To deal with the money going out of my account to pay bloggers, I have decided to hit the streets and contact companies that I think would do well to advertise on this site.

I started by looking at my competitors. Most of which seem to be using affiliate banners, or cost per action banners on their blogs. A few seemed to be using AdSense or something similar, and so only a very small amount of advertising positions seemed to be direct advertisement placements.

I have advertised this site on a few other sites, of both friends and competitors to try to build up my brand, and I think it worked masterfully, but finding companies to now advertise on this site hasn’t gone as well.

So What’s the Problem?

The reason companies aren’t seeking out this blog to advertise on it is because of a variety of reasons. One issue that might be limiting the number of private ad sales on this blog is that Xfep still isn’t a thought leader in the niche it covers, despite placing fairly high up in the Top 100 list for making money online blogs.

Another issue that might be hindering the number of advertisements on this site is that my advertising page is all text. Most people are very visual in nature, and despite describing advertising positions, all they see is a jumble of text and move on. This is something I am planning on fixing in the very near future.

One of the final reasons I will throw out there is that advertisers don’t see the value in advertising on this site. There are so many other competing blogs, and there aren’t many products that would fit with the type of visitors that this blog brings in. Things like blog design, search engine optimization, coding, and other blogger related products or services will work well, but outside that focused group, the type of audience just wouldn’t match.

I have priced the advertisements on this blog fairly aggressively for the amount of traffic I get, and have slowly built up a list of products, services, blogs, web hosts, and whatnot that would benefit from advertising on here. The revenue that is generated with this blog goes to pay the salaries of other bloggers that I employ (so now you all know that I am not getting rich off this site or anything).

The Big Question

So, I guess now the big question is, will I be successful in finding advertisers for the open inventory I have, or will I have to fill it with affiliate banners and CPA advertisements like most of my competitors?

Originally posted on April 30, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

Recently, Darren Rowse, a blogger I highly respect put up a post about AdSense Secrets 4.0, a product by Joel Comm. I won’t link to his product because of reasons I will outline below.

The post talked about how great the product is and how inexpensive it is at only ten dollars and like most other Make Money Online blogs, Darren was promoting Joel’s new product and didn’t mention the incredible catch.

In what seems to me like an evil scheme, buying the book also means you sign up for a thirty dollar per month membership which after purchasing the book, you must cancel if you don’t want any further charges. Joel did this knowing that a large percentage wouldn’t see that they were subscribing to a monthly program and a small percentage would forget to cancel, as such is the case with most membership programs. It is just a huge profit grab.

Of course, just like everyone else, Darren includes his affiliate link to the product, and I think that Darren, like others, despite updating the post, deserve a huge thumbs down today for promoting such an underhanded technique.

Here’s a piece of the updated text:

3. In signing up for this product there are a few ‘catches’ that I didn’t realize. As I mentioned in the post the long page is very salesy and as I encouraged you to skip through it – I skipped through it. This was a mistake on my part and I apologize for this. Please do read the sales copy and understand that there’s a membership program/monthly report with this that costs $29.95 a month which you are subscribed to when you sign up for this. You can unsubscribe at any time if you don’t want to be in it. I’m a little surprised and disappointed to see Joel doing this to be honest but it is mentioned in the sales page (see the ‘free’ bonuses).

Mark from 45n5.com deserves huge kudos for shedding light on this atrocity, so please check out his post revealing the shady marketing tactic.

Don’t Buy AdSense Secrets

Even if the product is the greatest in the world, you shouldn’t buy it as you will only be promoting the type of marketing that surrounds it. How would you feel if every product you bought, from WordPress theme to your computer operating system came with a membership that was three times the price per month of the original purchase?

Originally posted on April 19, 2008 @ 10:51 pm

So Jim Kukral wrote up an interesting post, and recorded an even better video that talks about advertising networks that have advertising and marketing teams that suck. I suggest checking it out before you read this post, as I reference it a fair bit.

I work as Head of Marketing for Splashpress Media, and while I agree that Jim is right about advertising networks, as a blog network, I think our marketing team, which is me and a some other people in Splashpress Media, work hard to continue to market our brands, and I think we are doing well.

Advertising and blogging networks are very similar in nature. We want to create a unique business that attracts attention and mindshare.

One thing he doesn’t bring up is what would work for marketing and advertising. Marketing requires very creative people to think outside the box, which is cliche, but very important. The difficulty with marketing is creating a personalized feel for potential clients, while not devoting all of our time and attention to slowly building up a group of people interested in working with us on things, one at a time.

The blogosphere, and the businesses connected to it, is huge, and it can be difficult to make money on the personalization. If I can get one percent of a thousand people every day, versus one person per day through personal interaction, I think casting the wide net is usually the better approach.

Again though, I have to agree with Jim that, if you have a high level potential client, “do the work!” With important people that have a fair bit of money and experience at their disposal, it becomes all about that “personal” touch, or that personal interaction. You aren’t just selling the brand, the product, but instead are selling yourself.

The whole video is very worthwhile to watch, no matter what business you are marketing or advertising for. Check it out on JimKukral.com.

Originally posted on March 24, 2008 @ 1:15 pm