How Should You Use Ads For Your Site?

The question of when and how to use ads in your web based business is such a tough one! I have struggled endlessly with it myself over the last few years. I have read what other blog owners have to say about the issue, and I've found that there are many schools of thought on this. After considering all the angles, it seems to me that nobody is really wrong. It really all depends on what works for you and for your site, and you can't figure that out until you try a few things, can you?

I have heard from people who think it's best to start with lots of ads, right from the very beginning.

Some readers don't mind that at all, realizing that the blog owner has to finance the blog somehow

Some readers don't mind that at all, realizing that the blog owner has to finance the blog somehow and that ads are a necessary part of that. Unfortunately, I have noticed that quite often these readers also have sometimes trained themselves to completely ignore the ads, and will certainly never click on them or consider a donation to the blog. 

Other website owners think that it is worth skipping the ads completely in the beginning because they are afraid of running customers off. Well, I do understand that way of thinking and it is quite true that some people will see one ad and run. However, if you begin with no ads at all and then suddenly put them on your site, it can drive customers away equally as quickly. Starting off with no ads will not work too well in my opinion, because after all we all need to make a living!

I have found that a good way to deal with the question of ads is to use them, but to do so wisely and at a measured pace. Of course plastering your site with ads from day one will be a bad idea, especially when you think about the fact that we all want our sites to be inviting and friendly. My favorite way to do this is to put just a few select ads on my site, choosing the more unobtrusive ones in the beginning. I have found that 
partnership ads, or "sponsor" ads, are a really good way to dip your toe into the blog ad pool without having to dive in all the way. You could even consider putting up a few reviews or slight inline links that your blog readers are well suited to.

Another way to get financial support for your site is a donation button, accompanied by brutal honesty. 
I think that a donation button that just says something like "Please help defray my costs with a financial contribution" is not the tone that most readers respond to. For one thing, it is a little boring. It is also not that personal, and as most site owners know, it is really important to have a connection to your readers. When your readers feel as if they are your friends, they are much more likely to offer financial support. Maybe a brightly colored donation button that says something along the lines of: "I need money to feed this blog - it has taken over my life!"

"I need money to feed this blog - it has taken over my life!"

Another great little trick to get some quick income is by making it relevant to your readers.
After all, they come to your blog for your unique content. Maybe you can tell readers that you will be able to provide more content and options if they contribute one dollar per month. I know, you are thinking it is not enough to really help. But, before you say that a dollar is not enough to accomplish anything, consider the volume of customers the web offers. A brick and mortar business may have 1000 customers who are regular buyers. With the Internet, that number is usually tripled or more. Those small donations can really add up when you are dealing with thousands of customers.

It can be a little bit tricky to determine exactly how to use ads with your site. I know that it took me a while, but I finally got there. If you can hit that middle ground, you will get the same results that I do: Happy customers who donate regularly, and a popular site.

Take a look at your toaster. Now your DVD player. Next, your coffee machine. They have some solid gold advice for your social network.

It might sound crazy, but all of these appliances have design standards, and the Web is no different. Consider the 'play' button on your old VCR. When users know what that button is, they can recognize it on their DVD players, MP3 players, online videos and more, and instantly know how to use them. 

Changing the Web standards of your network is like forcing your user to learn a new language.

It asks them to give up on ideas that they are familiar and comfortable with, and that means they spend more time learning how to interact with your site and less time actually interacting with it. 

Take a look at your page stats over at crazyegg.com and your Google analytics - You may be shocked at how impatient your users are. No one wants to buy a toaster they don't know how to use. On the Web, that means going over to another site. 

How do you apply these standards to your site? 

- Prioritize.
Your toaster has one giant button to push the toast down and to warm up the coils. That's the first priority. The other controls are for advanced users - those who want to control the darkness of their sliced bread. 

Prioritize your site and think about what they'll most likely be looking for (or what you want them to be looking for) on every page. Make sure that option is highlighted in an easy-to-find way. Let users fine-tune if they want to, but make access and interaction as fast and simple as possible. 

- Stay traditional, even if you don't.
We talked about that big green triangle on the DVD players, the universal signal to users that "this starts the movie."

Design a DVD player without that triangle somewhere and you're guaranteed to confuse

people. 

You may have the next killer site that will take the world by storm, with new ideas and a new architecture all its own. That's great. But it won't matter if no one knows how to use it. If you can use a button, use a button; if you can use a text field, use a simple text field. 

If you have a stunning, simpler idea for how these things can work better, try them out, but do so carefully. Once you understand what users are looking for, you can play with the rules, or present them in a new way. But you must learn what works for your users first, and work to those expectations.


Hopefully all this talk has left you seeing your toaster, and your Web site, in a way that leaves you hungry to improve - or, at least, hungry for some toast. 

I shouldn't write this article because I haven't tweeted in awhile, but that's because my iphone is broke, and that is how I tweet. But I just have to tell you, (ya you the one that thinks twitter is a waist of time) how great this micro blogging platform can help your traffic. 

When I'm tweeting regularly, I pick up another 10% -15% traffic spikes, and that's big, just think if I tweeted more than two times a day. As I've pointed out before, I don't do allot of SEO, marketing etc.. for my Socialgo networks but I do in my 9-5. 

What is twitter? 
Heck if I know. It's called micro-blogging and 95% of everything I read on there makes me feel like I've waisted 10 seconds of my life. But there are those jewels I pick up here and there,  latest news, funny stuff, and business advice. If I ever have a question, or am making a decision in blockbuster, I can tweet it and get plenty of good advice. 

Grab on to those last words "good advise," That is what you want to be known for on twitter. You want to be the come to guy or gal in your certain speciality (or what your network is about).  If it's about hanging out and making friends, you should be hanging out and making friends on Twitter, then invite them over for a chat, or to check out a funny blog. If you have a fishing network, you should send out some good websites, news, videos on fishing regularly. Not like every tweet, that gets old, and everyone knows what your doing. It should be very natural.

This is what I do with littleprayerbox. I follow the 50-50 rule. %50 percent of my time on twitter is spent trying to be funny, responding to tweets and yak'n it up. The other %50 is spent either sending a relevant news link, a link to someone who needs prayer (on my site), or answering tweets that are in my network's speciality. So %50 chillin, and %50 promoting me and my site. 

Tools of the trade 
On the go - If you have a iphone there are several (12-15) free twitter apps. I love Twitterrific. It is very clean and easy to use but I also use Twinkle for m other twitter account. It's nice to have two apps so you don't have to login and out. You can also text your tweets from any mobile phone read about it here.

Desktop -  On m desktop I use tweet Deck, I've tried others and this one is the mostest. You can split up your screen to view different information, like direct tweets to you, messages and even just your favorites (i think). This is a must because, it's like the pro-tweet tool. 

Broadcast twitter on Socialgo -  Now with the socialgo Layout manager it's easy to broadcast your tweets anywhere on your SG site. you can see my broadcast, how it works on littleprayerbox.com about page.

It's very easy to do this just go to twitter widgets here sign in  select "other." grab the html code and drop it in one of your widget areas of the Layout Manager. You can see it working, and also styled with CSS on my prayer site.  Now your network can keep up with your everyday minutia. 

Twitter Marketing tools - There are many tools that help you manage your twitter account with more precision than twitter allows. 

TweetLater -   This is probably the most popular tool. there are others that do similar functions, but so far I haven't found one better. One of the best things you can do with this service is in it's title, you can schedule tweets. I do this sometimes, but don't do it too much, people catch on, and don't like it when your tweeting but not there. Another great thing you can do is have a email sent to you of tweets with any keyword you define. So for me, I have a daily email sent with every tweet with "socialgo" in it. This is a great way to find friends or a market directly targeted to your service or network. For your red snapper fishing site, you could have every tweet that has "red Snapper Fishing" Then add those people. The last thing I'm going to touch on is the auto friend. You can set it up that whenever someone ads you as a friend, you automatically add them and it sends them a email that you specify -- keep it chill, like "thanks for adding me, hope I don't bore you, here is my site if you want to know more about me (site)."I wouldn't suggest this for your personal twitter account. Only for biz.  

Twitter blasts - If you have a Facebook or Linkden, myspace and others, you can funnel your tweets into the accounts. Facebook actually has a app for this, read about it here. But what I do mostly is use my BETA quub.com account which feeds into like 8 social networks, and it is a social network it's self, so I make friends there too.. very cool site. There is another one I've been playing with that also does this called this moment also in beta. This Moment is so very useful and fun. It trys to tie all your networks to gather, like you tube face book and on.. Havn't spent much time on there yet. 

Social book mark your tweets - Click Ball  is by far my favorite way to tweet. It is a social bookmarking site that lets you update your status both on twitter and clickball with a firefox plugin (get when signing up). What's cool about this, is you can easily send TINY URLs with just a click. When your just surfing around and you see something useful for your twitter community, just click the red ball. A form drops down, you write, "check out this funny monkey," it shrinks the URL and tweets it. I've made allot of friends at Clickball also because it's easy to find people with the same interests and follow them, on the other side some people like my bookmarks and can follow me on twitter just the same. There are other twitter plugins for firefox, but none this simple, and don't forget your getting two times the broadcast because you are broadcasting to click ball and twitter at the same time. This is great for link building. I send out a clickball with every blog I write on here (well I did, I'm behind)

Tweet your way to traffic  
I hope that's a start for you.  Twitter traffic is good targeted surfers, IF, ou don't just go adding willy nilly every body on this side of earth. Use tweet Later and pick your friends well. Have fun with it, make friends and contribute good content to your community. I (and others) can smell someone just out for my traffic a mile a way. 

Make your article and content good and relevant... that is the key, and has been the key since the beginning of media.

SEO quick boost Part: 2 >> 1

I'm sure you've heard of the Long tail. It's actually been around for quiet awhile in different industries, and under different names, even before the Internet. We're going to do a series on using the Long Tail to rock your Social Network Google stats, but right now I want you to get a head start, because as the name suggests: it's a Long process.  So, if you start now, then you might start getting the results in time for my series, which will be helpful in understanding what I'm doing.

Long Tail Research
There are many ways to research your Long tail, and I'm not even going to explain them all here. Instead, I'm going to send you to the best Long Tail tool I have found on the net, and it really works. Like Alcoholics Anonymous says, "it works if you work it"... but what's cool is you don't even have to be sober to do this :) 

I haven't done this yet for my networks, but I use this web site almost every day in my business, and it will work on anything with a blog, or forum (something with updatable and lasting content). Go to Hittail.com and sign up for the free 30day account.  They have some videos teaching you about Long Tail Traffic, but you don't have to watch them to make it work. Just do this. Enter your web site in your account. Wait about a week, sometimes two (or longer) if your traffic is real slow, and check in occasionally on the SUGGESTIONS tab. Until you start getting suggestions, it's fun just to watch the real time traffic widget, which shows (REAL TIME) hits to your site and what they searched for. When you start getting suggestions in, click the check mark to put them in your "to-do" list. Now, all you do is each day (or each time you have a new suggestion) Write a blog, forum, or Article, with the keyword they suggested, cleverly embedded in your Title. It's also a good practice to use it again in the body, and maybe (once we learn this) search for similar niche keywords in Market Samurai and using those in a subtitle, bolded text, linked text, italic text... but don't go crazy. I would use only two niche keywords in one article, and use the HITTAIL keywords in your title. 

What you will see if you are diligent in doing this is a snow-ball effect. It will start leaking in for the first months, but soon your Niche Keywords from HITTAIL, will compound the interest, and will began to bring in significant traffic targeted just for your content. When I'm doing HITTAIL on a site, I try to write a article from their suggestions every day. Sometimes I'll do it on our blog, or, even better, submit a summarized article to other sites with a link back to a more complete article on ours (works in forums too). Either way, you will get the Search credit for the keyword. 

I hope you know by now that there are no magic buttons for traffic, it takes dedication and work , and anyone who tells you different is probably making allot of money (for the moment), but I promise you, they don't have any magic for you. And if they do have something that works like magic, it's spam, or manipulating google in some way and will be gone before you even get started. (and you might get your tail slapped)

Make your article and content good and relevant... that is the key and has been the key since the beginning of media. More Later...

I went from literally 5-10 hits a day to 90-110 a day within the span of one week and I did it with just three easy to implement keyword placements.

I'm working on a Podcast and Deep tutorial Series that will focus on marketing your Network using a tool we talked about in a earlier Blog Market Samurai. Now I have to admit, even though I am a Marketing Director in real life, doing SEO (site engine optimization) everyday, that I haven't done much in the marketing dept. for either one of my networks beyond submitting them to search engines and directories, but I have done a few things that gave me a huge boost (at least on one of them) while I try to find some time to do proper SEO work on them. Here on ProSocialgo I bare it all, so I'll let you in on some of my own stats, though they are hardly impressive, but, what is impressive is I've literally done nothing more than about thirty min. of work bringing in the traffic I have.   The tips I have today are just the tip of the ice-burg, they are just enough fuel to get you off the ground and running.   My little prayer box  receives 2500 hits a month or 90-110 a day, I get 1-2 (on averg.)  members a day, and 1-3 email prayer requests, for people who don't want to sign up. I know, that's not much, but it's actually fine for me, I don't think I could handle much more with my time restraints. 

I went from literally  5-10 hits a day to 150-200 a day within the span of one week and I did it with just three easy to implement keyword placements. All I did was put my (well researched) Niche keyword in the title of my Network (you do this in the ADMIN). So, it used to be "little Prayer Box," now it is Little Prayer Box: Online Prayer Requests and intercession. This uses two of my NICHE keywords in one understandable phrase: 1. Online prayer Requests 2. Prayer Intercession.  If you weren't raised in Catholic or Christian Schools your like: what the? It doesn't matter.  What matters, is through my research these are the keywords people are searching with to find sites like mine, and one better, they are not saturated keywords, which means I don't have to compete with many sites because not many prayer sites are tapping into these keywords believe it or not. The saturated keywords for LPB are "prayer blog and prayer forum"

So if you have a  fishing site, I bet a shark fin that the keyword "Fishing Website" will do you no good because it's saturated beyond belief, but "Trout Fishing Fly" will bring in a Niche audience (I actually researched that keyword > 400hits/day, 40,000 competing pages. that's great!) Now compound that with "Snapper Fishing" (400hits/day 40,000 comp.) and you will receive even more hits. You see, it's useless to go after the obvious and saturated keywords. Unless you have big bucks, they will et you no where. Even Socialgo seems to understand this. If you look at their meta tags you'll see some strange keywords like "web Builder" (Something like that). If they tried to go after "Social Network," forget it! 

Ok, I'm rambling, let's finnish up. Second! You need to gather about four NICHE keywords for this. Place your main one (online prayer requests) in a h1 tag on your home page. Then scatter the rest through your home page content. When you do this, put them in sub titles (h2) or bold them, link them, italicize them, but whatever you do make it coherent. It doesn't matter if they bring people or not if your shoveling a bunch of crap on your home page. Do no more than four of these keywords on your home page and write your content around them. If your using the fishing example you could use a h1 title like "From Trout, FLY to Snapper Fishing, we're the Network for you!" Ok, you could do better... but see I got two key phrases in one H1 title.

Now this blog post is a little bit backwards because there is so so much that underlines these quick helpers. But until I get the new series out, I thought, why not? Why shouldn't you start playing with your SEO right now. We'll delve deeper later, just try it out, watch your stats about once a week. If you've used a tool like Google SEO (get a free adwords account), or Market Samurai correctly in finding your niche, you should see a jump. 

Lastly! You probably already comment on blogs in your Networks niche, so stop using your web URL or name as the link anchor. That's right! Use The trout fishing fly guy.  Here is a article on using anchor keywords. 

One last NOTE: It's even better if you have a really good Niche keyword (tht you know the stats on) in your actual URL and the title of your Socailgo Network.

Part 1 >>2

I came across this thirty day challenge, which is basically a challenge to start your online business and make your first buck, or ten bucks, during the 30 days. I'm going along at about "4 days" a day because most of it I've learned from other sources. But, I find little gems here and there, especially in the area of SEO tools.

One product that I fell head over heals for is a SEO/Adwords app that works both on the mac and PC. If you’ve been trying to do SEO on a mac for any length of time, you know the programs available are sparse as Democrats in Dallas.

If you’ve been trying to do SEO on a mac for any length of time, you know the programs available are sparse as Democrats in Dallas.

It’s called Market samurai, and it is a real workhorse. Talking all your keyword research needs such as longtail, adwords, competition, and page volume and rank. That’s just the half of it. It also has a full area dedicated to finding content and promotion, with all kinds of ways to analyze the content. A few upcoming upgrades will dedicated processes for  “publish content,” Monetization” and “adwords.”  I love it, and if you have a SocialGo Social Network with a hanker’n to make some bucks, Defiantly check it out. The Keyword tools are free; you have to pay to get the rest. But, the free stuff is very useful.

I would suggest the 30 day challenge to Network Owners who are new to promoting their site, advertising (SEM), SEO and all the other fun acronyms. But, it’s also a great start for those who want to use Market Samurai. They have allot of real world application, plus you learn what all the Samurai acronyms stand for.  

It’s all-free, but, they do have your email. And I get something like once a week from one of the guys, but some of it’s actually pretty useful. I would gladly trade useful spam for my extensive catalogue of penis enlargement email.

Our first Market insider will be dealing with Keyword research, so even if you don’t do the challenge, download Market Samurai, we will be using it in our research.