It’s funny how many bloggers and website owners assume that Adsense would give them the best chance to make money online and get something back for their effort. There is no question that in certain situations Adsense could get you lots of money. You are going to have to be in the right niche and get a decent amount of traffic for that to work. But even if you make a killing with Adsense doesn’t mean you are getting the best deal from your ad space. That’s where OpenX comes into play. OpenX is an ad server that enables you to run your Google Adsense ads vs. affiliate and other types of ads and measure its performance against them to find out if you are getting the most out of your ads.

The fun part about OpenX is the fact that you can either host your ads yourself or join OpenX community and let others buy advertising space on your website. You can then let you ads compete and find out which ones work the best for your website. If you decided to run OpenX yourself, you can always grab affiliate banners from Commission Junction or LinkShare and pit them against Google ads.

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StumbleUpon is one of the most underrated advertising networks on the market. It operates very differently from Google and Microsoft. Unlike pay per click or CPM model, StumbleUpon is a pay per view model. So you’ll only spend money when your page is viewed by StumbleUpon visitors. That’s not all though. You can get free traffic from StumbleUpon if people who have visited your landing page give you enough thumbs up. That means StumbleUpon can be a great traffic driver if you have a content heavy portal. It can also help lower down your conversion rates as the cost of each view is only 5 cents. The only knock against StumbleUpon ads is the fact that it doesn’t get too much love from SU. The service could be much more sophisticated and allow for more flexibility, but that hasn’t happened so far. The service is getting a upgrade in look and feel as StumbleUpon is testing StumbleUpon Ads beta. It’s designed to help you get a better feel for your StumbleUpon campaigns and get more out of it.

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Every marketer knows that testing things out and optimizing landing pages is one of the best ways to secure higher conversion rates. Many newbies discount the effect that changing the smallest elements on a landing page can have on conversion rates, but even colors of your buttons can be a big difference maker. That’s why you should take the time to test every element on your page to find the page that converts the best. But should you try adding Adsense or social media buttons to your landing pages as well?

We have addressed the issue of Adsense on landing pages in the past. It’s really up to the marketer to test various units and compare conversion rates between pages that do have Adsense and those that do not. Most top marketers leave their Adsense units at the bottom of their landing pages. They figure if the visitors are going to leave, they may as well leave by clicking on an Adsense unit. Things are a bit more complicated if you think about social media buttons. Social media can be a bit distracting for your visitors, and you could lose the attention of your visitors when they are in the process of submitting your website to Facebook and other top sites. Besides, not all landing pages provide enough value for your visitors for them to take the time to share them on social networking sites such as Facebook. (more…)

Many online marketers make a living out of promoting other people’s products and reviewing them to save others time and provide them value in the process. This whole tactics has been around for years. It’s the oldest trick in the book. You want to promote a product, a comprehensive product review can help you increase your conversions and make some revenue in the process. The FTC is apparently aware of some of the issues that is going on in the affiliate marketing industry. PPC affiliates have been getting away with a lot in the past few years. When you do make a claim about a product or give it a rosy review, you better have purchased the product and put proper statements of disclosure on your landing pages. While the FTC won’t shut your business down with one violation, you certainly want to stay in the good graces of the FTC.

One way to make sure your disclosures are all in order is by using services such as CMP.ly. These services are designed specifically for anyone who is promoting and reviewing products online and want to have a way to differentiate between their relationships on their various landing pages. Sometimes you are promoting a product because you are an affiliate. Other times, you are getting freebies and other incentives to promote a product. Whatever the case, you are going to need to have proper disclosure lines on your website.

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Online marketing is a very competitive business. There are plenty of people who are doing it, but not too many are innovating and applying new techniques in their niches. That’s why those who take the time to learn new skills and apply them to their markets are in with a better chance to top their competitors. It’s one thing to know Google Adwords inside and out. It’s a whole other issue to know how to optimize a campaign, make changes that matter, and try new channels to bring high Adwords CPA’s down.

Online marketers today need to be more well-rounded than ever before. It’s not enough to be just good at one thing anymore. If you happen to be interested in expanding your horizon and mastering the art of search advertising from ground up, here are 3 books you should read to get you started:

Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words: I don’t like giving people more credit than they are do, but you have to tip your hats to Perry Marshall. He comes up with some of the best training material we have seen on a consistent basis. His Adwords books are classics and keep getting better. If you want to learn Google Adwords once and for all, you should get this book.

Web Analytics 2.0: if you are not a data cruncher, you better start getting into the game. No matter how talented a marketer you are, there are things you can’t figure out without using your Analytics software to its fullest. Web Analytics 2.0 shows you how you can go about optimizing your campaigns and turning your data to actionable information. (more…)