Advertising vs. Sales

I just heard a reporter from the New York Times talk about how little revenue they generate from their website compared to their newspaper even though they have more people reading the website. I have heard a few people from the New York Times use the same line as they say they get dollars from the newspaper and pennies from their website.

It seems like it should just be a matter of time before this evens out. People are used to paying top dollar for an ad placed in the newspaper, but are just starting to figure out how to advertise online.

Online advertising seems far superior. I think we will get to a point where online ads are more expensive than print ads, but we are a long way from there right now. A person can't click an ad in the newspaper and immediately buy something or sign up for a newsletter.

Advertisers can track the effectiveness of their online ads much better than ads in a printed newspaper. The New York Times should be able to charge top dollar for their online ads at some point.

This gets me thinking about my sites and online business efforts. I also have been frustrated with the little amount of money being generated from the ads on my sites. I sometimes think I'm not doing something right, but when I hear the New York Times talking about their frustrations, I know it is a market wide problem and not just something I am doing wrong.

One thing that does deliver good revenue for me is sales commissions. I recently sold a luxury item that generated a commission of $344. A few of these per week and I will be living my dream life. It takes a lot of visitors and a lot of clicks on ads to get me to $344.

The problem is it is much easier to get someone to click on an ad compared to getting someone to buy a luxury item through my links. The best year I ever had online involved over 80% of my revenue coming from advertising clicks. Maybe this is why I put so much focus on generating revenue from advertising instead of from sales commissions.

Maybe it is time to change my focus to affiliate sales. I know it isn't like it used to be where it was easy to buy traffic from the top pay per click search engines and send the traffic to affiliate companies or landing pages. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are all trying to crack down on affiliates landing pages. However, I have sites that are more than just one page landing zones with a one and done mentality.

So as I build my traffic by adding lots of qualtiy content, I should remember to have a few relevant affiliate links on my sites instead of just having a block of AdSense ads.

When the market evens out and advertisers start realizing the value of online advertising, I might need to change my strategy again, but for now, I would rather be making dollars instead of pennies.