Snap Shot announced that they are entering the monetize your site advertising program with Snap Shares. Much like other affiliate programs Snap Shot now has the option to include four different types of ads, and of course Google Adsense is one of those methods.
Snap Shares adds a new money-making dimension to Snap Shots by allowing Web site owners and bloggers to increase their inventory with context-based ads at the bottom of each Snap Shot.
New Way To Monetize Your Blog
For those monetize your blog folks out there, this might be something to look into if you haven’t used their service before. It works similar to those textual links where an ad pops up from some keyword from within your post. What made Snap Shot a little different is they take existing links and the pop up window is a “snap shot” of the link. I use / used it on a few different blogs (I even used it on this blog) for a while, but the pop up on each window became tiresome to me, especially when it had no advertising value to the program.
I don’t know if I will try it again on this site, probably not, but I do have one blog that still uses their service and I will be sure to change over to my ad numbers. If you are already using the service, by default, the ads will be displayed when you mouse over the link. You will need to create an account on Snap Shot and make sure you update your account with your Google Adsense or other ad information. Without the update you are just giving away ads clicks.
Will the High Traffic Blogs Try It?
It will be interesting to see if some of the larger blogs pick up the service. Most of the a-lister blogs I come across do not use their service. I would guess one of the main reasons is that it distracts from their site a little bit and I am not sure how profitable the ad program will become.
What is interesting to note is that some of their subscribers seem less than happy about the change, and many have gone to remove the plugin altogether because they moved to an ad based system. When I initially signed up for their service I was rather surprised at the time that they were not using an ad based system, but perhaps that was the big appeal for a good part of their clientèle. If a majority of the Snap Shot users were not interested in the monitize your site application they may loose quite a few users, but I would guess they had researched this before hand and know what to expect.
What about your site? Have you used their service in the past or do you plan on trying it out now that they are offering a way to make money with the service?
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If you work or sell anything on the Internet long enough you will come into contact with all kinds of people and personalities you may never run across in the course of your daily routine. This of course is not always a bad thing, most of the time you can meet and interact with so many more people than you ever could in person, but every once in a while you will come across that individual that makes you think how far can they actually take this. And the answer can quickly become very obvious, about as far as they want to, and usually way farther than you would want them to as well.
I have sold different products and services on the Internet now since about 1993, so I have run into my share of not so pleased customers or buyers that no matter what you do or say they are pre-determined to be displeased. I think I could write a book on it, but another article that comes to mind that I will write soon is called The Customer is NOT Always Right, but I will leave that for another post.
The Customer is Not Always Right… Really
Well, this is an old saying, but buyers can go to far. The Internet allows people to say and do things they would never do face to face, even though there really is a real human behind the screen, sometimes buyers (customers) can use the Internet to take advantage of the systems in place. There is a difference between good customer service and common sense, and you have to weigh the effects of each situation. I really don’t think the customer is always right, but a company should still live by that adage as best they can. When you can’t, minimize any negative effects that might occur and move on.
Recently I came across one of those buyers on Amazon that just would not be happy no matter what we did. He ordered a book from us, we shipped it to him within 24 hours, and he received it very quickly. It was then he determined that he wanted the book to be a hardcover (even though a printing in the same edition and publication year did not exist). It was not a gift or anything, just for personal reading, same words, same everything, just a paperback copy. After explaining that a hardcover didn’t exist he demanded a full refund, and wanted to keep the book.
That is the point at which I should have just said, ok, keep my book, here is your money back, can I do anything else for you?
- The customer is always right
- Re-read my step 1
I Guess the Customer is Always Right After All
If I took my own advice here I wouldn’t have anything to write about, so if you don’t do step 1 above, learn something from the mistake. In the end, because of the way Amazon is setup to deal with their Marketplace sellers, I had to refund the book price and the shipping anyway, and had no means to get the book back other than just to ask the buyer to return it, which he refused.
This buyer did threaten me with the standard I will file a claim and leave negative feedback thing, neither of which I wanted over a sale like this, but it did cause me to dig into this customer service cause and effect a little deeper than I had in the past. When pushed by a dumb seller, how far could a bad or unethical buyer take it to an Amazon Marketplace seller if they so desired? As far as they want.
Is Being Right Worth Your Amazon Marketplace Account
I guess you could win the battle and loose the war pretty easily here. After knowing how far a buyer could go, I might re-evaluate how right I really was here. If I had to choose between my single book and my seller account, I would probably have refunded the guy twice what he paid for the book. In a recent blog post, 10 Steps to a 7 Figure Income From Your Site, number 5 on the list is of course, The customer IS always right. If you are in business for any length of time you will soon learn that the liability all rests on the business, and whatever the problem is, it probably isn’t worth it in the long run. The screen shot below was from a canceled account from just 4 feedbacks, it doesn’t take much sometimes.
The steps I will outline below did not happen in this case, of course, it is just the scenario I found with not to much trouble, and I know I can learn something from it. After I tried to explain to him that he was indeed wrong, I promptly emailed him back to say how unprofessional I was and if I could do anything else to let me know. As of this writing that is as far as it went.
How an Unethical Person Can Get Your Account Canceled
Noticed I have now changed to person and not customer or buyer. I really think that there is a line, usually that is the line of law, that once crossed, the individual is no longer considered a customer or buyer, and should not be treated as such. It is nothing more than simplistic fraud, and not even very smart, but, who ever said common sense prevails. If you have someone that has it in for you, especially over the Internet, they may not stop until you are down and out.
I hesitated to list these steps in the first place but did so because I found them (1) readily available on the forums, (2) something anyone could really figure out anyway, and (3) something I (we) can learn from the next time there is an unruly customer. Good customer service should be the key.
There Are Three Ratings So There are Three Steps
A little background on Amazon’s policies. Amazon has a Seller Performance Measurement plan that shows what they expect from their sellers. For the most part there are three different areas Amazon looks at, the seller’s Feedback, A-to-z Guarantee Claim Rate, and Media Refund Rate. Each of these figures need to be below a certain rate to remain in good standing. Knowing these, it is just a matter of doing the math.
1. Look at Seller’s Feedback, Times 10%
If a seller has a feedback rating that is 100% and 100 feedbacks in the last 30 days, 10% of that is 10 feedbacks. The total negative feedbacks allowed by Amazon is 5%, or in this case 5 negative feedbacks over the 30 day period. A buyer only needs to buy 10 books or 10 products and then they can immediately leave 10 negative feedbacks, well above the limit.
2. File A-to-Z Guarantee Claims
The number of claims against the seller can only be 0.5% of the orders received. The above 10 purchases would all need to be filed as a claim against the seller. This can’t be done immediately, there is a minimum time limit allowed to receive the item before they can file a claim against the seller, and if the next step is taken first then it doesn’t come to the A-to-Z claim.
3. Request Refunds Through Media Refund
A buyer can do one of the two last steps to be effective. If the buyer doesn’t want to wait to file the claim they could bully the seller into issuing the refunds. If the seller refunds all 10 products in the example above it would far exceed the 5% allowed by Amazon. Of course the seller doesn’t have to refund the orders, they can wait until the claims are filed.
The seller may also find out what the person is doing and refuse to ship the product, and in this case, the seller will need to refund the orders as well. Amazon gives you 24-48 hours to ship or refund the order in question, all of which will not be good for the seller.
Seller’s Can Take Standard Precautions
There are of course a lot of variables here. One being that Amazon will actually take action against the buyer and actually look at the situation and understand a good seller from a bad one. Another would be that the seller could follow some standard practices that might help their case and protect them from this kind of fraud.
- Sellers should always ship their orders with a tracking number
- Ship orders within the alloted time
- Respond to all emails as quickly as possible
- Keep in mind, you never know who you are talking to or where it could lead, good or bad
- Make professional acquaintances that you can talk to about problem customers
- Do your research first. Groups and forums are a great asset, your problem is most likely not unique
- Remember step 1 above and bite your tongue
This situation outlined above would be a perfect storm situation in reality. I did find a few sellers that had some of these problems but not many. It takes a buyer that is willing to go to these extremes and actually spend their own money, Amazon would have to be totally oblivious to the buyers activities (which I doubt they are), and you would have to have some pre-existing issue or issues with one of your ratings.
My experience selling on eBay and some other channels tells me this isn’t really exclusive to Amazon. Usually when a seller account is suspended or canceled there are at least some underlying reasons that the seller or company usually omits or slants, it is just natural, and we can never really know what information the Trust and Saftey or Alliance teams have gathered to make their decision.
It does happen though, and any selling channel company that tells you it can never happen doesn’t know what they are talking about, in my opinion. A recent post about Google, Get ANY Adsense Account Banned, spelled out a similar scenario, and eBay is probably the biggest and easiest target of all. Each sales channel has its own weaknesses that customers can abuse and exploit. What is important to remember as a company or seller is that we can probably stop most problems before they become something bigger ourselves by just good old customer service.
Update, April 4th
Ironically, that is how it ended for us on Amazon as Amazon Marketplace Sellers. The email screenshot at the top was the actual email we received after a quick string of bad buyers (click the image to see the entire email). We were able to give no explanation, no time was allowed to correct what the “buyer” complained about, and no grace period or way to get back in as Amazon Marketplace Sellers. One email and we were out and our business was gone. I knew it would eventually happen, and it did take a few years for something like that to catch up to us, but in the end I knew it was only a matter of time. We spent many good years on eBay and many good years selling on Amazon and learned a lot about selling online (see We are No Longer Amazon Marketplace Sellers).
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In my last post, Reasons to Keep Running Google Adsense Ads, I looked at some good reasons to keep running Google Adsense ads, or to consider using them on your blog or eCommerce website. Here I will take a look at some of the other marketing options available, examine some of the less desirable effects of the Adsense program, and make some conclusions about the points made from these two articles.
This is not a bash Adsense article, obviously I use them myself, but what all business owners should do, look at as many options as they can and decided which one fits the best according to their business needs. On a side note, I have an upcoming set of articles that examines both sides of Google Adwords too, so stay tuned.
Marketing is Not One Size Fits All
All you have to do it run a search for Adsense and you will see so many different responses for and against using these type of ads, and it might be hard to tell what really works. I think the real answer to that questions is what works for you may not work for me and vice-versa. Each site is so different, has different goals and objectives, but sooner or later, if your store or site keeps growing you will need to look at some online marketing, either to buy some ads (which would be Google Adwords) or to sell them (Adsense), but the growing opportunities available with smaller companies continues to grow each day.
More and more businesses are becoming very specialized. It is important for these niche markets businesses to look at different options that will benefit your company, not just right now, but options that will enhance what will be your long term marketing plan. In the same manner that eCommerce shopping companies have become a collection of niche markets, so are the options available in the online marketing field itself. Look for companies that specialize in your niche market or are at least familiar with your companies specific needs.
Adsense is a great one size fits all ad program, and you can even get very specific with their affiliate ads but there are so many other good online marketing companies today that it is only prudent to not limit your business to one particular company or ad program.
You are Advertising for Your Competition
I generally write from the perspective of the company or store site selling a product, so talking about Adsense is really the opposite of what companies should look at when they are trying to sell a product, right? After all, you are selling your products, not someone else’s, so looking at selling ads on your site might be counterproductive. For this example I think Blog About Crafts put it best on a recent post called, Adsense Kills Business, where she talks about the difference between running a business and a hobby. Treat your business like a hobby and that is what it is, treat your hobby like a business and chances are, you are in business. You do generally have to act and look like a professional to be a professional.
There is a big difference from a personal site like Blog About Crafts and a professional services or product selling site
Look at the screen shot below. I grabbed the header from the online store page that sells crystals and beads. At the top, the ad shown will take people away from the store you are looking at and at bare minimum will show other options to your own store or site. The Adsense links at the top are taken right off the content of the store selling the same products. Now sometimes this is what you want to do. You might be networking between several different companies and some reciprocal links may be called for, but Adsense is not a reciprocal link program.
Does it Add Value to Your Company
Marketing should not only add value to the company you are advertising for, but it should also add value to your company. This may sound strange but there has to be an exchange of value for it to be worth doing. This is the whole concept of business and what you are doing by selling your products or services. Someone else finds a value in what you are selling and gives you something of value in exchange.
This is going to be different depending on what your company goals ultimately are for your business. Usually the value added to your company is going to be money paid to you for advertising. If your main market is to sell advertising to pay for the production and maintenance of your site (much like Google itself), then it may very well add value to your site, but you still need to look at how much value it adds.
Adsense may pay, eventually (see previous article), but I haven’t found returns that would be considered great by any means, at least not something that could be called “revenue” to me. The value exchange should be as close to equal as possible. I.e. a highly valued area of your site should produce an expected return, so be sure that you have some way to measure if you are giving a whole lot more to your advertiser than you are receiving in return. This doesn’t have to be exact, but it shouldn’t be totally unequal. Many times I think the Adsense program has been so successful for Google because they get so much coverage on so many sites with very little payment in return.
One key to this is testing. There is a good article on Blogging Experiment, How to Find AdSense Alternatives for Your Site, lists several alternative companies and options, but also makes a good point when he says testing is a very important part of finding good alternatives. Many companies offer a 30 day trial if it is a paid monthly service, others will give you some kind of credit that should give you an idea of how well it will work. One problem with this is it might not be a long enough period of time to see an actual return if you ran it continuously.
Don’t Keep All Your Marketing Eggs in One Basket
This is a simple point but one worth mentioning. You can continue to develop your site or store, increase your traffic, sales, subscriptions, and use just one marketing company but if something ever happens you have to just start over again. If you build up high enough revenues (a good thing, yes), but with only one company, if and when that revenue is ever lost your company will suffer much more so than if you spread the marketing revenue around to a few different sources.
You can do a quick search and find many examples of people that have been banned from using Google’s Adsense program for one reason or another. From my experience on eBay, it seems to work the same way with Google, once you are gone, you are gone, no questions or appeal needed, and it doesn’t always seem to be that hard to do.
SEO Refugee wrote a rather nerve racking article, Get ANY Adsense Account Banned, which explained in some detail how easy it is to get an account banned. After reading that you really hope the competition people who might not care all that much for your company doesn’t get a hold of that information. Granted it does require the other party to really do some work, but some don’t care how the get rid of the competition, just that they do. This unethical practice is terrible to say the very least, but I have to assume it exists and Google should have something in place to prevent this type of fraud from happening.
Complexity and Unknowns
This is not referring to the complexity of implementing the program, I actually stated the opposite on my previous post, but the complexity that is Google and the unknown that goes along with their programs and services. As with any company of Google’s size it is very hard to know what their internal checks and balances are and how they effect their own customers. Google, for good reason, keeps their proprietary data and development information very secret so it is hard to know what might effect your marketing campaign and what might not.
One issue that has come up recently is the paid link topic and how or if Google will penalize a site for using paid links. Google has actually provided some good information about this topic lately, see my article, Matt Cutts Updates Google’s nofollow Use, and it has been very helpful, but it has taken a while to get to that point of knowing what to do and what not to do. From Google’s perspective it is about stopping spam, not necessarily paid links, but if use paid links as part of your marketing campaign you should know what effect it might have on your Google indexing and your marketing campaign.
It isn’t really what you know, but what you don’t. The issues that Google faces are not going to be the same as your company, and they are going to do what is in the best interest of their company, just like everyone in business. Google is in business to make a profit, not to make sure your company has enough ad revenue. Once identified, those interests may be contrary to your business efforts. They may not be, but the point is you don’t know. Good business practice says to minimizing the risks as much as possible, and that is very fluid, sometimes you don’t know what those will be from one moment to the other.
Affiliates Can Offer a Good Value
Google Adsense is one of these, yes, but there are many different affiliate companies (Commission Junction being of the biggest) and there are some very good programs to look at, even with smaller company’s websites. Many companies now offer their own affiliate program where you can earn a return or you can pay others to be affiliates for you to send traffic to your site. This post won’t be detailed enough to get into all the different platforms that affiliates offer but they are very extensive.
A new project I found this weekend looks to be very promising, called the Rubicon Project, it allows you to control all your different affiliate programs in one place. They are just in Beta testing right now but the feedback so far has been very positive, according to one of the founders of the project. I will post a full review of their company in an upcoming post and go into more detail about affiliate programs in that article.
Conclusion
Marketing your products or services takes a lot of work, research, testing, and perseverance. There are many online options available for just about any niche market company or blog, look around, do your homework, see what else might fit your business needs in addition to Google Adsense (or Adwords for that matter). Remember that results won’t happen overnight, but using alternative ad companies will minimize your risk and should continue to add value to your company.
Try to use a balanced and well planned out approach. Re-read your marketing plans and goals and see if what you are doing will meet those goals. Online marketing, no matter who you use or what method you employ, should offer at least an equal return for your exchange of time, money, or space on your website. If not, you might want to look for another option. If you want to keep running the same ads for no return, that is fine too, just let me know, I would love to place an ad on your site for free… any takers?
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When considering an advertising company for your blog or website Google is probably going to be high on the list, but shouldn’t be the only one. I opened a Google Adsense account on April of 2004. The screen shot shown here was take a few days ago that shows we have now reached the payout amount minimum of $100 for Google Adsense.
Obviously we were not publishing ads on big PR7 sites, we just used it here and there on a few different store pages, but, for those counting, 3 1/2 years is a long time. Comparing different revenue rates for different people is impossible because of all the variables involved, but that isn’t really the point here, so instead I will just give you my $.02, don’t spend it all in one place.
Sometimes Time Spent is a Little Money Earned
It may be a cliche, but does that make it any less true? Once we opened this account we threw it up on a few different sites and quickly forgot about it. It wasn’t until I started trying to add a few Google ads recently that I realized what ads I had run and on what websites. It was really nice to log on and see a balance of around $80 when I had forgotten about it, but at the same time, it was only $80, after 3 years and a few months. That comes to approximately $1.90 per month for the time period stated, not a great return, but you have to look at the time that was spent to receive that as well, and it was probably about an hour.
Once I actually started working with the ad program again, started putting some time into placing the ads on pages with higher traffic rankings and most of the normal things you would do to increase your ad revenue, it started moving a little faster. It took 3+ years to go from $0 to $80, and only a few weeks for it to move from $80 to $100 with just a few changes to where the ads ran and on what sites.
No matter if you are running an eCommerce site, a blog, or an informational static pages, the more quality time you spend placing ads in the proper locations, producing well written content, creating a good design, and proper SEO, among other things, the more your traffic will increase, and the better your ad revenue will be. This is not something special with the Adsense program, it works with just about everything.
It is not always at the return rate you would like though. Sometimes we can spend a lot of time for a lot of revenue and other times we can spend a lot of time without much return at all. The key is of course to try to minimize our risks and to look for places that will provide a good return verses our time spent. That was the question I asked myself when I started looking more closely at my Adsense account.
There are some good reasons to keep running Adsense ads on your blog or website. You can do a quick search and find people that love it and hate it, but lets look at some solid reasons for keeping at least some Adsense ads running, and some reasons we should look elsewhere. In this post we will look at some Reasons to Keep Running Google Adsense Ads and in the next post we will look at Reasons to Look at Options Other Than Google Adsense Ads.
Reasons To Keep Running Google Adsense Ads
Listed below are some positive points for starting, or continuing to use the Adsense program. This is not a pros and cons look at the program, that I will save for another article so keep that in mind when looking over the below items.
Google is Google
Google’s complete presence on the Internet is unmatched. Sure there are countless good companies on the Internet, but few have permeated and infiltrated companies and personal pages from the biggest to the smallest little site out there like Google. Biggest doesn’t always mean the best, but it does have its advantages. Google is Google may not be a great reason but… it’s Google. Everyone knows who they are and users know the ads most likely won’t contain any malicious links.
Ease of Use
There are so many different options within Adsense it takes some time just to explore all the opportunities available. You can do everything from link ads to affiliate ads and everything in between. You can customize the layout, integrate colors that match your website, choose from many different sizes and shapes that will fit just about any ad block, and choose from a list of affiliate ads so large that it would be hard not to find something that goes well with your site and matches your target audience.
Information Availability
Google has so much information about the Adsense program available on the Internet that if you can’t find what you are looking for from Google chances are you will find it somewhere. Google has a blog devoted to Adsense and updates it frequently. This goes right in line with number 5 but is a little different. You don’t just want to see the polished view that a company gives out, you want to know what the real issues are. These can be both positive and negative items, but with some newer companies it isn’t as easy to find out the real information you are looking for, and with Google there is just tons of it.
Coming up soon I will be reviewing several different marketing options for your eCommerce store site, and a few of these companies are brand new. One of the newest companies I am looking at is only about 30 days old and they are charging quite a bit for their services, but when you go to look for information outside of the company you can find very little other than what the company has put out for us to see.
Continued Advancements
Google continues to add to the program and probably will always do so. The most recent highlight for the Adsense program would be the addition of Google Ads for video units. This is something that has been rumored about for a while and has now been implemented. Right now it is only available in the United States but it is sure to be added to the U.K. soon.
There is a lot of information posted about this new advancement and it looks to be very promising. Search Engine Roundtable posted an article on how to setup video units (see article), and there are bound to be new advances in how and where the ad program will be used in the future. After all, Google is all about ad revenue, that is what built this company so it will continue to focus on this for some time to come.
Another recent topic has been that Google added new payment options for people in Malaysia where they can get paid through Western Union. In a recent article from Adesblog, How to withdraw your AdSense earnings through WesternUnion, he takes a good look at how this new option functions, and although I basically run from payments via Western Union I am sure it is something those in other parts of the world are glad it has been added as an option.
Support Network
The sheer number of people that must work on, and with, the Adsense program must be huge, so it should count for something. The network of support pages and content to help new users is extensive and most of it very helpful. In a recent article on their blog, Getting more quality inventory for publishers, Google talks about improving the validity of their links and several other important issues facing its users.
Our goal with this change is to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the referrals program for both publishers and advertisers. By increasing the value and quality of the referral network, we believe we’ll attract more advertisers and provide more opportunities for you to earn.
Like most things Google, they also have an extensive Google Adsense Group that helps with current issues and questions you might have, and with so many people using the Adsense program you are sure to find some good help in this particular group.
Availability To Have Your Ad Seen Worldwide
Availability is something that not all ad programs can offer. Google will run your ads worldwide and not even Yahoo’s ad program is as easy to use when you want a worldwide marketing program put in place. It is as easy as choosing that option and they continue to add the program to new areas of the world all the time. Google recently announced (see announcement) the Adsense program would start in Vietnam and Indonesia and it isn’t likely to stop there.
Reporting, Tracking, and User Interface
I put this in there because when I compare it to other ad opportunities, most do not compare to the reporting and tracking functionality that Google Adsense presents to its users. You can track your ad programs by many different options like adding new channels for specific pages or sites you want to track. It shows you where your ads are most effective and where you should improve or move ads if they are not getting the proper visibility. The reporting functions are pretty standard but the detail you can get goes back years if you have that much data and you can customize reports to meet the needs of your company.
As I mentioned at the top of this article, coming up, I will post an article about the many other options that companies can choose when looking at their online marketing strategies. To me, these are probably more interesting since everyone knows about Google, but may not know about many of the other opportunities available to all of us. Google is certainly a viable option for those wishing to advertise on their website in an easy to use manner, results may vary.
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This is the first Facebook application put out by this company called Nothing Original and it sold on eBay (see listing here) for $2500, called Logbook. It makes use of the Amazon affiliate program along with Google Adsense, and allows Facebook users to add movies, books, and music to their reviewed items. This should open the door for more applications like it, and it certainly can’t make MySpace feel very comfortable.
There doesn’t actually seem to be a whole lot of other information about this application and it is the only app the company has put out, but it did sell for $2500 so that should say something about the sales opportunities for these types of applications.
Other information from Nothing Original’s information:
