People are getting more creative in their marketing and advertising efforts. Look at this below, they don’t send you emails anymore, they send you money (cents to be exact).
Was it affective? In my case no, because I didn’t signup. However I did have a look at their page. So, it was effective in getting the traffic to the website, but ineffective in converting the leads.
While twitter is still trying to figure out how to make money, others are already making money with its platform. One such service is Magpie. Magpie is an ad-network for Twitter.
How it works:
In basic terms, you allow them to access your twitter account, and they will tweet relevant ads to your account. You get paid based on your number of followers, the rate of the ads (different category ads have different prices), and the number of clicks on these ads. How exactly they calculate your earnings is obviously known only to them.
You can define the tweet frequency, and for maximum control you can choose to pre-approve each tweet from magpie yourself.
How much you can make?
It depends on the number of your followers. Magpie has a calculator on their website. According to this calculator with my 177 followers, apparently I could make up to 8.61 pounds per month (i know.. that’s very small).
Let’s insert someone’s username who is influential on twitter. And that’s none other than @aplusk or Ashton Kutcher. He has over 1.5 million followers.
So the calculator says he could make over 90 thousands pounds every month! (see screenshot) Wow, that’s a lot!
Summary
So, as you can see, number of followers does matter. On twitter # of followers are like a “unique visitors” in normal websites. The more followers you have the more money you will likely to make when the twitter based publisher networks come out. Therefore, start building your twitter community, grow your twitter’s following. I am quite sure that twitter’s own (and other) “making money models” will rely on the number of followers that one has first. And perhaps this will be combined with the number of clicks that each ad will get.
Whatever it is, you will need to have a healthy twitter community, which is active and will actually follow your tweets. Because I am sure twitter (and other future publisher networks on twitter platform) won’t just pay you for having the most number of followers. Having thousands of zombie followers who do not click on your tweet-links won’t benefit you. Therefore, don’t try to grow your network with those automatic tools that will just fill up your twitter network with dead followers. Most of those followers are actually empty accounts that won’t get updated ever.
Well, Magpie might just have thought a lesson to Twitter on how to monetize their network.
Website: be-a-magpie.com (they should really get that magpie.com!)
Follow me on Twitter: @ades
As you already know (yes you should check my miniblog) EntreCard is running their own ad-network now.
I did a test run with $25 funds, promoting my color picker software in their Web Development category. Here is the results:
From the results you can see that the CPM rate was $0.4927, and CPC rate was $0.1096. I guess they run a combination of two types. In total I got 50,739 impressions and 228 clicks for my $25 bucks.
My funds were depleted right away within 24 hours, that’s because they do not provide daily limit options.
Here is how campaign creation page looks:
Yeah, it’s dead simple. No daily limits, no campaign type (cpc, cpm) selection. Also at first they did reject my website, I don’t know why, perhaps it was not a blog? But then I see they re-approved it.
Selling your credits
I am sure most of you had EntreCard accounts and perhaps some of you have some credits in their accounts still. If you do, now you can sell them for $1 for every 1000 entrecard credits as announced by EC founder on his tweet.
So, it’s time to make money if you had thousands of credits in your EC account! If you are new, you can always sign up for EC now.
In general I think it’s a good move by EC to open their own ad-network, both for advertisers and bloggers.
Website: http://entrecard.com
With Facebook’s new commenting widget you can put comments box on any page and allow people to comment using their facebook login. Great thing is that, the comments will appear on their own profiles just like any other notification message in the Facebook.
Do you know what that means to you as a blogger? It means a great opportunity to promote your blog on the facebook for free. Imagine 20 people commented on your blog and these 20 comments appeared on their own facebook profile and seen by their network of friends. E.g “Adam commented on AdesBlog saying….” Obviously there will be people who click on the link and come to your blog.
Mmhh… I think I have to sit and figure out how to replace my wordpress comments with this facebook comments widget. If you find a way how to do it, do let me know. Because it needs to correspond to every post on your blog accordingly. I am not sure if that is possible. It would be better if facebook team could come up with wp plugin for replacing wp comments.
The widget does support comments from people who do not have facebook accounts. So that’s great too. It means you won’t lose anything.
Here is a video by facebook engineers on how to setup this comments widget on your site, (might be little techie for beginners):
For more info you can go to here, developer wiki or forums.
Google Ad Manager is now open to public. Anyone who has Google Account can login and start managing their advertisements.
Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.
I have always used phpAdsNew (now OpenX) for managing my ads. Compared to Google Ad Manager, I found OpenX to be much more user friendly (or is it just because I have been using it for a long long time?).
Again Google wins…
Basically besides being the No.1 search engine on the net, Google is an ad-network too — with its Google AdSense on one side and Google AdWords on the other. So, what does that say about this new ad-network platform — Google Ad Manager — that Google introduced?
OpenX has a good answer to that on their blog, below is the excerpt from their article:
Google is Your Biggest Competitor
By allowing Google Ad Manager to serve all ads on your site, you are reducing your ability to get advertising elsewhere. Because Google could ‘cherry pick’ users that are the most lucrative for Ad Sense, they will leave the other users for your remaining advertisers. Therefore, your advertisers will not get as much ROI, and leave you for another website.The same theory goes for ad networks. If ad networks do not have access to your most lucrative users, then they will not pay you as much for them.
Google’s Margins will Increase, Not Yours
By allowing Google to serve your ads, you allow your biggest competitor for ad revenue to know how much you make from ALL advertising on your website.Therefore, if your average CPM from Google is $0.75, and your average CPM from other ad networks is $0.50, there is no reason that Google should give you more than $0.51! Remember, it is up to Google to determine what revenue share that they will pass back to websites. source
I think that’s a huge plus for Google and very very big minus for all the other ad-networks.
This is a guest-post by Rajaie AlKorani of http://www.rajaietalks.com. In this post Rajaie discusses how to get private advertisements to your newly launched blog.
Unless your blog brings in thousands of visitors its first day of launching, you’re going to have a pretty tough time attracting new advertisers and filling all those ad spots on your blog. And having eight of them (i.e 125×125 buttons) with “Advertise Here” in bold definitely will not make your life any easier.
To start pumping in the money, you need to provide your sponsors with reasons as to why they should pick your blog from the millions of others. No, they don’t care about your mission or about helping pay your bills. The only thing on their mind is getting the best bang for their buck, and if you can’t help with that, than you’re out of luck.
What if your blog has been bringing in some impressive results for a while which happen to be sky high, and yet the image ads are still empty?
That’s it! When advertisers see all those empty spots, their brains will automatically tell them that – something is wrong with your site! What can you do to get out of this everlasting cycle?
1 – Testimonials
Ask your existing customers for a testimonial. To make your testimonials more credible; include person’s name, the name of the company he/she works for, and the position he/she holds at the company. Also provide a link to their company website and if possible get a picture of them. I’d say that this is the best way to boost your chance of selling anything since it’s real proof given by other people.
2 – Hold A Contest
Everybody likes free stuff, so hold a contest where readers can win free ad spots, this will help fill up the empty spaces. And hopefully they will turn into regular advertisers.
3 – Do A Banner Exchange
Do a banner exchange with someone in your niche, you link to their blog and they link to yours. It is a win-win situation if both of you have empty slots available.
4 – Become An Affiliate
Most websites that sell products have an affiliate program where you earn a percentage of every sale you make. Usually they will provide you with the banners so you’ll have nothing to worry about. So instead of having 8 buttons with “advertise here” word on them, display affiliate banners and make some money at the same time.
5 – Start Exploring
If you have the idea that your sponsors are going to search for you, then think again. It’s your job to hunt down potential sponsors, not theirs. Special promotions and discounts are always welcome ;-)
6 – Be A Nice Guy
Why not just email a friend telling him that you’ve added his site to your “blogroll” or that you’ve given him a free ad spot for the month. This usually pays off in the long run where it helps develop a relationship between you and him.
7 – Don’t Be Irrational
If you just started your blog a couple of days ago, then asking for $500 a paid review isn’t very reasonable. If you want to be taken seriously, then present yourself seriously!
I believe that those are the best ways to start selling private advertisements on your blog. What are some ways you used to sell private advertisements when you first started your blog?
Guys at MarketLeverage.com are quite creative. They have found a novel way to get mentioned on top blogs like problogger (46K+ readers) and shoemoney (16K+ readers) with a small investment that the team themselves will enjoy wearing. They purchased these two blogs’ t-shirts and wore them and sent a picture of the whole team wearing the t-shirts. Guess what? They got dedicated post on both blogs. That’s what we call a win-win situation. MarketLeverage (win), two blogs (win).
Shoemoney t-shirts are just $5.00 each for both men and women, and problogger t-shirts are $17.99 for women and $23.99 for men. So, LeverageMarket spent about $50 on shoemoney and $132 on problogger (unless they bought double logo t-shirts, which are more expensive). It’s a fraction of what you would actually spend to get publicity on these high-traffic blogs, if you were to go through normal conventional way of advertising.
Moral of the post: Be creative!
I am sure many of you know Scribd right? Scribe in their own words: “Scribd is a Silicon Valley startup creating technology that makes it easy to share documents online. You can think of Scribd as a big online library where everyone can publish original content, including you!”
Basically, you can upload your documents and it will be available to other members of scribd, as well as to anybody who searches for them online.
Scribd as a promotion tool
One thing you can use srcibd is – as a promotion tool. In fact, it can be a great promotion tool if you write
great, useful articles. Before I wanted to post about this, I gave it a try and uploaded 14 documents of mine to scribd. Eleven of them were photoshop related tutorials and 3 were blog articles. Documents were uploaded on 10th and 11th of February, so has been roughly one month.
As you can see, so far they have been viewed 2053 times. That translates to average 146 views per document. Most viewed article was 356 times, and the least viewed was 27 times. You can view list of all articles here.
Ways to promote your blog on scribd
But most importantly do not spam! Just share your best articles with other scribers and start building your repuation in scribd. start here scribd.com.
I hope you found this article useful. Subscribe to RSS to read upcoming useful articles. click here.
Don’t want to spend money on ReviewMe and similar networks purchasing paid reviews? How about exchanging free reviews with other fellow bloggers then?
Well, ReviewBack does exactly that. You browse among 1,659 blogs in the ReviewBack network, choose a blog that you want your review to appear on, send the owner of the blog a request and if he/she accepts, you write a review about that particular blog on your blog, and he will write a review of your blog on his. Sounds good? Check it out http://www.reviewback.com
It’s been 12 days since I have joined Entrecard. Within this period, Entrecard brough 162 visitors, that’s about 13 visitors per day. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. I also noticed that
people are not really clicking on the banners. I have purchased 2 ads so far (2 more in queue), from these two ads, one was from a high traffic blog that has 13K+ readers (not JohnChow dot com, I don’t want to mention the URL because people might avoid advertising on that blog). Clicks from these two ads were only 7 clicks, that’s about 1 click in every 8 hours.
Due to long waiting period and limited credits, I was not able test my ad performances that well.
I also have to note that, the poor click-through-rates might be due to my button design. I am sure design of the button affects the CTR (click-through-rate) a lot. Therefore, I will need to test it with different button designs after this.
Entrecard Improvements
Since Entrecard is still new (launched 8th Nov), it’s improving almost daily. Recently they have introduced an
Entrecard shop where you can purchase “Featured Status”, “Fast Pass” and “Entrecard Stickers”. Featured status costs you 200 credits, and will make your button stand out from the crowd, with gold borders (see screenshot).
Fast pass costs you 300 credits, and it allows you to jump the queue. Fast pass can only be used once. The question is in a life-time? or in a year, month, week?
Entrecard is also in discussion with its members on how to monetize it without annoying them. I think they are taking a very good approach, consulting with its members. So far they have suggested 3 possibilities:
I had proposed making money through selling credits (to its members) instead, but let’s see what they will decide as the final monetization option.
Conclusion
In summary, Entrecard is doing quite good. I would say it’s a must tool for new blogs. Because unlike other services (like BlogRush) it does work, and it does bring traffic every day. Even if it is not much, but there is a constant traffic flow to your blog from Entrecard.
I will still be using it for the next few weeks and then decide if I want to continue. Have you joined Entrecard yet? If yes, how is it performing? How is your ad’s click-through-rates?
I decided to test Entrecard. I have integrated the button beside the Top Commentators section at the sidebar.
If you do not know what Entrecard is, it’s simply a banner exchange program. You display others’ banners on your blog and in return you get to advertise on others’ blogs. Everytime someone advertises on your blog, you earn credits. These credits later can be used to buy advertisements from other blogs. Actually the system is more complex than that (you can earn credits in many ways), but in simple terms it’s a banner exchange program. You can read more on how it works here.
After I signed up and put up the code on my blog, the advertisers started to flood in. After 20 minutes all 10 spots (for 10 days) were full (sold out). You know why people flood the new blogs? Because in the beginning it is very cheap (only 1 credit) to advertise on the new blogs. Later, the system will start to adjust the price depending on the demand and the number of people drop their cards on your blog. As you can see below, the price has changed to 3 credits (it’s just changed to 5 credits).
Does it bring any traffic?
It’s too early to tell, but if I were to state the stats only, then so far within half an hour it brought 19 clicks.
I will have to see at least few days before I can say anything on the performance. Also as you can see these clicks are from entrecard and not from other blogs.
As you can see below 19 clicks, I have not bought any advertisements from other blogs. So, actually the performance of the system would also be based on the blogs that you are advertising. Some blogs bring tons of clicks, and some not. So you have to know where to advertise. In the beginning you don’t have credits, so you won’t be able to buy any advertisements until you have accumulated some credits.
Even after you have accumulated tens of credits, you will need hundreds of credits more if you want to advertise on popular blogs like JohnChow.com. So it might take you some time, before you get your banner on those popular blogs.
My Recommendations to Entrecard
Based on my limited usage, I would like to suggest few features to Entrecard.
I will update you guys again on its performance after 1-2 weeks. Till then you can join Entrecard and advertise your blog on AdesBlog (while it’s still cheap, only 5 credits). You can also read Entrecard blog here – http://entrecard.com/blog
One of the most secure and reliable source of income from your blog is the one that comes from your direct advertisers. And not the one that comes from AdSense, or TLA, or ReviewMe, or any other publisher program for that matter. Why?
Because, firstly, you never know when those programs will stop making money. For example, AdSense used to be a huge money maker before, now it’s a dying breed. Or you might have been making good money with Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe and PayPerPost before, but no longer after the Google PR penalty.
Secondly, they usually take a huge chunk of your income. Most of the time 50% of your income is gone to them (if not more).
Thirdly, they clutter your blog. And if you do not integrate properly, they might make your blog look unprofessional. As a result, it will be difficult for you to get new readers for your blog. Because new readers are very very difficult to convince, and tons of ads won’t do any help.
So, making a living with publisher programs is a risky business. If you rely on them 100% at the moment, you should really start to diversify. Try to, slowly shift from publisher programs to your own advertisements. Because that’s the only secure and sustainable way to make money in the long run. It’s a difficult task to find advertisers for your blog, but it’s not an impossible task.
Provided that:
Keep record of your previous advertisers
When you introduce a new advertising option on your blog (eg. 125×125 buttons), it’s always a good idea to start with your current and former advertisers first. Why go look for new advertisers when you already have the list of potential advertisers for your new ad option?
These people had already advertised on your site, that means, they had already gone through the decision making process, and they chose to advertise on your blog (among many other blogs). So, it’s a lot easier to get them advertise again, rather than getting new advertisers.
Give irresistible offers
When you contact your former advertisers, give them an irresistible offer! Offer that is simply difficult to say “no” to. It can be a free trial or a discounted rate which is far below the normal price.
While free trial will get your ad spots filled in no time, they also have the least conversion rates compared to paid ads. Because, with free stuff there is no commitment, so people take them for granted. Also, anybody would agree for a free advertisement, and that makes it difficult to know if the person is really interested or just taking a free ride.
In contrast, only the interested advertisers would pay. Normally people who pay for it (even if small amount), would follow their ad through (i.e will track the ad performance, click-through rates, sales conversion..etc). And this interest and effort of the advertiser will play a major role when deciding whether to continue advertising on your blog after the first month.
Contact advertisers on other blogs
Advertisers on other blogs that are in similar category as your blog are your potential advertisers too. If they are advertising on your competitors’ blogs, then it’s probable that they would want to advertise on your blog as well.
So, click on those ads and get to know their website. Once you know what they do and who to contact, send them an email. Again, your email should contain a great offer that they cannot resist. Also it’s important to include a link to your stats or provide a brief summary of your blog’s stats. Because these are new advertisers, who probably do not know about your blog.
Be flexible
When dealing with advertisers, be flexible. If they ask for a further discount, give them. If they want to advertise for longer period (3 months or more), give them more discount. If their ad is expiring today and they didn’t contact you, or worse yet they didn’t answer your emails, be patient and give them extra 24-48 hours. Little things like these can go a long way, so pay attention to them. These small details can turn one-time advertiser into a long-term sponsor. Being rigid and strict will only chase your sponsors away.
Tell your readers
Make announcement on your blog about the new advertisement option that you are introducing. Because your blog readers are your potential advertisers too. In fact, they have many advantages than other people who do not read your blog. For example, they know about you and your blog (its niche, traffic, readership..etc). And that alone makes a huge difference. Because to your readers, you don’t have to explain all about your blog and the daily traffic it gets. For them, you just have to make a good offer, that’s all.
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P.S How do you get advertisers to your blog?
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