Exploring Shopzilla [Interview]
April 10, 2008
This CPC (cost per click) ad unit is similar to those used successfully by many with the Chitika program. There’s one live in action at the bottom of this post.
I’ve been getting some good feedback from quite a few ProBlogger readers who have tried the program and am consistently getting good results with them so I approached Shopzilla’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Business Development, David Weinrot, for an interview about the program. He kindly agreed. Here’s our chat about Shopzilla.
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A Year Ago on DBT: March 28
March 28, 2008
- 7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money: Some time ago I wrote an article titled “Are you marketing your blog?” where I argued that there is a myth around the Internet that bloggers and webmasters should not spend money on advertising. The myth comes in great extent from the success stories of people that managed to create popular websites without spending a dime on advertising or other paid promotion techniques.
- Always install Wordpress on the root directory: Unless your blog is a secondary part of an existing website you should always install Wordpress on the root directory. When I created my first blog I used an automatic Wordpress instalation that my web hosting company offered, but the standard installation was done on “www.domain.com/blog”.
- Speed Up Your Site: Use a slash on your links: When a server opens a link in the form of “http://www.domain.com/about” it will need to figure what kind of file or webpage is contained on that address, wasting time on the process. If instead of using that link you include a slash (”/”) at the end like “http://www.domain.com/about/” the web server will already know that the link points to a directory, reducing the time to load the page.
- Avoid tricks when placing ads: When placing ads on your site do not try to trick the reader. By trick I mean any technique that will deceive the reader into thinking that a link or image is not an advertising when it actually is.
- Post excerpts on the Homepage?: Lately some blogs are starting to display post excerpts instead of full posts on the Homepage (e.g. Pronet Advertising). There are both advantages and disadvantages with this method.
- Are you marketing your blog?: There is a myth around the blogosphere that bloggers should not spend money on advertising for their blogs. It is founded on the success stories where established bloggers affirm that they achieved thousands of dollars in monthly revenues without spending a dime on advertising or other marketing techniques.
- Customize the Feedburner Chicklet: This tip is easy to implement but it can be very useful if you are trying to customize the text on your Feedburner Feed Count Chicklet. Just look into the HTML code that Feedburner provided you for the Chicklet and locate the address of the image.
How Much Should I Charge for my Advertising Space?
March 26, 2008
What about [direct advertising] pricing? Are there any good ballpark price structures? What do we base rates on?As soon as a blogger decides to play with direct advertising, the question of “how much to charge” emerges. If you charge too much, you might end up with no advertisers at all. If you charge too little, on the other hand, you will be leaving money on the table. Unfortunately, as Brian wonders, there are no standard pricing structures across the Internet. You will need to take a look around, do some research, and experiment on your own site to find the rates that will maximize your revenues. Read more
