5 Ways To Make Money From A Proxy Website

At first glance it may seem like making money off of a proxy website is easy business. After all, they’re very popular and fairly easy to start driving traffic to – and you can get lots of that in a hurry, if you use the right techniques. But anyone with a little experience knows that proxy sites are notoriously hard to monetize. Why is this?

1. Advertising restrictions placed on proxy sites
2. Horrible CTR from users
3. You are competing with the site that you are serving for your user’s attention
4. Small space to place advertisements on

Add this on top of the fact that a successful proxy site quickly requires a powerful and expensive hosting package and now you have the reason why most webmasters who set out to make money from such a site fail. However, in this article I am going to discuss 5 techniques that will help you turn the tables and make a profit from your proxy website.

1. Pop-unders / Pop-ups

Pop-ups used to be the huge new thing a while back, until the internet was flooded with them. Then came pop-unders, a modification of the successful pop-up. People were seeing CPMs of $3-5, which is huge. But then came pop-up blockers, and the war began. Nowadays, pop-ups and pop-unders are not in such proliferation, but if used properly they can still be an effective source of income. Find the companies which have been developing advanced pop-up/under technology that beat the latest blockers and implement them into your proxy website. Don’t overdue it, however. Test out different strategies on how to serve them and how often to serve them, and see what works.

2. Interstitials

Interstitials are the ‘new pop-up’ to say – most advertiser’s response to pop-up blockers. These are ads that load between pages – you’ve probably run into them from time to time. A user will click a link to go to another page on a website and be taken to a transition page that will automatically redirect the user to their target page in 5 – 10 seconds, but in the meantime displays them a full-page ad. These types of ads typically have higher CTR since they grab the user’s full attention. Try incorporating interstitials into your proxy site – for example, having one display for every 20 pages a user visits through your proxy.

3. Adsense

Using Adsense on a proxy website is hit or miss – it may work for you, it may not. You’ll have to try it out and see what your results are. I contacted Google a while ago to ask about using Adsense on a proxy website and they said that as long as the code is on your page (not somehow tacked on, or making it seem like it is part of, the page that you are serving through your proxy) then it is fine.

Most proxies keep a “bar” running across the top of the page that reminds the user which proxy they are using and links back to their homepage, etc., and place their ad there – however, this is unlikely to be effective because of “banner blindness” that users have nowadays, so try something different. Maybe implement Adsense like an interstitial – every so often between pages the user will be displayed a transition page that has some text (“Thank you for using myProxy – blah blah blah. You will be redirected to [page] in 10 seconds. In the meantime, take a moment to look at our sponsors.” or something to your liking) and then displays an Adsense box. This is much more likely to be effective because it captures the user’s attention by placing the ad block front and center.

Some people write Adsense off as something that is no longer as effective as it used to be – this is false, you just have to be more creative in your implementation of it. You can still make nice money if you know how to work it. Test things out, record your results, and modify appropriately.

4. Affiliate Offers

Affiliate marketing is becoming bigger and bigger with tons of money to be made off of it. Find products/offers through companies like Copeac and AzoogleAds and then use the techniques described above to sell them – display the offers and salestext in interstitials or pop-ups/unders. After a little experimenting you should find out which type of offers have the highest success rate, so stick to those. The possibilities with affiliate marketing is endless, so keep an open mind and try everything!  Remember that you can’t just place a link to the offer and expect people to buy it – you have to presell it first.  Read about successful landing pages and incorporate those techniques into your interstitials.

5. CPM

If you have enough traffic you can still make decent money off of CPM, even if it is only a single banner ad. Try placing a standard banner in your proxy info bar at the top of the page and see what your results are. Because proxy traffic is not generally high-quality traffic you may not get into the bigger name (and higher paying) CPM companies like TribalFusion, FastClick, or Burst!, but you will be sure to get into at least a couple of the lower quality ones. Let’s say that you only earn $0.30 CPM, but you are serving 300,000 pages a day – divide that by 1000 and you have 300. 300 x 0.30 is 90, so you would be earning $90/day – wow!

While proxy sites are hard to make a profit off of, I have showed you 5 techniques that will help you do just that. The most important thing to remember is to keep trying different techniques and see what works best for your site. Be creative – you’d be surprised at what might work!

Posted in Promotion Techniques | 4 Comments »

Experiment #1 Updates – 11/6/07

It’s now been about two weeks since I have submitted my ebook to around 20 directories. As I mentioned earlier, the ebook is about 5 pages long and I created a one-page site that offers information about the ebook and a link to download it, as some directories host the ebook on their own servers and some link to your site. Here are my results as of now:

• No affiliate sales
• No sizable amount of traffic
• No progress!

This leads me to the conclusion that if you want to promote and distribute an ebook you have to do more than submit it to a couple dozen directories – it will get you some traffic but nothing sizable. With this part of the experiment done I plan to take it to another level and see what kind of results I can get by trying these new techniques, which are as follows:

• Update my ebook website to be more than just a download link. Put up excerpts from the book, statistics, etc.. Use the website to establish credibility and draw in some search traffic.
• Update the ebook – use techniques for copywriting typically found in blogs (like killer headlines) to make my ebook more attractive.
• Start posting on a handful of forums/blogs that concern my subject (including a signature link of course).
• Guest write for a couple of sites concerning my subject.

As always, i’ll keep you updated!

Posted in Experiments | 2 Comments »

What Are Your Top 5 Required Tools?

I’m interested to hear what programs/applications everyone else uses to develop, promote, and maintain their websites.  You never know what you may hear of that you never knew about before!  So what are your top 5 tools?  Mine are, in no particular order:

1. Firefox with Web Developer plugin, Google bar plugin, and SEOFox plugin.
2. EditPlus 2 (advanced text editor)
3. CuteFTP
4. Adobe Photoshop 7
5. W3Counter.com (best visitor counter / analyzer that I have seen)

What are yours?

Posted in Resources | 4 Comments »

Interview with Noah Kagan from OkDork.com

I recently had the chance to interview Noah Kagan from OkDork.com, a blog that I have been reading and getting ideas from for quite some time. Noah worked at Facebook and coordinated Community Next, as well as being the director of marketing at Mint.com.

His blog is filled with short, thought-provoking and call-to-action posts, which I find great. Anyways, without further ado, here is the interview.

1. How did you get into the fields of product management and marketing?

I got into the field when i started making web businesses in college, comegetused.com, collegeup (defunct), ninjacard.com. I had to market and PM which i guess was deciding how to build the websites.

2. As you have grown and taken on new projects (like Mint and CommunityNext), what has been one or two of the most important lessons you have learned in terms of marketing?

Marketing is 1 thing. who is your audience and how do you get a hold of them. secondly, is how to get your audience to help (want to) do the marketing.

3. From a marketing/promotion standpoint, what are some things that you always take into consideration when launching a new project (for example, creating hype for the product/service)

Build hype WAY before you ever need it.

4. On OkDork.com you state that you are interested in social networking and that you have worked at Facebook. Obviously, these sites deal with many thousands of users – is there anything of particular interest that you have learned by dealing with such a large volume of users?

Yeah, people love complaining. its hard to figure out what to do when you have so many people wanting so many things.

5. Do you have any essential tips, techniques, software, or resources that you think would be beneficial for new webmasters struggling to promote their sites?

Yeah, try a lot of things to promote, measure EVERYTHING, test, repeat.

6. Last question, and possibly the most important – Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

Neither ;) [Gasp!]

Posted in Resources | 2 Comments »

Experiments in Promotion Update 2

Here is what I have done so far with my experiment in ebook promotion:

• Written a four page ebook, including affiliate links
• Built a one page minisite that offers my ebook to download
• Submitted my ebook to ~10 directories

I don’t think that this alone will get me much traffic or sales, so here is what I plan to do:

• Submit to as many more ebook directories as I can find
• Put some articles on my site and try to draw in some search traffic
• Post in relavent forums with the ebook link in my signature
• List my minisite in website directories for the appropriate subject

I’ll keep you updated with how my progress goes – in the meantime, keep an eye out for my upcoming posts on forum promotion 101 and how to monetize a proxy website.

Posted in Experiments | 2 Comments »

Sunday’s Quote – #1

This Sunday’s quote is simple but has large implications:

Advertising is the “wonder” in Wonder Bread – Jef I. Richards

Think about Wonder Bread – it is by far the most popular white bread on the market, and maybe even the most popular bread period. You can buy a loaf of it anywhere for about $1. What’s so special about it?

Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just like all the other generic white bread brands out there, it doesn’t taste any better, and it is certainly not nutritional. So why is it so incredibly popular? Because of lot’s of promotion and very effective marketing.

How can we learn from Wonder Bread? I think that the lesson we should take out of this is that you don’t always have to have the best product on the market, you just have to be able to market it as the best.

Posted in Quotes | 1 Comment »

100 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Blog

InternetBabel.com compiled a big list of 100 ways to get more traffic to your blog – some of them you will already know but some will be new to you. Here are some examples:

• Make your blog as different as possible.
• Use interactive features like polls and surveys.
• Let your readers know about great little known resources.
• Take criticism.
• Admit your faults.
• Create bragging rights.

Check out the link and learn some new techniques!

Posted in Promotion Techniques | 1 Comment »

The Power Of Mindshare

Christopher M. Knight once said these very important words:

You must have mindshare before you can have marketshare.

Consider the truth in that statement for a moment. Your users make up your market so it follows that without them you have no market. Don’t market TO them, rather communicate WITH them. Identify and understand your target audience’s needs then create solutions that deliver satisfaction to them, based around their needs, not yours.

This is not a new idea, and I am sure that you have heard the same general advice from any marketing site you may visit – but not everyone understands why it is important. The answer: it builds mindshare. And mindshare equals marketshare. And marketshare equals profit.

Your challenge: connect with your users – become not ‘some guy’ who is trying to sell them something but rather a unique individual who is offering them a product or service that fits their unique needs and with whom they can relate to.

Posted in Promotion Techniques | No Comments »

Experiments In Promotion #1 Update

I’m making a change in my first ‘experiment in promotion’ – instead of doing article marketing, which is very time consuming (of which I don’t have too much currently), I will be using eBooks instead. Same concept, different technique. I will write a couple of short, concise (and free) eBooks that provide good and relevant content concerning a subject that I can find a couple affiliate offers around.

The eBook will contain links to a one-page minisite that I create around the affiliate offers and information I wrote, and may contain direct affiliate links. I will then distribute my eBooks through various means. This is a test to see two things: how much traffic/downloads and how many conversions I can get. I will be keeping you updated on my progress and results.

If you have any tips or suggestions please feel free to comment! Also, if you have done this before, let me know how your results were.

Posted in Experiments | 1 Comment »

Promotion is Perseverance

Promoting your website is not something you do from time to time. It’s not something that you do until you start to see success and than stop. It’s an all the time gig and it takes dedication. Think about it this way – in school, you work hard to get an ‘A’ on that first math test. You get the test back and did indeed get the ‘A’, but you don’t stop working now. If you stop working with just one good grade all of your future grades will be low – you have to keep working, keep studying the whole school year.

The same is true about promoting a website. You don’t stop promoting after you start to see an increase in traffic. If you do, your traffic will not be sustained at that level, it will drop back down.

So here is my call to action: define a couple of daily/weekly goals for yourself, write them down, and then do them. Every day. You won’t become successful if you are lazy. For example, try something like this:

• Make 3 posts in 5 different forums targeted around your niche every day
• Guest post on someone else’s blog once a month
• Create one informational video and upload it to YouTube once every two weeks
• Read and comment on 5 different blogs targeted around your niche every day
• Write one concise but informative ebook and release it to the public once every month

These are just some examples of what you should be doing to really promote your website. The traffic (and revenue) is there for those who are willing to work hard for it.

Posted in Motivation, Promotion Techniques | 2 Comments »