YugaTech | Philippines, Tech Reviews Blog

One of the most common confusions about online advertising amongst bloggers is how to compute for their ad rates. I’ve previously wrote about how to create an advertising rate card and how to analyze conversions or ROI, but the truth is not all page views are created equal.

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I’d like to welcome my new visitors and readers coming from MSN Live, Yahoo! & Google looking for my blog after watching the feature at Mel & Joey last night. I was surprised that for a 2-hour footage, they managed to squeeze it in a 2-minute feature.

Just to guide our new visitors, I’d like to point you out to some readings. I wasn’t really anticipating to be inundated with emails so apologies if I didn’t come up with a welcome page to guide all of you along and answer the more obvious questions beforehand.

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I’ve been a Feedburner Ad Network (FAN) member since February. That’s after I hit the 500 subscriber mark last December. Looks like 500 is the magic number to get a FAN invite.

Since then, I’ve been running RSS ads thru Feedburner. The ads do not appear automatically but you get notifications that your blog is included in an ad campaign, of which you need to approve. Using Feedflare, ads will either appear on your RSS feeds or on your blog (ever saw one of those Flash ads about the Blackberry Curve?)

In the last 6 months though, my total FAN revenue is a mere $42.23.

Yeah, a true low-earner — very close to Adbrite’s performance. However, there could be several reasons for this, some, very inherent on the fact that your advertising to the rss-reader crowd:

• Low CTR. Very evident on the chart above. RSS readers are not click happy. That’s why they’re using feed readers, right?
• Geo-targetted? Probably. Some of the ads will only display for feed readers from certain regions.
• No email ads. Feed subscriptions via emails do not contain ads, which should be rightfully so.

As it is now, do I think it’s worth it? I think it’s too early to say — let’s see on the 12th month. On the other hand, since FeedBurner is now part of Google, are we expecting some changes in the payment options aside from the Paypal-only delivery? I do hope cheque deliveries will be available soon or maybe Google will just include that in our AdSense cheques?

Someone once asked me what’s the difference between pro and non-pro. I said the pro‘s get paid to do it. A professional driver gets paid to drive; a professional photographer gets paid to shoot pictures; a professional basketball player gets paid to play hoops; a professional crier gets paid to cry on burials.

In the same sense, a professional blogger gets paid to, you guessed it, blog. So, what’s so damn wrong if professional bloggers are getting paid to blog, except for the fact that the concept is so new to people beyond their 40′s (excuse the pun)?

Professional blogging is still in its infancy in this 3rd world country of ours and that every day, income generation evolves just as it was first revolutionized when Google Adsense was born in mid-2003. Do I need to enumerate them still?

• Bloggers place Adsense codes, tweaks them, layouts them on top of the fold, colors them like their own blog theme, blends them within the body of their content hoping that visitors gets fooled a little confused in clicking the ads as if it were part of the content. Others even try to hide the line that states “Ads by Goooogle”.
• Bloggers sign up with link advertising services like Text Link Ads(aff.) and get paid to display links of advertisers. Others try to hide the paid links by blending them with their blogroll to avoid the wrath of Google (allegedly) but that’s another story altogether.
• Bloggers add Amazon Associates codes for books, gadgets and whatnots then sometimes label them “must reads” and “this blog recommends” hoping that their readers would buy the items and eventually get commissions from the sale. And yes, the bloggers don’t need to have personally used each of those items he endorsed on Amazon.
• Bloggers sign up with InText link advertising like Kontera which automatically add links to the text in the body of their blog content hoping that for each click of a curious visitor, they get a few cents out of it.
• Bloggers sign up with affiliate marketing campaigns, puts an affiliate link and even write a neat endorsement post (peppered with affiliate links) about the product or service and pray that it converts (CPA). They later receive fat cheques from the affiliate program.
• Advertisers send free accounts to paid services or sample products in the hopes that the blogger writes about it and eventually adds to the awareness campaign.
• Advertisers pay bloggers to have testimonials or endorsements added somewhere in their blog to promote a service or product.
• Bloggers may also employ advertisement schemes that displays a whole page ad on top of the page, just like an overlay. I’m sure most of you have seen those nasty Adbrite ads I had here once.
• Ahhh yes, and just recently, bloggers are now also getting paid to do reviews.

And to the uninitiated, yes, that my friend is the evolution and diversification of blog monetization and professional blogging. If you don’t like them, you are free to remove those Adsense ads in your own blogs (i.e., if you have a blog).

I have, at one time or another, used many if not all of those monetization schemes I mentioned above. I tell my readers what advertising campaigns I employ and which ones are paid (in the case of paid posts or affiliate links). I even post a thank you note with link loves to all those who’ve successfully signed up under my affiliate account. Still, I don’t understand why others would criticize the way I handle advertising campaigns or revenue models for my blog.

If some accidental reader doesn’t want me to maximize my blog’s revenue potential and earn my keep, they can always click that cute red X button on the top right of their browsers.

Performacing has finally opened their Ad Network program to bloggers.

Performancing Partners offers publishers a new, smart way to get paid for blogging. By placing the Partners code on your blog you open your site to a wide variety of advertisers whilst being free to concentrate on what you do best: Blog…

The revenue split is very simple with Performancing Partners, and it’s geared toward rewarding publishers that stick with us, and refer others into the program. The main points are these:

* You take 70% of advertising revenue your blog generates.
* Performancing takes 30%
* You take 5% of income generated by any publisher or advertiser you refer to us

This is almost similar to AdBrite, only that this time the Publishers (i.e. Bloggers) get a bigger piece of the advertising pie.

Sign up now.

We’re not actually done with our problogging interviews yet. I still have a couple more expecting in my Inbox.

I won’t introduce Connie anymore as most of you already know a lot about her. The rest are best kept under the rug.

She recently bagged another blogging gig for Global Voices (or was that an editorial position? Is it official now?).

• How would you define problogging?

  Earling out of blogging but not necessarily getting paid to write specific content.

• When did you start blogging? When did you get into problogging and how did you realize that there’s some money to be had from it?

  Started early 2003. I don’t know if I ever consciously got into problogging. I applied to a couple of programs and one time I received 2 20-dollar checks (shock, shock) in the mail and well I guess that would be a defining moment.

• Which blogs are you writing for and which blog networks are you affiliated with?

  She’s not writing for any blog networks right now but I think Global Voices might be considered a network. – yuga

• Are you problogging part time or full time? Do you see this career as a part time gig or you are looking into going fulltime problogging?

  Let’s put it this way. I write full time now. Part of that is blogging and 3 out of about 5 or 6 blogs just happen to earn their keep.

• How do you monetize your blog? Which ones bring in the most revenues? Adsense, YPN, BlogAds, AdBrite, Text Link Ads, Affiliate, Direct ad sponsors, etc. Which ones bring in the most revenues? How long did it took you to significantly earn from your own blog/s?

  All of the above (at one time or another) except direct advertisers and YPN. Adsense is, so far, the best for me. How long it took… uuumm maybe a year? Or a little less than a year.

• How long before you got significant revenue from your blogs? How consistent are the revenues and what affects it?

  In a year, things were steady. Until my database disaster last December.

• How much time do you spend on problogging?

  Well writing… a few hours. 2 maybe three. It’s the reading that takes allday and sometimes well into the night. But not everything I read becomes blog entries. Most are for you know intellectual consumption… hehehehe

• What other benefits do you get from problogging?

  One is the newspaper column… the others, I can’t divulge yet hehehehe (but, did I just told them about GV? – yuga)

• What’s the most significant event/moment you had in your entire problogging career?

  Getting the food blog published in Gourmet magazine as “everything
  that an amateur blog should be” hehehe ok ba? Gusto mo screenshot? Attach ko.

• What personal tips can you share with bloggers who want to try out problogging?

  Magbasa sila at tigilan ang kaka-intriga. Walang patutunguhan yan. Losers.