Thoughts on Project Wonderful?

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:36 pm

I know a few people here use Project wonderful, so i thought i'd ask everyone's thoughts on it, especially how it compares to selling wallpapers or donation buttons and the likes.

I don't want or need to make any real money off of it, but i'd like to be able to pay for a domain name - which winds up being roughly three cents a day. For sites in my pageviews rage, that seems feasable, but i'd like to hear other's experiences with the system.

Also: how much do their stats differ from siteadmin, or say, google analytics?

Fleakitten · Post by **Fleakitten** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:29 am

I just want them to send me my invitation code.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:42 am

I've been using PW for a little over four months, and have thus far made about $7.50 US. Once I hit $10 (the minimum withdrawl amount for your PW internet-dollars), I'm hoping to use the money to buy a domain name, myself.

I find that while most fans don't care much about wallpapers and aren't likely to just dump money into a tip-jar, a lot of them are comic creators themselves, and are more than happy to shell out a little in the hope of sharing some of my hits. I've had bids as high as five cents per slot on my ad-space (=20 cents in profit per day), back before I went and hiatus'd the comic for exams; not terribly impressive, but considering that I'm making internet-pennies for no real effort, I'm pleased. It's also nice to be able to accept and reject ads as I see fit.

Can't say much about the stat-tracking system that PW has set up... I don't want to hijack the topic, but I'm curious: do people find that they benefit at all from advertising on comics like mine, in the 500-1000 displays-per-day (as per PW's stat box) range? I've thought about advertising, but I'm kind of a cheapskate and wouldn't want to shell out $5 a day for the crazy-expensive ones.

Shishio · Post by **Shishio** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:38 am

Keffria wrote:I find that while most fans don't care much about wallpapers and aren't likely to just dump money into a tip-jar, a lot of them are comic creators themselves, and are more than happy to shell out a little in the hope of sharing some of my hits. I've had bids as high as five cents per slot on my ad-space (=20 cents in profit per day), back before I went and hiatus'd the comic for exams; not terribly impressive, but considering that I'm making internet-pennies for no real effort, I'm pleased. It's also nice to be able to accept and reject ads as I see fit.

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, Project Wonderful takes a 25% cut, so your profit is 15 cents.

Keffria wrote:Can't say much about the stat-tracking system that PW has set up... I don't want to hijack the topic, but I'm curious: do people find that they benefit at all from advertising on comics like mine, in the 500-1000 displays-per-day (as per PW's stat box) range? I've thought about advertising, but I'm kind of a cheapskate and wouldn't want to shell out $5 a day for the crazy-expensive ones.

It depends. If you advertise on the right sites, you get equal, or better value for your money, but I hate seeing an ad only bring in 20 clicks, even if I only paid a minimal amount for it. I advertise on higher traffic sites that either have the same schedule (Once a week) or whose readers can be reasonably expected to like my comic.

As for the original question, you can only make any siginficant amount of money with Project Wonderful if you have a large audience like Questionable Content, or Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Also, the less ads you have on your site, the more money you make. More ads = less competition amongst bidders.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:07 am

Ah yes, I forgot about the five internet cents I lose to PW. ;>_>

And yes, losing even a penny a day to a site that's hardly going to make a ripple in my pageviews would be annoying.

Zhongda · Post by **Zhongda** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 12:18 pm

fleakitten wrote:I just want them to send me my invitation code.

Geekblather · Post by **Geekblather** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:02 pm

Hm, I do pretty targeted advertising, (when I advertise) so hopefully I'm picking up actual readers, although, at this point I'm looking to join/found an advertising collective selling based on impressions (Xdollars = x# of impressions) because I think it'll be better for everyone. As it is, PW is a good place to start out though, a collective like that takes a lot of programming/networking/marketing knowledge. I'm definitely not the one in charge.

Kels · Post by **Kels** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 2:06 pm

It seems like the general consensus here is that Project Wonderful really isn't that wonderful, but what is? I'm just starting to promote, and I'd like to have something by way of revenue to maybe recoup a few costs. If Project Wonderful isn't the way, then what are other options for revenue?

Shishio · Post by **Shishio** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:32 pm

Actually, I think Project Wonderful is... wonderful. It's just a really shitty way to make money unless you have a huge audience and update frequently. (So that your huge audience checks your website often, thus making your ad slots more valuable than they would be if they weren't visiting regularly.)

But it's a great way to build your audience.

One thing I have done is set a small monthly goal for myself. I simply aim to have 1,000 more unique visitors in subsequent months than previous months. So, if I have 10,000 one month, next month I aim for 11,000, then 12,000, etc. So far, I've surpassed my goal everytime. (Well, except for one time I set the goal higher near the end of the month. I surpassed the original goal, but didn't meet the new goal. Though I'm confident I would have, and probably surpassed it if there had been one more day in June...)

Kels · Post by **Kels** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:43 pm

Heh, I'm not even to 1000 yet, but I've only just actively started to promote, so that's not much of a shock. We'll see what my totals are at the end of the month, I suppose, then try to build from there.

Bekka · Post by **Bekka** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 4:01 pm

A problem with PW for anyone who isn't in the first few pages of it, is that it loads SO SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Who has the patience to sit there for five minutes waiting for a page to load, to see if there are any sites with decent readership and cheap slots? I've just bought an ad slot on Keffria's site because I saw her post and thought 500 pageviews at less than 10 cents is a nice deal, but I'd never have found out that info by checking PW because it's so slow that it would take hours. So my suggestion would be to let people know in forums you frequent how many pageviews their ad would get and how much it'd cost them - I doubt that many would find that info by themselves.

Axonite · Post by **Axonite** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:43 pm

I've been on PW since November, and basically I'm using it as a sort of link exchange system rather than trying to get any money out of it right now (or spend any more than the $10 I already put in). I've seen a general increase in visitor and pageview numbers since I started, though ads can be a bit hit and miss. I generally try to advertise on sites that get decent traffic and are relatively inexpensive. I've run an occasional ad on a bigger site, but often it seems like I don't get many more visitors from it, I use up money faster, and I wind up reducing overall advertising so the money coming in from my ad boxes can keep up! (But if you're planning on putting more money in as needed, maybe some sort of campaign on the bigger sites could work well.) At some point if enough money comes in from my ad boxes, I'd consider taking some out and letting it pay for my domain name/hosting/supplies/ice cream cone/whatever. (Or more ads!)

The pageview numbers from my ad boxes generally correspond to what my site statistics tell me - sometimes a little high, sometimes a little low (especially if PW's running a bit slow and the ad boxes wind up not loading on every page), but pretty close.

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:31 pm

Keffria wrote:I don't want to hijack the topic, but I'm curious: do people find that they benefit at all from advertising on comics like mine, in the 500-1000 displays-per-day (as per PW's stat box) range? I've thought about advertising, but I'm kind of a cheapskate and wouldn't want to shell out $5 a day for the crazy-expensive ones.

I was reading projectwonderfultalk.com, and there was some thought that you're getting a better deal if you buy 500 pages/day space instead of 1000 pages/day because the 1000 generally costs more per impression.

Other than that, there seemed to be some consensus that you're better off having one or two large ads on your site than a plethora of button ads.

I've been thinking of putting a donation button up along side the ads, and once i get enough donations for a domain name, shutting off the ads. (And of course, advertising that fact.) I figured that, if anything, would make someone want to donate.

Sasjhwa · Post by **Sasjhwa** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:42 pm

I have had my ads out on a lot of sites and it has definitely generated traffic to the site.

If you have waited more than 2 weeks for PW to get you a code, email them and ask politely for it. That's what I did and got my code within the hour. They recommend you do that in their FAQ.

The trick to making money on PW is to have enough readers to generate the higher bids per ad. So try to get your traffic up and see if that helps. Also, don't put too many ads on your site. It may seem tempting, but you always end up with half of them being zero and that just brings you nothing.

I pulled down my ads and took the adboxes off my site when CG started going down a lot. I didn't want ads to a website that wouldn't load since that repels readers, and I didn't want to keep getting notes from PW that my comic page wasn't available.

Dotty · Post by **Dotty** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:27 am

Zhongda wrote:
fleakitten wrote:I just want them to send me my invitation code.

Shishio · Post by **Shishio** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:44 am

kels wrote:Heh, I'm not even to 1000 yet...

Then make that your first goal.

Bekka wrote:A problem with PW for anyone who isn't in the first few pages of it, is that it loads SO SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Who has the patience to sit there for five minutes waiting for a page to load, to see if there are any sites with decent readership and cheap slots? I've just bought an ad slot on Keffria's site because I saw her post and thought 500 pageviews at less than 10 cents is a nice deal, but I'd never have found out that info by checking PW because it's so slow that it would take hours. So my suggestion would be to let people know in forums you frequent how many pageviews their ad would get and how much it'd cost them - I doubt that many would find that info by themselves.

This is only a minor annoyance for me since I'm online all day and have tabbed browsing, so while I'm waiting for results to load, I just check forums, e-mail, etc. Also, you can search by individual sites.

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 4:58 pm

As a reader and not comic creator I find PW to be excellent. I've found quite a few new comics to read through it, most of them off the QC PW banners.

Dragoness_Minerva · Post by **Dragoness_Minerva** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:13 pm

Can't say I haven't been thinking about PW. It seems really interesting and could help out big time.

Shishio · Post by **Shishio** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 8:08 am

Another thing:

One exception I make to my rule of "Almost never advertise on sites with low traffic" rule is for sites like Comixpedia, Talk About Comics, Project Wonderful itself, etc.

The idea is that by advertising on sites that a lot of webcomic creators visit, I might make fans out of some of then who might then link me on their own sites. It hasn't worked so far though. (You fucking cunts. I hate you all.)

Kels · Post by **Kels** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:16 am

Oh man, Shishio, I was just about to add a link to you, and you ruined it. Better luck next time!