If you’re a relatively new webmaster, you may be wondering how to monetize your site. That’s a big topic and you should definitely spend some time on it (although, if you were smart, you would have a monetization strategy already in place once you have a business plan.)

But I’m not here to school you on the importance of having some sort of plan before you dive in headfirst. What I am here to do is make fun of the ignorant people who dive in without a plan and then bitch and moan about how things aren’t working out

What I’m seeing is that webmasters are complaining about CPA ads. They say things like “I deserve to be paid for placing the ad” and “I have a great website so I should be raking in the big bucks, not stuck only getting paid for leads.”

Some dude in a webmaster forum got up on his soap box and proclaimed that CPA ads are cheating webmasters, and that we should stand up and revolt, settling for nothing less than CPM ads. The rant was followed up with highly relevant nonsense such as comparisons to ads in print newspapers! (Gee, newspaper ads are priced differently than internet ads? Who’d a thunk it?!)

Lastly, they said CPA ads were good for nothing more than those shady landing pages with no value.

If I had to guess, this dude probably just got scammed out of $47 when he bought the “How to Make Gajillions of Dollars Overnight with CPA Ads” ebook and needed to vent.

But let’s look at it. When should you choose CPM ads, and when should you choose CPA ads?

What Are CPM and CPA Ads?

CPM ads are typically big banner ads and you get paid each time the banner is viewed on your site. The above 728×90 banner ad is a CPM ad for Domino’s Pizza, served through CPX Interactive. (See it on LiquidGeneration.com.)

CPA ads pay you per lead. That means a visitor has to click the link or banner and then fill out a form before you earn any money.

The above screenshot shows a text link and banner ad for one of the many acai berry offers. (Seems the banner is served by MaxBounty.)

*Note that most of these acai berry trial offers are scams and should be avoided. But it makes for a wonderful example of a CPA ad.

When to Use CPM, When to Use CPA

Let’s compare these two types of ads for different websites.

For example, say you have a huge website with lots of general traffic. We’re talking a site like CollegeHumor.com or even YouTube.com. Let’s say your site gets 300,000 page views per month (leading to 300,000 impressions on your banner ad.)

And let’s assume you get paid $1.00 CPM. That makes your monthly earnings $300.

But for the next example, say you have a small website that gets a mere 500 visits and 1,000 page views per month. Even if you were accepted for a CPM ad network, you’d earn a whopping $1 per month. Let’s face it – one item from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu won’t feed you for a month.

Good news – this small site isn’t a crappy landing page. It’s actually a quality, informative site, but it serves a very small niche. You have numerous #1 spots in Google SERPS, but there’s just not much traffic out there.

Despite how terrible CPM would be for you, it’s your lucky day! There’s a fancy doo-dad for this niche that you can advertise on your site and get paid $2.50 per lead, thanks to their CPA program. So you promote that, and out of those 500 visitors, you get five to buy. (Not hard considering how focused your site is.)

That’s $12.50 from CPA vs $1 from CPM.

Which is better, CPM or CPA?

So really, which is better? As I just showed you, it depends on the site.

CPM ads work great if you have a high-traffic site that attracts a general audience with varying interests. CPA ads work great if you have a tightly-focused niche site, since those sites attract a low quantity of high quality visitors.

If you’re using CPA ads on a CPM-type site, it’s no ones fault but your own. Quit whining and do something about it. You need to test both options and see what works.

Worst case scenario, you lose out on a day, week, or month worth of earnings if you choose the wrong method. But the knowledge you gain is invaluable.

*I didn’t even include CPC ads because that’s best for when you half-ass a website that’s not targeted enough for CPA and not big enough for CPM.

Let me repeat: Quit crying about your low income and test out some new ads for your site.

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One thing I hear around the forums and blogs from disgruntled webmasters is complaints about how they have a quality website with amazing content, yet they don’t get tons of traffic or recognition.

If the site was really good, then they would just need traffic to get started. And it’s true, there are plenty of high-quality sites that don’t get the traffic they deserve.

“Could my baby be any cuter?!”

But… a lot of people exaggerate their site’s quality. It’s the same as with baby pictures – pictures of your own child appear tremendously cute, no matter how truly ugly the baby really is. (And if you ask someone, they’ll probably just agree with you to make things easy.)

So before you put lots of money into advertising, or go on a rant complaining how your awesome site isn’t getting as much attention as crappy competing sites, sit back and really think, “is my site really that great?”

I’ll just tell you right now – your site probably sucks. The majority of websites do, so don’t feel bad.

Let me give you an example:

I recently came across a site called Campus Squeeze. It’s a “college humor” type website. The owners probably think it’s the best thing ever.

To their credit, the site does have decent headlines and concepts for articles that seem like they’d do well on social media sites like Digg.

But put CampusSqueeze in comparison with a really great site like Cracked.com. Cracked blows this site out of the water! (Cracked.com is so awesome is was even featured on DoshDosh.com as an example of creating Digg-friendly content.

No need for me to explain further, though, when you can simply check out Cracked.com for yourself. Here are a few articles I enjoyed:

• The 8 Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters
• Videos You Didn’t Know Were Staged – And How They Did It
• 9 Manliest Names in the World

My guess is, once you start reading one, you can’t stop. And once you’re done, you’ll read another article! (I have probably stayed on Cracked for the 9-5 workday on more than one occasion.)

If you analyzed the site while you were browsing (like a true internet marketer,) you probably noticed that Cracked has hilarious concepts, gracefully-written articles, intensely funny commentary, killer headlines, and thorough research.

By comparison, Campus Squeeze is lame. They have decent headlines, but the articles are scrapped together. There is just no real content.

Take this one for example – “Top Upsets in NCAA Men’s Basketball History”

It’s just a few pictures and short paragraphs. There is no substantial research and description to go with them. No suspense built up that draws you into the situation. In short, the post created no excitement whatsoever.

And the “no research” applies twice actually. There’s no research to determine if these are actually the 10 best, or if there are much better examples.

Another example – “The NHL’s Best Goalie Fights”

This one is eight random videos pulled from YouTube. Each one has an entire sentence worth of description. I could type “goalie fight” into YouTube and create just as good of a post in about five minutes.

Another – “Jail Bait Celebrities”

A child molester may get a quick bit of enjoyment from this post, but any celebrity gossip addict will be disappointed. The post provides very little information, tons of celebs are left off the list, and there aren’t even links to pages with more pictures!

Moving on – “Halloween Is The Best for Pranks”

OK, so some of these vids are kind of funny. But where is the funny commentary? I could go to Youtube.com and get the exact same pleasure.

Still going – “The 14 Biggest Upsets in College Football History”

Here we have an article that consists of pathetic commentary and no videos. Enough said.

Not done yet – “Sports Icons Who Called Their Shots and Failed”

The commentary wasn’t too bad here – it’s almost worth reading. And it did well on Digg, so I can’t fault it too much. (One of the very few exceptions.)

Last one – “The Hottest US Olympic Women”

In this case, the writers were smart enough to combine hot women (always popular on Digg) with a current event, the Olympic Games. The article did well, but too bad the pics and info were lame.

You see the difference, right? CampusSqueeze has its moments, but I think it’s clear that Cracked is better in every way.

The lesson in all this is… The sooner you get realistic, the sooner you can build a site that is great, and make lots of money. But if you want to live in denial, so be it.

The other lesson, that those true internet marketers probably picked up on, is that if you find a great site, you should copy its exact strategy!

Photo credit: AntToeKnee

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If you’ve never heard of Stores Online, you are missing out on one of the biggest ripoffs in the entire internet marketing world. You might not recognize the name from some sales letter because that’s not how they rope you in.

Stores Online sends letters to people (preferably older people in rural areas that may be seen as more gullible) inviting them to attend a free conference about how to make money on the internet. The conference is held at a local hotel ballroom.

If you attend, you get a free seminar, free lunch, and free gift. Sounds great, except…

Then they sell you their overpriced garbage services for somewhere in the range of $10,000 for a turnkey e-commerce website.

I’ve been to one of their conferences, but I’ll save that story for another day. Today I want to show you the latest flyer I got from Stores Online. (Yes, they are still inviting me back to their conferences!)

Like I said, they offer a free gift for attending. In this instance, the letter said “free MP3 player” and showed a picture of an iPod Shuffle.

Then I was reading the fine print and it said you get a free MP3 player, but you specifically DO NOT get an iPod! LOL!

Here is a scan of the letter:

You can click the picture to see it full size. You can clearly see the iPod portrayed below the “Free MP3 Player” text, but once you read the fine print, it points out that you most definitely do not get one of those for free!

That’s such a funny “bait and switch” I couldn’t resist sharing it!

(For further reading on Stores Online, here is a funny investigation plus a ripoff report.)

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Last month I was browsing through some “make money online” blogs for shits and giggles, and I came across a post about Google Hot Trends at one of the higher-quality blogs in our niche.

That post, plus an earlier expose of Google Hot Trends at TechCrunch, reminded me of how fun it can be. (If you haven’t used it yet, Google Hot Trends is a continuously updated list of the hottest new search queries.)

At the same time, I realized I better get my act together and write about how to use Google Trends to dramatically increase traffic to your [...] Continue Reading…

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As soon as OnlyWire.com launched a while back, I thought it was pretty cool. I even said OnlyWire was great for internet marketers.

If you haven’t heard of OnlyWire, it’s a social bookmarking tool that lets you bookmark websites to all your social bookmarking accounts with one click. Kind of like a mass-submission software for spamming social bookmark websites would do.

Why a regular web user would need more than one social bookmarking account, I’m not sure.

But this was the perfect tool for internet marketers that wanted to jump into the social media craze without doing much work.

So, considering [...] Continue Reading…

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Something I’ve been wondering for a while, even more so now that technology is rapidly improving and expanding, is…

What happens when a guru can no longer hide behind his ebook?

Future internet marketing guru.

The thing with ebooks is that you can write some crap down, come up with good sales copy, and then make a bunch of sales. You don’t even have to write the book yourself; you could get someone else to answer your questions, or resort to the ever-popular “copy and paste” method.

So not only don’t you have to be an expert, you don’t have to know [...] Continue Reading…

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The other day I got a cheesy email from a so-called Silicon Valley start-up…

Hi,
we are a startup www.hyperwebenable.com based on silicon valley.
providing next generation blogging service.
we have seen your blog its very interesting we request to write review
about our service in your blog it will be useful to all your readers .
We will be happy to provide more info about our service.
Thanks and regards

Apparently they thought they could bypass my $3000 review fee by using impeccable grammar and saying that their service is useful to all my readers. But it’s never that simple in the dog-eat-dog [...] Continue Reading…

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