Project Wonderful
I have been running Project Wonderful ads on my blog for months now. Since I am about to take them down, I'll post a screenshot of them:
Clearly, they look ridiculous. It's not the ads themselves that make the ad units look bad… it's the hideous blue text, forcefully styled with a thick border underneath, that steals way too much attention away from the ads themselves. And seriously, $0.02 to advertise on the best blog in the universe? You might be wondering, how does that work?
Project Wonderful is based on a bidding system. When you set up an ad tag on your site, it automatically becomes available in their system at $0. Advertisers bid to win your ad slot; if an advertiser currently holds a slot at $5, and another advertiser wants to take that spot, they just put a higher bid. I don't recall what the time span is for the price, but I think it's per day. So, currently, I make about $0.04 a day off this ad unit.
From what I can tell, Project Wonderful is popular among web comics, online games and boutique web stores. I actually found out about it on We The Robots. Everywhere that I have seen these ad units, the advertisers fall into one of these 3 groups. That means it's not very good for sites fitting another niche (say, for example, web design).
So, that's enough Project Wonderful for me. It was, um, not so wonderful (ha!). Also, someone should make it easier to theme those ad units! But that's not my problem anymore.
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You actually can theme them, including removing the text and border entirely. I think it's under "edit".
Wow, I would have liked to have known that before…
Hi Christian. i tried one ad unit in some of my sites (still experimenting). I noticed the system allows users to set a minimum bid price.
Janette, I knew that, but I wanted to see if the bidding system really works. I don't think it does.
Chris,
I don't think enough people know about project wonderful… Its not that big in the development community. Its because a developer in the community didn't build it. A person in the comic space built it.
If more people knew about it, they would see that its DAMN cheap for publishers…
Oh Well.
I still have them on my blog. I don't swear by them, but I definitely don't get enough traffic to find something else.
Scott, I totally hear you there. Then again, the "developer community" has sites like Buy Sell Ads that follows the traditional name-your-price model, and Google Adsense which is just your run-of-the-mill, I sure hope someone clicks on this ad unit model. I think Project Wonderful provides a good alternative model for publishers, but the system is a mess for advertisers, so you'll never get any real money going in. That being said, Google Adsense already does the bidding model on a much more widespread scale, in which you don't need to know the specific sites where your ad will end up; Google's algorithms take care of that for you. So, it's no surprise that I didn't make any money from Project Wonderful, and to be honest, I don't think I'll go back to running ads on this blog anyway… the traffic is too low at this point to bother.
Hi. I just signed up for projectwonderful today. Thanks for the info. I usually give everything six months and ditch it if its not working out well. Is it even worth the six months?
I use Project Wonderful on my site. The bidding system works and of course, the bigger you are, the more people will bid into your ads.
I understand that right now it is strongly biased towards webcomics, but that is because that's where ot originated. The system itself could work in other sites as soon as it gains popular mass, unless it generates a 'webcomics-only' stigma, which could happen.
It is true that is your site does not generate enough traffic, your income potential would be greatly diminished. For me right now, it is not an income generator, but it pays for my own advertisements, an at a price that I would not be able to get otherwise, so I just keep the ads in my site as a source of funding my own ads in other sites.
You can also set up your ads to be automatic in 'campaign' mode where you just specify the categories and prices you are willing to pay (even a top amount) and the system will bid for you.
DISCLAIMER: My site IS a webcomic, so my experience may be better than yours for that reason.
Thanks for the feedback on Project Wonderful. I think you have good points on your feature, and its always wonderful to get honest feedbacks based on your experience, thank you for sharing that. It is true that most advertisers on Project Wonderful are webcomics, but its changing, we are seeing major brands and etsy stores using the site as advertisers, major brand had contacted me and told me that they can't believe that in other sites they are paying like $150 per week when through Project Wonderful, they can pay as low as one cent per day. in my sites case, which is more of modeling, fashion and celebrities, the other ad networks like adsense, adify, etc, did not work for me, I like the open system on Project Wonderful, true, it is so cost effective for advertisers at the same time, they know the actual traffic that's going on. And they can always cancel their bid anytime. I use it also to advertise my sites, and it works great on me. On the earning side, I think everything takes time, Project Wonderful has an excellent model, but the publisher site really needs to build traffic, as its competition. I've seen sites on Project Wonderful where each day the bids go as high as $100 per day on a single ad box and this is for a Friendster site! And the advertisers are not comics but rather boutiques! So I think there's always great potentials for Project Wonderful, the key is always building traffic for the ad boxes to be successful, and also to use the system to advertise yourself, I've eliminated all my other ad network and relies on either direct buy and project wonderful. but remember, each site has its own experience, there is no perfect system. Nothing is guaranteed. But one thing that I like most about this, is that you can get your profit in real time! No other ad service provides that. So I guess, Project Wonderful rocks! on that sense.