Apr
2
Are you using Project Wonderful to earn income on your blog? I recently started using it on my restaurant blog, and I’ve had some mixed results, but it has the potential to bring in a steady stream of income for your blog. For those of you with newer blogs, or are just getting started monetizing your blog, it may be a very nice alternative to consider. It is easy to set up, and you can start earning money right away.
One of the things I like about Project Wonderful is that you can create ad boxes and advertising campaigns for multiple sites from a single account. You won’t have to create a separate account for each of your blogs. That really simplifies things.
Once you sign up and create your profile, you will be able to create an ad box for your site. Once the box is created you will be able to place it anywhere on your site, so you will want to think through the placement and what size will work best before you create the box. The ad box setup gives you a lot of options for size, number of ads displayed in each box, the way the ads are displayed. You can set it up as a square, banner, or skyscraper.
One thing you will want to pay attention to is setting the minimum bid. You can set a minimum of $0.00 or higher. The good part about setting your minimum to $0.00 is that you will get ads on your site right away. Without ads displayed, there will be a “Your Ad Here” box displayed, which doesn’t speak well of your ability to deliver for advertisers. On the other hand, a zero-bid allows other sites to advertise on your site for free.
One caution about creating your ad box: Once your ad box goes live, and there are ads placed in it, you will not be able to make changes to the size, configuration, or minimum bid amounts. If you want to make changes you will have to create a new ad box and replace your existing box.
Project Wonderful displays ads on a highest bidder basis. Whoever bids the most will have their ad displayed on your site. The bid placed is how much they will pay to have their ad displayed for one day.
Let’s assume you have an ad box that allows to ads to be displayed, with a minimum bid of $0.00. Buyer #1 places a bid with a minimum bid of $0.00 and a maximum bid of $0.02. Because they are the only bidder they will pay $0.00 (the minimum). Buyer #2 places a bid with a minimum of $0.01 and a max of $0.02. Their ad is displayed at $0.01, and Buyer #1 is still displayed at $0.00. Buyer #3 then places a bid with a minimum bid of $0.02 and a max bid of $0.05. The ads on your site would now display Buyer #1 at $0.02 (which was the Buyer #2 max bid), and Buyer #3 at $0.02.
If those bid numbers look low, well, they are. But it is a good indication of what to expect if your blog doesn’t have much traffic. I have seen more popular sites that are charging more than $5 per day for each ad displayed, but you need to be able to deliver traffic for that much money. Even the Project Wonderful homepage is only getting $0.80 per ad.
When a buyer is considering whether to place an ad on your site they will have access to Project Wonderful’s traffic stats for your site. When you place the ad widget on your site, PW will be able to track your traffic count. They will display that count over the past 30-days for any potential advertiser. If that traffic count is low, the amount they are willing to bid is low
For Bloggers that are just getting started, this means earnings of a few cents per day, but as your traffic count grows, so will your earnings.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with Project Wonderful. What has worked (or not worked) for you? Please share your comments so we can all benefit for our shared wisdom.
I use it. However I mainly use it for advertising rather than making money. The value is using the money you have to advertise on other blogs in my eyes
That’s the way I am using it right now, as well. Until my traffic counts get high enough to generate significant income, I will continue to use it for free advertising.
Hi Jim, I would like to try this Project Wonderful, but do I have to create a banner to have displayed on other sites? If, so, how do I do that?
Ria,
Yes, you do have to create your own ad, but you can do that in any graphics editor. It should be a 125 x 125 pixel jpg, gif, or png picture. You upload it to the Project Wonderful site, and fill in the information about what site it is linking to, and Project Wonderful takes care of the rest.
Thanks for your help Jim, I’ll create one right away then!
I agree with Rhys, using PW for advertising is much better than using it for making money.
Setting up a campaign is very easy and you can configure it so that you can automatically reach blogs within your niche.
I haven’t had much luck with it as a money maker, but I am considering using it for advertising as others have said.
Very descriptive, thank you. I’ve held off up to now as I’ve gotten very mixed reviews…usually just why I hate or why I like, but you went into good detail, as did the commenter’s before me with the advertising ideas.
Thanks!
Yeah I did received few emails from some webmasters asking me to sell the ads space to them, but I never accept their offer. Just don’t want any PR leak, and I don’t think I can make big money from this
Hey Jim, thanks for the PW link. I’ve never even heard about it. I think I’ll sign up on both ends and see what it looks like.
Nice information Jim.
It’s a great way to monetize the blog when it is new and the traffic is very low.
Michael Taylor