Advertising Review: BlogMad.net

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(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.

If you liked this post, buy me a beer. (Suggested: $3 a beer or $7.5 for a pitcher)

Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Advertising, Traffic on 13 Jul 2007
Comments (7)

4 Rules of Blog Advertising

A lion met a tiger
As they drank beside a pool
Said the tiger, “tell me why…
You’re roaring like a fool.”

“That’s not foolish;” said the lion,
With a twinkle in his eyes,
“They call me king of all the beasts
Because I advertise!”

A rabbit heard them talking,
And ran home like a streak.
He thought he’d try the lion’s plan,
But his roar was just a squeak.

A fox, who happened on the scene,
Had a fine lunch in the woods.
The Moral? When you advertise,
Just be sure you’ve got the goods.

- Anonymous

I haven’t yet started buying ads to promote this blog. Because this blog simply wasn’t ready. But will be doing so from mid-July onwards.

4 Rules for Blog Advertising

1. Don’t spend money on advertising your blog until your blog has decent content on it (both quantity wise and quality wise).

2. Don’t start advertising before you have a steady source of revenue from your blog. A source of revenue other than from ads that you run. A report you have written or a service you provide are good sources of revenue.

3. Don’t spend money before making money. Start off with free promotional tactics. Then parlay your initial profits to buy ads and generate more traffic.

4. Test and track your ads to know which ones are profitable and which ones are not. Re-run the profitable ads only. Don’t expect repetition (of poor ad sources) to lead to profitability.

Visit this blog frequently and you’ll read how to go about buying ads to promote your blog and which ad networks work well.

If you liked this post, buy me a beer. (Suggested: $3 a beer or $7.5 for a pitcher)