I came across a listing on Digital Point that stated Shoemoney was offering advertising at $2.xx a day – not really knowing where the advertising would go, but caught up in the frenzy (I want to take a screenshot with my 125 x 125 ad beside that famous cheque :D ) I bought advertising… for a month. After reading Viking Blogger’s post on how crap the traffic was, I was a bit apprehensive – a second per visitor?

Anyways, my first two days are up, enough for Google Analytics to update – in total, I’ve received 21 visitors, and 66% of them were brand new to the site – something that’s pretty intriguing. I’ve just realised that although I update this blog every day, I haven’t marketed it to its full potential, and thus apart from the regular circle of readers here… few know about it. Guest posts are obviously a cost efficient way to get your name out (they cost zilch apart from a bit of time and the right pitch) but what if you don’t have the time to write them up? Well, I don’t have the time… but I do have a little bit of spare cash, and I’ll be putting that up for grabs in a few days, so watch out ;) . Anyways, here’s how advertising on Shoemoney went:

MultiHoster

As you can see, nearly everything is an increase – something I’m fairly happy with. With a bounce rate that’s nearly halved, and more pages per visit, the only thing down is the average time spent on TUK, but that’s still at above two minutes, which is pretty healthy. As far as I can tell, I didn’t receive any comments from it, so perhaps after some of them read this post ;)

At the moment, my opinion is crap positioning, but targeted visitors and worth the money so far (for example, a standard click for ‘make money online’ on Adwords costs $3+). A great deal to the low CTR is the style of my ad, which doesn’t really say much about the site, I guess. The ad which I used is on the left… I could have used a better one, but I liked the glossy effect. That ad still shows the old mascot, which is currently my favicon. Oh yeah – I finally learned how to embed images aligned in posts like the one on the right, so that should break up the huge chunks of text you had to read before then.

Pay Per Play Ads

I’ve been asked my opinion on this a few times… they suck. I don’t care how much money you’ll make if you promote your downline, but jeez – do you really want to display annoying ads on your website that are ultimately only going to irritate your readers? I’d stop visiting a website with Pay per play installed, first off because the ads generally don’t make much sense, and secondly, well… people should learn from how Myspace ‘pimped out’ profiles with annoying blared music died. The common argument used is that people surf the internet with their speakers off, so it doesn’t really annoy – don’t know about you, but I generally play music, and the last thing I want is some advertisement for healthcare or something annoying me. Also, there are no clickable links, so what benefit is it for advertisers?

Free domains… Hehe.

My buddy at GoldPoster is giving away free domains for a mention… I’ve claimed the LLLL (surprised no one else did!) but there are a few others up for grabs, including a decent 3C.us. All you gotta do is mention him in a post and you’re odds in – contest ends in less than 24 hours, so get in quick :)

Something cool? Just let me know and I’ll plug it.

A blog is user-driven – it exists only because of the people that read it. Sure, there are people that would blog even if they didn’t have any readers – I’m not one of them. So for the forseeable future, this blog will be even more user-driven – if you’ve got an interesting post you feel that my readers would like, let me know and I’ll plug it; same with contests. Note that blatant crap will not be tolerated.

Another person took me up on the offer of free advertising – that is The Profit Hustler. At the moment there are only three blogs sharing the spot, so they’re getting anywhere between 70 – 100 unique views a day free. :)

Football scores

Arsenal won, and Man Utd/Chelsea drew. Top of the league, and looking good – woo! :D

University starts

Sad thing is that I started today… after having a month off to relax. It’s just the first day, and I’ve already been hit with a major assignment – a 2,000 word essay on something related to human rights as well as the note that we’ll have to do an essay a week from now on (and that’s just for one subject!). With a tonne of work, and of course the trip in the middle of the month to India, I’m not sure how well I’ll do with regards to earnings… We’ll see though :)

Guest posters on TUK

Sammy has confirmed, so I’ve got four… I still need 4-6 more. Anyone wants to give it a go? It’ll net you a decent PR3 backlink and some exposure, and my policies aren’t too stringent… :)

Email marketing

I will be sending out a broadcast message soon for everyone to unsubscribe themselves, then start off by writing the first ten or so emails before it goes live. I’m looking into Aweber as well, and will update with regards to what’s going on.

I think I’ve written up enough for today – it’s the first week of university and probably the last bit of free-ish time left before I start working hard, so time to relax (a bit). If you want some good reading, Geoff from Can’t Get Rich put up a pretty decent post on John Cow. Take a look! :)

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