BlogKits Archive

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.