I use Project Wonderful extensively to advertise my website (which is NOT a comic) and have some suggestions for those of you trying to get advertisers who have money to spend onto your site.

1. Don't put your ads someplace that you have to scroll to find them. I check the site before I bid on it and too many times the buttons are waaaaay at the bottom, or off to the side, where you'd have to really be looking for them to find them. I'm not going to pay for an ad that no one will see, no matter how many hits you get.

2. Don't have blocks of ads of various sizes. You may think you're diversifying to get different ads, but it just looks like a jumbled mess and no one will click on my ad because it disappears.

3. Put spacers in your ads. This helps distinguish one ad from another at the cost of a few pixels' width. People who look at the ad bar will see separate images, not just a jumbled mess, see above.

4. Quit moving your ad boxes. I get notices every week from one person or another who has decided to redesign their site and is going to delete the ad box and make a new one, or whatever. Unless it is a site that I specifically picked out, I'm not going to bother to go back and find it and re-bid.

5. If you're going to approve all your ads, actually filter out the objectionable ones. I've had my ads against some gross pictures, and I don't renew those bids.

6. If you don't want my ad on your site, then don't approve it. I've had site owners approve my ads, and then make fun of them on various forums. I'm paying decent money to advertise with you, not to be ridiculed where you think Google won't find it.

I'm surprised nobody has replied to this so far, 'cause the anonymous advertiser raised some good points and gave us an insight that we don't get very often. (S)he also echoed points raised before about the approval system - in my view (and the view of other members too), it's a valuable tool, unfortunately misused.
Thanks for the spacer tip, too - I'll be sure to implement that on this and other websites.
Anonymous Advertiser, might I ask what general area of business your site is in?

I want to echo especially this one. (Most of the others I can find out before I bid on that site, and then I just don't bid there if I don't like it.)

But this one -- if it's a site I like, and they're nice about the ad box change and send out a message about it, I'll probably come back. But if they do that more than once, well, bye.

But most sites don't even bother to message their advertisers about it. All I get is "ad cancelled" and no good reason for it, and that means I'm definitely not coming back. (And yes, I'm keeping a list of sites that cancelled my ads without giving a reason ). Seriously people, can you not decide where the ads look good on your site without trying out 5 different live ad boxes?

OK, rant over

Site is cashduck.com - basically a site that you sign up to take surveys and sign up for trial offers and make some extra money. Project Wonderful has been a great place to find people of the "I need money" demographic. I spend about $200 a month on PW and noticed that I was usually one of the few people pumping real money into the system as a lot of ads are just other webcomics recycling their own PW earnings. If the system can be made a lot more advertiser-friendly, I think you will really start seeing the bucks coming in. One thing that definitely needs improved is that there is no way to just say "I want to spend $100 and I have 5 minutes, go!" There should be a way to bid on large numbers of ad spaces at once - if you get it, you get it, and if you don't, you got a buncha other stuff. Real companies don't have the damn time to review every single site, they just want to spend.

Two hundred bucks a month? Yeesh. At a grand total of three hundred bucks deposited over the life of my account, I thought I was spending a decent amount.
I agree with you in some regards - personally I'd love to see a system where I could just say "Here's a hundred bucks, spend it for me and get me better than 5 cents a click."
Might I ask what your ROI has been like?

@Spikydragon, regarding deciding where the ads look good and other newbie mistakes - I'm thinking it might be time for us to make an Unofficial Newbie Guide to Project Wonderful.

@anonymous - what the hell is that "shiftcode" thing at the bottom-right of cashduck.com? I click on it and it just sends me to a registration form.

Also, regarding people talking on forums in a negative light about cashduck.com - I'm gonna have to agree with some of them, to a point. The site has a reasonably sound idea behind it, and from the looks of what I've been reading, it seems as though it's actually working for some people. But the adverts smack of pre-dot-com-crash, and the site could do with an overhaul.
Especially the forum - is there a reason why you're using a remotely-hosted board?
Even if it's a viable, decent service, and even if you're actually doing good for people, it all counts for naught if it looks spammy. When I first saw your adverts appearing on my websites I took a quick look, thought "Spam" and banned you without a second thought. I was probably wrong to do so (and have unbanned you now I've had a read up on what folks have been saying about your site), but I have to say it was the aesthetics of your website (and the vagueness of your ads) that triggered my mental spam filter.

Shiftcode is the software that runs the site. I don't know why but you have to register before they will let you see the products. It was originally conceived of as an easy way for people who know nothing about websites to have one, but a lot of the sites that use it now are like mine since they have specialized modules for us.

ROI has been extremely good - I have over 5,000 members. I'm the second largest non-real-company site (ie it's just me) and the only reason I'm not the largest is because the other one is much older. It's all about reaching new markets, really. My favorite type of user is a chatterbox with 50 friends.

I don't particularly care about what you think regarding my site look - it works. People trust it because it DOESN'T look all slick. I use a remotely hosted board because I don't have control over my own hosting. Regarding how crappy you think my ads are, I posted to that same board where they were complaining about me and said I'd be happy to commission any of them to design a new ad. Apparently, designing is much harder than complaining because not a single person replied or contacted me.

I feel I have to apologise to Spiky after checking this thread, because I know I personally when I was very new to PW cancelled some boxes, and his ad is the one from it I remember.

I guess I still am pretty new at this, but I have to say so far in this thread I have found useful advice

Hey, no need for apologies ... in the end, it's still every ad-box owner's own choice what they do with their ad boxes anyway (And I do have my banner ad still running on your site, outbid at the moment though )

(Although I have been wondering whether I should apologise to Cashduck in this thread, as I cancelled one of their ads in the beginning because I accepted it by mistake -- it was animated and I didn't want animated ads. This was before exclusion of animated ads was automated. I did explain in a PM though, but still, again -- sorry Cashduck.)

Hmmm, if I may hijack this thread for a moment -- how many of you (ad-box owners) hate animated ads? How many of you (advertisers) have only, or at least strongly prefer, animated ads? (As an ad-box owner, I don't allow animated ads; as an advertiser, I don't have any. Badly animated ads are migraine triggers for me and end up in the filter very quickly.)

I find animated ads don't work as well for me as one might think. The problem is that by the time someone sees your ad, it's already on the third or fourth frame, and they don't understand what's going on. So I have stuck to non-animated for the last six weeks.

That being said, if people would routinely list something larger than a button, or at least put spacing between the ads so you can use the whole button area, there might be enough room to say something without requiring animation.

I've considered creating animated ads, but only for the smaller ones. An animated banner or skyscraper is often annoying, while a small animated button doesn't draw too much attention away from the main focus of the page it's displayed on. Haven't got around to do it yet, but it'll come.

Regarding allowing animated ads, I don't mind them much if they're animated tastefully. I'll judge them on a case-by-case basis.

Now, if PW allowed ads with sound, these would go in the trashbin with extreme prejudice.

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Le champignon nouveau est arrivé.

Cashduck I am wondering why you dont have PW-ads on your site? And I am also waiing for your service to go international

And on topic...
I dont use animated ads yet myself and I judge on a case by case basis if others use them. I dont hate them in general, but they need to be viewable from when you notice them, without you feeling you lost a couple of frames...

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Trying to get a quality freeware gamesite squessed in between some comic-sites. Http://Curlysworldoffreeware.com. Also working on my Danish webdesign company

I have problems with vertical spaces: the generated code doesn't work consistently in browsers other than Internet Explorer on Windows. The result is that usually the space rendered is many more pixels than I've requested. So I set the vertical spacing to zero.

Eddie
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Comic Match

CashDuck is US only and will remain that way basically because international is a huge pain in the behind. InstantProfitz.com is international.

I don't have ads of any kind on my site - it's frankly not worth the couple bucks a day for my users to have to look at it.

Some great suggestions on there.

I've employed a few on my site to improve bidding. Is it me or is bidding very slow on Project Wonderful and dominated by comics?

Does anyone have any idea of roughly how mnay people are regular users?

My site is www.the-muzic.com, we support new unsigned music. We did just have the 2 ads down the side and the footer ones but on the advice received on here we've added the top row. Looks alright and gets instant views, also appears on every page which I am sure appeals to most people.

Thanks for the ad spacing tip as well, makes the ads look better as well as giving advertisers a bit more individuality.

Rich
www.the-muzic.com

In terms of animation I have a system going currently where I regularly just ask the members of my site about the ads shown, do they like them, have they clicked them and so on.
I haven't had much of the way in animation make it to high bidder status, but basically, I would accept it on the condition my members approve.

When I first read the above, I didn't believe it. Nobody would actually do that, right? But it just happened to me, so I guess it's real after all. What the heck is wrong with these people? On what planet is it considered a good idea to mock your paying customers?

Now I'm almost curious to know which ad boxes those are, so that I can avoid bidding on them. Hasn't happened to me yet (that I know of), all I have seen was an adbox where the owner in his blog made fun of advertisers in general -- and that was the reason I ended up not bidding there. But mocking specific paying customers' ads seems several times worse ...