I decided to try Kontera on The Naked Celebrity as an experiment. I’m sure a lot of you have seen inline advertising before, but if you haven’t, it looks like this, providing a little pop-up-ish advert only if the user hovers over a link. The links are determined by context, and the links can change from one refresh to the next, I’ve found.

Kontera has worked out better than I could have imagined.  The pay per click is fairly low, but the click-through ratio is so high that it doesn’t matter as much.

Important Stats:

ECPM (revenue per net 1000 impressions): $1.45
Compare that with my ECPM for Adsense for that same site: $0.23

The click-through ratio is a staggering 5.43%.  Compare that with  0.17% on the same site for Adsense.

The downside is that I’m earning under 3 cents per click on average compared to Adsense on the same site paying roughly 6 cents per click on average. But in my opinion, the vastly superior click-through ratio more than makes up for it.  In the same time period, I had,and I’m not kidding, roughly 40 times the number of clicks through Kontera that I did through Adsense.

I’m comparing this to Adsense, but the truth is that you can easily use them side-by-side, so it’s not an either-or situation.

Keep in mind, some people find in-line advertising to be invasive.  I’m not sure I exactly understand why, because unless you read with your mouse hovering over/under every word as you go, you don’t have to see any ads you don’t want to.

On a technical hosting blog I participate in, one user responded that when he first started using in-line advertising, his loyal users did complain.  But after a couple of weeks they got used to it and it was simply a non-issue after the initial storm.

Also, I’ve found their reporting to be a couple days behind, which for stat-watchers and experimenters (I don’t actually think that’s a word) like myself is slightly annoying.

I’m not sure I plan to add Kontera to this blog or to Blogging for Bitter Women (my humor blog), because they have much lower traffic than The Naked Celebrity, although considering some of the topics I talk about on Bitter Women, it would be amusing to see some of the products it considered “in context”.

I do plan to add inline advertising to a large gaming website I run.  It has a large, loyal fan-base, so I’ve already started laying the groundwork for preparing them to see it in the near future in hopes of diffusing any initial reaction to it, but those click-through ratios are pretty amazing.  That site has enough traffic that I might consider going with Vibrant (they require minimum of 500,000 pageviews/month to sign up, whereas Kontera doesn’t have that restriction), just to see if there’s a huge difference in technology, script loading speed (it does slow things down by a couple of seconds) and reporting…. not to mention payout rate.

So in summary:

Pros:

• Very high click-through rate
• Users don’t see ads unless they hover over distinctive double-underlined links
• Kontera has easy entry requirements (no pageview restriction)

Cons:

• Can seem invasive to some members, especially loyal return users
• Slows down page loading by 2-3 seconds.
•  Can take 3-5 days to get approved by all the sites I’ve contacted, unlike something like text-link-ads which approves instantly.

Have you tried Kontera or one of its competitors?  What did you think?

BTW, this is not a paid review, just me filling you in on my experiments as usual.  :) 

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When I started trying to manage three blogs, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed and in desperate need to organise. I’ve learned quite a few things over the past month since starting blog #3, but still am no expert.

I decided, therefore, to ask a few people who did successfully manage multiple blogs, and ask them what their “secrets” were. In searching for people to interview, however, I found it very difficult! It seems that most people running multiple blogs tended to neglect one or more of them (I wanted someone who was actively running several successful blogs), and a few of the people I found it turns out they were running “scraping” blogs, and I really didn’t want to have anything to do with that (I wanted to talk to people endevouring to create original content like I am). A lot of people seem to be running 2-3 blogs, but more than that is more rare than I thought!

And so I wrote to Kevin, who runs four successful and active blogs. I knew him from his popular humor blog Pointless Banter, and he agreed to let me in on his own blogging techniques so I could share them with you. He writes these blogs:

Pointlessbanter.net - “There is material on there over three years old, it originally started out on MySpace. It is what got me blogging and into writing, it is a humor blog and I guess my “personal” blog. The site has been up for over two years.”

Buzznetworker.com - “It technically has been up for ten months but due to some technical problems it really didn’t get going until like six months ago. It is about using social networking websites to increase recognition for your brand, your blog, or your business.”

Jambandnews.com - “That is about three months old right now. The title is self explanatory.”

staroffenders.com - “This blog is only a couple of months old but it has done well. It is a celebrity gossip blog focused on celebs in trouble.”

When I asked him which was the most successful, he said:

Trafficwise Pointlessbanter.net has exploded over the last few months.  StarOffenders could and will easily pass it though, because of the type of content people search for.

I asked Kevin about structuring his time, and he told me:

“I used [have a method for structuring time] to but I have honestly been struggling lately with work, grad school, and maintaining four blogs. For a few of my blogs that don’t need to have “breaking news” type of stuff I try and pre-write my content for at least two weeks at a time.”

He says he tries to write Monday through Friday on all four blogs, and so I asked if he ever had trouble keeping up with it all.

“Yeah it has gotten pretty rough as of late, I am thinking about scaling back to just doing two blogs, but of course if I spend a weekend on getting caught up I could be ok. I have been continually wrestling with this.”

I’m glad I’m not the only one!  Some days I feel like I can do it all and want to start 2 MORE blogs, and other days I feel like the three I have are overwhelming, and I want to shut one or two of them down.  I get the feeling a lot of bloggers have that experience.

So I asked Kevin whether he was in it for love or money (I’m sure I phrased it more delicately though.)  To have a full perspective on his experience, it was important to understand if this was a hobby or a real attempt at commercial enterprise.  He said:

“… Buzznetworker, Jambandnews, and StarOffenders are all part of the b5 blogging network. I get paid to write those. Pointlessbanter is my baby and my number one focus, it always has been and it will be until I am done blogging. That page does make some money through ad revenue and I have started actually trying to come up with an ad strategy for it instead of just throwing up google ads.”

Me: “What made you want to start so many? Is it a plan for making money online, or do you just have a lot of topics you wanted to cover?” Answer:

“Last year I was working from home as a consultant while going to school, so I had a little more time on my hands. I thought blogging would be a good way to add to my income. When I left to go to grad school I really thought about getting up to 8 blogs and using the money I made from that and my student loans to pay the bills. But I ended up landing a job as a new media manager for a local company, which kind of put a wrench in everything.

“These are all topics that I really enjoy and really like to talk about. The money, while nice, isn’t enough to get me out of bed and force me to blog in the morning. With my personal page I really couldn’t tackle the social networking thing or the music thing because it wouldn’t fit in with my style or what I talk about. These blogs were a good way for me to change things up a bit.”

I’ve considered giving up at least one of my blogs before, so I wondered if Kevin had ever been tempted to simplify as well.  I asked, “Do you have any blogs you’ve given up on, or do you nurture each one if it starts slowing down?”

“Right now I am thinking about asking them to find another writer for staroffenders and jambandnews. For a celebrity gossip blog to work you need to post 5 short stories a day and I just don’t have it in me right now. They all have a certain level of success already so I am handing them off in good health.”

Conclusions:

What I  found most interesting about this conversation was that it reinforced my own experiences with blogging.  I like it, I have had some success, but at the same time it’s a struggle not to give up, especially when life gets busy.

I’ve also discovered some specific techniques for managing my own time, which I’ll share with you in an upcoming post.  It really helps to organise, but knowing you need to organise and knowing where to start are two different things.  Details coming soon!

A huge, special thanks to Kevin for sharing his thoughts on running multiple blogs.  With all that work he has going, I’m amazed he had the time.  Thanks! 

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I confess I was skeptical when I saw John Chow advertising WidgetBucks.com on his blog. Mostly because I figure anything that makes him a zillion dollars will at most make me 35 cents.

Plus after the whole Blogrush thing and people swarming to and fro and proing and conning and on and on, I was reluctant to try it, but I tell you, it looks promising.

I run an online community (non-bloggish) that gets around 500,000 impressions monthly, and the Google Adsense income for it has been steadily declining. So I replaced it today with Widget Bucks. Click image below to see full-sized screenshot:

What this screenshot can’t illustrate is the interactive quality of the widget.  Users can scroll through a list of top ten items in a category, and it moves them automatically after a delay.

I’m excited about the possibilities, because Adsense is so often a disappointment.  Sure the income is somewhat respectable, but on a site with half a million monthly impressions, I can’t help but think I could be doing so much better.

I definitely plan to add this to The Naked Celebrity, and possibly Bitter Women as well (my other blogs).

Sometimes I think I should have called this  “Experimental Blogging” instead of “About Blogging”, because I’m constantly trying new things.  But if you’re on as much of a journey with your blogs as I am with mine, I thought you’d be interested to hear what I’m trying, why, and the outcome.

I’ll give WidgetBucks a few weeks and then report back with a comparison to Adsense.

Have you tried WidgetBucks?  If so, how are you liking it, and if not, why not?  I’m interested to hear all of your feedback!

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I used to use Amazon affiliate links on various websites years ago, but had lost track of what was happening, because I found that people got used to seeing the same old amazon boxes on every website, just as they have grown accustomed to seeing a PayPal donate button. We tune out the images we see all the time.

The other down-side of trying to use Amazon as an affiliate-type programming is that you only get a 24-hour cookie, meaning the purchase has to happen pretty quickly. Most programs out there give you a more leisurely 30 days for your click-ees to make a commitment.

However, Amazon has some nifty new widgets that I think look pretty good, and I’ve been looking again at trying out Amazon as a tool for monetising my blogs. I decided to share them with you in case you either had never used Amazon Affiliates, or had, like me, not looked at them in some time.

Unbox Videos and Slideshow give a moving and active presentation to the Amazon product links. Nicely eye-catching.

I particularly like the Product Cloud. People like this layout of information right now, and are used to clicking on category tag clouds on blogs.  I think My Favorites would be most suitable for a personal blog or a review blog.

Likewise, Wish List might work best on a personal blog. Personally I’m not sure how much time Quick Linker would save someone, since it’s not that difficult to add an amazon link to a website as things stand now. Will have to explore this one.

Search is one I’m not sure how useful it will be. If people want to search amazon, my own feeling is that they’ll just go to amazon and search. If you aren’t familiar with aStores, they’re something Amazon has added to make it incredibly easy for someone to create an entire website shop based around Amazon products. Amazon even hosts the shops. You can see an example here with Cheap-iPods.com .

The Products Link widget isn’t really anything new, although it’s in an easier-to-plug-in format.  Product Preview  and Context Link (below) look promising if you’re interested in advertising Amazon products without actually cluttering up your sidebar with any additional widgets.  I particularly like the Product Preview, because you can decide exactly where and when the adverts appear.

Text Links follows a format similar to Text-Link-Ads, but it leads to a specific destination on Amazon.com

The Omakase, Banner, Recommended Product Links (below), and Search Box (below) widgets look a lot more like traditional Amazon advertizing, but with the ease of an automated widget.

I’d written off Amazon.com as a source of potential income on websites, but these new widgets look quite interesting!

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I wish I could tell you this title, “My Journey With The Naked Celebrity” means I’m having an affair with Brad Pitt, but no, I’ve started a new blog. Yes, I may be perilously close to having to face my blog addiction, but until then, I thought I’d tell you about it.

This blog, called The Naked Celebrity , is my first attempt at a blog that is designed primarily as a money-generator. I do find the topic interesting and the writing for it fun. What I mean by “made it as a money-generator” is that when I set it up, I decided to do so with monetizing in mind.

Becky, over at Preblogging, has some great tips for to follow before setting up your blog, including choosing your blogging niche .

I would also recommend that before you get started on creating a blog (that isn’t a personal blog) that you check out this article on problogger about choosing your niche . Despite having the same topics, the articles have a vastly different focus.

So when I decided to get started, I took the following steps:

1. Choose the niche.

After investigating what people are searching for using Google Trends and Google Adwords (which shows the popularity and competitiveness of terms that show up on Adsense and how much advertisers will pay for these terms), I decided to go with something in the celebrity vein.

“But, Jayne… you can’t stand celebrities.” That’s right, and so I realised that this could work in my favor. If you’ve been to my humor blog Bitter Women, you know that I love a good rant. So instead of just presenting the news like a thousand other blogs and websites do, I would put my own slant on it, and give it my own voice.

Ranting about how idiotic celebrities are would just never get old for me.

In order to create something different, I created a set of characters named Auntie Maude, Cousin Rose, and Uncle Horace who give their own opinions and funny observations about the silly gossip stories that abound.

2. Choose the Title

I chose “The Naked Celebrity” because putting those two words together turns it into search engine gold, but also because I liked the double-meaning.

3. Choose the design

I am so happy with the wordpress theme I chose, called The Morning After. It gives it a magazine feel, which I hope looks professional and slick. I felt that if I was going for the “gossip mag” feel, I didn’t want it to look too “homey” and it even veers away slightly from the traditional blog look. It IS slightly complex, as there are a lot of images to upload in various places for each article, but readers want pictures and eye-candy, so an image-rich layout is great, and I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out.

I’ve also picked this layout because the advertising fits well within it, and doesn’t look sloppy.

So now all that’s left is the final bit…

4. Fill it up with some content so it doesn’t look too bare.

Right now I only have a few articles up, so I need to add about a dozen more within a few days to fill out that celebrity name “category” list on the left.

Since this is my first attempt at a real monetised blog that is set up with SEO in mind, and working for search users, it’s something different for me, so I’m letting you in on my process, so you can learn along with me. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

*Note: I can report that some things seem to already be going well, even after just two days! I’ve already started getting click-throughs from Technorati on the celeb names. Why is a few clicks a big deal? None of my other blogs get any traffic from technorati at all! LOL

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