I’ve recently been exploring content locking more and more.
I used to make decent money with CPA Lead back in the day.
I’m now with BLAM Ads, which is doing really well for some of my friends. I’m going to start using them for some of my sites in other niches.
So why is Content Locking the 900 pound gorilla?
I’ll give you two reasons.
- Content-locking means you get to INCENTIVIZE your visitors… you know, like a bribe. Complete this survey to view my content.
- Content-locking means you interrupt your visitors from what they wanted to see, tease them and possibly increase the perceived value of your free content… essentially making your own content more valuable!
But won’t this frustrate my visitors?
Yes and no. Some will be frustrated and not do it. A lot of others, as mentioned above, will perceive your content as MORE valuable because it’s harder to access. This will mean that the people that do see your content are going to read it, interact with your site and you are usually going to get a higher quality visitor.
What kind of money are people making?
Well, that entirely depends on your traffic. It’s all about volume here. You’ll get somewhere under $2 bucks per conversion usually for the surveys and types of offers that are used with content locking. Multiply that times 20,000 uniques per day on a nice traffic site and you’re talking about a lot of money.
It amazes me how much money people make from these sites when I rarely come across them. Just goes to show you how much Internet traffic there is.
Hope that makes sense.
This is definitely one of those cases where you have to try it to find out how it performs. As you mentioned, you definitely run the risk of alienating your visitors. It can work, as long as the content is valuable enough for visitors to be willing to jump through a couple of hoops to get to it. While adding the extra step may give the content a higher perceived value initially, the content also has to actually be valuable to the visitors once they get to it in order for people to keep coming back.
Although I agree that with enough traffic and quality content, content locking is a profitable way to make money with affiliate offers, some affiliate networks or offer providers would frown on the practice if the offer in question does not allow incentivizing. With this type of traffic, those filling out the offers are mostly in it for what’s on the other side (the content), and not for the offer itself. A few days ago, an affiliate manager from one of the major networks emailed everyone in the network and stated that someone was using content locking on a particular offer, and that was a violation of the offer’s terms.
Now if the offer allows incentivizing, I would feel much more comfortable using content locking with that offer.
Aha, now that I look at Blam Ads, they bill themselves as “The complete solution for incentivized advertising…”
Yah, they only have incentive offers for content-locking.
I agree with your other comment though, you can’t do content locking/incentivizing unless they allow it.
Most of the content locking networks, especially BLAM are aware and make sure they get incentive friendly offers
BLAM Ads is so hot right now!
Hey!
Thanks for the mention! We’re rockin’ it right now!
- Jes
man this is really good post
Is there anything else about incentive network?
We have developed a system that you can place any offer and not just Blam in the content locking iframe.
For example visit http://www.iconomap.com.
By just placing a simple Java code on your blog or website you can lock the content and place the website of your favorite advertiser in the iframe.
Our system allows you to choose any advertiser.
Please email info@katir.com for more information.
I bought a universal locker that allows me to use incent and non-incent offers from ANY network.
It uses postback and is self-hosted. Beats all the incentive networks out there by a mile.
If you really want to make a difference to your earnings from locking, search Google for Content Lock Pro, it’s available at a nice launch price on a couple of forums.