Ditching AdBrite For MIVA
I never expected to make any real money from this blog or the tools I release related to it. This is just a place for me to vent and share ideas. If I wanted to make money I could put as many ad platforms as I could fit on the page so that you had to strain your eyes to see the content around the ads.
My goal with advertising on this blog is to try different forms of advertising. It’s so easy to get your Adsense account, throw up the code, and not give advertising a second thought. This is what I’ve been doing for a while now and it was time to experiment with different ad networks to see what each had to offer.
The first network I tried was AdBrite. What I liked about AdBrite is the different channels it provided for making money. I could sell links on the site, get paid by people clicking on the run-of-network ads, or get paid from CPM ads. I assumed that AdBrite would manage all this for me and show the best performing ads.
I never sold a link (not that I expected to in the one month this blog has existed), and I was getting about $.10 per day from click throughs and $.01 per day from CPM. Keep in mind that DIRZAP was getting 1,000 page views per day with a leaderboard in a very prominent position during this time.
Although $.11 for 1K+ pageviews is horrible by anyone’s estimation, it didn’t bother me too much. Like I said, I never expected to make anything from this blog or DIRZAP so I just let it run for a few weeks. I thought that AdBrite would eventually start paying off once my sites got more exposure and people started buying links.
However, AdBrite started showing interstitial ads on DIRZAP even though I had my ad group set up to not show them. Even worse, I wasn’t getting any money from those ads. Topping it all off, I sent an email to the AdBrite team about this early Friday morning and it’s now Tuesday and I haven’t received a reply about what I consider a critical issue.
So I finally decided to ditch AdBrite and try something new. I signed up for an account at MIVA because I’ve heard some rumors about them lately and I wanted to give them a try.
I wanted to get the AdBrite ads down ASAP because I was never going to see a cent that I earned from them, so while I was waiting for my MIVA approval I built a little ad network of my own to show affiliate links in the sidebar. I also began showing these affiliate links on DIRZAP.
Now that my MIVA account is approved I’m split-testing MIVA’s content match ads (similar to adsense) in the sidebar with my affiliate links 50/50. I’m also using MIVA’s inline ads.
I know that inline ads can sometimes be a real eyesore, so I only have them on pages that show individual posts. Most of my loyal readers either browse the front page or view the posts in an RSS reader so it shouldn’t bother them at all. I’m hoping these ads monetize the search engine traffic that I’m starting to get.
I won’t be showing MIVA ads on DIRZAP because I like having those ads open in a new window which is something I can control with my affiliate links.
Today is day 1 with MIVA. We’ll see how it goes at least for a few weeks and then I might try something else.
If there is another ad network you either recommend or would like to learn more about, let me know in the comments and I’ll consider it. No affiliate links, please.
Related Posts
Trying Out AdBrite
DIRZAP Is Faster Than Ever
