Making $$$ Online - Part 3

By Steve Rosenbaum

In Part #1,  we warned you these things take time.
In Part #2,  we talked about Community and the importance of Community.

Now, we're going to get to the part that everyone wants to learn about:  Advertising. 

First,  if you haven't played with Google AdSense yet,  now'se the time.  With AdWords, it's credit card simple - so go and spend $20  and learn about how the system works - it will help you understand the AdSense side of the equasion when you go to put ads on your site.  It's good to know, at least in part, where they're coming from. It's self-serve, low cost, and you're off to the races.

We've used lots of ad networks here at Magnify.net, and I can tell you  - we haven't found any that perform better,  or do a better job of ad targeting than AdSense. If you don't have an AdSense account set up, do it right now.  It's worth the 10 minutes it takes.  I promise.

So, you've set up your AdSense account,  and if you've got a Magnify.net page - or a page from any service that lets you put ads on your pages,  you've got ads running. Ok, that's a good start. Now, how do you grow that business?

There are two kinds of ads you care about: Cost Per Action (CPA)  and Cost Per Click (CPC).   Those are different businesses. Cost Per Click are those Google text ads you see on the page. They're targeted,  but they only pay if someone clicks on them, and on the other side,  the advertiser only pays if a potential customer clicks.  Cost per action is going to pay you more money if somebody buys something - CPA ads work, and there are CPA ad networks out there that have a huge inventory of CPA campaigns that you can put on your site today.  This is particularly true if your site has nice traffic and you've organized your videos so that your the best collection of  car repair videos or mountain climbing or backpacking - whatever your specialty is.

Now,  not all CPA ads are created equal.  Each campaign has a different offer, and a different payout.  So,  for example,  Eastern Mountain Sports may be paying a 7% commission on all sales from your customers who click in and buy -  while other advertisers may look like they're paying more,  but then what you find is that the advertiser is dropping off your visitor on the product home page,  rather than to a shopping page or shopping cart,  making it a ton harder for you to get paid.

So,  CPA is really powerful - and since you probably know better than an algorithm what folks on your site might want to buy - and you can mix and match and update as seasons and products and tastes change.  So,  if you want to manage a CPA campaign,  there's real money in it  for you-  just takes some time to get the mix right.

Among the networks you may want to take a look at.

PepperjamNetwork.com

Last but not least,  if you're looking for the Holy Grail, it's probably not CPA or CPC.  You've watched Hulu, you've seen those pre-roll ads.  Yes,  they're a bit of a pain when they run :30 secs - but heck,  there's gold in them thar hills. So if you want to get pre-roll in front of your videos,  it's about volume.  You want to join a pre-roll network, but they're looking for quality videos and volume in order to take your traffic and put ads in the mix.

Here's the thing I want to stress.  If you work your butt off - and make as many videos as you can,  you're probably going to make 5 videos a week for your site.  Maybe you can make 10.  That's not enough to generate traffic and therefore pre-roll inventory.  And you can't run pre-roll in front of YouTube,  or Revver, or Blip or any of the other sites that allow you to discover and embed videos on your pages.

Which raised the BIG question. Are your visitors contributing video to your site?  If  they are,  you're building pre-roll inventory on the videos you make,  and the videos  your visitors contribute. If they aren't making video and uploading to you - why not?

Invite them to participate.  Do it right away.  Because the more people get comfortable with your site being a  mix of videos you make,  videos you aggregate and curate from across the web,  and videos that are submitted by your visitors that are pruned and curated by you - well,  that mix is going to generate SEO goodness,  pages,  and revenue.

Three kinds of advertising: Cost Per Click,  Cost Per Action,  and Pre-Roll.
Three kinds of video on your site:  Video you make (created),  video you gather and sort (curated),  and video you get from your visitors (contributed).

This is a magical combination -and now'se the time to jump in feet first!