Vital Pixel

Adbrite VS. Adsense

Ok, so I started out Vital Pixel using adsense, and of course when there was no revenue. Days after the opening of vitalpixel, the site started to get tremendous traffic. The blog was getting thousands of hits/pageviews per day thanks to social networking, and some other methods. Tremendous in relative terms… since it was days later that it started to receive thousands of hits, I deem it tremendous. Despite the tremendous amount of traffic, the money stayed near the same. The highest point using google adsense, was a remarkable $5 on one day, with a not so remarkable twist. The $5 was split between a large sum of 297 clicks.

So, after wondering whether or not I had been click bombed, in which case google probably wouldn’t have counted a large amount of those 297 clicks.  I decided that maybe, google was really only paying me an average of 1.5 cents a click.  Which totally sucks if you know what I’m saying.  In my dream world, that many clicks would’ve made me at least $100 dollars.  So, feeling that I had been royally jipped, I decided to venture out into the world of ad network limbo.  Reading guides on blogs other than my own, trying to decide which pay per click network I would use.

I came to the decision that I would try adbrite, which I had used before on my arcade website a couple years back.  I’m so impatient that I only managed to force myself into leaving the ads on Vital Pixel for a couple of days.  There were so many things I could say about adbrite that were good, it’s might be hard for some to realize why I took their ads down.

1. First, adbrite counted ad impressions much faster than adsense, and it seemed a lot more accurate.  I’m not sure if me saying that really has any meaning, since I can hardly read the statistics in my cpanel.
2. They offered page ads, so I could make money with a popup like advertising, that wasn’t really a popup. (yay?)
3. They included inline ads, so I didn’t need to use any other company like kontera.
4. I could make extra money from people that payed specifically to advertise on my website.

Oh, but then… every one of these positive features of adbrite had a downside.  Each downside greatly outweighing the positive.

1. They counted ad impressions accurately, I guess, but when do i get even a single cent?
2. Page ads, oh pl0x (leet speak for please).  My browser froze 3 times when I came to my site because it was having a problem loading one of these page ads.  Plus, if every visitor that came to my site got one of these page ads, then I probably should’ve made more than 3 cents.  Since there were over 900 pageviews by that time.
3. The inline ads fail compared to kontera, they’re all stuck bunched up at the top of the blog content.  Where as, kontera spreads the links throughout the page, and allows you to blend them in a bit more with regular links.  Plus, google allows you to use the context links of kontera since they can’t get confused with the look of their own ads.
4. I doubt anyone would pay to advertise on my website at this point in time, with all of the negative posts about how the site was doing financially.  Though I should probably be happy with the profits I’m making.  Which means I’m perfectly fitting the role of the spoiled american, that always wants more.  Who shouldn’t always want more though, and isn’t it the instinct of any human being to want what they can’t have?  Especially if that thing you can’t have, seems to be just barely beyond your reach.

So no, I did not prefer adbrite over adsense, and this has happened to me before.  All the other sites that I decided to use other advertising networks on, I was severely disappointed.  Being to stupid to learn from my mistakes in the past, I’m hoping this will be the last time.  who knows how many $.001 I could’ve made when I removed google as my advertiser?

As you can see, adsense has been reinstated, and adbrite has been shunned by me forever, or until I forget what’s wrong with it again.

The comic:

Tags: adbrite, adsense, advertisement, google, network, ppc

Get Your Own Website Comic

Alright, to tell the you the truth, after making 2-3 posts every day it appears that I have run out of ideas for new webmaster tip comics.  This is where you (the reader) come in and lend me a helping hand.  If anyone has any webmaster tips that would work well in a comic strip, then let me know by commenting on this post!

• Just comment with a title and something to write about
• If you give me a url, I’ll give your site credit for suggesting the tip!

Get a Comic For your Website:

Alright, I’ll be making free comics for anyone and everyone that wants one.  Here’s how it works;

• If you want a comic for your website, comment on this post and I will email you.  Or you can post your website details and give me an idea of what it’s about, and I’ll get started making the comic right away.
• The comic will be a simple two character dialogue about your site, or the site you ask for.
• I’ll post the web comics in batches of five every week or so.  (Obviously to keep people coming back )  I’ll try and include an html embed code, but you should be able to embed the image yourself.
• A link back to me would be appreciated, but it isn’t required.

Conflicting Google Clicks

I’m pretty skeptical of my adsense clicks right now, seeing as I’ve got different programs telling me I got different amounts of clicks.  So, I’m going to experiment with a couple of other Pay Per Click advertisement companies and see how things work out.  Another thing thought brought me to seeing the downside of google is how much money i was getting per click.  The other day, I had 297 clicks, and made only $5.39… so the 1 and a half cents just isn’t really worth it for me.

I know I said I might have been being click bombed, and that still stands.  I’m definitely going to be trying something new though.

Tags: adbrite, adsense, Advertising Networks, kontera, ppc

Make Money With your Blog

Blogging is one of the most popular ways to get your ideas across to the general public. I use it, and there’s probably more than half of the webmaster population using a blogging platform as well. It’s a good thing though, a lot of blogs means there are a lot of good tips, information, and news that circulates around the web. Blogging is easy too, with just an update or two per day, and a little bit of help from your social networking friends, you can get your blog popular and make money with it in days.

Step 1: Traffic
I’m going to assume you already have traffic to your blog, and continue with this post. If you don’t have a steady flow of traffic coming to your blog yet, then check back next time for the Blog Traffic post, which I am due to release pretty soon.

Step 2: PPC Ads
By far the most obvious way to make money on the internet. Go and make your self a publisher account on Google Adsense to get started. You can customize your advertisements, and paste the javascript code into your page. Make sure to blend your ads in with the usual color scheme of your site, for maximum click potential. For every click, you get a certain amount of money (based on your keywords). You can also make money for getting large amounts of impressions. Don’t click your own ads, or ask your visitors to click ads!

Step 3: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, is simply getting someone elses product, and referring new users to it. Lot’s of sites on the internet have affiliate programs you can join. You can check out Affiliate Scout for several different sites that have affiliate programs. Sometimes affiliate programs have flat rates, like… $65 dollars per sign up. Or, they will pay you a % of the money the person you referred ends up making.

Step 4: Link Sales
If your blog has a high page rank. Which is Google’s interpretation of the value of your site. People will start getting interested in having their link on your website. The higher your page rank (pr), the more you can sell links for. The easiest way to sell links, is to join a forum like Digitalpoint or Vitalpixel Forums, and create a thread giving the details of your site, and how much you are willing to sell link-space for. Never fill up your site with too many links, and make sure to sell links monthly. Don’t offer life-time links unless you’re a directory, because you may want to take them down at some point.

Step 5: Products
If you have your own products that you’d like to sell, you probably know more about how to sell them than I do. But, the way I would go about selling my products, is to post a link to my website on a webmaster forum (in the buy/sell/trade section). Then, I would give details about what I was selling, and offer my services to those willing to pay. For Example;

I would say, Selling webmaster tip comics for $5 a piece. They would give me what they wanted the comic to be about, I would make it, give it to the buyer, and they would pay me. It’s pretty simple, and self-explanatory really.

Step 6: Blog Reviews

Once your blog starts to get a decent amount of visitors, and has a pretty good page rank, you can start selling reviews. When I start making reviews, I’m sure I’ll be using reviewme, which is the biggest name in blog reviews at the moment. You’re site will have to be reviewed by them, before being accepted into the program, but once your in you can make quite a bit of money.

Tags: affiliate, blog, internet, link sales, money, pay per click, ppc, profit, Reviews

Ad Placement

Where you put your advertisements is one of the most important factors when trying to make money on the internet. You need to make sure and keep your ads in places where people can see them, but also make sure they’re not an eye sore. Blending your ads in with the usual appearance of your website is also important. For example, if you had a green theme, and your google ads were red, there’s no way you would get as many clicks as you should.

The Comic:

Tags: ad placement, comic, google, internet, money, online, optimization, profit, vitalpixel

Black hat Tips Used by Google to Get Big: Revealed!!!

Ok, so how could any site get big like google without using some sort of black hat tips?  One possibility is link-baiting, using titles which suggest the content contains more information than it actually does.  Like for example, a title that enthralls the reader, and aggressively persuades them to read on.  So no, i don’t have any real black hat tips that Google Used to Get Big.  I doubt anyone could tell you what google really did to get big.

Unless they tell you the truth, like;

• Google Invested a lot from the beginning
• They have good products
• They have Good Service
• They have their own building IRL!

Ok, to continue the lesson… here’s a quick comic:

In order to get really popular articles, you have to write titles that attract the reader.  If your title is as boring as mine usually are, then nobody will go on to read the rest of your post.  So whether you’re tricking someone or not, you might want to try Link-Bait!

Tags: black, black hat, black hat trick, comic, google, hat, link bait, seo, tip, tips, trick, tricks, vitalpixel, webmaster

Don’t Pay For Traffic!

Traffic that you pay for can never really be good traffic.  When I first started off in the webmaster business, I wanted to find ways to get visitors really quick, and without a lot of work.  The truth is, you’re never going to find quality visitors that way.  What you want, is people that are going to go to your site because they want to, not because they’re being paid to.

Some of you may have been to traffic exchange sites, where you leave the window open for 30 seconds, and then move on to the next website.  When you pay for traffic, you are paying for visitors to come to your site just like that!  There are also other ways that people can send you traffic, and whether they’re bots or real members, it never works out the way you want it to.  Unless you’re one of those sites that brings all of it’s visitors in from top sites, then the traffic you get to begin with doesn’t mean a thing.

One other downside to buying traffic is… google doesn’t condone it!  You could get your publisher’s account banned just for purchasing traffic.  You could lose multiple clicks, or be smart-priced… (no bueno, I’ve been there).

For quality traffic, build up your content and let SEO do its work.  A few other ways to get good traffic is to post in show off threads in forums, submit articles to digg, stumble your sites (trust me, social networking is good).  Even linking and embedding youtube videos on your site can get you some quality traffic from the linked by section underneath the video on youtube’s site.

Here’s my comic for this lesson~

Tags: account, ban, buying, google, quality, seo, traffic, visitors

Oh the Horror

After my click bombing post the other day, I’ve been getting hundreds of clicks per day in google.  I assume that most of those clicks are the result of click bombing.  It really sucks because I was trying to advise people against that sort of thing, what does click bombing do for the clicker?

Anyways, maybe I’m not being clickbombed, and all of my click values are just extremely low.  I seriously doubt that though, 160 clicks and $1.50?  Haha

Luckily I haven’t been banned from google yet, and maybe that’s because google has updated.  Perhaps they just don’t count multiple clicks, instead of banning the publisher account.  Which would be a very good thing for publisher’s who’ve been previously click bombed.  What’s really crappy for me though, is I can’t tell if I’m getting actual clicks or not.