ProjectWonderful ads for your blog?

Comments

1. Ilias (4 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 11:05 am

   I am using Project Wonderful at the moment on my personal blog.At the moment I (like you did) have more disadvantages to write about than advantages.. Anyway.. I ‘ll give it some more time..
2. DJ (1 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 11:20 am

   I didn’t register…I just browsed the publishers to see if I wanted to advertise. I was a little put off by them not having a category search. Perhaps that’s available to registered users but I’d like to know if there are any blogs in the category I am looking for before I sign up. But on the other hand they do have a tag cloud search but still…I want categories.
3. Mark Ghosh (386 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 11:34 am

   DJ: Their backend interface leaves a lot to be desired for publishers. It sounds as if it is the same for advertisers. That is such a shame.
4. Mubin (6 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 1:04 pm

   I signed up and specifically deposited money in my account to advertise on your blog, but my blog didnt get approved! Guess you didnt like my ad eh Mark?

   it is a weird system though, Im sure with the traffic that you are getting you could sell those ad spots on a monthly basis very easily.
5. Phil Newton (1 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 1:38 pm

   I’ve used it a bit and am quite pleased with the results, but as previously mentioned it’s a little slow and difficult to use at first. I started by placing a few manual bids, and then a campaign once I got more settled.

   As for making money, that’s not so been great. I also got the “blooming teas” ad quite a lot, and a lot of the advertisers seem to be comics (probably because they generate a lot of impressions even with a few visitors). My average income on the site is about $0.10, which isn’t really worth it.

   All in all it’s a good site to get started with advertising as it’s relatively low cost and low maintenance. It has its problems, but hopefully they’ll start to disappear once it gets more popular.
6. Andrew (32 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 1:52 pm

   I tried it about a year ago and found the same kind of advertisers you mentioned. I stopped using it because they weren’t relevent to the site I tried them on and actually seemed to diminish it because they weren’t very well produced.
7. Ilias (4 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 2:35 pm

   I didn’t know that this service is so more than a year old.
8. Chess Teaching (15 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 2:41 pm

   Reading this article I think that I’ll stick to adsense
9. Christine From The Internet (4 comments.) says:

   10/28/2007 at 4:51 pm

   I used PW for a while, but found that there weren’t really a lot of relevant advertisers.

   I suppose if enough bloggish types pushed using PW, then a critical mass of blog advertisers could end up forming.

   Maybe.

   It certainly is nice having a constant trickle of money as opposed to the seemingly random results googleads produce.
10. Dodgypress (2 comments.) says:

    10/29/2007 at 7:18 am

    Hey Mate,
    Thoroughly enjoyed, this post. Tiny blog network publishers/developers like me find this subject matter very pertinent, due to the fact at some point in time, we have to start monetising, the blogs. Thus info about the right ad systems to utilise will be crucial.

    Will there be a chance, that, you will at one point cover and recommend, a range of ad systems, for various blog sizes?
11. Derek Coward (1 comments.) says:

    10/29/2007 at 8:43 am

    If I recall correctly, Project Wonderful was started by something very connected with the webcomics community and that’s why you see a lot of ads for webcomics.

    The part that turned me off from displaying their ads is the fact that a lot of people would bid, get the ad for a nice price, then cancel before they actually had to pay anything. After seeing that I had more cancelled ads than anything, I gave up and removed them from my site.
12. hso (8 comments.) says:

    10/29/2007 at 12:00 pm

    Hey Mark,

    What exactly do you mean when you say “Google Friendly”? Does that mean Google will allow this model of advertisements and not penalize the site unlike the recent speculation with Text Link Ads?
13. Mark Ghosh (386 comments.) says:

    10/29/2007 at 12:40 pm

    hso: Not PR affecting in any way.
14. Viper007Bond (91 comments.) says:

    10/30/2007 at 6:22 am

    Seems that an advertising setup such as this one would only really work out for very large sites with lots of reputation. I mean, who would want to target and pay any money for a tiny little blog like mine?
15. Alistair Hutton says:

    10/30/2007 at 1:47 pm

    UI too found PW to be painfully slow but it seems that they’ve done a big server upgrade and searches that took up to 30 seconds to respond are now completing in less than a second. Makes the whole process a lot more bearable
16. Xial (3 comments.) says:

    10/30/2007 at 6:26 pm

    I’ve been using Project Wonderful for 10 months, 22 days as of this comment.
    While the ads that I’ve received with the two Project Wonderful boxes are perhaps what we call ‘painfully obvious’ in the fact that there aren’t major advertisers pouring money in there, I’ve had a few days where bidding got up to 70 cents per day. I’m also not a major site — I’m just a small personal blog that doesn’t have high PageRank, and not a very large visitation from others. I also admit that most of the time, I tend to hover around 2 cents a day per box as of late, but at the same time, I do recycle some of my earnings into advertising for myself for a week or two.

    For a shrimp like me, it works.

    I’ve also brought up things to the guys at PW about their ad code, and they’ve actually spent time working on it. Perhaps if someone said that the way it’s set up is difficult to understand or makes no sense…
17. Adam_Y (1 comments.) says:

    10/31/2007 at 5:54 am

    I use PW on my webcomic, The Flowfield Unity. Most of what has already been said is fairly sound.

    The site is awfuly slow at times…

    The system is possibly best used to generate a small advertising budget of your own, ploughing the money you make back into more advertising on other sites, but as mentioned the range of sites is a little limited right now.

    My advice is that if you have a (relatively) small number of visitors to your site, it’s a good bet.

    Start selling your ads for free rather than putting a reserve price as that will stop people having a punt to get you started. Once you have an advertisiser, you’re more likely to get some bids.

    Use the money to fund a small advertising budget of your own and you can generate some traffic in a banner exchange like manner.

    There are some bigger names on there though, The Book of Biff, A Softer World, and Quantz… all very good webcomics with a solid daily audience.
18. David Davis (1 comments.) says:

    10/31/2007 at 9:01 pm

    Project Wonderful was built for webcomics, so that’s why you’ve seen a lot of comic advertisements. I run a webcomic and it’s a much better earner for me that adsense ever was. I’m not making much, but I can generally manage about 10 dollars every one and a half to two months.
19. Roman | ANAWIKI GAMES (1 comments.) says:

    11/1/2007 at 5:26 pm

    I used PW as an advertiser and plan to use it again. It is hard to find publishers that will convert your advertising into sales, though sometimes for $10 you can get $200 return in sales (and sometimes you get $0 for bigger investment).

    PW should work harder on getting more publishers and then finding more advertisers.

    BTW. You can’t cancel ad without paying… you need to deposit money before you advertise and once you deposited money you can’t get it back if your ads have been displayed.
20. Caveman Joe (1 comments.) says:

    11/12/2007 at 2:30 pm

    Project Wonderful money for publishers seems to come in waves, seemingly at random. However, for advertisers, it delivers the best ROI I’ve ever seen. I wrote an article about my experiences as an advertiser here on Project Wonderful Talk. I figure when more advertisers start seeing the ridiculously low CPC rates, more advertisers will be attracted to the system, and rates will go up for publishers.
21. Network Geek (21 comments.) says:

    12/24/2007 at 10:28 am

    So, it’s been two months since you started with this. How’s it working for you? Have you tried any others? How are they working for you in comparison?
22. Pras says:

    5/5/2008 at 6:56 am

    I have been using PW from past few months & so far i am happy with it. As mine is a startup blog i prefer displaying PW ads rather than the adsense ads.
23. Isles Tech (1 comments.) says:

    5/13/2008 at 3:12 am

    Thanks for all these description and comments about Project Wonderful. I think I’m going to sign up.
24. Matt says:

    3/26/2009 at 9:55 pm

    The ads are actually bid by the second not by the day. The person can bid say $1.00 for the day, leave it up for an hour when your site visits are high (they can see that) and then take it down. They are only charged pennies then. I think that sucks.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

1. Project Wonderful Talk - PW Reviews says:

   11/12/2007 at 3:07 pm

   […] first time, one as a publisher, and one as an advertiser. Mixed feelings for Project Wonderful in this review from Weblog Tools Collection. The author seems to have the same problems that the rest of us are having – poor server […]