Why would Publishers be angry?

Why shouldn’t they be angry when their sites get redirected to some holding scam like page? Publishers’ own visitors themselves might lose trust in the site they go to. This especially applies on new visitors. What about the big sites that publishes Advertlets? Within minutes a few hundreds if not thousands of visitors would have been redirected. I’m happy my site isn’t too established yet if not this mistake made by OTHERS would have cost me my site, my reputation and my viewers’ trust.

Why would Advertisers be angry?

They pay for what they do not deserve. That is why. But I doubt it is much of a problem most probably because Advertlets would extend their advertising period for free or refund them the lost during the period whereby their advertisements are not displayed.

Last Words

Some thoughts I have on the issue. You cannot go far if you make such mistakes especially when you have strong competitors. Such mistakes may seem so small and insignificant but the effects and aftermaths are great, greater than what you think or expect. Small sites will not be affected much but for the more popular and famous sites the damage created is huge and painful. With such an event happening Advertlets may have to build the site a few months again before they can regain trust from the bigger publishers. Well perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill but for me this is a mistake that made me lose all my trust in them. It is just renewing a domain, how difficult can that be? If you can even forget to pay for your own fees, what more about issuing publishers their payout?

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Right. So now we know the situation let us talk about it. Almost 3 or more advertisements repeats itself. That would mean the advertisers are paying let us say 1000 impressions, but all they get is? 1000 / 4 (easier to calculate) = 250 impressions! In other words, advertisers are actually paying 4 times to price per 1000 impressions. I tried reading through the faqs, terms of conditions etc but nothing touches on this subject. I don’t know but it sure looks to be quick money for publishers but as for advertisers? Ineffective and a waste of money.

Both Advertlets and Nuffnang are companies and places of revenue for webmasters, bloggers, especially in the region of Asia (specifically Malaysia and Singapore). Though they both aim the provide users with an alternative source of income through their website, they both run on different system. It may seem rather unclear on how different Nuffnang and Advertlets are but I hope after reading my article you will have a clearer view on which is “better” for you.

Recently there have been several complaints by bloggers on Nuffnang on why they have not been receiving advertisement offers for several weeks or months. These outbursts of anger also include them being angry on how they realized that they advertised Nuffnang without being paid. Almost all of those that complained switched to Advertlets as they no longer want to wait anymore. However, on the other end bloggers that are currently getting the advertisement offers showed their disagreement and debated back. All these debating sure sound intense but there is only one suggestion to both ends. If you do not receive your advertisement offers, so be it. Nuffnang is not for you. For those who have received offers over and over again, good for you.

Advertlets on the other end have not much problems so far. No complaining except the fact of that little puny sum of money that publishers are earning and the problem of the logging in system. To make up for that, Advertlets hosted several campaigns and offers for bloggers such as reviewing their own website for a chance to earn a sum of money. (25 SGD for the lowest) Great ways of winning the people’s heart and at the same time earn effective money. I have one concern that is a few months back they also offered a sum of money if your review on their site get selected. I participated at that time but the sad truth is, there was no winner at all. They extended the deadlines to November and I was utterly disappointed on that matter. They did not even bother to give a reason as to why. I guess it was most probably because of the lack of participants but that should not be a reason for them not to provide one. This incident might not have affected many as Advertlets is still not known to a lot of people. However, I am one of the unlucky victims who have lost a little trust in Advertlets since that incident. (No one seems to even care about it or perhaps people did not even notice? Or wait; perhaps there was not one except me participating? I doubt so.)

Without further ado, let us go on to the comparison of both companies and then my review on both of them as well as my opinions and thoughts.

Table of Comparison

Detailed Comparison

Focused Publishers

Both Advertlets and Nuffnang are currently still in local scale. Both provide advertisements that caters to only Singaporean and Malaysian readers. They also pay in SGD or RM. However, Advertlets is also seen to be showing international advertisements (but that is highly unrecognizable). In my opinion, Advertlets caters more to Malaysian publishers while for Nuffnang, caters both to Singaporean and Malaysian publishers with equal effort (Nuffnang has both .SG and .MY sites and are operated by different people).

Ability to earn from it?

Of course you can earn from both companies. However, some might find Nuffnang to be more profitable or the other way round. Advertlets definitely will give publishers some earnings. As long as you have a website, you display their advertisements, you get the money. However, for you to be able to earn some money from Advertlets, it requires you to display their advertisements on a high traffic site. You can earn around 0.20 RM per 200 impressions (Uniques? Not too sure there. I myself am confused) and these visitors ought to be countries from Singapore, Malaysia or perhaps South East Asia. I realized that they pay more for impressions coming from those countries mentioned above then countries like USA, UK etc. As for Nuffnang, if you have a high traffic site, you might or not earn money at all. Nuffnang in the other hand works differently. They do not display advertisement as soon as you sign up. They work in a business module whereby the advertisers choose which website to display their advertisement on. Thus, you might get no advertisement offers at all! In that case, you will not earn a single cent at all. In my research, I found out that Nuffnang have advertisers that only caters to Singaporean/Malaysian visitors. Thus if your site is found to have a strong traffic of international countries, you may not get any advertisement offers at all. In conclusion, Nuffnang may work for some only (Strong Singapore/Malaysia traffic), while for Advertlets for everyone as long as you have the people coming in.

Amount of revenue publishers can earn

For Adverlets, you can earn cents to a few dollars every day. If you have at least 1000 page views everyday (Page views, not uniques.), you can earn a dollar or two. As for Nuffnang, if you have offers continuously coming in, earning around $20 SGD a month would not be much of a problem. Putting that aside, Advertlets and Nuffnang both host other offers that enable you to earn extra cash. For example for Nuffnang, selected publishers are given specific advertising offers (creating a post to promote a certain product) and can earn extra cash from completing them. As for Advertlets, reviewing their site might get you some money if your review gets selected. All in all, Advertlets will earn you cents no matter what site you have or who you are while for Nuffnang, a highly Singaporean/Malaysian/Asian specific site only.

Ads placed based on?

Advertlets - Your traffic and statistics derived from your polls.

Nuffnang - Your traffic

Relationship with publishers

Advertlets - Average with most publishers if not good with others. So far not many complaints about them except the logging in issue and as for me, them extending the deadline without any reason at all.

Nuffnang- Extremely bad or good. Bad for those who have not received advertisements for months after joining, and good for those who received advertisements. (Duh.) Well, I would say the majority of the members do not have a good relationship with the company. Seriously. (only the minority and those are the hardcore nuffnangers and those that received offers after offers love Nuffnang)

Activeness

Both companies have hosted programs and outings to show their care and concern for the publishers. However, Advertlets is seen to be only active with Malaysian publishers as most outings that are organized so far are held in Malaysia. Nuffnang on the other hand holds outings in Singapore and Malaysia. (Both branches work differently anyways. Different management and staff) However, participants on those outings are usually the ones who received advertisement offers. Perhaps they only reach out to the ones that love them? And not bother about those who hate them? I do not know.

Reliability

Both are reliable. Cheques have been sent and publishers have received them. None are scammers at all.

The Verdict

If you are an international reader, meaning you are not from Singapore or Malaysia, none of these companies can work out for you. I would suggest that you join Google’s Adsense, Adbrite, Widgetbucks etc. Now if here is a mind map as to what you should take (in my opinion of course.)

If you do not understand the mind map or cannot view the mind map, here is the text version:

1. Where are you from?

(a) Singapore (proceed to (2))

(b) Malaysia (proceed to (2))

(c) Others (UK, USA etc) (go to answer 3)

2. Is your traffic

(a) High (proceed to (3))

(b) Low/Medium (go to answer 2 and 3)

3. Your traffic consists mainly of…

(a) Singaporean/Malaysia (go to answer 1 and 2)

(b) Others/International Users (go to answer 2 and 3)

Answer 1 - Nuffnang
Answer 2 - Advertlets
Answer 3 - Google’s Adsense, Widgetbucks, Adbrite etc

Analysis

Why did I come out with such answers? How did I derive such opinions? Well, let us see:

Nuffnang - Advertisers are all from local regions (meaning Singapore and Malaysia). Since advertisers are to choose which site they want to display their advertisement, they would obviously choose sites with high traffic from countries their companies are located at (in this case, Singapore and Malaysia). Since they are all local advertisers, international users are most probably not going to get any advertising offers at all. Going on to the traffic, it seems to be that Nuffnang promotes sites to the advertisers. If you get more traffic, Nuffnang promotes you more. In that case, you most probably will get the offer. However, if you have a puny stream of visitors to your site per day, you will most likely be unrecognized nor be informed to the advertisers. Thus not getting any offers at all.

Advertlets - Advertisers are also from mainly the local regions. However, since Advertlets work on a PPM (pay per impression) system, every member will get advertisements displayed on their site. And every impression made (visitor etc) will result in some money being earned. Thus, as long as you have a high traffic flow, Advertlets will earn you money. Of course I noticed that they pay more for local visitors. If you have a low to medium traffic flow, the money will still be earned except that it will be much lesser.

Other international advertising solutions - I will not touch on that since my main focus is on Nuffnang and Advertlets.

Conclusion

A really long article but I hope it gives you a wider view on both companies and which you should choose. Any comments? Post it and I will respond to it. I still have much to say but I must be sure that people are actually interested in this topic. And if that is the case, there will be another part coming out to touch on the publisher’s nationality. That is another factor of which site you should choose from.

A side note

I am neither a business expert nor an internet marketer. I am not a full time professional blogger nor a learned entrepreneur. All information listed above is solely based on my opinions. To believe or not to believe in it, it is your own option. People have their own opinions, I am no exception.

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http://www.wordhugger.com

“Word Hugger is a Micro Investment website. A micro investment of $60 will earn lots of money back over the ten years that you own your word page for. We offer a 100% money back guarantee, and provide phenomenal support along the way.” ~ About Us - WordHugger
Can you comprehend that? No? Alright I shall try to paraphrase it for you so as to enable you to be able to further understand what WordHugger is all about. If you know about the milliondollarwiki, WordHugger is something similar to that but instead of buying a page, you buy a word! On buying a word you get something like wordhugger.com/your-word-here and you can edit it to your liking etc. Get it now?
Here is the catch. When you buy a word for 60 bucks, some of it, to be exact 50% of the profit earned, will be given to Kiva. Now, what is Kiva?
“Kiva is a non profit organization which loans money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Individuals give Kiva a micro loan of $25 per person they are going to sponsor. Kiva then pools a number of these sponsors together, to collect a sum of $800-1200. Once the funds have been reached, Kiva contacts its micro-finance institutions in different developing countries such as Ghana, Ecuador, Cambodia, and so on, who then loan it to an entrepreneur in that location.”
Sweet? Definitely. Not only are you helping yourself in your business or whatever by buying a word, you’re also indirectly contributing funds for a good cause!

So now what’s up with me being all kind and sweet putting up such an advertisement on my site. Well, besides me finding the site and concept behind it rather cool and innovative (Yes I meant what I say. I swear that I speak nothing but the truth), they are currently running a contest to promote themselves. In that case, this post is somewhat like a submission for the contest. Ha, call me money-minded or what-so-ever, I don’t care. All I want is to win a few bucks for me to spend after my examinations. If you are interested, you can participate too! Here are the details:

http://blog.wordhugger.com/wordhugger-contests-win-100-free-words-or-maximum-exposure/
Go read it yourself. I’ll just key out the main points:

- You write a post about wordhugger

- You tell the webmaster

- You stand a chance for a $100 dollars

Now for further details, go to that URL I provided. It gives you the guidelines on how your post should be and what it should contain etc. Right, now back to studying if not I’ll be history for history tomorrow. Ha Ha I know it’s cold but I’m really stressed out currently.

In the past we have things such as podcasts and screencasts. Now we have a new one, a new way of communicating and spreading of your own ideas etc, and that is by sketch casting. Sketch casting is a method whereby users sketch or what we call draw out what they want to tell and in addition, add on a voice over if needed. Kind of cool for artists and drawing enthusiast. However, if you lack the proper equipment and tools (Such as a tablet or some drawing equipment for your computer) the result might become rather terrible. It is rather time consuming actually in my opinion, drawing and then erasing and back again. Here is my first ever sketchcast!

Alright, I know my drawing is terrible, I know my ideas are retarded. But still, I dare to try. No pain no gain, right now you can laugh all you want at my *unique* artistic talent. If you guys want to try it out, it is really simple and easy to do so. Log on to www.sketchcast.com, register a new account and start sketch casting away! A good point is they host your sketchcasts, so you need not worry on where to put them. It is rather new so if there is any problems, go contact their staff and support team. Happy sketchcasting!

http://www.planet-pulse.com/

Introduction

Planet-Pulse is a site whereby it gives the opportunity for people to take surveys provided and earn money at the same time. I know of many such sites but however I did not venture into any of them. However with the recommendation of one of my friend, and some comments from others in the internet, I found myself entering the site. First impressions are always very important and all I knew was that Planet-Pulse gave me a good one. The site design was simple and nice; colours used were really soothing and pleasing to the eye. In the front page I was also greeted with a flash introduction of Planet-Pulse. Without further delay, I went on to register myself. Registration was pretty fast, (Not too quick as there was a sum of questions asked. Besides this is a survey website, it ought to know its members more) validation mail came within seconds. Validated, and off I go into the member’s panel

Member’s Panel

The member’s panel was really simple. Options available are “My Payment Account”, “My Payment History”, “My Pulse History”, “Invite My Friends”. Payment Account is whereby you set your payment account details. Currently the only method of receiving your money is by PayPal. Thus in that panel, you can set your PayPal email address etc. My Payment History is a place whereby you can check when you last claim your rewards and how much was the reward. My Pulse History is whereby you can check the different dates you have taken the different types of survey and the amount you earned from it. And lastly Invite My Friends is a page whereby you can see how many referrals you have and also calculate and estimate the amount of money you can earn from them. From there, it provides two options of inviting people, one by email and the other by using banners. That is practically everything in the member’s panel.

Surveys right at your email

Once Planet-Pulse receives their clients’ requests, surveys will be distributed to members email address. Before members get to answer the survey, members have to answer a screener. The screener is something like a qualification round to see if you are suitable to take the survey. With that done and if you qualify, you continue to do the survey. Upon completing it, you receive your “Pulses” (To be converted to cash or gift items later on) However, if you do not qualify for the survey, you will still be rewarded a smaller amount of “Pulses” for taking the screener. This ensures that everyone gets something and does not go back empty-handed!

Positive Remarks

Good exchange rates

100 Pulses = 1.00 USD (1.52 SGD)
Survey rewards are promised to range from 100 – 5000 pulses, that is 1 USD to 50 USD for just one survey.

Everyone has something to bring home

It is a great idea to reward members who do the screener but not qualify for taking the survey. This makes everyone happy as though I can not to the survey; I still get rewarded for looking at it. This is definitely a good idea to keep members loyal to the programme.

Referral Programme

A win-win situation whereby Planet-Pulse earns free advertisement through its members recommending their friends to join while members at the same time get incentives by doing so.

Negative Remarks

Late and Little Surveys

Somehow around 3 weeks after my registration at the site then came the introduction survey whereby I can earn my first every pulses. Yes it came rather late, 3 weeks and then it came telling me that it was an introduction survey, pretty late eh? Also besides the introduction survey, I did not receive any other offers or such within the time frame of when I registered and join as member and a month later which is now. Though rates are good, if there are no surveys at all, members can never earn much money.

No other methods of receiving payment

Besides using paypal to receive payments, there simply is no other ways. Since this service is still rather new, this point can be overlooked however I hope that in future, more options will be available for members such as receiving payment by cheques or e-gold etc.

Conclusion

With all of that said, this programme looks promising. I really wish that it will last in the future and prosper. Also as it progresses, I hope that not only it continues to provide good services for its members, it will take suggestions into mind and thus improve its features (More surveys, payment options etc) or customer service and what so ever. If you will be kind enough to be my referral, please go to this link http://www.planet-pulse.com/live/pp_register.php?rid=143220. Anyways, that is it, good bye. May more surveys appear in my mailbox in future.

Ratings

*exchange rates of pulses to money, amount of surveys given etc (rated on the ability of money making opportunites)
**referral campaigns etc (banners to promote and refer, ability to estimate earnings etc)

http://www.kwix-host.com

First & Current Impressions Review

Introduction

After numerous free hosts I tried, I must say that Kwix-Host is the best. It is reliable, stable and simply provides quality plans both reasonable for them, providers, and us, users. Kwix-Host, backend up with a tremendous amount of positive reviews and near perfect uptime, I decided to venture into it. At that time I must say I hated post-to-host providers. That is because I have learnt that I am pretty much exchanging my precious time for hosts that were going down the next week or so. However, Kwix-Host did not disappoint me. It has already been a month or two since I had them hosting me and never did a single time it was down nor caused me much problems. All I can say is that I am really glad to have such a provider, and I really hope that it stays that way forever (Until I decide to go into paid hosting).

First Impressions

When I first stepped upon the homepage, I was not too impressed at all. A simple layout filled with some news and links to the various sites and that is about it. Maybe I am the kind of guy who likes complicated things thus not liking it too much. As for minimalists, the design might be quite appealing to you. However, the colours used are rather warm and pleasing to the eye. Navigations were straight forward, and the FAQs etc were rather well done. Since it was a post-to-host provider, I immediately venture into the forums. The forums’ template was not too bad, as again the colours used were really well done. It was simple and clean. Icons, topics and categories were clear. Descriptions that were written clearly describe what the particular categories were and simply leads you to the place where you want to be. Registration for forum membership was the same like many other forums (This forum is powered by the invisions board systems). Validation mail etc. Then come the posting. The board looks not too active, however just needing around 7 posts etc was just a piece of cake. Posting here and there soon got me meeting the requirements for the basic plan. Off I go happily to register my account. Everything was quick and was instant (Yes it is an automated script to create your account, human are not going to help you with it. I am really surprised that this post-to-host provider does not need requesting of account creation.) Everything was smooth, no problems etc. To cut the long story short, I was impressed with the quickness etc, alright with the design, happy with the community. I really wished then the host would live forever. And it did live, for two months since my arrival at least.

The Worth Mentioning

Uptime

Within this two months being hosted by them, I never once faced a downtime. Amazing but true. I am rather impressed with this and yup, they are gaining my trust alright. I guess I might as well stay real loyal to them now.

Server Speed

I must say that from my country to the server’s location, the speed is rather fast. Uploading scripts etc were within minutes or so, loading and refreshing pages were almost blinking fast. Everything were smooth, had no problems with page loading times. Great!

Support

Need help? There is always a staff that will reply to you within 24 hours. Never tried their live chat at all however the support forums were enough for me to resolve my problems. Friendly staff and great community that is eager to help too. Support is really efficient for me.

The Plans

Simply reasonable and fantastic. Great amount of space and bandwidth, satisfying amount of features (They provide cpanel by the way, so what I meant here was that they provided enough email accounts, SQL databases etc) and easy to achieve requirements. And on top of all of that, it is all for free and without forced advertisements

Updates

Members and users gets updated really quickly whenever there is going to be a downtime for maintenance or whatsoever. The server software is frequently upgraded just like how they upgraded their cpanel to the latest version 11. I am rather impressed with that actually. They upgrade their space and servers accordingly to how much stress their current servers have. This results in really stable hosting and making it much more reliable than other hosts.

The Neutral

Design

Website and forums are designed based on simplicity and sleekness. It is warm and colours are really attractive. The design makes me feel real comfortable whenever browsing the forums and reading the posts etc. I would not say that it is extraordinary, but it fits the bill of providing a place where people feel at home and want to return for more. I cannot imagine myself posting in a forum with a disgusting template to it.

The Staff

The staffs so far seem rather active and plentiful. Helpful and kind they are and they seem to speak in a rather friendly way. I like that.

The Unworthy Mentioned

Community

The community really seems to be rather inactive. I will not say that it is all dead as there is still the staff and around 10 to 20 other enthusiasts who posts and reply a lot. I guess it is because once they reached the required amount of posts, they completely stop posting and could not be bothered much about it. Oh well, though the plans require a monthly upkeep of posts, it does not seem to be working as like I said, the whole activity of the board is unseen. Only a few regulars are seen posting at times.

Suggestions

More People Please

I think what will make the host even greater will be the adding of referral campaigns, competitions and games. This is for one purpose, to increase the activity of the board by encouraging members to invite other friends and to keep them posting or thinking in order to participate the contests/competitions. The forum really needs some people if not this hosting is such a waste. Such quality plans, uptime and reliability is going down the drain without an active community. That is the only fault I found with this host. Get more people and this host is simply perfect.

Conclusion

I really hope this host last as long as it can. It is simply a great host with great staff, plans, and is just absolutely made of quality material. The potential for great heights is there and I wish it will grow and improve along the way. For people out there who are still finding a host, Kwix-Host is the one for you. Happy webbing people!

Ratings

——————————-

Overall: 7.5 out of 10 stars 7.5 (Fantastic!)

*based on their own website template, community, staff etc