Advertising Review: BlogMad.net
(This is the first post in a series of advertising reviews. I’ll be buying ads on various ad networks and posting my reviews on this blog frequently. So do subscribe to its RSS feed if you haven’t done so already.)
BlogMad.net is a traffic exchange website for blogs. How it works is: if you visit other blogs from your BlogMad admin panel, you will win credits. These credits can be redeemed to generate traffic to your blog.
All the blogs are opened in frames and you have to remain on them for at least 30 seconds. This way. BlogMad can track how many blogs you visited.
Price
Instead of spending time visiting other blogs, I decided to buy credits at BlogMad. I spent $10 with them for 1000 credits. And redeemed these credits for a 1000 unique visitors to this blog. Thats 1 cent per unique visitor… one of the lowest prices I’ve found.
Quality
Was it worth it? I’m not really sure.
The traffic from BlogMad has been slow to come. And because they use frames, I find that their statistics aren’t very reliable. When my BlogMad admin panel said that 101 people had been sent to my blog from them, my Google Analytics account showed only 23 visitors from them. Thats a huge discrepancy.
Email conversation with BlogMad shows that they know of the discrepancy in tracking but are unsure as to how to solve the problem. And they assure that they send exactly as many people as their admin panel shows.
Virality
Till now, I haven’t noticed any viral effect that can be traced to BlogMad. BlogMad was the first website I bought ads at because all its members own blogs. And maybe some of them would end up posting comments over here. Or talking about one of the BlogClout goodies on their blogs.
But my Google Analytics shows that visitors who come from BlogMad don’t stay on this blog for a long time. They visit the site, wait for 30 seconds, and then leave from that same page. Bounce rates is almost 100%. Haven’t seen a noticeable effect.
But the 1000 credits I bought have still not been depleted. So maybe it may still pick up.
Ad Score Sheet
Website: http://www.BlogMad.net
- Price: 5/5
- Quality: 2/5
- Virality: 1/5
- Overall: 2.5/5
Verdict: You may want to test them only because the price per unique visitor is so low. But the low price matches the low quality too. Its ok if you pass on them.
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Comments (7)
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Great informative review. I might have tried BlogMad if there weren’t the discrepancies you mentioned.
Posted 14 Jul 2007 #
Interesting post Ankesh. $10 is probably too expensive for what you’d get from a site like that. It’s very likely most of the visitors you’ll get from them are just getting credits for their own advertising.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Thanks Wicked Keemo for your comment. I think thats the case too. But I went ahead with testing because even if just 1 out of 5 visitors paid attention to my blog, it would be as good as buying ads on other networks.
But as I’ve already stated, till now, my experience with BlogMad has been lukewarm.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
I think 1 in 5 is going to be very optimistic Ankesh. What you need to measure is what percentage of the visitors stayed longer than 30 seconds and how many of those have come back. That will give you the true cost of the traffic. Still, $10 is pretty cheap…that’s slightly more than a pack of cigs
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
It seems incredible to me that you have not received the visits you expected.
Blog Mad claims 6985 blogs and 11708 users registered. If you are right in your figures (and I don’t see why you should be wrong) then the vast majority of their accounts are dormant.
Maybe most have signed up, realized it was a poor service and decided to give up.
Posted 29 Jul 2007 #
Hey,
As a warning, I had a warning letter sent from Google because they said that artifically generating impressions or clicks is prohibited.
I immediately terminated my accounts with all traffic exchange sites.
Posted 26 Aug 2007 #
Dominic: Thanks for your comment. But blogmad.net doesn’t generate impressions artificially. Various members of blogmad (with different ip addresses) visit your blog for real. Its not some script that keeps on visiting your website. There maybe some one who kept on clicking on the ads on your website… which may have resulted into the letter from Google.
Posted 27 Aug 2007 #