www.performics.com/ | PPA | $0 |
* Generally to get a check sent to you from an affiliate program you have to earn at least $100.00. Sometimes it is less, maybe $50.00.
As you can see, none of the PPA (Pay Per Action) affiliate programs made any money except for Amazon's. Even then it wasn't enough. I believe that the reason for this is that most PPA affiliate tracking is not done correctly. I think that there were some purchases through my website on these programs, but for some reason they were not tracked. The tracking algorithms or processes they have in place may not work correctly. Also users may have on their computers programs that erase cookies, which would also make it impossible to track PPA.
I also joined http://www.bidvertiser.com. They are also a PPC program. I know I did not make any money through them, but I am not sure if I had their ads up for over a month, so it wasn't a fair trial. If anyone has any information on bidvertiser I would like to hear it.
There are three affiliate companies that denied my applications. They are Tribal Fusion, Casale Media and ValueClick Media. I hear that if you can get accepted by these companies as a publisher then there are BIG payouts. But they do not accept many applications.
Tribal Fusion has high CPM (Cost Per Thousand) rates. That means they pay publishers a certain dollar amount for every thousand times that a banner advertisement is displayed. Their FAQ claims that they pay "publishers 55% of all revenue we secure for your site."
Casale Media also uses CPM (Cost Per Thousand) impressions ads. Their Features & Benefits page claims that Casale Media "offers its publishers the industry's highest payouts - 70% - and works on a strictly CPM basis, making it that much easier for publishers to reach their profit goals."
ValueClick Media again uses CPM (Cost Per Thousand) impression ad
units. They include banners, pop-unders, rich media and video. They
claim to give you "expert tools to earn the highest payouts and
effective CPMs possible." They denied my application in December of 2005
and another application in December of 2007. My website apparently is not
good enough for their standards.
You can accept donations to your site throught PayPal Donate
or Amazon Honor System. Which is better? Paypal Donate
vs. Amazon Honor System:
At the time of this writing it is free to sign up for PayPal
Donate and there are no monthly fees. You are basically
charged 2.9% of the total amount of the donation plus .30 cents.
That means:
Donations
| Donation Amount | PayPal Takes | You get from PayPal |
|---|---|---|
| $1.00 | .33 cents (1 * 2.9% + .30) | .67 cents |
| $5.00 | .45 cents (5 * 2.9% + .30) | $4.55 |
| $10.00 | .59 cents (10 * 2.9% + .30) | $9.41 |
| $100.00 | $3.20 (100 * 2.9% + .30) | $96.80 |
For more information or to sign up go to: PayPal Donation Button.
For current prices go to PayPal Transaction Fees and Pricing Details. The PayPal website says these transaction prices are for US only. See International Payments.
At the time of this writing it is free to sign up for Amazon Honor System and there are no monthly fees. You are basically charged 2.9% of the total amount of the donation plus .30 cents. That means:
| Donation Amount | Amazon Takes | You get from Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| $1.00 | .33 cents (1 * 2.9% + .30) | .67 cents |
| $5.00 | .45 cents (5 * 2.9% + .30) | $4.55 |
| $10.00 | .59 cents (10 * 2.9% + .30) | $9.41 |
| $50.00 | $1.75 (50 * 2.9% + .30) | $48.25 |
For more information or to sign up go to: Amazon Honor System.
For current prices go to
Payment Fees. Amazon's website does not say if there are different fees for
US or International donations. However, according to the
FAQ they only accept
up to $50 for any individual transaction on the honor system.
Here we go. The most important way to make your website
popular is to have it indexed by search engines and directories.
So here I have a list of the most important website search
engines to be indexed in from top to bottom. After that I will
show you a list of the best sites that will submit your website
to multiple search engines at one time.
Tip: Many experts will tell you that you only need to submit
your main domain name to each search engine
(Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com) and then if you have a link from
there to all your other pages the search engine will index the
other pages by itself. However, I find it more effective to
submit each individual page that I want indexed in the search
engine (Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/page1.htm,
http://www.yourdomain.com/page2.htm) rather then waiting on the
search engine to index them.
Tip: I do not ever recommend paying websites money to have
your site submitted to search engines. That includes Yahoo's
pay for inclusion service.
Prospective clients in your area will most likely use
business directories online (such as online yellow pages)
to find a business in a specific category (i.e. auto repair,
carpet cleaning). Therefore, you will want to submit your
website to local business directories. There are usually
business directories that are sponsored by your local city
or county or other cities in the area. Find these and
submit your business website to them. You will also want
to submit your site to the following big business directories.
The following directories offer free listings and include multiple cities:
Do you write web pages with interesting content that are like
news articles? If so then you could make a simple article out of
your web page and submit it to article submission sites. What is
the benefit? At the end of the article you write a brief
About the Author section, describing yourself and
including a link to your website. This gives you traffic to
your website.
Remember, though, that with article submission sites, others
can take your article and put it on their website. But they are
not allowed to change your article and are supposed to keep
the "About the Author" section attached to the article also.
Here are what seem to be the most popular article submission
sites at this time:
Article
Submission
Sites
That
Allow
Images
I am including the following article submission sites
for one reason only: They allow you to have images in the
article. They are not very popular sites, but since they
allow images they can be very useful.
Once you have your RSS/XML file in place on your website you
will then want to submit your RSS Feed to a RSS Search site, that
way others will be able to find your feed when they are searching
on one of these popular sites. However, before submitting your
feed make sure it is accurately written by using the FEED Validator
website:
http://www.feedvalidator.org/
At the time of this writing, and
as far as I am aware, these are the 10 most popular RSS submission
sites:
To see the next 10 RSS Submission sites click the plus sign.
Submit Feed to Multiple Sites
And here are some RSS submission sites that will submit your
RSS feed to multiple RSS search engines at one time. In order
of popularity:
Press Release
If you have a new business, a new website, or are offering a
new service within your business then you will want to announce
it to the media. Here is a list of websites where you can
submit your press release. Most of the Press Release websites
offer a free service and a pay for service. The pay for service
usually includes having your press release submitted to more
news sites like Google News. However, I believe that making your
website popular can be done for free, so I only recommend using
the free services.
Press release websites in order of popularity:
Social Bookmarking Buttons
Personally I think all the social bookmarking sites, links and
buttons are getting out of hand. There needs to be one standard
bookmark button and it should automatically go to your preferred
bookmarking website or program.
But as it is now, if you want your website visitors to tell
others about your website you may want to add some social
bookmarking buttons to your website. I feel that you should just
add the most important social bookmark sites, so I will show you
the code to add a button for those bookmark sites here:
Submit Website to Search Engines and Directories
Submit Website to Multiple Engines and Directories at One Time
Submit to Bussiness Directories
Submit Articles
http://www.ezinearticles.com -
Rules -
Suggested Reading about use of HTML
Allowed: HTML Tags: bold, italics, underline, br,
pre, blockquote, XMP (to display HTML code), OL, UL.
Links: Total of 6 active anchor tag links.
(3 links you are affiliated with, and 3 links you are
not affiliated with.)
Not Allowed: HTML tags: paragraph tag,
javascript, images, font size or color, HR, H1, H2, H3.
http://www.goarticles.com/ -
Rules
Allowed: HTML Tags: They recommend that you
do not use any HTML Tags except for anchor tags for links.
http://www.articledashboard.com/ -
Rules
Allowed: HTML Tags: They do not mention any
rules on the use of HTML tags. Most articles have none.
But a few use line break, H1, and HTML character entities
such as • to display •
http://www.isnare.com/ -
Rules
Allowed: HTML Tags: They do not mention any rules
on the use of HTML tags. Most articles have none. But a few
use P, B, and BR.
http://www.articlecity.com/ -
Rules
URLs are allowed but
HTML codes are automatically stripped out.
http://www.weeno.com -
Rules
Allowed: HTML Tags: CENTER, B, I, TT, HR, TABLE,
colored text.
Not Allowed: Do not link to images outside of Weeno.
Instructions to submit the images to weeno.
Submit RSS Feeds
[+]
| Check which buttons you want on your site | Highlight and copy the contents of the textbox below |
|---|---|
If that is not enough for you then try these websites:
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User Comments
|
. Under
"Look in:" click on the drop down arrow and click on "Local
Disk (C:)", then click on each folder to get to the Internet
Explorer .exe file, usually Program Files ->
Internet Explorer -> iexplore.exe
(C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe).
to select
which browser you want to preview your HTML document in.