This week I’d like to run a ‘reader review’ competition here on ProBlogger. Chitika kindly emailed me last week to ask if I’d be interested in doing a giveaway with them and so instead of just running a ‘comment to enter’ competition we thought we’d do something that gave everyone a chance to win a prize by helping another blogger.
The Prize
Chitika (the ad network that is my 2nd highest blog income earner – learn more about them below) have put up a Tomtom ONE LE – (Limited Edition) GPS unit (pictured left).
The Competition
To put yourself in the running for the Tomtom all you have to do is review the blog Girls Just Wanna Have Funds by this Friday at 9am my time (in Melbourne Australia).
The winner will be the person who leaves the most helpful comment in the comments section below (as judged by the blog’s owner, Ginger). I should note that this is not a paid review for Ginger – I simply asked my Twitter followers to let me know if they wanted a review and she was one of many who submitted a link.
So don’t just leave a comment ‘great blog’ – actually look over the blog, talk about what you like, talk about what could be improved, share how you’d suggest they work on different aspects of the blog like design, content, SEO, monetization – the more constructive and helpful your comment is the more chance you have of winning.
My hope with this review is that Ginger will get some good advice, that one reader will get a nice prize and that the rest of us will improve our own skills and knowledge on how to build great blogs both by giving advice and reading what others have to say.
About Girls Just Wanna Have Funds
I asked Ginger to share a little information on her blog with us to help those of you participating in this review to give quality feedback that will help her. Here’s what she provided.
Girls Just Wanna Have Funds is a personal finance website targeting women in the areas of saving, investing, debt reduction and frugality. Our articles aim to be centered around issues that mainly affect women such as balancing career and family within the context of personal finance, education and the glass ceiling, household budgeting and managing finances with a significant other/spouse. Our primary goal is to teach women how to be mindful of their spending and building their net worth by making careful choices around their money. Women are often socialized to use money to create a certain lifestyle, while men are socialized to utilize money to invest for the long term. We’d like to change that by educating women on how to build wealth long term by paying attention to the present state of their finances and the decisions they make. In addition to the blog, we also have a meetup through Meetup.com that meets primarily in DC but also have other meetups nationally in the US that meet in other states through Meetup Alliance where members are able to create state chapters and begin their own meetups centered around women and personal finance.
Areas for Improvement:
- Content/writing: How can I improve the content to target women in a more efficient manner and increase commenting on posts
- Ad placement: I am with BlogHer Ad Network which is great as far as revenue but not sure about the optimal placement that doesn’t become obtrusive as some of the ads are animated via Adobe Flash. Also I am aware of the ad at the top of the theme causing the theme not to work properly in IE. I am working on this with BlogHer and my theme designer.
- Site promotion: Besides commenting on other blogs/forums, guest posting and blog carnivals, how can I increase readership that sticks? Ive been stumbled quite a few times and even featured multiple times this year on local and national media but would like to figure out how to retain the readers that visit the site as a result of the media exposure.
There you have it – if you address some of the needs that Ginger has mentioned above you’re surely putting yourself in a better position to win the prize.
About Chitika Our Sponsor
I’ve been using Chitika for 2-3 years now and in that time they’ve earned me well in excess of six figures – but I’m not alone. In that time they’ve increased their publisher network to a point where they now have over 30,000 publishers using their variety of ad units.
Their ad units traditionally suited publishers with product related blogs – but in more recent times they’ve introduced their ‘premium ad’ units which display a much wider range of ads and help those with less product oriented blogs monetize their blogs. They’ve also relaxed some of their publisher requirements over the last few months so even bloggers with smaller amounts of traffic will now be accepted into the program.
Update: this competition is now over and I’m just waiting for thhe winner to be selected by Ginger before announcing it. Thanks to everyone for entering.
Ginger:
Ads on both the left and right are too much. I’d just do one or the other, especially since you also have in-line ads in your articles.
You just have too many ads… it’s like a NASCAR race car! You have them left, right, top, and in-line in articles. Too much… makes it hard to read and takes away from the seriousness and quality of the information you’re writing about.
I like the black background but the pink or fuchsia shading is too funky and dark. The pink text and links need to go too in favor of something more standard that people are used to clicking on.
Hope this helps,
Fred