The Spikes “Drive Traffic To Blog” — The Best Thing That Happened To CMF Ads?
Posted by
eli
on 12/27/09• Categorized as Consulting
One important issue against advertising through CMF Ads is that, as an ad network, it does not bring enough traffic to blogs.
cmf ads
CMF Ads Is A Poor Traffic Performer vs. Other Ad Networks
Compared to other ad networks like Entrecard and Adgitize, CMF (“Changing Marketing Forever”) Ads always pale in comparison in terms of bringing traffic to blogs. But is it not a fact that if you are a blogger your main concern in advertising is to generate traffic to your site, so that your content gets read? After all, of what use is your original, unique, high quality content posts if no one read them in the first place?
My Experience With CMF Ads
When I posted on December 13, 2009 my dismal experience with CMF Ads vis-à-vis bringing traffic to my blog despite my 50-100 adverts running at any time on the many publishers’ blogs, other CMF Ads member-bloggers concurred and agreed based on their comments to my post. In sum, they said that their ads did not produce any clicks.
Ben Barden’s Comment
Then, on December 15, 2009 Ben Barden, one of the three CMF Ads owners and admins, also commented to my post and said, among others that:
“The problem with not getting a lot of clicks is an interesting one. CMF Ads does not give any incentives to members who click ads. If we gave everyone 1 cent for clicking an ad, you’d see a lot more clicks, but how many people would be clicking just to get that extra cent?”
Ben’s comment seemed that he and the other two CMF owners want to keep the clicks natural and not the drop and run traffic of Entrecard and Adgitize. If that is their policy, then so be it. There are other ad networks to choose from.
CMF Ads Spikes: Drive Traffic To Your Blog
However, on December 24 2009, Ben posted on the CMF Ads blog about the new traffic scheme called the Spikes, titled “Drive traffic to your blog – buy a Spike!”
What is a Spike or What Are Spikes?
It is a brand new feature specifically for CMF Ads publishers, which was launched on December 24, 2009.
As explained by Ben, Spikes are a quick way to drive traffic to your blog. Purchasing a Spike costs $ 0.20 and guarantees 50 unique clicks to your blog. In addition, members will receive $ 0.002 for every publisher link clicked from the Spikes page in the CMF Ads site. In short, if you click 50 different sites, you’ll earn $ 0.10.
As mentioned, Spikes are only available to publishers who run the CMF Ads widget. Once your spike has accumulated 50 clicks, it will disappear from the Spikes page and you will be able to buy more clicks.
The Best Thing That Happened To CMF Ads So Far?
As a blogger who likes to promote my blog to earn extra traffic, I consider the Spikes to be the best thing that happened to CMF Ads so far, as far as traffic generation is concerned. CMF Ads owners’ aversion to “incentive clicks” as against natural clicks must have already changed.
With the Spikes CMF Ads owners must have accepted the reality –that there are many sites in the blogosphere that give people an incentive or reason to click. The key is once you get people to your site, it is your responsibility to keep them there by having useful and informative content.
The Spikes will do just that – giving incentives to “spikers” who are CMF Ads publishers to click the sites in the Spikes page to drive traffic to your site. Once they are there, it is your job to ensure that they will linger on your site to read your content.
Three Good Things About CMF Ads, But The Greatest Maybe the Spikes
Now there are three things good about CMF Ads: low- cost advertising, efficient and friendly support Admins exemplified by Ben Barden, and Spikes, these three, but in terms of driving traffic to your blog, the greatest maybe the Spikes.
Drawback – with the system giving incentive to clickers, expect some bounce rate on your blog.
i already try cmf ads before. But seems not get good return. Did you get good result?
To get traffic spikes, you have to pay for it, thus incentive click. But that screwed up the bounce rate. Natural click on the other hand, is dull.
So better work on SEO to get natural traffic from search engines.
Well at least they keep trying, but I agree, without any incentive the traffic that CMF brings to ones blog is non existent. Even with spikes, the time on site will be dismal.
A large issue I think, with CMF ads, is that a large percentage of bloggers who have their ads also have EC and Adgitize as well, which tend to get more attention. I’d be interested in getting figures from somone who only has CMF ads on their blog, see if there’s a difference.
I think they’d do better if they allowed non-publisher sites to have Spikes too though. That would give publishers more incentive to put those up for Spiking.
I’m not so sure yet. I have no incentives in my own traffic exchange, “Along for the Ride!” and it does pretty well with people clicking on the widget. I also have to agree with the above, incentives only raise the bounce rate, lower the quality of the visitor and begs for a Google back slap.
I was kind of impressed after the first two days from SPIKES (24th/25th) but now it fades rapidly.
Yes, you get traffic but no it won’t be much of a quality traffic. It’s similar to EntreCard/Adgitize where you get ECs or Clickpoints and in CMF you get now direct some Cents in your account.
When i count now only the visitors who stayed longer than 30 seconds (which should be the time to read my first post) from the 50 visitors only 7 would be qualified to be called visitors. (18 visitors have not been counted at all by Google Analytics)
Paying 20 cents for 7 real visitors doesn’t sound anymore that cheap like 50 visitors.
My second Spikes is a BIG FLOP for now. 15 clicks, only 5 recorded by Google and only 1 -visited me already last time- stayed longer but just to visit my CMFSpikes-Result post four times.
If this Drop & Run continues it won’t be anymore the BEST thing but the WORST thing they ever invented…
Eligat- thanks for the review.
Looking at the comments, it is disappointing to hear so much criticism of a feature we developed purely based on member feedback. We would not have developed it if people had not asked for more ways to get people to their blog(s). In particular, the number of clicks on each ad was reported as lower than other networks. Spikes will not directly affect that as we’d still like to keep ad clicks as natural as we can, but it should help to get some new people to your site.
Most of the comments relate to the time spent on each site, and the bounce rate associated with Spikes. Several of our members have reported that people coming from CMF Ads (whether from Spikes or elsewhere) spend more time on their site than people coming from other ad networks. Of course, this is not true for every blog, nor is it true for every clicker, but it is something to bear in mind.
I can see that renewing your spike as soon as it finishes may not produce the best results, as you’ll get some of the same people clicking through. Also, you may see better results if you buy a spike shortly after adding a new post to your blog, rather than buying 2 or 3 spikes in a row when you haven’t updated your blog for a few days.
Cornyman: We have applied a fix that should account for the missing clicks. To compensate, we have credited every spike with 10 free clicks. We apologise to everyone who lost clicks and hope this is an acceptable solution. (There is a post on the CMF Ads Blog about this too.)
To all: If there is a feature you’d like to see at CMF Ads or there’s anything we could do to improve the service as a whole, please let us know. The “Talk about CMF Ads” section of our forums is a perfect place for these comments. And if you do suggest something at our forums, many more members will be able to add their views.
Thanks
Take heart, Ben.
There are two kinds of people as there are bloggers — those who look at the glass half-full and those who see it as half-empty. I think the commenters here, though well-meaning, are looking at the glass half-empty, while those who look at the glass half-full have not yet drop by to make comment.
But the best evidence of the Spikes’ success, so far, is the number of blogger-members who take part in it. As I see it now, Dec. 30, there are 143 who bought Spikes, an indicator of its growing popularity and acceptance among CMF publishers.
In contrast, when Entrecard started its controversial Sponsor Ads, there were 10 advertisers, including me. But for the past 2 weeks until this very moment, the advertisers were down to only 2.
At last, I found this article once more. You have few useful tips for my school project. Now, I won’t forget to bookmark it.