Showing posts with label is Adgitize any good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label is Adgitize any good. Show all posts

Adgitize Ads - Inside the Mind of the Seasoned Clicker

06 April 2011 Comments
Advertising your blog in the Adgitize network is a surefire way to up page views and visitors to your blog site every single day that the ad is active. 

Kitty says pick me!
How do you make ads clickable?
(photo courtesy of re_lepage)
The question "by how much" depends however on many variables: your niche, your content, the first impression your badge makes and your competitors. 

Some members get hundreds to thousands of visitors a day, while others settle with less than a hundred.


Internal Rivalry

While you can't go please everyone with your chosen niche or content selection, you can do something to create a positive first impression about your blog site... and maybe even to make your competitors bite the dust.  

So, how do you make your ad more clickable? Are you wooing site visitors to your blog the right way? What makes people click your ads? Why should visitors pick your badge from the group?

There are two kinds of clickers you would want to woo: the seasoned clicker and the fresh visitor. This blog post is the first of two parts. Today, I will take you inside the mind of the seasoned clicker.
  

Things that Compel the Seasoned Clicker to Click an Ad

The Adgitize insiders would not care too much about how your badge looks like. Well, on the first few days they might... Over time though, these people will pay more attention to the ease of experience that your site offers for blog hopping within the network. 

Adam Smith's invisible hand theory is very much alive in the network, and the worst thing you can do is to make things difficult for the clicker. The factors that will influence the seasoned clicker love your site or hate it include:

  • the loading speed of your site

    Does your blog load faster than 10 seconds? The shorter the wait, the better. Teecup Limited has a recorded load time of 1.97 to 2.03 seconds, which Alexa considers to be slow. About 68 percent of other blogs reportedly load faster.

  • the availability of ads

    Which type of Adgitize ads are you showing? If your site is only displaying the affiliate badge instead of the regular ad groups, chances are you will get fewer clickers and clicks.

    Site visits and blog badge clicks are assigned points. If you break or hamper the continuity loop, your ad could be earmarked for a possible boycott. Dead-end sites are highly unpopular with the clickers.

  • the positioning of ads

    Are the Adgitize ads placed on the upper fold? If the length of your blog is about 6 mouse scrolls or pagedowns long, the group of badges should be visible within the first 3 mouse clicks.

    Interestingly, a handful of seasoned clickers also scroll down to look for unvisited badges to click. For the most part though, nobody wants to scroll down and hunt for that cleverly blended Adgitize badge. Every second wasted is equivalent to points lost.

  • the freshness of your content

    How often do you update your site? If you intend to advertise your blog on Adgitize, then you might want to pump out content on a daily basis. The community has a preferred publisher program where regular members have to visit at least 100 blogs a day in order to qualify for extra points and extra exposure.

    These frequent guests tend to notice which sites are growing stale and which ones are worth repeat visits and comments. You significantly decrease your chances of getting the online audience hooked to your site when you neglect to update your blog.
     
  • the overall impression that you or your blog site creates

    Is your site annoying? Is it reflective of your repulsive personality, shallow thinking or lack of originality? Does your blog cause browsers to crash? Will it harass the visitor with pop ads, automatic music players and eye sore?

    A yes to all these questions will quash your chances for a positive first impression and successful blog site advertising. Just try to place yourself in the shoes of the site visitor. What irks you might irritate the readers even more.

I wrote these things from the perspective of an Adgitize insider. On my first few weeks with the network, I found it very difficult to click 100 ads. Over time, I grew methodical with my blog hopping schedule. I became a seasoned clicker, made a few friends along the way and will continue to ruthlessly flesh out the click-worthy blogs from the poor ones on my daily rounds.

My point: Some ugly ads turn out to be very clickable when they are able to make up for the poor aesthetics with excellent user experience. All it takes is some familiarity with the blog site to look past the superficial flaws of a badge.*

Adgitize for Bloggers - Why Ugly Ads Get Noticed

05 April 2011 Comments
It's so easy to tell a blog site apart from a regular website. The former is often smeared with widgets and badges. Most widgets link back to directory listings and are of passable quality. Majority of the badges are downright ugly though.

Ugly Betty and ugly ads
Some ads are like Ugly Betty. They still sell.
(photo courtesy of Ace Photos)
Why oh why would a blogger bother to clutter his precious blog space with so many ho-hum badges? Last month, I published the post Top 10 Contest Sites for Creative People on the premise that powerful visuals are essential to getting an online audience hooked longer in your site. Won't showing some unsightly badges yield the opposite effect then?

My fascination with the "staying power" of some aesthetically challenged ads led me to a site called Adgitize. The ads coming from Adgitize all sport a distinctive text in green at the bottom. The text reads, "Adgitize Me - Advertising for Blogs."

Adgitize is really more of a blog advertising network than a regular website. It includes a forum frequented by bloggers. 

The more I learned about Adgitize from the members, the more I understood why ugly ads get noticed and why the ads are not going to get axed very soon.


4 Reasons Behind the Ugly Betty Phenomenon

  • There may be little face value on the badges, but Adgitize is a gold mine for improved traffic and Alexa ranking. When you advertise your blog, your badge is rotated within the network of over 17,000 registered blogs. The surge in traffic, page views, and unique visitors as well as the dramatic improvement in your Alexa rating somewhat downplays the emphasis on aesthetics.

  • Ugly or not, the badge is a source of pocket change. Take away the ads and you lose out on points that are convertible to either advertising credits or cash paid to you at the end of every month. That's right. The site pays you a tinsy winsy amount for advertising space, and rewards you for your regular blogging activities.

    Isn't this neat? Whenever you update your blog and visit other blog sites within the Adgitize network (via the badges), you get a thumb's up in the form of points.
     
  • The owners of amateur-looking badges tend to stick to Adgitize rules when it comes to displaying the ads and making it easy for the network members to go blog hopping for points, credit or cash within the network. Some really good-looking badges lead to what Adgitize members would call as "dead-end" sites: blogs that don't display any ad blocks. Unless dead-end sites are of the niche that interest me, I don't want to waste my time on them either.

  • Blog advertisers are enjoying the comfort zone. Perhaps they are unaware of the untapped potential of better badges or maybe they share this mentality: If a so-so badge is already achieving what an excellent badge normally does, why push it?
  
A Touch of Authenticity

As you can tell from the ad block labeled "Featured Blog Sites" to your right, I did sign up with Adgitize. There is so much room for improvement when it comes to ad quality and aesthetics... but it looks like the ugly ads are here to stay... and for reasons that I fully understand. 

Would you sign up with a network that sounds too good to be true? Maybe not. The going quality of the ads hint that there are human beings behind the blogs. I like this touch of authenticity. The individuals are probably good bloggers but not very creative designers. 

For all it's worth, give Adgitize a try. Your biggest challenge will be how to make some really awful "off" ads blend nicely on your theme - that is... if you care about aesthetics as much as I do.*

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