CATEGORIES
- NYC COVERAGE
- WEB STARTUPS
- WEB NEWS
- CONFERENCES
- WEB TECH JOBS
- VENTURE CAPITAL
- MICROSOFT
- INTERVIEWS
- ADVERTISING
- VIDEO
- ALL TOPICS
- ALL COMPANIES
CONTRIBUTORS
- ADRIAN CHAN
- ALICIA NAVARRO
- ALLEN STERN
- CORSIN CAMICHEL
- DRAMA 2.0
- DARREN HERMAN
- HANK WILLIAMS
- MARK DAVIS
- RICK TUROCZY
- SANFORD DICKERT
- SHANNON CLARK
- Comment on YouTube Down by DVS01
- Comment on Twitter COO Costolo: Advertising Coming To Twitter Soon by Satoshi Nakajima
- Comment on Twitter COO Costolo: Advertising Coming To Twitter Soon by OMG Stop the Web! Twitter is gonna run ads ? and Scoble says you?ll love it
- Comment on What?s Up With Yahoo Mail Delivery? by MJ
BlogKits Review
Both TechCrunch and Problogger.net took a look this week at BlogKits, a new advertising option for bloggers to make money on their sites. Since it appeared as something interesting and since I have worked with affiliate marketing online since it began, I thought I too would take a look. It appears my review will be a bit different than both of theirs. Actually Problogger is really more of an interview so have a look for a discussion with the BlogKits owner.
Usually I leave the summary for the end of the review, but this time I am starting with it. I just don’t see the value in this service. If you want CPA adverts, why not use Commission Junction (CJ), the largest in the space. I get the idea of creating “blog friendly” formats, but CJ has tons of formats as well. And they have thousands of merchants which you can pick and choose from. When I advise others on affiliate networks, most times I steer them towards Amazon because it is easy to use, well known, and people already have accounts. Kinda feels like they made some 125x ads and jammed blog in there and now its a network? I just don’t get it.
Payment on the signup says $25 min, on the terms it says $50 min. Might just be an oversight.
Let’s begin by looking at the options available — I put the code on the page to get a couple screenshots since you can’t see anything beforehand. These are from the tech category and look relatively good. However, I cannot find any information on the site about what these ads pay. Is it 5 cents a sale, $5 dollars, or how much? More importantly are these ads also per transaction? I am not sure I get the difference between these ads and the ones below. One commenter on TechCrunch asked if these ads are coming from other affiliate networks, Jim did not reply about it so I am not sure.
I completely understand the fact that they just opened shop, but to show you what your choices are, under the CPA option, here are the companies that are listed. 3BSoftware is the only one listed that is actually in tech.
- PeterLeeds CPA
- FreeDebtAssessment.com
- SkillDog Skill Gaming
- Peapod
- Medifast
- 3BSoftware
- MyJewelryBox
So yea, I don’t get it. I hope I get a chance to speak with the site owner, Jim Kukral to get my questions above answered. I will report back if I am able to speak with him.
Any more questions Allen? Or anyone?
i like the idea – any stats of bloggers who currently run blogkits and how much some make with X amount of traffic/visitors?
Jim – thanks for replying to all of my questions. Just to confirm, you state that eBay pays 40% on a sale. Is that 40% of the winning bid price? Meaning that if a bid wins at $100, you pay me $40? Something seems off there because I am sure you get a cut too, that means eBay is paying out over 50% ?
I think I am more open to your program today based on your answers but I am curious to understand how many advertisers you have in your mix?
Can you share some stats so far? Similar to what Tim asks above – what's the conversion rate, etc. And is there a cookie for the ads in terms of time of sale?
Again, don’t quote me, but I think the eBay program is a lead for signups, I think. So it’s different than a piece of sale.
Right now we have just under 50 advertisers in, with more coming the new year, and the new feature creative coming that is going to be HUGE! Can’t wait to tell you about it.
I’ll post some stats on the blog in January for all to see.
As far as cookies go, we take that from each merchant’s policies. They decide how long they want cookies to go, not us, we just track :) So it’s different for each one.
Jim, I appreciate your replies. I guess I am a little confused about your eBay payout. 50 advertisers is in the rotation or on the cpa deal like i posted above? What I would love to see (even confidentially) is a list of all advertisers and their payouts. But I can understand if you can't provide that. I do think that might be something to post on the members page because I can imagine others might want to know as well.
I look forward to learning about your new features soon. I hope we get an exclusive over the others :)
We have close to 50 advertisers in the network, so 50 or so different ads, both text and banner, all cpa, or leads.
None of that information is hidden Allen, if you login and go to the statistics navigation tab you can see all advertisers and their payouts :)
And yes, you can have the exclusive in January for our new features, I promise!
Jim
Thanks for replying Jim – I will have a full reply later today but my first question would be — on the eBay ad above, what does it pay? And the same for the Buy.com ad?
“If you want CPA adverts, why not use Commission Junction (CJ), the largest in the space. I get the idea of creating “blog friendly” formats, but CJ has tons of formats as well. And they have thousands of merchants which you can pick and choose from.”
I’m in your same boat Allen, been doing affiliate marketing for a long, long time. I’ve also been blogging since Aug 2001. I’m going to have to disagree with you on the CJ comments, for several reasons.
1. CJ has no blog friendly formats. Only a very large selection of standard IAB banners that frankly, bloggers hate. Over the past two year, I’ve conducted polls and studies on the matter talking directly to thousands of bloggers.
The results were extremely conclusive. A. Bloggers do not want flashy/blinky banner ads (which if you really look at CJ banner inventory for almost every merchant, the banners are just that). B. Bloggers want, and are ok with, understated, subtle ads that “fit” into their blog without being too much of a distraction. If you’d like to see some stats of those results you can visit these pages.
This first one is interesting, “73% of bloggers surveyed indicated they were ok with using affiliate marketing techniques in their blogs. While only 27% of the remaining bloggers being either neutral or in disagreement with the statement.”
http://www.revenews.com/jimkukral/archives/000872.html
This is also interesting, talking about why people blog. This gives much credence to our mantra at BlogKits of “you just keep blogging, we’ll take care of all the confusing money stuff”.
“36% of bloggers surveyed chose the answer ‘I like to write’. Proof positive that blogging lives and breathes because at its core, blogging is in essence… writing. Coming in second was ‘It’s fun and I can maybe earn a buck while I’m at it’ at 28% of bloggers surveyed. In total, that’s 64% of bloggers saying that blogging/writing is fun, with the kicker being that the 28% of them believe they have a chance to earn a buck possibly.”
http://www.revenews.com/jimkukral/archives/000857.html
Back to the banner design points, this result is key. “34% of bloggers realize that their ads must match their blog content, with 27% of them instead wanting control of how the ads appear first. That’s amazing proof that bloggers are clued into the business of making money via advertisements.
What’s interesting as well is that 21% of bloggers are now primarly concerned with how much they can earn, leaving us to believe that more and more bloggers are realizing that there’s money to be made in the blogging business.”
http://www.revenews.com/jimkukral/archives/000880.html
2. Did you ever think what a regular person, a person who starts a blog, must think when they go to CJ.com? First, they have to fill out a very intensive signup form (ours is simple). Then, they have to wait to be approved, and frankly, CJ is in my opinion not too excited about approving a blog with 50/visitors a day into their network. So maybe you don’t even get accepted, likely. Third, if you do get accepted, you log in and see 2000 merchants, each with 100 or so text links/banners.
Confusing? Yeah, remember, we’re talking about a guy who just started a blog. This is someone who essentially knows how to check email and hit the publish button in their blog software, that’s about it. Can you really expect them to go through the CJ.com process and find the right banner ad, with the right merchant, etc…? I argue that is a tall order.
BlogKits is vastly different. Signup, get instantly approved (we review list every day), then login, choose type of ad you want (text or banner, more coming soon too), choose category of type of ad, grab code, put in your blog… done. Maybe like 3 minutes, tops. Plus we have a set of plugins coming that will allow you to do all that directly through your WordPress interface, including placing the ads. Easy as pie
“When I advise others on affiliate networks, most times I steer them towards Amazon because it is easy to use, well known, and people already have accounts.”
Amazon is a good choice as well. Our system is still easier though.
“Kinda feels like they made some 125x ads and jammed blog in there and now its a network? I just don’t get it. ”
The ads are 120×240 and are designed based on years of blogger feedback, and years of studying blog design and template construction… the point being that they fit what the majority of bloggers want, and can fit on every blog design out there. Also, each banner or text ad is specifically written to say “support this blog” or something like that. So instead of these being “ads”, they are more like fancy tip jars. You support this blog, I make a buck. Bloggers like that attitude.
“Payment on the signup says $25 min, on the terms it says $50 min. Might just be an oversight.”
Oversight, will fix.
“These are from the tech category and look relatively good.”
Thanks, I designed them myself!
“However, I cannot find any information on the site about what these ads pay. Is it 5 cents a sale, $5 dollars, or how much? More importantly are these ads also per transaction? I am not sure I get the difference between these ads and the ones below.”
Go to your advanced tools in the nav and you can see the exact payouts for each advertiser. The reason it’s not up front is because “regular” bloggers don’t really care. All ads are cpa, cost per action/sale. The text ads and the banner ads pay exactly the same for each merchant, they are just different in style obviously, and preferred placement.
“One commenter on TechCrunch asked if these ads are coming from other affiliate networks, Jim did not reply about it so I am not sure.”
All tracking for this goes through our Offerforge network, powered on the Directrack system.
“I completely understand the fact that they just opened shop, but to show you what your choices are, under the CPA option, here are the companies that are listed. 3BSoftware is the only one listed that is actually in tech.”
These are just some of our Offerforge network customers that Forge Corporation does outsourced affiliate management for. Good point here, once in BlogKits, you can go and get single banners/text links for any merchant, including these ones, if you want. You don’t have to use our “ad pools”. 99% of people do. Again, it’s about simplicity.
I’d just like to say that I’m thankful for you for allowing me to answer these questions. Any more, just fire away!
Don’t quote me, I’m at home and I don’t have my work files, but I think:
eBay: Sale: 40.00% USD, Lead: $0.00 – $12.00 USD – Probably exactly what CJ pays.
Buy.com: Sale: 3.00% – 10.00% USD
Our payouts will never be lower than what you can find direct through each merchant’s program. We don’t make money by cutting commissions for bloggers. We work with merchants to generate performance incentives for ourselves, or negotiate higher payout rates that we can pass back to the blogger when we reach certain levels of sales.