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

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

Click Bombing

Well this post and comic is about the malicious people that decide they want to get your advertising account banned.  Anyone with advertisements on their blog could be a victim of click bombing.  Click Bombing is when a user decides to click on your google ads hundreds of times, to purposefully get your google account banned.

There is not really any way that a webmaster can combat click fraud.  These users just decide to do it, and they do it.  The only thing I can think of to keep your site from getting click bombed, is to make sure you don’t have any enemies.

The sad thing about click bombing is, google automatically blocks your account when they suspect you of clicking on your own ads, and trying to make money.  Also, if you don’t check your account often, then it becomes harder and harder to get your account unbanned.

Careful

Graphics From: maplestory

Tags: adsense, advertisement, click bomb, click bombing, google, management

Useful Forums

Alright, I’m going to list some great forums, and what they’re useful for. (Usually pertaining to webmaster’s unless it’s one of my forums). I’ll try to list the forums in order of PR, and help you to determine which ones are good for signature links.

Signature Links are a great way to build up backlinks, and add pagerank to your websites. The higher the pr of the forum you have signature links on, and the more posts you make, the better the boost your sig link will give you. Hence you will become higher ranked in search engines, and ultimatize your SEO awesomeness.

DigitalPoint Forums: PR7
Digital point has been the most useful forum for me in my webmaster-ing career. Atleast so far that is. They have a huge member base, and all the better for receiving help. You can find tons of guides on there, searching the forums will usually give you better results than google. I definitely recommend you sign up for digitalpoint forums if you are an aspiring webmaster.

V7N: The forums are ranked at PR5
V7N is somewhat of a dying forum, but it used to be equal to digitalpoint’s greatness. It has a lot of members, but few are very active now. You are allowed to have signature links once you get 50 posts… which is somewhat of a crappy deal. Despite V7N being a dying forum, there is still quite a bit of useful information on there.

SitePoint: PR 4 (forums)
Many people use sitepoint to auction off their sites, and seek advise. Sitepoint is also a webhosting company (which i advise against).

Direct Advertisement: PR 0
Direct Advertisement is a forum built to help owners of websites, and forums (more specifically). It includes many free services for advertising websites. The more members direct advertisement has, the more potential members you get when you advertise your site there. Anyways, despite being PR0, the forum is more active than all the other sites I have listed here, other than Digitalpoint.

SEOChat: PR 4
A great forum for finding information on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), although there isn’t many people to talk to any more. Again, a good place for putting links in your signature.

I’ll probably update this list of useful forums later, if you have one that is either high PR, or high on traffic and users, or contains lots and lots of useful information. Feel free to comment on this post and I can add you to the list.

Tags: awesomeness, backlinks, forum, google, list, page, pagerank, PR, rank, resource, seo