Chris Brandrick

I recently posted about my domain, gtafour.co.uk and the plans to advertise it via Facebook. Due to me having doubts as to the viability of Facebook as an advertising platform and me having read mixed results on other blogs, I approached trying Facebook as more of an experiment, testing the water to see what results can be gained on a small scale.

For those of you unfamiliar with how advertising on Facebook works, you of course need a Facebook account to begin with, from here navigate to Facebook’s advertising section and follow the on screen instructions. Including such obvious data as your destination URL, target audience and so on. You also get the chance to choose between pay per click or pay per view. I chose pay per click. Also within this section you get to set a price on how much each pay per click will set you back, and your daily limit, this enables a control on your spending and is a good way to get the most out of your budget.

Designing an advert is somewhat limited on Facebook, but keeping in style with the site, this may be deemed positive or negative, that just depends on your views on advert effectiveness. As can be seen on the left is the advert which I created and ran on Facebook, I included the games boxart as the advert image, along with some relevant text. Once you have completed this advert creating process, the advert must get approved by Facebook staff, mainly to see if the adverts content is suitable for age range I targeted (18 - 30 UK Males). To my surprise the advert got approved very quickly.

I ran the advert for two days with a tiny budget of $5 per day. The advert gained 34,462 impressions and out of all those impressions a mere 21 clicks. That’s (a rough) average of 1 click every 1,600 impressions. Personally I think that’s pretty poor, but I expected the results to be far from great, as I go on Facebook to catch up on what my friends are up to….

I doubt I would use Facebook again for advertising, but I think this advertising model sure could work for other types of sites. Do any you have any experiences with Facebook advertising? If so just drop us a comment.

It’s February 27th and that can only mean one thing here at ChrisBrandrick.com, (apart from experiencing an earthquake) it’s Winning Wednesday, and todays competition marks the last in my month long weekly giveaway. So it’s only right that I end on a high note. Up for grabs this week:

• Custom Avatar (Just like last weeks competition)
• Blog Review (I will review your blog free of charge)
• Free 1 Month Advertising here at ChrisBrandrick.com (125×125 ad)
• 200 Entrecard Credits (Entrecard account required)

One lucky email subscriber will win all of the above, and if the winner doesn’t have a blog,  website, or an entrecard account, the prizes will go to the person in second place (if they have all the requirements), and so on until I find a suitable winner. Interested in winning? You should be! All you have to do to win this prize is subscribe to ChrisBrandrick.com via email. So sign up now, and be in it to win it!

This competition will run until Friday at midnight. Good Luck!

Last week’s winning wednesday competition offered the chance to win a custom avatar, and just in case some of you were wondering what the winning drawing looked like, the above image shows a small preview of what the winner received. Be sure to check out tomorrow’s competition for more opportunities to win!

Last year I blogged about the numerous domains I had acquired and that I really ought to do something with them instead of just buying them, and letting them expire, going unused. One of these domains was http://www.gtafour.co.uk, which I intended to use for a blog detailing any news about the release of the upcoming game GTA IV.

My intentions didn’t flourish into anything other than mere good intentions, and up in till now the domain has been unused. The game (GTA IV) is released at the end of April, so I now think it’s somewhat late to start a blog, so in order to gain some sort of justification on purchasing the domain I have added a simple page online. The page simply shows the games boxart, a youtube video and some affiliate links to preorder the game. Hopefully the website will receive some traffic (UK based) and generate some revenue via the play.com affiliate links.

In an attempt to drive traffic to the site and hopefully gain some sales leads I have decided to give Facebook advertisements a try, and to test the water on how effective they can be I am running a campaign on Facebook tomorrow targeting 18 to 30 year old males. I will be sure to update on how effective Facebook ads are and whether I would use them again. Hopefully the results are positive!

Oh and if your feeling generous and want the game, feel free to preorder through GTAFour.co.uk.

For the past two days here at ChrisBrandrick.com you had the opportunity to win your very own custom avatar just by subscribing to my rss feed via email. Well now the results are in and the winner of this weeks competition is:

Tim from Yimto.com - Congratulations on winning, and be sure to check your emails!

If you didn’t win this weeks competition don’t forget that another contest will be held here next Wednesday, and next week’s contest is guaranteed to be a great one, so be sure to subscribe for your chance to win.

Back in December I posted about browser compatibility issues and how they render, and more importantly how to take a look at your site in a number of sites really easily. Now the importance of having your site display properly across all major browsers is of the utmost importance, but getting it correct for the most commonly used browser, Internet Explorer, is imperative to the success of your website.

Today I came across this handy website which will let you type in any URL and quickly see how your page will appear in Internet Explorer 7 through to 5.5. The IE NetRenderer can be found here, and is well worth bookmarking if you find yourself having troubles with Internet Explorer.

Another Wednesday and yet another chance to win! Last week I gave away $50 to one lucky reader and this week I have an all new prize to give away as part of my Winning Wednesday competition!

This week subscribers to my rss email updates have the chance to win a custom drawn avatar, or caricature if you will! Just check the example below of a drawn picture of me:

To get your very own custom avatar like the one above all you have to do is subscribe to my RSS feed via email and if you win, supply me with two photographs of yourself so my friend over at Permanent-Temps.com can draw you up. Having a character drawn up like this is great to use on your blog or personal website! The winner (selected at random) will receive the completed file within a week of sending the two photographs, and only one revision can be made to the drawn picture.

This week I have decided to run this contest for 48 hours, in order for more folks to get a chance at winning this unique prize, so get subscribing! Good luck and don’t forget once you have subscribed you are automatically entered into every other Winning Wednesday this month!

i am jack’s design is a blog which I have been reading ever since I joined Entrecard back in December, and has since become an almost daily read, he even got some recent link love! Jack’s blog is worth checking out as week in, week out helpful well written content is posted.

Now Jack has launched his very own newsletter which will feature exclusive content which can’t be found on his blog, including tips on web development, wordpress and more. What’s all the more sweeter is that those that sign up now to his new newsletter will be entered into a launch contest to win Adii’s Premium News Theme. This launch contest closes on the 7th of March, so be sure to sign up, I know I will be!

When designing choosing the right font can be crucially important, it can help obtain the right look and solidify your brand (if that’s the case); so it’s defiantly worth taking the time out to find the right font for your work. Wikipedia defines typography as: Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type; read more about it, and it’s history at the above link.

Finding various typography sites that offer up quality (and in most cases free) fonts, and are regularly updated is no easy task, but below I have listed a handful of sites which offer quality free typography. Be sure to check them out, and if you have any further recommendations just drop me a comment using the comment form, no registration required!

• Fawnt - Easy to navigate website, offering a clean view of stylish fonts.
• DaFont - Very wide selection, some great, some not so great. Categories make finding something specific easier.
• DeviantArt - More oddball and random font styles can be found here, but with so many to choose from something weird is bound to attract.
• SmashingMagazine - This superb website has a good small section dedicated to fonts, which features some really great stuff.

I may be making some obvious omissions here as to whats good for fonts on the web, but I personally recommend the above few sites, if you have any to recommend, just comment and I will add it to the list! Don’t forget the importance of type when it comes to designing!

Photo by Janvi Agulto

Kontera is an advertising service which displays in-text links via a custom technology called ContentLink. Kontera Content Link (once installed) will scan your blog pages for contextually relevant keywords and then automatically turn those into links to advertisers, thus earning you the blog owner money.

I decided to give Kontera a try as not only do I plan to monetize this blog fully before the year is out, but also because an additional level of customization was available via Karol Krizka’s Kontera plugin for Wordpress. This plugin will allow you to pick and choose which blog posts you will allow Kontera ads to display on, so say for example you are publishing a paid review or an article and you do not want it to have Kontera ads on it, you simply select not to when posting. This allows great flexibility and gives you control over where ads appear.

Having Kontera installed will hopefully bring in some welcome income and all at no additional effort.