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Why are you sending your site visitors away?
It happened again today… someone with a brand new website
asked for a critique and some of the first things to catch my attention
on her home page are several invitations for me to visit other websites.
The website owner would probably have been paid and few
cents if I had visited some of the sites, and if I purchased from another,
she would likely have received a few dollars.
But is it worth it?
The invitations to the other sites came in the form of
contextual ads and an affiliate banner. More and more website owners
are adding such links to make sure they make money from their site.
There’s nothing wrong with these types of revenue generating programs,
but if you are selling your own product or service, you should be
promoting yourself first.
Just in case you aren’t familiar with the term, contextual
ads are those short text ads in the right margins or tucked among the
informational content of many of the websites you visit. The delivery
system determines which ads to display based on the keywords on the
page, so that the ads should be for products and services that might
be of interest to someone who would be reading that page. Additionally,
ads distributed by a search engine company may also be delivered on
search results pages based on the keywords entered for the search.
Webmasters place a bit of code on their site where they’d
like the advertisements displayed and are paid for each click on the
ads. The amount paid to the “publisher” for each click is determined
by the amount the advertiser pays to the ad company.
For informational sites or membership sites contextual
ads can provide an excellent source of income. And there may even be
a place for them on your sales site, but you need to make sure they
aren’t whisking away your visitors before they even have a chance to
find out what you’re selling.
Remember, the contextual ads are served based on the keywords
on your page. So assuming your most valued keywords are present on your
home page, you’ll be serving ads for products and services that directly
compete with your own. While some programs such as Google AdSense allow
you to exclude competing sites by URL, you’d have to spend a great deal
of time monitoring the ads and making exclusions to keep from promoting
competitors.
An affiliate program pays a commission to a website owner
for sales generated through a special link placed on the their website.
Because you have complete control over which affiliate links you display,
you can select complimentary instead of competitive companies. Still,
you want to be careful not to make your affiliate promotions more enticing
than your own.
Tips to help you strike a balance between selling your
own products and promoting others
1 – Don’t place contextual ads and affiliate links above
your home page introduction and mailing list subscription invitation.
You want to capture your visitors’ attention and contact information
before they click off to another site.
2 – Don’t place ads on your product catalog pages. Keep
the focus entirely on selling your products.
3 – Use affiliate links as recommendations after someone
has purchased from you. You can make recommendations for other products
and services on your thank you page or in the confirmation email. (Check
the guidelines for contextual ads – some companies don’t allow the ads
to be placed on thank you pages.)
4 – Use contextual ads and affiliate links in articles
and on your blog.
5 - Write product reviews and recommendations and place
your affiliate links and contextual ads in the content.
Most importantly…..decide on the purpose of your website
and stick to it. If you build a site to sell your own products and
services, make sure that’s your focus and what grabs your visitors’
attention on your home page and all of your sales pages. It’s certainly
worthwhile to include additional income sources like contextual ads
and affiliate links, but if you aren’t making money selling your own
products, you should fix that problem first. Take care of your primary
goal and make the other income sources secondary.
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Visit Linda Stacy Recommends for tips
and resources on starting a blog and filling it with great content.
Article reprinted with permission from adayspecialties.com.
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This article is available for reprint as long as the entire
resource box is included and all the additional terms and conditions listed
to the left on this page are met.
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