An Open Question To Adgitize Members
Posted by kexbrown on November 14, 2009
The price changes have brought out some comments by members, both for and against. Well, I wouldn’t say that anyone is actually for the price increases. Anyway, 3 comments that I have received in the last week have sparked discussion here at Adgitize. I need our members to help us decide one way or another.
Here is the discussion on the table. There are many members in Adgitize, over 4,000 at last count. All the members have different reasons to be members. Some are just publishers, some are just advertisers and some are publisher/advertisers.
Now, most of the active publisher/advertisers were generally okay with the price increase because they will advertise and get most if not all of their advertising dollars returned to them. But, members who were only advertisers see the high price hike as killing their ability to advertise to our members at what they feel is a reasonable cost to for our traffic.
A New Price Proposal
The proposal on the table here at the Adgitize Offices is whether we should provide a discount to members that fall into the category of Advertiser ONLY. These members usually aren’t displaying the Adgitize Ad Groups on their blogs and aren’t receiving any rebates on their advertising. Many of them don’t have time to click on ads and aren’t interested in being on the top of the leaderboard. Their only goal is to get branding for their blog and some traffic from the Adgitize Membership.
Here is the question. As a publisher/advertiser, would you be upset if you paid $24 a month for your ads and another member only paid $18 a month?
Advertiser Only
Before you make your decision read this. We would create a new ad category called Advertiser Only.
- This member would receive NO advertiser points (100 points).
- They would receive no doubling of the ad views and page views points that is normally a part of the advertiser bonus (10 to 100 points per day).
- If they decide to click on ads they would have to actually click 100 ads to receive 100 click points for the day and would not receive the doubling of the click points that is normally a part of the advertiser bonus (50 points).
- They would NOT be able to have a Regular Ad and an Advertiser Only ad at the same time. Once the member chooses an Advertiser Only ad then all of their ads fall under the rules of the Advertiser only designation.
Having an Advertiser Only designation would take many points out of the Adgitize system which should help publishers earn more money. An Advertiser Only member would be able to be a publisher they just wouldn’t get as much earnings back as before because they would lose the Advertiser bonus.
Advertiser Plus
We would probably call the Regular Advertiser the Advertiser Plus because then the advertiser is receiving additional benefits by being an active publisher/advertiser.
Having a system like this would encourage more advertisers to be a part of Adgitize as they would be receiving a 25% discount. This should drive more revenue into the Adgitize Network which would be passed to the publishers in the same methodology as today.
What Do You Think?
So, what do you think? Is this a good idea? Have we missed some fatal flaw in the concept that will sink the whole organization? If we did it today would you choose the Advertiser Only choice or the Advertiser Plus? Do you think this will change the organization to the point that all advertisers will actually choose the Advertiser Only designation?
We will be making our decision November 20th (maybe sooner) so please let us know as soon as possible your thoughts.
Dougs Missoula said,
I’ve already commented via private e-mail, but wanted to add my POSITIVE YES vote here in the tally, if there is one.
JT Locke said,
This is an interesting proposal.
At the moment, I’m leaning toward a negative view of this proposal. I’ll have to think more closely about this and weigh the pros and cons before I give a definite answer.
Stealth_mayhem said,
As of right now, I am only a publisher, but at the beginning of next month, I will begin to advertise here. The only problem with the tier pricing as you have it is, why am I going to pay $24/month and display ads on my blog, participate in forums, etc, while you are giving a discount to people who post their ad and forget about it. The are doing nothing to grow the community here. I say $24 dollars across the board. If advertisers want to pay less, put some ads on your site, click on other sites, whatever it takes to make some of the money back from the cost of advertising.
dickster1961 said,
It is hard to say right now since we really have yet to see any increased revenue from the November price increase. I am currently an publisher/advertiser. Right now I plan to renew my ad so that I can see whether or not a full month at the new rate will continue to pay for itself.
I guess the big question would be are you seeing current advertisers only leaving the network because of the price increase? As you have the program stated, it does seem like it would benefit the publisher/advertiser
Emm said,
If it is going to take points out of the system and thus raise our earnings as Publishers then I 100% say yes.
cornyman said,
Yes, it’s a good move to attract some of the previous advertisers (which aren’t active publishers) and increase (improve) the earnings for the active publishers and advertisers!
But in case someone wants to buy this cheaper ad for traffic purpose and being sometimes active, too, it’s not that attractive.
There should be a small incentive as Advertiser Only for the advertiser points (50 points) as you also give advertiser points for the preferred publisher program when you pay (25 points) and even with the free option (10 points).
Otherwise you could make it an optional requirement that these “Advertisers Only” have to click 3 out of 4 days the 100 click points to get additional 50 advertiser points.
This would positively affect the other advertisers in getting traffic and less active advertisers would get a fraction of a cash rebate.
You can read my analysis about your proposal on my blog
John Lottery said,
Against (unless Advertiser Only customers are indeed Advertisers Only, meaning they contribute income to the system but do not receive reimbursement)
I can see that there are a few advertisers who display their products but do not display Adgitize widgets. At the old $14/month rate, it was a worthy expense for them. But at the new rates, advertising on Adgitize could become too expensive.
As I had written on one of my blogs, I believe the the increase was far too steep in this economic environment.
Any concessions in pricing adjustment should be made across the board to be fair to all.
Eli @ Business Sphere said,
Before I comment, I have read posts in some publishers’ blogs saying that their daily earnings haven’t improved, as promised, despite the ad increase.
Therefore, my vote is in the affirmative IF having an Advertiser Only designation would help publishers earn more money and IF it would result to an increase in the number of advertisers, especially coming from outside like business firms, thus driving more revenue into the Adgitize Network.
Bachrum said,
I would Like to say that the proposal is fair enough.
I think that we must thinking for the advertiser purposes which is some of them is pure advertiser who not have a time for doing the other activity for getting some cash back, they need the traffic only.
In other site, I think that this “Advertiser Only” feature is a good solution in raising the potential benefit for all.
Ayurvedic-Tuchkas said,
Marvelous move,
Ken this would really be a great thing because I have also noticed some of the sites when clicked on there is no widget of adgitize and so they are not interested in earning then why not allow them to pay less for advertising.
But one querry is pending in my mind still now is that publisher like me who is interested in earning and increase in traffic both will try to avoid such advertisers who are typically marked advertiser only as they are supposed to be widgetless site or blog so we would not get further link to the adgitize widget and try to avoid it as we will have to open completely new site once we visit that blog.
For Eg. juliana bits is the blog without widget and authority directory is another one so I personnaly click on these blogs only if I have less time to click as the last resourse.
May be this could be my personal view.I would like to have debate on this topic.what others think of it.
Hope you can come out with a solution for this so that advertisers get maximum out of their investment.
Chinaren said,
Yes, sounds logical and fine to me. I’m for it.
113Tidbits said,
I’d like to voice my opinion as an affirmative voter. I have seen the benefits of both sides of the argument. Primarily being able to only advertise a service is a good option for times when you can’t put in for visits.
Either way, I have really appreciated the service and response of your network here.
fedhz said,
I’m still lost here. But I will still continue being a publisher/advertiser. My ad just expired now. Let’s see how much I could earn the next coming days.
Russ said,
I think you are doing a good job.I would like to see the advertisers only get a cheaper rate.But require a widget on there ad.I drop from my inbox on EC.It doesn’t both me but it does halt the whole process.
Keep up the good work.A happy Advertiser/Publisher
sharkbytes said,
It sounds like a viable plan, but it’s always hard to anticipate what an effect will be when there is still a change that hasn’t worked through the system yet. ie. the increase to $24. And despite all that has been written about it, there are still a lot of people who don’t understand that it will take a month to see the effect of that change work through to be able to get the $24 back by participating.
My poll is showing (another week to vote folks- at justthrowmoney.blogspot.com) that clickers DO avoid sites with no widget. So there is a decreased value for advertisers who choose not to put the widget on their site.
That leads me to agree that it’s ok for them to pay less. I like that it would remove some points from the system, since that should mean that those of us who participate fully would each get a slightly larger slice of the pie.
I’m a tentative yes. But I just hate making changes on top of each other, although I can certainly understand why “advertisers only” want relief now.
ALittleBoysBlog said,
I think that’s fair enough. It’s fine to create a new ad category. My ad expires today and I’ll continue as an Advertiser Plus, next month though…
MommaWannabe said,
To be honest I still don’t know if I will continue as advertiser. I am waiting to see if I indeed I will get an increase in my earnings this month.
Laane said,
I have to think about that, so a fixed decision time would be nice. The 20tiest.
Thinking aloud:
Have you considered making the first month of advertising cheaper, so people can start up?
I’ve seen in the blogging community that clicking/dropping at other sites is considered an investment, maybe not in time, but in money.
So that means that there’s a group that has to invest more money ànd more work to see a return.
Interesting is too that on other programs people pay to have no ads on their site.
Here they would pay for visitors to their site, but by having no addtional adgitize ads, the surfers will ignore them as they get to know that visiting their sites does interrupt their rythm of visiting.
DogsDeserveFreedom said,
I don’t like the idea.
Overcashed said,
I am still awaiting feedback from those who keep on advertising. Right now, my ads has expired and it’s like im back to being new with adgitize. It does not hurt… I am still thinking about advertising again depending on the amount of return.
Wizard Surf said,
I have to say I debated throwing some ads up but the low price last month was really an incentive to try out adgitize. So I did.
After checking my stats in many places I have determined that while this is a unique venue, the price increase is not worth it because I get more traffic exposure in other places that are essentially free.
Had this been the old rate from last month, I’d do it again because I was still in the process of evaluating the performance based on the old price.
I do believe you should consider subscription-based with a discount for multiple months/years.
Lastly be good to these people who made this site. Count up how many referrals they brought here and consider the idea that if a member brought you 50 or 100 new people for example, either give them free lifetime ads, previous rate, or a discounted rate.
I know with a lot of marketing sites the price increases as the membership grows due to many factors – operating costs, time it takes to admin, upgrade features, etc. BUT some of them allow you to lock in your subscription rate before a certain date or membership milestone. Which could be just what you may need to keep your current members happy but apply the new rates to new members from here on out.