I find most online advertising from little to very annoying, but I admit I somehow like those 125×125 pixel banners and always pay attention to them on other websites. I've been wanting to play with these banners for quite some time now, but never really spent the few minutes to do so.
I've applied to Buy Sell Ads, got approved (so I guess they're accepting roughly anyone) and here they are, the cute little square banners. This may be a temporary experiment, mostly out of curiosity. We'll see.
Anyway, for the first month and to celebrate this pixel intrusion in my sidebar, banners are $5 dollars a month (yeah, couldn't make them cheaper, that's the bottom price enforced by BSA:) There are only 4 available so get your spot quick!
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I would have loved to, but BSA makes you join their site as a member just to purchase an ad. That's an annoying step that I'm not willing to take. I should just be able to pay with paypal and be on my way. (not that any of that is your fault).
Nathan » Indeed, you're making a point there. I was also expecting more customization options like a custom "advertise here" place holder or, more importantly, being able to fine tune the ads CSS (I'm expecting layout breakage when 2 ads are displayed on the same row:)
I guess that's partly why they are still in beta :)
I recently worked with this plugin:
http://www.oiopublisher.com/
and was very happy with the results. It's $47 but IMO it's well worth the money if you plan on automatic ad sales.
Nathan » Yeah, I already bought it like 6 months ago. Never took some time to implement it in my blog :)
@nathan, sorry for requiring the registration at BSA, from your comment I've added a feature enhancement idea for allowing people to buy without needing to register and we would just create an account/password automatically for them.
@ozh, I think you should charge more than $5, you've got a great blog! To kick things off I'll buy an ad ;)
To remove the default "advertise here" box and replace with your own, you can set the JS variable "ShowAdHere" to false.
To customize the CSS, you can edit the css styles (in the JS ad code) that are contained in the styles array. For example, you can add "float:left;" to the A element in the styles array and the ads will tile horizontally and not break they layout once you have two ads.
Hope this helps!
Count me in! Sounds like an excellent deal, if you ask me!
I think OIO is a good choice. I tried performancing ads and well, it's partly that I don't run a super big site!
But, like you, I still need to implement it on my blogs. I have it running on both of them, but, am still too tied down to work on prices and stuff.
BTW, what is the revenue sharing scheme of BSA?
Ajay » It's 25% for them, which I think is pretty fair for a hosted solution.
..and done! Very nice, Ozh – thanks for the opportunity to advertise on your site! Check out that nifty Monzilla Media banner! Sweet! ;)
Jeff » great :)
Last $5 spot! Next month will be more expensive!