ShoppingAds Review - Auction Ads Out?
By Max | October 3, 2007
I just received this email from Patrick Gavin of TLA and AuctionAds.
Maxwell, thanks for your support of AuctionAds over the months since its launch. I know that you were making more money in the early months than recently and I want to change that! We have been working hard on a CPC product that will perform better than the current CPA model and its finally ready! Its called ShoppingAds. I was hoping we could get your site up and running with SA. It is in private beta now but is ready to go live on your site. I hope you will give it a shot and run it in place of your current AuctionAds.
He is right, my AuctionAds performance has been doing worse recently compared to the past. In all honesty, AuctionAds wouldn’t be worth running at all except for the big payouts when a new user signed up. I was making $25 a pop from that, but now it is less I think.
Compare my first month of AuctionAds with my last.
April 2007
Impressions Clicks CTR Revenue
61661 1150 1.87 $61.09
September 2007
Impressions Clicks CTR Revenue
969122 658 0.07 $33.76
With over 10 times the impressions, I got a lot fewer clicks. I am not sure what going on, but something is up. With only $33 in earnings, I am not risking a whole lot by switching to ShoppingAds. In fact I was just thinking that moving to some kind of CPC or CPM ad there would be better. It can’t be much worse. If the system only pays out $0.05 per click, I should make about the same. Anything extra will be gravy.
When I entered in the keyword “ipod,” the system showed 650 products available, so it looks like ShoppingAds has plenty of ad inventory.
The other site I run AuctionAds on is my Counter Strike site. Using the keyword “Counter Strike” turns up mostly Xbox consoles and other games. I am not sure if switching on Counter Strike would be the best thing since there will be less relevant ads shown.
In any case, I’ll make some changes and report back with the results in a few weeks. Its always nice to have more options.
Topics: Ad Network Review | 10 Comments »
Website Income - September 2007
By Max | October 2, 2007
I am now back from Egypt. I had a blast. Check out this photo of me on a camel.
On to business…
My total earnings for September was $4912.70. This was a little disappointing, since it was a drop from last month. There is a good reason for the drop however. I lost some traffic due to school starting. I run a couple video game related sites, and traffic for sites like that run opposite of other sites. Weekends and summer time are great for video game traffic. Normal sites however suffer, since most adults surf the internet at work. Most kids surf when they aren’t in school.
Here’s the breakdown.
Google Adsense: $2172.05
TribalFusion: $2095.86
Kontera: $549.65
ValueClick: $61.38
AuctionAds: $33.76
Topics: Monthly Income | 6 Comments »
Adding Azoogle Ringtones
By Max | September 6, 2007
I am not sure what affiliate programs will convert the best on the Counter Strike site, but I thought I would start one before I leave on vacation tonight. I added a link to a Thumbplay ringtone offer. It pays out $13.50 per conversion. I assume that the video gamer demographic is similar to the group that will likely purchase ringtones so hopefully it goes well. One reason I am trying ringtones is that it is a pretty easy offer to convert. Every teen wants ringtones. The best thing about ringtones is that participating in the offer doesn’t require a credit card. All you have to do is enter a confirmation code in a text message and the fee shows up on your bill. In my opinion this is a little scammy, because I imagine some conversions don’t realize they are being charged for the ringtones. I’ll see how it converts over the next two weeks while I am on vacation, and report back when I return.
Topics: Earnings Optimization | 3 Comments »
Website Income - August 2007
By Max | September 4, 2007
I got around to this a little late due to labor day weekend, but here’s my numbers!
Google Adsense: $2789.26
TribalFusion: $1700.25
Kontera: $487.30
ValueClick: $77.02
AuctionAds: $63.88
Direct Ad Sales: $20
The grand total this month was $5137.71. I am really pleased with this. Its my first month going over $5000. Most of this increase was due to further optimization of my Counter Strike site. I actually had lower earnings on some of the other sites due to the summer slowdown. Hopefully that will pick back up this fall.
I am going to be on vacation in Egypt for the next couple weeks, so there might not be any updates for awhile. I am sure you understand. Don’t worry though, I’ll bring back pictures.
Topics: Monthly Income | 8 Comments »
Find A Buddy
By Max | August 30, 2007
Last night I had a meeting with a friend of mine. He is going to be watching over my websites while I am out of town. Next weekend I am leaving for Egypt to go look at some pyramids, so I want to make sure everything is in good hands while I am gone. It would be a disaster to have the server go down on Day 2 of a vacation where you can’t get proper internet access. Missing out on earnings for a couple weeks is bad, but a worse scenario would be if google decided to crawl your site and delist you from the rankings during that time.
I suggest finding a friend you can trust with these sorts of things. The more technical they are the better. If you can’t find someone who can help, then it would probably be a good idea to advertise for some backup webmaster services on Sitepoint. You’ve invested a lot of money, so do youre due diligence and protect that invesment.
Topics: Purchase Tips | 4 Comments »
Tribal Fusion Results
By Max | August 27, 2007
A few days ago, I added some more impressions with Tribal Fusion. I was pretty pleased with the results. I am now serving up over 100,000 impressions/day on the Counter Strike site. I estimate this will earn me about $25/day once the rates have settled down. For some reason Tribal Fusion always pays a lot more the first few days after being activated. Significant drops can occur afterwards.
Topics: Ad Network Review | 5 Comments »
Watch Your Tone, Find Your Voice
By Max | August 24, 2007
I have been wondering what makes some bloggers so successful. A lot of bloggers have an easily identifiable catalyst which propels them to the forefront of the internet. John Chow’s blog hit the front page of digg a couple times in a week. Then he changed his focus to making money on the internet with regular transparent updates. This proved interesting enough to keep people coming back. Shoemoney’s blog started gaining popularity when that huge adsense check began circulating around the internet. A few other blogs I read became popular because they are such a trainwreck. Casey Serin is a good example of this.
However, I think there is more to it that that. A lot of blogs get dugg, but then have trouble maintaining the traffic. I think this is because of a writers tone. In my opinion my writing style on this blog is pretty boring. I have good information, but perhaps its presented too much like a text book. My personal blog does a little better job of sharing a glimpse of my personality. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of compelling posts over there. So now, I am going to try to write in a style that is more personal. If your readers get to know you, they’ll be a lot more likely to come back. Maybe I’ll be successful in finding my voice, maybe I won’t. We’ll see. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
I suggest to you bloggers, that you go back and read some of your old posts. Ask yourself if they are interesting to you. Do you want to know more about the writer? I can always tell that I have found a good blog when I want to click the “About” tab on their site, to find out who is behind the blog.
Topics: Article | 9 Comments »
Adding More Tribal Fusion
By Max | August 23, 2007
I added a couple more Tribal Fusion spots to the Counter Strike site today. It was earning between $7 - $11 a day. I hope the new additions will boost that by at least $5/day.
I really haven’t done anything with that site in a couple weeks. I want to examine some affiliate options for this site. I am not sure yet what will convert well, but I keep reading how if adsense is your top earner, further monetization is more than possible. I want to try to sell ringtones since they should do well for my target demographic. I also had someone email me about a possible affiliate program, so I need to look further into that.
Topics: Website Flipping Experiment | 6 Comments »
Types Of Websites - The Content Site
By Max | August 17, 2007
When looking for a website to buy, my favorite type of site are content sites that get a healthy amount of search engine traffic. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, I understand the source of revenue and traffic which allows me to optimize more effectively, and two, the time commitment for a site like this is low.
I feel like the business model behind an ad network supported content site is the most straightforward. You get search engine traffic and a certain percentage of them click on the ads. This percentage is fairly reliable from day to day, which makes earnings predictable and everyone loves that. It is easy to see from glancing at a content site, how their ads could be further optimized in terms of either placement or the choice of ad networks. The traffic is easy to understand too. Search engine traffic is amazingly steady. If you maintain your placement in the search engines, you can feel confident about the number of visitors you’ll receive each day.
The time commitment for a content site is generally pretty low. It largely depends on the niche, but I have one site where I haven’t updated any content since December. Check out www.mymixeddrinks.com. I literally haven’t touched the site since then. It has had steady earnings for the last 8 months and I have done nothing. My earnings on that one have actually been increasing, because I got better search engine rankings over the last two months. Before June, I wasn’t getting much google traffic there, but now I rank for a few drink related keywords.
Topics: Article | 2 Comments »
The Grey Area Website
By Max | August 14, 2007
A reader of this blog pointed me to this sale over at Sitepoint. He asked for my opinion of the site and the sale. I thought I would review it here for everyone’s benefit.
If you browse Sitepoint often enough, you’ll see several sites for sale that fall into what I like to call the “grey” area. Actually, some are downright illegal, but there are a lot that may or may not be legal depending on the country and the practice.
This particular site makes money by charging the uninitiated a fee to show them how to download movies presumably via torrent searches. While the site hosts no movies itself, it is certainly playing a part in the piracy of copyrighted material. I don’t really know if this site is legal or not. One of you will probably have a better idea than I do. Even if it is technically legal, I would still be cautious about purchasing a site like this.
One problem is that the site makes money from an illegal practice, the downloading of copyrighted material. In the short life of the internet, the preferred method of downloading illegal content has changed several times. Napster got shut down. Then came the Gnutella clients. Kazaa came and went. Now we have bit-torrent and the torrent search sites. In each case, the RIAA and other similar organizations have swooped in and rendered the technology nearly useless. This forces the emergence of new schemes for downloading. Torrents as a format seem here to stay, but many of the large torrent search sites are under attack. Who knows how long it will take to shut down some of the more popular ones?
The risk in purchasing a site like this is that you are almost guaranteed to have to update the program to account for changes in the illegal download environment. That would be the best case scenario. It is possible that a simple update wouldn’t be sufficient. If the method for downloading changes too drastically, its possible the program can’t be updated to continue the service. Or even worse, the RIAA could target your site specifically forcing an expensive legal battle. This could happen to get you to shut down regardless of the legality of your site.
I stay away from these types of purchases. Unless you really know what you’re getting yourself into, you should too.
Topics: Website Valuation | 5 Comments »
