Blogging Experience

Ad Spots/Types I Don’t Think Look Good For Readers

by Melvin · Aug 14, 2008

Well as you can see I am almost pretty sold out on private ads. Maybe that’s because of the super duper affordable but quality advertising I am giving them. 😉 There are some who have booked it for long term. If you are interested in advertising (I know you’re not!), look at the advertising page.

So, selling ad spots depends on the owner. You can oversell every space on your blog to make money. Just look the evil Chow and the number of ads on his site. But of course sometimes this may hurt your readership (in some cases they dont). Well, these are the spots and/or type of ads that I hate:

Stripe Ads – I will never consider this one. On older browsers, sites that have stripes do not look well. But well even though if everyone is using Firefox, I wouldn’t still consider it. For me it’s annoying and would hurt your readers (literally)
Leaderboard – Although I have used it in my basketball blog, it isn’t really much of a great choice I think. After all it’s very HUGE and the focus of your reader will instead shift to the leader one.
300X250 – Again Chow and some guys like Tyler Cruz and Carl Ocab are selling this spot. Why I don’t think its good? Well because oftentimes people will wonder what’s the relation of that pic/ad to the certain post! Your readers will wonder what is it for and it’s not so good for branding. Will never try it!
Peel away Ads – For some other people they have had some success with it but for me it’s like giving almost 1/4 of your blog to advertising. Although it’s not as intrusive as others, I have received feedbacks that it slows down your blog/site. Anything that makes a site slow is BAD!

That’s it for now. Maybe someday I can appreciate those spots and start thinking of selling them (no way!) But well it depends on people and needs. Maybe if I need it badly to buy me a house and lot then I would consider it. 🙂

CPM Ads: Underrated MoneyMaker

by Melvin · Aug 11, 2008

I often hear questions in forums that say “I have the traffic but little income from my blog”. Well as what I have observed people saying it, are people who are putting their earnings largely on Adsense. Though Adsense has had been a great money maker for some, almost 85% of people in this world are still not successful from using it… So getting back from the statement, I always answer “try CPM ads”. CPM stands for Cost per Millie, meaning you are gonna paid per 1000 impression. Take note, impression is not unique visitors, its pageviews!

So why do I think it’s an underrated moneymaker? Well just look. If you’re blog is getting about the normal 5000 uniques a month and say 12000 pageviews, then you’re on your way to $30 per month. People oftentimes think of selling direct ad sales but sometimes you cannot find anyone who will buy it. Especially if you’re blog is something very unrelated to internet marketing, then chances are people will notcare about your ad space. With CPM ads you can make money easily. And the sky is the limit. On my basketball blog, I had a large leaderboard CPM banner at the top that really pays me well. What I have done is I have ordered a cheap 100,000 US traffic. And with some advertisers paying up to $4 per cpm (US based), thats a really great deal for me. And that’s just the prelude. You can do more, “read more buttons” hot or not, voting scripts, and etc) Just do note that some CPM networks are very strict with some shady techniques and you’re account can be terminated, do it at your own risk!

Well one thing famous bloggers don’t like CPM is that it gives user a bad experience. Oftentimes ads are not good to user experience because they are unrelated. ANother is that sometimes they show flash ads that slows down your site! They also take a huge chunk of your income, 30-40%. Sites like Chow and Problogger could have had tripled their earnings that easy. But well it’s really bad to branding so I guess theirs no way they would try putting CPM ads on their sites…

How about you how do you find CPM ads? Have you considered trying and using them?

7 Tips Before buying an Adspot on Any Site/Blog

by Melvin · Aug 5, 2008

I’m really skeptic about accepting guest posts here but w/me being stucked on my schedules, I would consider accepting some.

In this competitive world ,everyone wants to promote his site. People use various methods for the cause. But the best way is paid advertising. Although advertising blindly may result in nothing but loss of money. So here are some tips which every advertiser should follow before advertising on any blog/site

Create a Good Banner :- This is a point which most of the advertisers miss out .But having a good banner is equally essential as choosing a good place to advertise. Having an attractive banner results in more visits to your site/product.P.S If you are not good in designing then you can get your banners designed at Digital Point Forums at cheap rates.
Keep Up with your niche :- The point becomes quite clear from its heading itself.Advertise on sites related to your product/site. e.g advertising on a blog writing about WebDesign having a Unique Visitors of 100 daily will give you better results than a site about gardening and getting 1000’s of Unique Visits daily.
Get the Stats :- Before advertising contact the owner or the admin of that site.Ask the site statistics like Monthly Visitors , Page Views etc. Dont simply trust the written stats ,ask for screenshots for stats and if possible ask for public stats URL (in case of sitemeter and some other statistic service which support it ) to test it yourself as screenshots can be faked.
Not just the Visits :- While checking the stats, just not ask for number of visitors ,bounce rate and average time spent by a visitor. Average time is very important as the visits may be of low quality.Dont forget to check the alexa rank,incoming links, yahoo domain links.Use plugins like SEO Quake or Search Status to get important informations about the sites.
Position of Ad :- Ensure that your ad is on a good position.Header ads perform better than sidebar and footer ads in most cases.
Posting Frequency – Make sure you see if the blog you are advertising on has a high of posting frequency. More posts will result in more visitors automatically.
Go for trials :- If you are not yet sure about a site/blog’s performance then go for a paid trial ad.You can get it for 1 or 2 days and can pay the site owner a small amount of fee for it.If you are satisfied with the amount of visits you get , then you can go and buy ad for long term.Better lose 10$ then 300$

This is a guest post Written by Siddharth from Technoworld

The PR Update, Announcements And More

by Melvin · Jul 26, 2008

Well well well, another busy weekend anew with all the studies and all the responsibilities being an officer of the computer organization of our university. But well at the end of the week I have pretty some great news for myself. Well the PR update who has long been speculating has already took place. This blog has now a page rank of 2 (though it deserves more of a pr 3) and my basketball blog who has been slapped before because of selling do follow links is also back with it’s pagerank. My rival Alkorani got a pr3 and most of us in the blog premiere got a pr2. Not bad for not promoting too much.

I always believe that the algo of page rank isn’t the same as before. Before it is so damn easy to get a pr. Link exchange there, reaching top commentators, commenting on dofollow blogs. I can say it’s now different. Although you can still get some value there, it isn’t like before. That’s why I don’t believe on what Tnx.net is saying about gaining pagerank points. As search engine marketers become smarter, so as Google. Google has distinguished valuable dofollow pr’s from not. The “in” thing for getting tons of backlinks and pr is try making a widget for your site and distribute it around your community.

Another announcement is that I am now putting entrecard back to where it is. Why? Because entrecard doesn’t really deserve the advertising sidebar. Although some bloggers like Flimjo puts a huge emphasis on it, the value of advertisers there aren’t really going to brand your blog. It’s hard to take a look at the advertisers and reject the unrelated ones so I am just surprised to see someone sporting porno on entrecard widget. Where is it before? It’s under everything. 😉

The last thing is that I am looking for a Chief financing officer. Well we are running a company based here on Philippines about freelancing and SEO. It has been planned since January and although looks like everything is set, we are still going to wait for next year to launch. We are preparing so hard for it and we do hope everything will work out fine. I also look for some coders but i think DP has a lot of that. You can directly contact me if you know one

Don’t Bother With PM’s From Your Blog

by Melvin · Jul 24, 2008

Since I have started this thingy I am always receiving tons of message from the contact form that are pissing me a lot. I’m not an impatient person but of course I don’t like craps. As this blog is getting read by more and more kids people there are also other things that are not so good to my eyes. Like the number of spams I am starting to receive and of course the messages from the contact form.

The purpose of the contact form is to contact. Sometimes my friends do not know how they can reach me so I put this one up. That’s also there for business purposes. But when is something not business related? Let me tell you a story. Sometime last month someone contacted me saying that their company is holding some promotional measures and would do me a free banner and logo in exchange for a linkback. During that time I think my header is fine but still I was like “Wow someone seems to be interested in my blog” But then the thoughts of beautiful design ala UniqueBlogDesigns was thwarted when the sample was given to me. It’s SO ugly that the drawing of a chicken could even look better than it. I swear! After that, I no longer respond. But that certain kept on sending me mails. After a week, they are already three! They all promote the same thing with the same company. Wow!

So things like that started off like comets falling here on earth. Most are asking/offering me about their services(which isn’t bad)! And a lot has been promoting untested networks with their affiliate links and wtf, their is even someone there saying she wants to be my husband! I guess this is really how things go. I can now understand how big and established guys and companies are having hard time dealing w/it. Before i am used to checking my email in this blog everyday, now it’s once a week and sooner it will be once a month!

The Polluted Make Money Online Niche

by Melvin · Jul 20, 2008

blog pollution Well I was looking over at 45n5 top 100 make money online blogs and have seen my blog already there in the top 300. I also have seen some of my friends blog already there. I always had a thought that everyone nowadays or even as early as last year is trying to get into the make money online niche. Almost every minute there are new “make money online” blogs springing over and over. I can so much say that that this niche is like a river full of feces garbage and craps.

People are jumping into this niche because they are thinking that creating a make money online blog (or something similar) will make them money. That alone can summarize they are so wrong on doing and believing on it. Make money online blogs are blogs that help people make money maybe online or from other sources. Most bloggers nowadays think that because they have this kind of blog they can make money from it easily. Naah! That’s why I always have the feeling that people want to create a blog like those because they want their readers to help them make money while in truth, they should be helping the readers! MMO blogs are so many nowadays, like the rapist on every corner of the street. And I have listed here why it is so much polluted.

Make MMO and you’ll get tons of comments. Now this is what I think in general. It’s a proof because most people who do this are always looking for blogs to comment and they do it on a lot of blogs. i’m not saying it’s wrong, but you see it’s just a proof that this niche has a lot of spammers bloggers. Just take a great look at my basketball blog, most of the comments there are just under 10 and that’s because there aren’t a lot of people interested on reading basketball blogs.
The top 100 list. Remember 45n5 top list? Well no offense but I can say that most blogs there in the list are a crap (I’m not saying mine is better). Most blogs there are just full of anchor links that spam Google and some are just made for affiliate links and so. The list only shows how many people are egging to jump into it.
Do not promote it. and you will still get pageviews. it’s just like in the first one. People are always looking for something that can boost their blog’s exposure and it’s exactly it.
Ever increasing scammers. Well as these make money online blogs occur, so as the advertising networks who are promising to overdeliver and overpay only to suck at the end. Everyday I always get about 2-5 emails through the contact form on my blog suggesting me to use their services and I will earn a lot. Are they scam? Perhaps! But the thing is most newbie will just jump to it not knowing they are still untested and will later whine for not being payed.

As I have said before the numbers would easily quadruple for the succeeding years. But is it a problem? Heck No! Some really make good chunk of money from it! It’s just a proof that while the mmo niche is gettin polluted and competitive, it’s also getting to be milked easier as you no longer need to promote it very hard as bloggers will find you. But then is it enough to make a good chunk of money from your blog? Are you also polluting the niche? Maybe it’s worth to rethink after all,

How To Make Money Offline

by Melvin · Jul 18, 2008

Making money online has never been so kind to you. So what to do now? Actually there are million of things and ideas that you can do to make money offline. Yes, actually these are ideas that a student or literally anyone can apply. If the online world is cruel to you, then why bother? Switch! Many people are so wrong on thinking that their time will come. My goodness, if this field isn’t for you then pack your things and go. So how can you make money offline? Well it’s up on your skills. But here I am going to specify how a college student like me who is handsome slightly lazy can be able to do it so easy. Actually it depends on your skills really.

Do your classmates project. This is probably my favorite thing to do. This trimester we have a subject entitled Web Programming. We are using Visual Web Developer to make login pages and database. So this one happened just recently. The professor told us that the major exam will not be written. We just need to pass a .aspx website with login and register and masterpages and thats it. What happened? Sadly, most of the people on the other class do not have the software and some of them do not have an idea on how to do it. So here we come, we start offering our services and later charging $$$.
Buy and sell. Another thing that can easily be done by everyone. Actually for me, it is very easy to pretend what I am selling is very expensive yet it’s not! You might earn not so much, but then you have literally done nothing to get the job done.
Deposit your money. Last year upon the arrival of my WidgetBucks check, I have asked top personnels and some forums on what’s the best thing to do with it. Most say, reinvest it! Others tell you should keep on learning. What caught my attention was Shoemoney’s response via twitter saying “Put it in bank and sit on it’s interest”. This is true. You will do nothing and let money flowing. I know most of you do it the more hardcore way.

Making money offline is like a “lost art”. When the dot com boom started, it seems like everyone just jumped into it and forgot that there’s so much real business offline. I know you, as a reader understands my point. So maybe you can share me your own tips on making some cash offline? 😉