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Last week we released the first in a series about using WordPress MU as a platform for entrepreneurial endeavors. Today we’re going to give you some easily digestible information about advertising basics and introduce you to some of the best tools currently available for monetizing your WPMU site.

Advertising is not the best monetization strategy for everyone. It’s usually more effective to employ this option in tandem with other strategies such as upgraded memberships, affiliate programs, sponsorship, additional services or products, etc. This is by no means an exhaustive post on the subject but concerns mainly the quality and placement of your advertisements. Let’s get down to business:

Tips for Making Advertising Work:

• Keep it relevant- ads that are irrelevant to your users are annoying and will drive traffic away. Period. Even if you can sell the space , don’t let it go to something that will continually tax the users’ sense of purpose at your site.
• Don’t let it be ugly! People adopt a defensive attitude immediately when they see ads that are visually intrusive and unattractive. They will not click and they will not buy. They will probably leave your site.
• Map your site and its traffic for strategy – utilizing a heatmap for clicks and a statistics package will help you examine what content is bringing you traffic and will help you to be more strategic about ad placement.

Best Advertising Tools for Monetizing the MU:

Advertising Widget:

Mind-blowingly simple widget for targeting your advertising to your users based on how they arrived at your site.

Supporter Advertising:

Allows you to configure ads to show before or after post content without having to touch a line of code.

Author Advertising:

Blog admins can use this plugin to create their own revenue sharing programs. It comes with three different widgets and has a number of easily configurable options for complete admin control.

Advertising Management:

This plugin makes it possible for you to easily include ads virtually anywhere throughout your blogs: below titles, below content, below comments, etc.

Who Sees Ads for WPMU:

Allows the admin to set any number of rules about who sees ads or any other piece of content.

If you’ve tried any of these with your WPMU site, let us know how they’re working for you.

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This is a plugin that operates in a similar fashion to our Supporter Advertising plugin – but where that plugin allows bloggers to remove their ads by paying to become supporters, this one doesn’t.

It’s made for WPMU site owners that simply want to insert ads before and after post content, across their site, and not have it removed or replaced by any other ads by any users.

Simply download and install the plugin and then configure it via the new Site Admin > Adverting submenu.

It allows you select whether you’d like ads before and and after post and page content, a maximum number of ads that you’d like to display and whether you want to disable ads showing on the main blog.

Not bad huh!

Here are the options:

And here it is in action:

Enjoy!

Download Simple Ads here.

You can feel the tension in the air… we’re approaching that 100 fast… so make sure you’ve entered the contest to win an annual WPMU DEV Premium membership once the big number pops, or you’ll regret it!

And in that vein, plugin number 96 is a handy (and much asked for!) in-post advertising solution that integrates perfectly with Supporter.

Essentially this plugin allows you to simply configure advertisements to show before and after post content without having to touch a line of code.

It’s perfectly integrated with our powerful Supporter plugin and so makes it simple for you to add advertisements to blogs that haven’t paid to you – while removing them from blogs that haven’t

The Supporter plugin itself does come with an advertising addon that allows you to use functions to display ads in any manner you can dream of… However, if you’re just looking for a simple ad solution with no coding required then this plugin is the answer.

And, of course, the best spots to earn a high eCPM for any ad are above and below post content.. so hopefully this plugin will earn you a little too.

Check it out on action:

And here’s the configuration section:

Happy advertising  – you can download the plugin here.

And again… remember, that entries are still open for the opportunity to win 5 yearly WPMU DEV Premium memberships worth $419 each to celebrate 100 plugins, themes and videos at WPMU DEV Premium… and it’s 100% free to enter and enjoy! Click here to participate.

Due to the recording schedule change for WordPress Weekly, these polls will now be conducted every Tuesday instead of every Friday. This week, I want to know which theme company in this list has the best word of mouth advertising. Now, I don’t want you to guess but if the company you continuously hear about from others as a recommendation is in the list, vote for them. If not, add the company name to the comments. No one better mention Thesis because they don’t count.

In my own opinion, WooThemes has the best word of mouth advertising right now. In fact, I’m very impressed with the marketing aspect of the company. Everywhere I look I see Woo this and Woo that. Also, they are doing some cool posts on their WooCamp blog with the theme ShowDowns. While most commercial theme authors have a showcase featuring sites using their theme, ShowDown takes it a step further by getting the audience involved.

Related posts:

1. Another Company Goes 100% GPL
2. GPL Commercial Theme Page Now On The Repository
3. How Do I Contribute To Commercial GPL Themes?

This blog post has been on the tip of my tongue ever since I introduced display advertising. Here on the Tavern, I use a plugin called OIO Publisher to handle my advertising needs and it’s been the best $48.00 I’ve ever spent. In the sidebar as well as the blog header, I use a block of javascript to display the advertising zones. Unfortunately, these advertising zones are not displayed for those running Ad Block Plus in FireFox or alternate ad blocking software.

Back on May 11th, 2009 the creator of the Ad Block Plus extension proposed a change to his user base where occasionally, a new version of the software would suggest users to whitelist frequently visited sites. He has published the responses to the initial proposal in a follow up blog post along with his take on the feedback.

As an Ad Block Plus user myself, I actually wouldn’t mind a notification every now and then asking me if I’d like to whitelist a site URL since I visit it so much. I thoroughly enjoy browsing the web without having to deal with blinking ads, flashbased annoyances, etc. However, I can certainly understand the other side of the argument in that these advertisements are there to generate revenue for the site to exist.

I’ve been down that road of annoying advertising on sites so with that in mind, I am asking you to instill trust in me and whitelist WPTavern.com if you’re using Ad Block Plus or any other ad blocking software. As it stands, this site only displays images for advertising, nothing is flash based and there are no popups. I don’t plan on adding popups, popunders, flash advertising, surprise forms for you to fill out to give me your details, etc.

I am this websites advertising manager and since I have access to all the stats, I feel I can make a pretty good judgment on whether a piece of advertising will be relevant to most of the audience that visits this site.

The bottom line is, not every site on the net is filled with advertising evil, WPTavern being one of those sites. So I ask again that if you enjoy what is happening with WPTavern.com, to allow the advertisements to be displayed and hell, even check a few of them out as all of them are pretty much WordPress related. If you have any questions or concerns related to advertising, you can contact me here.

Related posts:

1. Advertising Now An Option On WPTavern