Why your pet site could be losing easy revenue

[cpvr]

Well, well, I thought I'd bring this topic up because I know some users hate ads - but some webmasters like myself know that ads can bring easy revenue to your site, and here I'll list a few advertising companies that you can run on your pet site - in the beginning - until you get more traffic.

Since when do monthly unique visitors really matter? I suppose for a site like Marapets that has 20 ads per page, it'd be useful. I wonder what the statistics are that matters for a site like Subeta/Marapets/Etc, which is how many people actually play the game, the average amount of time on site, number of clicks per visit, etc. I could easily put a ton of money into an advertising campaign meant to get clicks and rack up 80k uniques that don't even register for the game. [/url]

Also, Alexa and Compete don't have access to our analytics. Subeta gets closer to 60k uniques per month from around the world . Still not 88k, of course.

I found this post interesting by Keith and I thought I'd quote it here to make a new topic because - traffic = free money.

Pet sites can run CPM ads
Have you noticed how Marapets has so many ads? They're making money from those ads - they're called cost per impression, and here's a definition of CPM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_impression

Cost per impression, often abbreviated to CPI or CPM for Cost per thousand impressions, is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic.[1] It is used for measuring the worth and cost of a specific e-marketing campaign. This technique is applied with web banners, text links, email, and opt-in e-mail advertising. Although opt-in e-mail advertising is more commonly charged on a cost per action (CPA) basis, sometimes CPM is used.

CPM is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand. When used in advertising it relates to the cost per thousand page impressions.
For sites earning revenue for advertising impressions, the related abbreviation RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) may be used.[2]
It is important to remember that when someone says something like, "our CPM is $5," this means that the cost per impression is $0.005.
[edit]

That means, the more pageviews you site receives - the more money you'll make. You can just put an ad on the footer - or a skycraper or an ad at the top of your site - it all depends you have to do the testing to find what CPM ad locations perform the best for you - but, a good an easy ad network to get into your site is new is Valueclick(they should still accept online pet games, someone correct me if I'm wrong), and plus, when your site gets bigger - you can get into the bigger ad networks like Casalemedia that has a bigger ad inventory and pays more.

Adsense ads https://www.google.com/adsense/www/en_US/tour/
Adsense is google's ad network - and we run their ads here. Why? They're a CPC ad network - which means, you get paid per clicks and sometimes impressions - depending on what ad inventory you select and such.

But remember, your adsense ads should be optimized well into your content - or easy ad locations that aren't so annoying to users.


So, let's discuss - what ways to earn from your pet site? I don't care what you say about ads, but if you're a true business game owner - you're going to try to make more money to invest into your pet game. Why? Investing is the number one way to grow your pet site - and quite frankly, some people need to learn about advertising networks and how they can easily generate money.

The ads are annoying though... Ya, I know, that's why you give your users a feature to remove the ads or something - why? Most pet sites selling cash shop items or accounts upgrades, so that's useful too.


And besides Slash wrote a blog post on monetized your petsite and she discussed a few things as well, like this:

Pet sites frequently suffer from a lack of finances. They're expensive, and there's no doubting that. They require a decent amount of income to keep up. Consider all the costs associated with running one - server costs come first, then programming costs, artwork costs, and of course costs associated with keeping you, the owner, on board. Obviously you don't want to live in a homeless shelter while running your virtual pet website, so it needs to be able to support you!

But how do you get your site to support you? Ads are a bad decision, in my opinion. Ads have a tendency to piss users off, as they have negative emotional feedback and make the user feel like their playing space is being intruded. Instead, you want to provide natural mechanics in your game that the user will want to pay for.

She's right as well - it's all up to you though, its your business - if you turn your pet site into one.


So, what does everyone think about this post? Let's discuss.

[MrCjTheFish]

I know mara has some Adsense ads, but are you aware of what the others are?

[cpvr]

I know mara has some Adsense ads, but are you aware of what the others are?

Ya, they're running http://www.tribalfusion.com/
They're program policies are below http://www.tribalfusion.com/publishers/benefits

Quality begets quality

We at Tribal Fusion believe that the strength of our network lies in the richness of our publisher partners’ content and audiences. As a result, we only work with high quality publishers that host highly targeted content, professional site design, and desirable audience compositions – and our advertisers know it. Even better, they are willing to pay for it. This means that we deliver among the highest eCPMs in the industry from the highest quality advertisers.

[MrCjTheFish]

Ah okay. I have always been curious. Marapets is a fun site, they just need to take some ads out, really difficult to play at times.
I am currently using Chitika ads on my sites. tried bidvertiser, didint like it, clicksor, I liked, but my users complained that they were getting popups, even when popups were turned off for that ad box.

[cpvr]

Ah okay. I have always been curious. Marapets is a fun site, they just need to take some ads out, really difficult to play at times.
I am currently using Chitika ads on my sites. tried bidvertiser, didint like it, clicksor, I liked, but my users complained that they were getting popups, even when popups were turned off for that ad box.

Why would they remove the ads when they're earning revenue to pay for advertising on Google adwords and re-investing into the game? Ian was gone for awhile, but he has money to re-invest into Marapets. Heck, I believe there was a rumor going around a year or two that Marapets generated $500k+ in one year. So, if you owned Marapets, would you remove the ads? Or would you keep them up to earn more money?

Marapets also has account upgrades - so that's another revenue source for them. Why do you think Neopets has sponsored games? Why do you think they have merchandising? More revenue sources.

Pet games = money, they're an entertainment/virtual world site - so that means, people are going to play, so your traffic = your money. Sure, you can have one revenue source - which is, cash shop or account upgrades/premium accounts, but what happens if users stop donating and your players online list jumps?

What happens then? You don't have money to pay for things, so of course, the advertising networks that you use = your money.

[Anjwalker]

Personally I am not a money fussed person, so If it inhibbited by users enjoyment I'd try and fix that, as long as the site still payed enough to continue developing it.

[kami]

I don't plan on putting any outside site ads on my site at all. I hate them so why should I place it on my users who I'm sure hate them as well? Not worth it, if you ask me.

[Undel]

Ah okay. I have always been curious. Marapets is a fun site, they just need to take some ads out, really difficult to play at times.
I am currently using Chitika ads on my sites. tried bidvertiser, didint like it, clicksor, I liked, but my users complained that they were getting popups, even when popups were turned off for that ad box.

http://www.burstmedia.com/
http://www.tribalfusion.com/
http://www.contextweb.com/

A few ad sites for you to check out. You can daisy-chain your ad system so that it'll always serve up the ad network with the highest CPM. If no ads from that network are available to be served, it'll go down the daisy chain to the next-highest paid and so on and so forth. Very handy! You can slap an adsense or a project wonderful on the bottom of the chain if you so desire.

I don't plan on putting any outside site ads on my site at all. I hate them so why should I place it on my users who I'm sure hate them as well? Not worth it, if you ask me.

I agree that ads can be annoying, but if they're no-sound and well placed, then I will deal with them. Take PA for example: http://www.penny-arcade.com/ (note that this comic has some NSFW humor, but the front page should be fine. :-) ) Their main page has two ads, with their comic pages having a single ad. The ads are built into the site design and placed in such a manner as you wouldn't accidently click them. They don't affect your navigation. They don't make noise.

I took a look at Marapets and their ads have the problem of being puzzle pieced together and nestled among the site's navigation. They're so in-your-face that you can't get away from them and focus on the content. (mind, I do not have an account. This is my impression based on the main page.) The site's content seems entirely boxed in on all sides but one by ads. O_O

I don't think that there's a problem with having ads on a site. The ads can often help balance a growing site's server needs: As the amount of traffic increases, so does the site's need for more memory, bandwidth, and disc space. But if you have ads, as traffic increases, so does the amount of ads you serve up and thus your income. So having ads on your site can balance site growth and the servers should virtually pay for themselves without any need for users to spend their personal money on cash shop currencies. This means that more free content can be funded, and that more pages can probably be viewed while logged off.

With ads, sites can offer more free content than non-ad sites because all page views generate income, not just special items.

Of course, you could always build a site that offers a combination of tasteful-ad quantity and placement AND cash shop currency. Users who don't want to deal with the ads*** but still want to support the site could purchase a premium account for a low fee that would remove ads and perhaps have a few perks to it as well. :-) The purchasing of the premium account should be an amount that offsets the potential lost-revenue from the lack of ads for that user. Of course, all users are different, so finding that the fair-premium-account price would take some feeling-out.





***...or those users turn on ad-block and the site generates $0. If you did good ad-placement and filter out sound/video ads (most good ad networks allow you to do so), there should be no NEED for the user to have to do this and still have an enjoyable experience.

[kami]

I know ads generate more income, but to me, it's not worth the extra money. I'm not in the petsite making business to make money. I'm in it to make my longtime dream come true which is to make my own petsite that myself and others can enjoy

My site will have a cash shop, but I don't plan on taking any of that money for myself. It will all go back into the site. As for premiums, my site won't have any :3

[Jenny Harper]

Personally I think that ads are a dead base now, especially since ABP. I use that and never see the ads.

If I had a site I would at least try and be a millionaire first. Because I know that a Cash shop alone could not keep the site afloat.