Well the title says it all. I’ve been to many many sites that take upwards of 15 seconds to load, and not to my surprise, half of the content is affiliate links. Now, I have nothing against putting ads on your blog. You deserve to make a few bucks for being a helpful contributor to this wonderful thing we have called the worldwide web. I’ll tell you what though: I’m not going to read your fricking site if it takes a year and a half to load!
I’ve decided to take a different approach to my advertising model, and I suggest that others do the same. I have decided to hand pick what I’m promoting, and only promote services that I have used before and personally like. I’ve also chosen to forget about the flash style ads (such as widgetbucks) in the interest of having a faster loading page. I’ve also ditched the full-page browser hijacking ads that everyone despises so much. It’s just not worth the half-a-cent-per-visitor revenue that I earn.
That being said, here are the two products I’ve chosen to promote for now, and a bit about each of them. Note: One offers a free trial, and the other actually MAKES you money, so they are worth checking out.
The first is PayPerPost, where you basically get paid to blog. There are hundreds of topics for you to choose from, and they generally pay anywhere from 5 to 20 dollars per post, with what I believe is a limit of 3 posts per day. This is great for someone who has a blog about random topics, a “how to make money” blog, or a personal blog. I used this for a quite a while, and made some nice extra cash from it. Payout is pretty fast, too, only takes 30 days if my memory serves me right.
The second is great for anybody who has clients. I do mean ANYBODY with clients. There are tons of anti-spam laws, and HIPAA regulations and so on that are hard to keep up with regarding mass e-mails. This takes care of everything for you, and lets you keep in contact with your clients for whatever purpose. If you’re announcing a new product, or a new sale, sending out a mass e-mail to anyone who has chosen to receive updates from you is a great way to get the word out. It lets you target the people who you already KNOW are interested in your company. Beats the heck out of sending 5000 postcards and hoping someone reads it! Constant Contact, an Email List Management Tool lets you try it out for 60 days to see if it does everything you hope, and they don’t require a credit card or anything like that… they aren’t going to bill you if you forget to cancel.