Short Introduction

A lot of webmasters have been earning money from being PPC publishers for a long time, only those that are making the most out of it have stumbled upon an even better solution, of also bringing traffic to their websites via the same method.

It might sound a bit wrong, but when you come to think of it it actually makes perfect sense. Those people that are directed to your website, are possible to click an ad or even buy something from your site, it all depends on how well you can manage your your ads . Getting a balance between a CTR ( Click through rate ) and a Conversion Rate ( we're just going to call it CR for now ) is the key for making money from PPC.

Let me explain that a little bit more, imagine you are already managing an advertiser account and paying $0.05 for every click ( that's 5 cents a click ), for those 5 cents you spend you might be able to earn somewhere from $0.25 to even $20 or even more.

Let's explain those numbers a bit more, for every 5 cents you'll be paying you could earn a round $0.50 , now think about what if it were to spend $100, you would be multiplying your earnings by 10.

These earnings depend on how clever the advertiser / publisher is and also this is where the CR interferes.

How to improve CR

Your conversion rate depends on many factors, and is especially influenced by your CTR. Now , in an ideal case we could think that weeding out the 'tire kickers' and 'curiosity clickers' ( remember that you are paying per CLICK ) would get us to a high conversion rate , thus big profits . This is by all means true, but unfortunately it is impossible to weed out the 'tire kickers' and 'curiosity clickers' , so you'll have to turn your eyesight towards another method, designing your ads for conversion and not clicks.

A common mistake I have seen on many ads is that they're not informative enough. I see all sorts of ads like, "Click here to get " or "Visit this to get " and so on . This is an example of a bad ad , with a relatively poor conversion rate . You should keep in mind that you are paying per CLICK; people that are misinformed from the beginning feel like they have been fooled and after clicking your ad they will just abandon your site .

An example of a good ad would be "Get your free here - just enter your email and receive it", "25 free - with every new sign-up", and so on .

Remember, never try to fool your possible buyers, try to give them as much information about they are getting into before you start paying for nothing.

Further thoughts

The way advertisers/publishers are earning money this way is not only by using the same ( or an alternative ) PPC program, sometimes you have to be a little more clever and use affiliate programs ( that's what most people do , but not everyone does it correctly ).

In a future article I will tackle the reason why Landing Pages are important and possibly The basics of Affiliate Marketing.

An overview of black hat SEO and white hat SEO, by Perry W.

White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques are the angels and demons of the SEO world. White Hat SEO methods are the "legal" ways of doing search engine optimization while Black Hat SEO methods are the exact opposite. There exists so little information on how to totally differentiate the two. As a matter of fact some reliable SEO companies use Black Hat techniques accidentally, though most use them deliberately.

Search Engines and Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO techniques sometimes give the impression that the whole SEO business revolves around the concept of outwitting - even to the point of fooling - search engine relevance algorithms. In fact though, there are ways of implementing fair and justifiable SEO processes. Most of the time (though not all of the time) Black Hat SEO techniques are easier to implement than White Hat SEO methods. For this reason, search engines like Google continue to find ways to level the playing field and to discourage the use of Black Hat SEO techniques.

Google polices the search engine environment and bans Black Hatters whenever they are caught or reported by concerned internet users and stakeholders. But as much as search engines strive to eliminate the use of Black Hat SEO techniques, there will always be clever people who will get away unscathed with unethical SEO techniques.

It's for the Money or for the Easy Way

For what reasons do Black Hatters practice unethical SEO? The answer is fairly simple. It's the big bucks in exchange for negligible effort. SEO companies who stick to White Hat methods work hard to succeed. On the other hand, Black Hatters exert a fraction of the effort and earn as much or more money than the White Hatters.

Moreover, sometimes it is disheartening and frustrating to find Black Hat SEO sites that rank above yours on search engine results pages after all the effort that you have exerted using White Hat techniques. Black Hat SEO sites rank higher because they trick the system. They look for the weaknesses in search engine algorithms and target them. On the other hand, White Hatters playing under the assumption that the internet is a level playing field usually end up being at the losing end of the search engine results.

Black Hatters as Algorithm Testers

Black Hatters are sometimes too clever for their own good. Once Google or any search engine for that matter discovers a Black Hat SEO anomaly, it will implement counter measures to fight it. In particular, Google's algorithm will be tweaked to make it more foolproof.

However, as soon as the new algorithm takes effect, Black Hatters then find other ways to trick the program. If this process continues, the good guys will basically win in the end.

There will always come a time when after encountering all the tricks behind Black Hat SEO, search engines will be able to provide the absolute counter measure. In other words Black Hatters are just providing the good guys an edge in the business. Black Hat techniques serve as the testing ground for search engines to improve their system. In the long run, White Hatters will gain all the benefits in the SEO market.

ReviewMe is a new advertising service, developped by the people from Text Link Ads.

The concept is very simple. Advertisers pay for bloggers to review their product, site or service and get some exposure. By default, the price of the review is set by ReviewMe based on 3 criterias. The Alexa rank, Technorati rank and estimated RSS readers. However, each blogger is able to set the pricing he wants.

The admin panel of ReviewMe is clear and simple, easy to use and you can get started in minutes.

The main disadvantage I see is that they take a 50% commission on each review, same as they do on TLA. This seems pretty high and will probably motivate advertisers to contact directly the blogger instead of going through ReviewMe.

I love the concept though and I'm sure it will be a great success. Congrats to them!

After the King of the Bill, Andrew launched another advertising model, "King of the Clock".

The concept is pretty simple, advertisers can become "King of the Clock" by paying $10 and this place their site on the top of the list. Once their ad is live, if somebody bumps it from the "throne," they can simply "rebuy" the spot for an additional $10, creating a kind of race between advertisers to remain on the top.

I found it pretty interesting though I'm not sure what type of traffic this would actually bring to the advertisers.

I just crowned ExoClick, let's see how long it stays there and if it brings any traffic at all.