Saying hello to old Adgitize & CMF friends

It's been about 7 weeks since Adgitize closed and even longer for CMF. During the heyday period of those two blog advertising networks, my regular schedule was to visit many of the members participating blogs. But now that they are closed, I find myself daydreaming about the good old days.

While traffic for this particular blog has dropped substantially, my two lottery blogs have seen a dramatic growth in search engine traffic. This has kept my morale up and generates enthusiasm to keep on blogging.

To keep myself stimulated, I've settled on routine of regularly visiting a few of the blogs who were active participants in the above networks. In particular, I enjoy stopping in and reading the posts of:

• Orient Lodge and learning about Aldon's political, professional, and personal involvements,
• Sharkbytes My Quality Day which has helped me weather the winter and enjoy the Michigan scenery
• Dickster's Random Thoughts which shares Dick's personal thoughts and the family's difficulties with dealing with an autistic child
• Some Assembly Required that is written as a personal diary documenting the life of an successful advertising executive in Texas
• Carmen's Chronicles , an old favorite and a frequent commenter on my blogs, who has been recently visiting and living in India
• Quick Blog Tips by Ben Barden (of CMFads fame), and Floor15 (which will be closing shortly)
• English Wilderness by John who posts beautiful pictures scenic UK locations

While I rarely leave comments on the blogs that I visit, I just wanted to share my thoughts and let everyone know that I am still thinking about them!

PS: And of course, I continue to miss postings by our old friend Ken Brown!

Rock Paper Sissors - CMF Ads

As a followup to last week's post, I'd like to emphasize the other major features of CMF Ads that make it an important network for all bloggers whether new or old. Below I've described 4 of the primary reasons why this blog, Ask the Blogster (ATB), likes the CMF Ads network.

First is the CMF Ads site itself. Developed by Ben Barden and administered by Turnip, the CMF site has undergone many transformations. In its present state, members can easily traverse the site by use of a well organized series of pull down menus. One can quickly see their account information, advertisements, blogs, or view the overall membership community as well. Without having to go anywhere, you immediately see your account balance as well.

Second, CMF Ads is an advertising network, aimed at allowing you to advertise your site within the community. For this purpose, CMF offers members the opportunity to purchase 4 different type of ads:

• Rock Paper Sissors- Spikes: which begin selling for $0.20 for 50 unique clicking visits
• Rock Paper Sissors- Fireworks: which begin at $1.00 for 50 unique visits.
• Rock Paper Sissors- Campaign: directly targeted ads to individual member blogs for various terms
• Rock Paper Sissors- Network: broad based ads randomly displayed on all member sites.

This wide range of advertisement choices allows users of all budgets and interests to maximize the reach of their blogs.

Third, all members are publishers as well, meaning that they can easily earn both passive and active income. As publishers, blogs earn passive income from all Campaign and Network ads displayed on their blogs. Those who wish to be more active can boost their earning by clicking on all of the daily Spikes and outstanding Firework ads. All earnings can be utilized to purchase any or all of the offered ads types, or can be withdrawn from the system for only a 10% fee.

Fourth and lastly, its content is family orientated and well monitored. CMF Ads does not accept all blogs who apply for membership. All content must be original and the blogs must be free of spam, pop-ups, music, etc.

CMF Ads was launched in 2009 after extensive rounds of beta testing. The same group of members have operated the site, continually enhancing it and making improvements. So, if you are looking for a way to boost your visitor count and earn some income at the same time, then join CMF Ads and its membership community!

Related articles

• CMF Fireworks Illuminate Your Exposure (asktheblogster.blogspot.com)

CMF Fireworks Illuminate Your Exposure

CMF Ads recently introduced a new advertising alternative called Fireworks. These are similar to Spikes in that a member may purchase a fixed number of unique visits through their advertising widget. However, there are two primary differences between Spikes and Fireworks.

• First, Firework ads are hosted on member blogs after installing the associated widget. Whereas, Spikes are displayed on a unique CMF page.
• Second, Fireworks ads can provide unlimited impressions because only clicks by unique visitors are counted.

Firework ads cost approximately 5 times that of Spikes, but return 4 times the amount of income to visitors. For those trying to click on all the available Fireworks is like entering a scavenger hunt. Since ad placement is random, members must visit a variety of blogs to locate a Firework. However, there is no guarantee that you will find a new Firework ad. This feature provides advertisers the opportunity to have their ad displayed with an infinite number of impressions.

We believe this new product is a great complement to everyone's blog because the CMF Fireworks illuminate your exposure.

CMF Spikes Rock!

During this past week, I decided to experiment with the CMF ads Spike advertising feature to see if I get a boost in traffic.

For those who don't know, a CMF member can purchase 50 Spikes for $0.20. Each spike is worth a single visit from a participating member. After you receive 50 visits, the spikes are gone.

In my case, a set of spikes lasted one day, so I kept buying Spikes for each of the past 7 days.

To my surprise, I discovered that: CMF Spikes Rock! Nearly 40 of the 50 spike visits were registered as actual visits by Google Analytics. By comparison, very few of the Adgitize visits are registered.

Thus, I will probably continue to purchase Spikes for a while as this advertising tool helps to increase my blog's traffic.

Thanks CMF,

JL...............

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• Bloggers: Join Adgitize & Place an Ad to Get $3, $7, or $14 Rebate from Us (asktheblogster.blogspot.com)

Report Trojans, Virus, Pop-Ups, Hackers & Malicious Sites Here

Perhaps the most common obstacle that our Blogging community faces when trying to visit other member sites is the unwanted encounter with a malicious site. How many times have you clicked on a site and all of a sudden, the screen flashes, and various windows pop-up.

The typical attack presents alert boxes asking you to "click here". You're afraid to do that for fear of infecting you computer and cannot close the annoying and dangerous attacks.

Worse, you feel all alone. Who do you tell? Did anyone else know about this?  Was this preventable?

During the past week, I had such an encounter on Adgitize. While I was able to close all the browser windows, my laptop failed to shut off. I was able to turn the power off and then force a "reboot" when powering up again.

I did report this, but as far as I know, the culprit is still there. I know the problem isn't on my machine because I performed a full scan after each attack and nothing was detected.

This isn't a problem isolated to me. CMF Ads has a noteworthy thread about this problem. And after reading it, you will find that many experienced bloggers are often the victims.

Whenever you click on Entrecard sites, Adgitize ads, or CMF Ads, you are at risk. Turnip recently reported that he disabled one such site on CMF. Entrecard's blog states that they made a complete scan of all blog members and eliminated many. And, Adgitize removes sites when they are found.

However, these three organizations are combating the malicious attackers in isolation. Unfortunately, they are not working together to share the list of evil-doers, and we, the blog clicking community remain vulnerable.

Therefore, I'm asking all members of each network to report a malicious site here, in a single place, for others to read and be informed. With that data, I will validate the claims, and report the offenders to each of the three networks.

So, if you have a problem, and can isolate the name of the bad site, leave a comment here. 

We've got to work together to patrol our community and keep each other safe.

JL...........

PS: 

• I didn't list the site I encountered here because I haven't identified it yet. I think it is fired off when I close the window which is already too late.
• Also, many CMF members recommend Sandboxie.  I haven't checked it out, but intend to do so.
• Lastly, it's important to remember that many of the offending sites may be victims of hackers. As such, they are innocent, but need to be quarantined  until they are sanitized and safe again.

A Week of Ups and Downs

This past week has been full of surprises for our blogging communities.

First, the Down. Adgitize went offline, almost a year to the day from the previous outage. Unlike last year's episode, there has been little communication from Ken, placing a wee bit of anxiety in the it's member community. While the site is back up, one forum post indicated that full functionality may not be restored until next week. If history repeats itself, an advertising extension of some sort will be credited to advertisers. As of now, we are in a "trust-me" state. As an aside, one of Ken's own site is "You Can Learn Series" which is a mainstay advertiser on Adgitize.  That domain registration has expired and brings visitors to a parked site. This seems to be quite odd since most folks who own a domain name don't want it to expire. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

For the Ups, both CMF Ads and Entrecard released new innovations to their product lines.

Entrecard opened, without much fan fare, it's membership to websites. While many do not believe this is significant, I believe it is important. Sites like my Lottery Power Picks have already joined and are receiving new visitors. Now, both Adgitize and Entrecard are open to websites.

And, CMF Ads introduced Network Ads. While this is similar to Adgitize, it is a great addition to their product. The primary reason is that it fills up the empty Ad space that many members experience.  While the payback to publishers will be relatively minimal in the beginning, I am sure that Ben and all will think of a way to make it more financially benefical for members to display the CMF widgets. And, this new product is a great complement to its newly released Spikes because when people visit, they will now be exposed other CMF member ads.

JL.........

Two Rounds of Applause

This week I experienced two unexpected acts of kindness from fellow bloggers, and I wanted to provide them both with a special thank-you and round of applause.

First, I received an Alert from Ben of CMF Ads, indicating that I needed to provide a feed URL for my blogs. Since I use blogger and FeedBurner, Ben instructed me to Convert my Feed to RSS 2.0 format in order for him to read our content. I wrote back and indicated that Google recommends that we publish our feeds with Smart Feed, which will automatically send our our content in whatever format. Within a day of my reply, Ben wrote back and stated that he found a way to force the feed into RSS, thus enabling CMF to import most FeedBurner feeds. I didn't expect this speedy resolution and was impressed that Ben found a solution that is beneficial to all blogger and FeedBurner users. A round of applause to Ben!

Second, I received an Entrecard message from John of English Wilderness: Nature Photography indicating that the Entrecard chicklet that displays popularity / ad price was redirecting visitors to a parked domain. This meant that nobody could visit my blogs. This problem wasn't specific to me, so John warned others and wrote the post WARNING: ENTERCARD CHICKLET WIDGET. Additionally, he contacted the site owner and had the problem resolved before I had a chance to visit my blogs.  John suggested that I remove this chicklet from my blogs since it wasn't provided by Entrecard, and I followed his advice. I wish to thanks John for helping me and all other bloggers for his proactive efforts in protecting our micro-environment. To John: A hearty round of Applause!

Thanks again,

JL..........