Cash is Good!

I have taken a part-time job, and it's definitely affecting my blogging time. I'll continue to post here as I am able.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Why You Should Choose Adgitize in Light of CMF Closure


With the news that CMF ads is shutting down bloggers are probably looking for the best place to advertize. CMF has chosen to endorse Project Wonderful, but I think there are good reasons to choose Adgitize instead.

To the credit of Project Wonderful, they allow you to target where you want your ads shown. You can research blogs that match the topics you cover and choose to advertise only on those. They are also incredibly cheap, free (if ad publishers are silly enough to allow this) or just a penny or pennies a day. And, not only that, but their engine will track the timing and let you spend portions of pennies over just a few hours. So, ok... it's cheap to place ads, but you have to do a lot of research and requesting.

On the flip side, if you choose to publish ads with Project Wonderful, you are only going to make pennies a month, unless your blog gets a huge amount of traffic.

Frankly, I think it devalues the whole blog industry by promoting the idea that it's OK to receive less than 50 cents a month for a banner ad. That said, I still have PW ads on one of my blogs. It's the one with the best traffic, and even with ads that get cancelled the minute the price goes above 3 or 4 cents a day, I still make about 2 cents a day. Whoopie. Come to think of it, maybe the next time I cash out, I'll just cancel it too.

So, why choose Adgitize? Adgitize is a blog advertising network. It's about advertising- you are not going to get rich there either. But it's a lot less work, and if you are willing to click just 51 ads a day you can at least break even, and maybe make a couple of dollars.

Adgitize serves ads to all the blogs in their system that publish ads. The membership just broke 10,000, with over 18,000 blogs logged. Not all of those are active, but let's say that half of them are. Your ads will be shown on 9,000 blogs without you needing to do anything at all after you create your profile and banner, and pay $14 a month. (There are shorter plans, if you just want to try it out.)

Since advertisers who want to get paid enough to get back their $14 have to click ads, you will get traffic. There is always the argument about whether it is quality traffic. I say, "You have to get people cruising through to have a hope of creating readers out of them."

If you don't want to advertise, you can choose to just publish Adgitize ads and click 100 ads a day. If you do this you will earn a few cents, which eventually ads up to enough to cash out. But, remember, the point of Adgitize is not to make money, the point is to advertise.

You are allowed to block any ads in the system that you feel aren't appropriate for your blog. All blogs are checked by a human being within a few days of their applying to the system, and ones which do not adhere to the standards are turned off. (the biggest issues are original content, no popups or autoplay, must be safe for work, and current material) There are some other customizations available.

Owner Ken Brown says, "We are currently working back through our membership base, now four years since our launch, and are removing blogs which are no longer active or following the standards." That will be a long haul to complete, but it's nice to know that someone is trying to pay attention.

To summarize, I think that Adgitize gives bloggers a lot of exposure for very little work. With only $14 in hand you can start building recognition and getting traffic that will never cost you money again as long as you click those 51 ads a day.


Adgitize

1 comments:

John said...

I'm using Project Wonderful and despite setting the minimum price to $0 it's working well for me.

It pays a small amount every month (~$1) without having to click ads, post daily, etc. I don't mind only earning pennies because I can advertise for pennies.

The price a blog can realistically ask depends on the ad position and blog traffic. I'm happy to pay $1 a month for an ad above the fold with 200 views per day. Any higher and I might as well spend my money on Adwords.

I often see blogs asking prices in excess of $5 CPM - poor value for the advertiser.

As on online retailer the incentivised clicks on Adgitise are worthless to me. They don't convert to sales. Most of the visitors are only interested in one thing, earning points to recoup their advertising $.