Paid sponsor per post (advertising)

[Divinum Fiat]

I'm trying to accomplish something that I don't know if it's technically possible.

I want the main income of the forum to be from advertising but NOT Google adwords but individually targeted sponsors who pay a flat monthly fee. My question is, when I go to a post the side bar disappears. So where would their ad even show up? Is there an easy way to do this?

Thank you.

 

[Jeremy]

There's a bunch of ad templates you could use to insert specific ads into. Search ad_ in the templates. If you want to do bidding, you may want to look into Digital Point Ads.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thanks King. I have the Digital ads one but it's way too confusing and over the top for me. I'm the least technical person ever and couldn't figure it out. Was hoping for something much simpler. I also want to be in control of who advertises rather than others competing and us having to take whatever highest bid is. It would ruin our site completely. So I need more manual control. Was hoping to find someone here who is getting income from advertisers (but not adwords).

 

[RDR]

I think you could use the ad templates and then a good platform to control what goes where and when.

For example, Google has DoubleClick for Publishers: https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/dfp/info/sb/index.html

R.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thanks RDR, watched their video. It's still with Google and I don't want anything to do with Google. :-( This has to be an individual account-by-account basis. We are a spirituality based forum and our ideal marketers will be large events, exhibitions, speakers, authors, etc. I have a staff member who does the outreach and sales, what I want to stream line is the monthly set up. As it stands now I have to manually ad them into the xenport side bar, which seems tedious and there's gotta be a simpler way.

 

[Jeremy]

Thanks King. I have the Digital ads one but it's way too confusing and over the top for me. I'm the least technical person ever and couldn't figure it out. Was hoping for something much simpler. I also want to be in control of who advertises rather than others competing and us having to take whatever highest bid is. It would ruin our site completely. So I need more manual control. Was hoping to find someone here who is getting income from advertisers (but not adwords).

Before an ad is displayed on your site, you get to approve/deny each and every ad that an advertiser submits to run on your site.

I'm sure DigitalPoint would be able to help you so you can easily use his system.

 

[RDR]

Thanks RDR, watched their video. It's still with Google and I don't want anything to do with Google. :-( This has to be an individual account-by-account basis. We are a spirituality based forum and our ideal marketers will be large events, exhibitions, speakers, authors, etc. I have a staff member who does the outreach and sales, what I want to stream line is the monthly set up. As it stands now I have to manually ad them into the xenport side bar, which seems tedious and there's gotta be a simpler way.

There is a similar system not related to Google but you would need to get your hands dirty setting it up

http://www.openx.com/publisher/open-source-ad-server

The basic premise here I think for you is that once you have all your "zones" set-up and code implemented in the ad templates, all your advertiser campaigns and whatnot are done through your OpenX set-up. You can start simple and then as you grow, use more sophisticated features that are there waiting to be used.

R.

 

[craigiri]

The ultimate simplest way is that if have full time sponsors of each forum -no banner rotations - this can be done with a simple "if" type statement which other members can help you with....

Rotation and Fractional Banners....

OK, this has to be slightly technical......but you can probably get help here or elsewhere with the final implementation.

Just for a description, let's say you were a remodeling site and had three forum sections:
Roofing
Siding
Kitchens

You want to be able to run banners in each one tailored to that particular section. A common use (and what I do) is have one ad at the bottom and one at the top of each of those forums. Then, in addition, you can sell "fractions", so you could have four sponsors in each forum, each with 25% of all the banners run.

There are many ways to program this in.....I am not familiar with Robbo's XF add-on, but you can check if it does this.

But it can be done with most any external ad banner rotation script also. I use an ancient one - from 1998 or so - and the things still works! There are many of them out there, including paid ones like adpeeps:
http://www.adpeeps.com/

OK, if you are still with me, there are two parts here.
1. The external ad management program
2. The insertion of those ads into the proper forums

What I use is a piece of code which says something like this:
"Make up a URL that pulls in this particular banner if we are in this particular forum"

It would be confusing to you for me to detail it further - but it can be done!

On my site I go a little further and say "if there is a banner, load it up, if not put a google adsense banner in there"

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm totally overwhelmed and don't get a thing you say. I would definitely need to find someone who can help me set the whole thing up. I'm still not sure what is the best way. I don't want banner ads anywhere on my site, except on the front page right side bar. That's the challenge. And I need 100% control over who exactly advertises, so all ads have to be manually approved. It would be nice to set it up on auto-pilot, a dream. Ads, however, will chase our members away for sure.

 

[craigiri]

Oh, that one is fairly easy........
I use one like the soapstone one on the right here.

I use this add-on:
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-rotating-ads.292/

That one is easy to set up.....

Edit- Oh, you don't want it outside the forums! That's not going to be easy if you have no sidebar in your forum. But you can use that same add-on to put in banners in other areas. See enclosed pic of the positions.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Hi Craig, thank you! Went to the add-on. I totally don't get how it works. Not sure that will help me do what I want to do and I can't figure out how people get to place their ads in the actual banner. Where they sign up, who they pay, etc. Total newbie here to ads and green behind my ears when it comes to technology.

Most importantly, I just don't want any banners except on the front page right hand side. There is no sidebar in any of my posts anyway, unless there is a way to put side bars there. I want people to sponsor actual posts but the sponsors have to be in alignment with the actual post. It's a tricky thing for sure.

 

[Mike Edge]

I use Ad Manager, a premium add-on released here by Robbo. It is real easy to use and you can put your own ads into it easily.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you, Mike.

What I don't get is how people sign up. The whole process is Chinese to me.

 

[Mike Edge]

Thank you, Mike.

What I don't get is how people sign up. The whole process is Chinese to me.

Sign up for what?

 

[Divinum Fiat]

advertising... how do I get them to sign up? I don't understand the whole process. Sorry.

 

[craigiri]

With the type of ads you are trying to do, all "sign up" and placement is done manually.

That is, you personally price them and often even make up the banners for them and link them to the proper places. Without learning the ability to do that, you really are going to have a hard time doing it....

As an example, in that add on I had to upload the banner to somewhere (anywhere, really) and then link to it with the proper code and then paste than into the banner program....

I know that does not seem easy, but in terms of ads it does not get much easier, I'm afraid! You need to find one of your members who wants to help...maybe...with the semi-tech stuff!

So, this is the code for that banner program...

<a href="http://www.thelinkedsite.com"><img src="http://www.hearth.com/banners/thebanner.jpg" alt="" align="center"></a>

In terms of sponsoring a single post? Well, you could always just edit the post and paste in a link or something like that.....

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you, Craig! The linking doesn't seem to bad. What I still don't understand is how they pay.

What I want to do is approve the ads manually but not have to place them manually. That just seems way too much work, especially since they can opt out every week.

Wow, this is more complicated than I thought. Thank you for all your help!

 

[Mike Edge]

advertising... how do I get them to sign up? I don't understand the whole process. Sorry.

I use an ad agency, so not sure. I guess you could put a banner "this space for rent" in the ad spot and hope someone purchases it.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Using an ad agency is great, but I still don't understand how they get the ad to show up in your forum. My brain is not connecting the dots somehow.

 

[craigiri]

Using an ad agency is great, but I still don't understand how they get the ad to show up in your forum. My brain is not connecting the dots somehow.

Sometimes the dots don't connect.
Firstly, it may be tough to get an agency to get involved for low $$$.....

If they were going to sell a spot and place ads there, there would have to be some kind of code in that spot which has the ad in it...

Just FYI, I manually sell 3/4 of my ads - which means I talk to the clients, send them a bill and then send a check or paypal, etc. and then I place the ad.

Automatic placement would seem more complicated...if you want to choose your own sponsors, doing it manually is a good way to start. When and if the demand and $$$ build up, then you can think about automation or agencies.