£5 Advertising Space Wanted for The Money Shed

JohnnyDebt

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In my Twitter time-line I saw the following "Any blogs our there offering any advertising for £5? The Money Shed is interested!"

I have thought about this for a couple of days now and I have to ask, is it worth it? OK to get advertising space for a fiver is a good deal, but is it good for the website? You read so much these days with regards to Google and the way that backlinks affect ranking. It would seem that in some cases even having guest posts can be detrimental to both sites involved.

So really my question is, does the sort of advertising requested above make a site better or worse?
 

Jon

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OK good question..

Imagine you have this site you have created. It is getting loaded with new content every day with new members joining each week and new content being written by those members. There is great information to be had once you find the site and you are absolutely convinced that once people do discoverer they will either take from it or sign up and join in.

That site is The Money Shed and so far I have spent £0.00 on advertising. I have given away Amazon vouchers on here so that + buying the domains + hosting I am already in the red as they say.

I have written guest posts for blogs about this site, blogs have also written about us.

I advertise The Money Shed on Facebook / Twitter as well.

I have applied to a number of popular blogs in the 'stay at home mum / frugal living / earn from home' area and as soon as they send me their 'media pack' i know I am going to be asked to pay £50 for the privilege of writing a post for them.

What I have come across are some very nice niche sites which offer a slight crossover to the 'earn from home' topic and these sites offer me banner ads for only £5 for a month or two. That is enough to invest and let me see if they work (so far they do btw as Google Analytics can tell me how many have clicked through to here from their blog)

I think the cost of advertising on the Internet is insane at times. Especially on Blogs. But I do need to do something.

If you search 'Earn money online' you will see we are now ranked on the 2nd page. People may find us that way but I feel they may click on a ad on a blog they are already engaged with as it works as a personal recommendation of sorts.

It's great having a site like this that people can benefit from but communication has to go out that the site is actually here. I have held off on spending any money on advertising to the absolute last point but we are at the point now where the content is constantly growing and we are pushing up the Google ranks and I need to capitalize on that

Then of course I could just go over to Fiverr and pay $5 for a huge amount of traffic from China but I'm not sure that would really help me.

It's also worth mentioning that this site makes me zero, zip. ZILCH. I have no advertising on it at all and I run it because I believe that the world needs an alternative to the green site and the constant stream of get rich quick Facebook posts

I am all ears if anyone has any other avenues they can think of in terms of ways I can advertise this site at VERY minimal cost


Btw : just had a email back from someone who runs a blog about 'finance issues' and if I can do a guest post for them and I have just got back We do offer that but it's a featured post which is £195.
 

JohnnyDebt

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Blimey mate, you can write for England ;)

My personal policy for my site is that I will charge £50 or $77 per year to have a guest post, however if I like a particular idea then I do offer it for free. Also in extreme cases I will even write about a site myself, if I think that it has a good purpose.... and that's why I wrote about this site, as I believe in the product!

Perhaps a forum is different to a blog in how you can do things? I am no expert in SEO's but maybe a forum has by it's very nature more contributions than an average blog, therefore making it very "content" friendly to a search engine.

I think the trap that many of us fall into is that we want to rule page one of Google, so as a result we hang onto every word that the Google Masters tell us about SEO. In the past many sites were punished by Google for having unnatural links, but we also have to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there.

By having ads on other sites will get people clicking to see what it is all about, then some will actually sign up. So the advert has done its job. Maybe this is a better approach than spending so much time worrying about SEO?
 

mnporter2001

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I think natural backlinks are the best on similar type forums just like i did for Jon the other day, not only has it got 2 new users but is also now a hard link back to this site for Google to pick up.

But I do agree in that I think we all get a little side tracked in thinking Google is god !
 

JohnnyDebt

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Another thing that I also notice as I randomly clicked on some of the Topics and Posts, very few of the posts have been shared socially! Some of the posts are of great value, yet when you look at the Social share stats they are 0.

Perhaps there is a way of encouraging people to share good posts?
 

Jon

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Yeah the share buttons do work but the numbers don't go up

I should look at applying another social share plugin. I will add it to the "to do" list

Can I ask - do you get much of an update of people paying you £50 to post on your blog?
 

JohnnyDebt

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Looking at the last 12 month I got £595 & $693, I am sure I could have made more but quite a few were rejected. I also noticed that in the last 6 months ish, the amount of requests have also dropped off, I reckon that this is as a result of Google?

I have also had a few requests for links to be removed, as these companies were spanked by Google for having too many unnatural links.

My charges were for 12 months, after which the links would be removed, but it was my option whether or not to keep the content.
 

Jon

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You really seem on know you stuff!!

Is there anything you think I can do that is either free to
Very little to spread the word on this site or am I being too ambitious for a site that only started in January
 

JohnnyDebt

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Trouble is, I really don't know my stuff! All I know is things that I have tried in the past and have failed.

What have you done over the last two weeks that have worked? Well, you got me hooked and I am sure that others have also joined in the same way. So at least you now know one thing that has to continue and be built up.

As your site is young, it will appear on the first couple of pages on Google. I think Google does this as a feel good factor? However I have noticed that new sites gradually fall from favour and slip beyond page 10. You will also find that there is a massive difference in your search results if you do a normal search and then a "private" search on Google. I think Google does this so that your regular searches come first and it makes you feel good.

I think what you are doing is good, so just keep chipping away and concentrate on what has worked so far.
 

alditoharrods

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Hi Johnny,

I too am not an SEO expert, but it's part of my Real Job.

I think it really depends on the strategy for your blog and what you want to achieve. For From Aldi To Harrods, I'm all about talking naturally to my peers who are typically females in their 20s, about saving money and making money. What I want from FATH is to be able to share the link with anyone, from my Dad, to my boss to people I meet on the street. I write good content (well that's subjective I guess) and I've got decent Google positions (#2 for various searches about eBay, with eBay being number 1). I get freebies to review, I do a few sponsored posts (my minimum is £50 but I've had as much as £720) and I run Adsense and Skimlinks. I've spent time on keywords but nothing else.

But that's what I want. I want to be like beauty bloggers and fashion bloggers and get invited to blogger events and get free things to review. I also want my social media audiences to grow, I want to post YouTube videos and I want to see my traffic increase every month. I don't care about my Alexa rating, my domain rank, etc.

On MMWAJ, my objectives are completely different to FATH and I'm all about stats, Alexa, PR, domain authority, backlinks, etc.

Sorry I'm waffling. I'll answer the original question, I promise! It goes back to what I was saying about it depending on your strategy for your site. From what I understand, Jon wants more members to TMS. He hasn't monetised it, it's about more members interacting. So for him, all advertising is good and it doesn't matter about SEO.

Plus its my understanding that Google picks up on content written on forums, so the more we post, the more keywords will be generated and the higher up we will go :)
 

Jon

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Wow that's a really interesting take on things

It's good how your have different goals for you sites. Must make it easier to target rather than a splatter gun approach

You are correct in that I don't want to earn any income from TMS so yes you are right. All I want from advertising is more members.

I have targeted from the start stay at home mums and frugal guys and gals. Is there another audience market you think I am missing?

The only thing I will say is that this site is a VERY hard sell

I post on social media giving links like "come follow one of our members as she earns hundreds each month from YouTube" and it just comes across as click baiting when actually it is real.

Trying to get accross to people that there is a world on potential for earning online that isn't surveys and PTC sites and all the information they needs is here is a real challenge as people just think I am posting yet more get rich quick schemes..
 

alditoharrods

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It's hard to get traffic, then convert that to members. And as you said, people often think it's link baiting.

Keep at it though, your passion shows through and your membership is constantly growing.

I've got a few ideas for promoting - things like a newsletter to members with featured posts might be good. Of course the blog advertising is good too.

You will get there :)
 

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