I provide a free "Tell a Friend about this page" script on my web site for others to use on their web sites. No programming knowledge is required. All the webmaster has to do is copy and paste the code onto their pages and change a few variables. All server side processing is on my server. The number of people who use this tool is increasing everyday and I am now starting to wonder if it would be possible to generate some income using this tool. I am not interested in charging webmaster for it's use, but would be interested in possibly selling ad space on the Tell A Friend page, in the email that is sent out, etc. Anyone have any ideas how I could market this, and what it's value may be? The traffic isn't targeted, really, since any web site can use the tool, so that will probably make it harder to find someone willing to buy ad space. Just looking to get some suggestions, ideas, etc. You can find a link to the script in my sig if you want to see it in action for yourself to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.
If you can customize that script you could add a small button 88x31 to the just below the "tell a friend" bit. Also in the emails like you mentioned have a sponsor message or top advert and bottom advert. Other sites do this when they offer their free scripts like bravenet.com, everyone.net and so on. Drew.
You could go the Co-reg way...give your users the opportunity to subscribe to sponsor newsletters while recommending ones site. I'm not sure about the payrate...i think it's about 0,30 $ /co-registration
What's the best way to market this, and how much traffic do you think I'd need before I could sell these links? I've never sold ads like this before and am not sure the best way to go about it. Right now I'm getting a little under 100 "tells" sent a day. Not sure I understand what you mean by Co-reg? Could you please explain?
I would suggest to keep it free and get automated backlinks from sites using it. You will need to modify the script a bit and add some riders about a link back. You can also use some link management software to make the tool conditional i.e. only if a link back exists the script can be used free. Abhilash _____________________________________ Free Web Tools for Webmasters
This is also a good idea. Since everything is served off of my server I could easily check for back links when a user comes from a particular URL. You think I should require a back link on every page they will use the script, or just one page per site? It would be easiest programming wise to require a back link on every URL they use the script on, and would benefit me a lot more. Thanks for the good idea!
On your website or on forums such as these you can sell the links.. If you are getting approx 100 a day so far then thats not too bad and if you sell them in amounts of say 1,000 ads = 1 ad per tell so at current approx 10 days Even if you only ask for say $1 I would consider that a good deal as the advertisers message is going directly to the end user and being a email advert more chance that people will click on the link if you include a description. Drew.
Not a bad idea, I guess, if there is an interest. Guess I could post an auction in the "Link Sales" forum and see where it went. Wouldn't hurt, right? Don't know if it's worth my time to persue, though, for a couple dollars a month, haha. Might be best to wait until I have more traffic.
Think I could use the co-op network to get more traffic, and then place those ads on the tell page for now?
Click on the "User CP" link at the top left hand corner and all your rep. will be listed there in a table.