Project Wonderful : Anything to Raise Team Funds

Perhaps some of you have noticed some of the ads from sponsors on the sidebar that are always changing. Today, there may be no ads, tomorrow some, then poof gone again. The ever changing ad boxes are the works of Project Wonderful.  I am honestly tired of trying to sell direct advertising for our blog, when we have so much else to do and I'm sure you know time is limited!   So, I handed the ads off to Project Wonderful for the time being.

At first they were free, so a lot of people tried them out. I have now put a cost associated with them, some from 3 cents per day to 10 cents per day.

I am not sure if any of you use this service, but I have actually a few ads out there myself though it.  It's cheap advertising, but if you do your homework sometimes you can find a niche site that works for you.  Ultimately if you sell handmade , advertising on a site like Handmadeology for $50 for 3 months will get you a lot of views.  If you don't have $50, you may wish to try a smaller niche site for say, $5 and see what happens.

Get your Ads in Gear with Human Body in Motion by sevilyadesign

I want to reiterate that things aren't going to fly out of your shop, (I'm on Design Sponge and I'm not selling out) so.....this is for people who want to put $10 or $20 into an advertising account and test the waters. Find a niche.  For just ten cents a day, $20 may last you some time! What's nice is you have reports --if you research and read them you can find something that works for you.  You can search for blogs  (both business and personal) that fit your keywords.  Some blogs have a lot of page views, others are growing .....A crochet seller may have very good luck advertising on a yarn site and get advertising results for less , than if they were to advertise lost in a sea of ads on a larger much more read big-boy site.  You really have to do your homework and search by keywords. The best part is you can cancel it at any time and you are not committed.

You can really do research for free before committing to Project Wonderful.

It took me awhile to find the right place to advertise my vintage shop via Project Wonderful.  I found some places really cheap just weren't a good fit for my vintage shop.  One vintage site wanted $11.13 a day to advertise, I must say they were a widely read blog but if an ad is going to cost me that much I'll go to Design Sponge!   I found a spot that worked for me, but over time my click though rate cost me about 60 cents a click so I dropped it. Now I'm on a site that costs me about .18 cents when they visit my shop.  What that means is , a vintage reader who loves vintage is costing me less than a quarter to visit my site.  Would YOU pay a quarter to get a new customers in your niche to visit your Etsy shop and look around?  The best part is you can set a spending limit like "Drop me when I used up $5".

You can easily get lost in the WWW full of advertising. This pendant by Girl Geek Boutique!

Project Wonderful is a bid system.  You bid the most you will spend per day on any given ad. I "park" my bid and leave it up. Today, I may be the winner and featured for a few days for .10, but Wednesday comes and someone bids .12 and knocks me out.  They then leave on Saturday advertising elsewhere and I'm back in because no one is bidding against me.  So, it takes me a heck of a long time to blow though $20.

Ironically what you can't see is the fact it targets four country zones. People reading this from Canada may see ABC Calendar's shop wherein someone in the states may be seeing XYZ Supplies.  It is based on target audience. 

Project Wonderful makes their money when you deposit funds from your paypal in there, taking small service fees.   A lot of people say to me, "I have not had any luck using Project Wonderful."  I say to them, did you do your homework and really read the reports, and if not, how do you really know?  Someone who clicks though today may come back and buy tomorrow.

Advertising can be confusing.

I'm putting together more compiled results in Advertising in the future, but for now I thought I'd tell you that I'm letting Project Wonderful handle our blog advertising from now on.   We may not get rich quick off selling these ads, but over time we should have some money deposited into the team shop funds.

So please support and visit our sponsors!  They will be constantly changing :)