The News Room
The News Room looked very promising. I wanted to add video to our main site, portallanguageservices.com, so it seemed natural to include their videos however I am so far very unhappy.
I'm unhappy with the news room for the following reasons:
1. Slow updates
The news feeds are updated very slowly. I had added a news feed for world news and I even had it on the front page of my site for 10 days. I only noticed one new video added for that entire period. I don't know if the feed system is messed up or not, but it isn't my problem. There should be an easy way to pick a topic and have that topic appear.
2. One-by-one
It seems that the only way to add text news is to go to their site and select them one-by-one.
Do I really want to spend 30 minutes everyday to go to their site to select news and then post it on my site when I could be working on adding my own content? Only if the compensation is high enough which it isn't.
3. The compensation is low
The idea is that you are sharing ad revenue, but even though there is a video ad, you get very little money. Even though the world news video feed was on my front page on my most important site, it only registered views for a fraction of visitors so I made less than half of a dollar for a third of a month.
I can make more with Adsense ads. They mention that you make money for referrals but there is no code to be found for having referrals. So how to I refer people to use it without a referral link or button?
4. Their reporting system is flawed.
If I have over 60 visitors to my main site on average and at least 20 of them go to my main site then I could expect that at least half of them 'saw' the automatically playing news video. The system didn't even register that many. Since there is no FAQ to explain how all this works I don't know what to think.
The revenue reporting option that appears after logging in only reports about one out of 6 or 7 days. The rest of the time it tells me that it is 'being updated'. I want to know if it is working or not. I have a sinking feeling that these 'being updated' days don't report when videos are being watched.
Because of the above reasons, I don't recommend trying TheNewsRoom even if Problogger.net is advertising it.
I removed the 'video feed' from portallanguageservices.com 's front page and I left it on the 'video activity pages' as a supplemental activity. I'm not giving it a prominent location anymore, since the videos aren't getting updated by keyword as they were supposed to. I will leave the system there for at least a few more months or until I find a better option for giving students and visitors videos for practicing their listening comprehension skills.
If TheNewsRoom improves their services, I'll let you know in another post.
Amazon.com's Affiliate Report
I haven't had much luck so far. I've gotten a few clicks but no sales. I haven't been pre-selling any books yet. I have only made them available.
A-Store advertisements don't work
One problem is that there was supposed to be a way to put advertisements on your site that would show products that you're offering in a blended way and that when clicked on, the visitor would be sent to your Amazon.com A-store. Well that system doesn't work.
I put the ad code on pages in my main site. I thought it would be a good fit since most people who are learning languages also need reading material. They need supplemental books. The ad code only shows a generic Amazon.com ad so I get no traffic and I lose potential Adsense clicks because the visitor has already left my site for Amazon.com.
The generic Amazon.com ad doesn't not blend well. In fact, it is a bit garish. I think it looks like your typical banner ad.
I of course tried e-mailing Amazon.com's Affiliate support. I e-mailed them twice.
The first time the answer was " I went to your A-store, and the links work". I had told them by e-mail that the ad links TO the A-store weren't working not that the A-store itself didn't.
The second time I e-mailed them was a reply to the first reply. I clarified that NO it wasn't the A-store but the ads that were supposed to be blended and referring to your A-store that didn't work. They replied that they were 'aware of the issue'.
If they were aware of the issue, then why didn't I see a warning on Amazon's Affiliate site next to the option for this kind of ad? They could have just posted a message in big bold letters saying. This service doesn't yet work so you'll see a generic ad instead.
I like that they did reply to my e-mails but I didn't like wasting my time configuring the blended A-store advertisements and adding the code to my site to later find out that they 'were aware of the issue'.
I'm not saying I wouldn't recommend Amazon.com but I think you'd either need thousands of visitors a day or you'd need to pre-sell books through reviews or other promotions.
Google Adsense update
So far it appears that I'll get 25% more from Google ads this month. Last month I made about 16 dollars in Google Ads. So far this month I've made $10.96. Yes I know it isn't much but it is increasing every month. I have been getting many many clicks but the money/click isn't very high. I do like Adsense though and I do recommend it. The ads blend with the content so they never look bad.
Check out Google Adsense to earn money on your websites:
Check out Google Adwords to promote your website:
Conclusions
I think that if you have a high volume of site traffic, Adsense could make you a lot of money. I also like Google Adsense because its reporting is pretty accurate and it updates frequently. I can check several times a day and see updates.
Amazon.com's Affiliate program reports once a day and you don't see the previous day's report until the next morning.
I've been waiting several days to see TheNewsRoom update its report.
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