Monetizing A Hardware Review Blog
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If someone asked me when was the correct time to monetize a new blog, my answer would be to wait till the blog has at least 500-1000 daily unique traffic. But when I started my new hardware review blog, Digit Geek, I was tempted to try out ad programs like Chitika eMiniMalls, Chitika Linx, Chitika ShopLincs, TTZ Media and WidgetBucks that would perform better on a product related site like THR than on a site like this one.
Trying these ad programs would also help me to review them here and let you know if they were good or bad 
THR had almost 500 unique traffic the day it was announced here and has currently around 200 daily unique traffic.
This is what I have done to gain traffic to my hardware review blog and monetize it.
Chitika eMiniMalls Vs TTZ Media
THR was first monetized with Chitika eMiniMalls but I replaced them a few days back with John Chow’s TTZ Media ads as they look a lot better, are more clickable and hopefully will perform better too.
My complaint with eMiniMalls is that they aren’t very clickable and they display the best deals in a separate tab. How many visitors would click the Best Deals tab on eMiniMalls?
And on an eMiniMalls MPU (Multi-Product unit), a visitor has to click each product image to get their description and best deals where as on TTZ media ads a visitor can see straight away what they need (description is shown only on single product units).
Check these ads from eMiniMalls and TTZ Media to get a better idea
TTZ Media also provide square ads with ratings that I simply love
But TTZ Media’s report system sucks. It doesn’t show the ad impressions, CTR and the daily earnings. All it shows are the clicks and the monthly earnings! But this problem seems to be only for me as I saw a few screenshots on other sites where they had CTR and ad impressions.
Current CPC (Cost Per Click) rate of TTZ Media
Up to 1000 clicks - 0.15
1000~2000 clicks - 0.18
2000~4000 clicks - 0.22
4000 clicks and more - 0.25
Unlike TTZ Media, CPC rates of eMiniMalls are not fixed. Last month, I got average CPC rates as high as $0.60 and as low as $0.11
Earning Comparison
Last month Chitika eMiniMalls earned me $11.21 from 47 clicks
This month so far TTZ Media earned me $3.45 from 23 clicks
Experimenting with other Ad Programs
Besides Chitika eMiniMalls and TTZ Media, I also tried out Chitika Linx, Chitika ShopLincs and WidgetBucks. Linx used to work well in the beginning but then stopped working for some strange reason and so I had to opt for Kontera’s ContentLink.
ShopLincs is great but it isn’t performing as well as it used to do for me in the beginning.
WidgetBucks ads look great but only their blog sidebar format seems to work for me. Also I haven’t earned anything from it until now.
The other ad programs I plan to try out once THR starts getting good traffic are TribalFusion, AdSense, BlogAds, Amazon associates, Vizu Polls and FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN).
Getting Traffic and Links to the blog
As you probably already know, regularly updated good quality content is not just enough for the blog’s growth and to earn well from it. You will have to promote it and let people know about the blog and try to get links from related sites.
I have promoted my hardware review blog here many times and also got many stumbles and reviews on StumbleUpon which brought in some traffic for a few days but has now started to fade a bit.
I also had decided to advertise the blog using Google AdWords but since it does not accept PayPal, I had to use StumbleUpon Advertising.
Though advertising through SU brought in some traffic, it did not get the blog any links from any site. Also as I expected, not many StumbleUpon visitors clicked ads. Its usually visitors from Search Engines that click ads.
As the blog is new it doesn’t rank well for much keywords and I will therefore need to get it links from other sites, especially from related ones. For this I have asked some of the THR writers to write Digg worthy posts. A story that hits Digg’s frontpage will get a site not only good traffic but also many links from other sites.
Very soon I will be working on another blog too and I have a plan on another one too in the future.
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Posted on January 11th, 2008 | Category: Make Money Online |
Matej
January 12, 2008 at 2:02 am
I have find out about your new site from StumbleUpon ( we are friends there) and I must say that I was impressed with monetizing technique you used there.
Can you tell us how Kontera performed? What was CPC?
I also didn’t received any clicks from WidgetBucks ( with more than 3,000 impressions).
Since I’m not from USA, can you tell me do you see REAL WidgetBucks Ads on my site ( sidebar).
All I can see is “You are 99,999 visitor” and that stuff… but I’m from Europe so they won’t show me normal ads.
Cheers!
Fabien of Small Fish Big Money
January 12, 2008 at 11:48 am
John, with the TTZ Media reporting, they have actually stopped showing the impressions etc… nowadays, they use to show all those metrics at first but they have lowered it to show very little now, I believe you can find detailed stuff in the archives though, I am not sure.
Just letting you know,
Fabien
Wayne Liew
January 12, 2008 at 2:33 pm
It is good to see you working and coping well with these two killer sites of yours. Moreover, you will be having another site coming in and I should give this a WOW.
I would be interested if you share on how you manage your time wisely since you have adequate time for your sites.
kevin
January 12, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Thanks for sharing the experience to monetize a blog
This is very useful to read
–
Kevin
Plenty of Software: Free downloads center
http://www.plentyofsoft.com
countyinfo
January 14, 2008 at 10:17 pm
glad to read your blog.
Rose
January 15, 2008 at 10:40 am
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. It will help in the long run to see what ads I can put on my blog also. Keep up the good work.
Sexton Enterprise
January 15, 2008 at 11:04 am
It’s going to take me some time to read through your archives but I love what I have seen so far.
Sandy
January 15, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I can’t grow up traffic from 350 unique
JohnTP
January 15, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Matej- I was using the Kontera code for JohnTP.com on THR until yesterday, so I cant tell how Kontera performed for THR.
And I am also not from USA
JohnTP
January 15, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Fabien- TTZ Media stopped showing the impressions and CTR? Thats bad
Matej
January 15, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Thanks John for response
Hanne Sena
January 16, 2008 at 6:42 pm
agree with kevin. hope you continue reporting that blog. anyway, i like ttz media ads compare to chitika ads..
JohnTP
January 16, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Hanne Sena- Ok I will report once in a while on THR and on the blog I am currently working on.
David
January 17, 2008 at 4:53 am
I am almost up to 500 visits per day and am thinking about Amazon.com affiliate program. What do u think about them? I buy so much stuff from them I can review their products just about every week.
Also, you need to have a mutual link with Virginia Breeze. We don’t have the same stuff but that is good. We COMPLEMENT each other. Just like businessmen like to go to a movie for entertainment.
I am going to the top and I like you too. And that’s important. You should enjoy the people you work with as you reach for success.
And that’s from someone who knows. Believe it.
How To Rule The World
January 17, 2008 at 6:27 am
those CPC are really low. I am not sure it would be worth monetizing on a CPC basis. Have you tried a CPM model or affiliate CPA model. You might have better luck at a monetization. Consider a CPA with 1 conversion could probably pay off better than both months combined.
JohnTP
January 17, 2008 at 9:14 am
David- I tried Amazon ContextLinks for a few days on THR and now trying one of their widgets. So far I have got a few clicks but earned nothing from it as it is CPA, not CPC. You can give it a try and see how they work for you.
JohnTP
January 17, 2008 at 9:26 am
How To Rule The World - I have not tried CPM ads yet as they work best on sites with good traffic. Besides TribalFusion only accepts sites with a minimum of 2000 unique visitors a day. THR only has around 200 unique visitors a day currently. Do you know anything better than TribalFusion?
I tried Amazons CPA programs, but have not had any luck yet.
The only thing that seems to earn me anything are those CPC ads by TTZ Media, Chitika and hopefully Kontera’s ContentLink too.
btw, John Chow let me know that they are working on a better reporting system.
Eva White
January 18, 2008 at 11:18 am
Hey John Thanks for sharing the information. Keep telling us your feedback about your review of these ad programs. It will help us make money too.
mymytri
January 28, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Nice article johntp.I do agree visitors from organic search click the ads.through social networking sites like digg,su don’t give much ad revenue but you can get traffic which indirectly help your blog posts appear in front pages of search engines.
Hanne Sena
February 2, 2008 at 2:33 pm
actually i notice that on january 28, thehardwarereviews publish a “killer” post and got many stumble [i don't know about digg]. ermm, can you share with us how many visitors you got that day ? and if you don’t mind how long the writer spent to create that article ?
Tom
February 5, 2008 at 7:09 am
I just stumbled upon this page and wanted to mention that Chitika works great for me! Over the last year I compiled some statistics of my earnings and I actually earned twice as more with Chitika compared to AdSense. For those of you considering Chitika - try them!