Why You're Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren't Doing This.
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Copyright © 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul
Your tip today starts with my own shocking secret - I used to *HATE* listening to audio online. I'd still rather pay to download a transcript. I'm just a print-oriented person.
But I’m an oddball- that’s why you need to remember this one very important fact:
Almost everyone in the online world would rather listen than read if they can.
(And people like me will buy your audio if you let them - I’ve paid for free audio streamed seminars to be sent to me on a CD.)
I can’t name one friend who doesn’t own at least 25 CDs, but only five have more than 7 books. Yes, even if it's the same material - when faced with clicking an audio link to listen, or reading, they’d rather listen.
Not everyone is a great writer. But just about everyone can talk -- or get someone else to talk for them. So here are three reasons why you need to figure out how to have an audio-enabled site today.
1- Visitors love audio.
And your site is about the preferences of your visitors, not you, right? Right? Whew! You scared me for a second there.
2 - Audio keeps people on your site longer.
In a recent conference call by the makers of Instant Audio, a discussion was sparked that detailed many of the reasons why visitors stay longer at your site - particularly on your sales pages - when they are also Audio-enabled.
3- I’ve got one word for you. Podcasting.
If you run a business that has even the simplest web site, even if you don’t have an audio-enabled computer, there’s a way that you can widen your audience, perhaps up to one hundred visitors by this time tomorrow.
This is not an exaggeration.
Podcasting, in lay-persons terms, is simply a way to incorporate audio and other types of media into RSS Feeds.
Some podcasts are full-fledged amateur broadcasts, and others, like the one at my main site, are just quick daily tutorials, tips or greetings, that I like to call mini-casts.
(There’s a free video that will teach you how to do a mini-cast at http://howtopodcast.blogspot.com and there are free how-tos all over the Net.)
Through the power of RSS, folks can then find out about your site in a variety of ways, not just as a one-time visitor, but as a subscriber to your feed, often on their daily trips to their personal pages at My Yahoo, CNet’s Newsgator, or MyMSN.
Just like with regular RSS, every time you update this file with information, your subscribers get an automatic notification.
This is often more efficient in delivery than email marketing - and although ezines and other email communications have not gone the way of the dinosaur, not having an RSS Feed from your site is like being a television network station with only one or two shows. You can think of your average static twelve-page website or weekly newsletter as examples of these shows.
Once the “program” is over, they don’t have a reason to be back. Many web surfers return to your site only because they are reminded.
With an audio-enabled feed, you are taking care of these issues in one shot.
• Update frequently (meaning at least daily) with news, tips or editorials that are relevant to your audience and they’ll be back to listen to and/or read what you have to say.
• Search Engines love sites with feeds. It meets their needs of finding fresh, keyword specific information. If you’re maintaining an updated feed and/or blog, you’re giving the search engines more chances to find you and more reasons to list you. Combine your text posts with audio and you’ve got a search engine magnet.
• With audio, even if your visitor surfs away from your site, your voice is still with them and they’ll start tuning in to your “station” the way they would with traditional broadcasts.
If you put together a podcast feed, whether it’s a quick tips daily show that lasts five minutes, or a weekly half-hour audio show coupled with shorter text-based updates, you’re giving your site an air of distinction.
But don’t listen to me.
Listen to USA Today, or the Washington Times. Both recently ran prominent stories on Podcasting and its growing popularity.
So how do you get yourself properly audio or podcast-enabled?
That’s a little more complex - but starting out can be as easy as filling out a few forms and making a phone call. Now that you don’t even need to have a microphone , money, or a bunch of fancy equipment, there’s nothing stopping you from being able to compete with other sites that offer audio.
Tinu recently opened a completely free resource that gives more information for audio and podcast beginners. You can read the announcement at http://www.freetraffictip.com - or read her blog for more free daily traffic tips (in text *and* audio).
Treble your Adsense Earnings in 60 Minutes by Kenny Hemphill
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Treble your Adsense income in 60 minutes.
Google's Adsense is one of the most powerful weapons in website publisher's arsenal. It enables you to monetize your sites easily and if used properly can generate a very healthy income.
However, if you're not using it properly and maximizing the income you squeeze from it, your leaving money on the table – something we all hate doing.
Boosting your return from Adsense can be done very easily and quickly, and you'll be amazed by the results.
I ran Adsense on my sites for over a year before I discovered these techniques, and like many people, I though I was doing pretty well. My clickthrough rates and CPM figures were very healthy, and I didn't honestly think that they could be improved a great deal. How wrong I was. Immediately after I implemented a few quick changes my clickthrough rate more than doubled, and by doing some fine tuning I manged to get nearly three times as many people to click on the ads as had been previously doing so.
The first technique is one that was 'discovered' by the amazingly helpful Debs, on SIteSell's
SBI! forums. When I read it originally, it made sense and I decided to goive it a go, but I wasn't prepared for the immediate impact it would have on my income. It involves making only a few simple changes to the format and positioning of your Adsense ads.
Firstly, forget about using banners or skyscrapers. These ad formats are almost universally ignored by surfers. Why? Because we've all been conditioned to recognise a skyscraper or banner as an advert and as these adverts are rarely of any interest, we ignore them. What's needed is a way of integrating Adsense ads into the editorial on your site as seamlessly as possible. To do this you need to do three things:
1. Use the 250 x 250 rectangle format 2. Make the background color of the ad the same as the background color of your site, or as close to it as possible. 3. Make the ads borderless by setting the border color to be the same as the background color of the ad.
These changes can be made by logging into your Adsense account and creating a custom format. Just select the 250 x 250 ad format, and create a custom color palette. Use the color picker to pick the coor you want. The Javascript is automatically generated at the foot of the page, ready for you to copy and paste into the pages on your site.
Now, you need to position your ads where surfers are most likely to click on them. Research using retina scanning technology has shown that the place that surfers tend to look at first and most often is the top left. I don't know the reasons for this, perhaps it's because that's where we're used to seeing the most useful search engine results (at the top of the rankings) and search engines are the sites we most often visit, so we automatically look at the same place on other sites.
Whatever the reasoning, as soon as I made the above changes to my Adsense ads, clickthrough rates doubled, immediately.
The second technique is much newer and one which is entirely based on my own experience. Google has recently added a new type of Adsense format, called Adlinks. This displays a series of links on your page in the same style of Ad unit as regular Adsense ads. When a user clicks a link they are taken to a page of adverts that resembles regular Google search results. As a publisher, you are paid every time a user clicks one of those ads.
Adventurous soul that I am, I jumped in with both feet and started to trial Adlinks on my most visited pages as soon as it was launched. I'm using the four links in a square box format, positioned top left of my page content. After a few weeks of running Adlinks alongside regular Adsense ads, it's clear that the return on Adlinks is about a fifth to a quarter higher than regular ads. There's no clear reason for this but one explanation may lie in the fact that clicking on an Adlink takes the user to page of 'results'. When a user clicks on one of these, you are paid for the click. If the user finds what they want, great, if not, it seems that they hit the Back button on their browser and try again, just as you would for normal search engine results. Then they click on another result, and you get paid again. So it's possible to be paid more than once from the same Adlink click. Now, this reasoning is speculative, but it does make perfect sense in the light of my Adlinks results.
Finally, Adsense has some excellent tracking statistics that allow you to track your results across a number of sites on a site by site, page by page, or just about any other basis you choose. This is a very powerful tool and you should use it to find out which ads are performing best for you and fine tune your Adsense and Adlink ads accordingly.
So you see, by spending an hour or so of your time making a few adjustments to the Adsense ads on your sites, you can very quickly treble your Adsense income. Give it a go, you'll be amazed by the results.
About the author:
Kenny Hemphill is the editor and publisher of
The HDTV Tuner and has been running Adsense ads for two years.