Day 5: Easy but Often forgotten money… (Includes Day 4: Part 2)



Now that we have the profile of our user, and a list of problems that the user may have it is time to start to think about how we can put the solutions in front of the user. Personally I use really advanced software for this which controls all my websites in a single place, however for our small site I’ve found something a lot simpler.

I am not an expert in this new plugin so if you know more than me, feel free to add your comments however I have spent the past week using it to try it out. Part 2 of Day 4 covers how to set this up, and how we can add our first Income Stream to our website.

Today involves installing our Ad Management software, joining our first affiliate network, creating our first sales page, and configuring our Ad Management software for this… Sounds like a lot so lets get started!

Install the Simple Ads Manager

The software is a plugin called Simple Ads Manager, when talking about ad’s the place the ad is shown is normally called a zone. Whilst the ad itself is called a creative and belongs to an ad campaign.

In Simple Ads Manager the place the ad is shown is called a Place, and the Ads are called Zones (don’t ask my why)… What we will do now is install Simple Ad’s Manager, add a page on our site offering to sell advertising, and then set up a default ad to advertise this page if no other ads are avaliable. I am also going to give you a few default ad’s to use.

  1. Log into your WordPress dashboard
  2. Click Plugins, then click Add New.
  3. Enter “Simple Ads Manager” and click Search
  4. Click Details and make sure that the Author is “minimus” as there is another plugin by nearly the same name. If it is click Install Now.
  5. Click Activate Plugin.
  6. A new option will appear on the left menu called “Ads”


Joining our first affiliate network: Clickbank…

Now this is where everyone else goes sign up here, copy this code here, and you are done… I’m special because I am different and I am going to try and explain it so you understand exactly what we are doing.

An affiliate is someone (or a company) that makes their money through getting paid commission for selling someone else’s product or service. Generally the more affiliates that promote or market that persons product, the more money the person makes.

Finding these affiliates willing to promote their product was a big problem, however the solution was simple. A “middleman” was developed called an affiliate network which is like a meeting place for affiliates and product/service providers. This allows affiliates to sign up to view and promote a list of products/services that are listed on the network by their creators.

Clickbank is Instant Automatic Approval so you can start promoting offers immediately without having to be approved! You do not have to do this for every site you create, and should only do this if you do not already have a ClickBank account!

To get started…

  1. Watch the video for an explanation of how Affiliate Networks Work…
  2. Goto http://www.clickbank.com
  3. Click on Sign Up
  4. Fill in the details, pick a unique username for yourself. Read and Accept the Terms and click create account.
  5. Goto your email and find the confirmation email from ClickBank, open the link.
  6. Go back to your email and copy your confirmation code from the ClickBank email. Go back to the clickbank you opened, paste this code in the confirmation code box, type in the confirmation code and click Confirm.
  7. Important - ClickBank will automatically generate a password for you and show it to you now, write it down in a safe place or memorise it. If you lose your username you will lose anything you have earned in that account! I have also changed the password from the one shown in the video…


FULL DISCLOSURE DISCLAIMER
 Clickbank does not run a refferal program for new affiliates, I will not earn a single penny from your signing up to this affiliate network.


Our First sales page…

Now we have our Clickbank account I will show you just how simple it is to add multiple streams of income to your website in one go. Many people do not bother to do this, it takes 10 minutes and you only have to get one person to buy from either method to be in profit. Easy but often forgotten money…

  1. Open your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Click Pages, Add New.
  3. Enter the title “Advertise Here” – (I use this so people looking for sites to advertise on in google can find us)
  4. Untick the “Show this page in Menus” tick box
  5. Start writing your page content  – (I have included my example below for you, please write your own version of it)
  6. Goto http://ClickBank.com, and click Marketplace on the top right. Enter “banner” into the search box and click search.
  7. You can decide which product you want to promote, or if you want to promote a design service instead. Personally I am promoting Easy Banner Creator.
  8. Click promote next to the product/service. It will open a new window. In the Account Nickname box type your username, for Tracking ID type “ap” (for Advertising Page) and click create. Copy the domain it gives you in the top box.
  9. Go back to your Advertise Here page, and add a comment saying something along the lines of “If you do not have any banners to advertise with already, I recommend you use Easy Banner Creator here to make professional looking banners“. Select the text “Easy Banner Creator” and click the Hyperlink (Insert/Edit Link) button on the editor toolbar (looks like a paperclip). Paste the link from Clickbank into the URL box, tick open in a new window, and click Add Link.
  10. Finish writing your advertise page telling them to email you (include your email address) if they are interested in advertising. Click Publish to add the page to the site.
  11. Now we want to add a link to the advertising page in the footer of everypage the same way we did for the Privacy Policy. Click Appearance, then click Editor. Select the footer in the file list that appears on the right.
  12. Now you want to look for  where you added the Privacy Policy code and insert the following code between the </a> and the <br />. After you have done this check your site to make sure the Advertise link is on every page.

 - <a href=”/advertise-here”>Advertise</a>

The sample text I use is avaliable here http://www.bestfootballgoals.info/advertise-here, PLEASE use this only as a reference and rewrite it yourself for the best benefit!

How to configure WordPress Simple Ads Manager…

Now we want to get it ready to use, and add our first (often forgotten) method of monetizing our site, this is simply to add the ability for people to advertise on your site… I was going create some lush banners but cannot find my photoshop cd, I will add these as a resource at a later date…

We start by adding a new page detailing our offer:

  1. Save these two images (right click on the following addresses and click Save Target as…) http://crashedchallenge.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/468×60.jpg and http://crashedchallenge.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/300×250.jpg
  2. Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  3. Click Ads on the menu
  4. Click Add New Place.
  5. Enter the name (at the top of the page) “Top Banner Spot”, make sure the size is 468 x 60. Click upload and select the image you just downloaded called 468×60.jpg. In the target box enter “http://www.yourwebsite.com/advertise-here”.
  6. Scroll down the page, and where it says Codes in the Code before box enter “<center><p>” and the code after box enter “</p></center>”. Scroll up and click the Save button on the right.
  7. Click on New Place in the Ads menu on the left. Enter the name “Bottom Banner Spot”, make sure the size is 300×250. Click upload and select the image you just downloaded called 300×250.jpg. In the target box enter “http://www.yoursite.com/advertise-here”.
  8. Scroll down the page and where it says Codes in the code before box enter “<center>” and the code after box enter “</center>”. Scroll up and click the Save button on the right.
  9. In the Ads menu click on Settings.
  10. In the Ads Place before content select “Top Banner Spot”, tick both the boxes after this Allow ads place… and Allow using predefined…
  11. In the Ads Place after content select “Bottom Banner Spot”, tick both the boxes after this Allow ads place… and Allow usng predefined…
  12. Scroll down and click Save Changes…

The video for this is here…

If you have better graphics skills feel free to upload your own images instead of the ones I have supplied.

Summary

Today we have just started moneytizing our site and I have shared a money method that 99% of Internet Marketers do not do. Back many years ago it used to be very common, now though people get so distracted by advanced stuff they forget tried and tested basics.