Confessions of a First Time Blogger

It’s been a little over a week now and I have posted almost a dozen blogs. I find that writing my thoughts down is stress relieving. It also is a way to help me organize my thoughts. I have wanted to start a website for some time, but I never really knew how to begin. With the help of a friend, I just picked a domain name and he set it up and said, “Get to it” and I did. It is so easy and only takes a few minutes to write a few sentences. Any time I have a second, I try to write a few lines. Waiting on the bathroom to open up, waiting for dinner to be ready, or even five minutes before bed. All are plenty of time to write out a few lines.

Now that I have become fairly familiar with posting my thoughts, I am going to start digging around on the site to see what other cool things I can add to it. I have noticed there is a place to post pictures, so I plan on adding some in the near future. I may also look into customizing the theme of the entire site. There are a few themes available to choose from now, but I think if I look around a bit, I can find some more to add to it. Overall, the whole creation and maintenance process is fun, entertaining, and easy to accomplish without using up a lot of valuable time. Check back regularly for updates.

Want a website that makes money but don’t know where to start?

If you are a publisher with goals of making a living from websites, there are two basic goals you should start out with, get traffic, and convert that traffic into money. 

Chances are, if you have a good idea for site, it probably will never become huge.  There’s already good ideas in motion on millions of websites.  If your idea makes you nearly soil yourself every time you think about it, you might have a chance.  You can be successful with sites that don’t become hugely popular, you just have to have a lot of them. 

You need to focus on the type of ads that are going to pay you the most money, then construct the site(s) around them so that those high paying web advertisements are relevant to your users.  It doesn’t hurt if you like the topic of your site, but it definitely isn’t necessary.  Do some research, figure out which types of ads are paying the most, and will likely continue to do so.  Read forums, look at revenue program review sites, get involved in some webmaster communities.

Found an Ad Sector you like ? Research the competition!  Check out the first 10 sites listed in google and make notes of the best and worst features of each.  Incorporate their strong points into your design outline, and focus on providing better options in areas that your competition is weak. 

My Tip: Buy a few books on search engine optimization tomorrow.

WidgetBucks.com or WidgetSucks?

When I first came across WidgetBucks.com in mid-2007, I was pretty excited. They were doing new things with advert presentations using interactive flash banners. I could easily integrate their ads as small widgets into the sides of our sites, and it seemed like they would likely produce better than traditional non-interactive ads. They offered a sign up bonus, once you earned 50.00 they would add a $20.00 bonus to your payment. I thought it was worth a shot to test them and let it run up to $50.00 in earnings, where I’d break down the numbers and see how they really compared with the other networks I had been running in the same positions.

After about 2 weeks of running several ad sizes in different positions, total earnings were around $7.00 compared with what would have normally earned 150-200.00. After realizing it would take months to reach $50.00 I ripped those ads down faster than a Palin supporter yanking Obama signs out of yards on Election Eve.

A little over a year later, I am once again reviewing WidgetBucks site and ad layouts. It looks like they have made some major progress. I have read a few places that certain members of their team were replaced because of quality control issues with payouts, etc. It seems like a majority of their original publishers are still avoiding them. I’m going to chew off all my fingernails and then decide if I should give these guys another chance to rip me a new one.

Why CPA is a good fit for advertisers.

CPA-based advertising can deliver your customers to you and guarantee that you won’t pay a dime unless until you make a sale. In the highly competitive and expensive world of Internet advertising, this is a rare bit of insurance for your company?s advertising budget.

CPA advertising is also an effective way of reaching new customers without having to expend unnecessary advertising resources. You will be able to set not only the action that you will pay for, but also the amount you are willing to pay for this action.

AdBrite stats wrong. Possibly worst stats ever?

Adbrite, the golden child of the founder of F*ckedcompany.com (which now doesn’t work anymore), must have the most inaccurate statistics of any program I have ever seen. You ever notice if you are using network ads, you get 90% less clicks recorded , however, on your “Ad Summery Page” (the page that advertisers look at) it will say a 90% higher number than your daily stats show you getting credit for?

Example: I had an adzone that was showing “clicks per 7 day period: 290″ on the adbrite public listing of my zone. But my stats which were only running network ads were crediting me with 2 or 3 hits/day. As soon as the adzone would sell, the stats would jump up to 30-40 clicks/day.

If you use Adbrite make sure to set alternative campaigns if minimum prices can’t be met. They do pay on time (paid on time for 2+ years, 1 of only 3 to achieve this that i have used) but I wouldn’t recommend using them. Potential advertisers from your site often get sold network ad place when they click the “Your Ad Here” link on the adbrite zones. It’s better to just setup a free shopping cart using paypal and sell your banner spaces flat rate, directly on your site.

Since I am still using them for some small scale ad zones I better stop ranting before they cancel my account.