July 1, 2007

What do you do when you've sold all your ad space?

Come vote in my poll on v7n's forums: What do you do when you sell all your link space?

I have a number of sites with no ad space left and advertisers asking for ad space. I tend to build another site in the same niche to accommodate overflow, but I think this is doing it the hard way. It would be easier to concentrate on the one site and just jack up prices. I have something against raising prices so I never do it...

Posted by James Trotta at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2007

Subvert and Profit affiliate program

Has anyone tried a Subvert and Profit affiliate link?

I'm not interested at all in even registering with Digg or Stumbleupon but I'm sure many people are (the same people willing to take those post in my forums for 10 cents jobs). Anyone had any luck with this one?

Posted by James Trotta at 3:38 PM | Comments (0)

June 1, 2007

v7n contextual interview: why and how to use their service

I was recently able to get Mike Sewell from v7n contextual to answer a few questions about their program:

Buy-links.com: What makes v7n contextual a better option (for advertisers) than less expensive imitators?

Mike: The thing that separates us from our imitators is the quality of the blogs in our system. We screen each blog thoroughly before allowing them into the network. We also side-step the ethical issues involved with paid blog publishing. We don’t require our publishers to review the sites they are linking to, just to include their chosen anchor text in a blog relevant to the topic. This makes a win-win situation for all involved.

Buy-links.com: What are some of the better link buying strategies you've seen (what are the most effective techniques for buying v7n contextual links)?

Mike: A good link buying strategy is one that appears natural, increases domain authority and targets your selected keywords. The most effective use of contextual links is to buy a wide variety of links aimed not only at your top domain but also at deeper links such as product pages, etc. A mix of keyword and non-keyword anchors should be used, this will increase domain authority and focus search results on your keywords without triggering any alerts from search algorithms.

Buy-links.com: Where do you see contextual link buying in realtion to directory listings, reciprocal links, and other link building techniqes?

Mike: Contextual links are a unique and powerful compliment to the other more common forms of getting links. They are not a replacement for these other, more common techniques, but used in combination with them they can provide a much bigger boost to search rankings than using those other methods alone.

For te record, I've always been happy with v7n contextual links (buying and selling).

Posted by James Trotta at 3:41 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2007

Payperpost.com sucks, particularly the crappy support

I complained about Payperpost sucking for bloggers not too long ago. Now I'm telling you that payperpost sucks even worse than I thought they did a week or so ago.

I don't want to brag but let me start off by saying that I've paid for lots of blog posts in my day. The ones I write are really good, much better than the ones I'm normally able to buy. But I still get a good number of posts rejected by payperpost reviewers, I think because they're stupid.

For example Jillian from payperpost sent me this email::

This is a notification to let you know that your post, Coupons for exercise related products, at url http://www.healthspanblog.com/2007/05/coupons-for-exercise-related-products/, has been rejected for the following reason(s):

------------------------------

Thanks for posting!
Unfortunately we cannot approve your post. Please refer back to the Opp and use the exact required link/anchor text as provided.
Once the changes are made please resubmit for approval.
Thanks again!
Jillian


Please log into PayPerPost.com (https://payperpost.com/login) to either correct this issue and resubmit the post or to delete the post.
If this post is not corrected within 3 days, it will be deleted.

Thank you,

The PayPerPost Team
http://payperpost.com
http://blog.payperpost.com

If you have any questions or comments regarding this message, please send us a note by clicking on 'Contact Support' at the bottom of any page within your PPP account. Thank you!!

150 N. Orange Ave.
Suite 304
Orlando, FL 32801

I sent them this:
Not to tell you how to do your job, but I followed the instructiuons in the op:

"We would appreciate you also adding an optional link to the main page listed below in the required link area. The more variation we get for the link text, the better"

I'm afraid that if I follow your instructions the advertiser will be less happy because there's an optional link which I included and they want as many different types of anchor text as possible - Are you sure you want me to do " couponchief.com" as the anchor text?
I waited a couple of days but got no response. That's typical - Payperpost support is terrible at answering support requests - I've sent them as both an advertiser and a blogger. One time they had several hundred bucks of mine but wouldn't credit it to my account. It took several weeks and over 10 emails just to get the money (they refunded it instead of putting it in my account for some reason).

Anyway, I log in to Payperpost and into "manage my posts". The post I made is gone! Like it never existed. In other words I wasted my time and sent a bunch of traffic to the advertiser for nothing. All I got was frustration because the idiots at Payperpost can't read what the advertiser wants and can't respond to support requests.

This is the second time they've deleted a post of mine from their control panel after they screwed up by not responding to a support request. That's pretty bad considering I've only done 7 posts for them.

I'm done with Payperpost. I'm deleting every payperpost thing from my blog and going to every webmaster forum to share how sucky they are with the web developer world.

Posted by James Trotta at 6:24 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

What can webmaster's learn from the "Life's short. Get a divorce" billboard ad?

I usually stick to online advertising, but this offline ad was so successful that maybe we webmasters can learn a little something from it:

lifes-short-get-a-divorce-billboard.jpg

According to the AP, since it went up last week, attorneys Corri Fetman and Kelly Garland said calls to their law firm have gone up dramatically.

What makes it even more successful is that it caused such a controversy (some people didn't like it) that it's now a national news item. How's that for publicity? It just goes to show you that you don't want to try appealing to everyone. Be willing to piss some people off.

Posted by James Trotta at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)