They go to all trouble of submitting their links to a FREE For All (FFA) Link site, be it an individual web site or more than likely, a member of a huge network of 1000's of FFA Link sites.

But then they miss it completely by avoiding massive amounts of email result from such submissions.

Some people enter in false email addresses that clog up everyone's email including ISP's that have to send out those, "User Unknown" messages.

Worse still, even if by accident, or if on purpose, they enter in an email address that turns out to belong to someone else.

Doing this does bring you limited benefit of having other web sites link to your web site but you would miss out completely by NOT getting visitors.

And if you do it on purpose, there are now legal ramifications for entering in false info that then causes someone else damage due to misuse of resources.

The absolutely outrageous truth about FFA Link submissions is that there is a "SECRET GOLD MINE Hidden In FFA Link Submissions!".

The SECRET?

It is email responses!

Many people consider those confirmation emails as junk email and or spam. But that is totally WRONG!

Why?

Because those emails come from people that PAID for privilege to send you those confirmation emails, Spam-Free.

That means that every single email confirmation that you receive comes from a QUALIFIED BUYER, someone that has already proven their worth because they SPENT hard earned MONEY to buy a business service online.

That QUALIFIED BUYER is a PREMIUM FFA member.

And, NO, it is NOT enough to send an auto-response message to those confirmation emails.

But that is a great first step.

You make your FFA Link submission. The PREMIUM FFA Member sends you one confirmation email.

You are now legally entitled to respond - ONCE, with your own Auto-Responder message.

The Value Of A Hit

By this, I mean, what is a hit worth to you? (By hit, I mean one unique visitor or user session.) Compute this number by dividing total sales amounts (gross profits) by number of hits. That is, find total earned for say a month. This includes your part of sales of products produced by others, commissions on sales, and so forth. Your stats will provide number of unique hits.

For example, if you have a gross of $200 for month, and 1000 hits, value of a hit is 200/1000. Which is 0.20 or 20 cents. If gross was only $50, then this number is only 0.05 or 5 cents.

Moving Averages

With a mature site routinely generating hits, this number is not likely to vary markedly from month to month. Even so, a good plan is to include in your results a 3 (or 4) month moving average. For example, given Jan: $0.30, Feb: $0.20, and Mar: $0.10, add these three numbers and divide by 3. (30 + 20 + 10)/3 = 60/3 = 20.

The reason this helps is that looking only at monthly data, above looks like an ugly downtrend. The 3 month average eases that downer feeling. Equally important, it helps you keep from getting too excited about an apparent up trend.

Suppose value for April jumps to $0.40. For new average, January is excluded; you look at only last three months. This gives (20 + 10 + 40)/3 = 70/3 = 23.33 which is roughly 23 cents. In considering 23 cents as opposed to 40 cents for month, there is a more reserved view of sudden jump.

I chose numbers here to make things easier to follow. Actual results for your site will look quite different. And since computations, while simple, can be tedious and prone to error, most who take this sort of thing seriously use a spread sheet program, such as Excel.

Why These Numbers Matter

The value of a hit is fundamental to what you can afford to pay for advertising. And you'd like to stay a bit under this figure. If ad produces only this value per hit, campaign was a fizzle, for no profit was made. (The exception would be value of new customers as subscribers to your newsletter, those who return to purchase other products, and so forth.)

There's a lot of trial and error in testing ads, but ins and outs of it are off topic here. For our purpose, suppose you have a well tested ad that can be expected to generate 25 hits in 1000 impressions. If value of a hit to you is 50 cents, then you can expect a gross of 25 x $0.50 or $12.50.

What this means is you can afford to pay up to $12.50 CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) provided hits add to your subscriber list or returns for other products. If you expect only a one time sale, you probably will not want to pay more than $6.25 CPM, so that half of revenue is immediate profit.

With an established site, even given troublesome variations month to month, it is a fairly straightforward matter to decide what you can afford to pay for advertising. Things are different, though, for ...

New Or Small Sites