Making free sites sucks

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by JD

Hi Ronnie

Nice post!

Re:tracking banner conversions etc. what do you use for tracking banner conversions? I have to admit I have always been a "throw a new banner in there" type of webmaster and i have never kept track of good banners vs bad banners. I suppose theres some scripts out there that you could use, but I would not want to piss any link list owners off, if it has some fancy java or cgi on the page. What would you suggest for banner tracking? And what about text link tracking, is it possible to track this?

The way I have always made sites is to just whack home made text links in, or some banners from the site in question, never paying too much attention to which free site the sales came from etc. Even today I find it a bit tricky to know exactly what site made the sale. Unless you make a new NATS campaign for each site you do, but nats isnt available for sponsors such as top bucks, tcg or nasty or bang bros etc.

I have to say, I am just trying anything and everything right now, just to make a couple of sales, so I am all over the show really lol. I have some blogs but they are probably under your "crap" ones you mentioned. I dont always know what direction to go, so I do a bit of everything, but thats not necesarily a good thing as I could possibly be beter going in a direction that suited me more. Some people say, work out what works and multiply that, but I havent really found anything that works as such yet, as it does seem to be months and months of doing somethng before you will see a result, and being impatient at the best of times is not a good trait for me as I know you have to wait like 3-6 months to see some results for free sites or blogs.

Back to the grind )

cheers

JD

As for ads, one of the best tracking script is http://phpadsnew.com/two/ and best of all it's free. Incredible script. It does have a learning curve, but well worth it. Few people on this board use it, so if your ever stuck, should be able to get some help. I've never see a LL owner say anying about it, strange if they would. Now if you use a JS one, then you might get some flack, or bots not liking the code. Our goal is to get any many surfers to the sponsors as possible, it's a sales game. More people that see the paysite, more apt to sign-up. Of course better your ads pull, the more you send to the sponsor.

As for tracking sales, yes most sponsors do show, but not always. So you see the ones that make the sales and do more.

As for the waiting, thats not really true, least for free sites and tgp galleries for example. They both usually get traffic within a day or so, so in a week, you should be able to see what works and what does'nt. Should be able to see which ads work, which dont, eliminating the dogs. On another note, which sites/galleries get the most interest. It will take a little time, but I dont see it as months. Now a blog, that might take a little longer, they do need to "build-up". Nothing wrong with trying many things, just drop the ones you know for sure are not working, and give each venture enough time to evaluate if it works for you or not.

Also, of course the more focused you are, the better you'll do. Save time, automate what you can. Think of all the things you do in a normal day, see if you can streamline them or automate them.