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Squeezing Your Advertising Dollars

Online advertising that works can be like a chameleon. It’s hard to find, it’s always changing, and it eats bugs. Well, the chameleon eats bugs and advertising eats your hard-earned money. In this struggling economy, you need to squeeze every drop out of your advertising dollar. In this article, I cover three forms of advertising: Project Wonderful (PW), high traffic blog ads, and Google Adwords. The largest portion of the article is dedicated to Project Wonderful.

Project Wonderful

Everybody wins.

Project Wonderful is an online advertising broker with an innovative model that brings fairness, transparency, and profitability to the advertising process. We’re all about making online advertising more profitable and easier for everyone involved! Our own members will tell you how good we’ve been for them, as both advertisers and as publishers.

Here are some of our newest Project Wonderful publishers at the 100, 1000, 5000 and 10,000 hits/day levels - they’re just starting out, so it’s likely you’ll be able to get a great deal!

What am I using PW for?

I use PW on a daily basis. I run campaigns to advertise my blogs and my Etsy shop. I have PW as boxes on 3 blogs and one Network site. I use 100% of the money from my ad boxes to pay for my ad campaigns. I started my PW account with $10 and I have not spent a dime in 10 months.

Here is the list of places you can find my ad boxes:

Timothyadamdesigns - I have 2 boxes open

Critiques and Reviews - You will find one box there

Buried Treasury - There are 2 boxes to place ads on there

Buried Treasury Network - One box

We Love Art Fire- 2 boxes

How to run a killer campaign on Project Wonderful

Sign up for more INSIDER tips and tricks - click HERE

What you are looking at here are a few of the ads that I use on a daily basis in my PW campaigns.
Some of the ads perform better than others.



Here are two examples of stats from campaigns I have run on PW. In the first picture, you can see that I spent .37 for 59 clicks and 14,564 page views. Page views are the number of times your ad was viewed on a website. For less than the cost of renewing twice on Etsy I gained 59 clicks. Now here is the SWEET part to these clicks….THEY ARE OFF-ETSY TRAFFIC. Yeah, sure I may be bidding on Etsians blogs, but that is only a small part of the campaign.

Here is my newest campaign…It is currently running…It is set to run on all blogs with all types of traffic patterns. I have set my highest bid at $0.01 and the total spending at $10. If the numbers keep up, I will reach 1000 clicks for less than $10 .

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Here is a Campaign I started yesterday (11.6). I started this campaign searching for any site. The only search guideline I set was the bid amount. I looked for all sites with bids between free and .01. The search came up with 1,500 sites. Below you can view the current stats…

If you are looking to link a blog with an Etsy shop, there is a list of Etsy bloggers with
PW ads: HERE

PW Question and Answer:

Q:

HelenesDreams HelenesDreams

I keep getting emails that I am outbid here or there…and I find that I honestly do not have time to login and mess around with trying to place bids every single day. Is there a way to defeat this…I need affordable advertising…but this 1 cent thing starts to feel like a game of some sort.

A:
TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns
Using the campaign option of PW is a great way to set it and forget it. If you follow the basic steps outlined in the video, you will not have to worry about placing bids everyday. When you are using the campaign option the annoying e-mails won’t be sent. I recommend trying a campaign…you can always cancel it if you think it is not being effective.

Q:
beadifulbaublesSC beadifulbaublesSC
Is there a number as far as averages go that connects views to purchases through PW? Cause some say they get 500+ views per day… but views does not always equal sales…

A:
TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns
Oh wouldn’t that be nice. We have no way to track direct sales from PW.

Q:
JessicaC JessicaC
my question would be how many actual targeted views should I be expected to get?

A:

TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns
With the campaign system you are targeting a specific target audience. If you sell soap you won’t want to advertise on a car site…well maybe you would those guys are dirty!! You get what i mean…When you can target your audience take advantage and DO IT!

Q:

bobnstitch bobnstitch
How do I know it is working and worth the money?

A:
TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns
With the powerful stats that PW provides you will know every 30 minutes if your ads are worth it. You may not know if the views are turning into sales in the short term…but track your ad campaigns long term and you will notice the difference.

Q:

Waterrose Waterrose
I would be curious to know if buying for just a couple of days gets results. I’m thinking that running a campaign for a couple of months, since the costs are usually pretty low, makes the most sense.

A:
TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns

I like to run ads for about a week. That way I am spreading my ads out over a broad spectrum of blogs. I have seen great results in running campaigns for only a few days.

Q:

TheBrassHussy TheBrassHussy
I’d like to know your opinion on the value of a $.01 click, versus a $1.00 click.

A:

TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns

I have advertised on sites ranging from free to $15 per day. I have found that the best BANG FOR YOUR BUCK is running campaigns on the lower priced ads. Sure you can get lots of page views for the $15 ads but that still does not guarantee the clicks, so why not diversify over hundreds of sites.

Q:

bondagetea bondagetea

What type of graphics work best as ads? Animated? Text only? Text + picture? Picture only?

Should we advertise our shop (using our logo, avatar, something recognizable as representing the creator or online presence as a whole) or specific products? Does it depend on where we advertise?

A:
TimothyAdamDesigns TimothyAdamDesigns

The animated ads are the best and most effective. With an animated Gif ad, you can display more than one pic!

High Traffic Blogs/Sites Ads

Now that we have Google Analytics for our Etsy shop, we can better track the results of ad campaigns.

List of blogs/sites to place ads on. These are some high traffic sites that I have not placed ads on, but most of the big players have ads here.

Indiepublic : Indiepublic is an independent art and design community. If you’re an artist, designer, retailer, blogger, or just someone who gets giddy when they buy indie, we’ve saved a seat for you!
This is a Ning site with just under 10,000 member which puts their page views up there. They have Project Wonderful ads and normal 125X125 ads. The cool thing about the 125 ads is that they will show up on most every page that is loaded. The PW ads are only on the front page. I have not personally placed ads on this site, but all the major players do.


Craft Bits Is a high traffic site with 1.5 million page view per month. The cost is high but with that kind of traffic, it may be worth it. I have not personally paced an ad on this site. Click here to see the ad info.

majaba :  Now Known as Craft Cult, this site is a high traffic site used by Etsy shop owners to check views to their shop and number of hearts.

Cuteable: This is a very popular site…Etsy even has an ad on the side! Click here for their ad info.


Modish
: Very popular site…this is a must see…HERE is the ad info.

Here are a few more:

Bloesem

Creature Comforts

decor8

design*sponge

Poppytalk

Purple, Pink and Orange

Google Adwords

I have used Google Adwords in the past and did not have success…but this is a very powerful advertising tool. I have searched for the best articles on this topic and here is what I found.

Tips for Success (straight from Google)

10 Worst AdWords Campaign Mistakes by Tyler Huston

Mastering Google AdWords by Herman Drost


How to Set Up a Successful Google AdWords Campaign by Herman Drost

Here is a list from SmartAds.info. This is an amazing resource for all online marketing.

» Make Money with Google Adwords
» Effective Ads that create higher click rates
» What’s the best way to organize my ad campaigns and groups?
» How to improve bottom line when using AdWords and AdSense PPC?
» AdWords compare to other ways of getting traffic
» Released At Last - (Google Adwords to Turn Traffic ) Perfectly Legal
» Internet Millionaire Club - Make Money Fast with Adwords
» Organize Your Adwords Account to Get More Visitors, Lower Your Cost Per Click and Increase ROI
» Increase Sales and Make Money Using Google’s Adwords
» 4 Quick and Easy Insider Tips To Turbo-Charge Your Google Adwords Sales
» Using Google Adwords to Sell Products
» Overview of Google Adwords
» Some Adwords Basics for Beginners
» Top 7 Ways to Make Sure Google Adwords is Making You Money
» Affiliate Marketers Will Never Make a Dime Using Google Adwords
» Lower Cost and Increase Conversion of Your AdWords Ads
» 10 Inside Secrets to Google Adwords - Part 3
» So you want to run a Pay-per-Click Campaign?
» What The Gurus Didn’t Tell You About Google Adwords
» 10 Inside Secrets to Google Adwords - Part 2

Thanks to all the Etsians who participated in the Q and A section.

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