For the past few months I have offered private advertising on Technically Easy. You can see the banner ads in my right sidebar, and in the header. In the past I have tried various online ad providers, but didn’t have much success. When I did have success, I was usually paid a percentage of what I actually charged.
A few months ago I looked into OIOpublisher, which is a WordPress plugin. Since then I have sold several ad spaces through OIOpublisher, and have made 100% of what I sold. In this post I look at OIOpublisher and what it provides in terms of advertising for your blog.
What is OIOpublisher?
When providing private advertising on a web site or blog, the authors of the sites would usually turn to online advertising services, such as AdBrite. There is nothing wrong with using such services, however, you will be paying a percentage of what you make to the service.
The alternative to such a service is using OIOpublisher. With OIOpublisher you manage the ads yourself using it’s interface. When you make a sale, you keep 100% of the money.
OIOpublisher is great for those with a WordPress blog because you can install it just like any other plugin. Once installed, you will be able to access OIOpublisher from your WordPress administrative pages. What does it look like and what can you do with OIOpublisher? Let’s have a look.
Automating Your Advertising Space
There are many things that you can do with OIOpublisher, but I will discuss the advertising portion of the tool in this post. To provide advertising, you would need to create the advertising spots on your blog, create a page to offer the advertising, manage the payment, send out e-mails and then cancel the ads when the ad time period has expired. With OIOpublisher, all this is done for you.
When setting up space for advertising, you are provided with many options that allow you to configure the space. Some of the options include the following:
- The price of the ad.
- The duration in days that the ad will run.
- The size of the ad in pixels by specifying the height and width properties.
- The number of rows and columns. For example, in my right sidebar I specified 2 columns and 3 rows, which created the six ad slots.
- You can allow those who purchase the ad spots a choice of nofollow or dofollow links, and also specify a percentage increase for dofollow links.
There are more options you can set, but the list above gives you an idea of the control you have over your ad spots. Once you save your settings, you are provided with both PHP and Javascript code you can insert into your pages. You only need to choose one. The Javascript code allows you to use your ad spot on another web site or blog. For example, you can show the ad spots on a Blogger blog. You will, however, need a host to store the OIOpublisher code.
When an advertiser wants to make a purchase, they use a few pages that are included in the plugin. When the request is submitted, the advertiser can then use PayPal to make the payment. You are sent an e-mail from OIOpublisher once an ad request has been made, and eventually an e-mail from PayPal once the payment is made.
In OIOpublisher, you can then accept the ad or reject it. Once you accept the ad, and indicate that the payment has been made, the ad will run on your blog.
Once the time limit is about to expire, OIOpublisher sends an e-mail to the advertiser to let them know that their ad is about to expire. If no additional payment is made, then the ad is automatically expired and removed from the ad spot.
As you can see, all communication, payments, and ad expiration is automatically handled for you. All you need to do is accept and approve the ad to run.
Showing You Own Ads
When you first start advertising, you will probably have many of your ad spots left empty. You can place your “Advertise Here” image to tell people that that spot is open, or another option is to display your own ads, until they fill up.
OIOpublisher allows you to fill empty spots with other ads, such as your affilates or even Google Adsense. For example, if you have an ad spot that is 468×60, and no one has purchased that spot, you can show your Google Adsense in the spot until it is purchased. Once a purchase is made, your Adsense will be replaced with the advertiser’s ad. When the ad expires, and the advertiser doesn’t renew the ad, then your Google Adsense will once again be displayed.
You can display your own ads in all your spots if you choose. This is a great way to ensure that all your ad spots have the opportunity of making you money, even when they haven’t been sold. Once again, all this is handled for you by OIOpublisher. You just add your code, and it does the rest.
I’m a Numbers Person, What About Statistics?
OIOpublisher keeps track of stats about each ad spot that is purchased. Information such as ad clicks, and ad impressions are recorded. The CTR, eCPM, and eCPC are calculated and displayed. These stats can be seen from your administrative pages, and by default are shown for the past seven days. You can also specify a date range to display for the stats.
As for the advertisers, they will receive an e-mail once a week that shows the performance of their ads over the past week. While you will see the stats for all ads, each advertiser will only see the stats that pertain to their ads. Once again, this e-mail and data is provided automatically by the plugin.
Customizing the Pages
As you can see from my advertising page, it has been customized to provide a similar look to Technically Easy. Since OIOpublisher is a WordPress plugin, I have total control over the look and feel of the pages.
While I modifed the pages outside of WordPress, the author of OIOpublisher has made it easy for you to customize the look. He has included a theme editor into OIOpublisher so you can customize it yourself. The editor is very similar to the WordPress theme editor. You simply select a file to be modified, change the code, and save the file.
Most people don’t change the look of the OIOpublisher pages, but I find it provides more of a continuity between your blog and the ad purchase if you do.
The Catch
While everything written above may sound to good to be true, there is a catch – it isn’t free. Unlike other plugins, you have to pay for this one. The good news is that the cost is a one-time fee that allows you all upgrades for life. The fee is low enough that you can easily make it up quickly by selling the ad space on your site.
I have more than made enough to pay for OIOpublisher a few times over by simply selling the ad space. It is well worth the investment.
My Impression
I very much like this plugin, even with the price, as it provides a very easy way for me to sell private advertising space on my blog. I don’t have to worry about sending e-mails, monitoring when the ads expire, and organizing payment. OIOpublisher does all that for me, and more.
The support from the author is top-notch, and he has responded to every one of my questions, and has helped me solve any problems that I have. Simply asking a question in the OIOpublisher forums is enough to get the author to help you solve any problem. He usually responds by the next day.
If you are considering offering advertising on your web site or blog, I highly recommend you use OIOpublisher.