CLKeenan

i.e. not arbitrage/email/ppc>affiliate/etc?

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illusion

I try to by myself, but can never keep concentration like with a partner.

sleepylee

Me. I do.

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Laura

That's definitely more my focus.

Laura

photoads

Tthats all I run - long term popular content sites ...

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CLKeenan

Ok, good so I'm not alone

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Laura

Not at all.

CLKeenan

So what type of advertising do you run on your content sites? CPM? CPC? CPA?

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sleepylee

Depends on the site. There is no silver bullet.

Depends on the offers available for that niche, the demographics I'm aiming at, my visitors, and quite simply just what I have tested and works. I've got all three running and working quite well, but I know for a fact that if I swapped them over they would perform really very horribly.

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Laura

A little of everything... Banner ads (CPM), IntelliTXT (CPM), Adsense (fill), affiliate shopping coupons (paid percentage of total), comparison shopping feeds (paid per click), a new contextual advertising thingy that better understands semantics and serves more content-based advertising (to better relate to forum content - CPM), etc.

I think I have tried just about everything and I am always looking for ways to provide more relevant advertising that serves some purpose for users. Not always easy, though.

Laura

CLKeenan

Oh trust me I know I've been advertising on content sites for over 3 years now

I'm just checking to see what some of the methods are people are using for their content sites.

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Laura

So what are *you* using?

CLKeenan

In the past I had only run a CPM chain (Tribal Fusion, Burst, Valueclick, Casale, etc) as well as Adsense. Now I am still doing a chain but I have Gorilla Nation representing my website and bringing in some premium advertisers who are paying mid $x CPM for most campaigns. In the fall when school starts back up, they are planning on selling some custom campaigns (branded micro-sites, homepage takeovers, sponsored promotional contests, etc).

I talk to my account rep on AIM (or phone if its important) a few times a week and he's giving me input on my sites redesign and business plan for a new site I'm working on.

My income also shot up back to what I was used to earning with Tribal Fusion in their glory days (late 2004-early 2005) and then some - so I'm very happy

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Laura

That made a big difference in our banner income - we do something similar being represented by NetShelter. That's just one income stream, but having a company selling our site specifically has dramatically increased CPM rates over Tribal (which we do use in our chain).

So you only run banner ads?

Laura

Blastyourass

Very interesting and this is really the key to long term stability in internet marketing is legit conent sites built for the long term. I think many of the super affiliates know this and have been doing it for sometime but they aren't really sharing that with us. I feel there is still so much opportunity to capture some niches and make great money in the future once you get high in the serp's.

90% of my efforts are for the long term with contents sites. I feel that they will act much like real estate does in the offline world and produce a semi-passive income in the future.

Please tell us more about Gorilla Nation and other monetizing efforts you are using. I haven't heard of them? What are they doing for you?

I'm specializing in travel and niche mortgages. My ultimate goals with these is to be a direct affiliate with strategic companies where I control 100% of the lead capture and delivery, thus making sure I am in 100% control of my income. Plus I think adsense will play the biggest role for me and act like a renter would in my home and bring me in passive income with some low maintanace.

I would love to hear more about this and your experiences and I'm sure it would help Noob's to understand that this is what they should put more focus on then selling e-books or ringtones.

smash

I have one that I've put quite a bit of work and time into. I've written over 50 articles for it, some into a couple thousand words. Very nice content. I get the most traffic to it from all of my sites. I've paid for backlins, I'm linked to. I rank #3 in Google for it, right behind the manufacturers of the product. And guess what? It produces no money. Any advertising I put up always has a minimum of 2% or more click through, but no one buys.

My stupid MFA site makes more from natural searches.

Blastyourass

The prob is your right behind the manufacturer and you'll probally never break #1. It's like selling dell computers with a #3 site and dell is #1 and 2. Your fucked.

What I do is study the competition and rankings and see if I can crack #1 eventually. I look for high volume seraches where #1 in google has a low PR and is not a wiki page, amazon, etc. where you will never crack it.

CLKeenan

You can find out more about them here: Gorilla Nation

They are extremely selective in who they accept to represent. They do require that they control all of your banner advertising but you can default to your chain through them. So I have my chain setup GN->TF->Burst->ValueClick->CPA Offers (hardly any impressions make it this far).

You need to have a lot of targeted traffic and high quality content in order for you to be considered. It also helps to know someone who is already a publisher of theirs (I know the owner of Student.com and he put in a good word for me which got me in touch with the VP of BizDev @ GN).

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sleepylee

Smash - that's interesting. I suspect (without knowing more), that your niche isn't great.

What I tend to do is to check that kind of thing out before hand with a sub-par "semi-spam" site. Get some links into that and see how the traffic does - you should be turning a profit within a month or so and if you're willing to gamble a little with extrapolating your data and results, you can see whether it's going to be worth your effort in the long term. You can usually see quite quickly whether your visitors are the type that like ads / offers.

Not 100% effective, but it gives you some idea before you go charging in, all guns blazing.

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spyderman4g63

I do. It is starting to pick up.

Blastyourass

thanks CLK. I'm not there yet with my sites but its nice to know about this and well worth spending some time in here today. When I think I'm there I'l PM you and you can check it out and maybe give a good word.

Its little tidbits like this that make this forum so fucken valuable.

Peace!

Laura

Rather than trying to rank for the manufacturer, go for what they aren't.

Rank for reviews about the manufacturer and its individual products.

Create info videos or tutorials about the product. Actually buy the product and create a photo gallery of images that you can't find anywhere else.

Do case studies about the product and how its used.

Rank for words relating to that product. So instead of trying to rank for a skateboard brand name (for example), rank for the names of tricks.

If I were researching to buy a product (and you want the people who are really considering buying), I would do things like look for reviews, case studies, pictures, etc. Provide the material that possible buyers are looking for, make it unique so that 'enthusiasts' in the niche will want to link to you (in a natural way), then simply give those possible buyers a way to actually make the purchase once they are on your site.

If I want to buy a Dell, and I type in "dell," chance are that I want to find Dell.com. BUT, if I think I want a Dell, I am going to add some more to that search to find more information. For that reason, I think that it's far more important to rank for more long tail phrasing than it is to rank for the manufacturer's name.

Laura

CLKeenan

Sure thing, just let me know I'll keep you updated on my experience with them. I've only been with them for a few months now and the first month was very disappointing but that was just because they didnt have any campaigns sold to my site. The 2nd month was amazing I got some kick ass campaigns that really targeted my users well.

I haven't gotten any crazy cool branded campaigns for my site but thats my fault. I didn't get on board with GN early enough in the year to arrange for one (these things take lots of time to plan, pitch, and put out) and now with the school year over, my traffic is dropping down to like 1/10 of what it usually is.

So in the off season I've been working with Don (my account manager) to come out with a bang once the school year is starting back up

I have some powerpoint presentations that show some of the integration opportunities they have done in the past. If you are a well known/respected member, I will PM them to you.

-Chris

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pig2cat

I have a 'TV' content site, getting 25k uniques a month from google..
but i run clicksor and amazon on it, it pays kinda crap... I'm hoping to get accepted into CPXinteractive, applied a few days ago

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CLKeenan

content as in illegal streams or like blog on whats going on in the episodes?

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Blastyourass

I agree Laura. Longtail words are great but don't forget the the short tail. Great advice for sure.

I just would never build a content site about manufactured products and tangible goods. I build them around what needs are not being met by internet searchers in Google and lets face it 70% of them still type in one word searches when they start that search. If I see a 1-2 word search with really no competition and I can see where they want to go by reviewing the long tail versions then I have a great adsense site to target the top 3.

So my goal is when they type in a 2 word search is to be at #1 and my site will have the content and ads to take them to the 3-5 longtail and I get paid for fullfilling that need for them and google. Thats what Google wants so they get revenue on ads before the searcher finds what they want in the naturalserps. We get paid, google gets paid, the searcher finds what he wants and everyone is happy.

Did I go off topic? Too much coffee sorry

Blastyourass

Cool Chris! Yes get some branded shit in there. Thats what peeps want. You'll figure something good, just keep at it!

Keep us posted and thanks again!

CLKeenan

I did a print screen of the powerpoint slide that I think has the coolest integration:

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CLKeenan

here's another one:

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Blastyourass

OK, I see. They are doing what you would see on TV. Slick Website commercials.

Really appealing to consumers because thats what they see on TV. Now I see why they can be very effective! Cool, I'm very ineterested.

I would really keep peeps up to date Chris. Good info. Let me know how it develops later.

Peace!

pfgannon

CLK, thats some damn cool ad placement.
Makes me kinda wanna go back to content sites.

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BeefyChong

I run my own content website, got about 700-900 unique visitors a day.

Reefer420

Damn- this thread is one of the reasons why I can't stay away from this site for more than a few hours at a time...great info!

What is a CPM chain? Could you explain to this noob a little more about how that works (I know what CPM is, does the chain just refer to a number of ads from those networks displayed on your site?). How are these ads inserted into your site- is it just like the typical affiliate offer ads?

Also- do any of you run affiliate programs on your sites as banner ads? I'm launching a new content site soon which I have a banner admin section - so I can input banners linking to affiliate offers that would be relevant to the users on my site. I would be very interested in adding in CPM ads though!

Thanks!

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CLKeenan

A chain is simply defaulting the impressions one network can't fill to another network. You usually do this from your highest paying network to your lowest paying network.

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Laura

1. Most people use something like Openads - Home to manage their ad serving. It's free and pretty easy to use. You create zones on your site (which are just spots for ads) and then load up either your banners, or work out invocation for outside networks. This is where you decide what has priority and when to serve what.

2. It's very, very rare that affiliate banner ads do anything as far as conversions. You will likely just be taking up space that could be earning money through CPM advertising. By all means, try it, but I don't know anyone who prefers banner ads (which people rarely interact with - they are more for branding/presence) over text-based ads - either contextually or otherwise.

I answered your PM, too.

Laura

Icecube

I do, but creating content for those sites takes a lot of time
I mostly run adsense on them and CPM

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John

All I do now is run content sites.

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smash

I don't have a problem getting people to click. I run CJ, Auctions Ads and another ad. Each is rock solid in 2-5% click throughs, meaning on any given day 6-15% of my traffic is clicking out (I understand I could narrow the high number down further by some analysis but I like it better). The problem is that the only ones that seam to pay are CPM, not CPA. Damn cheap people!!! And I'm number 1 for quite a few long tail searches.

BlondeTM

I have a content site. I've owned it for about 6 years (with a one year break that two other people took over a few years ago) and took on a partner a year and a half ago, but have only developed the content part of it over the last two years. It was previously just a forum.

We have CPM as our main source of revenue (Gorilla Nation, Tribal Fusion, Burst and Casale as lowest on the chain). Gorilla Nation does well, but Burst has outperformed them as far as getting me great paying specialized campaigns. We have a Wal-Mart roadblock with them through the end of next month, which has been our biggest campaign with any network. Burst works just as hard as GNM in my opinion.

We also monetize with adsense (incremental income, nothing big) and affiliate marketing. We're ramping up affiliate marketing, smaxor was a HUGE help with that (who says black hat guys are badasses?). He really gave me some incredible ideas about how to monetize our users. My partner and I have also both learned an incredible amount here. Hopefully we'll be balancing out our revenue more.

Over the past two years, I've worked almost every single day at least 6 hours a day. It has been extremely frustrating at times, and I've been thisclose to burnout more than once. I can't imagine not doing it though, a content site has it's share of headaches but has an amazing amount of opportuinity also.

Blastyourass

I have been wanting to do a forum for my one of my content sites and was wondering if this is your only source of income or a side job? Second how is it running a forum and is it monetizable (meaning worth the work)?

I noticed you do have activity there and your site is very polished and professional. My fiancee actually liked it (new parents) so that was cool.

BlondeTM

Thanks BYA, I appreciate it!

I do this full time now. I don't involve myself in the forums any longer, I have an admin that does it. She runs the show there and does a great job. When you're combining business with community, it can blow up (and it did). Communities are people, and they don't want to feel like a customer. They don't want to feel like they are dollar signs. Running the forum was a huge time suck for me, and I couldn't do that and concentrate on making money. This arrangement works out well, I concentrate on the business end of it, and the forum runs itself.

My forum is a debate forum, mostly women so it was very very high maintenance. Depending on the type of forum you have, it may not be. I did have to learn vbulletin inside and out, and I do all the tech work for the forums. If you do decide to do one, just yell if you need any tech advice. Vbulletin is pretty cool.

BlondeTM

I forgot to answer the monetizing question....

I didn't start really making an income until I started developing the content. Forums can be difficult to monetize. My CPM advertisers didn't want to be in the forums, because you can rip through 100 ads per user without the user clicking on anything. Users tune out ads on forums.

We did try CPA, but forums users tend to be there for community...not to be sold to. Forums are a great way to retain users, but as a source of income they are marginal at best. They require a lot of work, and when I put that time into the content part of the site, I quadruple my return.

Laura

Two things for ya, Moe. This will save you a lot of heartache later.

1. Only add a forum if you know people are dying for one. You don't want to babysit and incubate it because, and BlondeTM says, the return for that work won't be worth it. If you didn't already have a content site, I would suggest only starting with a blog - with expert guest posters from the niche even - and once you start getting 20-30 comments per post, you have the starting of a seedling community. But since you already have a site, I would say that you are the best judge of the traffic and amount of interactivity with readers.

2. Keep the focus on your content site. Advertisers don't always feel good about forums. They know that forum users are far less likely to click on ads (or even notice them), but also many have concerns about their brand showing up next a post about somebody hating their brand. One thing we are working on changing on our site is taking forum content out of the forum to create more static pages (well really, they will just *look* more static). (If you didn't already have a content site, I would have said to only have the forum as an aside - not as the main focus.)

You CAN monetize forums, but you will work harder for that money. Is your content site product or brand-based? That will help you tremendously!

Hope that helps,

Laura

comatose

Im moving more and more towards the big content authority site model using LSI principles.
I want long term stability.. I still run mini sites and experiments here and there but big content sites (2 or 3) are my long term goal.

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am1r

How would you apply LSI principles?

topshelf

Long term.. oh yeah!

My most popular site passed 10mil hits since it's creation in 2004 and I've never looked back. Got about 60 sites now and normally create a new one each week.

I call them little gum ball machines that you don't have to refill

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comatose

By using tools other than your run of the mill keyword tools.
And by performing a little more in depth market research than what one might normally do.

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am1r

Sorry, I don't understand. What advantages do you get from 'using' LSI in a site?

Blastyourass

Thanks so much Blonde. I really appreciate your posts and help that you give here and to everyone. I take it all in and it helps so much in my determing what I will do.

You and Laura have solid advice and experience in this realm so I take very word and hold on to it!

Blastyourass

Thanks soooooo much Laura for taking the time her to help!

My site is a content site, branding a service and name in a niche industry. I think the blog idea is great to form as a catilyst for a forum for maybe later.
But peope are dying for one because they need help desparately but there is no one helpig them. Just taking and abusing their needs by gouging them and screwing them.

I was hoping to have an honest no BS forum to help them and in turn gain business from that help. We are talking one sale can be $3,000-$5,000 to me, so this is a whole different animal then the typical forum or advertsing. I would be the backer and advertiser. And the time I put in would be rewarding if they turn into sales. Its not like I'm hoping to make $1 a click.

Now that you see what I'm doing and the potential ROI what advice can you ladies give me on that?

Everything helps Laura. What you and Blonde are telling me, I shoulds pay a consultation fee for but shit thats whay were here to help