So there was a Blogging As Business symposium at BloggerCon XXIVII, and one of the monetization ideas, of course, was to sell BlogAds. I’ve been happy with BlogAds, but I do wonder whether that’s the long term answer.
My question is, as more and more sites add BlogAds has the interface and model broken down?
1) If you’ve ever tried to order BlogAds, you know that interface to find sites to advertise on is awkward. Another issue is the variable rates between sites, InstaPundit and Talking Points Memo are several hundered dollars a week while other sites are as low as $10 a week. Wouldn’t a cost per impression be better from a buying standpoint?
2) If you’re selling BlogAds, how do you get noticed in a sea of sites now listed on BlogAds? Also the BlogAd format is pretty rigid, and can take up a significant amount of screen real estate. Wouldn’t the option to use different form factor be benificial?
I’m interested in your opinion.
Very interesting questions.
I sometimes wonder if I undercharge on blogads, but the I feel bad asking for more, which just means that either I am a really lousy business person or I have no idea what my site is worth. Or a combo of the two.
That’s the thing, I guess the value of your blogads is whatever the market will bear, but your rate is dependent (to an extent) on what the top 5 sites are charging. Who is to say that their pricing is right?
I, on the other hand, have avoided all of these problems by the mere fact that I can’t seem to get them to respond to anything. I signed up over a month ago and haven’t heard a peep.
I am one of the $10 low-ballers. In fact, in setting our own price, we DO approximate a cost per impression. Or if we’re smart, we do. Alternatively, if I have a low-traffic, focused blog (eg Baseball), I might attract advertisers who are willing to pay more than a generic cost-per-impression.
2) “A sea of blogs.” Yes, only larger blogs will get noticed. That’s life.
“Screen real estate.” Seems comparable to a lot of other stuff that fits into a 150? pixel column.
Something catchy in the ad summary, perhaps?
Personally, I find them rather annoying. I realize that larger bloggers are trying to defray the cost of their blog, but they annoy me. Especially the ads with large photos. I think they detract from the beauty of a lot of blogs that have added them.
What happened to the comment permalinks?!
They’re in the inline comments. Not sure why they’re not in the popups too…
I found signing up for blogads very buggy. Things didn’t work particularly well, and it took several attempts. Now, even though I’m theoretically “in the system”, I don’t show up in their listings yet, so people who don’t already know about my blog wouldn’t know they could advertise there. The only way to advertise on my site would be to enter blogads directly through my site.
I’m going on 3 weeks.
Considering the massive amount of revenue that’s involved with this program, you’d think they’d be a little more on the ball with the tech details.
So far I could not be happier with blogads — assuming I get paid this week (they’re late). Well, they undercount my traffic too which I find a touch irritating. But on the other hand, I’m charging a good price, filling up my ads (I do a max of 5), and getting repeat customers.
I wouldn’t mind a smoother interface though and personally, I think they need to put together some sort of package deal for the small blogs where an advertiser might be able to get 10 small blogs for $75 a week (with the money split between them) or something similar. If you’re in that $10 range, you’re blending in with so many other blogs, I think it would be hard to get noticed.
Overall, I think Blogads is not too shabby. I think they’re going to do really, really, well as long as they keep upgrading the site and make sure to pay out….
What makes you think they are under counting? Blogads are served with JavaScript, so every time a JavaScript capable browser loads a page that has blogads, it’ll get counted. Spiders and browsers without JavaScript will show up in your server log, but not be counted as a page view, so some amount of disparity is normal.
The format does seem a bit rigid, in terms of font and color… although maybe people just aren’t taking advantage of what customization is available.
The most annoying things is animated GIF images. If I were running BlogAds, I wouldn’t accept any of those.
Woo hoo. I’m finally added to the list.
Now, I will wait for the money to pour in.