| LED Digest 1729: Your Philosophy and Your Business |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................. January 15, 2003 Issue #1729 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Banner Exchanges in 2004 ==-- ~ Peter Warnock "The oversized banners used in the header...have been getting my attention as of late." ~ Lee Roberts "If you're interested in making real money learn to control the banner ads on your site." --== Ad Blocking Software ==-- ~ Ken Evoy "It's important to separate philosophy from business." --== Affiliate Programs & Partnerships ==-- ~ Mark Whitman "...any comment on what the effectiveness of my comments in #1727 might be...?" ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Copycats ==-- ~ Kris Driessen ~ Michael Martinez ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Peter Warnock Subject: Banner exchanges > Are banner exchanges still popular? If so, can > anyone recommend a good banner exchange to join? - Michael Colucci, LED 1726 The oversized banners used in the header at pages similar to My Yahoo! have been getting my attention as of late. In addition, MSN has implemented the format. Peter Warnock ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Lee Roberts Subject: Banner exchanges, linking > ... I would recommend link exchanges with sites that are > similar to yours. As long as Google will continue to use > this as a factor in ranking calculations, this is the most > effective way to go (without putting out $$). - Mark Roberts, LED 1728 Linking: Any link from another site to your site is counted as a vote regardless of where it comes from and the type of site. It may be of some benefit to find sites similar to your own site and acquire links from them, but that it not the important element. The important element is any link helps; it just so happens that similar sites benefit you more because it is of interest to those viewers already. Banner Placement: Traditionally banners have been in four locations on sites. Those locations were top, bottom, left gutter and right gutter. So, what's the problem with this? Simple, put it in a place I know it's going to be and I can over look it each time. Put it in a place that I don't expect and make it look like part of the content and you can bet I'll read it. The problem with banner networks / exchanges / advertising groups is the site owner loses control over what's made available on their site. If you think this makes you money your welcome to continue that belief. If you're interested in making real money learn to control the banner ads on your site. Make them look as if they are part of your site. Imagine a site about e-commerce and it receiving a ton of banner ads from Miva, Monster and the like. When you get to the banner and it is flashing red / white you're going to get a headache really quick. If their design is in such discord to your site, the reader will look beyond it so quickly it'll be blinding. If people can tell they're banner ads they'll ignore them. Only newbies will click on banners and eventually they will stop. Since 1994 I have clicked on two banners - the first was for Amazon and the second was for Norton. Lee Roberts http://www.applepiecart.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ken Evoy Subject: Ad blockers > ... where are people like Ken Evoy regarding > this whole ad blocking issue...? - Marty Milette, LED 1728 Hi Marty, Sorry I've been a bit quiet lately. We've been so busy lately, it's hard to keep up with it all. So I've been reduced to lurking, but this is the one discussion list I never miss reading due to what JA used to call "the high signal-to-noise ratio." In response to your question, Marty, I've been right here lurking it. There's been a bit too much noise for my taste (i.e., opinions that get a bit too excited) about the whole issue around pop-ups. So I'll try to keep my own noise here short. It's hard, though, since this one winds into so many twisting roads (which is why I try to lurk issues like THIS one, especially). First, though, let me correct one statement you made. In fact, Site Build It! has evolved way beyond... > ... the ability of 'small guys' to be able to put up > affiliate advertising and Google AdSense ads > to generate revenue from their web sites... .. that's really just a small subset of every possible major monetization model that SBI! now uses. We've actually built our business on the ability of ANY type of small business to build and PREsell targeted traffic (you might find it interesting to see how we have sub-segmented and targeted TWELVE important categories with business-specific sites at find.sitesell.com). Yes, I agree... The affiliate model remains a valid one, I agree with you -- heck, we're likely the only Top 250 Alexa company (well, almost -- 257) that is virtually 100% affiliate-driven. But even then, we don't recommend the use of "ads" of any kind to monetize (except for Google AdSense since they fit our long-standing recommendation of "contextual text advertising" so well), and since it remains very profitable according to our users. We ALWAYS highly recommend great content / editorial to PREsell and then lead your new-found, confident user to whatever your monetization models are. So, Marty, I won't answer your question to me about pop-ups in defence of anyone or any particular monetization model. I just wanted to make that part clear before jumping into this issue, since it all gets a bit contentious. Also... Fundamentally, I'm a libertarian by nature -- "everyone should be free to do what they want to do AS LONG AS YOU DON'T IMPINGE ON THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS TO DO THE SAME." (It's the upper caps that separates the libertarian from the anarchist, to oversimplify a bit. The original American Declaration of Independence was probably the closest political statement of libertarianism ever, and the Internet remains as libertarian a medium as you could hope for... but I won't reflect here on where that's going, since Adam will probably chop this paragraph, anyway, getting a bit afield. ;-) ) One final preface... I'll use pop-up in the sense that most people and pop-up blocking software use it -- a pop-up does not include a window that pops up off the "foundation window" if that is the only link that occurs. I know some will disagree and want "total browser control" to decide when to open a new window, but the navigational needs to open new pathways from a link and to be able to close those and return to where you were are valid ones. That seems to be the closest thing to a consensus definition, judging even by the default settings of most major pop-up blockers. So that's how I use the term here (now you see why I've stayed out of this -- it's already NOT "short" ;-) ) Anyhow, with that said... if any site wants to use pop-ups, they have the right to. That's simple. If you, the site user, do not like pop-ups, you absolutely have the right to block them and/or never buy from that business. You have that right, too. You also have the right to drop a nasty line about how you'll never buy that site's products, complain in forums, etc. But I don't see that anyone on either side of this coin has the fundamental right to do anything more than that. Usually, the free market, when left alone, can sort itself out well enough, if "regulators" (and I use that term in the broadest sense possible) don't over-react to the natural over-corrections of a self-correcting system by screaming and yelling for all kinds of rules and regulations to continue the first small steps of regulating the Internet. We were one of the first companies to use a pop-under. We did it for navigational reasons. Our affiliates have the ability to send potential customers to direct product or promotional pages, bypassing our home page. We chose NOT to put home page links on those pages because we want them to focus on the main reason why they came. So we popped our home page, www.sitesell.com, UNDERneath the original destination page, so it would be there waiting to show them the rest of our offerings. What happened? A-B split testing (we test everything to the nth degree) was strongly positive. Complaints minimal. So we kept it. Simple... It's important to separate philosophy from business. Did we have the right to do it? Of course. Does anyone have the right to hate it? Of course -- we do get the occasional complaint, and I do mean occasional -- one or two per week, tops, for a high-traffic site like ours. But we significantly improved site usage AND sales. And THAT is where the business part of it comes in -- we will gladly trade a small number of complaints for significantly increased business. If people don't agree with that basic business approach, I can't help it. If the numbers had instead showed that so many people hated our pop-unders that it HURT our business, we would not use them. It's that simple. (Personally, I can't understand how someone would pass up a product that guarantees small business success because the marketing company uses pop-ups. I think their eye has been taken off the ball -- but that IS their right. It's simply not in the same ballpark as doing business with a spammer or felon.) Beside our pop-UNDER... We also use a pop-UP. And that is to expose everyone to our Sitesell affiliate business. Since we KNOW everyone sees our www home page, when the user unloads that window, we pop-up a small invitation to join. This *IS* more promotional than navigational -- it also literally tripled registrations. No matter what we did before, we could not get anywhere NEAR that kind of response -- so we still use it, even though its effectiveness is less than it was due to blockers. And that is fine -- I still prefer to pop-up that window for business reasons. And those who don't like pop-ups can complain or leave -- it's just business. At the point where pop-UPs are counter-productive, we drop them, flatten our navigation, and move on to doing business. (Oh, by the way... even if the reader of this does not agree with the way pop-up is defined in this discussion, you have all the rights of recourse mentioned above. And I have the right to disagree and run my business in the most successful way I can... within the law and basic freedoms / rights, of course.) Sorry to have rambled and missed by goal of keeping it short -- the topic can get way too complicated without some preamble and definitions. And I know that it can get into some nasty grey zones, not even discussed here. But I'd prefer to stick being guided by my libertarian values of fundamental freedoms and rights and focus on building my business by meeting my customers and visitors' needs as best I can balance (hey, I'd drop anything that remotely resembled a pop-up if it doubled sales and customer satisfaction!). Beyond that, I'll prefer to leave the endless debate to those who prefer to debate and regulate. Hope this helps, Ken Evoy http://webmaster.sitesell.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Affiliate programs > Whoa up, Mark Whitman [issue 1727] -- in my post in #1726, I was > paying you a semi-large *compliment*, not disagreeing with you! ;) - David Yancey, LED 1728 :) no David, I didn't think you were flaming me. I did read your entire post and of course enjoy being agreed with. I just focused on the little snip I did... > If the better-quality, content-rich sites took his advice, I > would be left only with crappy, misleadingly promoted > affiliate farm sites as possible partners. .. because it sparked an idea that I thought *might* be original and effective. In #1727 I was really putting an idea out there: > what would happen if you *required* affiliates to > post links to your site exclusively from a newsletter? .. thinking I would get some interesting feedback. I've never tried this myself or suggested it to clients but it sounded like an interesting concept so I made the post. I happen to think that once something becomes a well known "proven online concept" or worse yet "conventional wisdom" it's effectiveness drops like a rock in some (many?) cases. Banner ads are a classic example. So, I appreciate your comments and apologize for giving the impression I was on the defensive. Any post I make here or anywhere will always be in the blunt to edgy range but always meant to stimulate original thinking and feedback. So, any comment on what the effectiveness of my comments in #1727 might be (assuming affiliates are provided sufficient incentive)? Mark Whitman ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Kris Driessen Subject: Copycats > ... a competitor has bought a domain that is very close > to mine in name, then copied my meta tags and statement > at the bottom of my pages soliciting new products verbatim... - A. Brantley, LED 1727 This happened to me twice. When the site owner failed to respond, I complained to the ISP. One ensured that the offending page was taken down, the other told me to go pound salt. However... while searching Google recently, I saw a notice at the bottom of a page indicating that they had blocked a search result in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The explanation page is here: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=839 I may go this route from now on! Kris Driessen http://www.hickoryhillquiltbus.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Copycats It's not traffic hijacking. Not quite. And as for whether it's really copyright infringement, that is something you need to discuss with an attorney. However, you might be able to make a trademark infringement claim. It depends on whether you can show that your domain name is a trademark. Generally speaking, meta tags are useless. Google will display their content in search results if there is nothing else on the page that is relevant to a query. But Google only turns to meta tags as a last resort. You can render their use of your meta tags useless by providing a focused title and H1 header tag on your page, combined with good content. Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth http://www.xenite.org/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy." - Ernest Dimnet |
