Picture it you get to the point where you have had to bump up your web hosting to compensate for the amount of traffic, a cost to you nonetheless but one worth paying. Oh happy day. When that day arrives (if not before) then you need to seriously consider advertising on your blog.
With so many solutions available such as BuySellAds, Google Adsense and more choosing the right advertising platform that suits you is of paramount importance. However with every advertising platform there comes a cost.
By utilising third party advertising systems, you’re either losing a percentage in BuySellAds case 25% or not showing specifically targeted ads (Adsense). At this point of choosing an advertising platform (you should be proud pat yourself on the back for getting this far) who you go with will not only affect your readership but the shape of your blog.
Nobody wants a blog full of ads, nobody, I for one will just go elsewhere if I see a postage stamp of a blog post surrounded by ads. But what if you could control the ads yourself and reap the rewards and cut out the middleman? (sorry middleman)
What if?….que WP Ad Center…cough…que…WP Ad center….
WP Ad Center has arrived…
Yes a brand new plugin called WP AD Center has arrived to satiate your inevitable thirst for running ads, providing you have the web traffic. So yet another WordPress ad plugin, bored.
Well you shouldn’t be, take heed, it really is rather good. No really….
Luckily enough I swiped myself a review copy so I can give you a blow by blow, lets press on to set up and findings etc, etc.
Setting up WP Ad Center…
Installation is the same as any other plugin simply upload via the WordPress admin or if your FTP inclined do it that way. Installation takes a few seconds before we are greeted with our shiny new WP AD Center menu in our WordPress admin side bar.
Our shiny new menu system for WP Ad Center
Well as you will no doubt notice we have a new menu system in place in the WordPress admin side bar entitled WP AD Center, well it goes without saying this is self explanatory so lets delve a little deeper into what it entails.
Make sure you get paid! or in other words setting up payments. First up we want to make sure we are going to get paid for any ads run on the site so simply enter your PayPal email address to receive payments followed by your currency. In this case I am not from down under so have selected US dollars (although you cant see it I really did).
Adding an advertising Zone for WP Ad Center. Adding an advertising zone is easy, simply give it a name such as side bar ad, top of site etc select the size in pixels from the drop down box and more importantly give it an accurate description such as ‘this advert is shown site wide’ etc etc. The more info you can give to your prospective advertisers the better for signing them up.
If you would like to add multiple banners etc, for the purposes of this review I have opted for a side bar ad with the traditional 4 ads in a grid. So to do this from Horizontal I selected 2 Advert and from Vertical I selected 2 Adver. We have now saved the ad zone, upon clicking the current ad zones we are given the title, Zone code, size, option to view banner and of course delete it.
Adding a package for WP Ad Center
So now we get to the nitty gritty the cash, the spondolicks (delete as applicable) so now we have our package section using our newly created Ad Zone we need to allocate it to an Ad Package itself. Here we have options for setting the price and time frame of the ad itself. Select from the drop down menu the time and input the cost associated.
Or you could offer an impressions package which is ads running on a page impression bases rather than a static advert. What ever you choose we are greeted with the current packages section when clicking the current packages tab.
So we have set up our payment section, we have created an Ad Zone, we have even created an Ad Package what next?…
Adding an Advertiser to WP Ad Center.
For the purposes of this review I added myself as an advertiser, just to keep things moving along. It gives us an advertiser to select and test that we have everything set up for the sale of Ads and make everything is running smoothly.
How about an advertising page itself?
We need to create a page for advertisers to to actually view our offerings, this way we can link to it with Advertise here etc and gain interest on the packages we offer. To create a page simply create one entitled “advertise here” or alike.
We can do this by adding a page in the WordPress admin back end and simply drop some short code into the page. Short code for doing this is, nice and easy.
As you will see from the above if you viewed the page as an advertiser you would be greeted with the above. Next…
As you can see from the above we now have an advertising selection obviously this is only due to the fact we have created our ad zones and packages etc. However for a potential advertiser this is great as not only do we have a clear distinction of what they are getting but it’s in a handy to use UI, easy to use and states clearly what you are getting for your money.
This is where this plugin shines, not only from it’s intuitive easy to use interface, but it also supports image uploads for gif, jpg, jpeg, png and SWF (Flash), so we are giving our potential customers options for advertising in various graphical mediums. We also have options for web url to point to, alternate text etc.
I’m a potential advertiser what happens when I sign up?
As you will no doubt note, at the top of the image I uploaded an image that was purposefully to big for the ad image. So we are greeted with ‘Please use a valid 125×125 banner image’ text. All rather clever methinks.
Once a user has added there banner they will receive an email stating this as well as a login to the site which will allow them to access your WordPress install. See below for advertiser access.
The advertiser actually logs in from the wp-admin.php screen and is greeted with the traditional back end for non administrators, from here they can check up on there advert and see how it is doing. The value this adds to the WP Ad Center is phenomenal, advertisers need results and delivering tangible visible ones then all the better. WP AD Center delivers.
Thankfully the tip on WPRecipes works and the above is the side bar ad in all its glory (I duplicated an ad to pad it out a bit) but as you can see you can have the same sort of ads as everyone else, the difference being is you keep the money and only share it with PayPal at 2.5% – 5% which is a better return already!!
There is a lot more to WP AD Center with an approval system whereby you can refuse adverts etc, I personally love the stats (stats geek) not only does WP Ad Center give stats to advertisers, you can also view ad performance on your site as well.
WPin’s Verdict on WP Ad Center
Nothing beats the freedom of selling your own adverts on your own blog
Free from the ties of third party offerings. In fact if your blog is successful having the leverage and opportunity to charge your own advertising gives you the ability to seal the deal with discounts and incentives etc.
Me? I like this plugin. Nay I love it, I think Kooc Media have done a fantastic job in creating an excellent WordPress advertising plugin.
Why did I review it? I asked, I asked for a review copy and was given one in a matter of minutes. Why? I genuinely believe they have a product of quality. And they know it. (hence the speedy delivery)
If your interested in purchasing WP AD Center (can’t see why you wouldn’t be) then you do so on WP AD Center website it’s $49.95 which is a relatively small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
The question I always ask myself is quite simply this: Would I have bought it?
Yes, yes I would.
