This morning I got an email from Text-Links-Ads saying they sold a link on my blog. I signed up for Text-Link-Ads a while ago but have completely forgotten about them. I tried selling my own advertising on this blog but wasn’t very successful at it. The three links under “Sponsored Link†were really freebies. I was hoping to land a real sale if an advertiser saw some links had sold already. Since that didn’t happen, I’ve removed that section.
It seems most advertisers prefer to buy advertising through a 3rd party network like Google. I believe the reason advertisers don’t like to deal directly with a blog is because it takes too much time. By using Google or another network (like Text-Link-Ads), an advertiser can easily browse for a ton of sites that match their requirements, and with one simple click, order up some advertising.
Often times, an advertiser ends up spending more this way. For example, the “Business Intelligence†link (direct below the top 468 Google ad) cost Cognos $200.00 per month. Had they came to me directly, they could have got it for $150.00. I found out what Congnos paid after doing a search for my blog on Text-Link-Ads. I think it’s great that they sold a link for me. There are 8 link spots available. If Text-Link-Ads can sell all the spots, that’ll bring in an extra $800.00 net per month.
Today’s text link sale got me into tweaking mode. I spent most of the day trying to figure ways to monetize the advertising bonanza the blog was enjoying. That’s when I decided to hit FeedBurner. Many webmasters use FeedBurner to handle their RSS but very few know they also run the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN). The FAN supplies advertising to my full feed RSS. What I wasn’t aware of was FAN can also serve ads directly to my blog. Once I found that out, I instantly removed the TTZ Media ads and replaced it with FAN ads.
FAN ads are CPM based and the CPM is very high. The above ads gross $5.00 CPM and The Lost Room ad that is currently running is grossing $7.00 CPM. FeedBurner takes 35% as their share, which is extremely reasonable when compared to Text-Link-Ads 50% share of revenues.
The bottom ad spot started out as the lowest performing ad spot. Using Google AdSense, the location barely produced 50 cents eCPM. Switching them to TTZ Media ads improved that to about $2.00 eCPM. Now, FeedBurner could make the bottom ad spot my most profitable!
Most bloggers depend on Google way too much. At the beginning, this is OK but as your traffic grows, you need to keep an eye out for other opportunities because there are networks out there that will pay you more. The hard part is getting into these networks. The ones that pay high rates (like FeedBurner) have very high entrance requirements. To see if you qualify to be part of the FeedBurner Ad Network, log into your FeedBurner account and click the Monetize tab. It will give you an instant answer. Check out my list of other ad networks here.
Look for my making money from a blog – November recap, in three days. You think I beat October’s results?