PagedLife

I decided to throw this out and see if you guys could use this.  This is borderline greyhat but I think it’s an excellent service to the community.  I recently teased of this in a previous post but figured I should throw it out there for you guys.

I recently started a Free Web Hosting site (Host.gd) just to expirement and find out what kind of traffic it would get, and what types of clients it would attract.  This helps me on a few levels as I currently have a legitiment hosting business (Think411.com) and I wanted to see the differences in traffic.  I have yet to monetize the free hosting site but I found an alternative way to make money on it, and solve a huge problem many free hosts have.

Basically, every free host out there must deal with the riff raff of scammers, leechers and pirates.  This can hurt many hosts, suck there bandwidth, and cause some legal issues.  Although I have done almost no promotion, I still have around 60 free clients in less then one month on my free hosting server.  I have gotten paypal scammers, ebay scammers, and pirates all trying to host on my site.  I don’t currently have ads running on the free hosting and this was starting to become a huge annoyance.

I started asking myself, how can I profit from this mess without putting ads on everyones sites?

Well here is the answer, let the spammers, scammers and pirates do your marketing for you.

Now this is much easier then you think, basically you just setup your default suspended page as a public service announcement letting people know that they have almost been scammed and/or directed to an illegal website.  On this page you fill it with relevant keywords, and then stick Adsense on it.  Adsense serves up relevant content based ads and suggests that people click there ads in order to read more information on how to prevent being scammed in the future.  This results in some very high CTR and also a good PPC for the relevant keywords.

Every time I find a scammer on my site, I shutdown there site and between the time they sign up and I find and shut them down they have done all the marketing I need.  I end up getting about 100 hits a day for about 4 days and then it dies back down until the next scammer gets canceled.

The basic motto of this article is that you have to think outside the box when monetizing your site.  If you notice a problem start thinking of ways you can profit from it.  You would be suprised with what creativity you can come up with!

Has anyone else thought outside the box and found a new way to monetize there site from a previous problem?

Bidvertiser is the next Ad Network we will review. At first glance, Bidvertiser looks very similar to Google Adsense. They also pay 30 days after you cash out, but this is where the similarities stop. Bidvertiser has a minimum payout of $10 via PayPal, a lot less then the $100 minimum of Adsense, but they do not tell what percentage of your earnings they keep.

Bidvertiser ads come in a variety of ads, and you have the ability to change the colors on these ads to fit in with your site design. The layout of there control panel is a little awkward, and there is not a lot of help on there site to assist you with building these ads, but once you start looking around it becomes fairly easy. It also seems relatively easy to be accepted into there publisher network.

One great feature of Bidvertiser is that they accept sites with little to no content, and also sites that are entirely flash based. They also base the price per click you get on the popularity of your website, so if you have a very popular site you can earn much more per click. They do this by allowing advertisers to bid on a PPC basis for your adspace. You can also filter the ads they are displayed on your site.

Pros:

• Sites with little to no content accepted.
• Flashed based sites accepted.
• Popular sites receive higher PPC.
• Can integrate with your sites design.
• $10 minimum payout.

Cons:

• Control Panel is awkward.
• 30 day payout time.

Here are some sample ads(top also):

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The next advertising network we are showcasing is ProjectWonderful. ProjectWonderful truly is wonderful. They have a very simple and easy setup process and they do not rely on clicks or impressions, although both of these are monitored and made available to potential advertisers.

The advertisers bid on having your ad spot for 24 hour periods and pay whatever the going rate is, and if someone out bids an advertiser, the advertiser still pays for the minutes their ad runs. You also have the option of starting the bidding at whatever price you would like per day, including a starting price of $0.00. Setting the starting price of free gives you the opportunity to have the "Place your ad here" turn into a real ad to become more appealing on your site. You can also change the default "Place your ad here" logo to your own ad or image.

There are various sizes of ads from 117x30 to 728x90 and 160x600. Ads can be shown in buttons, squares, vertically or horizontally. Ads can also be grouped in multiples of rows and columns.

While it might not make you a millionaire, I think the setup at Project Wonderful is a great source of revenue for both big and small sites. If there are any spots in my ads without bids, feel free to bid $0.00 and have your ad up for free!

Pros:

• Easy to use and setup.
• You get paid regardless of impressions or clicks.
• Ads can get bid up quite a bit.
• You have the option of approving or denying ads.
• Minimum payout is $10.

Cons:

• Project Wonderful takes 25%.

Here is a sample ad in a 2x2 block of 125x125 ads, in a small space this creates 4 different ads all bringing in daily revenue:

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Google has shown a Strong love for blogs since the very beginning, and on some Blogs Adsense works very well.

Google Adsense offers a range of ads including Adsense for Content which generates relevant ads based on your site content, Adsense for Search which creates a search option on your site showing both results from your site and paid results, Referrals for a range of products including Google Adsense, Video Units from YouTube, and even Adsense for Mobile Content.

Adsense also offers both CPM(Cost Per Mille) and CPC(Cost Per Click) ads, meaning you can choose to get paid by how many clicks you get, or how many thousands of impressions you give. Adsense allows you to create custom "channels" for reporting purposes, to keep track of which ads are generating more revenue, and generate reports on Impressions, CTR(Click Through Rate) and estimated CPM. You can also setup a competitive ad filter to filter out any ads that may be in direct competition with your services. Through site Authentication you can also setup Adsense ads to display relevant ads in member only areas.

The ads created can be any a variety of sizes from 120x90 to 728x90 and 120x600 available in horizontal, vertical and square. All of these ads are also able to be integrated almost perfectly into your site by modifying the colors of all elements in the ad.

Adsense seems to be the standard in the ad industry. Everyone uses it and even if your not using Adsense on your site, a lot of sites are now offering revenue sharing so you can plug your adsense code in and share in the ad revenue.

Pros:

• Adsense is the standard.
• Easily approved.
• Reliable well established company.
• Integrates very well into your existing design.
• Good revenue on a CPC basis with some high paying keywords.
• Ads relevant to your content.
• Will allow you to have other ads on your site.

Cons:

• Must have a minimum $100 payment.
• Paid at the end of the next month.
• Strict policies which can seemingly ban you for no reason.

Here are some working ads from Google Adsense(including the Adsense referral at the top of this post):

Adsense for Content:

Adsense Search:

Tomorrow I will be reviewing another revenue source, ProjectWonderful

Recently I was denied acceptance to text-link-ads.com because my blog "does not have strong enough traffic". I believe they are probably going off of Alexa for this information as I am now getting a strong 100-200 daily unique hit count. I never really liked text-link-ads.com anyways, there site is poorly designed, there tools have been down for a year or more, and there staff is slow and inadequate.

I was not going to put up ads as of yet, I just wanted to play around with there plugins and research it a little. This poor experience with text-link-ads made me decide to showcase different ways of monetizing our blogs. Each day, starting tomorrow, I will showcase a different way of monetizing a blog, explain in details the ad types, and discuss the pro's and con's of each. I will also include a sample ad for each within the posts.

And now for some comment bait:

How do you prefer to monetize your site, and why?

Many of you know my main business is Think411.com my web hosting company, the same servers that PagedLife resides. I have decided to try and monetize some additional services and have opened up several free services.

I have recently opened up IMG.gd a Free Image Host and Host.gd a Free Web Host. IMG.gd is currently monetized with only ads on the first page and Host.gd is not monetized at all, I decided I did not want to force ads on the free hosting clients.

I did however find a way to monetize Host.gd without producing ads on any clients pages, and without ads on the site at all. This method could be deployed in either a White Hat, Grey Hat or Black Hat method and so far is doing quite well.

I opened Host.gd about a week ago, and with very little promotion (only promoted on DP and WebHostingTalk) I have only gained 19 clients, some from search engines. Even if I decided I wanted to force ads, with this little amount of free hosting clients I would not be making anything at all.

Originally I was going to sell Host.gd on Digital Point, however I recently found found a new way to monetize the site, and the first day I made $1.20 and today, the second day of monetizing the site I made $2.16!

I am currently doing this in a White Hat way using adsense and it is working very good, I am going to continue testing this and if all goes well I may write an eBook on this method and sell it as I have not seen this idea anywhere. This method could easily be used in a White Hat, Grey Hat or Black Hat method and I think would do very good in all three ways for free webhosts.

This method is so simple and so perfect I can not believe no one has tried this. It does not affect the clients at all and does not break any adsense rules.

I may give more details in the coming days, currently I want to test this for some time and see if the results stay constant.

Has anyone else come across incredible ways to monetize there sites without affecting the end users in anyway?