Interview: Ben Barden from CMF
This interview I think every blogger will enjoy. It comes from one of the three partners over at CMF Ads, Ben Barden. Ben wears many hats but his main duties at CMF is to keep things running smoothly and also to develop new additions to what I believe is one of the better blogging ad networks on the net today.
Here from the CMF site is the preface from the About Us page:
CMF Ads was created by three bloggers who were unhappy with other ad networks. They were too expensive, too heavily taxed, or lacking key features. Advertising was unintuitive and difficult. We just wanted to place ads, as quickly and simply as possible.
TEN FOR BEN
1. Ben tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a web developer from London. I’ve been married to my wife, Lauren,
for 5 years. We lived in Australia for a couple of years before moving
back to the UK.
2.You spend so much time working on the computer, what do you do to relax and have fun?
I meet up with friends and family, write music, play on the Wii, and go
out in London. When we last lived in the UK, we lived close to London,
but not actually in it. We now live near to a Tube station, so it’s very
easy to simply pick a place we’d like to go to, hop on the next train,
and check it out. That’s exactly what we did today (Sunday).
3.What does CMF stand for and how did it come about? How old is the company?
CMF stands for “Changing Marketing Forever!”. The site was initially
created by Turnip and Stan in October 2008. CMF originally included 20
of the best blogs from Entrecard. It was set up using the OpenX ad
server. I joined in December 2008 to build a totally customised site,
with a control panel, widget and all the other things you’d expect from
an ad network. We officially came out of beta on January 23rd, 2009.
4.What separates CMF from all the other traffic sites online?
We don’t charge publishers to deny ads. In fact, we pay publishers to
approve them, depending on how much traffic each ad receives.
We don’t inflate clicks on the CMF widget by giving incentives to click
ads. Instead, we encourage people only to click ads that interest them.
CMF doesn’t send the most clicks, but it should send a far better ratio
of clicks from people who are interested vs. those who just click to get
paid.
We believe we have the best blogging forums around. We don’t charge you
to use them, we actively remove spam, and we have plenty of useful and
interesting discussions from one week to the next. And let’s face it -
vBulletin is hard to beat. This is the one part of our network we didn’t
custom-build.
Last and by no means least – we are bloggers. Very few ad networks are
run by bloggers. This means we don’t just understand the needs of the
people who use CMF, we’re also looking out for people. Earlier this
week, I contacted a member who’s been with us some time, as their blog
did not have any recent content and had been overrun with spam. Instead
of kicking them out, I alerted them to the problem, and gave them a
chance to fix it. They appreciated the notification, cleared the spam,
and posted a new entry.
5.You are one of the only services that give actual statistics for blogs to help advertisers choose. Is this something that might hinder smaller blogs from joining?
We’ve signed up blogs of varying sizes, so I don’t think the presence of
stats discourages people from joining. With network ads, it doesn’t
matter if you have a large blog or a small blog, you’ll get ads on your
blog whenever someone buys a network ad. The stats are more useful for
those who use campaigns, but most people prefer the simplicity of
network ads.
6.You recently instituted Spikes, how has it been doing for building traffic and do you see CMF expanding this part of the overall concept?
Spikes have had a very positive response. We’ve seen a lot of people
buying them, and we’ve also seen an increasing number of posts from
people who now list CMF Ads as their top referrer. We’ve already
expanded the feature by offering different pricing options. At this
stage it’s difficult to say if there will be similar features coming up
soon, some of our best features have actually been thought up and built
in a weekend. To give some real examples, Spikes and Network Ads were
both built very quickly indeed. We do have a few features that are being
discussed right now, I just haven’t had time to build them yet.
7.I heard through the grapevine that there are some exciting new ideas that are going to be implemented. Can you give us any advanced information on these or is it highly classified?
The ideas are secret – for now. This is because we sometimes change our
minds about upcoming features before we throw them out there. Some of
the ideas we’ve had in the past have been superseded by better ideas
we’ve had later. We don’t want to promise things that we can’t or won’t
deliver for whatever reason. Also, we’d rather not give away our best
ideas before we have a chance to do them. The main thing we look to do
is to help people get the most out of CMF – any features we can develop
that help people in this way will ultimately benefit the network as a
whole. That’s the type of feature we’re thinking of at the moment. And
we do have a few ideas to achieve that goal.
8.How many blogs today are part of the CMF network?
At this time, 672 blogs have an active account with CMF and run our
widget. We’d have twice that many if we didn’t actively monitor the
sites in our network. And we’d have three times that many if we were
less strict with our entry requirements. We put quality before quantity.
9.What are the short-term/long-term goals for CMF?
Our goals are simple: we want to help publishers earn from their blogs
without having to click on a widget. We want advertisers to have a low
cost, high value advertising experience. And we want to run a community
where people can improve their blogs, or just hang out.
10.Is there anything you would like to say to our readers?
To anyone who hasn’t joined CMF, whether you’ve heard good or bad things
about us, you’ll never know if the site will benefit your blog until you
give it a try for yourself. In particular, it’s worth giving the forums
a try – you don’t need to run our widget to join.
To anyone who’s already a member, if you ever have a question, you need
help, or you just want to say hi, please drop by our forums. We’ll be
happy to see you!
Some of Ben’s other blogs are:
http://www.theguidetoblogging.com
I have a hard enough time keeping up with one blog let alone 4. I don’t know how he does it, but each of these blogs are well worth a trip. Especially if your into blogging.
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ann
Lauren
Don E. Chute
June Zach
Roschelle
Comedy Plus
Gentleman Joe
The Padrino
Katherine
Mario Oyunları
I may have to give CMF a try now.
They are a good company.
Man Over Board has interviewed me about CMF Ads: http://tinyurl.com/ycr7ozz @ahardrain #cmfads
Ben looks spookily like my boss! Several times I’ve had to look again just to be sure.
I’m curious about the top secret features Ben’s working on. CMF has never failed to impress me yet
What I gathered from Ben is and this is top secret (so don’t let anyone know about this). Every blog on the CMF Network will be given a special “Obama Blogger Stimulus Package” heard to worth over $250k. Although it won’t be in given cash, they are coupons to Denny’s. Shhhhhh
I joined only to be told that my site wasn’t original material. I went over to delete my account and there isn’t a way to do that. So I’m a number to them. That kind of ticked me off. If I’m not good enough to be in the fold then they won’t let me delete my account so I’m not counted. Just saying.
Have a terrific day.
I am sorry they didn’t allow you to sign up, you have one of my favorite blogs and visit you every day. But I had a few other blogs myself and used my posts from this blog on the other blogs and CMF didn’t allow me to join with those blogs either. I do understand why they won’t allow copied posts from other sites, as they do their best to keep everything as original as possible.
If they based it on great people you would be number one
.
I gave CMF a brief thought at one time and didn’t get any further with it. Perhaps I’ll give them another look.
I believe they are well worth it Buggy, they are by far the site that has the BEST customer service bar none. And they are always trying to input new programs and keep trying to make it better.
Great interview, even if I already knew most of Ben’s answers.
Sorry if I denied anyone’s blog because they took the lazy way out. “Content must be original” is my polite way of denying blogs that steal content. For example: Results 1 – 10 of about 3,670 for “Four men were bragging about how smart their cats were”. That’s lame. Everyone on the internet gets those emails from people who have nothing to do at work. If you are going to post it, at least make an attempt to find the original source and link to it.
For those of you who don’t know Turnip he is one of the original two people who started up CMF. Ben I believe came in later. Forgive me for not introducing everyone from CMF, I personally have only had dealings with Ben. I believe the other owner is Stan Hayes from Razzball.com
I understand your point of view 100% and being a blogger who tries hard to keep my blog 100% original, I do use other sources like YouTube and others to generate my some of my posts. Being a newspaper style blog, I believe that in order to keep many of the posts on the front page filled with new and interesting content it is important to hunt for interesting filler posts, until I can afford a whole writing staff, LOL. But my best feedback is always from posts I write from scratch myself.
To defend Sandee is easy. She is a wonderful, giving and true friend, who like most bloggers are opinionated, after all why would we decide to blog if we did”t have opinions? But Sandees blog is unique, not based on the content, but based on the wonderful group of loyal followers she has developed over many years. I don’t think any comedian could possibly be able to day in and day out, come up with funny stories, pictures, videos et.all that are of good quality if they had to rely solely on themselves.
In every post Sandee will always give the source of where the article comes from, and yes she does occasionally post something new and just from herself. The uniqueness that is Comedy Plus, is the interaction from not only comments, but I know this as fact, Sandee writes as much original material as any blogger on the net. But it comes in the form of comments she leaves on everyone else’s blog. If you go back through my many posts you will usually find Sandee as the first commenter on almost every post. That is a lot of original content.
To many bloggers, especially this one, her comments are as important to me as any traffic service out there. She always keeps this blogger motivated and that in and of itself is priceless.
While it might not meet certain sites criteria she is FAR from being lazy. So I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you. She does not try to pull the wool over anyones eyes. To be totally honest having Sandee reposting my posts and adding my url on her PR4 blog with many, many followers and also being a dofollow blog, helped me enormously at the beggining of my first blogging attempts. You can’t put a price on that, or would Sandee ever be one to brag about this point. But to many of us who blog and know of Sandee and her blog Comedy Plus, she is to us a very important person and one we are all honored to call friend!!
Man Over Board has interviewed me about CMF Ads: http://tinyurl.com/ycr7ozz @ahardrain #cmfads
I tried to sign up AsTheCrackerheadCrumbles on CMF around the same time it was accepted by Entrecard, but CMF rejected it for not having hardly any original content and too many Bible verses. Sad. So very sad.
Jerry, again I am not here to be a ref for either side, as both sides have valid points. But it is their service and the guidelines that have been set are instituted fairly for all sites, regardless of their passages from the Bible or a limerick that has been passed down from site to site.
I think the best way to represent yourself and your blog is with unique content, otherwise what are you trying to gain? It’s fine to have guest writers and posts from time to time, like Glenn does here, but copying a snippet from someone else’s article and posting it on your blog every day just doesn’t work. You have to have a voice and an opinion from time to time. At least, that’s my thought. I like CMF. I’m still a bit weary on Network ads on one of my sites, however I will remedy that on my own.
I personally don’t allow network ads. I feel the people that pay for a full month should get that a full month. I also now limit the amount of ads I run a month, because I have 2 widgets. I want to make sure each advertisers gets at least 10,000 hits a month, if you ad in another 20 network ads, then there is no way an advertiser will get that amount. I am even thinking if my traffic does start to peak for the summer, which it probably will I will take less advertisers then I do now. I see so many blogs with over 30 advertisers and they have one widget and say maybe the site gets 2500 hits total, that isn’t very many views. I think the network ads are good for smaller blogs that do not have advertisers yet and instead of running the CMF logo they advertise other blogs. I am sure that is what the intent was for CMF. I could be wrong, perhaps one of the admins will clarify this a little better for us. It is also a good buy I would imagine to get your blog advertised on so many different blogs that you might not necessarily ever thought of.
An interview article can be judged on how the interviewer asks questions — poor questions result to poor article, and a good article is a product of asking the right questions.
In this post, I can see that Glenn was able to ask good questions, resulting to the useful and informative article about CMF Ads — another of the many quality articles which are the trademark and brand of this wonderful blog.
Great interview! You nailed it! You asked the right questions so in return you got the right answers.
When I signed up for CMF Ads, my application was approved in just a few minutes as in super quick! I then created a post about it and guess what Ben personally commented on my post. Since I am new I am still learning the CMF stuff. I find the network simple and effective.
P.S.
Thanks Glenn for placing an advert on my blog. More power to MOB! I like your entertaining posts here. It takes away my stress. LOL
Well, Mr. Glenn, I did glean some info from your interview and the ensuing comments. I appreciate the fact that original content is appreciated because that is the kind of crap I put out. I don’t pay for any advertising at the moment, but you have given me reason to consider CMF.
I haven’t had any problems with CMF. They have by far, the fastest and best customer service, I have found on the net. I am a loyal user.
I Agree!!