What is CPM, CPC, CPA and CTR

CPM CPM means Cost Per Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for thousand – and so Cost Per Thousand). This is the amount you will pay the ad-network or website publisher to show your ad a thousand times on their website or across their ad-network. Whether your ad is shown only once to each visitor (Unique Impressions) or any number of times – is something that you will have to work out with the nad-network or the website. CPM rates were once (p. yr 2000 bubble-burst era) as much as $75, but have now dropped to as little as $1 CPM.

CPC CPC means Cost Per Click. This is how much you would pay the ad-network or website every time a visitor clicks on your banner. CPC rates can be as high as $3 per click or as little as 5 cents per click. It depends on your product and your market – amongst other factors, the more competition there is – the higher you will probably end up paying as you compete with competitors.

CPA CPA means Cost Per Action. The Action could be any of the following types of actions – A visitor clicking on your banner coming to your site and filling up a simple enquiry form (CPR – Cost Per Registration), or if the visitor makes a purchase (CPS – Cost Per sale). It could be a flat fee or a percentage commission of the sale made. Affiliate-Networks like commissionjunction, linkshare and clickbank have very good software systems in place to track all this and provide statistics to online merchants and publishers on their network of websites. I have explained in detail what an Affiliate Network is, in another section. They basically, allow publisher websites to sign up for free so they can start earning commissions on sales arising out of the traffic they send to online merchants. The Affiliate Network tracks all this using their system and code merchants and publishers are required to place on their website. Publishers can sign up for free mostly, and in some cases online Merchants are required to pay a one time setup fee and possibly a monthly fee with commissions – eg. As in commissionjunction. A very popular site that is free to Merchants is Clickbank network.

CTR CTR is Click Through Rate. This is the percentage rate at which people click on your ad banner. If your banner ad is seen by 100 people but clicked by one person – then it’s CTR is 1% or .01 Similarly, if your ad banner is seen 100,000 times and in the same time period it is clicked 2000 times – then your banner CTR is 2% or .02.

This is how we calculate CTR … (Number of Clicks / Number of impressions) x 100 Example, for above case it would be – (2000 / 100,000) x 100 = .02 CPM, CPC or CPA … which is best for my ad campaign? Your choice will depend on various factors. Sometimes companies such as Pepsi, would just like to enforce their brand and be seen across many websites, without any need for the user to click on their banners. This is a brand hammering strategy, and a CPM deal would be preferred.

Apart from the above mass branding effort, the decision to go for a CPC, CPM or CPA ad becomes a calculated decision when you have a product that you want to sell on your website. Would you pay the publisher for only visitors he sends you? or would you pay him for every thousand ads he displays for you? or would you pay him a commission on sales from visitors he sends you? This is tricky.

You may need to read the paragraphs below slowly, or even several times over to get the gist of what I am saying … To help you decide, you should first run a pilot CPM campaign that will help you gauge results. Your CPM campaign and number of Clicks on your banner, will let you know exactly what your CTR (Click through Rate) is for your banner. Your CTR will help you decide your campaign type – CPM or CPC ? If your CTR is high, you should go in for a CPM, if its low you should go in for a CPC. The reason for this is simple.

If you have a low CTR then you would rather only pay for the low traffic that comes to your site. If your CTR is high, then you don’t mind paying CPM – because your cost will not escalate for more and more visitors that come to your site, but will remain the same. I will explain the above, with a couple of examples – Example 1 Lets suppose a website that you want to advertise on charges a CPM of $5.00 and a CPC of 50 cents. And, you need to decide if you should go in for CPM or CPC ? Lets suppose you first buy 1,000,000 impressions.

This works out to $5000 ($5 per 1000 impressions x 1000) Now lets suppose your CTR is not good and is 0.2 % (or 2 clicks per 1000 ads) Now, you need to calculate the amount you will pay of you had bought a CPC. If your CTR is 0.2% and you display 1,000,000 ads, then this works out to … .002 x 1,000,000 = 2000 clicks.

So essentially you have paid $5000 for 2000 clicks or $2.50 per click!! This means that I am better of buying on a CPC basis, because one click there costs me only 50cents! And if I go for CPC, then I will get 10,000 clicks for $5000 … which is 5 times more than the clicks i get in the CPM model (2000). Example 2 Lets assume that your banner ad turns out to be very good and gets a very good CTR of say 5% Now you need to decide .. CPM or CPC.

Lets analyze as above – I paid $5000 for 1,000,000 ads at 5% CTR That means 5% x 1,000,000 ads were clicked on, which equals = .05 (5%) x 1,000,000 = 50,000 clicks! So for $5000 i got 50,000 clicks. Now, if I had bought on a click basis, then at the CPC rate of (50cents) I will pay 50,000 x $0.50 amount for 50,000 clicks, which is $25,000 (5 times what I would pay with CPM, for the same traffic) So, I am better of buying with a CPM system for this banner ad campaign What about CPA? I have dedicated a separate chapter for this. This system is gaining popularity slowly. It seems to be the fairest system of all the three methods – specially when you are selling a product or service. Both Google and Yahoo are leaning towards taking their CPC system into a more fair and measurable CPA system.

Google has recently launched Google Analytics and Google’s version of PayPal (Google Checkout) – that is a positive and firm step towards its CPA plans. Selling ad-space on your website – how much can you charge? Nowadays CPM rates have fallen from highs of $50 to $10 to $2 in many cases. If you have high traffic you may approach ad-networks, and they will serve out the ads for your website. They will give you a piece of code to insert into the pages of your website.

You will get a Username and Password to login to a control panel area on the ad-networks main website, to see how your site is performing. Ad-networks pay you based on CPM or CPC, depending on what their client (the advertiser) opt for. They will take from 40% to 60% commission. This is acceptable, considering the fact that they get you the clients and revenues, and they have to manage all the advertising technology and payment systems.

Most of these ad-networks require that you have a certain number of impressions per month to qualify to become part of their network of websites. For example, DoubleClick requires at minimum 5 million monthly page impressions. There are many mid sized networks, like Advertising, fastclick, ValueClick (only CPC, owned partially by DoubleClick) and even smaller ad networks like, burstnet. You should visit adbalance to get a complete list and brief on popular ad networks.

WHY YOUR SUCK AT GOOGLE ADSENSE

I just found a good thread in Warrior forum

I am not sure he is a real Adsense guru or not

he very gr8 explain about adsense

please must read :

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/365672-why-you-suck-adsense.html

Adsense Keywods For Highest Earnings

Here is another exclusive tip for all you adsense freaks from earning tips of money. This is a nice little trick where you sneak high paying google adsense keywords into your otherwise nothing earning website for higher profit. This is especially nice for blogs because you can do this in every post and watch you google adsense earnings climb to the top. For high paying keywords I use the google adwords keywords lookup tool. Here is an example:

I have exciting news to tell you guys and no it's not aboutmesothelioma lawyers, instead it's about how google adsense can earn you millions. Really my friend who is a consolidate loan student has a nice website about finding tax lawyers and he makes so much money that I don't think even a personal injury lawyer makes that much. So anyways that's what I wanted to tell you guys and don't even ask me what is mesothelioma because that's whatmalignant mesothelioma is there for.

Notice that i overdid it just to show my point. But really try sneaking at least one or two every post and you'll see your adsense earnings rise slowly. If you don't believe me check out the ads on top of this post. Thank You

here you can see proof :

Twitter For Blogger

Twitter is a great tool for bloggers and can help with a wide range of blogging related issues, but if you want to get the most out of it, it’s important to use it well.

So, in no particular order, here’s a selection of Top Twitter Tips for bloggers:

• Jump right in and get involved. Twitter can be a little overwhelming if you’re new, but in order to get the most out of it, you need to participate actively. It’s very much a 2-way communication tool.
• Don’t be an idiot! It may seem obvious, but if you act like a jerk, it’s not going to help you promote your blog. Treat people with respect and build relationships, just as you would in real life.
• Use a dedicated Twitter client rather than the web site. It’s so much more convenient to have a small app running all day than to remember to visit the web site. Try Twhirl (cross platform) or Twitterific (Mac).
• Don’t think of Twitter as a micro-blogging tool, think of it more as IRC in slow motion. It’s more an extension of instant messaging than a blogging tool. Treat it like a 2-way conversation and ignore Twitter’s “What are you doing…?” line.

• Ask questions. Give advice. Participate in discussions. If what you have to say is too long for a tweet
• Don’t follow thousands of people and expect them to follow you back. They won’t. People tend to follow those who have something interesting to say, and it’s easy to spot uninteresting people. They are the ones following 10,000 people while only having 7 people following them.
• Try to find a balance between original tweets and replies. This is akin to engaging in discussions in the comments on your own blog. It shows interest in your followers and helps build community.
• Analyse what those around you are Twittering about. What’s interesting to you, what gets the most response, and what’s useful to your readers. Use this when trying to come up with new ideas for what to twitter about.
• It is possible to solely use Twitter to post automatic updates every time you post a blog entry. If you have a popular blog, this can be useful, but if you’re not using the Twitter account to participate in discussions, make it clear that this is an “updates only” account. A better solution is to use software likeTwitterfeed to send new post notifications to your Twitter account, but to use the same account to actively participate in the Twitter community.
• Other sites like Twitter Karma and Twitter Local can help you find new people to follow, but be aware that these sites often ask for your Twitter username and password. Use them at your own risk.
• If the name you want on Twitter is taken, but isn’t currently in use, it’s worth checking with the Twitter team to see if you can get it anyway. If a name is inactive for 9 months and clearly not being used, they will sometimes free it up for you.
• Remember, that just because Twitter can do phone updates doesn’t mean you need to use them. If you switch this service on for all tweets, you could end up getting a lot of text messages! Personally, I have the service activated for direct (private) messages only. When combined with Twitter’s ability to send updates by text, this means I can communicate directly with my Twitter contacts when I’m out, even if I don’t have their number – and I don’t get inundated

That’s it. I hope you found some of that useful.

ADSENSE BEGINNER TIPS

AdSense is the program that allows publishers to put Google Ads on their own sites – and generate revenue from them. It’s popular because it’s so easy to do and because the ads are context sensitive. Whatever the subject of your web site, Google will crawl it and automatically choose ads that match. And with thousands upon thousands of advertisers, the chances are you’ll get relevant ads on your site.

Getting AdSense up and running is fairly easy – just paste the Javascript code into your blog template – but if you want to make the most of Google ads on your site, here’s a few quick tips:

Placement
The placement of ads on your page (where you put them) is possibly the most important factor if you want to get maximum revenue from AdSense. Try to place ads “above the fold” – i.e. near the top of the page, so a reader doesn’t have to scroll down in order to see them. If you’re ads are right at the bottom of the page, nobody will ever see them, never mind click them.

Ad Sizes
Different sized ads can perform very differently, so it’s worth experimenting with different sizes to see which works for you. Many people find large leaderboard ads at the top of a page, or 300×250 ads embedded in the content perform best.

But you also need to consider how the ads fit into your blog template. If an ad won’t physically fit, try a different size or placement. You might even find that you need to try a completely new blog template in order to fit ads in without detracting from the content.

Colours
You might not think it, but the colour of your ads can have a huge impact on your revenue. Most people find that colours that blend in with your own site work best. In particular, look at removing borders (by setting them to the same colour as the background).

Change one thing at a time
When tweaking your ads, rather than changing ad size, placement and colour all at once, change one thing at a time and wait at least a day to see how that change affects your stats. This is by far the best way of seeing how a particular change is affecting your revenue, and you won’t have to spend time figuring out what it was you need to put back if your earnings suddenly fall through the floor.

Use channels
Google provides custom “channels” that enable you to track ads on specific pages or placements to see how they perform. This is really useful if you want to see how one ad is performing in relation to another, and it’s absolutely vital if you have more than one site. Spend some time setting up channels and getting a feel for how they work, and you could end up saving yourself a lot of time and money in the future.

Experiment with image ads
For some ad sizes, Google lets you specify if you want to see text ads, image ads, or both. Often, letting Google’s algorithm decide works best, but in some circumstances, using only image ads can improve revenue. If you have a very text-heavy site with few other graphics, an image ad can provide an eye-catching focal point to your page. On other sites, it just looks overly busy and doesn’t work. Experiment!

Don’t Click!
Never, ever, ever be tempted to click your own ads or encourage your readers to click ads on your site. Not only is this against the rules, but Google has some pretty sophisticated fraud detection algorithms, and if you’re caught clicking or encouraging readers to click ads, the chances are your account will be frozen and you’ll lose all your earnings.

It’s also worth remembering that someone – a real, living, breathing advertiser – is paying for every ad click. If you’re clicking your own ads, you are effectively stealing their money. So don’t do it!

Track your changes
You’ll be surprised how a small change in layout or placement can affect the amount of money you can make from AdSense, but sometimes, you might find a sudden jump or fall in revenue and think “What did I do???”.

A lot of the time, it will be nothing that you’ve done – a change in Google’s ad placement algorithms or search engine rankings – but if you do make changes to the AdSense ads on your site, just write a note of what you changed and when.

Get a book!
As with so many things in life, a good book can be the best way to learn about AdSense. The AdSense Code by Joel Comm looks to be a popular choice with good reviews.