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Part 3: Playing The Rate Card

September 8th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

After you’ve acknowledged what parts of your website have the most potential for advertising revenue and after you’ve decided exactly what types of advertising you’ll be offering, you’ll need to decide on a value for each of those spaces and assign pricing for it.

This is likely to be the most difficult part of getting into online advertising – generating the revenue model. For one, you’ll need to study your metrics, demographics and statistics to find out which pages are the most visited. For example, your homepage will likely be your most visited page, and why not? The home page is the entry point to your website. It’s likely how your visitors find you through search engines or through referrals and it’s also where they go to find out what’s happening throughout your site. Naturally, the more traffic to the page, the higher the value – and with that you can associate a higher price with it.

You’ll also have to keep in mind things like production costs. Will your advertisers be supplying their own content? Remember that not every business has a team of designers ready to provide you with an awesome barrage of advertising. You may need to develop some concepts for your clients and have some back-and-forth with them to ensure their satisfaction.

When factoring in production costs, it’s not uncommon to see many websites budget the first week or month (depending on how the ads are sold) of a sale toward the initial production. Once those initial costs are covered, be it for the design work or perhaps a commission to whomever sold the space – then you can begin to turn a profit. This all goes along with ensuring that your website has a proper business model in place before you start lighting up your site with ads like a Christmas tree and lose your shirt by not covering costs.

Web advertising can also be sold in a slew of different methods. One is by dedicated time slot where the ad is sold by either a number of days, weeks, months, etc. This is the most common and traditional way of selling advertising. Other methods include selling per impression or per click. This works by charging the client for a predetermined number of page views or by charging based on the number of times someone has clicked on the clients’ ad(s). Just as you can begin to get creative with what types of advertising you will be offering, you can be just as creative with how you sell it.

A proper business model is the key to making sure that your website blossoms into a healthy revenue stream. To do it properly, it’s not as simple as filling your white space with ad spots and plastering “Buy Me Now!” tags all over the place like a used car lot. There’s loads of strategic and careful planning to be done to ensure long time stability and viability.

We’ve touched here on the basics of preparing your website for advertising. If you’d like help in studying your website with the goal of helping it pull it’s own weight in revenue, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in General News, Web Tools

Part 2: Standard Living

September 1st, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Now that you’ve established which parts of your website are best suited for advertising, you’ll need to figure out exactly what type of advertising you want on your site.

But I thought advertising was just different sized boxes and graphics…

Web advertising can in fact be as simple as a logo placed on a page, but it can also be so much more. Web advertising can take on many different forms including everything from simple graphics to full video, animations or even contextual advertising.

No matter what method of advertising you choose, keep in mind that there are web standards to follow. For example, there are a set of standard ad sizes that are most commonly used across the web for banners, tiles, skyscrapers and more. These standards include dimensions, file size and length (if your ads are animated). For a complete list of standard web ad sizes, see the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Unit Guidelines.

Do I have to follow these rules?

These guidelines aren’t written in stone. It’s not like Charleton Heston brought down slabs of stone tablature from Mount Sinai that said “Number Five! Thou shalt not exceed 40 kilobytes on all Skyscraper banners”. You can build all kinds of wacky sizes if you wish, but keep in mind that your advertisers will need to build custom sizes for your website, and it will cost them more, which can be a turn off for many advertisers. The standard works for pretty much everyone, so why deviate? In the end you’ll likely end up investing more in trying to customize your advertising than you would get out of it by sticking to the standard guidelines.

If you’ve decided to go the contextual advertising route and place third party ads on your website to generate revenue rather than enduring the labour of going out and finding and securing advertisers, it’s important to know that each third party program has their own set of rules for what can be displayed on your website. For example, when placing Google ads on your website, there are restrictions to what you can do with them. You can’t place more than 3 on a page. You also can’t label them as anything but sponsored links or advertisers. Google ads work on a Cost-Per-Click basis so their guidelines are strict but very adaptable to any website.

I recommend reading the Google Adsense Program Policies before deciding to apply.

There’s a lot to consider when figuring out what to offer for advertising on your website. In fact, we’ve only really discussed a few traditional methods of generating advertising revenue. It’s often the campaigns that think outside the box that make the biggest impact, so keep your mind open to all sorts of advertising avenues.

In the final segment of this feature we’ll examine the factors you’ll need to consider when deciding on pricing for your spots. If you’d like to discuss what other forms of advertising that could work with your website, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Part 1: Preparing Your Website for Advertising

August 25th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If you’re a blogger, media outlet or any other form of web publisher, you know that one of the most traditional and stable methods of generating revenue is through simple web based advertising. Just like any newspaper, magazine or television show, there is commercial support to keep the product running – and your website is no different.

So where do we start when preparing a website for online advertising?

When putting together the credentials for web advertising there are a few things to consider. The first is to consider your content and where advertising should be placed so that your advertisers can get the biggest bang for their buck. Of course, as much as revenue is important, it’s equally important that the content of your website not be comprised. Remember, it’s content that keeps people returning, not a page full of ads.

Take time and study your website when choosing ad placements and have others use the site as well to get feedback. By doing this you’ll begin to figure out which parts of each page on your website garner the most eyeballs and thus have the most earning power. For example, websites typically charge more for advertising that is placed “above the fold” or “above the scroll” – meaning advertising that is placed high on the page so that a user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it.

Blending advertising in with your content is also an excellent way to combine both content and advertising towards a single revenue goal. Society is growing increasingly immune to the constant bombardment of ad after ad and slogan after slogan. This requires publishers to get a little bit creative. By targeting advertising and incorporating it into your content, you stand a much better chance at having interaction between your users and your advertisers. For example, if your blog or website is about movie reviews, you may want to begin targeting movie theatres or rental stores, etc.

After you’ve identified what portions of your website would be the most appealing to potential advertisers, you’ll need to take the next step and decide what kind of guidelines your advertising will need to follow.

Next week we’ll be looking at choosing ad types and sizes for your website. Is your current website layout not quite ready for advertising? It may be much more ripe than you think. If you’d like some help with the review process, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

Verifying Your Website’s Accessibility

August 18th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Accessibility includes many functions and many forms. So how can you tell if your website content is indeed accessible to everyone? There are more than a few tests and methods that one can and should take to ensure that their website is not leaving anyone out in the cold.

1. Drop that mouse, mister…

The very first test is the keyboard test. Not everyone has a mouse or it’s quite possible that they may have trouble using one. Try navigating your website with only your keyboard and see how you make out.

2. The screen reader feeder

A screen reader is a piece of software that reads the contents of a web page and provides speech for those with visibility problems. A screen reader can be a costly piece of technology to acquire just for testing your website, but most have free trials that should suffice.

3. Magnify this!

Try viewing your site using the magnification tool. This tool is available on both Windows and Mac. The magnification tool does exactly what it suggests, allowing the user to zoom in on parts of a page like a magnifying glass.

4. Check your website for validation

If you’ve hired a web development firm to design and/or build your website, then chances are this should have been done for you during the process. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, most browsers have additional plug-ins and add-ons that allow you to check for valid website code. You can also try the W3C’s Markup Validation Service. Invalid code can interfere with the ability of assistive technologies to properly interpret your site.

5. Watch your language

Sort of, but not really...

Not everyone is a Harvard graduate with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. There are a variety of different languages and reading levels among the population so it’s important to take this into consideration. Now, it’s not very realistic to expect your website to have translation for every language on earth, but the main part of this exercise involves identifying your main demographics to make sure they aren’t ignored. If you’re concerned about how your content is written or how it may be interpreted by your visitors, it may be a good idea to hire a copywriter. Often, copywriters are experienced in appealing to different audiences and a good copywriter should have no problem verifying your content or making adjustments for you.

If your website can stand up to the above tests then you should remain confident that your site is quite accessible. Of course, how far you take your usability study is up to you. There are no definitive checklists that outline exactly what you need to do to be labeled “certified accessible”. All one can really do is take the proper precautions to ensure that every user gets the most out of their visit to your website.

If you’d like to chat more about accessibility and how you can improve your website, contact Point Click Media.

Posted in Web Tools

An Introduction to Accessibility

August 11th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

What do you think about when you hear the word ‘accessibility’? Is it just another web buzzword that sounds important? Let’s break it down into its two parts – Access and Ability, or to sum it up in a phrase, the ability to access.

The web is great for so many reasons. I mean of course besides the abundance of lolcats and fail blogs.

Yes really. On the web everyone can essentially be treated as equals regardless of location, ethnicity, physical disability or social background. For business purposes you can communicate or sell to a deaf, wheelchair-bound person in Cameroon just as you could to the guy standing at the cash in your physical store right now. The web breaks down so many barriers that otherwise make the world a pretty socially awkward place.

As the web evolves though, new challenges keep popping up with regard to accessibility. In the early days of the internet, web pages were quite simply text with a few images used sparingly. Accessibility was pretty simple, so long as you could afford the equipment to do so. Now, with the majority of people owning some sort of device that connects to the internet, it has grown into an information hub for our everyday lives, incorporating text, imagery, sound, video and more. But with the addition of these new features comes accessibility problems. The hearing impaired will have difficulty with audio clips. Those with vision problems may have trouble reading smaller text or watching videos. Granted, technologies are constantly being developed to ensure worldwide accessibility to the web, but until worldwide web accessibility becomes a reality, it’s up to each of us as independent website owners to make sure our content is accessible.

Why should I care about such small demographics?

For starters that’s a pretty narrow-minded statement. Accessibility doesn’t lend itself only to the physical features of the people using your website. It extends even to the products we use to visit the web. Are you aware that your Mac reads even the simplest of web pages different than a PC? Suddenly our demographic isn’t so small.

Second, if you have any sort of social conscience at all, you certainly don’t want to discriminate. It’s good business to open your doors to everyone.

Third, it could very well become the law. Just as in most municipalities it is a law to have a wheelchair ramp or some other form of entry to your location for the disabled, such laws could very well make their way to the web. In 2006, retail giant Target was locked in a 2-year court battle over website inaccessibility to the visually impaired. They ultimately ended up settling the case but the precedent exists for more of these cases to pop up in the future. Do you want to take that kind of risk? By planning out your website beforehand  to contain accessible information, you avoid the much more costly solution of jury-rigging a solution down the road.

Next week we’ll examine what to look for on your site to ensure accessibility.

Posted in Web Tools

Should Your Website Be Mobile Ready?

July 14th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination by any means to realize that mobile devices are quickly becoming the wave of the future for browsing the internet. With the ability to access the billions of web pages on the web from the luxury of your phone or hand-held device from anywhere on the planet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the trend is becoming so popular.

Let me throw some quick statistics at you:

• 100 million. That’s the number of Blackberries sold to date.
• 85 million. That’s the total number of iPhones and iPod Touches that have been sold as of April 2010.
• 3 million. That’s the number of iPads that have been sold in the last 80 days.
• 1.7 million. That’s the number of iPhone 4 units alone that have been sold since launch on June 21^st. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in General News, Web Tools

Social Media Mistake #5: Expecting Too Much

June 9th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is the final article in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous 4 topics, see these links:

Mistake #1: Being a Guru
Mistake #2: Live and Let Die
Mistake #3: Policy Shmolicy
Mistake #4: Who Needs Metrics?

Have you ever seen those infomercials on at 4:00 in the morning where some guy in a 3 piece suit is standing in front of his 1o million dollar mansion and 3 pimped out Lamborghinis with his supermodel girlfriend bragging about how he raked in a billion dollars over the weekend on the internet? Lucky for you he’s willing to share his secret if you buy his 10 page book for 19 easy installments of $700. He’s even going to throw in a ShamWOW to sweeten the deal.

Well, contrary to what this jailbird is telling you… there’s really no get rich quick schemes out there for social media. If there were, they wouldn’t be schemes at all would they? They would make for a pretty popular business model. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Web Tools

Social Media Mistake #4: Who Needs Metrics?

June 2nd, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is part 4 of 5 in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous topics, see these links:

Mistake #1: Being a Guru
Mistake #2: Live and Let Die
Mistake #3: Policy Shmolicy

Unless you’re operating a do-it-yourself car wash that allows you to show up and empty the coin box once a week, it’s pretty likely that your day to day customer relationships are kept up by people and not by the PowerScrubber 5000. In addition to the people you have working behind the scenes, this also makes your business itself a living, breathing entity. It’s constantly growing and expanding and consistently reaching out to new avenues and always focusing on how to improve things. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Web Tools

Social Media Mistake #3: Policy Shmolicy

May 26th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is part 3 of 5 in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous topics, see these links:

Mistake #1: Being a Guru
Mistake #2: Live and Let Die

It should be noted that your personal social media efforts should be separated by a giant Jurassic Park-style electric fence from your business social media efforts. Now, that is not to say that you shouldn’t be joining your own company Facebook group (wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?), but it’s important to know that if you are going to pursue any type of social media that involves your business and your employees that there should be some well established ground rules laid first. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Web Tools

Social Media Mistake #2: Live and Let Die

May 19th, 2010

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

The following is part 2 in our series about social media mistakes. To refresh yourself on the previous topic, see this link:

Mistake #1: Being a guru

A common consequence of Mistake #1 is that after signing up on 30 different social media sites and bombarding your email inbox full of automatic friend requests from deceased presidents and adult film stars, you quickly realize that you have no idea how to keep all of your accounts up to date and relevant with fresh content. So, what happens next? Your social media endeavors quickly fall to the wayside because you can’t keep up with the workload. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Web Tools

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