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’ve been looking a lot at RSS feeds lately. How to use them, how to promote them, and how to make my numbers grow. I know from my own experience that I forget about sites, even ones that I enjoy, and I’ve begun to use readers and find out what a great tool RSS really is.

So I want my own readers to be able to take advantage of this and be able to find me again if they’ve enjoyed something they’ve read. (This “they” is YOU, by the way.)

When I first started out I got the message, “Make your feed easy to find.” Check. I’ve put it at the top of my blogs.

But now I want to do even more!

First, I noticed that other people had nifty little footers at the bottom of their feeds. Some with adverts and some with messages that didn’t appear on their sites, so I did some research.

Wordpress Plugins:

• Feed Footer Plugin
• Better Feed Plugin
• PostPost
• Sig2Feed

But none did exactly what I was seeing, so I keep looking, and guess what? It’s a standard feature you can get for free on Feedburner. (Yes, I feel dumb.)

Seen these? Well all you have to do to have them on your own feed is click a few buttons! It’s incredibly easy if you’re already using Feedburner. Log in to your Feedburner account and click “Optimize”.

Then Click “Feed Flare” on the left column.

Then simply go down the list and tick which options you wish to show up on your feed in the Footer.

Save. And it’s done!

This will increase the chances that your RSS readers will interact with your blog!

Other good articles on RSS feeds:

• Increase RSS Subscriptions 
• John Chow’s RSS Competition.   (I include this as I think it’s a great idea and inspiring to think of creative ways to raise reader’s awareness of your feed!)

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Blog contests are a great way to build traffic for the site running them, and a fun way to win prizes for their subscribers! Here’s a list of some popular contests running right now.

Stupid Celebrities - Giving away a Microsoft Zune 80 GB Digital Media Player Black (2nd Generation). Lots of ways to enter! - Ends Nov 30th

Help John Chow beat Shoemoney in their RSS competition. John is offering some great prizes for people signing up to his full feed RSS. Shoe is offering nothing so go John! Prizes include: A 2GB iPod nano (value $149), Ad in the RSS feed (value $200), John Chow dot Com Review, 7 Winning Strategies for Trading Forex (value $20). Ends Oct 31st. *Note: lots more prizes have been added since his first posting of the contest!

Blog Contests are giving away the prize they won in David Airey’s Blog Contest, Blog writing consultation with Ben Yoskovitz . Details here . - Ends Oct 14th

**EDIT FiddyP contest deleted.  Got a snarky letter from them about the post.**

TechJuicer is offering an 8GB iPod Nano as a first prize in his blog competition. You can also enter by sending text messages. See link for details.

The contest at Making Sales Making Money is different because all you have to do to win is give your opinion! Heck you don’t even have to have a blog. - Ends Oct 26th

Gadgettastic are giving away free advertising valued at $1800. - Ends Oct 31st.

To enter the macsimumweb.com contest for a $50 Amazon gift certificate, you just have to link to the contest post along with a link to FinanceFavorites.com with FinanceFavorites.com as the anchor text. - Ends Oct 31st.

If you know of any other contests running, or are running one yourself, I’d be happy to add it here!

*** Newly added:

Whydowork.com is giving away an iPod Nano. Contest ends Oct 31st!

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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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