I’ve always been a big believer that you sort of have to pick a solid monetization strategy on a new site before you put in the work - I mean, getting traffic is pretty easy these days with social networking sites, link bait, viral video etc – that you can ( and I often have) get a huge influx of new visitors to a brand, spanking new neophyte niche crammed with adsense ( or other contextual ads) and not make 87 cents for all of the effort. I personally believe the days of big buck blogging on the back of easy google clicks are well behind us – and for a plethora of pretty disparate reasons. Which is why I’ve spent a fair amount of time on here discussing alternative ways to monetize your network of sites either by selling ads directly yourself, niching out your sites to match a particularly good converting affiliate offer, or simply – as is my primary driver for this site – simply using your thoughts, ideas and experience as a lead generation tool to aquire new clients in a service related market. ( in my case – private coaching and consulting)
Which is why I’m not quite sure what Ricky Martin is thinking – as other than livin’ the vida loca, he also apparently is a bit believer in the Google Adsense monetization model. The man has google ads on his website. And three unique ad zones too. Now – while I didn’t spend much time vetting this out, it pretty much looks like this is HIS site and not some nutty nudnick with too much free time and a jones for listening to "she bangs" more often that the once a year William Hung American Idol re-runs. I’m actually quite stunned. What international superstar logs in and checks stats everyday and and wonders why his "home page right" channel is getting a better CTR than the 728X90 banner above the fold? I don’t know. I’m hoping it’s a desperate webmaster or something.
I don’t get it. I only recently put an adsense block on this site because I thought it would be cheesy. And I can’t sing. So Just in case you are reading this, Rick – you should grab the OIO publisher Plugin and just sell the space yourself. Or drop me a quick note and I’ll help you come up with some better ideas for making more money with your website in 2008, and beyond – no special treatment of course, but between you and I -my girlfriend is a huge Gloria Estephan fan, if you can work something out , I’m sure I can hook you up with better ways to amp up the income on dem crazy fans.
OIO Publisher
I wrote this article earlier today for one of the online article directories…and while I dont usually do this ( post these sorts of articles on my blog) I re-read this a few times and decided I liked it enough and might be useful to enough of you that it was worth sharing here. I do get a lot of questions about copywriting courses, recommendations, etc - and I really recommend nothing other than striving for continous self improvement. While I’ve never been much of a joiner (probably to my own detriment) and am trying to play well with others these days – I will tell you this. Most of the copywriting courses, ebooks and other stuff that is being sold around the willowly web is absolute shit. There are a couple things that I have seen hyped in the last week or so as the next big "must have" course, or video, etc – and the truth is you will be FAR better off ignoring it all and simply staying focused on your own learning process then being distracted by the hype. If you really want to swim in the slimy sea of the VERY best direct response copywriters in the world – and want to save yourself $97 – $497 – $997 – or whatever the pompous price points many of these pointless putzes are charging for their stuff – go out and buy a NATIONAL ENQUIRER and read the whole thing top to bottom, cover to cover – week in and week out. The folks who write – and sponsors who shell out the big bucks for this copy is a much angrier animal than the relative ce la vie world of low cost internet marketing mania. For an 8 buck domain and a few days of time – I can fail plenty without too much worry online. But if you are shitting out 50 large for a full page ad – well, lets just say your margin of error just shrunk a wee bit in case you put up a major league whiff. 
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