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An experiment in advertising - 5 quick reviews
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Yesterday I mentioned information overload. Today I'd like to expand on a point I made about looking for "anything that might result in someone being compensated financially". What if I want to put ads on my site? Will people link me to the sites that might help me, or will they give me affiliate links just so they benefit from my registration?I know some people are totally turned off by ads, but I think that general clutter is just as bad. My site is virtually clutter-free, so an ad or two is not going to push people away. Just as long as I don't go crazy. This isn't the first time I've experimented with ads on my site. The difference this time is that I'm sharing my experiences with you all.
The experiment
I often read about various ways of making money online - advertising networks, sponsored reviews, paid links and so on. Sometimes I do experiment with one or two sites to see if I can make a little money. Mostly it would be nice if I could make enough to pay for the monthly web hosting bill, which is really very reasonable, so it's not an impossible task.I'm not going to turn my blog into a how-to-make-money site because too many people already do that. I don't want to plaster ads all over my site either. However, I do have a few bits and pieces around my site that have worked well - Entrecard is a good example, although it generates credits rather than cold hard cash.
I'd like to see if it's possible to make a little money without devoting my entire blog to making money, without putting loads of highly annoying ads all over my site, and without constantly bugging my readers to click on affiliate links or ads. Consider this post a little experiment.
Five sites that I've tried recently
I've deliberately left out the links because at this stage I am not really vouching for any one of them in particular.Project Wonderful looks like a good way of buying and selling ads, and the system is a nicer way than selling ads privately... except that it doesn't generate much money. I've put it on my site and taken it down a couple of times now. It might be back, but for now there's no point using it on my site.
Google AdSense is very popular but has never worked out too well for me. I've had a bit of money here and there but I'm a very long way from cashing out (you need at least $100 to withdraw). I've heard that Entrecard can affect how much you get from AdSense - I don't know how much truth there is in that (and let's face it, nobody but Google would know for sure). All I know is that AdSense has not given me good results whereas Entrecard has helped my site a lot. So, AdSense is gone from my site for now, although I will continue to use it on one of my other sites.
PerformancingAds looks very promising indeed but I didn't get a chance to install it as it only works if you can add PHP to your templates. In Injader, I deliberately prevent the use of PHP in the template screens. Most sites just give you a bit of JavaScript code to put on your site - why can't PerformancingAds? In any case, this is really disappointing for me because I'd heard the site can generate some great results. I even had a $6 offer for a one week ad less than 24 hours after I signed up. Unfortunately I had to decline it and delete the ad box. I did send some feedback to PerformancingAds about this. Maybe I'll be able to give it another chance.
Niche Widget was recommended to me. First impressions were very poor; it looks like a really dodgy sales page with big red text and a lot of promises. However, I went ahead and gave it a try. The widget is absolutely awful - I could either use a widget that was too wide for my sidebar, or one that's so tall it takes up most of the height of the page. Also, when a new ad appears in the widget, it flashes brightly. This is a serious concern - it'd be very distracting for anyone visiting my site, and also, it could be dangerous for someone with epilepsy. This may seem like an unusual comment as I haven't mentioned accessibility here before, but I think it's a valid point.
Chitika is currently running on my site. The ads look acceptable to me. It's too early to say if they will do anything for my site yet, but this is one site I will give a fair chance. I will keep an eye on my results and write about them at a later date.
In summary
Here are my suggestions:- Ads that don't perform well should be removed. Otherwise, they're just wasting space.
- Ads that are distracting should be removed too. If they give you some money now but they make your readers go away, is it really worth it?
- By all means experiment with a couple of ads at a time, but don't go overboard.
What do you think?
Have you tried any of the above sites? What was your experience?Remember that my experiences are not necessarily going to be the same as yours. Every site is different.
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Comments on An experiment in advertising - 5 quick reviews
Ohh -- I like my capcha code today -- Vp7WTf -- sounds like how I feel -- but I'm digressing -- my comment on your post.
Generating $$ from your blog. Well, I'm certainly no stranger to that. I'm currently running PW on the eye along with a couple of other things that so far haven't brought in any money, but I don't really expect to since mine isn't truly a niche blog. I've gotten far more from writing contextual ads for a service.
I tried PPP for awhile, but the fit wasn't right for me -- to cliquey for my taste. There were never very many ops that appealed and then when my PR tanked, the ops were sleazy. I don't do sleaze.
I also tried Smorty, but the same thing -- sleazy stuff was all that was available.
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Ben, I think it takes a lot of work and you must have a niche for most of these to work. Chitika says my site is not for them, I do like PW because I really don't do anything with it. Very little money in it though. Smorty is just plain old sleazy, nothing I would be proud to write about. I just signed up with Performancing and have not installed anything yet. Adsence sucks. That is my two cents for today.
It would be nice to make money from advertising, but there's so many blog websites out there, therefore it must be very difficult make a good amount from it. In the future I'd maybe like to create a service to advertise and sell my own goods on my blog, such as paintings, or photography.
Ben -
A very thoughtful post about blogging and monetizing your blog. Good advice throughout your blog. I'm bookmarking.
Adsense didn't work for me either. In fact, after two years of running Adsense on a few blogs, I received my first $100 check in February...and they banned my account in April. Go figure. And you'll have to because after 4 appeals, they certainly were no more forthcoming about the ban reasons. But I'm not alone in that complaint.
That's the reason I created Niche Widget. And I'm really sorry your experience wasn't better with it. You do raise some interesting issues though - although I don't agree with your. Nevertheless, we are working on additional widgets that will offer different looks including an all text widget that actually looks like a sidebar to your post, but links to different sales opportunities.
And those won't flash :)
Love to hear any other feedback you or your readers have.
Thanks again.
David Perdew
The Niche Widget
ShareASale was recommended to me. Still figuring it out. I like ProjectWonderful, it isn't making me rich but it is simple and I don't have to put much time into moderating or checking it. Plus I can get money from it when I have 10$. Adsense used to payout a lot sooner. I'm surprised it is up to $100 now. I never was keen on it either. I write (here and there) for LockerGnome where they insist on including Adsense. I stuck in my # to humour them.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Welcome, Barry and David. :)
David, thanks for the comment - I'd be willing to give Niche Widget another try if I can get a widget that's no bigger than 250px square (less would be nice). And if it doesn't flash, even better. Please do let me know when the new widgets are available. Thanks for subscribing, I hope you find my content useful.
I tried Google adsense without much success. After 8 months, i still have under $20. And I now I couldn't locate my pin. Those SEO and traffic experiments may accelerate my earnings in the next few weeks.
PW takes too much space. I'm trying out direct ads for now.
Being a relatively new blogger, the only one that I have tried is revver, for video, which somehow embeds the google adverts at the bottom. So far only a couple of cents. :)
I really like the Rubicon Project. I've been using it since April and while I haven't quite figured out why but one day in April I made $50, but for the most part I haven't made that much money. Though obviously this hasn't deterred me from liking the system. I just don't think I get enough quality traffic to make money. I have the ads up for any random paypal purchases I want to make in the future.
Hmm, I might try Rubicon next, thanks fragileheart.
Ben, I'm elated you mentioned the problem with PHP calls in PerformancingAds. I really want to join the network, but my site is running SuperCache and a PHP call is not going to work right (it will essentially show the same ads over and over until i dump the cache). Obviously this is not a problem with Javascript, as it's client-side. Hopefully they can offer some other solutions, because Im sure I'm not the only WordPress user that wants to keep their site cached!
Welcome, Chewru. :) Very interesting to hear how this is affected by SuperCache in WordPress. I hope we can get some other solutions, but it's been over a week since I contacted them with no response whatsoever. Like you, I want to join!
Hey Ben - we've been talking about the PerformancingAds issue on the WP forum and we're making progress. Otto said it wouldn't be a big deal to convert into Javascript. I've sent them another email today as well.
Here's the thread to follow along. The PerformancingAds stuff starts about mid-way through the first page.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/193393?replies=10
Thanks Chewru - and hey, it looks like you have a JS version! I'm off to give it a try!
Chewru, thanks so much, you can see the code in my sidebar now. Now I can give Chitika and PerformancingAds a trial run at the same time. Great!
This is one topic that certainly needs airing, because most bloggers would like to generate some income but I suspect that when you cut through the hype very few do .
I've tried Adsense with no luck and some sort of guide on this topic would be very useful .