I stumbled across something yesterday that I found interesting, and even though I my knowledge and experience with it is somewhat limited, I felt it was worth passing on.
EVERYONE is on the hunt for better monetization options…and many/most of us have tried all the various options out there: AdSense, YPN, AuctionAds, WidgetBucks, AdBrite…ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Some of these are great…some not so much. From extremely poor click-though rates to extremely poor payouts…from unwieldy ad formats to godawful ad serving (yes, AuctionAds & ShoppingAds… I’m talkin’-a’-you…), this monetization game can be very frustrating. And many of the problems are at the system level…i.e., beyond the publisher’s control. So I’m always on the lookout for a better mousetrap.
Project Wonderful appears to be a new approach to monetization. Where prices and payouts on many of the “big league” options are hidden behind layers of excuses and mystery…with PW, even a visitor to your site knows how much someone is paying for your ad space. Is this good or bad? In my eyes, it’s a good thing. I think most people who believe in their own sites are willing to drop a little coin to advertise it…and yet, it can be scary to ask about rates when you fear that you wouldn’t be able to afford them anyway…fearing that you may alienate someone by asking, etc. So, I like the openness. It actually functions as an auction system…where you know what someone else is currently paying…you can choose to try to outbid them (prices, from what I’ve seen so far, are always per day…so the commitment is not high either way) and you’re given plenty of info about traffic to each site in terms of pageviews.
On the advertising side: It reminds me of AdBrite, but with better integration…and nowhere near as many sleazy sites clogging up the system. So far, it appears many of the sites where you can advertise are web comics….but I haven’t gone very deep with it. So, if you’re only targeting, say, folks interested in blogging or making money online…is it worth doing? I can’t really say. What I do know, though, is that is doesn’t cost you much to find out. I placed orders for ads on two sites last night. The first ad was active on the site immediately. Assuming I haven’t been outbid yet…you can see my ad here…on the left side of the page, well above the fold, under the heading “Blaugh Premium Sponsor!”. I like the spirit of the comic…I feel it’s a good match for the target audience of my clean humor site, and to me, it’s worth the 50 cents a day that I’m currently paying to see what kind of traffic and exposure (and hopefully, RSS/email subscribers) it can bring me.
On the publishing side: I don’t have much info to share yet. I am intending to add some well-placed ad space to some of my sites. And I’ll probably be breaking up a larger space so that several smaller ads can be easily visible, rather than a skyscraper, etc. I only applied last night…so my publisher account hasn’t been approved yet. I hope I’ll be able to manually approve the advertisers/ads. If not, that may cause a problem for my clean humor site. But there appears to be a delay built-in…either to give existing advertisers a chance to bid up, or more likely, a chance for the publisher to approve or deny.
I haven’t seen huge dollars represented in the process here…but using their search tool, it appears to me that the highest current bid for any of their existing advertisers is $65 per day…on a site with a half-million page views.
So, to me, it’s an interesting cheap advertising model…and it’s also an interesting approach to monetization, with all parties’ cards on the table. I like it so far, and I hope it succeeds, because I think this could be something worth building on for the future.
This certainly looks interesting. I just did a little browsing on their site. One thing that’s questionable is the stats they provide. I’d be interested to know how the claimed traffic is calculated. Of coarse Alexa is never an extremely accurate tool, but if you look at many of the sites in their network which claim to have thousands and thousands of visitors a day, their Alexa rankings are in the millions.
Like I said Alexa is of coarse not always accurate, but I believe in many cases it’s somewhat accurate. I’d just want to look into those stats a bit more before going much further with them.
Definitely a nice find though. I wonder why there are so many comic/humor related sites in the network?
I’m so in love with Project Wonderful. For a $5 deposit in my account I was able to start advertising my blogs, and still earn enough money to make keeping their ads on two of my sites.
It’s not a perfect system, I agree that the stats may be skewed but there’s more control for both advertisers and publishers.
Josh,
I suspect that it’s because they are sites that are difficult to monetize thru other means. My clean humor site, MadeMeLaugh.com, has a fair amount of traffic and a lot of good quality content. It’s not uncommong for someone to spend 20 minutes or more on that site enjoying the content. However, the CTR is so small that it kills my AdSense stats…so I go with other options.
I can’t vouch for the stats one way or the other. Not yet, at least.
Hey Wendy,
Great to hear from you again!
Glad to hear it’s working for you. I just put up some blocks on that humor site today, and we’ll see whether anyone takes the bait and starts advertising there.
Thanks for the info — I think I’ll give it a shot. I’m starting to monetize my blog and it might worth it for me, considering I have a personal blog.
That sounds like a good idea. I’ll give you feedback !
Thanks for this. I’m always looking for more and better monetization streams - looks like this one could be good - we’ll see.
Great read sir…and you got me very interested in it ;). Granted I’m not really at the point yet to utilize this but it sounds like a great alternative to conventional ones like Adsense. I like the open system too, but do you think it could ever lead to a site owner artificially bidding up his ad much like on eBay? Just a thought but definitely worth a shot.
Matt, I suspect that, as long as there are systems, there will be abusers. For now, the amounts are not large enough to inspire that kind of thing, I don’t think. Could happen. But I must admit, I’m enjoying having advertisers on my sites that want to be there…and making some pennies here and there.
It looks like Blogpico outbid you at .60 now. I really like this model, I signed up and am going to try it myself. Thanks for the great post!
I frequently find myself outbid, PD. In fact…I get way too many emails from them on the subject (update: this is now fixed. isn’t it amazing what you can do when you invest 30 seconds to solve one of those niggling little irritations!
). But, what I’m doing with it now is just as Wendy suggested. I threw a few bucks in to get started…and now, I just reinvest whatever I make from ads on my site to advertise on other sites. I haven’t aggressively worked at making money with it. But I do love some of the sites that use it, and even if the money isn’t big enough to make it worth my time, it still makes for a fun advertising option. Right now, I have ads running on a number of ads, including the Project Wonderful home page…sometimes. Other times, I’m outbid…but that’s fine. I don’t take it all too seriously. I still think it’s a terrific idea.
Looks like a new option for monetization. I will check out. But I prefer paid blogging sites instead of these types. My best earner is payperpost.
Hi Chuck,
this is certainly different from AdBrite altogether. However, what do you think about the difference between ‘project wonderful’ and classified ads in particular?
I was thinking about this but saw your post and figured if I could stick to one or test both at the same time…
Vern
Hi Vern,
I supposed it depends on what kind of classified ads you’re referring to. These PW ads tend to be very colorful and make me a lot more interested in clicking on them to find out more.
I think you can test both at the same time and get a feel for them. But if you are trying for some serious level of testing, you may want to do them one at a time.
c-
Hi Chuck,
thanks for your advice. I thought about focusing on one at a time and with this at least I could track my results. Given that I’m fairly green in classfied advertising.
Merry Christmas,
Vern