As a freelancer I sometimes lay awake at night tossing and turning over thoughts about secondary revenue streams. That tells me two things:
In this current economy it’s always a good idea to be looking ahead for new revenue opportunities.
I must be pretty dull at parties.
Lately I’ve been putting together a new travel and information [...]
As a freelancer I sometimes lay awake at night tossing and turning over thoughts about secondary revenue streams. That tells me two things:
- In this current economy it’s always a good idea to be looking ahead for new revenue opportunities.
- I must be pretty dull at parties.
Lately I’ve been putting together a new travel and information site called I Heart Japan. And while it has been coming together I’ve been looking at good ways to add advertising revenue streams to the site.
What’s out there for advertising?
Back in the dot com days I was part of a network that made a good deal of money with advertising sponsorship. But anyone will tell you, advertising isn’t what it used to be. With meager CPM rates, it has got people wondering if they should even bother with advertising.
Google Adsense is pretty popular – and while people may be starting to filter it out and click less – it still makes sense to have a few Google ads sprinkled throughout your site. Please note that I’m talking about your content driven sites. I don’t believe in advertising on your personal portfolio or freelance business web site.
Of course, I also looked into Buy Sell Ads. They’re a great source as long as your web site falls within their focused market of design and freelance related sites. My site didn’t, so I had to look elsewhere.
After doing some more research, I found some good recommendations for program called OIO Publisher.
What’s OIO Publisher?
OIO Publisher is ad management software that can either be used as a stand-alone product or as a WordPress plugin. It allows you to customize where you want your ads, what size you want them, and how much they cost. It also integrates with several payment options like PayPal and 2Checkout.
What can I do with OIO Publisher?
OIO Publisher basically allows you to place ad spots throughout your web site and then go out there and sell those ads.
There’s plenty of customization with the program. You decide how many ad spaces you want to make available. Do you want the ads to rotate? Will you offer purchasers the opportunity to buy several months of advertising or month by month? All of this is done through the straight forward administration panel.
When a purchaser clicks on one of your Advertise Here links, they’ll be taken to your sales section. Here they can fill in their information, upload their advertisement, and choose their payment method. Once you’ve approved the advertisement, OIO Publisher will run the ad for the agreed upon time and will email out statistics on how the ad is doing to the purchaser.
There are also options for offering pay-per-post, digital downloads, affiliate programs, and link exchanges. All at rates you set in the administrative panel.
What’s not to like?
OIO Publisher is a great product that’s very easy to implement and use. Saying that, however, it doesn’t mean that by just installing the program, you will have sacks of cash dropping from the sky. There’s still plenty of leg work involved in bringing advertisers to your door.
Services like Buy Sell Ads have a pretty large advertising base behind them and they can drive potentially interested advertisers to your sites. While OIO Publisher does have marketplace section on their website, you will probably end up having to either go out and pitch your web site to advertisers, or wait until advertisers take an interest in your web site on their own.
The one plus side to a method like this is that you get to keep 100% of the profits from selling the ad spots.
Conclusion
OIO Publisher has you up and running quickly, and while the burden of selling your ad spots is entirely your own, it’s an inexpensive way (only $49) to try your hand at adding an advertising revenue stream to some of your web sites.
Unfortunately, it still won’t make you fun at parties.
Travis King is a freelance designer who has trouble sleeping at night.
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