Project Wonderful Talk - Don't flood the market!

Don't flood the market!

Friday, January 05 2007 @ 04:56 PM GMT
Contributed by: Caveman Joe
Views: 985

To keep Project Wonderful moving plenty of cash around, it's important to give advertisers plenty of choice - but to keep supply in proportion to demand. If you're earning less than fifty cents a day on your site and you've been going for more than a month, you may want to use fewer ad boxes.
Each and every advert on your site is competing with the others on the same website, and if you have too many, then there's no good reason for an advertiser to make that all-important first cash bid.
Remember that most advertisers are looking for the best deal for the least money. It's unfortunate, but true - nobody's going to just hand you a fistful of dollars for having a cool comic or blog, especially if there are a dozen button ads, a leaderboard and a skyscraper to choose from on the same site.
Competition is always a good thing, but you shouldn't compete with yourself!
It's hard to say what your ideal number of ads should be as it's going to be different for everybody, but as a general rule of thumb, if you ever see "Your Ad Here" images on your site and you're not earning any money, you could probably do with fewer ads.
It's good that advertisers have plenty of choice - but there's a big jump between giving them choice and flooding the market!

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Don't flood the market!

Authored by: EddieC on Thursday, January 11 2007 @ 09:22 PM GMT

This is an excellent point. One aspect of PW that kind of restricts this idea, thogh, is that Sellers can't edit the rows / columns of the advertisement once people have started bidding.

For example, if I could, I'd start with a 1x1 ad grid on my site. If that filled up and I was receiving $1.00/day in bids, I would like to extend the grid to 1x2 until those _both_ reached $1.00/day, then I'd extend to 1x3, etc. But I can't. I'd have to cancel the earlier grid -- which would leave my high bidders in the lurch -- and make them re-bid on the newer, bigger, grid. That's clumsy and a disincentive to my advertisers. I suppose I could always just add a second 1x1, but then I couldn't give bidders the option of "bidding on the cheapest slot available".
So, practically speaking, I need to make my best guess before getting started.

Or maybe I'm wrong,
Eddie C

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Don't flood the market!

Authored by: Caveman Joe on Thursday, January 11 2007 @ 09:33 PM GMT

No, you're absolutely right. You should always try to make your first guess your best. Most of the time it won't be, but it's good to change as little as possible.
When I first started this website (a week ago today - feels like longer!) there was a 2*4 grid of 117*30 ads up there. When they all started earning a penny a day, I was delighted - but after a couple of days and much soul-searching, I cut the box in half. Now everybody's on $0.10 a day - much better.
I've found that as long as there's demand for your space, and as long as you use the "Contact All Bidders" function to let people know why you're cancelling their bids, people will re-list. In fact, they'll rush for it, 'cause there's free advertising going!
Plus, if you're earning a buck a day on one advert, then you know for a fact that there's demand for your advertising space - and people will rebid.
I'd like to see what the figures look like with only two button ads, but I've already changed it once, and I think it'd be rude of me to do so again. So yeah, it's always nice to get it right the first time.
Maybe at some point in the next few weeks, between the members here, we can figure out a rough guide for newbies, along the lines of "if you have this many visitors, have this many slots" - but then again, given that the Project Wonderful economy is very much One Of Those Things That Come In Waves, even that might be very vague at best.

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Don't flood the market!

Authored by: CWF on Monday, February 12 2007 @ 09:38 PM GMT

You couldn't calculate anything regarding this. Only thing you could say is that if your site has lots of visitors and might be a bit on the boring side, then place lots of ads. You might get lots of customers for those ads as people seem to be leaving your site all the time, and generally using the ads :D
This however does mena that your site wont have many regulars.
Some of the more fantastic webcomics advetising through PW has a huge amount of visitors a day, but visiting this specific comic is part of their every day rutine, and soon after reading the lates comics, they open up a new window and go to their usual rutine places. They hardly ever leave via the ads (unless they are enourmously eyecatching.).
You could maybe tell a newbie that there is no use in placing a huge amount of ad-boxes as you are paid pr day and as such dont get paid pr view or click, which would be reasons for placing more ad-boxes. I think that you might want to start out with 2 ad-boxes and maybe one 125x125 (which seems to be the seller on PW). Then you should let the big box generate some profit while you see how well the 2 ad-box (ad-box with two small slots) does. If you dont earn anything from it, then you propably shouldn't make more, but if you are making more than 0.10 on each of the slots, then maybe it would be a good idea to make room for more slots. Tell the advertisers that you are expanding and that is why you are cancelling their bids. Remember to remind them that advertising on your site will be cheaper afterwards... Then you expand and see how well that goes. Remember that seeing how things work takes more than a week.
This is really a work built around a couple of weeks, and while you try and find the perfect amount of ad-boxes your 125x125 ox will cover some of your expenses. Remember to use them on advertising :D

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Don't flood the market!

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