The What

A co-branded website is someone else’s content, with your name on it. Basically, they provide all of the content that your users may be able to use, you just supply the traffic. Co-branding agreements come in many forms, but typically you make a revenue share off of their co-brand.

The Why

• More content for your website = More value to your users!
• Increased cashflow!

The Who

So what types of companies do co-brands? Some big ones include sites like Careerbuilder or Pricegrabber. These co-brands can add value while producing income and I highly recommend them. They are not the only co-brands out there, but they are amongst the biggest. If you run accross a co-brand that seems to fit your site, I highly recommend taking it into consideration.

Banner, CPA / Cost Per Action, CPC / Cost Per Click, CPL / Cost Per Lead, CPM / Cost Per Thousand, CPS / Cost Per Sale, Impression, IO / Insertion Order, Inventory, PPC / Pay Per Click, Rich Media, ROI / Return On Investment, RON / Run Of Network, The Fold

Today, I will go over another batch of important terms.

Ad rotation: Ads are typically rotated based on a given list and given conditions. This can be managed by an Ad Network, a simple rotation script, or more complex Ad Management software. There can be any number of ads in a given rotation and they are often based on demographics and a requirement for number of views each ad needs to achieve.

Affiliate: An affiliate is a webmaster who has a relationship with an advertiser for CPA advertising / Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing is another term for CPA Advertising. This is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays based on specified actions taken by the end user. Some examples would be filling out a form after clicking on the ad or purchasing a product after clicking on the ad.

Clickthrough: A click in which the user was successfully directed to the Advertiser’s landing page.

Co-branding: A site which is branded with the logos and/or style of another site for use with the other site is called a co-brand.

Creative: The Creative is the advertisment itself, whether it be a banner, rich media, or text ad.

CTR / Clickthrough Rate: The Clickthrough Rate is the rate at which an ad is clicked on and the user is successfully directed to the Advertiser’s landing page. Clickthrough rates are often used to determine whether or not an ad is served and can sometimes have a Publisher’s account cancelled with an Ad Network due to low Clickthrough rates.

Demographics: The data that makes up a website’s audience such as age, gender, income, and location are the demographics for a given site.

PSA / Public Service Advertisement: A Public Service Advertisement or Public Service Announcement is an advertisement that is run on a website for no charge, usually when there are no other ads to display. These ads are usually displayed for charities or government agencies.

SEO / Search Engine Optimization: The process of optimizing one’s website to get better results in search engines.

SEM / Search Engine Marketing: Promoting one’s website through a search engine, either through paid listings, or getting one’s site higher Search engine rankings through other means.

ROS / Run Of Site: An ad shown anywhere on a website as opposed to specific pages or categories of the website.

Unique / Unique User / Unique Visitor: A visitor is counted as a Unique on their first pageview of the website for that day.

All of the terms from both posts can now be found in the Wiki filed under Advertising Terms.

Of course, none of these forms are worth much of anythign if you don’t have good traffic and to get good traffic you need good content. Really, that is the key to any successful website. I am not saying it is the only way to make money on the Internet, but certainly the easiest and most reputable way.

Hi Bradford, Please can you take a look at my gallery and suggest ways of improving it,do i need to register a name for it? host it seperatly? anything from design to turning it into a membership site.I haven’t been able to get back to you bcos i have been packing up for our relocation soon.Here is the gallery link. http://blogbytyna.com/Gallery/index.php

First off…

i have been packing up for our relocation soon

I hope everything goes well! Travel is fun and exciting, but it can also become a headache. Lets hope for the former!

Well Tyna, I most certainly have some suggestions and take them or leave them, I hope they help! Especially since I feel you are a gifted photographer, I hope that my recommendations help! Lets start with…

do i need to register a name for it?

The short answer: No. The long answer: Depends on what you want to do with it. How do you feel about the photo gallery? Do you feel it is an important part of your website? Do you feel that it has a “life of its own”? More importantly, do you WANT it to have a life of its own completely seperate from your Blog? If so, then definately!

host it seperatly?

Well, that highly depends on your webhost. It looks like you have it hosted on a CPanel server, so if your host allows you an Add-on Domain or not. If so, then you can quickly and easily setup the new domain with very few changes to your gallery or hosting account!

turning it into a membership site

Well, this depends on what you would like to do with the photos and what kind of membership you mean. If you mean to turn it into a “paid membership site” where people pay to see your photography, I wouldn’t recommend that route unless the gallery is already exceedingly popular, though I would even be careful with membership then. I would most definately do advertising, however I could see adding a paid membership feature to the site allowing people to utilize your photos on their websites or in print. Sort of a “royalty-free stock photo” gallery where people pay you to remove watermarks from your images and use the photos.

If the type of membership you are looking to do is to allow people to register on your site and post their own photos, that can most certianly work, however you’ll want to be careful with it. Spam is one thing, but image Spam can get pretty…well…not very pretty at all. It would probably be best if you moderated all of the photos that get posted if you go with a membership of this type. A few things to consider though:

• What types of photos do you want others to post?
• Will the gallery have a primary focus?
• What types of visitors are you looking to attract?

These questions are very important when deciding on membership and membership rules. They are also very important in choosing your domain name, should you decide to host the gallery on its own domain.

Lastly…

suggest ways of improving it

and

anything from design

• First and foremost I would change the template/theme. It is too…”gray”. It gives off a very somber mood.
• Use a lightbox! Lightboxes are GREAT ways to make a photo gallery more…”flashy”. See: http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/ I manage a Vet website and chose to use Gallery2 for their gallery. I utilized a lightbox for displaying the large versions of the photos. Check it out when you click on a photo in the gallery at: http://kernroadvet.com/gallery/v/august_openhouse/
• Link your sites together in a more “prominent” fashion. While your Blog links to your photography website and photo gallery, it is almost difficult to find the links. Even on a large monitor (I am running in 1680×1050), after one full page scroll the links are at the bottom of that scroll. I really like your navigation for http://www.tynaezenma.com/ and think that you should use similar navigation to navigate between all three sites/subsites. Now, I wouldn’t use the image example I have included below, but I threw together a very quick photoshopped idea. Maybe include three options…”Tyna Ezenma Photography”, “Blog By Tyna” and “Tyna’s Photo Gallery”.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer a few quick suggestions regarding your blog as well.

• Your right side ads are bugged in Firefox. See:

• Your RSS feed is only slightly “noticable” and I think it would be good to emphasize it more. Maybe something along the lines of…

I hope these suggestions helped!! Now…do YOU also have a question for The Edge? Just drop me a line through the comments and I’ll see what I can do!

Banner: An advertisement in a defined set of pixel space such as 468×60 or 160×600. These are usually image-based ads, but they can also contain text and/or rich media.

CPA / Cost Per Action: This is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays based on specified actions taken by the end user. Some examples would be filling out a form after clicking on the ad or purchasing a product after clicking on the ad.

CPC / Cost Per Click: This is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays a certain amount per advertisement click or pays a specified amount for a specified number of clicks.

CPL / Cost Per Lead: This is a form of CPA advertising where the advertiser pays based on specified actions taken by the end user. These actions are based around the advertiser gaining a “lead” usually through the user filling out a form.

CPM / Cost Per Thousand: This is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays based on the number of ad views. The payment is based off of a certain dollar cost per 1000 ads viewed. M is the roman numeral for 1000 and is the reason for the M in CPM.

CPS / Cost Per Sale: This is a form of CPA advertising where the advertiser pays out when a sale is completed.

Impression: The ad has been displayed on a user’s browser. Do not confuse this with a pageview. A pageview can have multiple impressions (due to multiple ads) or zero impressions (due to ad blocking software). Typically though one pageview will mean 1 impression per ad you have on that page.

IO / Insertion Order: An Insertion Order is a formal order for advertising specifying all of the details of the campaign (creatives, cost, impressions, etc).

Inventory: Inventory is the number of ad impressions you have available over a specified period of time.

PPC / Pay Per Click: This is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays a certain amount per advertisement click or pays a specified amount for a specified number of clicks.

Rich Media: Rich Media is an advertisement that contains technology more advanced than just a static image or standard GIF animation.

ROI / Return On Investment: An advertiser’s return on investment is how much was earned/gained from an ad campaign minus the ad campaign’s expenses, also known as “The Bottom Line”.

RON / Run Of Network: A run of network ad campaign is one that runs on all websites in a given network of sites.

The Fold: The Fold is the viewable area of a webpage without scrolling. The Fold is defined differently by different advertisers and ad networks. It is most commonly the first 400-600 pixels of a website.

7/14/08 UPDATE: These terms can now be found in the Wiki filed under Advertising Terms.

Statistics

Visits: 884 (a 425% increase)
Absolute Unique Visitors: 529 (a 670% increase)
Pageviews: 2014 (a decrease, but this is more realistic due to the bloated nature of the pageviews the site had while I was building it)
The average visitor spends 4 minutes and 06 seconds on The Webmaster’s Edge.

Monetization

Google AdSense: $6.52
Chitika: $0.03
Kontera: $0.02
Total: $6.57 (a 338% increase)

In June I added Chitika Ads and Kontera. While they have not yet had a strong showing, they still need some time and increased traffic to fully blossom. While I did not make a huge gain in my first full month of blogging on The Edge, I made huge increases considering I started from pretty much nothing. If I can continue these increases, The Edge has a bright future indeed.

Sign up for Chitika.
Sign up for Kontera.

All in all, I am very satisfied with how everything is unfolding. It will be interesting to see the state of the website at the end of July.

• Arial
• Comic Sans MS
• Plain Serif
• Times New Roman

This should really come as no huge surprise as Google is constantly testing new ways to promote AdSense. The only change that I’ve personally seen and was very disappointed in was when they made only the link clickable. I do, however, see the wisdom in it. The clickable area change was probably good for AdWords users, not so good for AdSense users. Some musings across the net have reported an increase in clicks since they started playing with the font.

While UBD’s Block Ad Plugin has a “cleaner” interface and allows you to easily select 1-column or 2-column mode as well as the number of ads to display.

UBD Block Ad Pros And Cons

• Pro: Easy selection of column layout.
• Pro: Easy selection of number of ads to run.
• Pro: You can enter more ads than the number selected to run.
• Pro: You can use a widget or manually enter code into your template.
• Con: Stylesheet is built into php file instead of a separate stylesheet file.
• Con: The auto-preview of ads causes you to be unable to enter a google ad in FireFox 3.

impNERD Random Ads Pros And Cons

• Pro: Stylesheet is built into a separate stylesheet file.
• Pro: You can use a widget or manually enter code into your template.
• Pro: Plugin’s settings page tells how to add the code to your template manually.
• Con: You cannot enter more ads than the number selected to run, nor can you select the number to run except by only entering a certain number of ads.
• Con: HUGE donation link at the top of the settings page.
• Con: So-So interface and no ad preview.

Conclusion: UBD Preferred, impNERD For Now

In the end, I feel that UBD’s Block Ad is a better overall plugin, but plan to stick to Random Ads for now. A few features I’d like to suggest to UBD:

• Separate the stylesheet from the php file.
• Allow editing of the stylesheet from within the plugin settings page.
• Add instructions for adding the plugin to your template on the plugin settings page.
• Take a look at and resolve the immediate preview issue when using the plugin with Google and Firefox.

Get UBD Block Ad

Get impNERD Random Ads

My only suggestion for the plugin is that they integrate it into the “Write Post” and “Write Page” pages so that you can choose to not run ContentLink™ on pages in an easier fashion than going to the plugin page every time your write something you do not wish to include ContentLink™ ads on.

Sign up for Kontera.

In any event, while I recommended (and still do, though after this experience…) them to small-medium websites who want to use CPM Ads, their rates and fill didn’t really impress me THAT much anyhow. But it gets worse…

1. They wouldn’t work with me. I knew that a change to my Ad Chain may have had something to do with it, but they wouldn’t allow me to make changes to try and correct the issue.
2. They said I had until June 11th. They canceled me on JUNE 4TH. This left me with a broken Ad Chain and lost advertising dollars. They didn’t give me forewarning, they just suddenly sent me an e-mail saying that my account was closed.
3. I responded to their e-mail because it said:
   

   Your Publisher account has been deactivated. If you have any questions or concerns, please reply to this email.

   Come to find out…

   Your email has reached an automated mailbox. Email sent to this address does not reach our Client Service team and will not receive a personal response.

   You’ve got to be kidding me right?

I started out promoting Casale on this Blog. All mention of doing so has been removed. They still are one of the top to mid tier CPM-based Ad Networks, but I personally will likely never use them again. Personally? Their loss, not mine.