An exciting new way to make money through the use of affiliate marketing and web site, is through content locking. If you aren’t already familiar with content locking, the concept is simple. You are basically offering a quality service or product for free. In exchange for offering your services for free, you are requiring users to sign up or complete an offer. This is usually seen in software, gaming and video series. Seems like a win-win situation, right? Sure is!

AdGate Media is an advertising network that specializes in running offers that are perfect for creating content gateway based web sites. With over 350+ different offers on their network, you have a lot of flexibility on what type of offers you want to run and test with your audience. Nearly all of the offers are incentivized, which means you can push them all through content locking sites without any issues.

The team behind AdGate Media is full of veterans in our industry, who have taken what they’ve discovered over their previous years of marketing and invested their own time and money into building a content locking network to help make you more money. All offers, payments and methods of advertising are negotiable when it comes to content locking, and AdGate wants to make their offers work for you.

If you are completely new to content locking and incentivized offers, here’s a few ideas for you to get started today.

Three Great Ideas for Making Money with Content Locking

Finding success with content locking is all about how you are going to present your content and make it available to people who want it. Below I have listed three different methods you can start using right now to start your own content locking web sites or landing page.

Hot Google Trends and World News – Using Google Trends, or any news stories that are spreading through out the world, you can quickly use this information to your advantage and create a sweet niche web site or landing page that people want to see. Whether it’s pictures of the latest celebrities behind bars, banned video footage from paparazzi or anything else people want to find, create a site around these topics and require users to complete a simple email or zip submit to access the information. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can reach this audience through viral methods such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Entertainment & Video Sites – As mentioned earlier, everyone goes crazy for video. Every day millions of people are looking online for illegal movies to watch, movie trailers and just funny videos. You can create a content resource site for any of these video sources, and will have traffic flowing to your site. Throw some content locking on that site, then spend some time on seo and getting quality search rankings and you could have a solid money maker for months to come. When creating any videos or entertainment sites, be sure to stay legit and not mess with illegal content.

Free Software and Gaming – Gaming and free software are two huge players in the content locking space, simply because most people are already willing to pay for these products. If you have the ability to create a free gaming software or useful software program that offers a free trial, then a full version after incentivized offers are completed, this is a golden and long term business plan. Of the three methods mentioned here, this is the best long term solution, which can also be bundled and sold down the road.

Do You Have Unique Content You Would Like to Monetize?

What seperates AdGate Media from the many other networks out there that promise the “highest payouts”? AdGate Media knows success in affiliate marketing is going beyond just sending out an email with top offers, but instead working with affiliates directly to help them build out successful web sites and landing pages.

If you have web site content that you would like to start monetizing, or have an idea about a new web site or software you could design, AdGate Media wants to be your partner in the content locking space. AdGate Media is already helping many other affiliate marketers (22+ reviews on AffPaying) make money with their content locking ideas, and they are more than willing to help you put together your ideas for a new web site or software. Feel free to follow AdGate Media on Twitter / Facebook, or contact them directly through their Adgate Media Affiliate Network.

A growing trend I’ve been seeing over the past few weeks, is an increase in landing pages that are using cartoon drawings while using a pre-sell video for a product or service. It’s really quite amazing and intelligent. No longer are you just looking at boring text, and listening to someone talk about how great their product is, but not you get a live action short movie that entertains you during the process.

The result… people stick around and watch your videos longer! I don’t know the conversions from these two landing page examples below, but I know I ended up watching them a bit longer, just because I was drawn in by the cartoons and talent behind them.

Take a look at the two landing pages and let me know what you think.

I’m not recommending or pushing either of these products, just making examples of their landing page sales process.

TruthAboutAbs.com

When it comes to landing pages, this is about as simple as it gets… and the cartoon work isn’t phenomenal, but it tells the story and keeps you interested. TruthAboutAbs is one of the top selling weight loss products out there, and they are always split testing new ways to improve their landing pages.

Mobile Money Bandit

This is a new sales page I just came across and it’s really high quality, and the artist does an amazing job through out the video. Any comic book fans will really enjoy this pre-sales video, but it will also engage nearly all readers.

It’s always great to see the fun and exciting new ways companies are getting creative with their landing pages. Let me know what you think.

First of all, from my experiences, banners work great in almost every vertical, but they work particularly well in dating campaigns.  Dating traffic is especially keen on visualization.  People don’t go to dating sites to read articles or to shop for electronics.  They are there because they are bored, and these sites provide an extremely low investment way for them to waste their time.  They can sit in their boxers, hop on, and send 10 messages in 10 minutes.

Let me explain this state of being: the users are completely non-committal, and self-will and purpose go out the window.  They are not on there to accomplish anything in particular.  They didn’t get on with the mission of sending 10 messages a day.  They got on that day and happen to send 10 messages because they felt like it at the moment; because they were bored and they saw 10 boys or girls who were cute.  In this state, they are very easily distracted.  It’s almost as if they purposefully contracted the shiny object syndrome, and are now asking you to: “Please distract me!”

Remember how people say human beings think about sex every 6 seconds?  Well, on dating sites, it’s going on just about every second.  That’s why with an effective banner that hooks the user the right way, you will see click-through rates that are much higher than on traditional social media sites.  Before a user will ever click on your ad, guess what, they have to look at it.  How do you get them to do that?  There are three things that control this: positioning, differentiation, and size.

Positioning refers to where the ad is.  If the ad space is below the fold on most people’s screens, I will never purchase that space unless I know below the fold is where most of the user activities occur.  Fully understand the real estate that you are purchasing and use it to your advantage.  For example, if your ad always appears by a user’s message compose page, try pointing an arrow at the “To” line and say “Why message her when I’m online now? Click me to say hi.”

Differentiation refers to the ad’s ability to standout in the context of the page.  A sure way to get someone to see your ad is to be annoying as possible with flashing animations and blinding colors, but not only will it likely be against the policy of the site, it will also likely annoy the user into not clicking.  The ad should give the user a positive feeling.  There’s not much to the last point, but the simple fact is that the bigger the ad is, the better the performance.

So now you’ve gotten a glance from your target user, congrats, you’ve earned a split-second attention-span equivalent to that of a 6 year old.  To attract their attention for a second longer, your banner needs to have a visual focal point.  I’m sure there are some genius marketers out there that have figured out some very specific types of images that work well for certain types of traffic, but the tried and true way of getting high CTR’s on dating ads is to sell sex and fantasy, because that’s what coincides with the instant gratification mindset of the users on the site, both male and female.

Let’s not beat around the bush: for men, breasts and butts work.  Get the most revealing images while still adhering to your traffic source’s guidelines.  For females, it’s a little trickier.   Muscles definitely do well, but key to their hearts is selling them a fantasy.  Whether it’s a firefighter fantasy, a doctor fantasy, or a wealthy man fantasy, there has to be some unique hook that gets their mental juices flowing.  But the most important rule of thumb to my suggestions above is this: the images must be believable.  Amateur images have again and again outperformed professional images.  The reason is the viewer can more easily believe and imagine the pictured person being real.  They actually think they will meet this person if they click.  The more real you can make this person seem the better.  It could be saying where they’re from, showing their online status, showing when they last logged in, or displaying how many messages they’ve received in the last 24 hours.

Along the same lines, keep your banner real by keeping it SIMPLE.  I cannot stress that enough.  The vast majority of banners out there are too crowded.  Designers often have trouble leaving space.  They think they must use the space given and when possible make the canvas fancier.  There are banners with elaborate borders, too many colors, and too many places the viewer is supposed to look when they should only look twice: the image and then a short copy.  There shouldn’t be much else distracting them.  The more elaborate your banner the more the user is aware that it’s a banner.  They don’t care about the design; they really just care about the image.  And lastly, never underestimate the power of white space, particularly in a crowded site.

For your copy, again keep it simple.  You shouldn’t be writing a paragraph outlining the features of the site you’re promoting.  The users have such a short attention span that you’re lucky if you can push one thought through their head.  Write a captivating headline that focuses on ONE, not two, unique proposition.  What is the one thing that you want to get across with your add?  If you have a photo of a firefighter, you better be promising them something congruent with that.  Speak directly to your audience as if you are the ad and you are sitting right in front of them.  Engage them.  End it with a call to action.

I hope that gives you a clearer approach to banner ads for your dating campaigns.  Get out there, make a bunch of ads, and start testing.  There’s no better teacher than seeing thousands of failed ads through your own test over time.

As an industry where we can literally jump from niche to niche on how we make money, we have opportunities like no other. One niche that actually relates to many of us, but not always exactly thought about for making money, is the pet industry. I have pets and I’m sure many of you do as well.

Yes, the country is in recession and people are saving up their money when they can, and lots of people are out of jobs… but the amount of money spent on our pets is still rocketing through the roof. Let’s take a look at a few quick stats from a recent report by American Pet Products Association.

• According to the 2011-2012 APPA National Pet Owners Survey, 62% of U.S. households own a pet, which equates to 72.9 millions homes
• In 1988, the first year the survey was conducted, 56% of U.S. households owned a pet as compared to 62% in 2008

Now let’s take a look at the actual US spending for Pet Industry Expenditures just over the past few years

• 2011 – $50.84 Billion
• 2010 – $48.35 Billion
• 2009 – $45.50 Billion
• 2005 – $36.30 Billion
• 2000 – $28.50 Billion
• 1994 – $17.00 Billion

As you can see… the growth among the pet industry is just astounding… and with the growth of more products and services being purchased through the internet, we may see $100 billion a year in spending in the not too distance future.

How Can You Make Money in the Pet Industry?

Everyone already knows about the huge pet store chains like Petco and PetSmart, but you don’t need to open a retail chain or carry inventory to make money in this industry, you don’t need to spend ten years in vet school either! There are actually many ways that you can get your piece of the pet industry, simply by creating information and resources online for pet owners, who come flooding to the internet every day. From daily searches on what type of food dogs can eat, to symptoms for why pets are sick, or to just place an order online for pet related food and purchases.

That is exactly what PetFlow did, which was actually started by the same guys who started Azoogle… yes, the affiliate network many of us currently work with! In just the past few years, PetFlow is now pushing millions of dollars in monthly revenue through pet food delivery services. You can read up on their full story I wrote up here.

Pet Affiliate Networks – Easy Access to Pet Related Offers

Sure, PetFlow is the acception, as the founders of Azoogle have millions of dollars to start with and fund their new projects. How can the new guy or smaller affiliate start making money in the pet industry?

As mentioned earlier, millions of people are coming to Google every day looking for answers to their many pet related questions. Everything from foods, health or silly questions about their pets… in the end they are all important, and pet owners are more than willing to spend money on their pets when they need to, or find something with rave reviews.

There is a massive amount of pet related products available through Amazon.com, but who wants to get a low 5% commission on referred sales. Your best solution is to find pet related affiliate offers. Unfortunately many networks only have “As Seen on TV” related products… that was until PetAffiliateNetwork.com came along! They have over 100 different pet related offers, many of which are well known brands and pay out good money. PetFlow is one of the current offers on the network, and it pays out a hefty commission of $40 per lead!

In addition to offers like PetFlow, there is also a wide selection of pet related daily deals sites, which pay around $1.00 for an email submit. A wide selection of “As Seen on TV” pet related products, and health/insurance offers. What I am getting at, is there are a lot of ways you can make money within the pet industry, without being limited to only focusing on products or an actual service. Create tight and quality review sites on one product or a tight group, and customers will come flying to your site, then earn you a commission on every lead and sale.

The pet industry isn’t going anywhere, and as more people show their support for pets and keep bringing them into their homes, the amount spent in this industry will just keep growing… are you getting your share?