DP is all you need

DP readers will find this amusing: The Infomercial Blogs. I can't say I agree with everything he says. The statement that "Every tip you see on [other sites] can be found on one site: Digital Point" must surely warm the cockles of Shawn's heart, but many of the things that appear here were written by the very people and sites he criticizes.

 

What's more surprising to me is the fact that he only made $2500 with all that exposure.

But then again PPC ads are starting to go the way of teh flashing banner. People are starting to ignore them. I dont care what anyone says, if you want clicks you damn near have to trick visitors into clicking them.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Does anyone know the name of the guy in the infomercial picture. I may be wrong, but I believe that guy was jailed for his last get rich quick scheme. I was watching a TV program about it, I think it was him.

Either way, one press release a 91 posts blog and $10/day adsense and he is now a marketing genius calling out himself and others as the likes of infomercials? I suppose any press is good press.

 

Heh. Linkbait if I've ever seen it. Nicely done.

btw, GeorgeB, I don't agree that you have to 'trick visitors into clicking on links' [sic]. Give them the right content and targeting of your site and the clicks come naturally. I do agree that the time will come when ad-blindness will come to affect the clickthroughs but this is something Google and other ad networks already know about, so I would think they will have something in the pipeline as a counter-measure.

 

its that crook who has the "what doctors don't want you to know" type books, i think

 

Actually I have learned all my actual skills from DP

 

Guess it also depends on your visitor type as well. Attracting a bunch of webmasters expecting to get adsense clicks is probably not a good idea.

Hope you're right about PPC networks making changes..

Problem with Google is the changes that really help are only made available to people making large gobs of cash already. Kinda equates to a tax break for the rich IMO. (please don't go off topic people, it's just an analogy...)

 

If you're using AdSense as your main income, you'll always be sadly underpaid. AdSense should be a stepping stone to better things. Let AdSense pay for your hosting costs and your software, don't expect it to pay for your bills and your vacations. A website/blog is going for sale soon (one of the biggest sales in blog history) by the guy at ensight.org. It gets over a million or two impressions per month but barely makes $2000.

Use AdSense until you can find permanent advertisers. If your site gets good traffic, you can get $60-$200 a week for placing a permanent ad for even a site with minimal traffic, if the traffic is quality. I've had offers for one of my blog for over $250 a week for a single ad, for a blog that only brings in about 6000 impressions a week (almost all are quality ones though).

Google only helps those who have succeed not because they make gobs of cash but because they've been around a long time. No one just appeared and made $1000 a month instantly -- it takes real time and care and focus. If you're not sticking with it for 2 years, why should Google help you?

 

Webmasters are probably the toughest audience to sell to. I've seen discussions where people refuse point blank to click on Adsense if they are on a webmaster-related site simply because they know the site owner will earn some money. I don't see the logic myself.

 

Rule #1: If you want to make money - don't build sites for webmasters.

(Trust me, pretty much any other market will make you more).

 

Let me Asimov you on that one:

Rule #0: Build sites for people who may actually buy something.

You can derive Rule #1 from that

 

You know, Eric, that goes to what Seth Godin talks about with Permission Marketing.

People should learn to just preach to the damned choir already, because they are the ones who will keep coming back to church.

Some people believe that if you "cherry pick" the people you market to, that's cheating, or too limiting. I say that's a load of hogwash.

It reminds me of the people who criticize low carb dieting by saying "It doesn't really work... you only lose weight because you are tricked into feeling fuller!"

Market with a laser, not a blunderbuss, and your efforts will be more lucrative.

</rant>

Sorry, I just went off. What were we discussing?

 

Let me tell you, when you have a blog targeting contextual ad publishers, they aren't really keen on clicking ads to help out someone else, lol. I was kind of surprised he called me out for being an infomercial, I think I am pretty far from it, and I sure am not selling anything. Not to mention my blog ran for over a year without any ads - and I only added ads because YPN did their pre-beta launch and I was allowed to show YPN but I was under NDA and couldn't *talk* about them.

I do link to DP fairly frequently on discussions when I blog, so people can discuss it in more detail, if they wish. But I guess he failed to notice the number of times I am the first to report something on my blog, and the discussion here tends to start with a link to my blog in the first post, lol.

My thoughts exactly when I saw it.

 

He raises some valid points I guess, but fails to add that these blogs actually organise information in such a way so as to make it digestable...

Signal to noise ratio on a forum (Especially this one) tends to be high at the best of times...

Not everyone wants to wade through the shit to find the really informative posts.

 

That's the key - organizing the info to people get access to what they want quickly. That's why I read the blogs I do.

BTW, the owner of that site is a member here at DP.

 

No reason to think that very targeted ads in niches sites won't perform very well. Why wouldn't they? Present a visitor interested in gizmatic 9000's with ads for gizmatic 9000 accessories and why wouldn't they click an ad to learn more?

My sites average 10% CTR. Maybe you need to change the kind of site you are creating.

 

Hey guys... it really wasn't link bait. And Jen, I only used your site because everyone knows about it.

I really did feel like I was trying to sell some some diet pills to a bunch of fat people. Like everyone said, our sites do organize information in a good way... but when I started getting emails like this, I started to understand the way my visitors were thinking:

"Eric, I am legally blind and I saw you on the news. I live on a very fixed income and there are not many ways for me to make extra money. I am not wanting to make millions, just a few hundred dollars a month to help my kids live a little better. I have started a blog here: XXXXXXXXXXX and would like your opinion. I am not very computer savvy, so please don't judge it on looks alone."

And that's just one.

Here is the problem, we fall into this circular way of thinking. Sometimes we forget that not everyone who reads our sites have been reading sites like DP for years. Even those of us that actually do make a living had to struggle along the way...

Regardless of what we say, the niche I fall into has this overtone that goes along with it. Call it an infomercial feeling, a get rich fast feeling, or whatever... it's there. If it wasn't there I wouldn't have blind ladies sending me emails like that.

Some sites truly believe what they write (I did for a while). I believe sites like Jensense are honestly trying to help people out. But when people start selling e-books, seminars, adding adsense, make things members only, etc... things have changed. It taints the water so to speak.

Every niche is allowed to make money, but not every niche affects people's lives the way mine does. I put hope into the hearts of desperate people. This alone was nothing bad... but I realized that I was updating my site with hopes of one day selling an e-book, or making more with referrals, or [fill in the blank]. My site had become "The Church of Blog Profits" and I was passing the collection plate.

It comes down to this; people will not make a lot with their blogs. No matter what we say, this is true. Why else would certain people I know exagerate about their profits. I know sites that claim to make $1000/day who really make about $70. They spread the word of "losing 100 pounds" when they really lost 5.

If sites want to review adsense, YPN, chitika, etc... that's fine. But it should come with a disclaimer:

"Warning: These programs will not make you rich. In fact, you will probably struggle to make enough for a nice dinner every month. This is more of a game than anything else."

In the end, I just got sick of giving people hope (even if I warned them first). A diet pill is a diet pill is a diet pill.

 

I'm sort of new to the game, what do you mean by impressions? Unique visitors, visitors, page views or what?

Trying to figure out what to charge for the advertising on my site now that I'm not using adsense anymore (involuntarily as it were )