Cut back on expenses, start spending money more wisely, but a big piece of living through a recession is learning to seize this opportunity, through online affiliate marketing.

You can easily make an additional $1,000 per month, all in your spare time.

Local Affiliate Marketing

Businesses are looking to retain current clients, and cut back on any and all marketing expenses, because the most obvious area to cut back in any business is marketing. You don’t see a direct benefit, and hope you can continue to rely on the brand of the business and current customer workflow.

The beauty of online affiliate marketing, is its the answer to every businesses’ problem. They need new customers to survive, but only want to pay for customers, not impressions or exposures or sponsorships.

How Does It Work?

Online affiliate marketing is a simple transaction, and works like this:

- A local cosmetic dentist is looking for new clients. They have cut back on advertising in the local paper and on the radio, where they were spending thousands of dollars, and seeing returns months later

- A marketer like myself can offer these dentists the ability to pay for new client leads. I set up lead sites, like I have for Florida Loan Modifications that educate consumers, and collect contact information (a lead).

- The dentist then pays me for these leads, often $20 or more, and so the process begins

How To Get Started?

To get started with online affiliate marketing, it’s really quite easy. You just need to start a new site, and start writing stories. You can use iContact to collect names, and once you have a steady flow of new signups, start reaching out to local businesses and offer them your services.

So at $20 per lead, and 3 leads per day, that’s more than $1,000 per month, which isn’t bad for something you can easily do on your spare time.

A couple of the networks I highlighted in the last post have turned out to not be that good, so I’ll make sure to let you know the networks not to consider.

The Best CPM Ad Networks for 2009

They are our number one priority for advertising networks. You can select the campaigns you want to run, by previewing the ads beforehand and see the CPMs of the respective campaigns. The standard sizes they support are: 300×250, 728×90, 468×60, 120×600/160×600. They consistently deliver eCPMs in the $1 range, which is great, especially if you’re used to seeing crappy ads and eCPMs of $.11.

They were on our last list, and they continue to be old-reliable. They have an ad server you can use so you can deliver your other ads through their network. Their creative filtering is not as good as interCLICK, but their reports and analytics are much better, plus they have a great GUI. The CPMs we see from them are lower than interCLICK typically, at $1-2.

These guys were also on the last list. They’re a small operation that sells ads for their network, and they deliver great results. Their campaigns can get to the high $3+ CPMs when there is a campaign running and then drop down to $.50 CPM when they run through a contract. They don’t have nearly the inventory of an interCLICK or Tribal Fusion, so you should always run Technorati as a coffee filter, making them your first show ad.

I had been waiting to get on the ValueClick network, and so far it has paid off. They return somewhere in the $.50 eCPM for us, which isn’t as good as our top networks, but their ads are high-quality. The biggest thing you want to look for in a quality ad network are their advertisers. You don’t want any zwinkies, flashing ads, etc. We did have audio ads with these guys, so make sure you disable this through the creative prior to starting the campaign.

Runner-Up CPM Networks

Some of these networks can be hit or miss, or I haven’t had a chance to fully test them so I want to give you caution before you start running them. Be sure to go through these networks and disable any blinking, flashing, or otherwise annoying ads. They pay you very low CPMs and just piss off your users.

BannerConnect
PrecisionClick
BurstMedia
PubAccess

The key to increasing CTRs and delivering higher overall CPMs is generating compelling, interesting, and targeted advertising for the user.

Location plays a huge role in delivering relevant advertising, so how does it all work and how can publishers take advantage of it?

Why Knowing Where …Is Half The Battle

Tthe implicit assumption of most marketers is that more is always better, particularly when more means more data points about who’s browsing a Web site, what they’re doing there, and have done previously online. Sometimes, however, it can be more relevant to focus not on what consumers are doing — but on where they’re doing it from.

How Does Location-Based Targeting Work?

Basically providers go and map the infrastructure of Web servers set up all over the world and map where IP Addresses have been allocated. We’re talking about over two million addresses in the database. The data is constantly changing, because IP addresses are subject to enormous flux. Up to 10% of them can change every month and even more if a telecom company is acquired.

So, as an example, say a customer is searching for shoes. By using IP geo-location data to situate exactly where they are, a shoe retailer can localize its landing page for each incoming visitor. Another customer example is a newspaper which uses reader location to customize their news and ad content. If you log in from Massachusetts, you’ll get the Red Sox score first — not the Yankees score. And news, weather, and the store locations of advertisers can be localized based on where a particular person is logged in from.

This particular publisher has 60 DMAs they serve, from Boston to San Francisco. Not only can they geo-localize targeted content, but they are able to sell local advertising to national advertisers granularized by metro market.

We have an agency using geo-data to do promotional campaigns for a Lasik Eye Center that has multiple locations. Whenever someone comes to their Web site, they’ll get information relevant to their location. They’ll be referred to the centers nearest them for contact and also only see advertising that complies with the state laws applicable in their geographic location.

What’s In The Future For Location-Based?

Looking forward, another important area of application will be mapping Wi-Fi IP location by routing Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to triangulate precise location. This type of marketing would of course be permission-based. But as you can imagine, the potentials for customizing content based on the Starbucks location someone is connecting from can be enormously valuable not only to marketers but to consumers who get truly relevant information.

Taken from an interview on Mediapost with Kerry Kangstaff.

This constant battle causes huge headaches for publishers trying to sell out their inventory and for advertisers trying to avoid being over charged.

So after experimenting for a little more than 6 months with different metrics tools, I wanted to share with you what we’re using at Grooveshark.

Quantcast Traffic Reporting

So after wondering why our Compete rankings don’t look anything like our Google Analytics and internal awStats numbers, we finally stumbled upon Quantcast.

The best indication that Quantcast is providing us with quality tracking can be seen in the graphs below:

Google Analytics

Quantcast

In web trending, you don’t often see graphs that actually resemble one another.

Quantcast Uses a Plugin

So with Compete, they don’t use any sort of plugins or site monitoring on the actual publisher site, so their results can vary dramatically.

However, with Quanctast, you install the plugin on your site, giving Quantcast the best metrics available for any web reporting site.

Real Numbers for Advertisers

So for publishers, thanks to Quantcast, the numbers you quote advertisers can be backed up by their infrastructure, and the huge clients that use them including MTV, NBC, Fox Entertainment, BusinessWeek, Time, etc.

Best of all, Quantcast is free, so make sure to sign up and get your site Quantified.

Nearly 30% of online adults surveyed and said they will immediately leave a website they perceive as “cluttered with ads”, and 75% who stay on those sites say they pay less attention to the ads there.

So too many ads is bad for the publisher, the advertiser, and the visitor. So what is the right number of ads to run?

The Right Number of Ads

Though respondents accept that advertising will appear on websites, the majority (52.6%), say they have low tolerance for any more than two advertising units per page. Another 27.3% say they will tolerate only a single ad per web page, and slightly more than one-quarter (25.3%) will tolerate just two ads per page.

So looking at these numbers, you should be looking to run about 2 ads per page. Looking at this blog, we have a lot more than 2 ads running, and looking at TechCrunch, the #1 blog, they have about 20 ads at any given point.

Too Many Ads Decrease Overall Messaging

The survey also found that ad clutter has a negative impact on consumers’ perceptions of an advertiser’s products and services:

* One out of two (52.4%) respondents has a less favorable opinion of an advertiser when their advertising appears on a web page they perceive as cluttered.
* One-half (56.4%) of women claim clutter negatively impacts their opinion of an advertiser, versus 48.3% of men.
* Women also are more likely than men to abandon a site that appears cluttered (32.1% vs 27.5% of men).

Ad clutter’s negative impact on respondents’ opinions increases with age. Less than half (46.8%) of respondents 18-24 years were impacted negatively by clutter, but nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of respondents age 55+ were unfavorably impacted.

Some of the highlights of the report explain why CTR’s are so low on display inventory, but why that’s not necessarily a bad thing for advertisers.

Explaining Low CTRs in Display Ads

With display advertising:

It’s clear that display advertising, despite a lack of clicks, can have a significant positive impact on:
- Visitation to the advertiser’s Web site (lift of at least 46% over a four week period)
- The likelihood of consumers conducting a search query using the advertiser’s branded terms (a lift of at least 38% over a four week period)
- Consumers’ likelihood of buying the advertised brand online (an average 27% lift in online sales)
- Consumers’ likelihood of buying at the advertiser’s retail store (an average lift of 17%)

And despite the relatively low CTR rates on display ads, hovering around .1%, the CTR on search ads is only .2% or .4%, not entirely amazing. However, with display advertising, with the increased branding, you have a higher chance of making an impact on a user resulting in later search keywords or direct visits.

This can be a difficult sell for advertising clients, but it’s imperative for publishers to learn how to sell their space and provide the best marketing advice for their clients.

Do you have any tips for selling Internet advertising?

Only at the last 10 seconds of the spot do the mention JCPenney, and only at the bottom of the ad. I was actually sent this ad this morning, so perhaps the viral nature of this campaign will make it a success.

It’s well worth the 4 minute watch: let me know what you think in the comments.

So living in a college town, we’re used to getting numerous parking tickets, tickets for speeding on bikes, getting your car towed, and parking boots. At the University of Florida, if you rack up 6 or more parking tickets, they finally put a boot on your car.

So about a month ago, my girlfriend Stephanie and I were going to the pool on a Sunday morning to try and get some sun. So we stopped by Panera Bread, and as usual, the parking lot surrounded the place is swamped, so we parked in the Crispers parking lot. About 15 minutes later, we come out of Panera Bread to find a parking boot on our car and a nice 250lb man coming our way asking us, “cash or charge”.

Looking at the cars next to us, we can see that pretty much all of them had gone to Panera, and subsequently gotten a boot. Not wanting to give in and pay the $75, I decided to stake out the parking lot for the next 30 minutes, telling anyone who parked in the lot to get back in their cars and park someone else, because they’re going to get a ticket. So after saving about 5 people, and costing the “boot man” about $375, he calls the Police.

The Police were more than understanding of the ridiculous nature of the booting, and said the only remedy we as boot-owners had was to get a note from Crispers, Momo Yaki, TCBY (they were closed), stating we had the privilege of leaving the premises of their parking lot to walk to Panera Bread.

You see, the Crispers parking lot was virtually empty, with nobody wanting to eat sandwiches at 10am, so there didn’t make much sense in Cripsers trying to preserve their open spaces for more customers. The same customers that went to Panera Bread for breakfast, also go to eat at Crispers, it simply was the wrong time of day.

An Unhappy Customer Tells 10 People About Their Experience

So after talking to the Crispers manager for a good length of time, and explaining to him that I am going to tell 10 of my friends about getting a boot on my car, and they’re going to hear that you, as Crispers, were responsible for this, they will never come back to your restaurant. After about 15 minutes, I think he finally got the point, and I made him a proposition.

If I buy a gift card from him, he’ll write me a note saying that I can have permission to lave the premises, and hence the boot comes off. So I paid my $10 for a gift card, and instead of being insanely mad at Crispers, they are now my savior.

A Happy Customer Tells ..The Internet

So in this situation, Crispers was able to turn me around, and make me an even more loyal customer for them. They helped me fight the tow companies (who doesn’t hate them), and now I’m talking them up on my blog.

Do you have any unhappy customers? They are definitely going to speak on their unpleasant experiences dealing with you, however, if you put in the effort, and are able to provide a solution to their problems, they will be your best clients.

At Grooveshark, we have a number of users who fought us tooth and nail on all sorts of issues, who blogged all sorts of nasty things about us, and through great user-relations, and relationship building, are now some of our biggest advocates.

If you need an introduction on any of these networks, email me and let me know

Best CPM Ad Networks

Tribal Fusion
They have high-quality advertisers, and for us they deliver a $2 eCPM, which is really great. They require you have 2,000 unique visitors per day before being accepted.

Technorati Media
They deliver high-quality advertisers, along the lines of Tribal Fusion. An extension of the blog search engine. They have a premium advertising network, that is above this self-serve platform.

InterCLICK
One of the strongest ad networks on this list is InterCLICK. They have a large selection of Fortune 500 advertisers, of which you can screen all of the creative. The average CPM hovers around the $2 range, which is great.

BurstDirect
The self-serve market of BurstMedia, this is a great Fortune 500 advertising network. They deliver eCPMs for us around $1, and are among the top-tier like Tribal Fusion.

AdOn Network
Good network as your back-fill. Be careful, as they have a lot of flashing content, so you may need to disable it on the control panel.

Komli (India)
If you have traffic in India, this is the best network for you. They have a great fill %, and specialize content specifically for India-only traffic.

BannerConnect
Another great top-tier network that can deliver $1 eCPMs. You can run these guys as your first choice, and can get great quality from this network.

Underdog Media
These guys provide sub $.50 eCPMs and can send you some flashing, distracting ads, so you should use them with discretion, but they will provide you a fill for all of your remnant, remnant inventory.

TRAFFIQ
This isn’t actually an advertising network, but an advertising exchange. I wanted to include them because they are a great resource. You can sell advertising on your space, and easily get $1 CPMs, which can be used instead of relying on remnant ad networks like Underdog Media.

WidgetBucks
They started off with CPC only advertising, but have transitioned to a mixture of CPM/CPC. They are essentially a storefront in your ad unit, where they advertise certain goods and allow you to earn commission on any purchases.

Marimedia (International)
Just like Komli, this is an International ad network, but it is more than just India. You have to be careful to filter out all of the cursor and flashing ads, but they also have a good run of quality advertisers, probably around the $.50 eCPM.

Intergi
This is a high-quality ad network, but for video games and entertainment verticals only.

TLV Media Online
They are a new ad network that we are working with, and don’t have the same high-quality of advertisers as Tribal Fusion, but have a good set of lower advertisers. You have to ensure you enable manual control over the advertiser selection, and they can net you around a $.50 eCPM.

CaptainAd
This is actually a really cool ad network. They take all of the videos embedded on your site, and overlay a banner ad on the videos, so even if nobody plays the videos you have on the site, at least you’ll get impressions via this process. For video sites, this is one of the best ways to start monetizing your inventory, and they have a nice selection of display inventory as well.

First, some definitions. CPM networks pay you based on the number of impressions you show (cost per mili). So if you show 10,000 impressions per day, at a $5 CPM, you would net $50 (10*5).

For CPC, it is very simple. Everytime someone clicks on an ad you show, you get paid (cost per click). It is also known as PPC.

Best CPM Networks

What are the highest paying CPM networks? What about the ad networks with the best fill-rate and eCPMs (effective CPMs).

Tribal Fusion
This network has very high-quality advertisers and requires that all publishers be manually approved, and have traffic that exceeds 2,000 uniques per month. We’re receiving about a $2 eCPM from them, which is pretty good.

BannerConnect
BannerConnect has also been a pretty reliable source for our CPM traffic. We have been giving them remnant inventory, and they have been able to do a pretty good job with it. All of our traffic goes through Technorati, then Tribal Fusion, and then to Banner Connect, and BannerConnect is still able to deliver us around $1 eCPM.

Best CPC Networks

A lot of people that don’t have the traffic for CPM networks like to use CPC so that they can start generating some revenue while they build up the traffic needed for the 2,000 dailies that Tribal Fusion asks for.

AdStation
This has been one of the best CPC networks I’ve worked with, ranging from the bottom-barrel $.10 CPCs, AdStation is a welcome relief. We were seeing CPCs that averaged around $1, for certain offers. Beware, that you must be returning conversions for them, otherwise the system will drop your CPC significantly. These are one of the top CPC networks I recommend for anyone.

Google Adsense
I really hate to put such an obvious product on like Google’s Adsense, but it really is a great resource for CPC traffic. They do not do a good job with CPMs, and sometimes the display ads can be very poor. I recommend using them with text links, and to embed them into your site and make the advertisements appear as content, because their display inventory is rather poor. We actually are looking at eliminating them from our ad rotations.

What Are The Best CPM & CPC Ad Networks?

So experimentation is the name of the game. You should be looking up everysingle ad network and signing up for them, I have a list of all the networks we have an account with, and let me know if you need an introduction yourself to get the ball rolling:

Adroll
ROI Rocket
AdToll
Ad Brite
Google Adsense
linkshare
casale media
bidvertiser
AdOn Network
buysellads.com
Advertising.com
WidgetBucks
AdsDaq
AdConion
Burst direct / 247 real media
Adjug
Videoegg
Tribalfusion
Komli
Bannerconnect
Lookery
Underdog media
Widgetbucks
Marimedia
Integri
Interclick

Let us know in the comments your experience with the best ad networks are. I’m personally looking for a good network for this blog, since I’m not yet at the point where I have 2,000 daily uniques. Let me know your experience.