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Tuesday, August 27

Passionfruit Testimonial + 5 Membership Giveaways!

Hey guys, thanks for reading! So my one year anniversary of using Passionfruit Ads is coming up next week, and looking back on the growth that this blog has seen in the last year I can honestly say that I owe such a big portion of that to them! That may sound extreme, but if I break it down; using 'PF' to handle my ads gives me ridiculous amounts of time back, so I'm able to use that time actually blogging, which enables me to write better posts, which brings more traffic and interest (the traffic that sponsors pay for) which brings the money that helps me justify blogging in the first place, which enables me to keep going every single day:) So you can see that Passionfruit is directly linked to the success of The Freckled Fox!
Success since Starting to use PF: Looking back through my stats, this time last year I'd been blogging for about 6 months, and was getting between 30-40,000 page-views a month. Today I'm getting about 750,000 a month and growing. that's 3/4 of a Million page-views per month! 

I'll break it down even more. Before I started seeing Passionfruit popping up all over blogland and decided to try them out I did all my ads manually, and it went something like this:
Before Passionfruit Ads,

  • I received emails all month long from potential sponsors asking for rates and perks etc, 
  • we (each of the potential sponsors and I) emailed back and forth approx 4-6 times over the next week or so to cover prices, invoicing, button design, coding, timing, size, etc etc 
  • I would have to set aside the last 1-3 nights at the end of each month to take lots of Tylonal (I was not a code nerd) and prepare all the buttons and coding for 'the big switch' that had to be done at midnight on the 1st. I remember actually postponing a family trip once because we'd accidentally planned it over the changing of the months, and heaven forbid if I was away from my computer!
  • every week I'd have to go in to my gadgets and move the codes around to rotate the buttons.
  • I had word documents and spreadsheets set up for each month so I could keep track of which sponsor was buying how many months, and which wasn't starting till the month after etc.
  • I may have sent out emails gently, shyly letting each sponsor know that I had a discount code for them or something if they want to help out a fellow starving blogger. (awkward!)
  • on the last day of the month I'd file and save the expiring ads (to save me time in the future if they wanted to come back), and pasted the continuing ads to the pool of code going up on my sidebar. 
  • Once the upload was complete I'd check each ad and see which ones I'd not completed the code on or those few that had the pixels all effed up. Starting out each month by going to bed after the sun came up. awesome.
And its not like this is a one time process either (you know what I'm talking about! :)), this is happening perpetually! Each month's group of sponsors overlapping and messing up email addresses and names (heaven forbid if you have two Lauren's or Jessica's and confuse them... true story:/). This is all sounding familiar isn't it? 

Now with Passionfruit Ads, 
  • I spent about ten minutes when I first signed up customizing my own little sexy ad shop with prices, sizes, and perks, and then pasted the code provided into my site.
  • I get emails every time a sweet new sponsor wants to advertise on The Freckled Fox, and I get get paid every weekend. 
Passionfruit does the rest. Every bit of it. Can you see how I kinda find it ridiculous to hear about bloggers who want to make more money with blog ads, but don't think they can justify spending a few bucks a month for a middle man who takes all that headache away even though they're oh so busy? That's crazy talk! How much is your time worth anyways sheese:) 

There are so many different ways to look at it if you're not sure you can justify spending $9 a month on your blog for the monthly subscription. Well firstly by making it a yearly membership (only until Sep 1st!) you only spend $50 a year! That's a little over $4 a month in case you were just gonna work it out. $4 freakin bucks peeps. wowzers. Isn't your time worth way more than that? 

And don't think that if you don't charge for ads yet on your blog that $4 is too much or that you're 'losing money', because its just like any other investment you've put in to your blog to make it better, only not even close to the cost of a single one of them! I'm talking about ads you've bought on other blogs to build your traffic, or maybe your DSLR camera, Adobe Photoshop, a design service, consultations, or heck that pumpkin spice latte you buy every day from Starbucks to fuel your fingers on their typing journey of the day. And they don't just handle all the dirty work of doing blog ads anymore, with the new Passionfruit 2.0 released about a month ago there are sooo many variations on services and perks you can sell in your virtual little candy store. I could go on for hours.
If you do or want to do sidebar sponsorship ads on your blog, you need Passionfruit handling them. Plain and simple. It really does all comes down to How much is your time worth? If you break it down to hours you'd spend on ad managing every month and what you're paying PF to do alll the dirty work for you. It really seems effin ridiculous to think of doing it yourself, doesn't it? :)

I've had friends in the past who're been big enough that they justified paying a friend to handle all their blog ads for them so they could focus on quality blogging, and that's all well and good but I bet they didn't pay them no $4 a month, or even the $9! You can still think of it like you have a friend handling your ads though, because you can have Jason's (the founder and creater) cell number on speed dial to answer your questions 24 hours a day if you want, and he'll answer! That's what sold me from the beginning, was seeing a number labeled 'cell phone' on the website, and hearing a real voice after 2 rings. I needed someone that was going to take as good of care of my sponsors as I would, and Jason does just that. Actually, Jason caring about his bloggers moves us right on to the last and best bit of this post!

Now that I've had my little rant *steps down from soap-box* I'm really stoked to announce that Passionfruit is letting me give five of you, my amazing readers and supporters, a free annual membership to Passionfruit! That's an entire year completely free! That's so rad! And if you've already paid for your upgrade then you're still eligible, your $50 will just be refunded! To enter is super easy too so lets get to it!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Details of note:
  • You need to have the Passionfruit Widget installed on your blog by the 1st of September to be eligible, so head on over to upgrade now!
  • If you are already a paid member and win, you'll be refunded in full!
  • The giveaway will only last till 8:00am tomorrow morning!
  • Five winners will each receive one annual membership valued at $50.
  • The winners will officially be announced on September 1st as well.
Thanks so much for visiting today, and good luck with the giveaway!
xo, Emmy
      P.S. The Freckled Fox has a new Facebook page! So if you're a previous FB follower or would simply like to connect that way, please feel free to click the 'Like' button below! xoxo
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12 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great post, Emmy! It's been amazing not only to have the chance to win a free Passionfruit membership, but also to get some fantastic first-hand info from a range of bloggers every day!

    Kia @ With Lovely,

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  2. thanks for the great giveaway! ive only just started blogging and this would be a HUGE help!

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  3. Ahh I love passionfruit. It's so easy. Thank you!

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  4. Yippee, I love passionfruit! Free passionfruit? Even better!

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  5. I just wanted to second that Jason at Passionfruit is great. I'm not really marketing my blog too much or expecting to grow it into an industry, but I did buy an ad space on a blog through Passionfruit, and when I got an error and a prompt to e-mail Jason, he totally responded within half an hour and fixed the issue. I highly recommend them for their customer service alone.

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  6. Nice post, liked it! So bad I missed this giveaway :(
    Anywho thanks again for the info, I'm still considering it : ))

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  7. Just started following your blog and pinned a few hair tutorials! I don't think I'm ready for ads since I'll be launching my blog tomorrow, but I'll use this for future reference. I look forward to keeping up with your blog and seeing more tutorials. Thanks!

    Enjoy, Ginet
    Gracious Delights

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  8. How in the world did you get to 30-40k views in only 6 months?! That would be an incredible post!

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  9. Just reading this now and new to experimenting with PF. Thanks for all the tips! Hope to increase my readership and ads over the next few months :)

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