Placing Ads - Help

Ad Copy - I'm no advertising expert, so I'm not going to give advice on what makes a good ad, beyond this -- think about what kind of ads capture your attention and try something similar.  I think a mistake a lot of people make is in trying to figure out what other people will like.  You're trying to find people who will like the same kind of program you like, so try to attract people similar to you by figuring out what makes you want to sign up for a program.

Do you respond well to the ads that simply repeat all the information contained on the program's website?  Do you get interested when an ad tells you what's unique about the program?  (The webmaster is nice; they pay quickly; they have neat games to play on the site, etc.)  Do you sit up and take notice when ads are longer, or shorter?  Serious or funny?  Everybody has their own tastes.  An ad that's very effective for one person will bore someone else, so you'll never please everyone.  Be creative.  Experiment.  It's all part of the challenge.

Oh, and PLEASE use a spell checker.  An ad full of spelling mistakes that could easily have been caught by a spell check makes it look like you just don't care.  If you don't care, why would anyone want to sign up under you?

Bandwidth - Think of a website as a prepaid phone card.  Most websites have a monthly limit for their bandwidth usage, the same as a phone card might have a $25 limit.  Every time somebody visits a website (makes a phone call using the card), each image or bit of content the visitor views uses up some of the site's bandwidth (the phone card's credit).  Once the limit is reached, nobody can visit the site until the owner buys more bandwidth.  We've all seen those messages that say the website's limit has been reached, right?  Well, this is what those messages are all about.  The site has been more popular than expected, or maybe the owner didn't calculate very well when he was figuring out how much bandwidth he needed to buy.

Banner Impressions - These are the banners you see at the top of each page on program websites.  They also appear on timer bars when you're viewing ads.  People don't get paid for clicking on them, so they don't get many clicks, but the people who do click are usually doing so because they're actually interested in what the banner is selling.  That means clicks, although more rare for this type of advertising, may be more likely to lead to referrals or sales.  Banner impressions will usually give you a lot of exposure for a very small price.  In a smaller program with lots of banners in rotation, a purchase of 10,000 banner impressions could easily have your ad running for several months.

Copy and Paste - To copy a URL, put your cursor at the beginning of it, hold down the left button on your mouse, and drag the mouse to the end of the URL so that the whole thing is highlighted.  If you have trouble handling a mouse, you can also position your cursor at the beginning of the URL, hold the Shift key and press End to highlight the line.  If it happens to highlight too much, continue to hold the Shift key and press the Left Arrow key -- NOT Backspace -- to get rid of the excess highlighting.

Once you've got the URL highlighted hold the Ctrl key and press C.  This will copy the URL to your computer's clipboard.  (A clipboard is a temporary holding area for things you've copied or cut.)  As long as you don't copy or cut anything else or shut your computer off, the copied URL will remain in the clipboard so you can paste it somewhere else.

To paste, position your cursor where you want the URL to go, hold the CTRL key and press V.  

Hotlinking - A website is made up of lots of files.  Some of those files run little programs, some display the text you read, and some are image files that will make pictures (such as banners) show up.  Most of the files that a webpage uses reside on its own website, but it's possible for a file to "live" or have an address on one website but be used on a completely different one.  This is referred to as hotlinking.  

Every time a file is called into use it uses up bandwidth.  Whatever website the file is located on bears the expense of that bandwidth, and that's why most website owners don't want hotlinking to happen without their knowledge.  In fact, many websites have measures in place to prevent it from happening.

When you buy an ad that involves a banner, the file that contains the banner image usually needs to be stored on your own webspace, and the program where you buy the ad will need to hotlink to it.  A lot of free webhosts don't allow hotlinking.  Some of them don't even mention that fact in their terms of service, so it's a good idea to test your ability to hotlink.  There are a couple of ways you can test.  

 - Ask a friend with a website to link to your banner from one of his webpages.  
 - Put the link to your banner into your signature at a forum.  (The Get Paid Forum is a good one to test on if you don't already belong to another forum that allows images in signatures.)

If you use either one of these methods and the banner shows up all right, hotlinking is allowed wherever you've got your banner stored.

Image Host - A service that stores pictures for you, usually used by people who don't need or want an actual webpage.  There are a few free image hosts around, but my favorite at the moment is Photobucket.  It's easy to use, and if you're just starting to advertise, the monthly free bandwidth they offer should be plenty to keep your ads running each month without having to pay for extra.  (Unless you're planning on going hog-wild with your advertising or your banners files are a lot bigger than they should be.)  Once the banner is uploaded, its URL will be displayed with it so you can easily find and copy it when needed.

Save Banner to Your Computer - Put your cursor on the image you want to save.  Click the RIGHT mouse button and a menu will pop up.  From the menu choose "Save Picture As".  (The menu may instead say something like "Save Image As", depending on the browser you're using.)  A box similar to this will show up:

First, decide where on your computer you want to save the image.  This is the field at the top of the box where our example says "My Pictures".  If you're not sure where to save to, make a note of what that field says and leave it as it is.  Next, go down to the bottom of the box where it says "File name" and replace whatever is in that field (in our example it says "bannerex") with some kind of descriptive name for your banner.  For example, if you were saving a Waygood banner, logical names for it would be "waygood" or "waygoodban", so you would be able to look at the filename and know immediately what it is.  Don't change anything in the final field where it says "Save as type".

Before you click the Save button, make note of the name of your file.  If we were going to write down the name of the file in our example box we would combine what's in the "File name" field and the "Save as type" field by writing them down like so:  bannerex.gif .  You'll need this information along with what you wrote down from the top field in order to find the file again later.  Once you click the Save button the banner will be saved to your computer.  Some browsers may pop up another box that says something to that effect.  That box can be closed and you're done.

Upload - This is just a fancy word for copying a file to a website.

URL - This is the address of an object on a website.  Like any other kind of address, it tells you how to find the place you're looking for -- the location of a webpage or an image, for example.  If you look at the address bar of your browser, you'll see that the URL of any of my webpages starts with something like: 

http://www.ptrprimer.netfirms.com/ 

The referral links you find on your referral page are special URL's that not only tell people how to get to a program website, but also automatically enter your name as the referrer if someone signs up using that URL.