Hello Lovelies!
The day has finally come and Matthew, the Founder of Adproval, is answering all your questions. Thanks to all of you for sending me all of your questions last week. I know that they were all great questions and I believe that this interview will clear up any uncertainties. As August is ending it is time to make some decisions on what to do with ad sales. I am going to give you my piece of advice and then let Matthew take it away! So my advice for those that are debating switching, I suggest that you go ahead and try out Adproval. What do you have to loose? Right now you have the ability to try out Adproval before you have to make any commitments to any other service. So here we go!
1) Will we ever have the opportunity to use promo codes?
Absolutely, yes.
2) In the Adproval interface there are many options that say coming soon like packages. When will these be available and what will this mean for those that use Adproval?
There are so many awesome things we are excited to add to Adproval. Features like promo codes and other offering types (like packages) all fall across a very detailed six month timeline of awesomeness coming your way. Some things will obviously be available sooner than others and we promise there will be a lot of very exciting surprise features along the way – like this one we just announced 🙂
3) Can you explain the differences between Adproval and PF in terms of charges and payment?
I’d love to! As I understand, PF charges a $9.00/month flat subscription fee ($108.00/year) plus you have to pay your own payment processing fees for every ad you sell, which comes out to you paying an additional $0.30 plus 2.9% per paid ad sale. So, if you sell a $10.00 ad, you pay about 6% ($0.59) of that ad sale in payment processing fees for every $10.00 ad you sell in addition to your monthly subscription fee.
Sorry – I know that’s a lot of math to keep track of! That’s one reason Adproval likes to keep things simple for you with a flat commission fee. For every paid transaction, we take 10% with zero additional payment processing fees. So, if you only use Adproval for free ad swaps and don’t make any money, it is completely free to use (and will be forever). If you sell a $10.00 ad through Adproval, you pocket $9.00, we take $1.00 and cover all your payment processing fees for you from that with absolutely no monthly subscription fees.
Overall, we prefer our percentage of transaction model compared to the flat monthly fee model because it ensures that we’re on the same team as you. It is in our best interest to help you make as much money from your blog as possible because that’s how we’ll make the money we need to keep our lights on. It’s a win-win pricing model in my mind because we are motivated every single day to help you make as much money as possible… because that is the only way we get paid 🙂
4) Who is behind the Adproval’s twitter account?
Guilty! It’s me, Matthew (the founder of Adproval).
5) Will Adproval ever charge a fee like PF?
In one word: Nope!
In four words and for more explanation: See this blog post (referenced above, too)
6) Do you have any tips for setting up ads using Adproval?
Yes, I certainly do! In fact, I have tips for setting up ads in general! I am not occupied by working on the technical aspects of Adproval (the actual web development and design) – we have some incredible team members taking care of that. So, my entire day is focused on making our users happy. I have spent quite a lot of time researching general advertising strategies and have tips specifically for Adproval. Please just email me and ask any questions, or sign up for Adproval and you’ll get an email from me personally to get our conversation started! I’d be so glad to help.
7) Does Adproval have a system like PF’s market place where there is a list of bloggers?
Yep! We’ve actually had one for a quite awhile! We just had some more pressing things come up that we needed to work on first and haven’t been able to release it yet. Trust me, we’re as excited as you are for it to be released – especially considering some of the exciting features it will contain!
8) Will Adproval ever have the capabilities to automatically adjust ads, which will keep sponsors from having to use an exact size for an ad?
We actually do automatically adjust ads! Our system will scale and crop ads that are the wrong size to fit the dimensions of the ad spot they are intended for.
Let me explain a bit more… The real issue is with the wrong sized ad being uploaded. If the wrong size ad is uploaded, there are two options for making the ad fit into the ad spot “window.” The first is to stretch the ad so that all of original ad shows but is very distorted. This is what causes ads to appear all squishy and warped and, from an ad art perspective, is the most damaging to the integrity of the ad. The second option is to scale and crop – which is what we do. This method maintains the integrity of the original art as it was designed, it just scales it to fit the ad space it is intended for and then cuts off the edges that overlap, essentially.
While we think our method is the better way of handling things, we are the first to admit that neither is ideal. The root of the problem is in the wrong sized ad being uploaded, which is something we have some cool ideas in mind to prevent in the future! And just a final note – if an ad is of the same dimensions being uploaded in Adproval, it will appear just fine. So, if it is a 200×200 ad spot and your sponsor submits a 300×300 or 400×400 ad image, it will scale down to appear correctly in your spot.
9) Will the Adproval interface be upgraded anytime soon to become more user friendly?
Haha yes! Trust us, yes, it will be 🙂
We are currently in the absolute earliest version of Adproval. We are very proud of what we have out there right now and have a lot of bloggers successfully using Adproval to save time and make money managing their ads. That said, our very talented web designer and developer have some outstanding plans to make Adproval so much better than it currently stands. Trust me – I’ve seen the designs and early working features for the next version and, seriously, you are in for a treat 🙂
10) Is there a way, like on PF, where we can view the sites our ad is currently running on?
Not yet! But please rest assured it’s coming. We haven’t been around very long and are technically still in our “beta” (although not officially branded as such).
Just the quick back story to help explain – I originally had the idea for Adproval over 2 years ago. These past two years have allowed me to have so many conversations with amazing bloggers as to what they would like to see in our service. I’ve also had a lot of time to research online advertising best practices and how I can personally best help our users make more money and be more efficient managing ads. And, finally and most importantly, I was able to find our current web design and development team that is not only incredibly talented, but just as motivated as I am to help our users as much as we possibly can!
Very, very good things are on the horizon for Adproval. We’d be thrilled to have you join us and help build something special for you.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions at all: Matthew@Adproval.com
I hope this helps all of you! I want to thank Matthew for taking the time to do this interview and providing Southern Beauty Guide Readers with all of these in-depth answers. No joke guys if you are still need help or have questions just email Matthew, he will most definitely help you!
Southern Beauty Guide is a Lifestyle & Beauty Blog written by Chelsee, a freelance makeup artist & life enthusiast. Chelsee is a self-proclaimed lover of all things Beauty and Life, who loves that makeup gives women confidence. She loves indulging in all the latest and greatest in Beauty, fashion, lifestyle trends, technology, and gadgets/services. At Southern Beauty Guide, there are tons of product reviews, DYI posts, and tips and tricks to make things easier for readers.