I signed up for WordPress.com‘s relatively new advertising service, Word Ads, quite a while ago and it has finally paid off. When I checked my Paypal balance today, I had over $100 waiting for me, paid out by WordPress themselves. This made me punch the air in happiness, as I’m a one guy operation, and have a full-time job, so it’s not like this blog is something I can devote my life to. For those that do not know, Word Ads only pays after you hit a threshold of over $100, so this was for one year of having these ads sponsored by them. One would assume it’s not worth your time, if it took me that long, but that’s not really the case. The truth is that it was my fault that I wasn’t getting great payouts at first.
For like six months, I was stubborn and did not optimize my blog with a theme that really utilized the service. In fact, this led to me getting measly $2.00 per month payouts. I’d occasionally check my ad placement, and discovered a terrible ad that was like “get your Missouri Driver’s license” was my main sponsor. After I spent a “crapload” of time making my site look better and switched themes, I got better ads and as a result have been getting around $20 a month for the last few months. I’ve seen big stuff like World of Warcraft and even Walmart pop up. If I can maintain this trajectory, I might be able to really make some cash for my blog. I’m not expecting anything huge, but if I can make my bills less of an issue and make overtime a non-issue at work, I’d be so happy. And me being happy = more blog posts!
I’m writing this because a quick Google search for “tips for Word Ads” results in many cranky users that expected to become overnight millionaires with the service. So far, persistence has paid off for me, and I’m enjoying the ride. This is an unsolicited Word Ads minor success story, if you have any questions, or concerns feel free to consult WordPress.com’s Word Ads page here, or drop me comment, my experience might be helpful I suppose.
That’s awesome! I’m going to check it out. Thanks for sharing.
I’m currently on a not-optimized for WordAds theme but making the switch next week to Twenty Fourteen. Great to hear (read?) your experience.
no problem at all, hopefully yours works out as well! My other tip that helps me is to use the Stumbleupon Toolbar, it has helped me quite a bit.
Hi, i recently got accpeted for wordads on my blog http://www.onedrawingdaily.com and am thinking about promoting it on StumbleUpon aswell. What is your experience with stubleupon marketing if i may ask? Do you know if it is against wordads’ terms to pay stumbleupon for a streak of traffic to get noticed and thereby get likes on SU?
Thanks for sharing your tips
Oh! I never pay for views, so I wouldn’t know. I knowSU has policies against that, so I’d be careful. I was a very active member of Stumbleupon years ago when I used to work for a gaming website, so I had a small but decent amount of followers. I just liked other content, and submitted pages to get traffic. it’s not a lot, but it ads up to a decent amount after a while.
Hi – I got a response from the wordads support service, and they said thare there was no problem with buying traffic – as long as it’s real human beings looking at the site..The person in question said that SU for sure was ok.
I actually did this little article especially for SU.. I’m really no expert when it comes to marketing online, but I tried making it interesting.. Have a look if you like:
http://onedrawingdaily.com/2015/01/22/6-things-i-learned-after-drawing-319-drawings-in-4-months-and-13-days/
I didn’t quite understand – what is against SU’s policies? You mean self promotion?.. I think it’s definitely something that one should be careful about – you know – not only sharing your own stuff with the clear goal of making profit from stumblers. I try to be an active member on SU, and i actually get a lot out of it inspiration wise. I think that one is allowed to add ones own pages, but with moderation..
Anyway, thanks for taking your time to answer!
Thanks for sharing your experience. I just turned on WordAds on my blog http://topbullets.com 🙂
Since I wrote this, ut’s been even better, I may have to update this article!