I Got Dropped From Nuffnang Glitterati

Yesterday when I was trying to add a post to Innit, I got this error message, something about not being a Glitterati member. As most of you should know by now after I wrote about my thoughts on Nuffnang, Innit is a Glitterati only feature. Well, I logged into my Nuffnang account and found out that I really had my Glitterati account status taken away from me, I was quite surprised.

Needless to say, I immediately reviewed what changes I had made to my blog recently. I concluded that as my Glitterati status was only recently revoked, it must have been something that I did on my blog recently. So on on the 7th of July, the only changes I made was firstly add a Pepperjam Network banner, a ReviewMe banner and another image link to some website selling magazines. These banners are actually not advertisements, they are more like affiliate banners. Anyway, I have since removed the ReviewMe banner, but I left the Pepperjam Network banner and the image banner there.

Anyway, seeing that the Glitterati status meant a lot to me as the I’m starting to find Innit rather useful , I contacted Nuffnang with some questions and was quite delighted when they gave me such a quick reply (about 4 hours).

I sent them this:

Hello, I’m wondering how come I got pulled out from the Glitterati program just today. I know that Glitterati is an exclusive membership with bloggers without advertisements from any south east asia originating network, but as my site does not have any of them I really am puzzled. Also for your information, I only have one blog with Nuffnang, and is has been recieving traffic.

I haven’t taken out or added in any advertisements in recently too.

Please advice.

And they replied:

Hi David,
You’ve added in an ad unit that is from another blog advertising company based in Southeast Asia which conflicted your Glitterati status as our crawler read on 7-Jul-2008 06:53:27. Kindly remove the ad unit and your Glitterati status will be restored upon a few days.

Cheers,
Robb Chew
Blogger Relations Executive
Nuffnang Sdn Bhd
www.nuffnang.com.my

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I replied them once more with this:

Hello, thanks for your prompt reply. It is much appreciated. If I’m not wrong, the only 3 things I added to my website yesterday was a banner by Pepperjam Network, Review Me, and another link to someones website. I have taken down review me banner. Could you please check my site and tell me whether I have any South East Asia originating advertisements.

And could you tell me what exactly are the networks that originate from South East Asia. And we’re allowed to mention them right? Just not allowed to put the advertisements up right?

This is my blog’s address http://www.drett.com, if you could be so kind as to help me check.

I realy want to get the Glitterati status back, so please advice me as whatever is neccessary.
Thanks.

I’m sure some of you can practically feel how desperate I am to get back my Glitterati status back. If you’re not yet a Glitterati member, I suggest you try it out especially the use of Innit, as I find it is a good source of traffic from Malaysia.

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My Review And Thoughts Of Nuffnang

Nuffnang is Asia’s first blog advertising community. Nuffnang was launched in February 2007 by Timothy Tiah and Cheo Ming Shen. Here are just some information and thoughts that I think would be useful for you guys who are thinking of joining Nuffnang.

OK. So I’ve been a member of Nuffnang for like about 20 days, and so far my current earnings is RM0.25 which I got from one CPC advertisement campaign by Digi. I haven’t gotten any cost per unique visitor advertisement campaigns yet though. Yea I know, compared to many bloggers out there, my blog’s traffic is nothing and I earn peanuts. Hey, but for me it’s a start

Nuffnang provides basic analytics information on traffic to your site, however, if you’re a stat junkie like me, the traffic information provided is TOOOO little. But hey, it’s still better than nothing, because at least they do tell you things like keywords your visitors used to find your site and what countries they come from. As you can see below, the stats aren’t real time as the statistics for today are delayed by an hour. On the bottom left corner you should be able to see some stars. Those stars are an indicator of how well your advertisements perform in an advertisement campaign based on click through ratio (CTR). I have 3 stars, pretty good .

Below is a picture of the control panel. When you click the more button (the small green one) the control panel flips over to reveal a few more options such as adding a blog, your polls and adding advertisements. The yellow band thingy you see is the Happy-O-Meter option which is supposedly to be used in a certain type of advertisement campaign. However, if you haven’t received a campaign that uses it, you still can post the Happy-O-Meter on your blog, just that you won’t earn anything from it.

Anyway, below are some information I believe you should know about Nuffnang.

What Kind Of Advertisements Do They Serve?

• Cost Per Click Advertisements – Any blogger registered with Nuffnang is eligible to run CPC advertisement campaigns. You get paid each time an advertisement is click, and your earnings appear at the end of the week. Cost Per Unique Visitor Advertisements get priority of Cost Per Click advertisements, meaning if there are Cost Per Unique Visitor advertisements, you’ll get them instead of CPC advertisements. A good thing too, as Cost Per Unique Visitor advertisements usually earn more than CPC advertisements.
• Cost Per Unique Visitor Advertisements – To run these kind of advertisements, you first have to get picked by an advertiser to run an advertisement campaign. Earnings for Cost Per Unique Visitor Advertisements are based on the number of unique visitors to a blog while an advertisement campaign is being run. You need to have 20 unique visitors a day to be eligible to  run cost per unique visitor advertisement campaigns, however, I have ran an advertisement campaign before without actually getting 20 unique visitors a day.
• Advertorials - Advertorials is when a particular blogger is paid to write about an advertiser’s product in his/her blog. The blogger will be paid per post because of its better reach. To be able to get Advertorials for you blog, you must be a glitterati member. To date, I haven’t recieved a single Advertorial from Nuffnang, but I guess it’s just because my blog so far still doesn’t qualify.

Glitterati?

The Glitterati program is Nuffnang’s loyalty program which rewards bloggers loyalty to Nuffnang. Glitterati is a status given to exclusive Nuffnang bloggers. An exclusive nuffnang blogger here means a blogger that has no advertisements from any other advertisement network that originates from South East Asia on his blog. To be come a Glitterati Nuffnang member, you just have to wait for about 48 hours or until the the Nuffnang crawlers crawl your page and determine whether you have any other advertisement from advertisement networks originating from South East Asia, if you don’t have, then you automatically become a Glitterati member.

Here are some benefits of being a Glitterati member:

• Payment Rates for both Cost Per Unique Visitor and Cost-Per-Click – According to Nuffnang, Glitterati members earn more as they have a higher payment rate for Glitterati advertisements when compared to non-Glitterati advertisements. (CPC advertisemetns for Glitterati members has a minimum of $0.25 per click while for non-Glitterati members it is $0.15 per click ; Glitterati CPM advertisements get 20% to 50% higher than current blog income while non-Glitterati get 20% to 50% lower than Glitterati income)
• Payment Terms  - Nuffnang will use it’s cash reserves to pay off Glitterati members for advertising campaigns that Nuffnang has not been paid for yet. This translates to a faster payout time for Glitterati members and non-Glitterati members.(30 days from end of month requested for Glitterati members and 60 days from end of month requested for non-Glitterati members)
• Advertorial Opportunities – Advertorials are ones that earn bloggers the most money. Each Advertorial can earn a blogger from $50 to $1500, not including freebies that sometimes come with Advertorials. Advertorial opportunites have recently been restricted to Glitterati members only.
• Community Events – Nuffnang from time to time organises community events, from free movie screenings to lunch meet-ups. Spaces allocated for these events are 70% for exclusive Nuffnang members and any guest they bring a long and 30% for non-exclusive Nuffnang members.
• Contests – Nuffnang has been known to organize contests where a blogger can win anything from free meals to mobile phones. 70% of the prizes are allocated for Glitterati members while 30% of the prizes are allocated for non-Glitterati members.
• Innit - Innit is a tool developed and hosted by Nuffnang to add the additional service of driving traffic to any Nuffnang blog. Nuffnang Innit is a bit like Digg, so those Nuffnang members who uses Digg will find this tool easy to use. I haven’t tried this yet, but trust me, the idea of getting more traffic to my blog makes me happy

With this kind of benefits, I have decided to only show Nuffnang advertisements on my blog and stop experimenting with Advertlets advertisements on my blog so that I can remain a Glitterati member. Anyway, even if they din’t have a loyalty program, I would still be showing Nuffnang advertisements as their advertisement campaigns have earned me a significantly higher amount of money than Advertlets normal CPM advertisements. For your information, Advertlets has launched it’s own loyalty program called TITAN, and so in the future I just might defect to Adverlets. Hehe.

Miscellaneous Information:

Well, if you’re from Malaysia, you get paid in Ringgit, and if you’re from Singapore, you get paid in Dollars. The minimum payout is either 50 Dollars or 50 Ringgit. You have to pay 1 Dollar or Ringgit transaction fee when you cashout. Nuffnang also has widget ads and polls for you to make use of on your blog. Look, I have a poll from Nuffnang on my sidebar, click on it to see how it works. Hehe.

This is Nuffnang guys. If you want to find out more, here is its homepage.

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Advertlets Launches Titan Widget

Advertlets, “Asia’s better blog advertising network”, or so it says has just launched the Titan widget. Adverlets is the 2nd blog advertising network in South East Asia and faces stiff competition from Nuffnang to gain the approval and business of bloggers in the region, and so far Advertlets is matching Nuffnang for every moves and new launches it makes. Nuffnang recently just unveiled it’s Happy-O-Meter widget a few days ago, and now Advertlets is launching it’s Titan widget. Good one Adverlets .

The Titan widget is limited to Advertlets Titan members, a membership which is very much like the Gliteratti membership in Nuffnang which is open to bloggers who have no other advertisements from advertising networks originating from South East Asia. This exclusive membership from these 2 blog advertising networks gives certain privileges to members which other non-members do not have, such as increased earnings and so on.

The Titan widget will mostly feature Advertlets bloggers and also news on Advertlets recent events, post event pictures, contests and more. Besides that, sponsors can also have their content included into the widget as well. The Titan widget is expected to provide more traffic and audience to Advertlets Titan members.

As most of you guys may have noticed, I recently have been jumping between using Advertlets and Nuffnang advertisements on my blog. After a couple of weeks of testing, I finally decided that I should use Nuffnang on this blog, while I use Advertlets on other smaller blogs of mine. The reason is that while I found that being a Gliteratti member in Nuffnang could earn me more money on this blog than Advertlets could. However with this new new Titan widget, I would seriously consider whether I should switch my loyalties back to Adverlets again. Hehe. Oh well, as since to apply for Titan membership in Advertlets you need to have been a member with Advertlets for at least 3 months, I have some serious time to think too

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Nuffnang Unveils Happy-O-Meter

Nuffnang, asia’s first blog advertising community has unveiled has launched it’s first widget advertisement called the Happy-O-Meter. The widget ad has the ability to show your readers your mood, how happy or unhappy you are and the reason you are feeling that way. It even calculates whether you’re averagely happy or unhappy.

The widget ad is supposed to be used in Happy-O-Meter campaigns. Even though you have not been assigned a Happy-O-Meter campaign, Nuffnang allows it’s bloggers to put make use of the Happy-O-Meter widget on their site. However, bloggers who place the widget on their site without a campaign will not recieve any earnings from it.

What do you think guys, do you think I should try it here?

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Things To Know About Making Money From Paid Advertising

Before you start making money from paid advertising on your blog or website, there are certain things you need to know so that you won’t break any rules set by the advertising network and so that you can decide what’s the best monetization method for your site.

The Concept:

Making money from paid advertising is like selling advertisement space on a newspaper. The larger your newspaper circulation, the more the advertising space is worth. The same concept applies in internet advertising, the more pageviews and visitors your site gets, the more valuable advertisement space on your site is. Advertisers wants to draw people to their products or services, while publishers (bloggers, website owners)are the ones who help the advertisers advertise their advertisements by putting up the advertisements on their webpage. The advertising network on the other hand is the one that connects the advertisers with the publishers. Advertising networks take a percentage of the publishers earnings, that’s how they make money. Of course you can take away the middleman (advertising networks) and find a publisher on your own to keep all of your earnings, but most webmasters and bloggers let the advertising networks to do the dirty work.

Terms You Need To Know:

• Cost per click (CPC) - If you’re a publisher, the cost per click (CPC) of an advertisement is the amount of money you earn for every click on the advertisement on your site. If you’re an advertiser, the cost per click (CPC) is the amount you pay for every click on your advertisement.
• Cost per mile (CPM) - Mile in Latin means thousands, therefore cost per mile  carries the same meaning as cost per thousand (CPT). If you’re a publisher, the cost per mile (CPM) of an advertisement means the amount of money you would earn for every thousand times the advertisement is shown. If you’re an advertiser, the cost per mile (CPM) of an advertisement means the amount of money you pay for every thousand impressions on your advertisement.
• Cost per thousand (CPT) - Carries the same meaning as cost per mile (CPM)
• Cost per impression (CPI) - Cost per impression (CPI) is commonly used by publishers to determine how much money they can earn per impression for cost per mile (CPM) and cost per thousand (CPT) advertisements . To determine the cost per impression (CPI), you divide the CPM or CPT of the advertisement. If you’re a publisher, the cost per impression (CPI) of an advertisement is the amount of money you’ll earn for every impression of the advertisement. If you’re an advertiser, the cost per impression (CPI)
• Cost per action (CPA) - Cost per action (CPA) advertising pricing structure requires that the visitor does an "action" whether it is buying something or signing up for something. The "action" does not include clicking on the advertisement.
• Click through rate (CTR) - Commonly used to measure the success of an advertisement. You can get the click through rate (CTR) of an advertisement by dividing the number of times an advertisement was click on with the number of times the advertisement was shown.

Forms Of Paid Advertising:

There are many forms of paid advertising, however here I’ll just list out the more popular and common ones.

• Contextual advertising - Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising on advertisements. The advertisements shown is selected and served by an automated system based on the content shown to a user. Example: Bidvertiser(Show text-ads on your Website or Blog with BidVertiser.)
• Banner advertising  - Banner advertising is basically banner advertisements placed on your site that leads to the advertisers site.
• Popup advertising - Popup advertising is an advertising system in which whenever a visitor appears on your site, an advertisement will popup in another window.
• Popunder advertising - Popunder advertising works on a system by which whenever a visitors leave your site or blog, an advertisement will popup in another window.
• Link advertising - Link advertising is just advertising plain old sitewide text links on a site.
• In-text advertising - Advertisements appear in-text, as in whenever the visitor hovers his mouse on certain “hyperlinked keyword”, an advertisement appears.
• Intersitial advertising - Advertisements appear from time to time during the period of time a visitor is browsing through your site. This advertisements requires the user to press a “continue” button or the visitor has to wait for a certain number of seconds.

Types Of Paid Advertisements:

• Cost Per Click (CPC) advertisements - CPC advertisements earn you money whenever a visitor clicks on an advertisement.
• Cost Per Action (CPA) advertisements - CPA advertisements earn you money whenever a visitor buys a product or signs up for something.
• Cost Per Mile (CPM) advertisements - CPM advertisements earn you money by the number of impressions.
• Cost Per Thousand (CPT) advertisements - Same as CPM advertisements.

Different advertising networks have different set of rules and requirements for publishers, thus I strongly recommend that you read up of the terms of service (TOS) of each advertising network. The most common rules are that you should not click on your own advertisement, or encourage others to click on your own advertisement. Besides that, some advertising networks also do not allow you to use the same form of advertising as their advertisements on the same page. For example, Google Adsense does not allow other contextual advertising advertisements on the same page as it, but it does allow other forms of advertising such as banner advertising and Popup advertising.

Really do try to stick to the rules, as once you get banned from a certain advertising network, then generally do not let you sign up again. I got banned from Google Adsense a couple of years ago. That time I was still naive and have since learnt my lesson. Never again would I try to go against the TOS of a website.

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