BlogAds Orders Way Up

I've been running BlogAds on my website Diggers Realm for over a year now. They've worked great and BlogAds is a great company that has always paid on time and been responsive.

Through the past year I've had at least 1 ad running in my Standard ad spot that I run on the right navbar. In this spot I run multiple ads. As the site grew and things moved a bit on the design, I realized there was a desire for top billing by some advertisers. So I added a Premium solo spot on both my left and right navbars that ensure they will always be above the fold and all by themselves. These spots, of course, are priced accordingly. They're about 50-60% more, but get seen and clicked on a lot more.

These Premium spots haven't been used much by advertisers. The Standard spot is where most advertisers choose and this is mainly because I'm a member of what BlogAds calls "mini-networks". These are related blogs that pool themselves together to sell ads. I only have my Standard spot in these "mini-networks" because I don't want to put a solo spot in there and then potentially have to reject advertisers that signup through the "mini-network" if the spot is already filled.

The Premium spots therefore have to be selected directly, either through a link on my site to them that displays automatically under the BlogAd even when there's not an ad there or through a search of websites on the BlogAd site itself. So unless advertisers are active readers of my site I don't see many orders there.

This past week though has been fabulous and just shows that advertising on the internet is growing. I was behind the ball on speculating however and didn't raise my rates for the Christmas season. In the past week alone I have filled both Premium spots, had to reject an ad that came in for one of the Premium spots that was already filled and my Standard spot has recived 4 ads. This is the most amount of BlogAds advertising that I've gotten in such a short period.

I also snagged my first 3 month ad buy -- which is already paying off handsomely for the advertiser according to the clickthrough stats I'm seeing. I was excited about that.

The only downside is that my Google AdSense tower in the left navbar gets pushed down dramatically by having a BlogAd positioned above it. So I've seen my revenue from AdSense in that space decrease a bit. This is where you need to do some math in regards to revenue. I went through and figured out my average revenue for the AdSense tower and added that up for a week. I needed to make sure that I was making at least as much as AdSense otherwise it didn't make sense to displace it with a BlogAd.

Since then, I've adjusted my rates for BlogAds accordingly. Unfortunately most of the ads I've already sold were at the lower rate -- including the 3 month buy. The 3 month ad buyer really got a doozy of a deal because they not only got in at the reduced rate, but also got a discount that I give for long term ad buys.

All in all I'm thrilled with the holiday season in terms of advertising on Diggers Realm and will be more prepared next year at analyzing what I should be charging according to other revenue sources that will be displaced in those positions.

Beltway Traffic Jammed

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