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Case Study: Monetize Your Blog With PredictAd
You might remember that this time last month I mentioned a new way to monetize your blog using PredictAd.
PredictAd is a service that adds a rather unobtrusive auto-complete feature to your site search box. In addition to the auto-complete, PredictAd has the ability to display contextual ads within the search box.
As I mentioned at the time that I shared PredictAd with all of you, part of the success that I have had in blogging for money is a result of experimenting with different tools to see what works and what doesn’t work for my blogs.
Unfortunately, I have to say that PredictAd doesn’t work for me - as you can see from this snapshot of my earnings summary.
In the month that PredictAd has been active on this site, I’ve earned nothing.
Zero, nada, nil, zilch.
Now to be fair to PredictAd, one of the primary reasons that I have not earned a single penny using their service is because there have been only a handful of searches during this test period. The success of the contextual ads is largely dependent on people using your search feature, as you would imagine.
No people searching = No income from PredictAd
While the service has not worked for me, I would not say that you should necessarily exclude it from your own toolbox. Take a look at your logs and web stats to see how often readers are utilizing your search function.
If you have a nice volume of searches taking place on your site, you might want to take PredictAd for a test drive as I have done here. When it comes to making money on your blog, you really do not know what will work well until you try it on your blog.
Naturally I would encourage you to sign up with my affiliate link if you would like to test the service as I might be able to earn a little sumpin’ sumpin’ if the service works well for you. 
One comment that I can make about PredictAd is that they seem to have a few great people working there.
When I was first getting started with the service, Tomer Molovinsky, the VP of Business Development, was extremely helpful to me in explaining everything and making sure that all of my questions were answered. Tomer, thank you for the assistance!
While I am disappointed that the service did not work well on this blog, I would not have known that without testing the service for myself. If you have any questions about my testing that I have not answered here, please leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.
When you do test the service on your own blog, be sure to come back and let us know how it worked for you!
That’s brutally honest. I’m sure if I were the guy who ran PredictAd this would leave me confused - whether to hit you on the head or appreciate your honesty.
Seriously, its all about the number of visitors, or in this case, the number of searches you get. I see people talk about monetization and conversion rates, but ultimately, all you need to worry about is eyeballs. More traffic you have, more money you get. So…how do I increase my traffic? I mean, I write regularly and all, but it just doesn’t seem to have a big affect.
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How well do you think PredictAd are doing?
When you posted that the first time I was leery. Of course, I don’t get nearly as much traffic as you. It sound to me though like this service would only work on high reference sites that require lot of internal searching. Thanks for the update.
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I didn’t hear about that before. But now I feel lucky for that
because it doesn’t work 
Well, now you know and knowing is half the battle.
I have not monetized my blog at all yet, still new to the scene !
Even though you earned nothing, the fact that your rate their staff so highly is enough for me to give them a try when I get the chance !
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Maybe it is fair of not earning if there is no search at all because they also not earn from it. For me its like a profit sharing all earns and all lose.
I’m sure my earnings would be the same! I could sign up via the affiliate link if that would help, do you get a one of “commission” or is it earnings based?
I have seen similar results on a few of my blogs that do quite well with other types of ads.
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If go by your testing, I don’t think PredictAds will do well in most blogs. I don’t think many people will use search function on blogs.
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Not many searches done on my blog either. Which is why I didn’t really try it when I read about it here last month.
Nicole Price’s last blog post..The Best ‘Money’ Songs Ever
I had a similar experience with PayPerPost. Surprisingly and funnily enough, there were no available opportunities to write posts on.
Nicole Price’s last blog post..The Best ‘Money’ Songs Ever
Well, personally, I didn’t like the idea of being redirected off a blog search anyway. At least if you click an ad you know what you’re in for.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you there (although, even with ads you can find yourself ending up in the strangest of places sometimes!)
I agree, but at least you know it’s your fault for going there
Such results were expected. If you say that they run off searches and you only had a couple of searches then of course you would not make any money.
the results are completely normal.
Such a service will work best with sites that gets a lot of searches, such as article directories
Terrible -
It sounds like a great way to make some extra revenue but from what you’ve said, it most likely doesn’t work too well on sites that don’t benefit from a few hundred thousand visitors a day.
I have to admit, I was thinking about using it up until I saw your earnings.
From the way I see, it don’t works well for low traffic site at all.
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Wow, its not worth to even check it out, judging by your experience with it. I am not against trying new things, but seems to me that the best monetization methods are still ones we have with us for a long time…
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PredictAd seems like a good option to monetize your blog, but personally, I don’t think many things work better than AdSense or handpicked affiliate programs.
Also, sorry for having zeros all down the board!
Well what can I say? I guess you learn something new everyday. So Thanks for that. I wonder if it working well for them?
I love this post. Simply because unlike most people you did not try to show off. I never see anyone blogging about their not so successful experiments. I think its better to learn from mistakes made by others rather than trying to copy those “make $10.000/day” people.
It looks like a total waste of time and money though. Thanks for the warning
Well, I don’t think I will try PredictAd since you don’t earn from it. I still know earn really low from ads in my site.
Only my anime site is the first site that get me a little money(about $3-$4 per day) and I use AdBrite since Adsense click payments are really low for anime sites.
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