When I first began my journey towards blogging for money, I was guilty of the “one trick pony” mentality and was only using Google AdSense.
As I began to learn more about monetizing a website, I quickly realized the need to diversify the tools being used to generate income with my blogs.
Today I added a new tool to this site in an attempt to test another means of monetizing my blog. The best part is that this new tool is very unobtrusive – which can be both good and bad – and is super easy to get setup on your own blog.
PredictAd is a relatively new service that adds a slick auto-complete feature to your blog’s search box.
So where does the monetization come into play?
Great question…
Along with the auto-complete functionality, PredictAd also displays contextual ads within your search box – highlighted with the blue bar here – while the reader is entering their search criteria.
The cool thing is that the ads will be directly targeted to what your reader is typing and offers a rather unobtrusive means of monetizing your blog.
There are quite a few cool features included with PredictAd – such as the ability to integrate multiple RSS feeds into the search box so readers can search across your feeds. This can really come in handy if you operate multiple blogs and want to open your readers to content across all of your blogs.
How much do they pay?
PredictAd pays based on a cost-per-click system, much like Google AdSense, so your payout will depend on how many people click on the ads within the contextual search box.
The basic revenue share is a 50/50 split for advertisements that run across the entire PredictAd network. However, when an advertiser signs up to display ads specifically on your blog you will receive 80% of the income generated from these ads. If you currently have advertisers on your blog, you might be able to talk with them about signing up for PredictAd to leverage the real estate in your search box as well.
How would you like some passive income?
Once you sign up for PredictAd, you can earn additional income when you refer other members to the service.
The emails that I received from PredictAd indicated the affiliate payout was 10% of your referrals’ earnings, although I noticed their website indicates that it is 5% of referral earnings. I’ve sent an email to PredictAd and will certainly update you once I get a definitive answer.
Given that they have a WordPress plugin, I was able to have everything up and running in a matter of minutes. Even without a plugin, setup is very straightforward and their website will guide you through the process. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note as well and I will do my best to help you out.
Time will tell how well PredictAd works on this blog but as I mentioned earlier, one of the keys to building your blog income is to continuously experiment with new methods of monetizing your blog.
Sign up now!
If you own a blog and want to earn additional money, sign up here.
If you are an advertiser and want to be featured in the search box, sign up here.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Does PredictAd have an option to allow for searching only your blog? I mean, like, an adsense search box gives users the option of searching within your site or the entire web.
Ling, the PredictAd service does not alter the functionality of your search. This means that if you have your search designed to allow for searching of your blog or the Interweb, it will still function that way.
On this site, I don’t have the feature to search the entire Interweb but if I added that PredictAd would still operate in the same fashion. Your search results do not change with PredictAd.
Thanks for the article Derek – great explanation of the service!
Sorry for the confusion about the affiliate program – it has been changed on our website to 10% of all revenues gained from a site referred from your own. I think that this is the main incentive for bloggers – if you refer a high traffic portal or website you stand to profit handsomely over time.
Although it’s difficult to determine how much you can expect to earn using PredictAd, it’s important to set realistic goals and expectations, and to remember that PredictAd is first and foremost an added-value service that improves the search & functionality of your blog or website.
We view the monetization aspect as an added bonus, but not the core focus of the service. PredictAd uses advanced collaborative filtering tools in order to offer search suggestions and ads relevant to your community search patterns. So if you have a blog on cars PredictAd will be optimized to display relevant search suggestions. Eg: if you type “h” into the search box than the word “honda” would float to the top because it’s a commonly searched term on your blog.
Please email me at press [at] predictad [dot] com if you have any further press or business inquiries related to PredictAd. Thank you.
Tomer Molovinsky
VP Business Development, PredictAd
Tomer, thank you for stopping by and clarifying the numbers regarding the affiliate program.
I’m looking forward to the use of PredictAd and hopefully the readers find it useful with the auto-complete functionality.
Cool idea, but when they click on an ad, do they leave your site? Feels kinda sneaky if they do.
Yes, I would assume that they would then navigate away. Very interesting idea. I’m not sure that I really believe in it, because 90% of searches are probably for things that can’t be monetized. But 10% seems a good referral rate to me, so I’ll be watching…
More ways to monetize a blog are always welcome. I’ll wait for your reviews of the service before signing on. Hope they work well for you.
I salute you for using nonobtrusive tool. You are a good example of ethical blogger.
@Matt :: Yes, clicking ads would take the user to a page for that ad, much like if you were to click on a Google AdSense ad or a banner ad.
@Nicole :: We’ll see how it goes, hopefully it works well but I’ll be sure to provide updates either way.
@pauletet :: Thanks, I appreciate the kind words.
Derek,
So far, is the PredictAd click rate promising for you?
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Unfortunately, no it is not. Although the primary reason for that is that almost nobody is using the search feature at all, making the likelihood of someone clicking an ad next to nil.
I’ll be posting an update after it has been live for awhile.
Great, will wait for your post update. Thanks.
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Have you tried linkworth?
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