EzineArticles any Good in 2012? A Case Study

Filed under Internet Marketing, SEO by on August 5, 2012 at 3:01 pm {8 comments}

EzineArticles any goodIs EzineArticles any good in 2012 and worth your time to publish there? For those who don’t know or have been in the online world for less than say a couple of years, EzineArticles was the best article directory out there. They have consistently maintained a higher quality of articles (than say a site like GoArticles that was popular at one point of time and almost dead now) and it was a good resource for people who wanted a quick, cursory research on a topic. The webmasters who published on EzineArticles knew that if they provide something of value, people will click on their links in the signature and they get highly targeted visitors. So is EzineArticles dead in 2012 now or does it still have life in it?

Why Publish for Free?

Historically, the primary benefits of EzineArticles was –

  • Backlinks for your site in the signature
  • Traffic to your site from highly targeted visitors

A lot of people especially in the SEO world looked primarily at the first benefit – that of link-building. Granted, EzineArticles homepage is a PR-6 (page rank 6) and it definitely helped you get a good link profile. However, the second aspect was and still is as important. Webmasters realized that it was easier to rank their EzineArticles pages than their own blogs, and they tried to funnel that traffic from the article to their websites.

This was a strategy that I had personally used and historically, I have had some really good quality traffic coming from EzineArticles to my blogs (granted, at times, I was really annoyed that my EzineArticles page ranked higher than a page about the same topic on my own blog).

Google Panda

And then Google Panda update happened. That almost killed article marketing and EzineArticles was one of the worst hit. A lot has been written and said about the death of EzineArticles and article marketing. However, I take a less dramatic approach. I’ll tell you when you should still use article marketing and when you shouldn’t.

Yes, the Google Panda update changed things. Hopefully for the better. This also means that genuinely good content might have been pushed down in the Google search engine rankings. Sites like EzineArticles weren’t deemed to provide enough quality content and the entire site suffered as a result.

Although Alexa rank isn’t the best judge of traffic, it can give a fair estimate. Before the Google Panda update, EzineArticles had a rank of under 100, which means according to Alexa, it was among the top 100 websites visited around the world. After the Panda, it ranks at 311 at the time of writing this. A rank in the 3 digits is still a highly respectable one.

Personal Experience – A Case Study

I have been using EzineArticles for several years now. My best performing article still manages to get over a 1000 visits a month in a very specific niche. However, I have definitely seen a drop in traffic to my articles and subsequently to my blog through EzineArticles.

Before the Google Panda update, I was able to rank highly and get good traffic from EzineArticles. After the Google Panda, here are the changes I noticed personally –

  • It is much harder to drive traffic from EzineArticles to my blog. This is because these articles rank lower in Google and also because overall, people visiting and searching for things within EzineArticles has probably decreased.
  • ‘Backlink juice’ is lower but still not terrible. Yes, backlinks from EzineArticles are still precious in the eyes of Google even though as much as before.

When I try to determine if EzineArticles is any good in 2012, I look at both traffic and backlinks. Both have decreased, but that still isn’t a reason to abandon this strategy completely. I would still recommend EzineArticles to new blogs to get backlinks and rank soon in Google.

The advantages of EzineArticles in 2012

  • The backlinks are still valuable! If you are a new blog and no one is linking to you, this is a great way to get some linking going.
  • Other blogs still borrow content from EzineArticles. This means if you publish an article, chances are, someone else picks it up and thus you get additional backlinks. Don’t count on the quality of these sites though.
  • You can still get decent traffic, especially for a new blog. When you are starting out, it isn’t terrible if you can get your first 10-20 visitors through a site like EzineArticles.
  • If you are a diamond member and write halfway decent articles, they should be accepted. It doesn’t take me more than 20-30 minutes to write and publish here, and it shouldn’t take you more either. For the effort that goes in, I think the results are worth it.
  • One strategy that I often follow is to publish a new post on my blog and write a related article on EzineArticles and get a link back to my blog in my signature.

Case Study

After the Panda, I tried to see how effective EzineArticles was in terms of helping me rank better in Google. Here is what I did –

Step-1: Publish a post on my blog, targeting a keyword that I want to rank high on.

Step-2: Measure its rank in Google. I used different computers just to be sure that I wasn’t affecting the results of my own blog. I saw this every day for a week, to make sure the rankings are stable for the short term at least.

At this stage, I have no backlinks to this newly created piece of content.

Step-3: Publish an article on EzineArticles with one link to my homepage and another to this newly created content. Wait for the article to be accepted and published on the site.

Step-4: Measure the rank for the particular keyword again.

Results:

  • For Keyword1, the rank went from 25 to 8. Not bad at all.
  • For Keyword2, the rank went from 15 to 6. Again, not too bad

This is why I think EzineArticles can still be good in 2012, considering the effort that is needed to publish there, versus the kinds of returns that you can expect. I wouldn’t write this off completely and is definitely still a powerful tool in your arsenal.

What has been your experience with EzineArticles before and after Google Panda?

Google Slaps Blog Networks … Hard!

Filed under Internet Marketing, SEO by on March 23, 2012 at 1:11 am {11 comments}

Google Slaps Blog NetworksBlog networks are being de-indexed by Google … hard and fast! Google always maintains it needs webmasters to follow all the ethical principles of ranking higher in search engines. Of course, it is hard to implement all of them, even by a giant like Google. This is why people have been using all sorts of methods to rank in higher. Remember for an internet marketer, the difference between the first and tenth position can be a few hundred thousand dollars, so there is a high incentive to use “black hat SEO” methods and the like. This isn’t a very good idea in the long run; after all, the bottom line of SEO is Quality Content. Links are a way for Google to identify quality content. If you try to deceive Google, there are consequences.

What are Paid Blog Networks?

For those who do not know, paid blog networks are a private network of blogs formed in a network only to build links to one another and to others who pay them, directly or indirectly. What this means is, you either pay a blog network to publish your article on their network (one of the blogs) or you indirectly pay by adding your own blog to the network so others and submit articles on it with a link back to their own website.

The problem with paid blog networks is that the only reason they exist is for back-links. They are not “natural” as Google would say. Even though it is private, Google the God knows everything. It is now beginning to de-index the sites.

Some of the blog networks are well-known names in the industry, like Build My Rank (BMR), Article Marketing Automation (AMA), Authority Link Network (ALN), Linkvana (LV), etc. If you have used these services before, you might notice a decrease in your overall Google ranking because you would have lost out on some backlinks now. Just hope Google doesn’t punish the users of blog networks too (harshly).

So What Happened?

Well, in simple words, Google found those out! Matt Cutts, the legendary inside-Google-SEO guy who does all the wizardry for search rankings and such updates, says blog networks are on his radar.

Google has already began de-indexing sites at BMR and ALN. Here is a discussion about ALN and was referenced by Matt Cutts in his tweet. BMR has posted the truth on their blog. It looks like the other networks are still safe, but no one knows for how long. Once Google is on to something, they can be pretty good with weeding out what they don’t like.

In the world of blog networks, de-indexing is part of the game. However, this is far more serious than the ones before.

If you are de-indexed by Google, you are essentially relegated to the netherworld of the internet, condemned to spend your time in obscurity without a soul in sight. That isn’t the best place for a site or blog to be, which is why it is never a good idea to be on the bad side of Google. Like it or not, they are the Gods in this game and you don’t want to displease them.

Looking Forward

For starters, don’t use paid blog networks for link building! Think about promotion methods that you can talk to Matt Cutts about over a cup of a coffee. Do you think you can tell him that you pay some shady network of blogs to get backlinks to your site so that Google thinks you are more popular than you actually are? If not, don’t do it.

The discussion between white-hat and black-hat SEO is a long one. Many people justify using black-hat methods on many grounds. However, you should remember it is hard to last and you shouldn’t use those for the long term.

The sad thing is, many webmasters are unaware of these methods and they go to the SEO companies for building their rankings. They don’t know what these companies do to get these ranks. This is one reason I am always suspicious of these SEO agencies. They have an incentive system that isn’t in line with yours. They want to get your site up the search engine rankings as fast as possible and take the money. You want to remain there for the long term. Ask Google about the difference!

Understand what good SEO is about and don’t make the big-G angry. Promote your blog but only through ethical methods. Or if you want to give something a try, don’t do it with your primary blog. It is hard to know which black-hat methods will be weeded out. Do you really want to take the chance though? Whether you deliberate engage in these practices or you are just a victim, unfortunately, Google isn’t likely to consider you on a special basis.

Have you used blog networks? Have you been affected? What are your thoughts on this issue?

Photo Credit: VerminInc

How to Increase Alexa Ranking: Unconventional Strategies

Filed under Internet Marketing by on December 21, 2011 at 3:35 am {954 comments}

How to Increase Alexa Ranking?

How to increase Alexa rankingI had asked this question a long time ago, when I thought and gave a lot of importance to Alexa ranking. However, I now realize that the real question that I should have asked is, Is Alexa Rank Relevant? And it turns out, that Alexa rank is a surprisingly poor indicator of your traffic. There are popular sites with hundreds of visitors a day with an Alexa rank of over a million while a lot of sites with a few visitors are ranked really well. Why is that?

To answer how to increase Alexa rank, you should first ask yourself how Alexa rank is calculated. Alexa ranking is supposed to rank websites based on traffic. The ultimate purpose of course is to give a traffic ranking to each and every website on the internet – an ambitious task. However, even if this can be done for the top say 10 million sites, that’s a great achievement. The problem is, it turns out that it isn’t as straightforward and the method employed by Alexa is flawed. If you want to improve your Alexa ranking, you should work your way through these flaws.

Learning About Alexa Ranking

  • Your Alexa rank is not an accurate indicator of traffic.
  • The traffic statistics are calculated based on the number of visitors who have installed Alexa toolbar to your site.
  • If you blog in a niche that doesn’t attract many people who would be interested in installing this, your ranking will be poor.
  • Domain traffic is added up, except in obvious cases like blogger or wordpress or typepad.
  • As a general rule, higher traffic would still result in higher Alexa ranking.

That being said, the Alexa ranking is still relevant for many webmasters.Here are some reasons why Alexa ranking is still relevant, when used in the right context.

How to Use Alexa Ranking

  • Show-off: This is especially true for attracting advertisers and selling yourself and your blog. It is a number, and people like numbers. If you have a good Alexa rank, it never hurts.
  • Compare Sites: You can still find some relevant use of Alexa ranking when you compare two sites in a very similar area and same niche. For example, if you want to know which among two photography sites that seem to cater to similar kinds of professionals is more popular, and you find that the Alexa ranking of one is far better than the other, chances are it is more popular.
  • Weed out Scams: I personally use Alexa ranking to quickly get an estimate of a site’s popularity. If you claim to be the #1 Furniture website in the United States and your Alexa ranking is 15 million, I will probably be suspicious.
  • Guesstimation: Alexa ranking can still be used to estimate traffic, popularity and relevance, especially if you have a fair idea about the traffic and rankings of other sites in the same area. It should always be taken with a pinch of salt, however.

Now that you know about Alexa rank and how it is calculated, here are 7 tips to help you improve your Alexa ranking

Secrets to Increase Alexa Ranking

  • Download the Alexa Toolbar: Duh! Well, this is definitely the first step. Download the Alexa toolbar. Like previously mentioned, Alexa calculates its website rankings based on the number of visitors who have installed the toolbar and have visited your website. Shouldn’t you be the first one to do so? You should, especially if you are starting out. It can help you quickly cross over from the big millions to the little millions in traffic ranking if you visit your website yourself, after installing the Alexa Toolbar.
  • Get Webmaster Targeted Traffic: I do not want to state the obvious – that you should increase traffic in general, so statistically speaking, you improve your Alexa ranking. However, there are certain niches that seem to have a higher probability of visitors with Alexa toolbar installed. These are usually webmasters, blog owners, etc. who want to monitor their own progress and also that of their competition. Therefore, you should try to get traffic from these sources, like visiting and posting useful information on relevant forums and leaving your link in the signature. This should get you more targeted traffic specially to improve your Alexa ranking.
  • Find Traffic Exchange Sites: Traffic exchange sites can be good for you, depending on which niche you operate in. I found Entrecard to be quite useful for my other blogs when I wanted to bump up their Alexa rankings. However, the bad news is, it can increase your bounce rate, especially if visitors are not very interested in what you have to offer. However, in my case, I was getting only a few visitors from Entrecard and had hundreds of other normal visitors but the ratio of people with Alexa toolbar from Entrecard seemed to be much higher.
  • Use the Redirection Trick: You can use a redirection trick to let Alexa know about your website even if the visitor doesn’t have a toolbar installed. For example, you can use a URL like http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?<your website domain> and this should redirect to your website, but through Alexa. I am not a huge fan of this because you don’t get direct backlinks, but this trick is especially handy if you want to mention your site in Alexa specific forums, discussion boards or leaving your URL behind during a review.
  • Buy Traffic: This of course involves paying money, but using pay-per-click type of advertising, you can drive relevant visitors to your blog. Of course this needs to fit in with the overall strategy of your blog. You might also consider advertising on popular webmaster blogs, so that the conversion ratio – percentage of people with Alexa toolbar installed is higher.
  • Ignore the Myths: There are several myths about Alexa ranking floating around the internet. One common myth that I always end up seeing is some blogger claiming that having an Alexa traffic widget installed on your blog helps improve your Alexa ranking. It doesn’t. You shouldn’t waste your time and effort in following all kinds of advice that isn’t even beneficial for the long-term traffic sustainability of your blog.
  • Traffic!: Of course, the main purpose of Alexa or any traffic rank is, well, traffic! You should concentrate on getting more traffic to your blog, which is the bottom line for any serious and successful blog or website. Remember that Alexa ranking is not the most important thing, ultimately it is just traffic. Alexa ranking is just an additional boost. Use Google approved methodologies for building a high quality long-term sustainable site.

If you have other tips to share, feel free to let me know in the comments.

5 Strategies for Business Through Internet

Filed under Internet Marketing, Make Money Online by on October 16, 2011 at 7:15 pm {7 comments}

Business Through InternetBusiness through internet can be a richly rewarding experience, both in terms of money and general satisfaction. Whether you are a total beginner or a small business looking to establish yourself in the online sphere, these business through internet strategies will prove to be very useful for you.

Business through internet is a rapidly growing market segment and rightly so. As more and more consumers move online in search of purchasing decisions, business has also moved, following the customers. The good thing is, the “little guy” has a lot of value online, so even if you are a complete beginner, you have hope for doing something significant and having an impact, if only in a small niche.

So the first question that I get asked a lot is what I want to answer right off the bat:

Question: Can I make enough money to quit my job?

Answer: Depends!

I can tell you this – if you follow the right strategies that I outline here and don’t fall for scams, you have a good hope of making a good passive income stream online. You should also remember that business through internet can be tough and is highly competitive so it really depends on how well you are able to perform and outsmart your competition by providing something unique and useful to your consumers or visitors. Yes, it is possible to live off the income you make online and no, not everyone who starts off with this intention reaches his goal, so my advice is don’t quit your job just yet.

With that being said, lets delve deeper into this topic, so I can provide you with some useful practical tips.

Business Through Internet Strategy-1: Explore Your Options

When I say explore your options, I mean you should know what you are good at and what interests you. By listing all the things that you might be interested in, you will get a nice list of things that you can do online. There are plenty of ways in which you can do business online. The question is, which ones are you ready to pursue with interest.

Some of the more common ways of business through internet include blogging, selling on eBay, promoting books and products from Amazon, affiliate marketing, eCommerce and selling products you make at home, like crafts and arts and other small items, freelancing like becoming a virtual assistant or writer, consulting, etc. All these are great ideas for different people. Which ones appeal the most to you? These are the ones that you should be looking to pursue.

When you explore all the options, you have more than one way to make money. You don’t need to stick with just one of them. For example, you might be interested in blogging and when your blog is popular, you can promote the books that you like, affiliate products that you use or even your eBay page. You can combine them all. When you know your options well, you can diversify your income sources.

Business Through Internet Strategy-2: Know Your Market

This is very important for any business through internet. Many people try to be all over the place and wonder why they don’t have any success. You should target your market in a specialized way. This is possible only when you know your market inside out, which you should. It doesn’t matter what niche you choose or what method of making money you choose. In the end, you are just like a small offline business catering to the needs of your customers.

There are plenty of analytics tools, like Google Analytics that you should definitely try to look into. These give you deep insights into what your customers are looking for and how they use your site or page.

Business Through Internet Strategy-3: Get Started Soon

The online marketplace is a very fast-changing environment. An year or two can completely alter the online landscape for a product or service. In addition, if you think you have a great idea, waiting longer means you are exposing yourself to the possibility that other small businesses or even larger ones will eat your lunch.

One of the best things that I found personally to do when you have an idea or want to do something is to go right in and do it. You cannot hope to learn 100% of all aspects that are required to run the business. Instead, I would suggest the simple 80-20 rule: If you learn the 80% you need to succeed, the other 20% can be learned on the go as you get personal first-hand experience in running your business through the internet.

Business Through Internet Strategy-4: Learn the Basics of Internet Marketing

No matter what kind of business through internet you want to get into, it will always help to know about internet marketing. The topic is as rich and diverse as traditional marketing itself. It is only going to become more and more powerful as the world gets more connected and millions of others join the internet. Businesses too are moving online and the average time spent on the internet keeps rising. All this means there is immense potential for reaching out to new audiences.

However, the way others get to know your business is through internet marketing. This is a very powerful force that you ignore at your own risk. Of course, anyone who hopes to succeed online will need some amount of knowledge in internet marketing. However, if you keep yourself informed from reliable sources, you can get great ideas that should help you grow your business.

Business Through Internet Strategy-5: Study your Competition

There are several advantages of studying your competition. It is possible that your competition is much better established than you, in which case you can learn important tips from looking at their business model and what things they do right. In addition, you can always pick up nuances and ideas when you scan through businesses and websites that are similar to yours (of course I don’t mean plagiarize, which you should never ever do). Ideas can be powerful movers and the way to get more ideas is to expose yourself to a diverse set of ideas and strategies.

There are plenty of very successful businesses operating through internet. You can study and look at what they do right, and then emulate them to some extent. You can also improve upon what they do wrong. For example, a competitor might lack a good social media strategy, so you can capitalize on it by having an active Facebook and Twitter presence.

There is plenty to learn in business through internet but once you do, you can have great successes. It is not easy but if done right, is worth every single minute of the time you put in during the initial stages.

How to Price Banners on your Site/Blog

Filed under Blogging, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online by on May 30, 2011 at 10:33 pm {6 comments}

Banner PricingHow do you price banners on your blog or site? This is a complicated question and there isn’t a straightforward answer. However, let me attempt to answer it with certain examples and cases which can provide a useful guideline to get started. If you have an idea of how much banners cost on other sites, you might get an idea how to price banners on your own blog or site.

I have previously written about how to sell banners on your blog and it gives a useful guide to know how you can find advertisers and how you can get started. In this post, I attempt to answer another important question – how to price the banners. Once you have selected a list of companies, businesses or websites whom you wish to contact for an offer for banner, the next step is to let them know the price. Here are a few guidelines to follow –

Tip-1: Try to Find Similar Sites

This is a simple advice which actually helps a lot. If you can find sites that are similar to you and see how much they charge for a banner, you can get a fair estimate of how much you might want to charge.

This of course depends on the niche, traffic, Alexa rank and a host of other factors, but it still gives you a fair idea.

In the niche of internet marketing and blogging, here are a couple of banner advertising prices that I could find:

1. Wassup Blog: This blog charges $30/month for a 125×125 banner. The site has an Alexa of 67k at the time of writing this. No idea about other stats.

2. John Chow: John Chow is one of the best known bloggers in this niche and it shouldn’t surprise you that it will be very expensive to advertise on his blog. For the same 125×125 banner, he charges $500/month. There are several other banners available with his blog as well. At the time of writing this, his Alexa is 5711 and his RSS followers are 100,000+ !

This of course is just for an idea.

Tip-2: It is all about the Niche

Yes, it is all about the niche. On my Penny Auction Blog, I sell several banner advertisements (somehow I started with 250×250 and stuck with it ever since). My traffic stats are far less impressive: 373k Alexa, ~350UV/day. However, I charge a minimum of $50/month for advertising on my blog (that is for old advertisers. For new ones, I charge higher).

So why is that? The first reason is, it is all about the niche. I write about entertainment auctions and it is generally a niche with not too many bloggers. A banner from my blog will give the sites a very regular highly interested stream of potential members. If the niche is lucrative, you should charge higher.

Tip-3: Look to Provide Value

Advertising is all about value. If you are John Chow, you can charge money simply for an advertiser to connect to your brand. However, not all of us are that lucky to have such a huge branding. So what do you do? You should provide value in other ways. I give my advertisers an option for featured blog posts to reach my readers. This provides them with great value.

Also, when a new site opens, by advertising on my blog, they are able to reach out to a very interested group of people who might want to join their site. Even if they get 100 interested visitors from my blog, the price I charge is justified (they get more). It is all about how your blog can provide value.

Tip-4: Let Advertisers Come to You

You won’t find this on my blog but this is something which you should know. It helps to have an “Advertise Here” link which advertisers can click and then reach a page that lists your pricing. This is a good strategy to let advertisers come to you. Chances are, several of your potential advertisers have at least visited your blog once. By giving them an option to advertise, you are looking for conversions. Also, make the process easy for them.

Tip-5: Learn and Adapt

Pricing advertising banners is not straightforward and you and the advertiser will seldom agree to the value of your blog or site. This is why you need to learn and change with your experience. If you get feedback from an advertiser you wrote to, learn from the feedback. Perhaps you charged too much. Or may be you should have offered a better space for the banner.

As you write out to more and more advertisers and get feedback, you will start to learn how to charge the right price for the banners on your blog.

Do you have experience selling banner space on your own site? Do you plan to do so in the future? I would love to hear from you!

Photo Credit: Peter Blanchard

The Core Fundamentals of SEO: Quality Content

Filed under Internet Marketing, SEO by on May 29, 2011 at 11:23 pm {20 comments}

SEO Quality ContentIt isn’t surprising that there is a lot of discussion all around on SEO. As more and more of the economy shifts online, good SEO practices can make or break a business. Perhaps this is also what prompts businesses like JC Penny to use unethical SEO practices to try and game Google. It shouldn’t be surprising though – JC Penny got millions of dollars worth of shopping during the holiday season. The difference between first and second position in Google can be huge.

Which is why, you see so many techniques for SEO, “tricks” that will rank you higher in the search results. There are both the “WhiteHat” and “BlackHat” methods. Then there is the middle ground “GrayHat” methods. There are the ethical and unethical methods, there is manipulation, there is money, there is violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines. There is everything you can think of under the sun. Which is what makes ranking difficult.

It is a constant cat and mouse game between Google and webmasters. Google originally came up with PageRank, with the idea that it is not just about the keywords on the site (which is what earlier search engines used. Yea, there was a life for search engines before Google too!) but also how many other sites would like to link to it. In an ideal world, one would only link to a site if he felt the content valuable. However, in hindsight, it is easy to see how easily the system can be manipulated. What if people enter into “backroom” deals as link exchanges? Google was smart and reciprocal links aren’t as “valuable” today, so people started a “three-way link exchange”. Then of course there is the class of webmasters that buy and sell high PR ranks. There are a million things that can go on in the world of SEO.

And that brings me to the point of the article: what lies at the core, at the very heart of SEO? It is simply finding the best content. Period. It all boils down to providing value to the searcher. The way Google determines this might change from one day to another, but at the core, it is all about finding the best web pages, out of the more than trillion pages out there.

There are many tactics and strategies used by webmasters. One day it is backlinking through article marketing and another day it is blog and forum commenting. These tactics are fragile and they can change easily. After the Google Panda update, article directories were badly hit. This is in tune with Google’s idea of providing the best results to users. Without good search results, Google is dead.

So when you are building a site and want it to rank high in Google, you need to build high quality sites. This is at the heart of SEO. Read this article by Amit Singhal of Google and you will see why. Though he doesn’t go into the details, everything there has to do with content. Everything. There is no mention of linking at all in the checklist. Yes, backlinks can be very helpful but they are only a stepping stone towards what Google ultimately wants: Quality Content.

 

 

Internet Marketing Foundation: Trading Eyeballs for Money

Filed under Internet Marketing by on May 18, 2011 at 9:26 pm {2 comments}

Internet MarketingWhen you want to enter into internet marketing, people have many different kinds of ideas. Some view it as a get rich scheme which it isn’t. Some think it is way too technical which is again false. Internet marketing isn’t hard to understand if you look at its natural evolution. To truly understand internet marketing, you should first look at any marketing effort in general. What does any marketing aim to do? Simple, it aims to get the attention of people.

Thus the foundation of internet marketing is still the same: getting as many eyeballs as possible.

A Case in Point – Television Ads

Let us look at a sample case of television ads to really understand internet marketing better. Why are companies willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising spots during the SuperBowl of Soccer Finals? It is because they get so many eyeballs – i.e. they get millions of viewers. The particular sporting event is able to give the advertisers millions of viewers which is worth tons of money.

So How is it Different on the Internet?

On the internet, the only difference is that instead of just sending in eyeballs, you usually trade visitors for money. This might sound crass but that’s the truth. What does any advertisement aim to do, on the internet? It aims to get clicks. Publishers are paid when visitors click on the ads or convert. This means as a publisher, you have a visitor to your site whom you are now sending to another site. You are still giving the advertiser the eyeballs but this time you lose a visitor. No wonder then that the cost of a visitor click is higher in this case than a simple television ad.

Taking this step further is the concept of CPA or affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, you trade visitors for a possibility of conversion. Thus, as a publisher you are taking a higher risk – certainly, not everyone who visits the advertiser is going to buy. Therefore, at the end of the day, you might just end up with nothing. Therefore, in CPA (cost per action) the publishers are paid even more. Again, this is to be expected because the publisher doesn’t get paid till the conversion takes place.

Bottom Line

So that is it. Internet marketing is a natural progression of offline marketing only more suitable for the internet audience. When done right, internet marketing can be very sustainable and everyone emerges a winner. The publisher gets money, the advertiser gets sales and the visitors get value. This is the central theme of any marketing, including internet marketing.

Photo Credit: ScrewTape

Join me on Facebook!

Advertisers