Friday, May 2, 2008

Project Wonderful - Update

On April 5, 2008, I created a Project Wonderful account with the goal of selling advertising space on my blog. Today, is May 2, 2008, almost one month since the activation of the account. I plan to keep my account open for a few more months to test things out, but I cannot say that I am overly impressed with the service.


First of all, I have three available ad spaces for sale on my blog through Project Wonderful. (Not to be confused with the ad space I sell direct with payments made via PayPal.) Additionally, I have played around with the daily cost of the ad space to determine the price that will generate the most interest. Currently, I reside at about .30 cents per day which equates to a whopping $9.00 per month... IF the owner of the ad remains on my blog for an entire month. If this were the case, I would be ecstatic. Who doesn't mind making a few extra bucks simply for doing what you love. I would blog whether I utilized Project Wonderful ads or not. Herein lies the conundrum. By using Project Wonderful, I am required to daily check their website for the following reasons:

  1. New Ad Approval. To be fair, you can allow ads to auto-accept and populate your blog/website. I am not comfortable with this concept. I may only visit my blog once daily and I do not want ads posting that I deem questionable without my knowledge. Therefore, my Project Wonderful settings state that new ads must be approved by me, while previously posted ads can be auto-accepted and populate my blog. This a great segue into my next point.

  2. Ad Turnover. My ad space is bid upon it seems all day long with new bidders outbidding old bidders which requires me to check Project Wonderful multiple times per day to make sure I can keep up with all of the new bidders. My experience, is that not only are originally approved ads outbid by new ads now requiring my approval, the approved bidders often voluntarily remove their ads anytime between 6 to 24 hours.

  3. Insufficient Funds. At least twice per week, I have to remove an ad because the advertiser has insufficient funds to cover the cost of the ad.

In light of all of the above activity, I have approved a new ad almost daily, sometimes two or three different bidders within the same day. Within the month, it seems possible that I would have accumulated at a minimum $9.00 in ad sales. Right? Well, let me provide you with the actual statistics:

  • Almost 30 days using Project Wonderful
  • 8 different advertisers
  • 57 ads generated by those 8 advertisers
  • Insufficent funds requiring ad removal at least 2 times per week
  • $2.01 profit

So, I ask myself... is all of the time and energy worth it? I will decide within the next 60 days. What's your feedback?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very mice Tabi you are doing a great job of your blog!!
keep up the good work and you gooooo girl!!!!!

Beat Black said...

im still unsure if i want to put project wonderful ads in my blog, but
$2 in 30 days sounds good to me

Katie L. said...

Definantly not worth your time. I think it's better just to offer to put someones mini up or have them make an ad to send to you to put up for $5 a month or whatever you want to charge. It's a lot easier than all of that sounds. :)

njm said...

enyaire,

Thanks for the compliment. I enjoy blogging tremendously.

Thanks for visiting.

njm said...

beat black,

Thanks for visiting. I am still deciding. I will certainly keep you posted on how it goes. Let me know if you decide to sign up.

njm said...

babylyons,

This is the test phase - 60 more days until the final decision is made.

Thanks for visiting.

Anonymous said...

Great article. I read with great interest because I have some PW ads up on one of my blogs.

I've only been blogging since April 1, so I don't think I can justify asking for people to pay for ad space just yet.

I don't pre-approve ads, and so far nothing weird has been posted. As far as when they run out of funds, aren't they just automatically removed? Keep up the good work.
Gina

Anonymous said...

Wow! Some were removed for insufficient funds? Sounds like it's not worth the effort. I had Adsense and someone might have profited, bit it wasn't me!

njm said...

Helen,

Yeah, I'm not sure what I think yet. Because I have to check daily, almost twice a day (morning and night) I feel like its becoming an obsession.

Yes, there are frequent NSF advertisers. Go figure.

njm said...

Geenah,

I believe you are correct - the NSF ads are automatically removed from the site, but it seems like they are still listed as the high bidder. Therefore, other bidders can't move into the NSF ad spot until it is removed.

If this is not correct, feel free to correct me.

Adorebynat said...

Your information is helpful.I myself is trying out the Project Wonderful. Right now, I only put ads on others'. Since my blog is pretty spanking new, I have to wait to offer ads placement.

njm said...

Adore By Nat,

Did you ever allow ads on your blogs? After I changed my settings on Project Wonderful things are a little smoother.

Unknown said...

I use Project Wonderful as well, its okay but nothing fancy, I eventual will have to find a new system, but Im using this only because I havent figured out how to private sale very well yet.