Normanski» Online Marketing

Asia Century? Well they didn’t pay me.

Normanski — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:48:32 +0000

Well, I find Asia Century funny. First there was an issue of an expired domain. Then I noticed that Asia Century is hosting their ad images on a free photobucket account, so I got some “bandwidth exceeded” images from photobucket instead of the campaign banners.

Asia Century Using Photobucket

Asia Century did call us during the first week of running their ads. They were impressed by the statistics that they’re getting from us. During the first week one of our site was getting Php 200 to Php 800 per day. Impressive huh? Well not for long. From then on the earnings started to drop in notches. In the site that we ran the Asia Century ads, we were giving them about 500K Philippine impressions per day but we started to average around Php 80 for about 3 weeks.

Then came the payment schedule. They were late for a week even though the bank details were clearly specified in the Asia Century account tab. Wow we got the first months payment! But guess what…

Asia Century's August Payment

Unionbank Screenshot of Asia Century's August Payment

The payment that I should get does not match the amount that they actually deposited to my bank account! I haven’t noticed this till yesterday when I started making plans about this blog post. The screenshot of my account with Asia Century above also indicates that I still have around Php 5,457.75 receivable from the company but that amount should have been sent last September. I wonder if they will still send that payment.

In general I love the idea that there’s a local advertsing company like Asia Century. It somehow gives me hope that the Phillipine online economy will improve significantly in the…

Testing Asiacentury Philippines on my websites

Normanski — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:20:12 +0000

Asiacentury is a new advertising company specifically targeting Philippine online market. It is a combined CPA and CPC program and publishers can choose which banners or programs that they would like to run. The thing I like the most about Asiacentury is the friendly staff, a day after installing their ad codes on my main site, I got a mail from Anders and Carlo even called us.

Today I’m already at around Php 195 for 381 clicks. However since it’s a new company I’m seeing some startup glitches, their server was down for at least twice in the last 3 days. There was also an incident of an expired domain (asiacenturyph.com) weeks back. I emailed their support and here’s is the reply that I got:

I believe we have around 4 affiliates who joined during the weekend and they are all showing large amounts of ads. Good for them, as their earnings are good.

We are adding more ram and power to the servers right now, so it will be down for a few minutes. Hope you can bear with us.

I can also say it is great that so many websites are joining us. We have almost 250 affiliates already, so it seems the local market has a need for more ads.

It seems high traffic sites have started to join the Asiacentury Network and their server is having a hard time serving and tracking those ads. Looks like they need some server optimization work to stabilize their system.

Venturing into the affiliate marketing world

Normanski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:16:03 +0000

The past 6 months has been and still is a roller-coaster ride. I got some good bucks from the networks that i have been using like AdSense, adbrite, widgetbucks and cpxinteractive however I’m still curious to know what lies further up the food-chain. I realized that using CPC programs, though very easy easily implemented are somewhere in the baseline of internet economy.

Thus I spent most part of the night researching for CPA networks with good track record and has a paypal payment method. After 2 years of fulltime web publishing and several lost checks in the mail, I’m now avoiding programs that doesn’t pay through paypal. After narrowing down the list of the affiliate networks I signed up to about 4 or 5 networks.

My application to most of them was declined and the common reason was that I’m an “international publisher”. It seems that these networks are trying to avoid publishers which are not based in the US (I’m based in Manila, Philippines). Yeah yeah it sucks, I’m beginning to realize the hindrances of web publishers outside the US and specially my fellow Pinoy dot-comers ( though we have our own share of advantages right?)

Luckily, I was accepted with CPA Storm. I think their support is great since the account manager which was assigned to me was very friendly and they do not reply with canned messages. I have started running some campaigns by purchasing some CPM ads and banner placement to my websites.

Advertising Scam – Tumri Sucks

Normanski — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:12:19 +0000

I recently dropped the Tumri Adpods from my websites after running them for several months and earning more than $1,000. I thought that they were good since a fellow webmaster was using them and claimed that he was being paid regularly. However its been 6 months since I have started using them and I have’t received a single cent from them. The user-panel displays that they have sent a check last January 2008 but its already April and not a there’s trace of the check in my mailbox.

I tried to email them for a number of times and I haven’t received a single feedback from Tumri support team. So for webmasters who are thinking of using the Tumri Adpods, I would suggest that you stay away from them until they clean-up their act.

Widgetbucks started International CPM ads

Normanski — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:09:57 +0000

Widgetbucks rocked cyberspace when they launched their PPC system last October, however the flaming start tapered off for a lot of publishers specially those that have international traffic.

Today is another milestone for Widgetbucks as few hours ago they launched a CPM (cost per thousand impression) campaign to compensate for international traffic. They partnered with a CPM advertising network. The CPM banners are being pulled from the server ads.yieldx.com and the Widgetbucks publishers should update their Widget codes to start server CPM advertisements. However old codes will still function in case you have not updated them yet.

I quickly updated the codes on several sites so I can test their CPM rate. I hope their CPM rates are good enough or at least better than what I’m currently getting from my current CPM provider.

Widgetbucks stopped crediting clicks outside U.S. and Canada.

Normanski — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:48:03 +0000

In an effort to maintain network quality and high RPC for publishers, Widgetbucks will be implementing some new guidelines and a “gated system”. According to their post their network has suffered from a significant amount click frauds and international traffics that are not converting to sales. Thus starting November 15 they will not charge merchants for clicks coming from outside U.S. and Canada. Publishers will not get earnings from this click and the traffic will be redirected to mpire.com -the online store behind Widgetbucks. Moreover, new publishers will need approval before they are accepted into the program. Widgetbucks has been actively terminating publisher accounts and a I have came across a significant number of negative discussions and comments from angered publishers. A lot has been suspended due to “non-English” contents and click fraud. In light of these new development, I installed a a geo-targeting system based on Maxmind’s GeoLite Country so Widgetbucks Ads will only be served on U.S and Canadian traffic. (thus maximizing returns for each advertising space)