Sebbie on the Webbie

I have been an advertiser on the Project Wonderful for quite some time, always relying on the square 125×125 standard advert, out of sheer laziness, really. I had one created for EntreCard and thought to stick one on Project Wonderful too. (Not much to loose, you know.) Then I started thinking… There are probably a lot of people like me, and the other ad boxes that must be out there go virtually unused… AND unpaid. So, I decided to create a version of my ad in all available sizes. The ad design is very similar, and the variation in textual message is minimal regardless of the size of the ad.

I realised that the standard 125×125 advert will cost me more to run, because the competition is higher, but on the flip side there’s a lot more sites to advertise on, so I kept it in the game anyway. (Besides, with PW rates, who cares?) To my surprise, the smallest of ads, the button, performed best. How odd is that? The button, based on my results, brings in 1/3 more visitors compared to the square 125×125 ad, maybe because it’s so small it doesn’t look like a paid ad but something the page author recommends. (I remember reading a blog entry along these same lines saying the same about the button ad, but to the life of me I can’t find it anymore to link to it.)

As an experiment, I spent 6 dollars on Project Wonderful and 6 dollars on Facebook advertising. Even though I created a highly targeted campaign on Facebook, the cost per click is as high as $0.16 (again using a version of the same ad showing only to people who mention “Barbie” on their profile or are fans of an official Barbie collectors page). On Project Wonderful, I ran a very untargeted campaign, showing the ads where ever I could get them for 0.01 dollars, and as a result I got about double the clicks and paid on average from $0.001 to $0.02 per click depending on the size of the ad. (The cheapest being the massive rectangle ad, and the most expensive a shared position between the 125 square and the full banner.)

Of course, there might be a situation where Project Wonderful simply doesn’t work for you because your genre isn’t on the whole network. I have found only one other site running PW ads that is about Barbie, but I am lucky in a way that my topic is a fashion icon, and everyone knows her already. I can also run the ad on craft sites, and chances are there’s a Barbie collector there who sees the ad. Also, I know that people who are into crafts can be curious about Barbie, so even if they’re not collectors yet, my site might coax them into it..! I know similar things have happened when I’ve been interviewed on the telly or magazines about Barbie stuff, and someone, who hadn’t even THOUGHT about collecting before got inspired to see what it was all about and are now active members of the community. That is why you don’t always want to put in highly targeted ads to people who may already have a routine in the niche, they might have their favourite blogging tips site that they visit every day and they don’t have the need for your tips.

Then, once the clicks are in, it’s up to you to keep them coming back. Make sure they know instantly what your site is about… And don’t do it like I did with broken links on the front page!!

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