William Charlwood

Finally got round to submitting a new ad to the GadgetSpots network today. My first one was obviously TOO cheeky - I was advertising GadgetSpots within the GadgetSpots widget. A sort of narcissistic, iterative advertising.

Naughty boy.

Actually since I started doing that not only has my original ad been deleted but there’s also an explicit statement on the site telling people that they are not allowed to do this.

So anyway, I created a new ad today spurred on by enthusiastic reviews by various folk I trust online and I’ll be tracking the stats carefully and reporting back.

One of the things you can do with GadgetSpots ads, as you can with any traffic generating system, is to promote something that can make money for you on autopilot so you really need to have either a commercial website of some sort or to have selected a product you can sell as an affiliate. In fact that’s one of the beauties of something like GadgetSpot - you just set it up and use your own ads to drive traffic to a link that can make you money.

But what if you don’t have anything in mind? Well try this for starters. It’s a powerful ebook that you can sell. Get your own copy here.

GadgetSpots are a new type of traffic exchanging advertising. You sign up (free-ish) and you can get your ads on loads of sites. In return you agree to display a GadgetSpots ad on your own site.

At the time of writing I’ve put one on this blog.

A few thoughts: there are 2 levels of GadgetSpots membership. The free one shares out 25% of impressions. If you pay a monthly subscription you get 75% of impressions. But that’s where it all gets a bit confusing. On the GadgetSpots website the numbers don’t add up. I do think the system will deliver traffic and if it grows then paying for a small monthly subscription will make sense especially since you control the wording of your ad in the GadgetSpots widget that goes on other people’s sites.

Like all these things, you do need to write the copy of your ad carefully in order to get as many clicks as possible. Do that though, and you’ll benefit from free targeted traffic easily. If that works out for you, buy the upgrade to triple your traffic.

Ok, so that’s GadgetSpots. Here’s the issue I’m thinking about though.

It seems highly likely to me that this blog will very shortly rank very high for the word GadgetSpots on the basis of recent results. So in order to capitalise on this should I write a post now when GadgetSpots are fairly new?

Or should I postpone writing for a few weeks when knowledge of the system will be much wider spread - and so will search volumes?

It’s a difficult one: it’s good to rank first but only if people are actually searching for the keyword you rank first for. To maximise the value of a top position on Google etc. you need big volume searches AND the ability to convert those searches either directly or indirectly into dosh.

The Closed Door Sessions have just been released. They feature 11 interviews on DVD with big name, highly successful internet marketers. If you want to see how the experts market online - and let’s face it - you’re going to find it easier to make money if you follow people who are already doing it than by re-inventing the wheel.

The Closed Door Sessions