There are several public
pages that your visitors will see, and a number
of password-protected ones that they will not
see, unless they become a member or an
advertiser. They are all to be found in the
"pages"
directory. Here are some suggestions for
improving a few of them…
index.php
As this is usually the
first page the visitor sees, your choice of
wording here is extremely important – the
casual visitor will only stay for a few seconds
if there is nothing there to catch the eye, or
to capture the imagination. The key message you
want to get across is "here is a great
money-making opportunity!".
The majority of PTRs
prominently display the benefits of membership
to both the earning member and the advertiser.
Under the heading "Members", for example,
you would set out the earning options available;
the amount a member needs to earn to qualify for
payment; the referral levels; payment options (Paypal,
Moneybookers, cheque/check,
Amazon gift certificate,
etc.); and of course any sign-up bonuses
available.
You can add a line which
automatically shows the total amount earned by
members to date (although not the total amount
paid out). Just copy and paste the following
into your page:
£<script
language="php"> totaldebits();</script>
earned by members to date
(Note the
single space between the </script> tag and
the word "earned"). You can of
course change the currency sign to whatever your
site uses, but don't change anything between the
<script> tags.
You should
also advertise the fact that your e-mails are spam-free
(you have a 100% opt-in e-mail list, so make
people aware of this); that ads
are uploaded within 24 hours (sooner if you can
arrange it), and any other relevant information
that an advertiser would need to convince him or
her to advertise with you.
Don't
forget to add a "call to action" in
the form of a "JOIN NOW!"
button for members, and "More Details"
button for advertisers (you can use bold text
instead of images if you wish, but buttons have
a greater impact, and will entice the
prospective member to click).
Try not to
include too many banner ads on the index page,
as they can slow down page loading appreciably. Text
ads load far faster, and can give better
results. You can also fit in far more text ads
than banners in a given space, thus increasing
your ad revenue.
I added a one-line rotating text ad to
the very top of the page, and it has proven to
be the best advertising position on the entire
site! This is because any text added above the
header section loads before the rest of the
page, so only the text ad is seen for a few
seconds before the rest of the page comes into
view.
We will see how to add
special ad areas such as this in the section
entitled "Rotating Ads".
At the
bottom of the page, I recommend that you add a
visitor counter to keep track of your site
traffic. Advertisers may need to know your
monthly visitor count and page views, so you
should choose a counter that reports on these,
such as Site Meter (I have no affiliation
with them, but I am a very satisfied user!).
Alternatively, look for "free hit counter" on any search
engine, and you will get plenty of useful hits.
confirm.php
This is the
page seen by the visitor when signing up. It may
be worth adding your own terms here as to which
countries are allowed to join, or a line in red
stating that your site is for a particular
country only, if you run a restricted membership
GPT site.
enter.php
The page
members are taken to where they can select their
earning options. This is pretty bland as it
stands, so you could use some attractive graphics
to illustrate the different earning methods,
e.g. for Paid E-mail you could have an opened
envelope, for the Paid to Click section a
computer mouse, etc.
Alternatively,
do away with the earning options, and put a
display ad position in the middle of the page
instead.
help.php
The FAQ
page. Although there is a good selection of
questions and answers here, it could benefit from
expansion with a few FAQs of your own,
for example details of which additional payment
methods are available, and the minimum account
balance required to qualify for payment.
I find that
some members are confused by the account
crediting system used by Cash Crusader, i.e. they have difficulty in
determining the amount of money they have in
their account, because it is shown to several
decimal places. I have lost count of the number
of e-mails members have sent, saying that they
cannot make head or tail of the figures.
For
example, if they have earned 9.25 cents, (9 ¼
cents) it is shown in their account as 0.0925.
It will help if you explain to them that the
software counts fractions of a cent as well as
dollars and cents, so to read their account
total, they should only count the two digits
after the decimal point. The principle applies
to any currency system whose main currency unit
is divisible by 100, such as UK Pounds, or Euros. It is an approximation, but is near
enough!
You may
also find it helpful to write a reply to this
question in your word processor program, save it
as a template, and send it as
a standard e-mail reply if members are still
confused about the issue.
terms.php
Your site's
terms of service. Here you may need to alter the
minimum age requirement for participation in the
program (depending on your local laws). On my
site's terms page, I changed the number 10 in
the sentence "You agree to receive e-mail
advertising from archerfish.co.uk limited to no
more than 10 per day" to the number 25, just
in case there was a run on e-mail ads at any
time.
advertise.php
This
showcases your advertising options and prices.
If you were going to be running special ad
packages, it would be worth telling your
visitors so on this page. On my site I added
this: "Check back every month to see
the current Advertising Offers, you could save
£££s with our discounts and special ad
packages." There’s nothing like the
prospect of a good discount to attract
advertisers!
Don't
forget to mention those sites for which you will
not accept advertising, these could include
adult, hate, illegal download sites, or sites
containing libelous or defamatory content.
In
order to keep your members happy, you should
also stress that sites that feature pop-up or
pop-under advertising are not allowed. Most
visitors hate pop-ups, and your members will
have enough windows to close as it is when they
do their daily paid clicks.
reflinks.php
This is a
page where members can copy and paste banners,
buttons and text links for promoting your site
on other web sites, in e-mail newsletters, or
anywhere else where a link can be posted. Most
of the text links are ready to use, but you will
need to make some banners of your own
design.
There are
several free banner creation sites on the net,
or if you are quite arty, you can use a drawing
program to create some. 468 x 60 pixels is the
preferred size, but small buttons can also be
useful if members have only a limited space on
their site. They should be in either .jpg or
.gif format.
Remember to
optimize the banners as mentioned earlier, for
fast loading on other people's sites.
userinfo.php
The page on
which the members account details are displayed.
Not much to change here, except that under the
"Cancel
Account" button, you should type a note thus:
N.B.
Should the form above fail to work, please send
an e-mail to support@yoursite.com with
"UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.
(for some
reason, the Cancel button fails to work on some
browsers, so this extra piece of text acts as a
legal safeguard).
Page
Keywords
The site
template already has a series of effective
keywords in place within the header area ("header.php"),
but if you are confident about editing pages via
your host's web control panel, you can open the
file (it will be found in the "pages"
folder) and add some extra relevant keywords.
As I run a
UK site, I added several regional keywords
including "British", "UK",
and "Ireland" amongst others, plus the
non-capitalized versions of these. If you use
the same keyword more than once, remember to
space them well apart, so that the search
engines do not penalize you for spamming, e.g.:
In the
example set of keywords shown below, notice how
incorrectly spelled versions of some words are
included. This may help bring visitors to your
site whose spelling may not be up to scratch:
<meta
name="keywords" content="paid to
read email, PTR, PTC, GPT, uk, British, Ireland, get
paid to, referrals, referalls, Paid to Surf,
free stuff, earn money, autosurf, homeworking,
home working, own business, autosurfing, work
from home, earn money, paid surfing, make money,
paid to read emails, referrals, sponsors,
affiliate programs, ads, advertisements,
sponsors, associate programs, uk, partner
programs, commissions, affiliates, associates,
surf for pay, surf for cash, afiliates,
referrals, program, incomes, money making,
business opportunities, free, cash, extra
income, earn money at home, freebies, make
money, top sites, UK, top money sites, easy,
pay, paid, earn, affiliates, emails,
cashcrusader scripts">
