David Pitlyuk

Carbon Fiber Gear originally started out as an experiment for myself in affiliate marketing.  The idea was to highlight carbon fiber parts and products, some that utilized affiliate links, and others that did not.  Through the time that I’ve had the site launched, I’ve taken it into a few different directions.

Originally it was just a blog, powered by Wordpress, using a free template.  I then later launched an eBay store on the blog utilizing the phpBay script.  Afterwards I created a custom design, and converted the phpBans script into BANS.  Now I’ve hired my first contributing writer, and the site is really starting to progress into its own real brand.

In the past I hadn’t really taken advertising too seriously on the site.  I had run some AdSense, and it brought a few dollars here and there.  I wanted to start selling some real advertising, so I had to setup a plan.

At first I created a 300×250 spot on the top left sidebar, and wanted to offer it up for $150/month.  The spot was to be exclusive, so one advertiser would fill it, and would run on 100% of the impressions for the month.  A couple of days ago, I decided to change that 300×250 spot to 2-4 125×125 spots that will cost $25/month each.

This will allow me to sell a variety of spots and not count on just one advertiser.  I also will only be accepting month to month contracts as opposed to multi-month contracts at a discounted rate because the site is growing fairly quickly…and $25/month is more like an introductory price to get advertisers in the door.

Once I had everything setup, I wrote up an advertising page with information advertisers would need.  All of the advertising is served using Google Ad Manager for tracking and trafficking purposes.  Google Ad Manager is fairly complex, but once you understand the system it’s very nice.  Shoemoney has praised it as well.

While I don’t expect advertisers to come knocking on the door, I suspect if I actually go out and try to sell the spots I wouldn’t have too much of a problem considering the low cost, amount of traffic, and very targeted carbon fiber niche.  I’m still not very driven to work on the advertising at this point in time, but the opportunity is now out there.  I suspect this will be a big part of Carbon Fiber Gear in the future, and I will continue to create new opportunities as the demand progresses.

Yesterday I went to go take a look at the original content section of College Humor videos, as they produce some pretty good high quality stuff like the popular internet comments in a boardroom series. When I went to the video, I noticed that the page had done an ad takeover for AirTranU.com, which is a flight standby program specifically for people between the ages of 18-22 aka college kids.

By doing an ad takeover, there were quite a few elements that took place (That I noticed):

• The background was changed to match the AirTran U branding (blue)
• The AirTran U logo was placed next to the College Humor logo
• The AirTran U logo is provided along the right and left rails of the page
• The video is surrounded by the actual “ad”, promoting a contest to offer free flights until you’re 23 from AirTran U.
• Prior to the video playing (pre-roll), there was a quick few second branding spot with the AirTran U logo stating that the video was brought to you by them.
• After the video was finished (post-roll), it automatically went to a 15 second commercial for AirTran U.
• Everything, including the background, was clickable.
• The only thing that didn’t seem to work was the 300×250 ad spot just said “Loading Advertisement”. I’m assuming either the 300×250 ad from AirTran U was not working, or they didn’t have one, so did not load an ad for competitive separation/exclusivity reasons.

Here’s a screenshot of the page, feel free to click it to see the full version:

I have to say that this ad takeover was really done right.  It was very effective to me as a consumer from a performance, targeting, and branding perspective.  On top of that, it also looks good.  I definitely noticed the ad/brand (enough for me to write this article!), and ended up clicking through just to see what it was all about.  I wonder what the cost of a takeover like this is, and what the CPM works out to be.  Anybody in the industry care to chime in?  It would be interesting to see more of this in the blogosphere, as long as it’s done right.

What are your thoughts?  Is it too much?

I’ve recently been doing a lot of stuff to try and make money using the eBay affiliate program through Commission Junction. While I’m glad I’m really just in the beginning of using the program, it’s still going to be a huge pain. Since eBay is moving off of CJ, all of the affiliate links need to be updated. Imagine those with thousands of blog posts…starting May 1st, 2008, those old links won’t make money anymore unless they are updated.

There will be a couple of big benefits from all this though:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs
• eBay will be offering a 5% bonus for all traffic (through the new network) in April. For those that can migrate quickly, they will see the benefits

The last three could potentially be really good if eBay does it right. I’m always up for new, targeted banners if it can be tied into content better and can be more effective. I’m interested in seeing what they mean by new landing page optimization. Geo-targeting capabilities may be something really big that I’ll be able to use for an upcoming project I’m working on. One of the biggest things is more detailed reporting. I’ve always said that the reporting was too limited by Commission Junction, and hopefully eBay can make this right. Reporting can do a ton for a publisher to better optimize how they promote the affiliate network, which makes more money for eBay and the publisher.

Overall it seems like it will be a good thing, but a huge pain in the ass. If there is any way they can make old CJ links still work, they should do that. I don’t see how that wouldn’t be possible since the old links use the rover.ebay.com domain…it’s not like it’s a commission junction domain, it’s on their own domain! Just make the new ones a different non-rover.ebay.com and if there are some sort of less reporting or features from the old links, they’ll be able to separate them.

My other concern is auditing. Currently, Commission Junction is the middle-man…the third party to verify reporting and data is correct. I hope there is something in place to ensure everything is accurate.

You’ll be able to start migrating April 1st, 2008, and should be done by May 1st, 2008. Here’s the full e-mail I got:

Dear David Pitlyuk:

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform.

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure. In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:

• Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
• New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
• New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
• More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008.

You can receive an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 (bonus applicable to traffic sent to Half.com and US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, India and Spain eBay sites). The sooner you migrate, the more you’ll earn! Just:

• Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
• Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
• Update your links with your new identifiers.
• Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008.

You will receive more information and step by step directions for the transition on April 1st. A special help desk to answer your questions about migration will also be available starting April 1st. You can find more details, including a list of programs that will be affected, at http://affiliates.ebay.com.

Thanks for being a valued partner. We’re excited for a successful transition, and the opportunity to grow your business through even more innovations, information and communication moving forward!

Sincerely,
eBay’s Affiliates Managers

When we started Tri Megatech, we were counting on the Yellow Book to generate a lot of our initial business. We dumped over $2,000 into it for the year, hoping to see a large ROI. While we definitely made our money back on our investment, it wasn’t nearly as much business as we had hoped for. I originally made the ad for the book, and here’s what it looked like:

The time has come now when we had to renew our contract to advertise, so I began doing some research on how we can improve our results…we needed to generate more phone calls. I found a few important key factors that can hopefully dramatically improve an ads effectiveness:

• The size of the ad is not everything
• Color is normally a good way to make you pay more, but doesn’t necessarily make your ad more effective
• A good headline is important to catch a readers attention
• Good graphics that are compelling are important to catch a readers attention
• Differentiate from your competitors

There is a ton of other things that can make a good ad, but just looking at these key things we can already see some major mistakes that we initially made in our first run. Our logo is huge. Who cares? It’s not even compelling. Nobody cares what the name of your company is, people are looking for somebody that can provide a service for them. There is no headline for anybody to read, or anything like graphics to compel them in. By now they’ve already called another competitor.

With my newfound knowledge, I decided to redesign our ads. We decided to do two, one targeting home users, and another targeting networking aka businesses. Here’s what I did for home users:

In this new ad we see some drastic differences from our previous copy. For one, look at the difference in the logo size. It’s much tinier, and hidden in the corner. We have a compelling headline and graphic to catch a readers attention and get them looking at the list of services we provide. Hopefully one matches their needs, and they give us a call. I added credit card logos, as people love to charge things. It also better legitimizes our company.

For our ad that targets businesses we were given an opportunity for one color. We wanted to use this to our benefit in order to help us stand out as much as possible. We just need to lure the reader in, and get them to call. Getting them to call us is 90% of the battle of generating new business:

We obviously used red as our one color, and we used it to emphasize two key elements of the ad; the headline and what we’re giving away for FREE. People love free. Readers are already looking in the “Computer-Networking” category, we want to make sure we targeted that reader. While we do a lot more than networking, we knew that’s more than likely what a potential client was looking for, and what we could use to lure them in. We also made sure the first three services we list have to do with networking. Hopefully we get a client for networking, but end up doing a lot more business with them over time. Business clients is really where its at. They spend more money, and they are more concerned about getting things done then every penny that’s being spent.

Do you guys think that these ads are more effective? It will be some time before they go out to print, but I will definitely report back and let you all know whether or not we’re getting more calls. Constructive feedback is also always welcome.

I am running Text Link Ads on this blog in order to earn a little more income.  That’s what the “Featured Links” section is on the sidebar, as well as one sold out post right now.  My problem is that TLA maintains a list under my account of sellable posts on my blog in order for me to make more money.  I guess those pages come up in searches for publishers, or however that works.  The problem is back when my account was setup in June (3-4 months ago) they made a list of posts.  I have been posting content almost every single weekday, and there has been a great amount of good content that has gone up on here since I originally started with TLA.

When I login to my TLA account, I see a list of 38 posts.   My blog now has over 160 posts.  My thought is that offer more inventory, increase the chances of selling a campaign, make more money, right?  So I contacted TLA multiple times now letting them know that I don’t think their system is working correctly.  I keep getting e-mails back from them saying there is nothing wrong with the system, the posts should update automatically.  They say that not all posts are approved, it has to be good caliber content.  Now I know for sure based on the 38 posts in my inventory, that there is definitely some good caliber content in the 120+ other posts that aren’t on the list…but it has no chance of being sold, and it doesn’t look like TLA wants to do anything about it.

When was the last time your TLA posts have been updated?  Is it just me having this problem?  To check, login to your account, click “edit listings”, then click “manage posts”.  You’ll then see a list of posts that are sold in TLA inventory.

Let me know what you find, help me figure out if this is really how long it takes for an update in posts, or if there is something wrong with TLA’s system here.  It’s been bugging me for months now.

Everybody knows that video advertising is going to be the next big thing. Google can’t spend $1.65 billion dollars and not expect any sort of kickback. I’m going to take a look at where advertising on video started, and show you where it’s heading.

At first we saw standard 15 and 30 second spots…basically TV commercials ported over to the internet. On top of that, sites like AOL include a synced banner that expands while the preroll is playing:

The problem with that is the upbringing of YouTube. Users were watching a bunch of video clips, and many of them were short. As a user, I don’t want to watch a 30 second ad just to watch a 25 second video clip on every other video play. How do you solve that problem? Make the pre-roll 10 seconds or under!

This was a better solution, but there is still a problem. According to Shiva Rajaraman, a project manager at YouTube, internal tests showed that 70 percent of users closed the video when they saw any sort of pre-roll. That’s a major concern.

Now comes another format into the mainstream, the overlay. The overlay is a lot like what you’ll see on TV. Say you’re watching Seinfeld on TBS, you may see a mini Bill Engval come accross your screen to promote his new show. I’ve even seen this on TBS where they will pause the actual show while the mini Bill comes to the bottom of the screen and starts talking for a few seconds.

The overlay ad works on the same concept. Show an ad over a small percentage of the bottom of the video. When a user clicks the ad another video displays in the same player, overlaying the original. Genius! The user doesn’t lose any time watching the video, and the site can still make money with effective advertising. On top of that, if you click as a user, the advertisers video does not have to be set to play only 10-30 seconds. For example an ad for a movie trailer can display, a user will click, and can then watch the full 2-minute trailer if desired. At any point in time the user can close the ad, and it will go back to their video which was automatically paused. Double genius! YouTube’s internal studies showed that only 10% of users closed the overlay ad. Here’s an example of the format from the VideoEgg Ad Network:

Also notice that the advertisers video also plays at the end of the video automatically, and clicking the menu button will also display the advertisers message.

While this new format is majorly hyped right now because YouTube will be offering it soon, VideoEgg is a little bitter because they say they invented the format about a year ago. TechCrunch has a great story on this. They also have a great followup story based on feedback they received from other companies that they too had overlay video ads over a year ago. You’ve gotta love internet drama…even going as far as VideoEgg’s homepage having this image:

YouTube will be offering the video overlay ads at a $20 CPM ($20 per 1,000 viewers, regardless of clicks or actions). On top of that…one of the coolest parts about it is that they will be offering a revenue split with the video creators. There are no details of how much it will be or how it will work, but obviously there are many concerns such as making sure somebody is the video owner, copyright, etc. It will be interesting to see how Google/YouTube positions themselves on this.

I’ve also seen a couple other video overlay formats, one being PreRollr that I had tested on Video Experiment. I had found the ads to be very annoying to users in two ways:

1. On a blog like VE where you show a bunch of videos, a user would have to close the ad on every video they wanted to watch.
2. Since the ad is overlayed on the video from the get go, it’s hard for a user to differentiate between an ad and a video. The overlay method that VideoEgg does is much better because the ad comes in after playing the video for a few seconds, and goes away on its own after 10 seconds.

This is what PreRollr would look like on a video:

They must have realized there were issues because going to their homepage now shows this message:

Revlayer’s down for the moment due to new developments we’re adding to our ad serving technology. We’ll be back up soon!

One competition (or should I say a parallel format) with the overlay format is contextual overlay. It’s offered by a few different companies, and I’ve seen it implemented on MetaCafe before. Contextual overlay is like a mix of Google AdSense with video overlay ads. They are ads that appear in relevant websites and videos to offer a more targeted solution for advertisers. Here’s an example of this from AdBrite’s InVideo solution:

Know of any other cool technologies? Post your comments and let me know.

Travis from Young Go Getter came up with a little creative idea where they are letting their readers create the logo for their blog.  All you need to do is print out a PDF of their logo and take a picture with it in some sort of creative way.  As a thanks, Travis is making the logo click-through to your site.  Just a few people have submitted their logos so far, and I just sent mine in:

The picture is of the two Viper’s in my garage.  Young Go Getter is a site about young entrepreneurs like myself, people that I also directly target with my blog.  I’ve found that young entrepreneurs are often inspired by nice things, like cars for example.  I think the Viper’s are a status of some sort of success and inspiration, which is why I decided to use them in the logo.  Travis informed me that it’s now in rotation on the site, and here’s a screenshot of it live on the site:

After making an advertisement for the newspaper, and finding out the results of how it worked out, it was time to come up with an idea that will bring in results faster and in higher volumes (more than 0!). It’s time to do a little guerrilla marketing, and after searching around, I think I found the perfect solution (at least I hope so!). They are called rip hangers. Essentially they are just regular door hanger advertisements, but the bottom 15% or so can be torn off. This is perfect to have you business card, or in our case, a coupon for 50% off all home services.

I think door hangers are great because the advertisement is right there. The potential customer may just throw it away, but they are forced to at least get a glimpse of the front, and if something entices them enough, they will look at the rest. Usually the door hangers I get are from restaurants, they are white with may one or two colors, and nothing really stands out enough for me to actually look at it. We’ll be doing full color and big lettering, hopefully enough to stand out and at least garner a look.

We’ll be getting 2,500 of these rip hangers printed, and 48HourPrint.com will be doing the printing. It will run us about $300. By just pulling in less than 10 customers, or even just one business customer, we should be able to easily make that money back. I’m really hoping that this will turn things around and actually work, as I’ve been really bummed out about advertising results lately.

I want to get your thoughts on the initial design. If there is anything that should be changed I can make those changes before actually sending the files out for print. So give me your opinion. Note that there is a good amount of trim space around everything, on the printed version there will just be a little amount of space between the edge and the text. Keep in mind the idea is to use the big text to entice the reader to read the smaller text, and hopefully cut the coupon off. We may not get customers right away, but they have until the end of the year to use the coupon. We also had a little concern for the text in the first paragraph on the front, let me know what you think about that and if it should be re-worded:

Front:

Back:

Again, I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts. If you think it sucks, don’t hesitate to let me know!

Last month we ran our first newspaper ad for Tri Megatech in order to generate some new business. Unfortunately I have some bad news to report…we had zero leads from our ad! Basically $200 down the drain other than potentially some branding opportunity for anybody that did see the ad.

I spoke with a few people to get their opinions on this, and they said that in the newspaper, you have to advertise day after day so people will see and trust the brand. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have the budget for this right now. Although the ROI may pay off over time, we need results now. I would much rather spend our advertising dollars on things that will provide more direct results.

We now have another thing to worry about…Many of our little jobs have been coming from our ads in the Yellow Book. Verizon just released their Yellow Book (which we did not advertise in) in the same area, and we’re afraid people will be throwing the old books (with our ad) away. We spent over $2,000 in advertising in the Yellow Book, so this would be horrible if the little amount of jobs we get from it now go away.

We’re already doing little advertising in Craigslist and AdWords, and we’ve tried a couple of local door-to-door flyer promotions. We’re also doing some services through OnForce, but it normally works out to substantially lower hourly rates. The next idea will be using something called “Rip Hangars”, which are door hangars that have a rippable business card on the bottom of them. We’ll be using this as a 50% off grand opening sale coupon. I’m hoping that since they are door hangars, people will be forced to see at least the front of it, and hopefully it’s enough to entice them to look further. Even if they don’t have computer problems now, they may rip the coupon off and save it for later. I’ll be posting the design (it will be full color both sides) as soon as I’m finished to get your thoughts.

Do you have any other suggestions for generating some more business? Do you think I’m being too impatient with the newspaper? Was the ad not good enough?

I got an e-mail this morning that I had a new message on my MyBlogLog (feel free to add me as a contact and/or join my community) from a guy that happened to come to my blog via StumbleUpon. He was asking me to test drive his new free advertising co-op called AdGridWork. It’s essentially a free ad network which works through contextual link exchanges.

You sign up, make an ad, and place the ad code on your site. As you generate impressions and clicks, the ad you create advertising your own site will get displayed on other network members pages. You get free advertising for your site (at the cost of giving up some ad space on your own). This may be especially good for newer and low-mid trafficked blogs where it’s not worth much money to give up space where a paid advertisement can go.

The concept seems good to me, I’m really just surprised the AdGridWork isn’t somehow monetizing it. I would have thought they would do something like a certain percentage of ads would be theirs and paid to them…or at the very least ads promoting other websites which they own.

Does it work though? The good part about answering this question is that it’s absolutely free to try out and see for yourself. If you do decide to sign-up, let me know how it has been working out for you. Either by posting a comment or writing a review (and then let me know and I’ll link to you).

I’m going to do a compilation of reviews that I find here which I’ll keep updated:

• Success Online
• KCLau’s Money Tips

Another interesting service that the same guys provide is called ReviewBack. It’s simply a marketplace to find other similar blogs out there that you can review for free, and they will review you back for free. A nice, free, easy way to build some traffic.