Blogkits a.k.a. OfferForge - My Review After 3 Months

I've been "toying" with Blogger blogs since May, 2005...
Made lots of lousy mistakes....Some blogs were up at PR3/4
at a time and suddenly dived to "0" or "2" and "3" and
then went up bit and down again....and then up and then down
.....I'm a lousy blogger. But I'm determined to make my newly
started, self-hosted wp blog a better one.

I knew next to nothing about "blog monetization" until I found
my way to MyBlogLog - it was around January 2007, I guess.

There, I took a few recommendations from other bloggers
to try out a few ad networks...
...One of them was Adsense....but not for me 'cos I'd read too
much about "click frauds" and account de-activations. I'm a
fairly heavy user of Google AdWords, so I thought I'd better
not try Adsense yet.

I took Bidvertiser, Auction Ads, Kontera, AdBrite and a couple
less popular ones - I started to learn about monetizing my blogs
in a small way....
Yes, I happily plugged some ads around my blogs....
...After 3 months?
...Nothing happened. Yes, nothing, except for Bidvertiser!

Bidvertiser didn't work out too badly...small earning...enough to
pay a few tiny bills.
What more could I expect - my blogs got just a pathetic amount
of traffic!
I gave up ALL except Bidvertiser by the end of March.

At about the same time I came across the name Blogkits, from
a blog which I can no longer remember its name....
Neh...I wasn't impressed with it at all after a couple of minutes
of reading.

April to July - I was too busy selling some new products.
So no time left for me to look up for other possible alternative
ad networks.

Mid August, 2007...
I stumbled upon André S Clements Blog at MyBlogLog and
came to know that André worked with Blogkits!
This time was different - I put in some serious effort to
research the company background. I went all the way to find
out where did Blogkits come from and who are the guys
behind it!

Wow! Very impressed with what I found out.....I joined!

BlogKits is an affiliate marketing network for bloggers, founded
by Jim Kukral

The name (Blogkits) has recently changed to OfferForge ,
now owned and funded by the Forge Corporation, a marketing
firm which has connections with high-level advertisers such as
eBay, Starbucks, Buy.com, and StubHub, just to name a few.

Blogkits campaigns are mainly CPS and CPA.

Jim Kukral is a veteran online marketer, web-entrepreneur,
speaker and award-winning blogger who focuses on creative
marketing ideas and strategies. (I copied this part from Jim's
profile in his blog). He was formerly (up till March 2007) the
Publisher of ReveNews.

OfferForge is currently headed by Jonathan Miller,
a ReveNews blogger, as well as the Founder and CEO of
Kowabunga Technologies
More about Jonathan Miller.

How OfferForge works:
Presently there are 2 main types of ad campaigns:

First type: "Ad Pools"
Ad Pools - in which advertisers are categorized three groups, of
which a blogger can simply choose one. Ads from advertisers will
be rotated - Choose either text ad or banner ad, or both.

The three groups are:

1. Tech & Internet People - This set of ads work best for blogs
that have a webmaster or tech audience.

2. Non Specific/General Readers - This set of ads work best for
blogs that don’t have a specific niche industry audience
(safest bet).

3. Small Businesses - This set of ads work best for blogs that
have an audience of small business owners or professional
business-to-business readers.

The second type is just to select whichever campaigns within
the system you wish to advertise, deploy the desired creatives,
in text or graphic banners and paste the codes into your blog.
Some of the campaigns are:

ForexYard Forex Trading
FreeDebtAssessment.com
Peapod
Accuquote
Bidz.com - Long Form
Bright Hub Membership Campaign
Computer Associates
DealMax- FREE $25 Visa gift card
FreeCreditReport.com
Mail By Santa
Maldini Sports Betting
MyJewelryBox
Net Quote - Auto Insurance
Nuance Speech and Imaging Software
Privacy Matters 123 - Free Credit Report and Score
Qwik Cash Loans
Slot Machines Mastery
Trend Micro
Webfetti
Winning Lotto Strategies
Zwinky

The Back Office:
Interface within the affiliate center is quite user-friendly as far
as my personal experience is concerned. However there's the
need to improve on:
--The FAQ's aren't explaining too clearly.
-- The "Payment Info" section is confusing - I don't seem to be
able to figure the nos out correctly (or, is it just me?).
-- After each "deployment" of a campaign creative, there isn't
a "link" for you to go back to where you come from. Must hit
"back" button twice to go back.
-- No creative specially designed to be used for pay-per-click
search engine (example AdWords) advertising. Need that
as soon as possible.

One other problem I got - minor one, perhaps it was caused by
the recent process of integrating Blogkits with OfferForge.
My problem - I still have 4 email notifications of sales left
un-traced. Here are the screenshots:




Final Thought
OfferForge has great potentials for bloggers (especially newbie
bloggers and those who have low-traffic blogs) to make some
decent cash. Personally I'm quite happy with what I've made.
In fact I hardly did anything other than placing some banners
into my blogs! I haven't promoted anything to my lists yet.
I haven't even started any campaign using pay-per-click
search engine marketing (AdWords, YPN, etc)- I plan to do so.
It doesn't have a referral program. If you're interested, click
the following link to join:

BlogKits Review

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Tags: blogkits, OfferForge, affiliate marketing network, bogkits review, Jim Kukral, Jonathan Miller, André Clements,
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