Moving along now you would have contacted a site owner and received a not interested/yes interested type of reply and you would have replied by stating that you were interested in one of the banner or text spots located on their site. Now they should be sending over their advertising rates and it is at this time that you should begin a serious process of site evaluation. I’m still getting questions on why not to evaluate the sites thoroughly BEFORE contacting the webmaster so I’m going to take another crack at this one last in the simplest form.
DONT WASTE TIME…
It’s simple folks. Why would you ever research a site thoroughly only to find out the site owner is not even interested in your proposition? I mean seriously, I’ve been over this topic sort of before but the whole idea is to get the biggest return in the shortest amount of time possible because this will leave you more time to scale. If your a stubborn head then I encourage you to try it another way and cry about it later. Believe me, I’ve been there before and I’m only trying to keep it dead simple and the least time-consuming as possible.
Alright now so begins the process of a good site evaluation. There are some tools that will aid in this but your best weapon is to reply to the webmaster when they send you the ad rates. When they do send that email it is now time to inquire about their traffic. Some webmasters wont have a clue but you should go ahead and ask about their quality of traffic and anything important that comes to mind. I’m not going to name any examples here because each site is different. I will give you a few things to look for though:
- Forums - Look to see if they have a forum attached to the site
- Blog - Look for a blog attached to the site
- Newsletter - Look for any type of optin form
- Anything else that captures visitors and would keep them returning
Looking for these will allow even more possible advertising for you. You should also ask about these just in case they are hidden. Some of the best advertising is renting optin email lists and mass forum blasts. 
While waiting for the email or phone call back you should do your own analysis as well. I personally use sites such as Quantcast and Compete to gauge traffic levels and pick up any hints of what their traffic types are. By using these tools you should know that you have no idea if they are accurate or not so you should take everything as suggestion only. You should be adding notes to your spreadsheet on this site of everything those two sites return to you. Also take note of the little spot where it says “People who visit this site, also visit” because that is just another source for you to pursue later on for your ads.
Look over this potential site thoroughly. You dont know at this point what the ad rates are so you should prepare yourself now. Where are all the ads located? Above the fold, below the fold? Typically if you are going to advertise on a “pay per impressions” basis then you are going to want the ads above the fold. If you are paying per click then you can try out ads below the fold. I personally do not advertise below the fold.
Negotiation
The time has come and you receive the advertising rates. Now here’s what I do so that I dont have to pay the bulk of the rates upfront. If you hop into buying for a full month before even testing the site, then your just a fool unless of course you just have the cash to burn. I am not going to talk about how I really dont care and I just throw the money down. That is something that I have worked myself up to and honestly I dont have the time to keep testing. I consider a month of advertising AS MY TEST. I dont want you to do this though if you are just starting out.
So you will want to ask the webmaster to pro-rate your ad rate so you can test the traffic. All the while this communication is going on you should be reassuring the webmaster that you are looking for a stable, long-term deal here and as long as it works for both sites, you will be a happy advertiser forever. If it’s banner placements I like to ask the webmaster to allow me to test the site for a week. By only paying for a week’s worth of advertising you cut your cost by 75%. If it’s an email drop to their list then you should only send out to a partial number of their lists to evaluate the response rate. Same goes for a forum blast.
Always negotiation folks the best you can. If it seems like it might cost you a deal then go with your gut instinct. That’s why it’s so important to evaluate the site yourself because their are snakes out there that will take advantage of you. Although, I personally have yet to come across such an instance.
From there on out you are on your own. I cant tell you what will play out because it’s up to you and the webmaster to negotiate some terms. Just use the tip of testing because it’s going to allow you to spend the least amount possible just to see if it’s all worth it.
This is dead simple folks and I’m giving it to you as I use it. No need to make it more complicated than it is. Find an offer, find a site, contact the site, if possible yes then start researching the site on your own, inquire the owner for any additional information, negotiate a testing price and time, move forward.
From here on out I would like a questions post. Any questions you send thru the blog, forum or email will be answered tomorrow and from there I will spend the rest of the month giving out some honey-holes and tons of places to use this method with.
6 Comments Received
October 15th, 2008 @4:20 pm
Good Article.
One of the thoughts that came to my mind was that if the website is running adsense, you can create a site targeted content network campaign (either image or text ad) for that site and gauge the quality of traffic for the offer you are considering. You will also get some idea on the quantity of traffic (ofcourse, google will not let you dominate so the actual traffic could be 2X or 3X the number of impressions you get with your campaign).
Any thoughts?
October 15th, 2008 @4:27 pm
Ruck,
Since you are well versed with PPC campaigns, I would like to ask you a related question.
Do you know what criteria google uses to determine the CPM bids for a site targeted campaign? For example, I have in the past submitted different pages from the same domain for targetting. The CPM bid range was so wide ($1.xx to $9.xx), I was surprised (remember we are talking about the same site but different pages). I thought it was due to the relevancy of my ad to the content on a given page, but it still did not make sense when I compared that.
October 15th, 2008 @9:45 pm
In all actuality webtrend I’m almost sick of dealing with Google. Not a days go by that someone is going of the handle about them (usually rightfully so) about how tough they are making it on Affiliate Marketers. Personally for me, I abuse the crap out of the Placement Campaign and Content Network on Google just for the sole purpose of finding sites in the first place that I can contact direct. Of course you could gauge it by using those methods however I hope you wont overlook the fact that contacting the webmaster directly can potentially open many opportunities you would have never known about from using google. Optin Lists, other sites they own, whatever it may be, I am finding out more and more that webmasters are becoming much more responsive to direct advertising. We can thank Google for their shitty Adsense payouts on that one
Other than other Advertisers in the same market I dont know the full criteria. Google does not tell us much so I dont want to speculate publically and turn out to be wrong. If you want to hop on AIM or the phone sometime I would be more than happy to throw you my conspiracy theories though
October 16th, 2008 @6:09 am
Hi Ruck, great post. I have been interested in this subject for a while…
Here are my questions:
What are forum blasts exactly? Can you elaborate on that?
How important is it to set up an S-Corp or LCC in regards to publishers taking you seriously? Would you say this is a must if you want to approach big publishers?
And since you’re a network yourself and have better overall insight in the industry then me. Would me being from the Netherlands effect me in any negative way when dealing with publishers? Not that I can do anything about it, but if you know of any stumbling blocks in that area I can prepare myself for them.
Good to see your still blogging! (former cashtactics reader)
Jan Paul
October 16th, 2008 @10:08 am
Basically if someone owned an automobile forum you could negotiate the owner to mail the members. Most forums have their members set to receive email from adminstrators by default so just think of some automobile offers and approach the webmaster if they are interested in mailing the members
They can also setup specific promotions in their forum. Get creative!
When I first started I basically approached them as an affiliate marketer (sole proprietor) and I can tell you that I got a large response rate of no’s or they wanted to know more about exactly what I was doing. Being from a network or agency or having a business is really just the fundamentals that start good business. I’m guessing that business entities are different in the Netherlands? Either way, you can get creative with how you approach the webmasters even if you dont have a network or something like that.
I dont think that being from there should hinder you in any way. If you have access to US offers or whatever country you want to promote in then getting access to traffic (buying it in this case) should not be a problem either. If you do have problems you can contact me directly and would be more than happy to assist you in any way I can.
Pingback & Trackback
Leave A Reply