Next up in the “Five” series for plugins is a snapshot of five advertisement related plugins for your WordPress site.
Once you have done the work to build your site, create the content and get the visitors streaming in it may then be time to monetize your site and maybe create a little income stream. Now I am not talking get rich schemes here – just simple and easy ways to place ads in and around your site. They may never make you a ton of money but they might create just enough of an income stream to make you a few bucks in the process. I have a day job for paying the bills so the trickle I get from my site is mad money for tech stuff. How do you spend yours?
So on to the “five”.
WP125 – This is a great plugin that can be used in two manners. One is for selling your own ad space for 125 x 125 graphic ads or you can use it as I do and link to affiliate sites you are a member of. I use it to link to my Amazon.com Associates account and my Xbox360 Game Exchange website (using 125 x 125 ads as well). The other slot tends to get used in ad exchanges with other sites. This comes with a Ads Widget that you can include in your sidebar or you can place code into your template tag wherever you want to place the ads. IT is highly configurable and can be set up in one or two column displays, show as many ads as you want, keep track of clicks and automatically removing the ad from circulation when its end date comes up. 25,468 downloads to date.
Advertising Manager – This is the plugin previously known Adsense Manager. This one will manage and rotate ads from Google Adsense as well as Adbrite, Adify, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Chitika, Commission Junction, CrispAds, OpenX, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN and Widgetbucks. It will even accept the code for unsupported ad networks. Some of its key features is that it imports ad codes automatically, is compatible with widgets and sidebars, and it automatically limits the display of ads on a page to meet the ad networks rules (such as Google Adsense only allowing 3 ads per page). 24,476 downloads to date.
Smart Ads – This simple plugin inserts advertisements at the beginning and end of your blog entries based on how many words the post is, when it was written and its category. You can also insert your ads anywhere in a post or page by using the Smart Ads shortcode. This plugin even cleans itself out of your mySQL database if your using WordPress version 2.7 or higher. The development of this plugin is quite fresh – in fact it was just updated today and has been downloaded 8,652 times.
WP Tag Ads – This is a unique plugin that uses the tags on your blog entries to display eBay products based on those keywords on your post. Where Google Adsense scans your page and the words on it to get contextual ads this one just scans the tags. Ads are then displayed either within your page template or in a sidebar widget that comes with the plugin. You must have a Campain ID from eBay and they are free to get through the eBay Partner Network. Only 3,153 downloads to date but that makes sense this is a niche area for only eBay program users.
All in One Adsense and YPN – This is an open source plugin and it automatically inserts either Google Adsense of Yahoo Publisher Network ads into your posts. It has settings to be able to customize the ads position, colors and how it looks when displayed. If your handy with CSS and HTML you can customize things even further. This one appears to be quite popular as it has been downloaded 54,863 times to date.
Looking forward to hearing from you all on what you might use to manage your ads and what methods you have found successful for displaying them.
If you have ideas for “five” posts please feel free to send me a quick note at @WinObs on Twitter – thanks!
I didn’t know about WP125. Sounds like a good plugin I will have to give it a try. Thanks for letting us know about these.
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer
I love Smart Ads and used it for a year now, thanks for sharing this
Thanks for mentioning WP125.
I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but WP125 was a contestant in the previous WLTC plugin competition. (My entry this year is “Tweetable.”)
Thank you for sharing diffenent varying options for wordpress
Very useful!
I’m using Advertising Manager, formerly Adsense Manager, for my wedding-related WordPress blog. I really like it — its worked out quite nicely.
For a next top 5, I’d love to see Flickr plugins!
I like smart ads too, comes handy.Thanks for mentioning WP125 and WP Tag ads,I think I will use them in the coming days.
What did you think of WP Tag ads? Here is WP Tag ads homepage BTW: http://www.wptagads.com
My favorite ad manager for wordpress is the wpAds plugin by nick brady,
. it’s simple to use
. versatile
. you can put any kind of code in there (adsense, your own affiliate code…)
. It’s FREE
I was using WP125, but with Thesis theme now I have uninstalled it. It is a very good plugin, basic and simple.
I am trying to keep my plugins installed on my site to a minimal.
I’m pleased by AdRotate
Same, great plugin, simple to use and works well. Great for rotating various banner ads.
They don’t sound bad, but for me, OIOPublisher works the best. It literally does almost everything you can think of.
I think smart ads is a good choice.
First, let me say thanks for putting this post together. It saves a lot of time poring through the codex looking for ad and monetizing related plugins!
Two, thanks for making a realistic assessment here. I get so sick of stumbling across “built for adsense” websites, and people trying to sell you the “secret” to making thousands just by having a website, etc.!
Also, I would like to point out that there is a plugin for classified ads that I have seen, and just a few minutes ago activated at my own blog. I can’t give a review at this time, but it sounds like a good idea, and I’d say the author deserves some appreciation. I’d like to hear feedback from anyone who might have tried it.
Bill – thanks for coming to WLTC and commenting on the post. Your feedback is very much appreciated.
What is the plug in name. I want to have a classified plugin for my site.
You should mention WhoSeesAds which lets you select rules to show or dont show ads something quite useful to let your “main” audience see ads or preserve them from seeing it 😉
thank you! would you mind I translate it into chinese?
That is a nice list but I guess you forgot to mention OIOPublisher.
For me it works the best!
We’re using wp125 and Advertising manager. The first is used for Site Sponsors and the second for AdSense and OpenX.
Wp125 shows great potential and it would be great if they would develop it further.
+1 for OIO Publisher!
nice list. will give them a try, thanks.
There are others too, like the MaxBlogPress Banner Ads plugin, availabl both as free or paid.
Fabulous! I have been looking for a great way to display ads on my business site. Digital Graphics Design involves so much personal promotion in order to get noticed. This will certainly help. I especially like the idea of ad/banner exchanges!
This was exactly what I needed! I tried to install some Adsense ads the other night and couldn’t get them to show up in my sidebar. I was using a TXT widget. (I’m learning…slowly.) I figured there was probably a special widget that would handle the job better but couldn’t find the information until I came across this post. Thanks so much!
Erica
Hi All,
I am totally new in wordpress but i know about php.i am implementing a site by using wordpress but i want to show unlimited ad in right side of the page but not in sidbar.As i have already used calendar,drop down in sidebar.And also i want to show some ad in footer section.Can anyone help me.I am not getting any plugin for that also.
Thanks
Smita
Hi I am new to wordpress and ads. I have setup google adsense but I want to set up more ad platforms. What platforms are good? I guess that probably depends of what website I have, but can anyone point me to some information?
Thanks for mentioning WP125, Just installed it on my blog. The coolest ad plugin I ever seen!