Webmaster-Source » Money

Does “Pay What You Want” Work?

Matt — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:56:03 +0000

The collective internet mind vividly remembers the “Radiohead Experiment,” when the musical group Radiohead decided to put their new album on the internet for download, but with an odd twist. They let you value their product and pay the amount you desired. You could give them a hundred dollars or three cents.

I always though it was an interesting idea, and one that could really work in some cases. Independent game developer 2D Boy is one of those cases…

2D Boy makes World of Goo, an interesting and fun physics game that retails for $20. It’s also one of the most-pirated games on the internet, with a whopping 90% piracy rate. This is a game that’s rated very highly by most sources. (It’s also one of the few games that works cross-platform on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.)

So what did 2D Boy do? They ran a Radiohead-style special for a few weeks, letting you pay what you want to download the game. The results?

Out of more than 57,000 sales, about 68% of the downloaders paid $2 or less. And 16,852 buyers only paid one cent. 7,347 were in the $5.00-$5.99 range though.

The GameRiot blog has something to say about that:

$2!!! That is a tenth of the regular retail price! That is like two tacos at Taco Bell compared to hours of enjoyment with an awesome game from a studio that deserves your money. I guess it just really disgusts me that so few people paid next to nothing. I realize the deal was there but how can you consciously pay a penny for any game that you would want to pay. Almost 30% of the people were completely pathetic and paid a mere penny.

As cheap and “pathetic” as it may be, I’ll certainly agree that it’s not very nice to pay a single cent, it certainly is better than the big fat zero from someone downloading from BitTorrent.

Because the payments were processed through PayPal, 2D Boy didn’t even get those one-penny payments.

For all purchases of around 30 cents and under, we actually saw no money, PayPal took it all, but they probably ended up losing money on most of those transactions ($0.01) as well, they’re not the bad guy.

You can see the full post of results over at 2dboy.com.

So, does this “pay what you want” thing work? I would say yes, but not in every scenario. There are times when you can make some good money, and times where you won’t. People love it, because they can get a great product for a price they can afford, or a price they feel is reasonable. Some will put the minimum amount, yes, but that doesn’t mean everyone will. There are generally enough nice people to make up for some of the cheapskates.

The Highest-Earning Web Companies and Blogs

Matt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:26:11 +0000

What are the highest-earning blogs? What web companies make the most revenue annually (or per second)? IncomeDiary.com has put together a couple of posts rounding-up the top thirty of each. The lists are not necessarily all-inclusive, but they give a pretty good idea of where the sites stand.

Can you guess which website has the highest annual revenue? Google! They make $21,800,000,000 a year…or $691.27 per second. Amazing, isn’t it? Amazon is second on the list, followed by Yahoo, then eBay, MSN, PayPal, and then iTunes. NYTimes.com comes in thirtieth, with a whopping $175,000,000, which is nothing to sneeze at.

On the blogging side, TechCrunch is leading with $200,000 in monthly earnings. Mashable comes in second with a comparative value. Envato’s Tuts+ Network comes in at #8, with Smashing Magazine right behind. Quite a few recognizable names on the list.

If you’ve wondered what your favorite blogs and businesses make, these lists should give you a rough idea. Quite fun to look at.

125×125 Ads: Monetize Your Blog With the Bloggers’ Ad Format

Matt — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:26:06 +0000

When you think of monetizing a blog, what immediately comes to mind? Google’s AdSense, right? AdSense is easy to set-up, and pretty much all legitimate sites are accepted into the program, so it’s the method most bloggers use right away. However, AdSense has it’s shortcomings, as do other monetization methods. It doesn’t work well for blogs in some niches, less and less people click them, etc. Luckily, there’s a better option.

The 125×125 ad, used by “big blogs” like ProBlogger, TechCrunch, and ReadWriteWeb, they are a great way to monetize blogs. I’ve been using them for a couple of months with great success. It’s taken me a year and a half to reach $100 in AdSense earnings; meanwhile I’ve made over $140 so far by direct-selling ads.

125x125s are, as their name suggests, square ads of one hundred twenty five pixels in both directions. They’re fairly unobtrusive, unlike monstrous leaderboard banners, and they’re less susceptible to banner blindness problems. They are the Bloggers’ Ad Format, thought-up by bloggers, and suiting their style of site well. The ads are sold directly to advertisers, cutting out the ad network middleman, and leaving you with more work on your part…but the difference in income is much greater.

Are You Ready to Sell Ads?

There is no “official” amount of traffic you should have before selling ads directly. It depends on your niche, and many other factors. You’re kind of on your own here. It all depends on

How big your niche is.
How big your site is relative to others in the same field.
Your traffic relative to the other sites in the niche.
How loyal your readers are.
How sticky your blog is.

You’ll have to decide on your own, I’m afraid. Try asking yourself “Would I want to advertise here?”

Preparing Your Blog For 125×125 Ads

Decide where to put the ads and how many to have. ProBlogger has six, arranged in two columns near the top of the sidebar. I’ve taken a different approach, putting them all in a vertical stack in my rightmost column. I charge more to have ads near the top than ones nearer the bottom. Others have placed the slots in a row between their header and the rest of the page. (Note: You may have to “make room” for the ad slots in some cases) Those who wish to sell all their ad slots at the same price may want to take a look at the Got Banners plugin for WordPress. It randomizes the banner order when the page loads, so all the advertisers have their turn near the top.
Decide how much to charge. It’s another of those hard “there’s no one-size-fits-all” answers. I have one tip, though. Offer a discount if they by a few months in advance. They’ll save you some trouble that way, so why not offer some incentive?
Make-up an ad-sized “your ad here” image and put copies in as placeholders, so prospective advertisers can see where their ad would go.
Create an “Advertise Here” page (Examples: Mine, ProBlogger, DailyBlogTips). Give some statistics (do NOT fudge the numbers!) your contact information, maybe a little about the site, and your rates. Place a link to the page somewhere near the ad slots, and link your placeholder ads to the page as well.
Put a 125×125 banner for an affiliate program or two in. You may make some money off referrals, and, at a glance, it makes it look like you’ve already sold some ads.
If you don’t have access to a PayPal account, get one. It’s pretty much the standard way to transfer money online, though Google Checkout is gaining some momentum.
Implement a click-tracking script. That way you can tell how many times an ad is clicked, and report it back to the advertiser at the end of their ad run. Of course I recommend my own GoCodes redirection plugin, if you’re a WordPress user.

Where do you find advertisers?

Other sites in your niche. They may be interested in advertising, or maybe people who advertised on their sites would be. Look through your RSS reader, and see who’s advertised on your favorite blogs. Check to see who’s linking to you, and commenting, as well.
Google. Consult the One Site to Find Them All™ and look for companies in your niche, or neighboring fields. While you’re doing that, keep an eye on the sponsored results to the right of the results. Maybe someone who advertised there would interested in buying an ad on your site.
Check some other ad networks. Who’s buying ads through them?
Ask around on forums. Some, like the Digital Point Forum, have places dedicated to advertising the ad space you have available.

Keep a list of prospective advertisers (and their URLs) as you look.

Approaching Prospective Advertisers

Once you have a list of people to contact, outline what you want to say to them. Include details such as your pricing, your statistics, and plenty of information about your blog. Next, email them one at a time. Send them a professional email. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown formal letter, but don’t put in any LOLs or anything else that could be considered unprofessional. Some tips:

Mention why you’re contacting them. Do you like their site? Do you think it would be of value to your readers? Where did you find them? If you just send them a boilerplate message, you may not have the best results.
Offer them a deal. Give them a free trial run of their ad, and tell them how many clicks it got.
Keep notes of who you’ve contacted, so you don’t accidentally send more than one message. You don’t want to come off as a spammer, do you?

Keeping Track of Things

Create a spreadsheet to log who has advertised on your blog. Add columns for the date the ad went online, the date it should be taken down, how much was paid, and anything else you may need to know in the future. I even have fields for the advertisers’ email and URL.
Use calendar software (I use Google Calendar) to help keep-up with ad expiration dates. Set email alerts for the days that ads need to be taken off, so you can remove the ad and send an email thanking the advertiser, and asking if they want to renew their ad.

Make Money By Selling T-Shirts

Matt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:14:03 +0000

How would you like to sell T-Shirts through your website without having to do any of the hard work yourself? With CafePress you simply upload an image, and you’re selling shirts (or other products) in no time at all.

I’ve experimented with CafePress a little in the past, but not too seriously yet. As NorthXEast.com had said months ago, back when it was still the personal blog of Collis Ta’eed, you probably won’t have great results if you’re selling shirts with just your logo on them. Only sites or companies with large mega-fan followings can do that (like Firefox, Apple, Google, maybe ProBlogger). Instead, you want to sell shirts with something funny on them (like at the Freelance Switch store). Would people buy a shirt that just says “FreelanceSwitch.com”? No, but they’d buy shirts that say “Think Outside the Cubicle.”

CafePress has two types of stores; the “free” version, and the “premium” variety. The way the free version works is

CafePress says a basic T-Shirt is $8.99
You apply your image and mark-up the price to $10.99 to make a $2 profit. If you think people will pay $15, then go ahead and mark it up to that amount.
You can only have one variety of each type of product (basic shirt, premium shirt, bumper sticker, etc). You can’t have two versions of the basic shirt with different images.

The premium version, for a monthly fee, removes some of the stupid restrictions and gives you more shop customization choices. Now, if only I could think of something good to put on a shirt…