Tech Raving

We are programmers, we love to look up from our code base and announce to the world “Hey look at what I found out!1!” We love to point out others work and say “Look at what their doing over there!” Or maybe just putting out widgets and plug-ins is enough satisfaction to keep us going; hoping that everyone will enjoy them.

Invariably we’ve all seen or posted the infamous “Donate” button in hopes that someone will recognize our work. Occasionally someone does make a donation and we are happy. Not that we are really counting on it though. We just love our programs, right?!?

So how then can we as programmers still continue to contribute to the community and be rewarded for our continued work, without being labeled as a shill or a sell out?

As a previous internet marketer I’ve had to handle the questions of how to make money on the internet. As a programmer I just love to code and, right or wrong, love to let everyone know via this blog on what I’ve found. No I don’t expect to make any money of these discovery’s and plug-ins; but boy would it sure be nice.

From my perspective of an affiliate marketer and programmer I do believe that there is a mix that I would like to share with you on how to gain a little more reward for the work that you do. You don’t have to look like you’ve sold out or only do it for the money either.

On Site Advertising:

Whether you choose to have advertising on your site is completely up to you. You must know that no more than %20 of your page can be devoted to advertising. Anything more than that makes it look like an advertisement. This along with with other images can lessen the credentials of what you are trying to say. If your site depends a lot on random flickr photos don’t dilute it with %20 of advertising banners.

Advertising placement doesn’t just go willy-nilly anywhere either. The best results are when you place them in-flow with your website. Placing a 468 x 60 banner at the break between your post and the start of your comments section will produce better results than if you placed the advertising in your footer section. On a blog it’s easy to find the natural breaks, between pages box and archives box, etc.

Try some placements for a while then mix it up. Eventually, and with correct stats reporting, you’ll find the right placement. Try different sizes as well. Two 120 x 60 may fail because it makes the site look busy, when one 468 x 60 banner will work best.

Don’t go grabbing just every advertiser that comes along. The advertising that you display on your website needs to be completely targeted to your readers. If your site is 100% devoted to Microsoft programming, chances are that they will not purchase Apple or Linux products/services. Find the Microsoft related advertisements, anything else would be a waste of your page.

What you write about is your target, if you wouldn’t purchase the product chance are your readers won’t either. If you can find any advertisements that suite your needs then maybe you shouldn’t display the ads.

Don’t make it harder on yourself. Find websites that will help you locate the advertising that you want to display. Yes you can go from site to site seeing if they offer affiliate programs, but you may not find well paying opportunities, or even worse, they don’t collect conversions correctly so you pass them traffic and they don’t pay.

Personally I use two sites regularly for all my affiliate opportunities: LinkConnector and LinkShare Corporation . Both of these two companies have regularity performed for me in accurate statistics and communication on when a merchant has decided to end early or otherwise when an opportunity is ending.

Tracking Software:

Originally called openAds I’ve upgraded to openX .It’s written in PHP and once set up allows me to create merchant (Linkshare and LinkConnector) merchants and create the advertising campaigns. It also allows me to rotate advertisements for the viewer. It’s truly become a lot more powerful over the original openAds as it allows for geoIP locating as well.

You could of course “hard code” your advertising links into your system, but then you become reliant on yourself to remove them once the opportunity has ended, naturally or early. Using openX I can specify when to end during creation plus I get advertisement rotation.

Link embedding:

Maybe you hadn’t noticed in the previous paragraphs but I certainly embedded the affiliate links from LinkConnetor and LinkShare. If you already clicked on them and joined then I got paid for referring you. Maybe now you’re a little upset at me for doing so, but that the point of this post. I neither talked goo or bad about them, only referring to you that they are there to be used for your purposes.

By me referring them to you, and you signing up, why shouldn’t I make a little something something.

Whenever I use a product, read a book, review others work I try a little to see if they have any affiliate links I could use to send others their way. Whether they do or don’t doesn’t sway my decision to write a post about them. However if they do have affiliate links to use then I consider it a little payback for research and or trying their product.

I will say one of the issues I have with embedded links is the search engine optimization of them when using providers. I f you don’t use “exactly” what the advertisers want you may wind up using “Get your affiliate money here” text links during the course of your post. That could be totally different from the flow of the post and makes it look like a shill. If you can work it into the natural flow of your post or are fine with that then run with it.

Infamous Donation Button:

PayPal has made it easy for others to donate to our effort in producing topics and reward us well for it via the donate button. However I will contend that having the button striclty in my sidebar did absolutely nothing for me. It seems to be all about “location, location, location”

There certainly value in using this but careful consideration of where it goes is needed for full impact. Maybe out of pity would you click the donate button after reading the post about how the writer had a bad day at work and you with loads of money. Or would you be more inclinded to click the donate button as it appears on the settings page of  a great plug-in that you are using?

Personally I’ve never gotten a donation from my web pages in general. Having created several WordPress plug-ins I include the donate button on all the readme.html pages. That has worked a little. The user then knows where to go for the button without remembering which site they got the plug-in from, only that they liked the plug-in and can easily reward the creator.

Another good placement for the donate button is when you use auto-versioning. All my plug-ins check in from time to time to see if I’ve updated them with a newer version. If I have the user is alerted to this fact and asked if they want to upgrade. Of course I have and they want to upgrade they are redirected to the page with the donate button.

I always give the user the ability to not donate and upgrade, but certainly if they have found it valuable then a small donation is made. I know this sounds contrary, but I hate nag screens. “You used this free stuff and I’m going to pop up this screen asking for money every so often till you pay” More times than not I ditch it. Asking for a donation over nagging works more times and creates better users.

Amazon Stores:

I happen to read a lot of technical books and subequently post about them. One of the great places to find the books I read is Amazon.com. So what I’ve done is create an Associate account at amazon and create a store just for this website.

When I read a book and make a review of it I link to the product I’ve placed in my store. If my reader after reviewing the post and deciding to purchase the book then I get a little something something for it. No there is never a contract to review the book or market it. Just the love of further expanding my skills.

If you are like me that reads a lot of material that can be found on Amazon then a little side money can be made that way. You certainly don’t have to write about everythng and link to your store just those that are important to you or you feel are important to your readers.

Don’t let the term “monetizing your site” fool you. You don’t have to sell out or de-grade your credability to make a little money doing the things you love and write about them. Go ahead and do and say what you always have without compromise. However keeping in mind that there are opportunities to make a some side income for your efforts without having to seem like selling out.

Tags: blogs, donate