WordAds: Advertising on WordPress
I seldom go off-topic (away from stereotypes) and even if I do, I still write about people, men, women; about countries, possibly about laws and their effect on societies… but I don’t go off-topic, so far away to talk about technology or blogging in general or advertising in particular. So why am i writing about WordAds?
- I can’t stop thinking about it (I tend to do that often once I am excited about something :D) and bloggers / writers simply write about their passions and their thoughts, and this where my thoughts are right now.
- I feel that there isn’t enough information about WordAds out-there since the program is relatively new and is still not as mature as Adsense. What I will be discussing in this blog post, can be found in bits and pieces all over the web, in many discussions, in other blog posts from other bloggers.
Most blog posts that I came across, simply don’t cover all the questions that might pop up on a WordAds newbie’s mind. so basically, I will answer few of the most commonly asked questions on this topic and then at the end of the post, I will share my story with you (it is still an ongoing story that I will be updating regularly).
How much money can I make from WordAds?
No one out there will give you a straight answer to this question (with concrete statistics or numbers). I reviewed few WordAds related blog posts and I collected the information below:
| Site | Earnings | Ad IMP | Page Views | Earnings /1000 views | Earnings /1000 Ad IMP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clarissa’s Blog (Oct 2014) | $ 653.16 | 270,727 | ~621,856 | $ 1.35 | $ 2.32 |
| Harsh Reality Blog | $ 407.5 | 167,136 | ~334272 | $ 1.22 | $ 2.44 |
| CommicNewbies’ Blog | $ 354 | 152,702 | ~300,000 | $ 1.18 | $ 2.32 |
| Filipino Scibe’s Blog | $ 246.97 | 286,662 | ~600,000 | $ 0.41 | $ 0.86 |
| MiniMotives’ Blog | $ 210.35 | 151,359 | ~350,000 | $ 0.6 | $ 1.4 |
| JDMoyer’s Blog | $ 162.19 | 70,000 | 120,000 | $ 1.35 | $ 2.32 |
| Diary of Dennis’ Blog | $ 133.26 | 67,234 | 149,978 | $ 0.89 | $ 1.98 |
| Clarissa’s Blog (Feb 2014) | $ 108.84 | 49,965 | 114,769 | $ 0.95 | $ 2.18 |
| The Human Breed Blog (this Blog) | $ 86.58 | 40,249 | 69,646 | $ 1.24 | $ 2.15 |
| SubtleWords’ Blog | $ 8.44 | 8,683 | ~30,000 | $ 0.28 | $ 0.97 |
| HalfBlog | $ 5 | 5,000 | 10,000 | $ 0.5 | $ 1.0 |
| Totals / Average | $ 2,376 | 1,269,717 | 2,700,521 | $ 0.88 | $ 1.87 |
The sampled data suggests that the average return for every 1000 views is around 0.8 US dollars. So, if you are getting 1000 page views a day, you can expect around 24 $ a month. Another way to look at it, if you want to quit your daytime job and focus on blogging (let us say you need 3000 $ a month), then you need around 3.75 million page views per month or a 125 thousand visitors a day.
Note: I believe that the discrepancies between the total page views and the ad impressions are due to three reasons
- Visitors using Ad block software on their web browsers
- Visitors from regions where there is low or no demand for advertisement
- As a blogger, you have the option to turn off Ads for other WordPress visitors who are logged in, so this could be another reason for some missed impressions
Is there a minimum traffic requirement for getting approved in WordAds?
Yes
Naturally, your next question would be, what is the minimum traffic threshold for getting approved in WordAds?
Unfortunately, I still don’t have a clear cut answer to this question.
WordAds was Launched in November 29, 2011 and apparently things have changed quite a lot in the last 3 years. I am new WordAds, so How do I know? I know because I have been reading hundreds of comments from other bloggers, few of the older applicants have been accepted, while having less than 5000 page views per month. On the other hand, some other few (like me) of the more recent applicants who are getting 10,000+ page views per month have been with-held until their blog reaches the minimum traffic threshold. So we can safely assume that the number is changing through out the life time of the program as WordAds matures and becomes somehow a bit more strict.
Edit: October 14, 2014, My blog has been approved, please read “My Story with WordAds” section below for details.
Notes:
- More recent comments suggest that minimum the required page views per month ranges from 20,000 to 25,000 views per month. (Edit: My blog got approved at almost the 15,000 views per month Mark)
- You can still apply to WordAds even if you do not meet the minimum traffic requirement. Your blog will not be rejected; your application will simply remain pending until your blog crosses the minimum traffic threshold as defined by WordAds
How long does it take WordAds to approve my blog?
Blog owner’s responses vary widely, from few days to few months (even a year). here are few examples:
| Site | Applied On | Approved On | Total Time in Months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cristian Mihai’s Blog | 15-Oct-12 | 25-Oct-12 | 0.3 |
| Comic Newbies’ Blog | 02-Jun-13 | 17-May-14 | 11.6 |
| Russel Ray Photos2’s Blog | 01-Jul-14 | 15-Jul-14 | 0.5 |
| The Human Breed Blog (my blog 🙂 ) | 13-Mar-14 | 13-Oct-14 | 7 |
| Kurt Brindley’s blog | 28-Sep-14 | 12-Dec-14 | 2.5 |
Note: Some dates are approximated because the authors were not precise in their statements, example: (I
applied to WordAds a couple of weeks ago…)
The waiting approval time seems to depend on two factors:
- Number of Monthly page views per blog
- Application date, since this affects the approximate pending applications that WordAds team need to process before reaching your application + the policies of the WordAds program might be changing slightly with time.
Bottom line, If you want to speed up the approval process, I recommend that you focus your attention and all your efforts and energy on increasing the traffic to your blog and not about worrying about when your site will be processed.
Are there any alternatives to WordAds for making money off my blog?
No and Yes.
No, you cannot use other advertising programs such as Adsense while your site is hosted on Wordpress’s or Automatic’s Servers; even if you buy your own domain.
Yes, you can use other advertising or affiliate programs but only if you do your own WordPress installation on your own web hosting plan. You do not need to be an expert to do that, but this path is certainly much harder and much more time consuming the using a WordPress Hosted site. You need to take care of everything from A to Z, such as:
- Pay your web hosting bills
- Buy a domain name
- Setup your WordPress blog
- Export and re-import your blog
- Maintain your blog (keep it up to date with every WordPress release), manage plugins, battle your way through massive spammy comments
Is my site eligible for WordAds?
- Is your site hosted on WordPress.com?
- Do you have your own domain name?
- Is your site brand-safe and family-friendly?
- Does your site have sufficient traffic to generate meaningful earnings?
If the answer is yes to all the above questions, then your site is eligible for WordAds.
How can I contact WordAds / WordPress about my application?
If you want to contact WordAds, just use this link http://wordads.co/contact/
What are the main diffferences between Google Adsense WordAds?
| Adsense | WordAds | |
|---|---|---|
| Payment Methods | EFT, check, Western Union, SEPA, Rapida, Wire transfer | PayPal |
| Advertising | From direct advertisers through Adwords | Ad partners like Adsense, Federated Media, and dozens of others |
| Average pay for 1000 views | Generally believed to be anywhere between 1$ to 3$ | ~ 1$ according to the sampled data presented above |
| Approval per site | Once the primary site/ account is approved, Adsense code can be added to any other sites that comply with Adsense policies without approval | Approval is done on a site by site basis |
| Where can I place these ads? | Any site which complies with Adsense policies | Only on wordpress hosted, full domain sites |
| You make money | when users click on your Ad | By Ad Impressions |
| Minimum payment | 100$ | 100$ |
How to apply to WordAds
Assuming that you have already bought your own domain name and your site is eligible for WordAds, simply use this link http://wordads.co/signup/ to sign up for WordAds.
My Story with WordAds
WordAds application submitted on March 13, 2014
It all began on March 13, 2014. By that time, I had already published 4 posts, and I was pretty happy considering that I was getting an average of 182 page views per day from a handful of posts. So, I bought the domain http://humanbreeds.com and I submitted my application to WordAds.
Why did I do it so early? Well, I simply did my research and I knew that WordAds approval takes a couple of months (at that time I didn’t know about the monthly traffic threshold requirement), so I thought I could use this time to build up my blog, write few more posts, and increase my traffic until my application goes through the long queue of pending applications.
Thank you for your interest in WordAds. Our team will be reviewing your site to determine if it is a match with our criteria.
Because we are launching this program to the public, the high volume of applications means that it might take a few weeks for us to respond. We appreciate your patience.
Inquiry about WordAds and my Approval Letter
I knew that WordAds approval will take anywhere from 1 day (if the site is very popular) to 3 months ( I ASSUMED my application would take 3 months maximum). However, by October 13, 2014, my application had been pending for 7 months, and at that point, I had already lost hope that I will ever get my blog approved. I simply assumed that the topics covered in my blog are of no interest to advertisers and this is why my blog has been overlooked for a long.
Having lost hope, I contacted WordAds team on (http://wordads.co/contact/ ) and to my surprise I got an immediate response:
My 1st Message (October 13, 2014) :
I applied for WordAds 7 months ago and I still haven’t heard anything back. May I know the status of my application? Is it rejected? or is it still pending?
The 1st Reply (October 13, 2014):
Our advertising partners do have a minimum traffic threshold. Looking at your page views, it’s not possible to earn meaningful earnings given your traffic levels. A site generally needs thousands of page views each month to earn meaningful earnings. As your traffic grows we will continue to apply to get ads activated, there is no need to re-apply.
My 2nd Message (October 13, 2014):
Thank you, I really appreciate your quick reply.
Is it possible to know the minimum required traffic threshold?
The 2nd Reply, (October 13, 2014), I must say it felt so good to read it:
Sorry about yesterday, I think I was looking at the wrong blog.
You were actually on track to be approved later this week, so I just put that through for you now instead.
You can now finish setting up WordAds via Settings -> WordAds in your blog’s Dashboard.
Page views per month for http://humanbreeds.com, humanbreeds got approved for WordAds at approximately 15,000 pageview per month
The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. Thank you WordAds for approving my blog. Waiting for 7 months only made this moment 7 times happier than I thought it would be. If you are waiting for your Blog’s approval, hang in there, and keep your focus on improving your blog and increasing your traffic and soon you will taste your “Sweet Victory”.
My WordAds Earnings
WordAds Earnings
Four months after the approval of my site, I must say that I am a bit disappointed with the earnings. What I find weird, just like many bloggers have already pointed out, is that even though my visitors are increasing, the earnings are the same or even slightly less now.
For instance, I got 16,250 page views in November of 2014 and for that I got $22.55. I got 19,639 page views in January 2015 and for that I got only $19.62 (a linearly proportional number would have been $27.25 in January).
Inconsistency in WordAds Earnings
Edit (August 16, 2015), things are getting worse. Check the first chart below: My earnings (green) have dropped down to half (From 22.55 $ in October 2014 to 11.77 $ in May 2015) despite my page views (blue) being higher than 20,000 views per month. In the second chart, you can see that the return per 1000 Ad Impression (CPM) has dropped from 2.25 $ in October 2014 to 1.17 $ in May 2015 and the return per 1000 Page views (CPV) has dropped from 1.39 $ in October 2014 to 0.51 $ in May 2015.
| Month | Page views | Ad Impressions | Earnings | CPM | CPV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October | 16,250 | 10,039 | 22.55 | 1.39 | 2.25 |
| November | 17,390 | 10,517 | 23.44 | 1.35 | 2.23 |
| December | 16,367 | 90,33 | 19.97 | 1.22 | 2.21 |
| January | 19,639 | 10,660 | 19.62 | 1.00 | 1.84 |
| February | 19,063 | 10,588 | 19.68 | 1.03 | 1.86 |
| March | 22,507 | 12,569 | 23.44 | 1.04 | 1.86 |
| April | 21,437 | 11,950 | 22.34 | 1.04 | 1.87 |
| May | 23,046 | 10,090 | 11.77 | 0.51 | 1.17 |
| June | 20,849 | 8,814 | 12.89 | 0.62 | 1.46 |
WordAds Monthly Earnings vs. Page Views and Ad Impressions
WordAds monthly CPM & CPV
To be fair, I think WordAds are doing their best to find more advertisers and drive the rates up, but the whole advertising industry is struggling. If your WordAds earnings are decreasing as well, don’t worry, it is nothing that you have done wrong, it is hopefully a temporary phase.
Here is a quote from the WordAds team to a blogger’s inquiry about the falling rates from this forum discussion:
Advertising rates fluctuate constantly, and they have been dropping industry-wide.
Please see the post linked to in the latest update from the private WordAds Group blog for more details.
Once we’re done with WordAds 2.0, we hope that will draw the attention of some the rarer higher paying advertisers again.
If you are new to WordAds and this topic is still generally not clear to you, please feel free to ask me any questions. Reading the frequently asked questions on WordAds or the dailypost’s / Automaticians’ post about WordAds would possibly help.
If you had your share of experience with WordAds, please leave a comment, share your journey with me and with other readers. I would love to know your stats too (if you are comfortable sharing it with the rest of the community).
Thank you for reading 🙂 and Goodluck
Excellent post. Very detailed and thorough!
I’ve always thought their view threshold for approval is 20k per month as well, so it comes as a good news they accept 13-14k. Some of my friends would be very pleased indeed.
Thank you for the compliment.
I too, due to my recent research was expecting that I had to push through to 20K or 30K to get my blog approved.
Getting the approval email just few hours after my posting about WordAds was a very huge and pleasant surprise to me. It even made me wonder, could it possibly be related to the unexpected approval?
The result is that I have work early tomorrow and I simply can’t sleep out of excitement, and it is 1:30 AM here, haha.
Thank you for dropping by Chan
I was already at work when I first got my approval news, so same result in the sense that I wasn’t able to accomplish anything afterwards. Haha.
I’ve heard that some other WordAds users were approved after following up, so it might have been the same for you. I kinda wish I remembered my own application and followed up, I might have sped the whole process along!
Excellent post about WordAds. One comment: In your first graphic with the Average, the first three columns are not average. They are totals. Only your last column is an average.
Thank you Russel. Yes, you are right, these are the totals, I made the correction 🙂
Nice article and thanks for linking my article in the comparison too. I do believe the minimum required traffic threshold is around 10k monthly views. This is at least what I get out of most user reviews I have found when I researched. I never have seen accepted people below 10k traffic but many slightly above or heavily above that threshold (and if they were below 10k then probably early adopters or beta testers). It´s just a feeling that I have. Also I am sure they prove if it´s cheap fake traffic. But with real organic traffic, it´s probably no problem to get accepted with over 10k monthly real views.
You did put some additional good informations togther. You commented on my article and I told you already but I say it again… I do like how you prepared your article. Looks very nice. You use a lot of things like font styles and features. I should start to do that too but I am way too lazy, I prefer to just write. You seems to make use of all the features we have here on WordPress.
I do by the way agree. There are some user reviews out there about WordAds but still not that much if we consider how long the program is already running. Before I was accepted, I did read too and it didn´t take me much more time than one hour or so to read through all related articles that I found with Google. Always good to see new related articles as this might help new users to get a lot of questions answered.
Thanks for the good update.
I tried to reply to your last comment on your blog, but I couldn’t, I think it has to do with “Enable threaded (nested) comments” limit 🙂 in your settings (yourblog-url /wp-admin/options-discussion.php) or just go to settings>Discussions in your blog’s dashboard, just in case you like to change it in the future. Don’t worry about me, I will reply to your comment here 🙂
You are absolutely right, getting my blog approved in WordAds has given me a massive push to write more and to improve my blog. I agree, Alexa is inaccurate, especially if your visitors are mostly tech savvy (i.e. most of them having Alexa toolbar installed). However, if you don’t have Alexa toolbar installed on your browser, then Alexa rank could give you a nice indication about your global rank, especially in comparison to other sites addressing the similar audience as yours.
Thank you for your compliments. What I learnt is that it is better to write one nicely written post than to write 100 casual posts which offer no added value to anyone. That is why I try to put some extra effort into each of my posts and try to improve its clarity and readability as much as possible.
About the minimum traffic threshold for WordAds approval, I think WordPress had to suffer through a lot of complaints from people who expect to make 100$ in one month while getting 10 page views per day. These same people were trying to give WordAds a bad name which (i believe) is very unfair towards WordPress /WordAds. Here is an example WordAds Results – A scam?.
This guy had his blog approved while he was getting less than 3000 page views per month and was simply disappointed for getting 0.88 dollars in 12 days. Just read through the comments, WordPress/Wordads team even personally replied to his post. This is their reply:
I simply love the efforts these people are doing to help bloggers like you and me make some money from their hobbies.
What I am trying to say is that the threshold seem to be increasing with time, might have been 5000 2 years ago, 10000 around 1 year ago, now it is probably closer to 20000. Why was my blog approved at around 15000? Perhaps my email or even my post had an impact on pushing my application through.
Thanks a lot for dropping by and reading and commenting on my post
Hi there,
Yes on my blog i just have three levels deep nested discussion but it is still possible to reply. I experienced that everything above that level can really look nasty on my theme because the comments get shrinked with each level. I had a big discussion on one of my articles so that one of the last comments was around 10px wide and unreadable. Also WordPress does suggest to not use more than 3 levels due to the same reason. But as said, that means you can even reply if you just have 3 levels enabled, it´s just that you need to scroll up to the last comment in the same discussion that has the reply button. Basically this means, in our discussion on my article you find the reply button on your initial comment and also on my answer to your comment (not the last answer), the initial or second answer of me. But don´t worry, you don´t need to reply over there as you done it already here. Just thought it might help you for the future.. There are other blogs with just 3 levels.
Yea, the article you linked in your comment is a great example. Some do really have unrealistic expectations. But you immedietly see that this person doesn´t have much experience. I have had self-hosted sites which means I also know about Google´s ad programs. It was a little bit more that I could earn but had other downsites. But one thing is clear, people expect to earn that much so that they can quite their daytime jobs. That is simply not possible unless you get other numbers like big and very well known blogs as TechCrunch to name one example.
I agree, at the end it is all internally and we can´t know the exact treshold. But it really makes sense to filter those out who expected to get rich with a blog that gets for example 900 views a month. I pretty much understand why they have some kind of treshold.
Thank you for this informative blog. 🙂
Even if I’ve had my blog for quite a number of years, I’m relatively new with the idea of monetizing my blog. I recently bought the http://theprojectfirst.com/ domain. So now, I’m literally in the middle of deciding whether I go for AdSense or WordAds. Honestly, even after reading so many views, I’m still wondering what the best option is.
But, I find assurance knowing that the blogging community has members always ready to help.
Cheers!
Thank you for your comment maria, 🙂
Your site is still hosted on wordpress.com, isn’t it? This means that WordAds is your only choice for now (which is not bad, i’m happy with WordAds so far, much easier and safer to manage than Adsense).
Goodluck with your blog and I am looking forward to reading about your “first blog related payment”
Nice article. Lots of good info. I’ve always thought that info and any contact for WordAds has been terrible. I’ve been running WordAds on my blog since October 2013 and I average a take home payment anywhere between $700-$2100 per month which has been an enormous fortunate addition to my life and it sucks that even though I’m feeling with s decent amount of money, there’s absolutely no one I can contact to get any information as far as things like will payments be sent out early for December or any basic questions I may have. It’s like a big secret. I have to wait and keep checking my dashboard for s payment to show “pending” then it’s a guessing game as to when I will receive the payment. It comes generally at the same day but I would love to have more interaction with the actual service other than one day, “poof” there’s a payment coming but nobody knows when. Thanks for the article. Check me out http://www.tstotopix.me
Hi Mike,
Thank you for your comment. I agree with you, many publishers are asking for more information, especially for more transparency in revenue reporting. Despite that, i think that WordAds is still maturing and will significantly improve in 2015 and the many years to come. Example, in their latest post (http://wordads.co/2014/12/16/wordads-in-2014/ ) , WordAds promised many new features to be rolled in 2015 and I am pretty excited about it.
did you try contacting Wordads? http://wordads.co/contact/ , you probably did. 🙂
Keep up the great work in your site, I do not play games, but I enjoy watching the Simpsons 🙂
Hey Mike how much of your traffic is interal WP?
Thank you very much. Great article
Thanks for dropping by and reading my article 🙂
I am putting out the word to all blogs that use WordAds. They will not work with the website in good faith. They will terminate an account without any notice at all if they perceive a post has violated their TOS.
We have been victims of their business practice where this is concerned. I as the owner do not oversee the day to day operation of the website and have delegated that responsibility to a Chief Editor which knows my policies for the website since we are a family friendly entertainment news website. We have to be extremely carful with what we post in order to work closely with ABC Family, Walt Disney Pictures and various PR Firms for young celebrities. Unfortunately no matter how much a website like ours is policed internally, there is going to be something slip through the cracks at some point.
We were nailed on 4 posts our of over 8,000 concerning the Mature Material clause and Automattic, Inc. makes that determination. There are no other guidelines in the TOS as to what they consider as Mature Material so anything they object to can violate this clause. The posts were made by our Chief Editor who of course is no longer with my website.
Instead of alerting me, the owner concerning this so it could be corrected, they just terminated the account without even notifying me that the account was terminated or why. I had to contact them to find out what was going on
The problem with this is that they flatly refuse to allow a website back into WordAds if they cancel an account on what they perceive is a TOS Violation. It makes no difference how innocent the mistake may have been. They don’t care.
We currently have a lawsuit against them in the courts concerning this and I am confident we will win and they will be made to restore our account and pay us damages.
WordAds is the only means for us to generate any sort of revenue to offset our losses on the website. Unfortunately other circumstances prevent us from seeking hosting off WordPress.com so we will be fighting WordAds tooth and nail over this. At the time of termination our account was generating around $300 a month. It looks like to me that they are probably making way more than I am with the website ads on their end so why not try to work with us because now they are not making a penny off us. It would be to their benefit to work better with the website owner than to just up and terminate.
I just thought I would alert everyone that in addition to being a writer that you also have to be a mind reader when you makes posts to know if it may at some point violate their TOS.
I’m sorry to hear that your WordAds account has been terminated.
Thank you for the warning, we all have to be very careful (what we post and what not). Before WordAds, Adsense has always had the reputation of being “brutal” in handling any violation to their TOS; and now WordAds is following suit? It doesn’t surprise me, afterall, WordAds team have to guarantee the best interest of its Ad partners like (Adsense, Federated Media).
I hope WordAds will allow you to do necessary content modifications and reapply to WordAds.
Goodluck, keep me updated.
They were rude and arrogant with us from the very beginning when we were trying to correct the situation. They didn’t give us any chances to correct the issue at all stating that they would never again allow our blog to be part of their program ever again and that they were going to withhold the revenue we earned in the month prior on the advertisement they ran our site before they spotted the alleged violations which according to them had been on the site since January 2014 and they never raised an issue prior to September of 2014. Their TOS as written does not give them that legal right to withhold earned revenue. That is why I filed a lawsuit against them
I won judgement in my lawsuit against them for $2,000 dollars and right now seeking to collect on that which I have ways in place to do that.
Hopefully that may teach them to be a little less hasty in their decision making and work with the website owners instead of how they handled this situation. All they had to do was issue us a warning to take care of the situation or risk account termination (which they never did) and the issue would have been rectified. It would have been as simple as that to solve the perceived TOS violation but they chose instead to play hardball with me.
You can be as careful as you can be and we were very cautious of our posts because we work closely with PR Firms, teen and child celebrities and the Walt Disney Company but yet something ended up slipping through the cracks. So it doesn’t matter how careful you are in your posting, at some point WordAds is going to see something as violating their TOS especially if the determination is left solely to their discretion. So just be warned at how quick they are on the trigger.
Really interesting review! I applied for wordads few days back and got approved in 2-3 days, my site http://drambedkarbooks.com/. Let’s see how I progress with earnings 😛
Any tips to get more traffic? 🙂
Congratulations on the approval. How many monthly pageviews do you have currently? Getting your site approved in 3 days is impressive (It took me 7 months to get my approval 🙂 ).
About the tips to get traffic, please see my reply to laurasomewherelse’s question.
Feel free to post back here with your progress. I guess you will get your getting your fist payment report mid February. Goodluck
Thanks for the kind reply. I have around 30000 pageviews/month, out of which around 60% are from India and rest almost all from USA!
This is a very insightful post and I’m so glad I stumbled upon it. I’m brand new to blogging about a month old and I’ve hit over 2000 views and counting for this first month without paid promotion.
I went into blogging for the passion for writing and I never really thought about making money from it just yet. I’m more set on increasing traffic and reaching out to as many people as I can. I get most of my referrals from Facebook and Twitter and so far had only 38views this month thus far from search engines mostly Google. How can I improve this?
Also, I’m thinking of going into paid promotion for my blog. What promotional site do you suggest? Also, please check out my theme and let me know if it is Optimized Ads friendly. If not, what theme would you recommend?
Finally, how many page views per month would you suggest one hit before applying for wordads at estimate?
Would you expecting your reply. Thanks
I am glad that you found this post helpful. I will answer your question 🙂
1- Search Engines: This topic is too wide to cover in a single comment. But since you are just starting your blogging passion, I will give you one single and very useful hint. The easiest and simplest way to get traffic from search engines is to write about topics that people are searching for but no one has ever written about. Why? Because, your new delicate (baby blog) wouldn’t then have to compete with bigger and well established sites.
2-Paid Promotion: Unless you are planning to sell something on your site, I don’t recommend using paid promotion, it will be too expensive and you can’t expect anyone who lands on your blog once to keep visiting again and again. People always find what they want through search engines and not by typing the address of your blog.
3- Theme: Yes your current theme is Wordads friendly
4- When to apply to WordAds: Roughly, you should be getting, consistently, at least 15000 views a month to get accepted to WordAds. However, I advise you to wait till the WordAds team releases WordAds 2.0 before applying to WordAds because they are currently not accepting anyone new to WordAds even those meeting the traffic threshold.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the prompt reply. It sure helps. I will definitely put your advice into consideration.
I think I am getting so less from wordAds. Because I got more than 325,000 views per month. Whereas, I hardly get $200.
You are approximately getting $0.62 per 1000 views, which is truly well below the average. Most of your visitors are from India and Pakistan; Advertisement returns in regions outside of North America, Western Europe and Australia are incredibly low.
Thank you for sharing your statistics 🙂
Thank you very much for this post! I have been looking more into WordAds lately since traffic on my blog is growing. Your post pretty much covered all the questions I had. Keep up the great work, friend. =)
Hi Mike, I am happy that my post was helpful in answering your questions. Goodluck to you, I am looking forward to reading your progress.
Thanks so much for this post! I really appreciate you doing so much research on this. We don’t have nearly enough traffic yet to apply- we’re about 3 months old and only at about 900 views a month. How did you guys increase your views so quickly? What’s your favorite way to do this with a wordpress blog? I tag my posts as accurately as possible and post them on my personal fb page and some Twitter…but it’s still not enough to drastically spike the views yet.
900 views per month for a 3 months old site is pretty good, I believe you are on the right track :). Don’t be discouraged, it takes patience, time and hard work to build a good reputation with search engines.
So you are probably doing a good job now (just keep doing what you are doing), but here are few things that I do, that might help you as well:
I purely rely on search engines to get my traffic (Google mainly), I find social media’s effects temporary (example, if you share a post on Facebook, it would give u some traffic for few days, then nothing… not exactly what i need, especially that I don’t like to write many articles). I am not suggesting that you abandon Facebook and Twitter, I’m just saying that these methods aren’t my personal favorite.
1- I found that it is best to write fewer high quality articles rather than writing many average quality articles. Sometimes I spend one or two weeks writing one article.
2- Spend at least 5 % of your time marketing your article, (i.e. get some back links, careful not to spam, you will get penalties for that). Even the highest quality article with no back links has no real chance of hitting the first page of Google.
3- Until your blog becomes very popular and reputable, try writing about topics than no one else is writing about, example, in this blog, my “Lebanese Stereotypes” post ranked high so easily compared to my “the perfect girl” post. Why? because everyone is writing about about “the perfect girl” but no one is writing about the Lebanese Stereotypes.
I can give you more details if you are interested :), thanks for your comment and Goodluck, Feel free to ask more questions / or / letting me know how you are progressing in your blog.
That’s sound advice!
Oh my goodness! This advice is amazing, and soooo super helpful. Thank you so so so much! You’re the best! I’m going to look into backlinking more and try to brainstorm more original topics. I will likely have more questions soon, so I really appreciate the offer to answer a few more of them 🙂 Thanks again!
-Laura
Nice article and thanks for linking my article in the comparison too. I do believe the minimum required traffic threshold is around 10k monthly views. This is at least what I get out of most user reviews I have found when I researched. I never have seen accepted people below 10k traffic but many slightly above or heavily above that threshold (and if they were below 10k then probably early adopters or beta testers). It´s just a feeling that I have. Also I am sure they prove if it´s cheap fake traffic. But with real organic traffic, it´s probably no problem to get accepted with over 10k monthly real views.
That’s sound advice!
I did not link to homeggo in the comparison :), I think you are referring to another one of your blogs?
I agree, most of the recent blogs that have been approved to WordAds had somewhere in the range 10K – 20K views per month.
Thank you for our comment and compliment
Thank you for all the helpful information. I started a food blog last September and I recently made a push on my content. Seeing my visitor numbers right now is quite discouraging considering what I have to get to in order to be approved but I guess that’s part of the journey. I started using foodgawker and tastespotting in hopes of driving traffic. Foodgawker has been accepting my photos and driving traffic. When I got 380 views yesterday I was smiling from ear to ear. I know that’s a very small accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, but hey, it’s a start. Thanks again!
It is easy to spot a good blog :), your blog is one of them. It is clear that you are putting a lot of effort into each post, writing the ingredients, the recipe and taking pictures of what you have cooked and your efforts will pay off sooner than you expect. Don’t get discouraged :), also remember this:
1- blogging is like a paid job; However, you don’t get paid your work’s worth at the end of the month; Instead, you only get paid for each of your “posts” so slowly… over the months and years to come. Example some of my popular (older) posts get 100 + views per day. That is 36500 views per year, approximately 36.5 $ per year… so one of your good posts is worth at least 100$… but you get paid in 3 years… not so bad if you are patient enough.
2- Most sites get their visitors from search engines; the only problem with that is that search engines take some time to trust newer sites and start considering them as an authority and start sending visitors their way (usually this happens when people start linking to your posts from their blogs/forums/ etc…). The good news for you is that you have found your way around that through foodgawker and tastespotting. Which is amazing 🙂
After all, what keeps me and many others bloggers going, is not the money, I made 23 $ out of this blog in December (practically nothing) … but I wouldn’t give up this blog… why? You know the answer… just think how good it felt when you got “380 views”… this is what keeps us bloggers going.
Thanks for a great post – I think it’s very helpful since there is a shortage of precise information regarding wordads (as has been mentioned a couple of times). My site is about four months old, but growing slowly. I Multiplied my traffic several times the last days after i tried marketing it on some social media sites (Stumbleupon having been the most “effective”) – I’m fully aware of the quality of these visitors, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t count a lot when wordads do the maths, but I like to think of it as a way to get a rootsystem established of links around the net..
My blog is different from the most of the blogs mentioned on here, because it’s not article based, but rather focused upon drawings. I’m doing one drawing/painting per day, and the blog is all about improving. I do get some traffic from google. Surprisingly enough people who search for pictures of an actor do click on my sometimes quite bad portraits, which is pretty funny. But part of increasing google traffic will be increasing the quality of my drawings, which is happening steadily.. I suppose that I’m a bit like you – i don’t expect to earn a living from it whenever i do get approved, but i can’t help to be excited about it and to read everything that i find about it 😉
Just one question, so that I’m not just talking about myself: Do you think that traffic like the pagempressions i get from StubleUpon counts anything?
Thanks again,
Thomas
Just in addition – I was approved just a few hours after writing this – which is strange because i have a total 6000 pageviews so far in january.. I suppose the wordads staff have been judging in relations to the last two days where I’ve had 1000 page impressions per day. These are thanks to stumbleupon, but i am pretty certain that they will die down after a couple of days, bringing my blog back to around 200 page impressions per day. Anyway, I plan on soon making something a little more “stumbleupon friendly” like a blog post entitled “ten things i learned from drawing every day for half a year” – I imagine that this would get things going for a while, but i am all new to using stumbleupon, so I’m not 100% that I’ve figured it all out.. And it’s not sure that these visitors will reach a stable daily number.. But anyway, I’m quite excited that I now am approved, and I’m looking forward to buying my next ad-financed sketchbook 😉 – Curiously enough the visitors from stubleupon seem to view around 1,5 pages each, so the common myth about the bounce-rate that one gets from stumbleupon does not appear to hold water in this case..
:), Congratulations on having your WordAds account approved; which also means that you got your answer ( It looks like stumbleupon’s traffic is relevant). 😀
When did you apply to WordAds? I think that the WordAds team are trying their best to approve any blog, even if it doesn’t reach 10K or 15K views per month especially considering that many posts on many sites might go viral overnight… and they genuinely don’t want anyone to loose the chance to make money ( check this post: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/going-viral/)
So maybe, they looked at your blog and saw the potential of your drawings to go viral 🙂 .
You are very talented and I really respect your consistency and dedication to your art. Keep it up.
Thank you for your comments and goodluck with your WordAds journey,
Hi, wow that’s quite a story reading about that post going viral. It really looks like a blog owner is in good hands if something like this happens! I wonder what a post like this has done to his day-to-day traffic..
I applied a couple of weeks back – i can’t remember the exact date, but it hasn’t been that long. I think that the wordads team might have reacted to the spike in traffic i have had these last days.. Anyway thanks for your answer and for checking out my drawings. Now I’ll try to make a site that goes viral 😉
Just to share my experiences, i thought I’d like to add my most recent earnings for the statistics:
In January i earned $26.88 from 13,407 ad-impressions. I’m expecting more for February – i keep checking, but still nothing 😉
My blog is onedrawingdaily.com
The new Wordads earnings were release few hours ago :). They usually release it a bit earlier than this month, but anyway, it is finally out. I really respect and admire your consistency and dedication… I can’t force my self to blog even once a week :). Keep up the great work!
Thanks !
I just checked the new wordads earnings. Sort of disappointing on my end.
2015-02 $13.42 9,554 Impressions 38,378 pageviews
2015-01 $26.88 impressions 13,407 pageviews 20,365
A big difference. I was expecting it to be more this time. In January i had a lot of visitors from stumbleupon – this time the majority was reddit visitors.. Mayby that influences the amount i end up with
If one truly believes in his or her capabilities , has strong will power , and persistence in work, he or she will truly succeed.
That is very true, than you for your comment 🙂
Thanks for your post, I got the information exactly what I was looking for.
Every month I get around 30k visitors for my blog SQLwithManoj.com, and I’ve applied for WordAds for last 5-6 months. They haven’t approved it yet, on asking they mentioned that I have enough hits per day and within the threshold limits and should be approved soon. I’m just waiting.
~Manoj
I am surprised that your site hasn’t been approved yet, you are already way beyond the required threshold. Since WordAds have already replied saying that your blog has enough hits per day, then I suspect it should only be a matter of days till you get your approval.
Goodluck 🙂
Thanks, I really appreciate the blog post you have written. It gave me all the details I could not find through lot of search. Thanks!!!
Update!!!
WordAds were activated on my blog on 2015-February end, and have got 3 months revenue. I don’t know how much they are fare on giving you revenue share thru Ads.
On 2015-March I got 36k hits, 16k impressions and $26 earning
On 2015-April I got 40k hits, 17k impressions and $27 earnings
But 2015-May I got 44k hits, but just 14k impressions and just $14 earnings
Don’t know how does their logic work and how much it is fare!!!
I am waiting to see how it turns out. I stopped using it about half a year ago because of some buggy flash ads. I hear people are making more money now.
I hope it goes well for you.
I think the rates are always fluctuating, supply and demand. Here is a post on WordAds Group, a private post (you can only view it, if you are signed-in with your WordAds approved account)
https://wordadsgroup.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/regarding-difference-in-earnings/
I am quoting here :
If you’re noticing a lower than expected amount this month, or are using your total earnings and impressions to calculate a rate and are noticing that it is lower than the previous month’s rate, there are a few important points we’d like to share which may clear up the confusion…….
…………. Rates fluctuate in the advertising industry constantly. In this particular case, the US rate dropped a bit, and we’re currently working on bringing in new US advertisers to bring that back up.
I hope you won’t encounter anymore technical problems
Reblogged this on HarsH ReaLiTy and commented:
This is worth a read and there are some great bloggers sharing some info. -OM
Note: Comments disabled here, please visit their blog.
Thank you for re-blogging my post, 🙂
Thanks for the kind mention with those great bloggers!
Thanks for the info! I found this after I began to research WordAds. I publish an indie newspaper and according to WordAds, my associated blog doesn’t meet the threshold and I’m averaging more than 60,000 monthly views. I’ll just keep plugging along!
Hi Sheila, 60,000 monthly views is way beyond the threshold for getting accepted to WordAds.
I can see that the last post in your default blog (shielamarshall) is back from 2011; I am guessing that this is not the same blog that you have submitted to WordAds. I think that you should update your default blog to your most popular blog and then contact Wordads here: http://wordads.co/contact/ … it might be the case that they are reviewing the wrong blog (I Know it sounds irrational to assume that someone as tech-savi as WordAds could make such mistakes, but just read my story, your case might just be similar to mine).
I hope that this will help, but either way… keep blogging 🙂 and sooner or later your application will go through
Goodluck
Hi. Thanks for the great article.
I applied to WordAds and my site http://www.defencyclopedia.com got approved in just 16 hours after i placed a request 🙂 . Maybe it was because i had around 80k views in the past 2 weeks.
80K in 2 weeks! this is very impressive. How old is your blog? How often do you write?
Congratulations for having your WordAds application approved, I am looking forward to hearing more of your news in 3 weeks :).
Haha. That spike was because I wrote an article which was requested by hundreds of people.
http://wp.me/p4zfpS-bI . This particular article gave me 50k hits in 2 days. Otherwise my monthly average is around 20-30k hits.
My blog is 10 months old and I generally publish 1 big article per month. When I have a lot of free time , I publish around 4 during that month.
And may I know who the major referrers of your blog are ? Mine are Facebook, Flipboard and Google.
Nice information, how do you collect such information? isn’t military related topics supposed to be classified :P.
Even 20 – 30 k is an outstanding benchmark for a 10 months old blog, good job.
I get most of my visitors from Google
Thanks. I’m an analyst and have been doing a lot of research from over 5 years on these topics. 🙂 And whatever I write is already available on the public domain. Nothing classified is revealed as I myself don’t know classified stuff 😛
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Thanks for posting this – I’m new to WordPress and blogging in genreal so it was great to find a post where someone is finally talking stats and numbers! Very helpful 🙂
I am happy that you found this useful. 🙂 Thank you for your comment.
Thanks! I’ve applied just several days ago and likely it’ll approve one year later :p
Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long. Goodluck! 🙂
Yeah! I still keep my fingers crossed! 🙂
Thank you for this post! I have a question for you:
My blog chiefsiddharth.wordpress.com is garnering 1500 views every day now.
I started it in October 2014.
After lots of thought, I’ve decided it is time to monetize my blog through WordAds. I will have to pay 18 dollars an year to get the domain so that the blog is eligible for WordAds.
My questions are
1. Very importantly, will I lose all my organic traffic and search engine rankings through this change to a custom URL?
2. My calculations say that I will earn 50 dollars a month for 1500 views a day? If you could, please confirm this.
Thanks in advance!
Good job, 1500 views per day in less than a year is impressive. Keep up the good work.
I definitely encourage to upgrade to a full domain, your site would seem more authoritative and its a good deal (Keep in mind that 18 dollars covers both the web hosting cost and domain cost)
As to your questions:
1- You will not loose any organic traffic or search engine ranking through this change. Google and other major search engines are smart enough to identify a 301 redirect properly and pass through page rank to the new URL.
2- Roughly speaking yes, you should be earning about 50 dollars a month… but I have some bad news. The numbers on this blogs were last updated few months ago. The advertising revenue from WordAds hasn’t been doing so well recently. So roughly speaking, you should cut your projected earnings to around 30 dollars per month. The good news is that everyone believes that this stage is temporary and the earnings per view will rebound soon.
Thank you for the quick reply!
But before I make the big switch, is there any way you can confirm that I won’t lose traffic? Another website had commenters saying they lost a lot of organic traffic through the switch to a custom domain.
If you are sure of what you say, that’s great news!
The only scenario I can think about causing a loss of traffic is someone having their own web hosting plan and moving from domain A to domain B without doing the 301 redirects properly. In wordpress.com, these redirects are done automatically on your behalf and are flawless.
Are these sites that you are referring to hosted on wordpress.com?
Out of experience in two of my blogs, I did not experience any organic or even referral traffic loss. Just check Google webmaster videos concerning 301 redirects and you will get more certainty about it too.
Edit: Also make sure that the new domain name hasn’t been used before, for example, if you move to an old domain with a spammy history, you could get in trouble
Not sure about the other blogs, but thanks for the help! Appreciate it a lot.
Thank you for all your help, I finally registered for my own domain today at chiefsiddharth.wordpress.com! I have additional questions for you.
The website says it will take 72 hours for the changes to be in effect. How long did it take for you, and how did traffic fluctuate during this transitional time?
To be eligible for wordads or in general, should my new primary domain be chiefsiddharth.wordpress.com (the original one) or chiefsiddharth.com (my new custom one purchased to be eligible for wordads)?
Once more, thanks! Your help has been particularly useful.
You should use chiefsiddharth.com as your primary domain.
72 hours for what? all the traffic is already being forwarded to your new domain, so you are not loosing any visitors. Soon search engines will adapt and start sending your visitors directly to your new domain. But even until that happens, you have nothing to worry about.
I suppose I have a long way to go. I started my blog FlatOutUnconstitutional.com 10 days ago and only have 3889 views so far. 2846 visitors. It will probably be a while before it’s worth it to apply.
You already have 22,900 hits, so I take it that you are doing very well :). You do address many controversial topics in your blog, this is not the only recipe for success, but it certainly helps a lot because people link to and share topics that they are passionate about.
Goodluck 🙂
Thanks! I was not sure what is a normal amount. My passion is the U.S. Constitution and I’ve studied it intently since I learned to read. 😃 After reading your blog and others I came to the determination that it probably takes at least 13,000 hits in a month to qualify. I assume that means views, not visits. Regardless, I went ahead and applied after getting to about 15K, then wrote to them and asked if I had any chance. They told me that they are no longer accepting any new applicants. Zero. They are upgrading to WordAds 2.0 soon and will not accept new applications until they make that upgrade. The woman I had an e-mail conversation with said that they have been saying “soon” since December, so she has no clue when “soon” actually will be. So I guess, I just have to wait and see! 😞
Aha, that is very interesting, so they are putting new applications on hold until they launch WordAds 2.0.
The woman you had the conversation with is telling the truth :), they have been promising WordAds 2.0 for almost a year now ( http://wordads.co/2014/12/16/wordads-in-2014/ ), but if they are putting new applications on hold, they must really close to launch now or… maybe they have too many publishers and too few advertisers… Which could also explain why the payout has dropped by almost half for most existing WordAds users.
:), If you got to 15k in 1 month, then you are doing an awesome job and you have a lot to look forward too. Keep it up!
Thanks! Your assessment makes a lot of sense. I wasn’t aware of rates dropping and never even thought about the need to balance advertisers with publishers. I had wondered why they don’t just let everyone advertise, but you just switched on the light bulb for me on that! Thanks! As for my keeping it up, I sure hope I can. Every day I am worried that I will run out of ideas to write about. So far something else has struck me, but then the same worry rears its head again. 😳 Hopefully I learn to get over that feeling and ideas just keep coming.
I don’t think that you will ever run out of ideas :), just turn on the news or check the news feed from major news papers and in few minutes, all the crazy stuff happening all around us will inspire you and give more than enough to write about :D.
About the dropping advertising rates, I have updated this blog post to shed some light on this area, please scroll down to the “Inconsistency in WordAds Earnings” section if you are interested in some numbers. I am pretty sure this is just a temporary phase and things will change very soon.
Great! Thanks! I’ll check that out!
Ok, I am sorry, but I can’t seem to find the “Inconsistency in WordAds Earnings” section. Do you have a link? I’ve scrolled down on the blog posting of yours that I initially replied to and I’ve tried finding it from your home page. I’m missing it somehow. I’m so new to WordPress though, I might just not know how to navigate very well.
Try to refresh the same page (the old one, it is not a new post), it is possible that your browser is loading an older version of the page considering that I have just updated the post few minutes ago 🙂
That was it! Refreshed and found it. Thanks! Great info!
Curious, do you have a favorite way to promote your blog? I really don’t know of many ways to promote mine outside of Twitter. I have a decent following on Twitter, so I get hits from there. I’ve noticed a lot of referrals from Facebook and I don’t even have a Facebook account, so I can only assume that someone with a lot of influence there has posted links to my blog. Other than that, I don’t know of any places to “advertise” myself.
I get most of my visitors organically, i.e. through search engines. I find search engines more consistent than social media. Social media is suitable for catchy topics that have the potential to go viral, I don’t usually package my content in that way (shiny, shocking or tempting titles etc…) and I haven’t invested anytime or effort in building my social media following… so I guess Social Media isn’t a convenient option for me at the moment.
I do get less than 5 % of my visitors through social media, that is through people who find my posts interesting and share it in their circles of friends or followers.
I suggest that you keep you social media promotion going on, since it is working for you very well so far. In parallel, read a little bit about Search Engine Optimization (very helpful for a blogger). In practice, there is a lot to do to improve your search engine ranking, but (careful here) sometimes I think people who over-think their SEO and SEM end up ruining their user experience and eventually hurting their ranking or even worse get penalties from search engines…
P.S. never hire an SEO firm… they will waste your money and hurt your blog… do it your self, or don’t do it at all.
Let me know if you have anymore questions 🙂
That’s a huge help actually. Thank you! I never even thought about trying to increase search engine optimization. I’ll definitely look into that.
I applied to Wordads yesterday. My views are around +12k – 23k per months.
but my visitors are really far from the views, like +4k – less than 6k.
and I’m from Indonesia, although, other than visitors from my country, I also got many views from US and from European Union.
reading your article makes me think I will be on pending too, but thanks for the info.
Well, it is hard to tell how long it will take WordAds to approve your site, hopefully sooner than you expect :). Either way, don’t let the pending approval hold you back, make this “barrier” a motivating force to push you to further improve your blog and get more visitors.
Goodluck, hope to hear good news from you soon
Amen to that, and thanks for the reply too 🙂
Great read. My stats aren’t really worth posting, since my blog is rather new, but we’re currently at 200 a day, hoping to get that Adsense set up soon. (:
Goodluck, just carefully read the terms and conditions of WordAds, focus particularly on “Family Friendly” content :), do you think your site is complaint in that regard?
I believe it is. I always make sure there’s no nudity in the photos, so I don’t think it’s breaking any rules, it’s just pictures of beautiful women.
Reading your article has made me wonder about my earnings. I’ve had WordAds since October 2013 and generally earn between $5 and $10 a month, despite now having over 30,000 views a month. Here’s my stats for August 2015:
Views: 32,493
Visitors: 26,331
Ad impressions: 9,652
Earnings: $7.82
Can anyone shed some light on why my earnings are so low? This is the blog: http://blog.harwardcommunications.com/
Hey Barnaby – if you check the WordAds blog, you’ll learn that since Oct 2014, there’s been a serious drop in the rates that advertisers over in the US are willing to pay for ad spots.
Unfortunately WordAds hasn’t been able to bring them up and perhaps this is the new norm. I’ve noticed going from $2.33 for most of 2014 to $1.75 in the first few months of 2015, and as low as $1.09 in recent months.
It’s made my monthly revenue for one of my blogs go from consistent $250-300 to under $100. I don’t even make the minimum $100/month cutoff anymore.
Also, depending on the subject of your blog, you’ll probably have a lot of visitors using adblockers. For instance, Tech and Gaming sites tend to have the highest rate of adblock usage due to their more tech-savvy demographic; whereas a gardening or cooking blog has far fewer adblock users.
Other factors include who your visitors are. Visitors from the USA give you the most $/1,000 impressions because advertisers who target the US market pay out more than, say, advertisers over in China/India. US visitors are also more likely to have video ads, which pay out more per view.
All else being equal, the reduction in what advertisers are willing to pay out since Oct 2014 probably explains some of the reduction in your revenue.
You can read the WordAds post “Regarding Difference in Earnings” from the WordAds official blog here: https://wordadsgroup.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/regarding-difference-in-earnings/
Very nice blog,
I have a question regarding the drop that you noticed end 2014. With our blog we noticed the same. Page views and impressions went up and still we get way less money. Did you manage to find out why this is? We now have over 2k views a day and only get $ 43 a month. You have any tips to make more profit? I have the feeling Wordads is screwing us big time.
Cheers,
Micky
Only through paypal?
Yes, at the moment, paypal seems to be the only payment method.
Ah I see.. Thanks for the Answer…
Thanks for the really helpful post! I have been reading up on Wordads for a few months and just bought my domain and signed up for Wordads 12 hours ago. My site is about 8 months old and I’m averaging ~20k views/month for the past 5 months, with 1 month being exceptionally high at 45k. I haven’t got a proper email reply but I think I might have been accepted since I got an email invitation to ‘Wordads Group’ and found the Wordads button in my settings page (not sure if it was ever there…).
Just wondering, how do I know if wordads is running properly on my site? And would the stats about wordads be shown to us in real-time (like stats for our blog) or will there only be a round-up at the end of each month?
Thanks in advance 🙂
Hi Kate,
Having been invited to join the WordAds Group, means that your WordAds is already active. I have visited your site and I can also see three Ads displayed (which is the maximum), thus your theme is optimized for WordAds which is all great news.
So far, WordAds do not display stats live. So to view your December’s earnings, you would have to wait till around the third week of January.
To see those earnings, you would have to visit ( /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=wordads&tab=earnings).
Goodluck and great job having such a popular blog in a relatively short period of time.
Great post dude! I used to be on Wordads about a year ago but then moved to selfhosting where I would struggle to make anything with google adsense. I’m not quite sure why but I could only manage a few dollars a month despite being on 10k views. Now I’ve returned to wordads this past month and I am yet to find out how much I got for december. I haven’t applied again but I believe my wordads account is still active.
Reblogged this on Lucky Otter's Haven and commented:
If you blog and are interested making some money from your blog, WordPress has a program called WordAds that makes this possible. You probably won’t be able to quit your day job (my earnings last month were about $40 but are going up each month in small increments based on number of “impressions”) but it’s definitely worth it, if you qualify. I don’t blog for money obviously, but it is nice to have the extra cash.
This post about the WordAds program is the most imformative I’ve seen. I can’t think of one question here left unanswered.
Reblogged this on Singapore Maths Tuition and commented:
There has been a drastic WordAds revenue drop recently. For those using WordPress, check out this post, which is the most comprehensive post on WordAds on the internet. Hope the situation gets better once WordAds 2.0 stabilises.
Hello, i just made contact with WordAds, my blog has >25.000 pages views monthly. Do you know how much time they take to aprove my apply? And are your earnings still dropping?Thanks
Things have slightly changed since the launch of WordAds 2.0. According to WordAds, application approvals should go through quicker now than they used to during Wordads 1.0. Try contacting them on the form I presented in my post above, usually this speeds up the process.
Earnings for January 2016 were out yesterday, They are not dropping any further, yet, they haven’t recovered their (April 2015 and before) levels. Goodluck.
Thank you for such detailed insights on how this system works. In the end ot the day you have to be extremely good in order to get to the point where you can repay your annual subscription. So, no too much revenues if you are not outsdanding!!
Great post! Just to help for updating purpose, my blog gastronomy.sg got approved for WordAds today at 15k views for March. Hope this helps others who are wondering about the benchmark to get approval.
Yeah, but how much do WordPress themselves make per ad, while they’re giving you pennies on the dollar for every 100 views? Have they even disclosed that number? I can’t find any information on the subject anywhere.
Of course, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want anybody to know that their “cut” was less than a percent of a percent of what the ad is actually earning.
Interesting read. Shame the rates have dropped and hopefully they will rise again one day! Have you any more recent figures on your views/earnings for 2016? I’m new to blogging, everyone’s views figures fascinate me on how high they are!
Good article.. I have submited and I already realized that I am wrong.. (sad)
As i am writing since last two months but not in a regular way.
I am using it for free but soon will buy a custom domain. I am getting approx 3000 views and 700 to 800 uniqure visitors per month, should i apply for wordads or should i wait till i got 10000 views per months.
I was to confused about wordads but your post seems really wonderful and very helping.
I read in one of the reply by wordpress team that one needs 1000 page views per month, are 1000 page views are even able to make a dollar????
Need your openinon.
If you are considering WordAds at your current monthly page views for the sake of having an extra income, then I advise you to wait some more time and then apply. At the current advertising rates, 1000 page views will not even make a dollar, so with 36,000 page views a year you would get roughly around 25 $ , which you won’t get paid until it reaches 100$. The domain purchase will cost you 18$ a year.
On the other hand, if having your own domain would motivate you to work harder on your blog and get your 3000 monthly views to many multiples higher, then it might be worth the small investment.
In the early days of Wordads, 3000 page views would not be enough to get your blog approved, but I think WordAds removed the minimum page views requirements, so that should no longer be a problem.
I hope this helps and I wish you the best.
Nice article mate..I bought arifsport.com blog just 15 days before and with in those days I have around 90,000 page views already which most of them are from European union and Norway. so what if I apply for wordAds now? do you think they will accept me such in a short period of time?
I think they would accept your blog quickly. Try applying soon, you have nothing to lose especially that you have already bought the domain. If they don’t approve it with a week or two try following it up with a question like I described in my post. Thanks for your comment and good luck
Thank you for this post, I recently applied for a WordAds account and was told that WordPress would let me know when I reached the minimum traffic requirements while not bothering to address what the minimum traffic requirements are. From what I can tell, I will need to increase my traffic by approximately 10,000% before they will approve my blog. Yippie!
You mean 10000 page views per month? That was the approximate threshold during wordads 1.0, the minimum threshold was thought to be disregarded after the introduction of wordads2.0. Either way, try reaching at least 10000 per month before applying. Even if they do approve your blog at a lower rate, the payment would probably be so low.
Right, not really worthwhile until you stand to make more than you spend.
Thnx for ur quick response;
.. .. I have just applied but I didn’t receive any confirmation weather my application was successfully submitted or failed. is there a way to check it is submission status?
Hi again 🙂
I have a doubt on how WordAds calculate earnings for us.
On my blog SQLwithManoj.com, for months May, June & July the “Ad Impressions” were around ~10k and earnings were in the range of $25 to $48 respectively each month.
But in the month of August the “Ad Impressions” were showing ~100k, i.e. ~10 times the previous months, but earnings are still in the same range.
Are they giving me lower share of the ad revenue?
It seems like it’s going to be a very long time before wordads approves my blog 😓
Great research on all the numbers!
I don’t see any reason why advertisement rates would ever go up again.
Every day, thousands of new websites pop up, competing for ads and user attention. Obviously, our piece of the pie is getting smaller every day.
Higher rates can only be commanded for very specific advertisement that is narrowly targeted, e.g. if you are writing a blog about cinemas in New York, some of them may advertise with you.
Hello MantisShrimp! Is there any update on this for 2016 earnings? Have you noticed your WordAds earnings increase or decrease over the past year?
Thanks very much for this detailed article. Though it’s nearly 2-1/2 years old, you’ll probably see a surge in traffic due to Jetpack having now absorbed WordAds as their primary net adwork. I really appreciate you having published the CPM & earnings data – it doesn’t seem too stellar when compared to AdSense, but I do like the fact that earnings can be sent via PayPal. I was just accepted into WordAds and will give it a shot.
Wordads is a big time scam.
Pageviews: 90K
#of ads in a page: 4 (header, below post, 2 in sidebar)
Ad impressions: 13k (Which I really doubt but told so by wordads)
Amount paid for 13k impressions: $1.45
Willing to provide screenshot.
Stay away from this scam or be willing to flush your money down the drain.