Wednesday, April 4, 2012

On Joining an Ad Network

Nail Wheel Wednesday will be happening today, just a bit later on. Right now, I want to share that I've joined the BlogHer Advertising Network. What this means to you is that instead of my smiling face at the top of the sidebar, there's an ad followed by some links to other blogs in the BlogHer network (and then my smiling face). What this means to me is that I might make enough money to offset the hosting costs for the photos I post here (okay, I'll probably spend any money I get on more nail polish, but I could use it for hosting costs if I wanted). I also might not make much money at all, but I decided to give it a try.

I got an e-mail from BlogHer a couple weeks ago explaining that they were adding beauty blogs to their network and had come across mine and liked it and wanted to invite me to apply to join. I'd heard of BlogHer and was surprised and even a little bit giddy at the idea that they'd heard of me, too. Since I hadn't been thinking about joining any ad network, I needed to do some research before I decided how to proceed. I found some helpful posts, including ones on WordCount and Life Blessons. After mulling it over for about a week, I filled out my application online and heard back pretty quickly that I'd been accepted. After that, I followed the clear directions in the followup e-mails and today installed the ad code. So far it's been easy to work with BlogHer, and I'm hoping that continues.

I don't expect this change to affect my posting here at all. I hope it won't affect your reading experience either. In the short time I've had the ad code live, it hasn't seemed to slow the page load time, but do let me know, either in the comments or via e-mail, if you see any negative impact. That's all for now. Later today I'll be back with glitter.

14 comments:

  1. It sounds like a good idea, congrats!

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  2. I think this is a good idea. The ad I currently see is for charity water. Sounds like a good cause to me! do you get paid per click?

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    1. Samantha, payment is based on page views, though I've opted to accept upaid PSAs (public service/charity ads, like the water one) as well. That's one of the things I liked about the BlogHer approach.

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    2. Unpaid, that should be. Upaid is not a word. Oh, Blogger, why won't you us edit comments?

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  3. Thanks for posting this, Karen. I've been debating it myself, and the resources you posted have been good reads.

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  4. Right on!
    :D
    p.s. I think it's a great idea!

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  5. Thanks for this, Karen! I got an email too and I was on the fence because I didn't know a lot about advertising on my blog, but after reading those posts I feel good about it!

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  6. Oh how cool! This seems exciting :)

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  7. I was emailed as well about joining this network as well-I had declined-but it is nt affecting your blog at the moment!

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  8. I used to be a part of blogger on my personal blog, but they had a requirement that any product you accepted and reviewed has to be under a $40 value, or else it had to be on a separate, non-blogger ad page. Do you know if this requirement is still in place? I suspect that some nail polish collections some of us receive to swatch/review are valued at more than $40.

    I should say I've been out of blogger for a littler over a year, so that rule may have changed.

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    1. Sasha, the "$40 rule" that the BlogHer Ad Network used to have is no longer in place. There are still rules, but ones that won't prevent me from doing the types of reviews and giveaways I've been doing, so I decided I could live with them. There is still always the option of doing reviews that don't meet the guidelines on a non-ad page, too.

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    2. That's great! I may re-consider joining again. Thanks for the info!

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  9. And I just noticed I put blogger rather than BlogHer... whoops!

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Thank you for reading and commenting! I greatly appreciate knowing I'm not just talking to myself here. :) I'm moderating most comments now due to the spate of spammers who claim to be looking for sexy times.