I’ve been testing out some new tricks with AD:Dynamo (AdGator) and Adsense, trying to maximize the revenue from each stream.
I’ve found some interesting things along the way, let me share them:
- AdGator targets South African traffic mostly, which means that impressions (AdGator) and clicks (AD:Dynamo) usually happen during office hours in South Africa, say 7am – 7pm
- Adsense adverts are usually clicked by people from the US (I did some pretty advanced tracking to figure this one out). Clicks are obviously not limited to US traffic, but that’s the trend I picked up on. Because of their time difference, it’s usually night time in South Africa when they are active.
Right, so what we can deduce from this is that it’s best to run Adsense during 7pm and 7am, and AdGator/AD:Dynamo during 7am – 7pm: This is obviously South African time. Something to remember here is that you obviously need to monitor your traffic, use Analytics and see where most of your traffic is coming from, if it’s mostly South Africa and the UK, then this strategy won’t work and it would be best to actually display Adsense for visitors arriving from countries outside of South Africa and AdGator for South African visitors, you can do this with some PHP code that tests their IP adress.
Back to the US / South Africa scenario, for this you’ll need to use some PHP code that checks the date/time and shows the corresponding code for either AdGator, during the day, or Adsense during the night.
It’s quite a simple set up and it will result in your revenue increasing, I have no doubt about that. I’m surprised that there isn’t an advertising plugin, for WordPress as an example, which allows you to specify times of the day to show adverts, rather than the current offering of just which dates to show adverts.
Making money online is so much more than just placing adverts on your website, there’s a science and an art behind it – trust me, I know!
Anyway, just wanted to share that tip with my fellow publishers, hope you can earn a little extra with this trick!
Speaking of advertisements, I have noticed that Addynamo ads takes a few seconds to load before showing. Just saw it now on your site as well. Google ads is loaded almost instantly but then about 5 seconds later the Addynamo ads only show up.
I’ve been on the waiting list for AdGator since November last year :(
It seems their system is rather popular with local bloggers…
Yea also been waiting on Adgator since July last year. But I heard they will be opening up registration again in march
Ye, they must have quite a huge queue of people waiting..
Ye, I noticed that myself too. AD:Dynamo isn’t doing much for me in terms of revenue to be honest; I left their adverts on my site for 24 hours and made literally nothing, so I’m not quite sure what I will be doing with that.
Legendary!
Thank you for this Chris! Big help! :)
Thanks for swinging over and leaving a comment Bret, I like keeping things this side, FB is cool and all, but screw them, they can’t steal my data :P
Chris – I think one of the big problems with AD:Dynamo at the moment remains its lack of ad-stock.
Let’s be honest I can probably count off 90% of the advertisers you will see off the top of my head.
Until they get new advertisers on board the click-through rate is going to remain unexciting. Fortunately new advertisers are slowly coming on board and they should try and avail themselves of the free banner design service that Sean and his team are putting together.
Sorry that should say “Have put together”
Ye Marc, I think there’s still a lot that needs to happen, comparing to Adsense is a bit unfair as Adsense has been running for countless years and they have a huge team and infrastructure to work from; That being said, I do agree, I think new advertisers need to come onboard, and it will happen, and then we’ll see more action. I’m not having much luck with making money as a publisher, so I’ve switched to being an advertiser and am trying out a few things to see how it goes :)
Maybe it sounds a little lame but I love South African businesses and I keep plugging it to all my mates – want to see these guys succeed and keeping SA rands in the country instead of shipping it over to Google.
Publisher wise – slight improvement over the last 7 days – December / January were a non event for me.
Just a case of plugging away and I think as publishers we need to do as much as possible to raise awareness of what Sean is doing – when there is buy-in then we all score!
Ye, the cool thing is that they’re local, which means it’s possible to contact them. I was in the Weekend Argus a few weeks back, featuring as a blogger who earns online and the company involved in this was AD:Dynamo, so I’ve learnt quite a lot during that journey about them and I definitely hope they can succeed.
My main thing is that I’ve used Adsense going on, what, like, 5 years or more, so I have a strong understanding of how to maximize revenue with them, but hopefully I’ll be able to transfer the skillset across in the not too distant future.
They need a referral/tier system put in place, so it’s worth our while to plug them a lot..
I am pretty sure that Sean is open to any suggestions.
Maybe they should look at an affilite type systems to promote new advertisers. Referring site picks up 1% of each referred advertisers spend going forward.
EG – If I refer you via a link / banner on my site and you sign up as an advertiser then I pick a 1% of everything you spend with them for as long as you’re advertiser. It could work out pretty lucrative…
BTW as an observation – I tend to get see a big spike in my click through ratio (as an advertiser) between 8:30 and 11pm in the evening.
But I don’t see the same on the publisher side so not sure what to draw from that.
Ye Marc, South Africa desperately needs an affiliate tiered system, just like you’ve mentioned. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a long time and have a draft post, it’s just not exactly where I wanted it to be yet. Also, it doesn’t have to be for advertisers, but for publishers as well, get both sides going, would result in more people pushing their services as well as more money for them anyway.
Ye, I’m going to give it a week and see where I stand from an advertiser point of view, honestly, I think taking advantage of the advertiser side now has massive potential!
And if you’re supplying the early ad stock and you get the click throughs via your own publishing platforms then you get them at 50% discount!
Or at least that’s my theory and agree – enjoy it when its cheap…
Hi Chris and Marc, I have come upon this “conversation” between the two of you accidental. I’m a woman of South-Africa, looking for a way to make money on the internet, but there is just too many ad’s and I don’t have an idea which to choose or where to start, especially because I’m not very computer literate. Have used it for story writing mostly. Can you please, please point me to the right direction?
Thank you very much
Ina
Hi @Ina – It’s a really long discussion unfortunately and there’s no quick or short answer available that will put you right on track with making money online. However, I started a thread in the link below and if you take the time to read the comments carefully, you’ll pick up some tips:
http://imod.co.za/index.php/2007/12/02/work-from-home-nonsense/
May the force be with you :)
I recently lost my google account when I received an email from them notifying me that my account was cancelled due to fraudulant clicks. Since joining addynamo I have been able to earn some revenue and I hope more advertisers start using them. Google needs competition.