Monday, December 14, 2009

Adgitize: Can you RISK advertising again? -Part 1-

Risky Business album coverImage via Wikipedia

After the month of November has passed, we headed into December and many members of Adgitize have been in fear and some in panic when the new earnings bracket will be sustainable which was "promised" by Ken Brown in early October 2009.

There have been two different kind of members in October/November. One part of the members (advertisers) have bought a Last-Minute ad in the last days of October and finished the month of November with a (bigger) profit than the previous months.
Other members believed in the earnings prediction of Ken Brown from October and didn't buy in advance a second ad (or there was simply no money available). They had to buy later on the new priced ad for 24$. As there have been -until the last week (even last day) of November- over 40% of old 14$ ads, there hasn't been any possibility to make a profit with 24$ advertisements in November.

Is advertising in Adgitize getting RISKY?

In this environment it is common that a lot of members think buying a new ad for 24$ in Adgitize is now a risky investment. Like i mentioned in the beginning there have been a lot of Blog posts of previous Adgitize advertisers which have been afraid of buying an ad (or just buying it too early).
Even in the Adgitize forum and in the comment section of the Adgitize blog there have been several members questioning about the impact of the new earning bracket and when it will be worth again to advertise in Adgitize.
These events made more advertisers cautious and we saw a big decline in available ads. Like you can see in the graph below we started with 216 advertisers on 31st October and are now on 14th December at 146 advertisers, a loss of 70 advertisers.

Click the chart to enlarge (opens in NEW window)!

amount of Adgitize advertiser November - December 2009Even when the advertisers are declining there is still more money in the system than in the end of October when the ad price was just 14$ (216 x 14 = 3.024 $, 146 x 24$ = 3.504 $) which is one of the reasons that nearly everyone is earning more than in October and November (if you're still advertiser or have been every time publisher).

In Part 2 i show you if it's really risky to advertise and show some new options to earn with Adgitize!
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Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Holiday-Contest-Winners!

Holiday-Contest
Congratulations to the 10 winners:


Thank you to all participants in our Holiday-Contest... the next contest will come soon!

In the next two days the ONE MONTH ads will be online and the ECs will be transferred in your accounts (the three members who made a blog post will receive the additional ECs, too) :)

Not all members who dropped cards commented on all five blogs, so i only took the persons who commented on the specific blog into the drawing.

If someone won the same prize on another blog, this prize has been put back and was chosen again for another blog.

Winner of the ad prizes should comment on this blog and give me a link to their ad image which they want to display or tell me if i can use the EntreCard ad image!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Adgitize: Secret of getting an ad paid by Adgitize + make a profit with it!

Do you want to know the SECRET how to get paid by Adgitize for your own 14$ ad? If you are a member, i guess you want to know, if you're not a member, this article will help you in finding an ad network that pays you (back most of your ad price) to advertise in its network!
UPDATE: There is a promotion running until 31st July 2010 which would pay you 14,57 $ for your invested 14$ if you are an active advertiser like described below!
Additionally you will get as my referral a FREE ONE WEEK AD (value 7$) which will give you between 250 - 500 visitors/week and up to 3.50 $ earnings in Adgitize - simply sign up by clicking on one of my Adgitize ads - the easiest way to monetize your blog and to get traffic to your blog!

My payment proofs from Adgitize from July since today 5th December 2009, always more than 14$/month (including referral earnings)!





Yesterday John Lottery from "Ask the Blogster" asked me -after reading the previous Adgitize blog post with my points and earnings statistic- how i could achieve these numbers as he only achieved a maximum of 480 points with TWO running ads (three blogs registered).
Eli came up with a similar conclusion as he only owns ONE BLOG, "Business Sphere"and his highest points have been just 425 (with one ad + paid preferred publisher).

In the last six month i could achieve daily in Adgitize 440 - 470 points (FOUR BLOGS registered) which has been nearly the maximum of the points (500 points until August, 600+ points since end of August).

The Basics in generating points in Adgitize
  1. Click the necessary amount of ads until you see 100 in the blue field under the Adgitize ads (for publishers this are 100 different ads, for advertiser just 50 ads) -> 100 click points

  2. Publish ONE article per day (more are allowed but don't give additional points!) -> 100 article points

  3. advertise in Adgitize for 31 days (14$ = 45 cents/day, best value!) -> 100 advertiser points
    Advertising gives you the necessary bonus -as you could see in #1-, less clicking and it will double your page/ad view points in #4

  4. drive traffic like crazy to your blog, use EntreCard and drop 300 cards, find persons who reciprocate your drop, get into the TOP 15 spot of your category and make your way in the overall TOP 15 for total exposure and FREE advertising for your blog!
Why it is important to get to the TOP 15 in your category and in the end in the overall TOP 15!

If you start dropping cards look yourself for an ad image that makes other curious about you or write the purpose of your blog into the image (be creative).
By using EntreCard's own templates you should write in a few words "what is your blog about" to attract some members (usually less members click on these cards).

Looking in my Category "Finance and Investing" there is not much competition and it would be easy to climb from 0 to 350 member visits (popularity points) with just 3-5 days dropping 300 cards.
This would give you already some exposure for the persons who are interested in this category and you would get some free visitors, just because you are in the TOP 15.

To get in the category "Mixed Bag" into the TOP 15 you have to find a good strategy with dropping and it will take time (more than 2 weeks) to come closer to the TOP 15 as there are over 2.000 blogs.

Getting into the overall TOP 15 needs time -around one month- but with the following strategies it's easier for you to achieve!

Some different dropping strategies:
  1. Drop on the 300 most popular blogs daily as they are usually daily active and most of them are reciprocating drops.

  2. Build friendships by commenting on some of the blogs where you drop cards.
    Commenting gives you exposure and a free text link (to your blog or blogger profile), especially if you comment on the TOP 30 blogs in EntreCard (as they get over 300 visitors from EntreCard!).

  3. Be fast in commenting = make the comment as one of the first on each blog post, more likely that others will read it and visit you, if it's NOT A SPAMMING COMMENT or just a "Great post, nice article"-comment :)

  4. Use Google Friend Connect or subscribe to the RSS-Feed so that you get their new blog posts automatically delivered!

  5. Drop on popular blogs in your category (even if they are not one of the 300 most popular blogs) to make them aware of your blog and your interests, share your knowledge with them.

  6. Drop on blogs who appear in your inbox, they might be interested in your blog and come back for a visit in the following days, too! Sort out blogs who didn't reciprocate your drops (if they are NOT OF INTEREST to you).

  7. Advertise daily in EntreCard with the received ECs. Look out for "cheap" ad spots by checking the popularity points. Buy throughout the categories and buy at least each second day one ad which costs up to 512 EC, it's worth the ECs and with more traffic your own ad price will raise, too, giving you more ECs to invest in more ads!

  8. Reward Top Droppers (look in your EntreCard Statistics) with link love, the easiest way is to join Dropaholics as they provide you with different widgets for your Top Droppers (you can see one in my sidebar, the largest one, small ones only show the ad pictures). Some members just visit you because of being an active member in Dropaholics (even if you don't drop back on them)! They just want to be on your TOP Dropper widget!
With these strategies you can get more visitors from EntreCard to your blog but your content should be attractive, too. So that they enjoy to visit you daily or frequently every other day.

If you write your content not only for your readers but partially for the Search engines (SEO), you will gain additional free traffic from Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Use Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Facebook and/or MySpace to increase your readership even more.

The page and ad view point system, the more points you want, the more you have to work!

The page view points are calculated in a very steep way. The maximum page view points (with FOUR BLOGS!) i could achieve was 60 points (originally it's 30 points as the points get doubled if you're an advertiser). Therefore i need 2.000 page views.
The highest page views i could achieve in the past have been 2.500 but nothing changed with the page view points, so this will be really hard for myself to achieve once the 70 page view points.

But you can influence the ad view points with the number of ads which you display and the number of ad groups!

Eli for example could improve his ad view points by adding one bigger ad blog with 9 ads or two different ad groups (one with two ads, a second one with eight ads). In this case he could achieve already the five fold of his page views. At the moment he gets just the 1,5 times his page views as he only displays ONE ad group with ONE ad and a SECOND ad group with TWO ads.
This change could be worth up to 30 ad view points, on average 20 more ad view points daily!
  • Choose two ad groups and mix them so that you show only a maximum of ten ads
For the ad views the point system (for advertisers) looks like this:
  • more than 10.000 ad views - 100 points (50 for publishers)
  • between 9.000 - 10.000 ad views - 90 points (45 for publishers)
  • less than 9.000 ad views - 80 points (40 for publishers)
As i didn't get 70 points in ad views, i can't tell you if 10 (5 for publishers) points are given for every 1.000 ad views. Therefore i would need your feedback :)

Another point which you should take into account - Preferred Publisher Program

Use the Preferred Publisher Program, it gives you free traffic (in case you click already daily the maximum of ads, 100 or 50) for one blog and additional 10 advertiser points. Otherwise read my guide for the Adgitize Preferred Publisher Program.
If you want to sign up for the paid Preferred Publisher Program, the prices start from 6$/month and you will get 25 advertiser points


Some other members achieve high points, too but only with more than ONE BLOG or several paid ads/preferred publisher!

In the Adgitize Leaderboard you can find in the TOP 10 usually only members with MORE than ONE BLOG (up to six blogs - Positive Men).
I would say everyone who has on average more than 470 points has two ads running or is PAID preferred publisher with a second/third/... blog as it's too difficult to jump over the 60 page view points.

I achieved the 500 points on 2nd of December just because i started my new ad at the same day as my old ad expired.
I wanted to see if there is a big difference in earnings but it seems it's just 1 or 2 cents for each 10 points in this area (different when you jump between from 270 to 300 or 370 to 400).

These have been a lot of tips how to achieve much more points in Adgitize, most of them are free, some might take additional time each day but in the end you will get most of the invested ad price returned by Adgitize!
In the past you simply had to achieve around 400 points on average to get paid by Adgitize for advertising (+ around 2000+ visitor/monthly) now it will be around 430+ points to achieve the same effect.

Join now, get traffic and make a profit with blogging!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Adgitize: Have you heard this news yet? I guess you have :)

The next quicky about Adgitize as they published yesterday a blog post about new enhancements as we are now a group of more than 5.000 members (just 100 members one year ago!) and 150 advertisers! Congratulations to this achievement :)

The new enhancement would be that you can see now on the Preferred Publisher List the NEWEST ARTICLE of your blog.

But there is at the moment a glitch in the system if you have MORE THAN ONE BLOG registered in your account and if the blog which is preferred publisher is NOT THE BLOG which will be fetch by the Feed reader at first.

This problem will hit these members
  • who publish only one or two articles for their blogs per day but not necessarily for their preferred publisher blog (like it is in my case with The One Minute Guide - today there was my previous article from this blog mentioned!).
  • who have more than one blog in the preferred publisher program as the Feed reader only takes the first written post of the day from ONE BLOG
How to solve this problem!

Go to the Contact Us link (right side at the top) and write Ken Brown a message that he should temporarily disable to display the "Last post title" for your preferred publisher blog(s) until this glitch is resolved.


But you can use it for your advantage, too! :)

Just use an attractive title and when the members look now more for the title than the blog name, you can add up some new visitors or readers for that day (even when the post is on another blog, perhaps you should link in this case to this specific blog!).

Sign up additionally for the Preferred Publisher Program (see my Adgitize Preferred Publisher tutorial) in Adgitize to promote your website as this is now a much better value when you post interesting articles (it doesn't have to cost you a dime when you use the free option for one of your blogs!)

Update for the ongoing Project: Let's see what's going on in Adgitize (earnings/advertiser statistic to proof the earnings prediction from 7th October)

I will publish this update on the weekend or when the first weekly earnings are out (9th December) and it won't be anymore a simple list which takes you hours to read and look only at hundreds of numbers like in the last one :)

As for the first published earnings day on 1st December, i can say the effect was still influenced by the old 14$ ads as they expired on that day. We saw the biggest drop in advertisers with a loss of 13 "ads" from the system to 158 active ads.
On the 2nd December there has been a smaller loss of advertiser with just 6 leaving the system to 152 ads.
In the first hours of 3rd December we dropped further to 149 ads but recovered to 151 ads.
Same for 4th December dropped by 3 to 148, guess we will recover little bit :)

Even when we lost now advertisers, the earnings are still profitable for members who can score more than 400 points daily (will improve after the weekend!) and as advertiser you get again MORE CLICKS for your ads than in November!

Earnings for 1st December with 470 points - 0.88 $ (+10 Cents profit as 78 cents/daily needed to pay for an ad)

2nd December
with 500 points - 1.06 $ (+38 Cents overall) -predicted earnings have been 1.20 $ but we have 30 advertisers less than in the prediction, a good enough number for the 1st day without old 14$ ads!!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Quickies for Adgitize, EntreCard, Contest, Comments

Hi, we are back from the visit of my wife's relatives in Penang and Alor Star (Malaysia) since the weekend.

Just wanted to make some quick announcements about new additions in Adgitize and EntreCard, the Holiday-Contest and my reply to comments.

ADGITIZE

There is now an option to BUY GIFTCARDS for Advertisement in Adgitize. This option is useful for contests, for "donations" or just as a gift for a blogger friend. They are available as 12$ gift for an ONE WEEK ad, as 18$ gift for a TWO WEEK ad and as 24$ gift for 31 DAY ad.

Throughout the 1st December the advertiser keep on dropping, it's a fact now that we lost over 60 advertiser since the end of October 2009. But this fact should not make anyone worry to stop advertising NOW.
I will keep advertising but change the ad in Adgitize to our All about babies and kids-Blog from 3rd December on.
In case you like to visit me after my Adgitize ad expires, simply follow me with Google Friend connect, bookmark me or subscribe to my blog :)

Why NOT stopping to advertise?
In every month there have been only 20% of the advertisers who earned back the money of their bought ad, this has been like this since i joined in April (there they changed the earnings system to the actual point system). And it will be again the same in December because of the specific calculation for each 100 point tier. In the coming days there will be less members in the 300/400 point tier and we saw already this effect throughout the last few days (Thanksgiving holidays).
Members who can score more than 300 or 400 points will have more stable earnings than the members who slipped in the 200 point tier. They have to share the same amount of money with more members.

More reasons to start/renew your ad now!

The last two days i see a sharp increase in clicks to my blog (around 30%-50% from the average 77 clicks --> 30th - 96, 1st December - 123):
  • one reason is that more advertisers stopped their ads and have now to click 100 ads instead of 50
  • the other reason less advertiser means higher chances to appear more often on the ad widgets and get surely a click!
In case you are not yet a member, you can join Adgitize today, start earning $$ and get traffic.
If you advertise as my referral for the first time you get 50% of my finder fee (9$) which would be 4,50$ via Paypal (Paypal may deduct fees of less than 50 cents).


ENTRECARD

After the invasion of sponsored ads in the last week the run for it has stopped as many members don't see it as an effective advertisement (too expensive as the 25$ just lasts for less than 5 days, less clicks if you advertise in one and the same category with the whole 25$).
When the spike of 12 sponsored ads had been reached, the 15% reserved air time was even exceeded by EntreCard, as many members experienced less clicks from their EC-based ads!

As an addition in the CAMPAIGN section, they added a new sign for EntreCard sponsors. The sign is a STAR in the ad image. It is also written in the user profile of these members.
It means the member has paid 5$/monthly or 48$/year to opt-out of displaying sponsored ads. On these blogs you will get now 100% airtime for your EC paid ads!
I saw in the last days four blogs with the star (Ad Master, SpicyBugz World, 2 of Maitri's Blog).


The Holiday-Contest

Thanks to the members who participated in this contest. The winners will be announced on this weekend on each of the five blogs!


Reply to your given comments during our holidays

I will reply to your comments in the coming days, so come back or subscribe by e-mail to the comments to stay in touch with the ongoing discussions!
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