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RSS Text Ad Sponsorship Available For September

written by John Chow on August 28th, 2007

Be The First To Advertise In The RSS Feed

In my continued quest to push the limits of making money online, I am now accepting orders for RSS text ad sponsorship. The ads are just like Post Level Text Ads from Text Link Ads. The ads are served to the RSS feed and will appear under the post and offer a full 80 character linked title and 150 letter description. Only five text ads will appear under each post and the number of advertisers will be limited to ten. This means your ad will show up on every second post.

A Growing RSS Readership

RSS count

Nearly 8,000 people read this blog everyday from the full feed RSS. A RSS text ad under each post is a great way to reach them. The blog’s RSS readership has been growing by leaps and bounds. A month ago, the FeedBurner chicklet showed 6,792 readers. Today, it’s showing 7,727. It will break 8,000 soon.

The cost of a RSS text ad is $200 per month and is available to the first ten advertisers. John Chow dot Com publishes over 100 posts per month. Your ad will be shown over 50 times. That works out to less than $4.00 per post – less expensive than a Post Level TLA. However, Post Level TLA are shown on old posts that are not read by 8,000 RSS readers.

If you wish to take advantage of this opportunity, then PayPal $200 to johnchow@johnchow.com and email me your text ad to the same address. Your ad can have up to 80 characters for the linked headline and up to 150 characters for the description. This is for the month of September. You will get the reminder of this month for free.

rssads.png

How good of a deal is this? Text Link Ads sells text ads to my RSS for $500 per month. More expensive than a site wide text link on the blog.

No Ad Flipping Allowed

I am putting an end to the ad flipping. Do not purchase an ad if you intend to flip it. I will not change the ad once it’s up. The first few flips were interesting but now it’s getting out of hand. I expect to have all ten slots filled within the next few hours. If you want one, better order it now.

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  1. $200 is correct for being featured in front of 7,000+ eyeballs. 80 characters for the title and 150 characters for the description is great too. I think you tested it and came up with those width John. I bet those characters count are very well calculated. Perhaps I will do that on my blog too.

  2. John Chow, I think the fact that people are flipping these ads show that the value of your coveted ads are on the rise…perhaps they are worth more than you thought? I think encouraging flipping would continue to generate buzz for your ads, but only after you increased the associated cost to acquire those ads of course!

    Like you said before, this site is all about making money…perhaps there is even more money to be made in your ads than you previously expected? Just my three cents….

    – Raymond (MONEY BLUE BOOK)

    • hm.. another creative way to write signature. :)

    • Have to agree here. Surely the flipping of ads only ads to the hype around directly sold ads. A lot of people are interested in buying them just so they can make money by selling them on.

      I think by banning flips it reduces the attractiveness of the add (and the hype) which will only drive the price down (or conversely stop driving the price up as quickly).

      It may be annoying for readers but it’s making you a ton of cash! Where’s the harm? :twisted:

      • You think the ability to flip the ads is increasing the number of ad sales or the price of them? I don’t really see how John would benefit from allowing it. I mean he only sells them once right?

        • I think it increases the price John can get for the ad in the first place. Someone is more likely to offer a higher price if they think they can flip the ad and make money out of it.

    • John needed to raise prices, and end the ad flipping…and he did, because he’s evil!

    • They aren’t worth more; they are being bumped up in price because the hype surrounding ad flipping. People are paying more than they should because they refuse to wait. It’s silly and pointless.

    • yup..i think he has a point….ad flipping is a way to make money too

  3. I have reently switched to FULL RSS feed as well – I have yet to sell an RSS TLA in my rss feeds but soon I will be there! – best of luck John – which I know you probably already have tons of bids already

  4. John,

    You can come up with some serious ways to sell ads. I bet you hit the $20k mark very soon if you haven’t already.

  5. It is another income stream. Good idea!

  6. thats good news lol your income will forsure continue to increase. keep it up !

  7. I not at that point yet, I still need to make more than $1000 per month in order to spend money to get traffic and make money. :oops:

    In the meantime, I am just using some of the best free route to get traffic and make money. Work very well so far! :mrgreen:

  8. It’ll certainly be interesting to read your August income recap, considering the ad-focused redesign. September will be even bigger.

  9. …and John Chow puts his mighty fist down on the out-of-hand ad flips! :twisted:

  10. Okay, I am SO anxious to see the income stats for August! John, I’m pretty sure you seriously dominated this month!! All of these new direct-ads.. gosh…

    You evil genius, you… :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

  11. That’s not a bad deal for those websites who really can make money. I don’t have the budget to buy this ad spots.

  12. John
    This is not on topic but I just interested in TTZ Media Network. Sadly, the website is down? I cannot access to http://www.ttzmedia.com/ :?:

  13. Aaaah…….to purchase or not…………

    Seems like good value……but RSS readers are notorious for not clicking through…..but it will be more obviously placed than the regular TLA Featured Sites……

  14. Great work John.
    What are the probabilities of an RSS reader clicking ads through it? With 7k+ readers, i’m sure it’ll be worth it. I still need to work more on improving my blog before i get to pay for traffic.
    Good luck.

  15. John, I can;t wait to see your earning reports for the month of Aug, it would be interesting to see a big increase in revenue, through your ads and direct banners, since you dropped adsense. :mrgreen:

  16. Dan

    Another idea would be for extra money making the 125×125 an iframe OR having the img sourced from their own location, so that they have power over how the spot gets used as long as it fits in with your conditions.
    That way you don’t have to change images around whenever somebody wants to change their icon or whatever.

    Just a thought ;)

  17. Wish TLA would approve my Feedvertising request…

  18. I agree. That ad flipping was getting a little ridiculous.

  19. Nice idea John…by the way, I’m a little behind but I like the new blog design!

  20. How many clicks is someone likely to get? I’ve never really clicked, nor got any clicks myself.

    • So many factors affect click rate, it’s impossible to predict how many clicks you will get. However, make a targeted and it should do well. The ads are in a highly visible spot. Direct below the post. It actually looks like part of the post.

  21. it was grt article but it meant nothing for a small blogger like me. anyway grt job.

  22. Hi John – I can understand you wanting to stop the ad flipping. But u do provide the inspiration for these evil ideas you know.

  23. Good. God.

    John this has got to stop. You are seriously crossing some crazy lines now man.

    So all those 125X125 ads on the right, they are going towards the September revenue not the August revenue?

    The thing about this blog is that you can do this because all of your readers are the right audience. I doubt someone like perezhilton could pull this off without the proper company handling the ads because there main foucus group are not webmasters. Still John you are minting it with this blog now.

    I think the last time I checked this blog has a better alexa than ttz right?

  24. Now John, I understand monetizing to a certain extent, but nowadays, I see a lot more ads than posts! This has to stop!

  25. no adflips allowed, seriously!
    I’m starting to think that you are getting pissed of that the original buyer makes at least 2x more cash than you did by selling it, and that’s why you’re puting an end to it.

    • It would srsyly piss me off to no extent to find out someone was making money off of my page, and Im not even that greedy. Imagine what must have happened when John found out he was being played!

      • Thats the word, being played or rather being used. When the first adflip happened i was wondering why in the hell would John allow that..

        • Making money off of John is actually good for John.

          Why? Well, the next time he comes to sell an ad, everyone remembers just how much cash the guy who bought the original made and therefore is willing to offer much, much more. Hence John makes even more cash the next time he sells the ad, and the next time, and the next time.

          Besides – I don’t think John got played – he made good money out of the original sale and achieved the price he was asking. Wasn’t it just a case of everyone being a winner?

  26. Great offer again John, too bad i have other expenses this month, or I would buy some

  27. Seems like you’re going to be more money selling the ads direct, because you will get 100% profit. Since you are already a big blog, you don’t need services like TLA to help advertisers discover you blog.

    Also why don’t you try advertisers bidding on your ads? That way you don’t have to guess what the price people are willing to pay on your blog, so you won’t put a too low one. Just like with the Google Ad replacement, you suggested $1000, but someone was willing to pay $1500 when it got flipped

    Anyways, for those of you that don’t want to pay $200 for advertisiment, you should check out this post: http://www.krizka.net/2007/08/29/ppc-advertising-on-this-blog-with-adbrite/

  28. What do you use to rotate the RSS ads for every other post? Or do you do it manually?

  29. John, your page load times are getting out of hand on any post with a significant amount of comments. I’ve also seen it hanging up acquiring info from thetechzone which I assume is for some ads. Anything you can do about this?

  30. I am anxious to see if all these bad boys sold out yet. I would guess the answer is YES!

  31. Dang John….. make money much? lol :razz:

  32. I just ordered a slot. Hope to drive some traffic to my blog from this!

  33. Max

    Hmm… I guess we will try it next month, right now I am not too sure about text ads versus banner ads… :roll:

  34. I think the end of ad flips will bring a tear to every hustlers eye :cry:

  35. Tom

    Thank you for putting an end to the ad flipping! It was a wonderful idea at first but like anything, people just start to milk the system til it’s dry.

  36. I wonder how much traffic people are getting from these RSS ad slots?

  37. I’ll swap you an ad spot in my RSS feed for one in yours :twisted:

Trackbacks

  1. » Ad Flipping Geiger: Geiger, you don’t know me! (Yet) - August 29, 2007 at 10:52 am
  2. Last Chance To Buy Me a Beer | John Chow dot Com - August 30, 2007 at 10:44 am
  3. GotChance - A Geek’s Blog » Blog Archive » Monetizing RSS Feeds - August 31, 2007 at 7:25 pm
  4. New Blog Milestone - 8,000 RSS Readers | John Chow dot Com - September 5, 2007 at 10:00 am