John Chow inspired me to take my ads off

[Hipsterpad]

I've recently become a fan of JohnChow.com and I wrote a little bit about how I got inspired to get sell my own ads. Should be an interesting read for you webmaster types.

So basically I decided to get rid of all ad networks from my site (accept one google link that does well for me and I'm working on getting rid of the ads in the preview button). You might ask why I would get rid of all the ad networks and you will find my experiences with various ones I dabbled in below.

I agree that most ad networks taking a 50% cut (the most obvious reason not to use them) is crappy but my biggest reason for taking network ads off would have to the QUALITY OF THE ADS. Here are my experiences with various ad networks that I have tried (this is only my opinion is only based from testing on my site).

Adsense:

Pros: CPC can be really high and link ads seem to work well for me while taking up little space.

Cons: “ads by google” display looks ugly and in my opinion makes visitors think less of your website. Testing positions and colors takes a really long time with little difference.

Adengage:

Pros: I have gotten checks from them so they aren’t scammers. Ads can be completely customized (great for those who like to blend or trick click).

Cons: Most of the websites in their inventory (if you want to be and advertiser) are complete crap quality (ex. Lots of game websites from Turkey that look like a 5 year old kid designed them). As a publisher, it gets even worse. The ads are nothing short of idiotic (ex. Dog owners forum, win something offers). I would highly recommend you stay away if you want returning visitors.

ValueClick:

Pros: You don’t need clicks to get paid because most advertisers run CPM.

Cons: The CPM can be $3 one day and .60 cents the next. Lots of crappy advertisers added everyday that need to be blocked (I personally don’t have time to everyday go through their very slow loading dashboard). Only worth ad on their site would be the 300x250 size. Everything else pays way too little.

So now you can see that I came up with way more negatives than positives. So, I’ve started selling my own ads (today). I even made my own banners to promote my first week for $2 campaign. I hope it works and any feedback or suggestions from you guys would be greatly appreciated. Oh, if you want to take a glance at the site, it's at link removed
Thanks for the read,
Paul
link removed

[Red_Virus]

That is a real cool article, I am doing the same thing to monetize my image hosting site

[monhunter]

good info i will apply to

[zibblu]

I'm not so sure that adsense (if mixed in with your site well) is such a big turnoff to surfers. I think most people expect to see adsense ads on websites these days. And sense adsense ads are not counted as outgoing links I see no reason why it would negatively effect selling links. If you are talking about selling ads... hm. I suppose that's different - but that's a whole lot of work too.

Personally I'm an affiliate marketer first (adsense is just a backup money generator for me) so yes, I will put my own ads up ... but they are affiliate ads. Anyway I like having both affiliate ads and adsense - because often times people won't be interested in my affiliate ads but will be interested in the adsense - My strategy on this is that you want to try and get *something* from every visitor, or at least as many visitors as possible.

[web-mastery]

I love my Adsense ads too much to ever abandom them

[nks]

Sell your own ads?

That's cool provided if your ads is being sold at a high price

[Hipsterpad]

Update:
I agree with you guys. When I was getting rid of my adsense adds I checked my test ads (which I kinda forgot about) and I was getting a shizload of clicks with pretty high PPC. This was only on my Preview song pages. So I decided to keep them and their trend continues (so far).

So I must retract the negetive things I said about adsense. My website is music related (free mashups/bootlegs) so it's incredibly tough for me to make money when 90% of my visitors are very cheap (I imagine the same thing for torrent sites).

Almost makes you want to give up until you check how old successful websites are and you see that it takes 2-3 years to make good money.

I've signed up for more ad networks just to see what kind of adds they have. And I'm still dissappointed to see the same lame free xbox 360 or win this crud ads. Blows my mind how you can make money when your whole website is only about scamming you to enter your info. I would think people are smarter than that. Anyways, thanks for letting me rant.
-Paul

[john587]

With the ValueClickMedia ads you do not have to login each day to turn of certain ads. You can do it so that when new ads come into the control panel they are not automatically checked. So if you want the new ads to also be served on your website, then you can go there and check them yourself.

The earnings do not vary that much from $3 - $0.60. The earnings roughly stay similar each day unless you have CPC ads enabled and get different CTR's each day then it will vary widely.

[bond007]

Originally Posted by john587

With the ValueClickMedia ads you do not have to login each day to turn of certain ads. You can do it so that when new ads come into the control panel they are not automatically checked. So if you want the new ads to also be served on your website, then you can go there and check them yourself.

The earnings do not vary that much from $3 - $0.60. The earnings roughly stay similar each day unless you have CPC ads enabled and get different CTR's each day then it will vary widely.

Do you know what is the average CPM?

[john587]

Not really as it depends on whether you have CPC ads selected and also what min CPM you want your ad inventury space to go for. If you select the only ads that pay over $0.50 cpm to show on your website then you are likely to get an average of over $0.50 cpm, but with a much lower fullrate.

[bond007]

Originally Posted by john587

Not really as it depends on whether you have CPC ads selected and also what min CPM you want your ad inventury space to go for. If you select the only ads that pay over $0.50 cpm to show on your website then you are likely to get an average of over $0.50 cpm, but with a much lower fullrate.

Thank you for info.

[cldnails]

Must have not been too successfull, I was greeted with 2 adsense ads as I loaded your site.

Were you not successful?

[john587]

I feel that the best way of doing business is not to look at and think of your own ideas. The more unique, original and better they are the more successful you are likely to become. Just because someone has took their ads of their site doesn't mean that you will have the same success of them.

All is good though, hope it all works out well.

[Noah]

I still am an Adsense fan!

[mac123]

I just have a query, does changing ad networks effect the earnings, is it not CTR which is important because any how if have CPC enabled only the earning changes, more effort need to be put in increasing your CTR.

Or

is it that the quality of Ads effect the CTR and hence the earnings.

any how this is a very nice piece of info to work upon.

[janhvizdak]

Originally Posted by Hipsterpad

I've recently become a fan of JohnChow.com and I wrote a little bit about how I got inspired to get sell my own ads. Should be an interesting read for you webmaster types.

So basically I decided to get rid of all ad networks from my site (accept one google link that does well for me and I'm working on getting rid of the ads in the preview button). You might ask why I would get rid of all the ad networks and you will find my experiences with various ones I dabbled in below.

I agree that most ad networks taking a 50% cut (the most obvious reason not to use them) is crappy but my biggest reason for taking network ads off would have to the QUALITY OF THE ADS. Here are my experiences with various ad networks that I have tried (this is only my opinion is only based from testing on my site).

Adsense:

Pros: CPC can be really high and link ads seem to work well for me while taking up little space.

Cons: “ads by google” display looks ugly and in my opinion makes visitors think less of your website. Testing positions and colors takes a really long time with little difference.

Adengage:

Pros: I have gotten checks from them so they aren’t scammers. Ads can be completely customized (great for those who like to blend or trick click).

Cons: Most of the websites in their inventory (if you want to be and advertiser) are complete crap quality (ex. Lots of game websites from Turkey that look like a 5 year old kid designed them). As a publisher, it gets even worse. The ads are nothing short of idiotic (ex. Dog owners forum, win something offers). I would highly recommend you stay away if you want returning visitors.

ValueClick:

Pros: You don’t need clicks to get paid because most advertisers run CPM.

Cons: The CPM can be $3 one day and .60 cents the next. Lots of crappy advertisers added everyday that need to be blocked (I personally don’t have time to everyday go through their very slow loading dashboard). Only worth ad on their site would be the 300x250 size. Everything else pays way too little.

So now you can see that I came up with way more negatives than positives. So, I’ve started selling my own ads (today). I even made my own banners to promote my first week for $2 campaign. I hope it works and any feedback or suggestions from you guys would be greatly appreciated. Oh, if you want to take a glance at the site, it's at link removed
Thanks for the read,
Paul
link removed

Nice copy&paste : http://www.mashstix.com/Advertising2.php isn't it?

Why are people doing such things???

[amoodyk9]

nice

[monhunter]

Instead of that u can try this program Best Program ever

[info4beingrich]

good information.. thanks for that..

[subnet_rx]

Good information, I haven't found that CPC works for me that well either. I really think it depends on your niche and the kind of visitors you get. Tech blogs will get a lot of traffic, but it's tough to make money. Other blogs get lower traffic, but have a better CTR.