I was quite shocked the other day to visit Adgitize forum only to see an announcement regarding Adgitize to close at the end of January 2012 (For those of you not familiar with the service, you can read my thoughts on it here).  The thought of Adigitize closing crossed my mind earlier this year when CMFAds closed down earlier this year but I sincerely hoped that it would find a way to keep the site up and running.  Building a blog network is extremely hard especially in a time where all the conversations have moved to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks to the site owner, Ken Brown, for the wonderful service the site provided over the past 3 years.  While I haven’t been visiting the site much in the last couple months because of my new job, I will miss the site and the professionalism that Ken exhibited for his customers.

I have been a CMFAds user for the past couple years so I was both shocked and sad when I saw the blog post regarding the service shutdown. I usually recycle the money I received from CMFAds advertisements on my blog back into advertising with other blogs so in a way the site works more like an advertisement exchange platform for me more than anything else. While I never made much money from the site I really enjoyed the service provided by Ben. He is an individual with integrity and I wish him the best success in his future endeavors. If you haven’t had the chance be sure to check out his blog!

On the other hand, I sincerely hope something similar doesn’t happen to Adgitize which is another blog advertisement company I have really enjoyed. Unfortunately my real life has been getting really busy (with new work that requires quite a bit of traveling) so the amount of time I have for blogging has decreased dramatically. As a result I haven’t advertise or participate in Adgitize’s forum at all even though I really like to. The advertising service they provide is great and the pricing is really affordable. While you are not going to get rich with Adgitize you can more than break even (I view Adgitize as an advertisement exchange platform as well). I would definitely recommend any newbie bloggers to check on Adgitize. Let’s keep the site running as the owner, Ken, is definitely another stellar individual!

For those of you who don’t know what Adgitize is, you can start off by reading my Adgitize review.  While I absolutely love the service the number of advertisers for the Advertising network have been bleeding a slow death.  At one point it has close to 200 advertisers in the system but now the number has dropped to be in the 130s.  As an advertising platform, here are some areas I believe Adgitize can improve .

- The way the forum is structured – currently it contains numerous topics.  While I love a good chit chat it is a not a place where I would go to learn about different aspects of blogging.  In order for the value of the forum to increase it has to focus more on subjects that a newbie blogger would care about.  Topics such as how to setup bloggers account, basic SEO, split page testing can provide a much higher value.  More importantly, SEO should be applied to these forum topics so they are visible to search results.  It is those newbie bloggers who will eventually convert advertisers.

- Add external ads to the forum.  The forum is a place where a lot of people gather and it makes sense to me to put external Adgitize ads (Adsense perhaps?) on the forum instead of member’s ads.

- Lack of a way to track where the affiliate clicks are coming from.  In the world of marketing, people need to test multiple campaigns in order to tell which campaign is working.  However, that requires the need to be able to track where the traffic is coming from (or perhaps no traffic at all).  If you can’t track where the traffic is coming from you can’t tell which campaign is working.

- Increase the number of clicks required on a daily basis for both publishers.  As a publisher currently you need 100 clicks to earn and as a hybrid (advertiser and publisher) you need 51 clicks.  Personally I feel this number should go up.  Currently I don’t have a problem with clicking 100 ads as a publisher only but I would definitely have second thoughts if it were 200 clicks (or 130s clicks for all advertisers).

- For publishers to earn credit only.  This point was mentioned in the forum and I am not sure how I feel about it.  As a publisher I much rather to be able to cash out if I did earn that money following the preset rule.

Adigitize has been an amazing site for bloggers.  However, it is also a business so it must adapt in order to survive.  The above lists are just random thoughts that have popped into my mind that might work or it might not.  Best of luck to Adgitize and hope it can turn its business around rapidly and provide even more value to its customers!

What is Adgitize
I would consider Adgitize a very affordable advertisement network for bloggers. It cost $14 a month to advertise with Adgitize and in return you will receive 40 ~ 70 visitors daily depending on how well your ad is designed. In addition, if you sign up as a publisher, you can make a little bit extra of money as well.

Pro:
- Very cheap advertising option.
- Can earn back the $14 monthly fee and more if you sign up as a publisher and participate in a set of activities such as answering in the forum daily.
- A group of friendly bloggers that are willing to help you out with any questions you might have regarding blogging.

Cons:
- The people visiting your blogs tends to stay for very short time while they search for the Adgitize widget. This means that your blog will experience high bounce rate.
- The amount of time spend can really add up for clicking 50 sites a day. This is one of the more time consuming part of earning but that is also how you receive traffic.

I have been a member of Adgitize community when it first started out. Even though the community has evolved it has sustained its core value – provide affordable advertisement for bloggers. What you receive in blogging is a result of what you put in. While there are definitely easier ways to make money online you will get a community of helpful individual. If you are a newbie why not check out Adgitize today!

As 2010 comes to a close, I can’t believe it has been a little more two years since I first started this blog.  When I first started blogging I was looking for a way to generate passive income and keep track of frugal online resources.

My total earning for the year 2010 was $1035.46 with a cost of $140.40 domain and hosting fee with BlueHost.  $1035.46  – 140.40 = $895.06.  Comparing to how I did for 2009, I would say it is about the same which is fairly disappointing.  The majority of the earning is still derived from time intensive activity like surveys sites and activity sites like Swagbucks.

While my income for Adsense stayed the same Adsense income for this specific blog dropped dramatically.  It is this year that I realized in order for coupon sites to make money on Adsense you will need tremendous amount of traffic due  the low CPC for keywords in this niche.  On average I only received $0.25  for a click for this site in comparison to my other site which has a rate of $2+ per click.  The lesson here is choose your keywords wisely if you really want to make money through Adsense.  As an attempt to move away from Adsense earning for this site I started Amazon affiliate program which I made $40.80.  Not bad but definitely something to work on for 2011.

As for blog giveaways, I definitely recommend people entering blog giveaways as I have won a number of them in the past two years.  There are usually a lot less people entering and your chance of winning is much greater than your typical drawings.  For the new year, I will have to find better ways to focus my time if I want to increase my earnings.  Look for my next post where I will discuss my blogging resolution for 2011 and whatever your blogging goal is, best of luck for the upcoming new year!

Checking my bank account this morning and I noticed that I received an $101.02 payment for Adsense.  This $100 took me about 7 months to accumulate so I was making about $14 a month, not great but enough to cover my hosting cost from Bluehost for this year.  Besides getting gift cards from Swagbucks and Communispace, Adsense generates the most revenue for me throughout the year.

So what am I going to do with the $100 I received?  I am planning to hire LadyJava to redesign this site.  If you are an Entrecard or Adgitize member, you have seen some of her wonderful work while hopping between different sites.  So stayed tuned to see what she comes up with for this site!

I just received my Adgitize payment for last month for $24.58.  The result was much more generous as a result of Adgitize reverting their advertise price.  In addition, I have my advertisement extended by 20+ days.  (Free Traffic!)

If you are a blogger and you are still not advertising with Adgitize, then you are making a huge mistake!

I started this blog a little more than a year ago as a reference for myself in regards to different ways to make money online, good reference websites and frugal tips as the economy started to tank. Maintaining a website takes a lot more work than I expected even with WordPress (One of the best blogging platform out there).

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I was quite surprised yesterday to log into my Adgitize account and see that they have decided to reduce their price back to $14/monthly.  The current sets of individuals who is paying higher prices will get their advertisement extended in the following way: 22 days for $24 ad / 10 days for $18 ad / 5 days for $12 ad.

As a company I can definitely see the need for Adgitize to increase price in order to pay for different server cost.  I, for one, didn’t mind paying the $24 if I receive a decent amount of traffic from them on a regular basis.  However, the number of advertisers dropped off tremendously new price was enforced.  From the customers perspective, I am glad to see they are monitoring and responding to their customer base on a regular basis.  From running a business, I worry about whether keeping the price low will be feasible in the long run.