Business Sphere

     This is not a pay-per-post on the Adgitize Ad Network. In fact, I was the one who paid the Adgitize and not vice-versa, and I had the receipt to show for it.

     This post is an answer to the questions of my fellow bloggers. Last week, four bloggers from Greece, U.K., the U.S. and India had e-mailed me, saying that they saw my advert for my Business Sphere site in the Adgitize member-blogs. They asked me why I advertised in the Adgitize and if it was worth it.

     The reason for my advertisement in the Adgitize is to generate traffic to my blog, no more, no less. All bloggers want to have visitors to their blogs, the more unique (first time) visitors daily the better. How do you attract visitors if your blog is unknown or in limbo? 

     Applying the principles of marketing, I think the first duty of any serious blogger is to make his blog known to his target audience, to make them aware that his blog exists. How do you  make your blog known to your target readers?  Let us put it this way. There are tens of millions of blogs in the blogosphere. Unless you promote your blog, no one will know about it, except maybe members of your family and close friends. 

     For me, the best way to make your blog known is to promote it and the easy, fast, and simple technique is through advertisement.

     The following are the reasons why I have chosen Adgitize as a medium to promote my blog:

     1). Adgitize ad rate is relatively cheap vis-à-vis other advertising firms. 

     2). Adgitize charges a fixed $ 14.00 only for one month, compared to other advertising firms that charge on a cost-per-click (CPC) rate or on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM).

     3). Your ad in the Adgitize can be seen by thousands of readers in a given hour, 24 hours a day, 7  days a week, in many countries where the publishers are based, since the ads are rotated and shown in  more than 3,000 active publisher-members in the network.  

     4). Adgitize encourages its member-bloggers/publishers to visit other members’ blogs  daily to get to know them and they are given points which are translated into money everyday.

     Having said that, is my advertising in the Adgitize worth it?  Yes, since I put my ad on May 20, 2009, I have observed, starting from day 1, a dramatic increase of traffic coming to my site. Before I advertise, my site had an average of 50 visitors daily. But for the past 24 days since I put my ad until now, my Google Analytics stats reveal that there have been an average of 300 visitors a day,  or a meteoric increase of  500%!  Traffic is traffic, no matter how you look at it.

     In addition, I was surprised to note that per Alexa stats, my site has now visitors coming from the U.S. (44.8%), Indonesia (13.2%), Philippines (9.0%), Greece (6%), Kenya (5.6%), Saudi Arabia (5.6%), Malaysia (4.8%), India (3.5%), U.K. (2.5%), Japan (2.44%), Slovenia (0.9%), and from other countries (1.5%). And my site has a traffic rank in those countries!

     Of course, Adgitize was not solely responsible for that huge jump of traffic to my site. There are also visitors coming through search engines, social networks referrals, EzineArticles.com, and from other referring sites like publisher-members of Project Wonderful and CMF Ads, where I also placed my adverts. But it is significant to note that of the 300 average daily visitors, 60% of these were all Adgitize referrals.

     To me, advertising in the Adgitize is very well worth it, as it has achieved my objective of  generating more traffic to my site.

     So, to my blogger-friends who wrote to me, there is only one piece of advice I can give: Try to advertise in the Adgitize and see for yourself.