Advertising

Advertising is a big part of the Internet, it wasn't till just recently I actually started using advertising on my websites, mainly because I realised just how good advertising is after the ad which appeared on explosm for Baby Seal Productions which brought in a nice amount of hits, I have gone through several advertising companies since BSP launched starting with AdSense which was suspended because Google found suspicious activities but never stated what they were in there generic email, all I can think is it was related to hits dropping when the ad was removed from explosm or the fact the server the sites are hosted on were subjected to numerous attacks during spring break, the reason I went with AdSense was they offered bank transfers and to be honest there easier and it means you wont have to walk into your local bank with a check that has a huge Google logo on it. Anyways after that I tried various alternatives which I never felt fitted with the website mainly because unlike AdSense they paid by cheque only and the advertiser has to buy the ad on your website so unlike AdSense if no one has specifically bought an advertisement on your website you just have a blank space with a your ad here button.

There is several options for advertisements, some websites may even sell ad spots directly, this is something I would recommend as secondary advertising, I rarely see anyone buy such ads on smaller websites, they work great for larger websites and since you are paid directly you are cutting out the middle man, my tips for advertising would be simple:

for a small site:

AdSense or what I now use Bidvertiser, they seem like a good company and they pay through paypal, here's a link to there website:







Medium sites:

AdSense and Bidvertiser are still good choices, the advantage of bidvertiser is your websites popularity has an effect on how much you make from ad clicks, you could also sell your own ads or use a service such as adbrite where the ads that appear on your website are purchased directly.

Larger websites:

Again the earlier options are fine, in fact I have heard of websites that make $100,000+ a year just through AdSense but if your websites big enough you could probably make more through selling ads directly on your website especially when you consider the $100,000 would be after Googles cut which no one really knows how much they make since Google don't disclose it.


Things to avoid with advertising:

I visit alot of websites and notice the same common complaints, pop-ups and pop-unders in my opinion can be a hits killer, they are a nuisance and chances are the users closed them before the ads even loaded, websites can make great money from just text links and they can be layed out in a way where they don't interfere with the visitors experience.

Don't force users to click ads, for one it violates the TOS, some specifically state you can't have text like please visit our sponsors our support us above the ads will violate the TOS, also if one ip is noticed to click every ad on the site then they tend to notice. I have seen websites display AdSense ads on a download page and state you need too click them before downloading the file, this was smart since most users would believe they had to click the ad when in reality there was just a timer script preventing the download button appearing for 10 seconds.

Never click your own ads, this is a simple one, you log in to your publishing account on the advertising companies website they can place a cookie on your pc that identifies you and the site plus they can compare the ips with clicks.

Don't overload your website with ads, theres nothing worse than a website where every second link is an advertisement, it makes the websites hard to navigate and can appear off putting.

One last thing I would say is, don't design your website around ads, for one if the focus of it doesn't interest you then your less likely to keep it up to date or keep interest in it, plus as ads are targeted at the user based on keywords or categories so whatever the topic of your website there will be ads available for it, although with some ad networks such as AdSense which use keywords your websites name and content will have an effect on the ads, take Baby Seal Productions for example, it has nothing to do with Baby Seals but all the Google ads were related to seals.

Sites to check out:

Rampant Designs Baby Seal Productions Stick Guy The Club BSP Blog Stick Guy Blog