You may recall that a few months ago I released a little side project named “Consumer Whore”.  CW is a shopping blog that features one cool item to buy every day.  The difference from most shopping blogs is that while most other sites in the genre feature items that are four figures or are not available to buy yet, I only feature items that can be purchased right now.  And for cheap.

It’s been dead for a few weeks as I traveled Europe, but it’s time to awaken the beast.  I missed browsing around my RSS feeds and discover tons of great stuff, and I couldn’t wait to start again.

So when I wasn’t sending off resumes and cover letters this week, I have been tinkering with CW and it’s new custom WordPress theme.

So what’s different?

Money

Well, for starters, this will be my second site ever that I have attempted to monetize (the first being College v2).  I plan on doing this with the usual mix of Text Link Ads and Google Adsense.   However, the real strategy I’m testing on this site is the use of affiliate links.  Usually, after finding an item I’d like to feature, I check if the retailer has an affiliate program.  If it doesn’t, no big deal. But if it does, I link to the item using the affiliate link.

I’m willing to bet that if a blogger builds trust, the reader could care less if the blogger is making money.  In fact, as long as the content is not dictated by the advertising, they may prefer it that way.  A fine line I know, but it’s a theory I’m excited to test and one that I will certainly document on this blog.

Design

The design has received a complete makeover.  I’m trying to take Barack Obama’s advice and stick to this style of design for CW for the years to come.  The goal was to make browsing items easy, and even fun.  I also wanted the item of the day to jump out when you first load the front page.

This design was also my first time using multiple loops on a WordPress theme (one for the item of the day, one for the tabs).  The tabs were done using the tabber script, and the banner is from this Smashing Magazine post.  Also, many thanks to wordpress forum user mores for his custom php thumbnail function.

I’m certainly open to any criticism out there.  I’ve been debating whether there are too many thumbnails, or if the tabs are too big, so any input in that regard will be rewarded with candy and general good will.  In fact, if you told me one thing that sucked about it, you’d be doing me a huge favor.

So go poke around and if you really like it, subscribe.

As a part in my endless experiment with the workings of the Internet, I pondered ways to increase the RSS subscribers to Consumer Whore, a little side project I have.  Consumer Whore features something cool to buy everyday.  On the surface, if CW were to refer waves of people to purchase an item there could be a potential for money via affiliate ads, sponsored posts, and display advertising.  So far, the growth of the blog is on par with its age.  After a month of being live, there are 8 RSS subscribers (5 of which I personally know).  The daily stats:

CW posts every weekday, so the stats dip a bit every weekend.

The Plan

I set off to take an ad out in Facebook.  I have had limited (but successful) experience with this, and wanted to try again.   On the days I was going to have the ad display, I wanted to make the item of the day an affiliate link.

An affiliate link is a link to a retailer’s product.  If you refer them a user that eventually results in a sucessful sale, you receive a percentage of that sale.

Theoretically, this would drive more traffic than usual to the blog on a day where the most prominent item could make me some money.  I still had a Commission Junction account from my College v2 days, and signed up to be a part of the Love Sac affiliate program.

I chose Love Sac, because a few of my friends have them and all love their … um … sac.

Placing the Ad

Since the last time I tried to advertise on Facebook, they have upped their advertising system so your target demographic can be extremely narrow.  I choose people between 18 and 28 years old in the United States who have listed “shopping” among their interests.

However I failed to note an obvious flaw with Consumer Whore: It has the word “whore” in the title putting up a red flag in any profanity filter.   My first ad I submitted was this one:

In my infinite genius, not only did it have the word “whore”, but also “sucks”, “sexy”, and “love sac”.   After receiving Facebook’s rejection letter (“The text may not contain, facilitate or promote offensive, profane, vulgar, obscene, adult or inappropriate language.” –Whoops) , I created a new ad … that got rejected for “excessive or incorrect capitalization.”

Finally I settled on the ad below:

The numbers

I paid 62 cents per clickthrough for a max of $25 per day.  The ad ended up running for one and a half days.   The stats for Facebook are below:

As you can see, the ad had a terrible click through rate (CTR).  I’m still new to the online ad game, but my hope was for 1%.  In my mind, this means my ad copy stunk.

However, it’s not necessarily the CTR rate that affects me.  The CTR more affects Facebook as they could have had an ad with a higher bid in place of mine, and made more money than they did from me.  What matters to me is how many people click through to my site and then (hopefully) to my affiliate link.  As you saw from the stats in the first picture, there was not a noticeable spike on the days the ad ran.  Granted, traffic did increase, but it was just as high as any other “random” spike in the days past.

The affiliate link traffic was absolutely terrible with only ONE person clicking on the link.

So to recap:

Money spent: $32.42
Increase in traffic: negligible
Affiliate link clicks: 1
Revenue IF that one person purchased the product: ~$20 (10% of a $200 sale).

After having a few days to stew think about this, I think the following rules should apply to my next ad buy:

1. Don’t mention the name of the site.  No one cares.  If they click, they are interested in the product
2. I should research the most likely demographic to purchase items under $200 on the Web.  Just assuming people who had “shopping” as an interest would be ideal was lazy.
3. Pick a product with a less unfortunate name.

I hope to have a better story to tell next time!

I’m a sucker for simplicity.  In that regard, I started a small side site called Consumer Whore.  The theory is simple: Cool stuff to buy, everyday.

Every business day at noon I post an interesting thing to have in your apartment or home.  There are a few design blogs that follow a similar theme.  However, I am trying to set CW apart by featuring things that can be purchased now.  One complaint I always had about tech and decorating blogs was that the items featured are either over $1,000, or not available for purchase.  Hopefully, I’m not the only one.

So, if you’re bored, check it out!  And if you’re really bored tell me which random header is the best.

As always, criticism is welcome.