Presto Bloggo

Monetizing your blog is more than sticking a few affiliate ads or a snippet of AdSense into your header or sidebar. Those of us who have wasted our time putting Amazon’s dynamic ads into our sidebars or a Commission Junction banner ad into our header and never received a single click already know this. We think to ourselves, maybe it’s just my site…maybe I don’t have enough traffic. Maybe the type of people who visit my site are the “wrong” type of people.

Most people won’t be able to retire on the earnings they receive with AdSense, but, unlike affiliate banner ads, at least they get something for the 30 seconds of effort if the content is right. But AdSense is not about augmenting sites, it’s about arbitraging traffic. You get a tiny bit of compensation for this, but for some types of sites, it’s not worth $.07 to send a user off your site.

ProductWiki just did an analysis of their PPC vs Shopping.com, and their affiliate earnings, and Shopping.com outperformed AdSense by a factor of 4.6! Does that mean we should all go parse the Shopping.com XML feed and stick it into our blogs and websites? No, but we should take a look at some of the key points that ProductWiki is making.

• The stuff you want to sell should be RELEVANT to your users
• The STYLE of your offerings should integrate seamlessly into your site
• Always remember the “IGNORE FACTOR“

What ProductWiki describes as the “ignore factor” is similar to what world-renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen found in the results of a landmark eyetracking study he participated in recently. The Nielsen research showed that people avoid looking at ads…or more importantly, items they perceive as ads.

People ignore ads that:

• look different than the rest of the site
• are overpolished
• are animated
• appear unnecessary
• look like…well…ads

However, people do look at ads that:

• display items a user many want to buy
• are related to the page content
• match the style of the site they’re on

We as affiliates, need to integrate usability and product design best practices into our merchandising strategies. We need to engage our users by picking products of interest, adding useful descriptions to our products and making sure everything is seamlessly integrated into our sites. We need to remember that it’s about adding content to our websites and blogs, not about sending our valuable users away. Then we’ll have the edge.

Technorati Tags: AdSense, Commission Junction, ProductWiki, Jakob Nielsen, PrestoGifto, usability

You can now integrate CafePress products into WordPress using the new PrestoGifto WordPress plugin. This plugin will allow you to put products into your WordPress sidebar, after posts, on a static page or on the footer of your WordPress page.

The plugin is packed with functionality. You can put any of CafePress’s 59 million products into your blog, either earning commissions through the CafePress affiliate program, incorporating your own CafePress designs from your existing storefront or by doing a little of both.

This plugin is different in a few ways. First, it’s got a ton of functionality because it is supported by the PrestoGifto API. This means that once you get a plugin installed, you won’t have to keep reinstalling it to inherit feature improvements and bug fixes. Next, it’s pretty powerful. You can do anything from plug a design or two into your sidebar to taking full advantage of WordPress’s CMS capabilities and create your own niche CafePress store. Since all products are dynamically controlled through your WordPress admin panel, you can swap out items seasonally, according to the latest headlines or just on a whim. Last, the plugin is fully supported by PrestoGifto. So if you encounter bugs, have a feature request, or just need to talk through the process of installing it, you’re not left scratching your head.

An updated version of this plugin will be available early next week with some small adjustments and a simpler installation/signup path.

Technorati Tags: CafePress affiliate program, CafePress, CafePress plugin, WordPress plugin

An affiliate (or “associate”) program is a way for you to sell another company’s products in exchange for a commission. You promote the product on your web site and receive a commission if a user makes a purchase. The company, in this case CafePress is responsible for all of the deliverables, the customer service, and the payment processing.

Commissions vary from company to company. For instance, Amazon pays around 4% and CafePress pays 20%. To join an affiliate company, you give the merchant a bit of information about you and your website and they give you a referral ID. Some programs, like Amazon and CafePress make it relatively simple to create links that have your ID attached. Others require more sophisticated link-building measures.

Since almost anyone can put a banner ad on their site these days, and the public has become somewhat jaded, it’s important to add value to the products you choose to promote. Successful affiliates integrate their products into their websites or blogs, add content and promote the products in newsletters and e-mail.

CafePress has two options. One is the premium shop that allows you to brand your CafePress storefront and create as many products as you want. That’s $6 or so bucks a month. The other is the “basic” shop. This is a simple HTML storefront that is branded CafePress (well, you can upload your logo…) and they limit the products that you can sell to one of each. That means that you can only have one mug, one bumper sticker, one ornament, etc.

If you’re a webmaster or blogger and aren’t interested in becoming a CafePress power user with thousands of products in your shop, then a basic shop is a great, free solution. This is especially true for those who have content-rich sites and some traffic that could potentially contribute some non-advertising revenue.

Let’s say you have a WordPress blog that’s gaining momentum and that you’re starting to acquire a fan base. Let’s also say that you have a basic CafePress shop that you opened with a couple designs and you’re wondering if you should expand to a premium shop so that you can sell more stuff.

A good option is to import the products you already have (don’t worry, that’s super easy to do!) into PrestoGifto and then find affiliate merchandise to round out your store. Chances are if you’ve got a message, then someone else on Cafepress has the same message or cause and there’s great stuff that your users would find appealing. The benefits?

• Making money selling other people’s stuff
• Not having to design anything
• Not having to upload anything
• Selling outside the stiff competition of the CafePress marketplace
• Offering a diverse selection of items
• Integrating your store right into your blog or site’s UI
• Keeping your users on your blog or site while they browse