Are you currently making money with your blog? If you are, there is a good chance you are generating revenue through the use of banner ads on your site. You might be selling ad space directly, using Google Adsense or even through individual affiliate programs and networks. No matter how you are making your money with banner ads, it’s important that you have a quality banner management system in place.
I run a large network of blogs and have different advertisers on each of them. Sometimes it’s easier to outsource your banner advertising, while it’s more profitable to sell your own banner ads directly. In this post we are going to look at three different services to help better manage your blog ads and how you can make more money in the process.
Buy Sell Ads
When it comes to banner ad marketplaces, there really is no other competition when you mention BuySellAds. They have massive exposure and their directory is loaded up with some of the most popular blogs on the Internet. One of the reasons why BuySellAds is so successful is because they make it so easy for site owners to just place a code on their site, and for advertisers to buy ad space through the network. BuySellAds is also a great way for advertisers to split test their banner ads across multiple sites and audiences. The only downside to BuySellAds is that they take 25% of all transactions. If you are doing $10,000 a month in banner sales, $2,500 goes right to BuySellAds every month… but at the same time they are taking care of some of your online CRM, such as managing your ads, payments and providing you with the advertisers for your site.
Cranky Ads
For anyone who wants to manage all of their banner ads, while also accepting banner ads on a paid basis, Cranky Ads is a great WordPress plugin that you can use. It’s free to use the plugin and site to manage the ads on your own blog. You also have the option to use their sales manager to bring in paid banner ads at the cost of 25% per transaction. I am personally using Cranky Ads to manage the banner advertising on several of my sites, most of which are through direct ad sales and rotating ads to see which bring in the best results. Cranky Ads has a great back end and plugin for managing banner ads, so I recommend you check them out.
WordPress Plugins
Lastly we have the world of WordPress plugins. There are a ton of plugins out there for managing your banner ads on a WordPress driven blog. OIO Publisher is one of the most popular plugins out there and it allows people to click on your open 125×125 (or any size) banner ad spots, then complete their order through PayPal. Using OIO Publisher allows you to not have to deal with 25% transaction costs, but the plugin does cost $47.
If you are currently running banner ads on your web site or blog, be sure to check out the services and alternatives above. For anyone who is currently relying on Google Adsense for all of their revenue, you should look at the pros and cons of using Adsense and other CPM driven ad networks and how you can start making more money by selling your own advertising.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: dragonblogger
September 4, 2012 at 1:51 pm
I use BuySellAds myself, the marketplace is a great feature that most of the free ones don’t have relying on you to sell your spots directly from your site, it increases visibility but they usually don’t accept blogs with under 10k visits per month.
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Twitter: moneyreign
September 4, 2012 at 3:23 pm
BuySellAds is the standard for everyone else to live up to or to try and compete against. They really do have a great system which makes it easy for sites to manage their ads and easily withdrawal funds.
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Great post! This is extremely useful for bloggers who want to manage their ads for WordPress. Thanks so much!
Very useful information especially for me who is looking for a way to place ads on my word press between the post. I have taken the name of all of them and will try them out to see which one suits me.
Twitter: SoCalMobileAuto
September 4, 2012 at 8:59 pm
This post falls inline with my vision board. I am in the process of redoing my blog and will have the room for ads. I can’t wait. This is very good information for me so I can decide which way to go before I am even up and running.
Thanks!
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Twitter: SalsRealm
September 5, 2012 at 2:26 am
This is great information for bloggers who run ads and want to manage banners in Wordpress. BuySellAds sounds neat, I’ll have to check that one out! Thanks for sharing!
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Managing banner ads has always been a tough task for me because I find it confusing and was not able to figure out the perfect ways to do it. But with the help of your post, now I will be able to manage the banner ads on my blog very well and with perfection. Thanks a lot for the share.
Hi, Zac! I think the most interesting is Cranky Ads. I lose lots of time with ads management, it becomes more frustrating the more projects I start. Since it’s a free plugin I’ll give it a try.
Thanks for sharing!
Twitter: smartitsols
September 5, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Have been using BSA to sell advertising space on my blog for last 3 yeras. and I am really happy with it. The good thing about is that it works great along side Adsense.
Keep sharing the good work.
Regards,
Twitter: SantoshSandilya
September 5, 2012 at 12:23 pm
BuySell ads are good, I think. They are genuine and pay on time. I agree with you that when it comes to banner ad marketplaces, there really is no other competition when you mention BuySellAds.
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I think BuySellAds set the benchmark as far as managing ads is concerned. I am also keen to try out Cranky Ads. I will be starting a new blog soon and would love to experiment with Cranky Ads. I prefer letting a sales manager handle this department as that would let me focus on what I like to do, writing and sharing.
Twitter: ravirajlh
September 6, 2012 at 5:39 am
Buy sells Add is really awesome and standard! … Every 1 prefers that. But I have heard that Getting approved is bit tough!.. is that true?
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I’m really surprised that there were other services for managing ads apart from BuySell Ads. Thanks for sharing these other ones. I’m not a Wordpress user. Can I still get those plugins? I definitely want to give Cranky Ads a try as I think I might not get the necessary Wordpress plugins. Thanks again for sharing though. Hope it makes my ad management better.
Twitter: Makewebworld
September 6, 2012 at 6:41 pm
I was using buy sell ads but just shifted to cranky ads, their ad spot can back-fill with adsense ads, so you will still earn some money on the unsold adsense spots. no marketplace is a big negative point for Cranky Ads, it might be change soon though…
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I have just started blogging. I needed some idea about how to go about ad management. I think this post has given me quite a list that I can check out. Thanks for sharing. I’m sure I’ll find something that fits my requirements.
Twitter: matthewraj2
September 7, 2012 at 8:40 am
BuySellAds is an awesome product. It is bundled with great features. What amazes me the most is that you don’t have to depend on anyone to place your ads. That’s just wow!
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Twitter: akhilendra1
September 7, 2012 at 9:42 am
Cranky Ads looks like a better option to begin with as it is free and one can get some kind of experience also in handling banners ads.
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Twitter: Shaggyjain
September 8, 2012 at 5:27 am
Hi Zac
This is such an informative post for a person who has just started content marketing….thanks for sharing
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Ad management on a blog is very much important as one has to keep in mind that he is providing what he is here for i.e. information.Placing too many adds can take away the interest of the readers as they find nothing interesting in it.
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Finding the first step to success is difficult as all other steps follow one another. Once you have achieved a basic recognition you will achieve the rest too. So if your blog is getting response then you can generate more revenue by selling the free space on your blogs. This is what this blog deals with. It gives us three options to choose from which can help us manage our banner ads. The blog also gives us the price difference which comes with each option. So when you are making money, why not some more with a bit of research. But be careful not to overburden your readers with only ads.
Twitter: shrewdgeek
September 14, 2012 at 4:44 am
I just came to know about cranky ads.Was looking for information about the crankyads plugin,this article has given me some insight.
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This is extremely useful for bloggers who want to manage their ads for WordPress but I’m not a Wordpress user.So I wanted to know if can still get those plugins?