How To Get Fast Traffic to Your Website

If you have a website, you need traffic.

Website traffic is defined as real people actually visiting your website. You might spend thousands of dollars setting up the prettiest, easy-to-navigate site you can imagine, but with no visitors, you will not make money with that website. It would be similar to building a Macy’s -fully stocked and staffed- in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield.

There are many ways to get traffic. If you need traffic fast, there are two basic methods you can use.

The first method you should consider is borrowing traffic. If at first you’re unsure if this method will work for you, please carefully consider it because it can be a very powerful means for getting new leads. The basic idea is for another website owner to suggest that his or her readers look at your offer. Generally, you will need to pay a commission or referral fee to encourage this action on the part of the website owner.

This procedure gets results for these two reasons. First, the other website owner has already invested the time and money required to collect the names and contact information of interested individuals, sparing you from doing the same. Second, this method allows you to get “credit” for the credibility of the other website owner. Think about your own experience. Do you normally seek out self-serving, traditional advertisements, or do you rely more upon the advice of friends and trusted acquaintances when making a buying decision? The answer is obvious.

Borrowing traffic usually will not cost you out of pocket cash, although normally you should be prepared to pay out of your proceeds.

The next fast-traffic method we’ll discuss is paid advertising. There are several types of paid advertising, and the very first you should consider is pay-per-click advertising. Google’s Adwords program is the easiest to begin with, and eventually you will want to research using Yahoo and MSN as well. Pay-per-click advertising’s great benefit is the ability to hone in one certain keywords that people are looking for, and as an added bonus, you can start getting traffic in 10 minutes or less.

This method of advertising is attractive for numerous reasons. Chief of these is the ability to match the words people are searching for with your particular ad. Another great benefit is you can track many aspects of your pay-per-click campaigns.

Unlike the “borrowing traffic” method, you will have a cash outlay whether you make sales or not. On the plus side, Google will likely not charge your credit card until the end of the month, so you may actually have generated more than enough in sales to pay your Adwords bill when it is time to pay. When you first start, most people keep close tabs on their Adwords account, to make sure they are not spending more than they had planned.

We have only covered two methods of generating traffic to your site. In future articles, we will cover many more.

A Letter in Opposition to AB 178

I wanted to share my letter in opposition to AB 178. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback, in particular Angel Djambazov. Writing letters does make a difference, especially on this issue because education is so important. People in decision making positions do not understand what affiliate marketing is or the consequences of this legislation.

March 26, 2009

To Members of the Assembly Committee on Revenue & Taxation
State Capitol (Assembly)
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Assembly Member:

I am writing in opposition to AB 178 (“The Amazon Tax”), which would have negative consequences for online businesses based in California. If this bill passes the state will experience a decrease in business activity and probably a drop in net tax revenue.

The goal of this measure is to force out of state retailers to collect and remit sales tax (use tax) by categorizing their California-based affiliates as nexus. While the desire for increased tax revenue is clear to understand, this is a destructive and ineffective approach based largely on misperceptions about what affiliate marketing is.

Before reviewing the likely short and long term negative effects, it may be useful to review two topics:

1. The current language of the bill is overly broad. Any business which accepts “commission or other consideration” for “directly or indirectly” referring “potential customers” is deemed nexus. This is basically a definition of advertising. While this may be intended to apply to affiliates, it could equally apply to any television, radio, outdoor, mobile, print advertising, or non-affiliate internet advertising, such as Google Adwords.

2. Affiliate Marketing is a form of advertising; affiliates are not a sales force. The retailer who engages with a California company on an affiliate basis has no more direct relationship then if they had purchased advertising from a television or radio station. The term affiliate marketing simply describes one of three main advertising models used on the internet:

a. CPM (Cost Per Impression) – If you buy an advertisement on television, radio, outdoor, mailing list (including email), or in print, you’ll pay based on the number of estimated viewers and the value of those viewers.

b. CPC (Cost Per Click) – If you buy an advertisement on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft adCenter, you’ll pay for each individual click that is sent. Many affiliate programs also pay out on a pay per click model.

c. CPA (Cost Per Action) – This is the typical advertising model used by affiliates. If you have a retail affiliate program, you set a commission rate to pay affiliates per sale.

CPA marketing allows the advertiser to engage with a large number of affiliates (better known as publishers) who are rewarded if they can prove their value. In contrast to a sales force, distribution center, or maintenance team, an advertiser enjoys no advantage by working with an affiliate in a particular physical location. As a case in point, many large affiliates are based outside the United States. The affiliate marketing model benefits affiliates by allowing small business to display advertising on behalf of retailers which they normally would not have exposure to without an advertising agency.

If affiliates are considered tax nexus, their ability to charge for advertising on a CPA-basis will be seriously disadvantaged compared to their competitors in other locations and their competitors using different advertising models - CPM or CPC. If California affiliates change their locations or their advertising fee structure, this nexus is avoided.

The following items should be considered in opposition to this legislation:

• Online retailers without current nexus in California have a high likelihood of severing their relationships with California affiliates to avoid nexus. This has already happened in New York, where hundreds of merchants dropped all their New York affiliates – most famously, Overstock.com terminated 3,400 relationships. This loss in revenue greatly hurt small business owners in New York.
• As a form of advertising affiliate programs are only so valuable to online retailers. The average affiliate program might generate, through advertising, about 10% incremental revenue for an online retailer. Small businesses which participate in affiliate programs are widely dispersed nationally and even internationally. If you divide this percentage by the national population, you’ll note that even in California, the most populous state, revenue from affiliate advertising would only account for one or so percent of an online retailer’s sales.
• Tax collection compliance is difficult. Most online retailers could not immediately charge sales tax even if they wanted to because the tax code is complex and the change would have to go through the development queue. Faced with a choice between losing one or so percent of their revenue and a possible lawsuit, they’ll probably choose to end their affiliate relationships.
• The overly broad language will cause confusion and hesitation in the marketplace. If the bill applies to affiliates, it should also apply to Google Adwords, which the vast majority of online retailers advertise through. It might also apply to advertising agencies, such as my own.
• Passage of this legislation would virtually guarantee a costly lawsuit against the state by its own small and large businesses.
• Companies without affiliate programs will avoid launching them. My business makes its money managing affiliate programs so you can see the impact this would have on us. My business currently employees seven people full time. This legislation would put a damper on our expansion plans.
• California will lose current and future jobs because affiliates - highly portable businesses - will move out of state, sell to out of state entities, and not start up in the future.
• The current and future jobs lost will include a high portion of skilled, well-paid, work-at-home jobs. Becoming an affiliate publisher is an accessible business model, requiring very little capital and is a great model for self employment. California’s unemployment rate is currently 10.5%.
• In California, call centers and web hosting companies are granted safe harbor status, presumably because the state realizes many of these relationships would be severed and these businesses damaged. The same is true with affiliate relationships.

Thank you for your time and consideration on this matter that is so important to my business and so many other businesses in California.

Sincerely,

Brook Schaaf

CEO

CC: [Note: this list is comma instead of line break separated to save space.]Hon. Charles Calderon, Hon. Chuck DeVore, Hon. Nancy Skinner, Hon. Jim Beall Jr.,Hon. Joe Coto, Hon. Diane L. Harkey, Hon. Fiona Ma, Hon. Jim Nielsen, Hon. Anthony J. Portantino, Hon. Lori Saldaña

Chiefs' pay rises widen public sector salary gap

Top bosses' pay in the public sector is far outstripping the rises enjoyed by their employees, making a mockery of government efforts to hold state sector pay rises at 2 per cent, pay experts said yesterday.

Chief executives of National Health Service foundation trusts saw their pay rise almost four times as fast as their staff in the year to March 2008 - by 7.6 per cent on average - while that for other NHS trust bosses jumped 5.7 per cent, according to Income Data Services, the pay monitoring group.

The trend of soaring executive pay is established across the public sector, drawing increasing criticism and scrutiny, IDS said.

Chief executive pay in foundation trusts averages £157,000 a year, while the heads of University College London, Newcastle and Heart of England hospitals received £232,000, £227,500 and £222,500 respectively. In non-foundation trust hospitals average chief executive pay is £132,600.

"Unease about the widening gap between senior executives and the rest of the workforce is growing in both the public and private sectors," said Steve Tatton, editor of IDS's public sector pay reports.

The trend of rises in top executives' pay outstripping that of their employees can be observed more or less across the public sector, from the NHS to local government, the civil service, among university vice-chancellors, and even in schools with "superheads", Mr Tatton said. Several local authority chief executives earned in excess of £200,000 a year.

"When you see people in the FTSE 100 and 250 companies paying themselves huge pay packages with share options and other incentives, it raises the ceiling for everyone else, so people at the top of public sector organisations start paying themselves more as well," he said.

An arguably better reason, he added, was that chief executives in the public sector were subject to far more examination. They were answerable for hitting targets, while their organisations - and by implication their own performances - were rated in league tables by an army of inspectorates.

"They are facing extra scrutiny and extra responsibility," Mr Tatton said, citing the case of foundation trusts, which are free-standing organisations. "They argue they are facing increased pressure and this is driving above-average pay rises".

But there is also a "salary carousel" at work, with high rates of turnover. Organisations therefore want to attract and retain those seen to be the best managers. One in six chief executives of big councils, and the same percentage of NHS chief executives, change jobs each year - roughly the same percentage as at big companies, according to the Audit Commission.

"This cannot be good for the continuity of management," Mr Tatton said.

Soaring public sector executive pay is also undermining the credibility of the government's drive to restrain public sector wages, IDS said.

Whether the trend will continue was debatable, however. It was highly likely that the government would seek a freeze, or very severe restraint, on public sector pay once current deals expired.

"That is what happened in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s and is more than likely to happen again, although public sector pay freezes bring their own problems of recruitment and retention."

from: www.ft.com

An Artist’s Riff on Million Dollar Homepage

Stirring up cash with pay-per-click ad models is standard fare on the Internet, but what about paying per pixel?

Part of Rhizome’s 50,000 Dollar Webpage

In a mashup of art project-meets-electronic bulletin board-meets-Internet parody, Rhizome, the new-media affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, has launched a fund-raising site that sells space by the pixel — five cents per pixel, to be exact.

It’s called the 50,000 Dollar Webpage and aims to raise just that amount in the next two months by charging users for representation on a large square grid, which, as a finished product, will likely be an eye-catching smattering of ads, links and images.

Rhizome modeled the page off the work of the British student Alex Tew, who sold pixels for tuition on his Million Dollar Homepage in 2005.

Part of the Million Dollar Homepage

“I really welcomed the idea of doing something nontraditional,” says Lauren Cornell, Rhizome’s executive director and an adjunct curator at the New Museum, which is based in New York.

The project meshes well with Rhizome’s interest in technology, and the beauty of this model, she says, is the minimal cost of setting it up online. It has raised more than $1,000 since its Wednesday launch.

At the organization’s annual benefit on May 28, the finished page (which Rhizome hopes will contain one million purchased pixels to reach the $50,000 goal) will be presented and saved in the museum’s archive.

Brooklyn-based artist Michael Bell-Smith conceived the idea of recreating the Million Dollar Homepage because the finished product becomes a work of art in itself.

“The image that was created [with the Million Dollar Homepage] was really crazy and amazing-looking, but then also it was an early example of … the viral nature of how things spread online,” Mr. Bell-Smith says. “Some things are intentionally designed as art, but there are some things that have resonance when you think of art, even if they weren’t intended that way.”

from: /blogs.wsj.com

Specialty, pay TV services grow earnings in 2008: CRTC

The Canadian specialty and pay TV industry enjoyed solid financial growth in 2008, in sharp contrast with the more dismal picture over on the private conventional side of the broadcast sector, according to a report by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand service providers saw revenues rise 7.6 per cent to $2.9 billion for the year that ended on Aug. 31, 2008, while profits before interest and taxes grew by 5.9 per cent to $686.1 million.

That's compared to the plunge in profits for their brethren in the private conventional television sector, to just $8 million from the $112.9 million recorded in 2007, according to a CRTC report from February. The drop was mostly because of an increase in expenses due to the buying sprees of several broadcasters, including those of debt-ridden Canwest Global Communications Corp. (TSX:CGS.A).

The conventional television sector also saw a 1.5-per-cent decline in revenues during the year, to $2.1 billion. The industry has been facing a crisis of late amid plummeting advertising revenues – its main source of income – prompting the federal government to consider a bailout of the ailing sector.

Back at the pay TV side, however, business appears to be booming, with total revenues having risen by more than $850 million over the last five years, with the number of services reporting climbing to 182 from 123.

The largest share of total revenues, at $2.3 billion, came from specialty television services, the report said, with most of that amount coming from 49 analog services.

Cable television subscribers brought in $1.3 billion of the $2.9-billion total, while national advertising provided $1 billion in revenues for the industry.

CRTC also pointed out that the amount spent on Canadian programming within specialty and pay TV services surpassed $1 billion for the first time ever, with spending increasing 11.3 per cent to $1.1 billion. Sports programmers captured the largest portion of that amount, with $270.3 million invested in Canadian content in this category.

Foreign programming spending also rose by 9.1 per cent to $361.1 million, the report said.

Employment in the industry was roughly flat at 5,495 people, who were paid a total of $406.8 million in salaries. That's down from 5,501 people paid a total of $408.4 million in the previous year.

from ottawabusinessjournal.com

มีเว็บไซต์แล้วต้องการสร้างรายได้จากการโฆษณา

เจ้าของเว็บไซต์ตลอดจนนักเขียนบล็อก เข้าร่วมเป็นพันธมิตรกับบัมคิว โดยบัมคิวมีระบบบริหารจัดการโฆษณาที่ได้มาตรฐาน มีระบบการทำงานที่ชัดเจน ซื่อสัตย์และโปร่งใส พร้อมเจ้าหน้าที่คอยตรวจสอบการทำงานของระบบอยู่ตลอดเวลา

คุณสมบัติและข้อดีของระบบพันธมิตรของบัมคิวมีดังนี้

• กระจายโฆษณาทั่วทุกเว็บไซต์อย่างยุติธรรม
  
• ได้รับส่วนแบ่งรายได้สูงถึง 40% จากราคาขาย
  
• กำหนดโซนภายในเว็บไซต์ เพื่อประเมินผลได้
  
• วางโฆษณาได้มากถึง 5 ตำแหน่งใน 1 หน้า
  
• มีรายงานที่ละเอียดชัดเจนและโปร่งใส
  
• รับรายได้ เมื่อครบ 200 บาท จ่ายทุกวันศุกร์
  
• รับรายได้ โดยการโอนเข้าบัญชี หรือ เช็คเข้าบัญชี
  
• มีเจ้าหน้าที่ผู้เชี่ยวชาญคอยช่วยเหลือให้คำปรึกษา
  
• มีรายได้เพิ่มจากการ แนะนำสมาชิกได้อีกทา

How much does the marketing of text links cost via teliad?

You can determine the price for each of your text link offers yourself. teliad increases the respective price automatically by a charge for commission. This commission is due for every successfully sold text link booking. You incur no further costs beyond that.
We have the following commission scale:
4-6 € / US $: 50%
6-20 € / US $: 30%
20-50 € / US $: 20%
from 50 € / US $: 10%
If, for example, you as a seller wish to receive 60 € / US $, the end price for the buyer is calculated as follows:
(6*1.5+14*1.3+30*1.2+10*1.1) = 74.20 € / US $
In addition we always round up final amounts, i.e. in this example to €/USD 75.
However, teliad automatically takes care of the calculation of the end price for the buyer; i.e. you as the seller only need to specify the price that you wish to receive.
Basically you have complete freedom to set your prices at teliad as you wish. However, we check all new text link offers and inform you in the case of unrealistic prices that are not in line with the market.