My Experience with Widget Advertising

It didn't take long to discover blog widget advertising shortly after starting to blog.  Essentially what blog widget advertising does is use your 125 x 125 or 480 x 60 ad that is displayed over that particular blog network.  In order for your ad to display you either have to buy ads using their credit system or pay for the ads using actual cash.  In order to use the credit system for advertising you have to earn credits whereas with the cash system you simply pay for your advertising.  There are pros and cons to both systems with the biggest con against both is you are advertising your blog mainly to other bloggers.  Here's my experience with blog advertising:

Credit Based Advertising

• Entrecard - This is the biggest credit based blog advertising system.  You earn credits for visiting other blogs by dropping your card aka clicking on other blogger's advertising card.  Despite the many problems this advertising program remains popular with some bloggers interested only in their traffic numbers.  Despite what Entrecard tells you this is a glorified traffic exchange.  Unless you pay a fee their ads will run on the widget 20% of the time which means you can't control what ads are run.  This may be a problem if you are using Adsense or simply don't want certain ads running on your blog.  The biggest problem with Entrecard is the bounce rate that will sky rocket if using this advertising widget.  The second biggest problem is time commitment.  In order for Entrecard to be effective you need to be  a top dropper meaning you need to consistently drop 300 cards per day that from experience takes a considerable amount of time each day.  While you aren't paying for the advertising in terms of cash you are paying for it in terms of cash by mindlessly clicking on 300 blogs each day.  In my opinion, this is one program to avoid!
• Spottt - Spottt is getting less popular but I still see it out there occasionally.  Essentially what you do is place their widget on your blog.  For every 2 ads shown on your blog you get your ad shown on another blog.  While it is called an ad exchange it really is a traffic exchange and in my experience not a very effective one.  The biggest con with this widget is you have no control over what ads are being shown so your nice, prim and proper family oriented blog may end up showing a questionable porn ad.  In my opinion this is a program to not even consider.

Paid Advertising Widgets

• Adgetize - Adegetize is an actually advertising program where your paid 125 x 125 ad shows on the widget other bloggers have on their blog.  There are various price ranges and ad running lengths with a regular ad priced at $14 for a 30 period.  Traffic is good from these ads.  Members are rewarded points for each daily post they make and visiting other blogs (100 for publishers, 50 for advertisers).  The points are then converted into cash so at the end of the month you have paid for your advertising and come ahead by a couple of dollars.  As an advertiser clicking on 50 blog ads will take under an hour depending on your connection and how much commenting you do.  An added bonus is members on Adgetize like to leave comments.  My only complaint with Adgetize is an ad will run without your approval so it is very important to check your account daily to reject any ads you don't want running.  Once rejected the ad remains rejected so you only have to worry about new ads.
• CMF - CMF is an advertising program that displays your 125 x 125 ad on their widget located on other blogs.  They offer a wide range of advertising options including one of their more popular options CMF Spikes.  A spike is a guarateed visit to your blog at a cost of 20¢ per 50 unique visits or .004¢ per visit.  In return for every blog spike you visit you earn .002¢ and you earn money for displaying ads that is dependent on the price you set to display ads on your blog.  The number of blog spikes you can click on depends on the number of blogs with active  spikes so there is no set number of blogs to visit.  Spike advertising if done consistently costs about $6 per month if you buy 20 spikes per day with a guaranteed traffic of 1,500 visitors many of which comment.  CMF also offers the flexibility of running a network ads and campaigns.

In my opinion the paid advertising programs are considerably better than the credit based systems.  They are extremely effective for blog promotion without inflating your bounce rate or costing you valuable time.  Pay for the advertising, participate on the site to earn a bit of money back and use your time to pump more content into your blogs.

Garden Gnome
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