Total Web Review

I know I promised this and after I have tried a few programs I am ready to give my thoughts on them.

I signed up for Spot and 125 exchange. Both ad networks give you impressions based on the amount of impressions and clicks you send others. The first that I will review is 125 Exchange.

125 Exchange

This program starts you out with 5000 free impressions to use comparing to 3 different ads that you submit. The goal is to see which ad performs the best. While you are using the free impressions ads are running on your site earning you more impressions (if those ads get clicked). The ratio for clicks is 3/2. So if you get three clicks from your site to the site for the ad running on your site then you will get two clicks in return. This is more free advertising for you. In this whole process you don’t pay a dime, your ad runs free on other sites and you never do a thing. This service is intended for established blogs so don’t plan on trying to join with some MFA site or a landing page trying to hawk the latest SEO strategy. It is designed to bring quality traffic to your site.

Using The Service

To start with you need to go to 125 Exchange and sign up. Then you will be queued to submit three ads. Now these ads will be the key to your campaigns success so you will need catchy ads that accurately reflect your site, if you have a picture of a beautiful woman and your site is about search engine optimization then you may get clicks but you will also incur a higher bounce rate when the reader doesn’t find what led them to the site. Once you have completed that you will place the ad code on your site. At this point you will wait to have your ads approved, the turn around is fairly fast and soon you ad will start showing up on other member sites. The free impressions are doled out at a rate of 75 per day so those first 5000 will last you a little while.

Thoughts So Far

At this point I have been with the program for a month. I have received 2659 impressions and 11 clicks. I have analyzed my Google Analytics and the bounce rate for the clicks received is low. I will be experimenting with new ads as time goes to see if I can get my CTR (click through rate) up. As far as customer service goes, if you send a a message using their messaging system you will get a quick response. I like this service and I plan on putting it on this site soon. Just in case you were wondering I am using it on JT Music Review right now so that I could see how the service performed.

I will be doing a review on the other service soon so keep on checking back for updates.

Thanks for reading,

James Terrell

Categories: Advertising, Blogging for Success, Website Review
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We have all heard the saying and it is just as relevant in the blogging world as it is to your normal day to day life. Pictures can give a post life and catch peoples eyes. Want to lower your bounce rate? Add a picture. Want to add emphasis to a great story? Add a picture. A good picture will help pull your post off the screen and keep the readers attention.

Acobox

That brings us to the topic at hand, I have found a nice site that you can use for blog pictures. They allow you to search the site and use any picture you want. Not only that but they allow you to hotlink to the picture! They provide convenient cut and paste code for your site that allows you to choose picture size and alignment. This is probably the easiest site to use that I have seen so far when it comes to stock photos for web sites.

Site Design

I have signed up for others but I never go back because most of them seem to be a hassle to use but this site has a nice design that is simple, clutter free, and easy to navigate. All it takes is a quick registration (it took me about five minutes total including the time it took for me to download the email to outlook) and you are ready to go. The main thing that they ask is that you add the website that you are posting the picture on so that they can keep people from hot linking that are not members.  Here is a sample of the quality of pictures that you can choose from;

Final Thoughts

If there is one thing that I would fix about the site it’s this, while you can choose align left or right for the pictures there is no choice for center. That is an easy fix though but it was a feature I looked for. For those of you who don’t know all you need to do is add a piece of code to the code you get from them. Just choose none for alignment and then put the center tags around the code that you get. That works every time for me.
So if you are looking for some good pictures that are free to use then try out Acobox. You should be able to find a picture to fit your post.

Categories: Website Review
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Contest Live

Bloggers are always running contests. I guess it is the nature of the game, run a contest to attract people to your blog or site and hopefully a few of them will stick around to enjoy the rest of the site. Promotion for these contests can sometimes be tricky, some resort to posting about them in every forum known to man, spamming other sites in the comments section, and going on an extensive email campaign. Of course there are other ways, some use their spinn account, digg, stumble or whatever but needless to say once they are done they have spent an extensive amount of time promoting a contest. Well for those of you searching for yet another way to promote your contest or for those looking for a contest to enter, Matt from Blog About Your Blog (that is his ad on the right there) brings you a site similar to Blogging Zoom where you submit a contest and it gets voted on. It will spend a little time on the front page with just 2 votes and for $5 bucks you can even have it as a featured contest on the blog and another $5 will get you a featured spot on the main page of Contest Live.

Site Design

The site has a straight forward feel to it. It isn’t cluttered like many sites today with tons of advertising, widgets, and other distractions. Site navigation is a breeze although I did have a hard time finding out how to get a contest featured. I emailed Matt and after I had sent it off I found a link to it on the blog. I am sure you could just use the contact form though and arrange it.

Important Links

Here are a few important links to the site;

Top Ranked Contest These are voted on by the members of the site. It may or may not be the judge of a good contest but I am sure they are worth looking at.

Contest Live Blog Here you will find some of the latest news on the contests being held, maybe a little about some featured contests as well.

Contest Sponsor Looking for sponsors for your contest? Do you want to sposor a contest? Well check out this page and see what is being offered.

Final Thoughts

I really like the site. I wish it would have been around when I had my contest last year. I may have got a few more hits from it. This site was probably one of the better ideas in the contest promotion area and I can see where it could become a very succesful site. So if you have a contest and need a little traffic for it make sure to check it out.

Now, I know some of you have been waiting on a article comparing a few different advertising mediums. I just want to let you know I am working on it but I want it to be right. I don’t want to rush through it and just post some junkie peice of content for the site. I have decided though that I am going to break it down into a few different articles so that I can give a good synopsis on each site that I am using. I should have the first one poisted soon so stay tuned.

Thanks,

James Terrell

Categories: Blog Contests, Website Review
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