Project Wonderful invitation

[Pam Hawk]

Over the past couple of weeks I've seen more and more references to Project Wonderful. I checked it out this week and was pleasantly surprised by how it works. After a little clicking and fiddling around, I've got PW ads posted on three of my blogs, and have even had a tiny little bidding war over one ad spot. Ok, $.02 per day beat out $.01 per day, but it's more than the big $0 I had with AdWords.

So here's what I've got going on: From May 12-16 I'm participating in a blog party called Mommyfest. Honestly, it's a little bit too much "fluffy bunny" for my tastes, but it's a networking opportunity for ladies in my demographic (very generically speaking, they are females age 25-65), and won't take up a lot of time, so I'm doing it.

The Mommyfest is affiliated with http://mommycommunity.com/ and http://themommycommunity.ning.com/
I'm trying to get a rough number of her projected participants so I can forecast how much traffic my blog will get, but at this point I really don't know. I have emailed Marie, the organizer, and will post her reply as soon as I can.

On my Pass It On Plates blog, I've got some PW ad space as a banner above the start of my content, and two more spots on the sidebar. I want to keep these spaces filled with ads over the duration of the week and keeping them filled at this point is more important to me than earning ad revenue. Here's where I'd love your help.

I have both ad locations set up with a $0.00 minimum to secure the ad spots, and PW will let you place your ad there for free for up to two days or until outbid. When the paid bid expires, any free ad bidding on the space takes over again. I'd like to keep the ad space filled through the duration of the blog party, and so at the very least I will need a steady flow of bids for free space. There is the option for me to place my own ads in this spot when no other ads have secured it, but since I don't have anything else to advertise on this particular blog space I won't be using my own ads.

I expect a nice increase in traffic to this blog over the next week, and ads in these spots should get a lot of views. If you would like to put your ad in one of these spots you may want to have some graphics ready, either 468x60 for the banner above the content, or 234x60 for the half banner spots in the sidebar. Either graphic needs to be no larger than 100K.

One note: you can set the dates you want your ad to appear, so if the spot is filled by one ad, you can either schedule your ad to appear when theirs expires or you can outbid them.

Let me know if you have any questions, or just go check out the space and post your ad if you're interested. Thanks for the help!
-Pam

[Spincus]

This is a fantastic opportunity to be on a site that is expecting higher traffic for a period of time. I will raise my personal priority to look into this service. Thank you so much for posting this highly detailed marketing analysis of what you are doing.

This seems like something we as a group should really understand and test. Great!

The down side is that you need a blog that you control add insertion to be able to take advantage of one of the two sides of PW, sales and add. Everyone here on considerations can add the PW widget to their blog spaces here. Ask me if you want to know how, and want to do this or add other links, like blog rings to your site here, technorati widgets, and can not figure out where or how to do it.

[Pam Hawk]

Ok, it's been 5 days now and I've had some ads on all my blogs. I've also earned 7 cents from advertisers bidding on the ad space available on these blogs. I know it's not much, but my overall traffic is low and I'm still new, so the ad space does not have much monetary value yet.

On the other hand, the a couple of ads I've placed (which have cost me no more than 2 cents per day per ad) have been viewed by 78 unique visitors over the past two days. This has cost me a grand total of 7 cents, so I'm breaking even.

PW provides complete stats on each ad and campaign and they have a lot of tools to help me find places to advertise and analyze my results.

Their initial users were comics writers/readers, and these pages have impressive stats and ad prices, but the crafting community seems to be starting to take over. I'm still exploring the other kinds of blogs and sites offering ad space. To find these sites, I'm typing in keywords that correspond with my target demographic, which includes women in a specific age/income bracket - words like finance, real estate, small business, etc. I've got over 250 sites to poke through and see what might be a good match. Meanwhile, I have a campaign set up to target sites with specific traffic stats, keywords, and ad prices, and my ads have been automatically bidding on about 12 to 15 different sites. Sometimes my bids win, other times they are outbid. While at my day job in a call center, I watch this between calls and I admit this is pretty interesting to watch.

Overall, the one thing I'm least satisfied about is my own ads. I don't like how they look. I'm experimenting with text only ads, which I design right on the PW site, but I need to take some time and create my own ads with color and photos.

At this moment, I still have ad space available for free on my blog http://passitonplatesblog.blogspot.com/. It's free to sign up for Project Wonderful, and my ad spaces are still free. Setting up your ad is very simple and if you have your image already made (468x60 for the banner above the content, or 234x60 for the half banner spots) it will take you 10-15 minutes to sign in, find my blog, and place your ads.

To find my blog at Project Wonderful, just click on "Place a new bid" and type in these keywords: plate regifting

I would love to see your ads in these spaces, especially now that my traffic is increasing. Please check it out and consider trying it.
Thanks!

[Spincus]

i promise I am following you on this one. Nice numbers, anything less than .01 per click is fantastic on cost from what I can tell.

Thanks for the solid update. I will be doing this very shortly. Trying to find time. lol

[Pam Hawk]

Perhaps I should clarify...
I intended to say that the ad for my plates blog has been viewed by 78 unique visitors for about 7 cents. I just dug a little deeper and discovered something else. (I'm still learning how to read and understand all this info, so bear with me.)

I went back to take a look and was surprised by the current (and updated) stats. Now I see a total of 403 views, 307 of them unique. That's a lot more than I initially thought.

Here's a screenshot. I have a small monitor so couldn't get everything, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what's going on.

These stats are for ads I've placed on sites with the keyword "food." My opening bid is $.01/day with a max of $.05/day. My 'cautious' bidding style means PW will automatically proxy bid (like eBay) in one cent increments until I've outbid my competition, up to my $.05 max. I've got ads on four different sites at the moment (and this can change at any time, due to constant bidding and proxy counter-bidding.)

When I started I gave myself a $5 budget to play with to get the hang of things. This is offset by any profits made by selling adspace to other PW users. I've spent a total of $.09 at this point.

[Spincus]

incredible numbers. truly staggering price per click. This is a must do. You might consider uping your cost per add if you can tighten your key words. Get food and cookies in for example.

[Spincus]

well your minimum bid is now at .10 for your add space. oh well,

[Spincus]

I placed a couple of bids. I bid on your site and am listed. :) A $5.00 test in total. pretty cheap.

[Spincus]

I started a blog post on my experiences.

http://considerations.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2027880%3ABlog...

[Pam Hawk]

I just posted an entire series about this on my blog, http://passitonplatesblog.blogspot.com/

The series starts on August 15 with Do You Use Project Wonderful and there are about 5 posts following it. The series covers a little on how it works and a lot on how you can make it work for you, from selling advertising spaces to creating and buying ads on other peoples' sites. I've even included some stats from an unrelated ad campaign I ran during the series.

Lots of useful info. Please go check it out!
Thanks,
Pam