Several months back, I wrote a post expressing my displeasure with the three leading blog ad networks.
I just received this comment from one of the owners of CMF Ads and wanted to publicly respond in a post.
Turnip writes;
“An ad network can only be as good as the blogs that belong to it. Clearly you run many ads on your blog. Why did you not reveal the click through rate on those? It seems you desire traffic regardless of quality. One month you recommend something, next month you say “don’t bother with it”. Am I to blindly trust your advice?”
I totally agree with with Turnip on the first point, a blog ad network is only as good as the blogs that belong to it.
Second point, I am not so sure about. How many is “many ads”? I have an EC widget, Adgitize widget, adsense, an affiliate banner for elegant themes and two 125×125 ads, one of which is my career advice blog.
As for the other points, since my blog is about blogging, I consider anyone with a blog as good traffic for me. In regards to clicks, I took a look at my analytics and there is a huge divide. I will get to the exact numbers in a minute.
To address the last point, I blog about what I am doing and what I am trying out in regards to blog promotion and making money blogging. With that in mind, it is very possible that I would experience something at one point and then something different at another. Then I write about, that is what blogging is all about, sharing my thoughts.
I am not asking anyone to blindly trust my advice as that would mean that I am telling someone to do something and not providing any information or facts to back it up.
So, here are some stats. I took two screen shots of my referral traffic from Adgitize and CMF during June 1 through September 1. The numbers speak for themselves
Adgitive -3,839
CMF Ads – 18
I want to disclose that the Adgitize numbers reflect the fact that I am a paid advertiser. I also want to mention that there has not been a month that has gone by where I did not make more money then I spent.
Let’s take a look at the real time pricing. Adgitize rolled back the price to $14 a month. If you blog daily or close to daily you should have no problem making that money back and then some. Here is some more detail:
You earn based on the amount of credits you receive per day.
Here is how you get credits:
Publishing a post on your blog – 100 points
Clicking on 50 blog widgets (takes 8 minutes) – 100 points
Being an advertiser – 100 points
Ad views – 30 points (you can earn more if you display more than one ad)
Page views -30 points (this will depend on your traffic)
That equals 360 points , which equals 51 cents. If you multiply that by 30 days in a month that equals: $15.30.
So, you (I) will actually make $1.30 in this equation.
I am not asking anyone to blindly follow my advice, but I am asking that if you think you would like to get paid for getting thousands of visitors to your blog then you might want to consider advertising on Adgitize.
Then again, if you are looking for a dozen or so new visitors, check out CMF ads
Go ahead and give it to me, I am sure I ruffled some feathers with this post. What do you think? What has your experience with Adgitize or CMF ads been like?
We hope you enjoy the new Spikes feature. We have deliberately kept it as simple as possible. Please post in the Talk about CMF Ads area of our forums if you have any feedback. Finally, we hope you have a great Christmas!
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We initially planned for this to be released to a select group of beta testers, but we’d like as many publishers to use the feature as possible, so we’ve decided to release the feature today.
.-= Cheat codes´s last blog ..Cheating for fun =-.
we’re not just an ad network – we have a thriving community at your fingertips.
we support multiple sites and even forum access on ONE username. Your balance can be used for any site you own.
Hi Joanne,
I’d like to provide an explanation for the issues you encountered while signing up for CMF Ads.
The email you used to sign up matched up with a domain on our ban list, so you received a banned message. We didn’t specifically ban you – anyone using the same email provider would have experienced the same problem. It was an error on our end. As you notified us of the problem, we were able to address it and you were then able to sign up successfully.
After that, you submitted a blog with a link that didn’t work, so it was rejected. (Otherwise, if you placed ads, the links wouldn’t work). When you emailed us, I explained the issue and we were able to work it out. Your blog was then approved with the correct link.
I can understand your frustration as you did experience a couple of issues in quick succession. We did resolve the issues that you brought to our attention. I’m sorry if you felt that this was handled badly.
First I have to say that dealing with the powers that be at CMF ads is a waste. In my opinion they are just very disorganized and rude. I signed up with them months ago and left immediately when I received nothing but attitude when needing help. Long story short a friend told me to sign up again because she was getting good results from them. So, I did and it was a joke. I’ve also been advertising and have a few ads out there with basically no traffic.
Adgitize on the other hand I love. I am a publisher and advertiser and have been paid monthly with a huge increase in traffic and surprisingly a low bounce rate. They help you when you need it and truly do care about their advertisers and publishers.
I suppose it’s different for everyone as to what works and what does not work.
.-= Joanne Olivieri´s last blog ..An Afternoon With Cher =-.
haha, no need to be an engineer. With all the top blog advertisers -> projectwonderful, adgitize, cmf ads, entrecard. None is made to make you money money. The money you make is to be recylced within their network and to gain traffic. Using these four in conjunction will push your traffic stats up. Any money i make with any is used to reinvest in building my traffic. Is it working, yes. My website in the beginning alexa 14m then 99k then i stopped all and it evened out at 250k. Now its back down to 140k and its not because im dropping everyday because i do maybe 2 -3 drops on sites i actually read but now its because of word of mouth. I hope by next year this time, my website will capture all and i get into low 40k’s on alexa and maybe 100k on quantcast if im lucky.
You just got another referral
I never spent any money on traffic or do I use entrecard etc I just want to see how it works looks interesting thanks
Thanks for all your support
Let’s make some MONEY LOL:)
.-= John Sullivan´s last blog ..Chris Brogan Trust Agent you are THAT GUY U GOOF =-.
Adgitize is simple and easy and it’s NOT necessary to post daily or click daily.
If you do it, it will improve your earnings, if not you’ll still can get 1 – 3 cents daily which is not bad for doing what you did already in the past
The referral earnings in Adgitize have changed slightly. Now it depends upon the length of the FIRST TIME AD how much you get as First time bonus
- 1 week ad gives you 2$ + 1 $
- 2 week ad gives you 3$ + 1 $
- 31 day ad gives you 5$ + 1 $
each ad renewal in the following months give you 1$.
The earnings are declining since this week and it’s no more that easy to achieve 14$ with 360 points.
Now you need on weekdays 400+ points to achieve 45+ cents, on weekends you can expect 380+ points might give you 45+ cents.
CMF Ads:
They change their system more and more to paid traffic (advertiser pays, visitors receive incentive) which i believe is a mixture of EntreCard & Adgitize. Their traditional ad system might die soon as i see on my blog already the consequences and on many other blogs, too. My ad price was from August to October 60 – 75 cents and i got 6 – 9 advertiser. On 27th October i changed to 33 cents as a Birthday Special for one month (with more than 20 advertiser during that period).
After changing to 60 cents in December i got just 2 new advertisers and with the SPIKES it won’t be more, i had to cut it already by nearly 50%.
Why?
Because you’ll never get 50 clicks within 30 days (the most clicks from my blog have been 36, with an average of around 9) like you can get now 50 clicks within 3 days for 20 cents.
After reducing my price for the last 3 days, my CMF Rank didn’t improve. So i checked some other blogs with similar page views and saw that they reduced their prices, too.
In the end i have to give-away my ads for less than 25 cents just because of the SPIKES?
It’s time to think again why CMF ADS was founded in the past because of EntreCard and because of dropping cards and not getting “quality” traffic but just Drop ‘n’ Run traffic.
And when Turnip tells you that you can get a compensation for visiting the blogs, it encourage more and more members to just do what they wanted to prevent with the invention of CMF ADS -> Drop ‘n’ Run traffic!
In my case up to 90% of the Spikes visitors are Drop ‘n’ Run champions!
Stay tuned for my 2nd Part of “CMF Ads – A crtical look!”
.-= Martin@Cornyman’s Money-Blog´s last blog ..CMF Ads – A critical look – Part 1 =-.
Personally, I’ve had great luck with Adgitize, very good luck with CMF, and lots of traffic from EntreCard. The only money I’ve spent on any of them has come from money that I’ve made from advertising on them.
In addition, while I don’t have data to substantiate this, it is my belief that a wise advertising campaign uses multiple platforms and my use of Adgitize, CMF and EntreCard compliment each other.
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Yea me, once the new blog is somewhat set up…although I will most likely go for reviews instead.
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Updates – Latest $10 Domain Winner, Latest Move News, and more. =-.
Its very worthy stuff good post with very interesting information thanks.
it’s good news to hear that people are becoming interested in advertising world. Hopefully better times are ahead. I guess the prices and features of the ads doesn’t hurt either. Good Luck.
It still seems a bit silly to compare stats that are months old when CMF Ads has been working to provide ways to drive more traffic to the blogs in the network. You’ll see a difference if you buy a spike or two. Nice post.
@iwoodpecker – so far i referred 13 people that have signedup and the referral bonus is $5 per referral plus you get $1 per month per advertiser for as long as they advertise.
@dennis- I agree, direct ad sales are the best (any takers?)
.-= Tycoon Blogger @promote your blog´s last blog ..Adgitize vs. CMF ads =-.
Frankly I haven’t tried any networks much yet, and only private ad sales…so much easier when i get an email asking how much. lol
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Updates – Latest $10 Domain Winner, Latest Move News, and more. =-.
I guess it’s time to check this Adgitize out
Stats are pretty cool.
Btw, you’ve mentioned, that you’re making around 15$ from adgitize, what about affiliate income from it?
.-= iWoodpecker´s last blog ..Getting Website Traffic in 2010 =-.
So good at your post, thank you for your time. is GEO or SE traffic matter on your point?
Personally dan i don’t use either of these services, i prefer getting traffic from social media which is free, and gets you a lot of traffic and comments.
The only negative is the bounce rate which can be decreased if you gain a certain rapport.
.-= gautam hans´s last blog ..How to get more retweets for your post =-.
I’ve been trying out the spikes since they started on CMF Ads and the traffic is great, I also have Adgitize, but don’t seem to make much from it, but every little helps when all Ad sites are combined together for the month
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Ah – I didn’t realise you were actually comparing stats that only go to September. If that’s when you removed the CMF widget, then that’s a better comparison. However, it still seems a bit silly to compare stats that are months old when CMF Ads has been working to provide ways to drive more traffic to the blogs in the network. You’ll see a difference if you buy a spike or two.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Are you overshadowing yourself? =-.
Hi Dan – there are a couple of things from your reply to Turnip that I wanted to comment on:
“It is not uncommon for bloggers to post daily.”
What is this comment based on? Now, to be fair, I can’t really prove or disprove this either way. But from what I’ve seen, many blogs recommend that bloggers should write posts daily, so they follow this advice to the letter. Unfortunately, after a few months I imagine a lot of people burn out. It is difficult to keep up a daily posting rhythm for a long period of time (6-12 months as opposed to a few weeks). It’s even harder to do so with a quality post every single day. I am strongly against posting daily if it doesn’t produce a decent post for the majority of the time.
“I guess the only way to give an honest assessment is to try out the Spikes and report my findings.”
This really should be a disclaimer in your post. Adgitize has provided click incentives for a long time. It’s a bit unfair to compare the two services when you haven’t tried Spikes. Yes, feedback has been mixed, but that’s why I think you have to try it before ANY conclusions can be drawn for your blog. Also, it’s extremely misleading to compare the referral stats for two services when you removed your CMF Ads widget a long time back. I don’t use Adgitize and have zero referrals from them, is it fair to say that the traffic speaks for itself because of that?
Please do give Spikes a try – it would be interesting to see how you get on after 30 days.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Are you overshadowing yourself? =-.
I am satisfy with you evaluation. You have made appropriate points in you side.
Dan, I remember your previous post about ad networks and this has just cleared it up for me.
I agree totally with Turnip about going through all the hoops for peanuts. I would definitely want to spend my time better in getting new content, commenting on blogs, promoting my blog, etc. It just seems like to much for not much.
Thats just my opinion.
.-= George Serradinho´s last blog ..2010 Goals: Personal and Blog Resolutions =-.
@Keith – That is funny! You won’t get rich with either but Adgitize can bring you some good traffic and it seems that the CMF spikes program will bring you some traffic as well, although I have not tested it out yet.
Dude, I am so frickin confused! I am glad I use simple advertising methods on my site, you would need to be an engineer to figure out what the 2 of you are talking about!
My question would be, bottom dollar, what service MAKES YOU MONEY!
.-= Keith @Need Information´s last blog ..Follow Up To Pagerank: It Really Doesn’t Matter =-.
@Turnip – Thanks for your response and you do make some valid points.
In regards to Adgitize, I am not sure I understand the hoops you are referring to. It is as simple as placing their widget on your blog and publish a post and then click. It seems like the same hoops you have except for the blog post. It is not uncommon for bloggers to post daily. In fact the bloggers that I visit on a regular basis usually publish at least one a day. Further to the point, I just checked out the leaderboard and I am ranked #80. This tells me that 79 people are making their money back and them some. This does not take into consideration the affiliate earnings for new signups as well as renewals.
Anyway, it was a smart move to add the “spikes” to your service as I am sure you were well aware that the click through rate has been historically low. I have only read several reviews so far (Cornyman’s blog) and I have heard mixed feedback.
I guess the only way to give an honest assessment is to try out the Spikes and report my findings.
More to follow..
You still did not release figures on how many clicks your non-paid banner ads received. Whether many or few, they are plain as day, give us a figure please?
Why not compare paid traffic to paid traffic? You can also purchase paid trafic through CMF Ads. So, to equal your 3839 paid visitors through CMF Spikes let’s do the math.
3839 Visitors / 50 = 76 Spikes purchased at a cost of $15.20.
Now you mention clicking 50 ads a day. Do that at CMF Ads and that cuts your cost in half, bringing it down to $7.60.
Now I don’t know about all that other things you do to achieve that formula. (an article a day, really now…) But it would seem you might sell some ads through the CMF Widget to further offset that $7.60. Lets say you sold 15 ads for $0.04 each. Then you only are short $7.
Some would rather pay the $7 up front than have to run through all those hoops. In addition, CMF Ads can convert your clicks directly to cash. So why send any money at all, let alone $14 to get $1.30 back? (which just changed to that lower price, btw, and you have no guarantee of earning $1.30 under the new system)
Going the free route. A CMF Member can click 50 ads a day earning a guaranteed return. If applied to purchasing paid clicks of their own, that’s enough to buy 750 visits (not counting visitors through ads).
Seeing as how you use the latest prices and info about Adgitize, why not do the same for CMF Ads?
.-= Turnip´s last blog ..Cleaning Up My Twitter List =-.
very good write up. I like the way you broke down the equation. Made it very easy to understand. I think I might check this out.
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