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.

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

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…

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.