BuySellAds makes it easy to sell banner ads of all sizes on your website. They make it easy for advertisers to find you, and they handle all the dirty work that cuts into the time that would be better spent working on your site. Your ads appear in a directory alongside noteables like NETTUTS, PSDTUTS, CSS Elite, and of course, Webmaster-Source.

Advertisers can just click an “add to cart” button for each ad purchase they wish to make, then set their link URLs and upload ad creatives. Their payments are logged in your account and the ads are sent to your for review (if you so choose).

It’s so much easier than selling ads manually. No back-and-forth through email, no worrying about whether the advertiser will actually pay. It’s all quick and automated.

When you’ve accumulated a sizeable portion of money, you simply request a payout and wait for the check or PayPal transation. There is no minimum payout threshold. You can request your money whenever it pleases you.

You have plenty of flexibility when you create an ad zone. Pricing is entirely up to you, and you can set whatever you want for the banner dimensions, though it’s recommended that you use common sizes. By tweaking the “Number of Banners” and “MAX Number of Banners” fields you can easily make your ads display as a rotation, a block of rotating ads, fixed slots, whatever you want.

I’ve had nothing but good experiences with BuySellAds so far. Their support has been spectacular, and their service works well. BSA managed to sell an ad for me before I even put the ad zone code up on Webmaster-Source, and then another later that day. I was quite amazed at that.

BuySellAds is the first of a new breed of ad network. They put more control in the publishers hands, and don’t allow Flash, thus avoiding the sorts of irritants that many networks put web viewers through. They make it easier for publishers to ink deals with advertisers, they keep the bad ads out, and they pay well. Their 25% cut seems a little steep at first, but seeing as you can set your own price, and as the service works well for me, I don’t really mind it.

Personally, I don’t think globally buying AdSense PPC ads is the way to start. You want to target your ads a bit better than that. I have a few suggestions to try if you want to get the most for your investment.

Search Ads

Want to get a leg-up over your competitors? Try advertising in Google results.

Now unless you have a lot of money, you probably won’t be able to afford premium placing, which is quite pricey apparently, but you could buy some keyword-targetted pay-per-click ads to the left of the results. Not everyone looks at the ads, but more than enough do.

StumbleUpon Ads

StumbleUpon can bring you a truckload of good-quality traffic ordinarily. If you have some money, you can advertise with StumbleUpon. Their “ads” are simply paid stumbles. You choose some targeting options, and then pay $0.05 for every visit sent to the page you wish to advertise.

What could be better than ads that take people directly to your website?

You can set how many visitors you want per day, from 100 to 5000, the interest groups you want to target, location, age, etc..

125×125 Ads

I am a big believer in 125×125 ads. The small banners are tasteful and unobtrusive, and often advertise things of interest. They’re images, so they do more for you branding-wise than text ads even if a person doesn’t click.

This option requires a bit more research, but can pay-off well if you find a good site to advertise on. Compare statistics and prices to find a good deal.

You can make deals via email or phone with websites that offer 125×125 ad space, if you wish to advertise on blogs that sell ads themselves, or you could go through BuySellAds, a network for quality banner advertising. You can browse through their marketplace and find pricing and statistics all in one place, then pay to advertise on the site(s) you chose.

Whether you use either method or both, try to find sites that fit into your budget price-wise, and have decent traffic statistics. Then put together a nice-looking ad creative with 125×125 pixel dimensions before buying.

Advertising can bring-in some extra traffic, gain you subscribers, and simply get your website “out there” for people to see.

New is version 1.1:

• Setting to change the widget title.
• Option to remove the default ad styling, enabling you to use your own CSS rules.
• Settings are no longer stored in a database table, but in WordPress’s built-in Options system. This reduces database queries, and improves performance.
• Admin menu functions are no longer included outside of the WordPress Admin (hehe ).
• A few other tweaks were made of efficiency and security nature.
• Major feature: If you supply an email address in the options page, you can opt to receive email notifications when ads expire, allowing you to easily send follow-up emails to advertisers, or simply just stay in the know.
• Major feature: Placeholder ads! If an ad slot is empty, instead of not being shown, a placeholder ad (a.k.a “Your ad here” image) will be shown, linking to your sales page.

Download the plugin here, or just use the WordPress 2.5+ automated plugin updater.

If you have any suggestions, or if you find a bug, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

EDIT: Everyone using 1.1.0, please upgrade to 1.1.1, unless you don’t mind your ads being unclickable. A stupid mistake on my part caused the issue in 1.1.0. It’s been patched now.

EDIT: Arg!!! I made another mistake. Version 1.1.1 is identical to 1.1.0, and therefore didn’t get the fix. Please use 1.1.2.

ANOTHER EDIT: Another bug squished. 1.1.3 is out, everyone. Fixes an issue with the slot dropdown on the Add/Edit page.

Apparently the revenue split so you get a minimum of 60% on ads the network sells, and 100% on ads that you sell. You control the pricing of the ads even. Payment is handled through PayPal and is transferred at the end of every month.

The network doesn’t have any apparent traffic minimum to join, though there is a “premium” option for those with over 250,000 U.S. monthly page views, where they handle other ad formats, instead of just 125x125s.

This looks like a good new ad network for smaller blogs, as well as the large ones. Be sure to take a look at their FAQ.

I built the plugin to simplfy the management of 125×125 ads, and lower the barrier to get started selling them a little. Some of the features include

• Custom ad layout options.
• A widget to drop into your sidebar to make it easier to set the plugin up. Or you can use a template tag if you’re pro-code like me.
• Click tracking.
• Ads are automatically taken down on their end date.
• The plugin can figure out an ad’s expiration date automatically, based off how many days you say the ad should run for (no more counting forward on your calendar!). It took a bit of time and effort to get this feature working, but it was certainly worth it.

Try the plugin out, and tell me what you think. It’s a first release (1.0.0), and it’s barely been out tweleve hours, so it may have some bugs or interface oddities that need fixing. (It’s not on WordPress plugin site quite yet either, but I’m working on that…) Tell me what you like, what needs fixing, etc.

I think WP125 is off to a good start, but I had to shave off a couple features I’d originally planned in order to get it out the door in time for the WLTC WordPress Plugin Competition. Sadly, that means I’m unable to use it on Webmaster-Source to manage my ads. I built the plugin to work the way I figured most people woud prefer, and pushed my preferences to the side for now. I handle my ads a little differently than other people, and it would have taken too much extra time and work to build support for that into the plugin. Hopefully I’ll have the time to include the settings I’d like at a later date.

Enjoy the plugin, and send your feedback along!

If you have ads on your site from the beginning, your readers aren’t going to complain when you add them in. (Though my advice to the whiners would be to read the article in their RSS aggregator.)

Unfortunately, when you’re starting out, there aren’t a lot of options for ads. You have the ubiquitous AdSense, then you have affiliate programs, and a sprinkling of smaller ad networks.

My advice: Use AdSense in the beginning, and see how well it works with your site. Use some affiliate programs lightly as well (for products you recommend, not just because it’s an affiliate program). Eventually, when your site gets to a reasonable level, transition from AdSense to direct-selling ads (e.g. 125×125 ads).

The standard RSS icon is available in a 128×128 pixel size. Using Photoshop, you could reduce it to 125×125 easily, and add a legend to it. Put the name of your blog, or something describing your blog (in my case, “Webmaster Resources”) over the bottom of the icon. Make it visible, but don’t cover-up the antenna symbol. (I’d give an example, but I don’t have a copy of Photoshop on this computer yet.)

Next, purchase a 125×125 ad slot on another blog, give them your ad creative, and tell them to link it to your RSS feed.

What do you think? Would it work well? Obviously this would work better with FeedBurner feeds, since clickers will get a list of recent posts. Some bloggers could reject your ad though, out of fear that viewers would confuse your ad for their feed link.

The 125×125 ad, used by “big blogs” like ProBlogger, TechCrunch, and ReadWriteWeb, they are a great way to monetize blogs. I’ve been using them for a couple of months with great success. It’s taken me a year and a half to reach $100 in AdSense earnings; meanwhile I’ve made over $140 so far by direct-selling ads.

125x125s are, as their name suggests, square ads of one hundred twenty five pixels in both directions. They’re fairly unobtrusive, unlike monstrous leaderboard banners, and they’re less susceptible to banner blindness problems. They are the Bloggers’ Ad Format, thought-up by bloggers, and suiting their style of site well. The ads are sold directly to advertisers, cutting out the ad network middleman, and leaving you with more work on your part…but the difference in income is much greater.

Are You Ready to Sell Ads?

There is no “official” amount of traffic you should have before selling ads directly. It depends on your niche, and many other factors. You’re kind of on your own here. It all depends on

• How big your niche is.
• How big your site is relative to others in the same field.
• Your traffic relative to the other sites in the niche.
• How loyal your readers are.
• How sticky your blog is.

You’ll have to decide on your own, I’m afraid. Try asking yourself “Would I want to advertise here?”

Preparing Your Blog For 125×125 Ads

• Decide where to put the ads and how many to have. ProBlogger has six, arranged in two columns near the top of the sidebar. I’ve taken a different approach, putting them all in a vertical stack in my rightmost column. I charge more to have ads near the top than ones nearer the bottom. Others have placed the slots in a row between their header and the rest of the page. (Note: You may have to “make room” for the ad slots in some cases) Those who wish to sell all their ad slots at the same price may want to take a look at the Got Banners plugin for WordPress. It randomizes the banner order when the page loads, so all the advertisers have their turn near the top.
• Decide how much to charge. It’s another of those hard “there’s no one-size-fits-all” answers. I have one tip, though. Offer a discount if they by a few months in advance. They’ll save you some trouble that way, so why not offer some incentive?
• Make-up an ad-sized “your ad here” image and put copies in as placeholders, so prospective advertisers can see where their ad would go.
• Create an “Advertise Here” page (Examples: Mine, ProBlogger, DailyBlogTips). Give some statistics (do NOT fudge the numbers!) your contact information, maybe a little about the site, and your rates. Place a link to the page somewhere near the ad slots, and link your placeholder ads to the page as well.
• Put a 125×125 banner for an affiliate program or two in. You may make some money off referrals, and, at a glance, it makes it look like you’ve already sold some ads.
• If you don’t have access to a PayPal account, get one. It’s pretty much the standard way to transfer money online, though Google Checkout is gaining some momentum.
• Implement a click-tracking script. That way you can tell how many times an ad is clicked, and report it back to the advertiser at the end of their ad run. Of course I recommend my own GoCodes redirection plugin, if you’re a WordPress user.

Where do you find advertisers?

• Other sites in your niche. They may be interested in advertising, or maybe people who advertised on their sites would be. Look through your RSS reader, and see who’s advertised on your favorite blogs. Check to see who’s linking to you, and commenting, as well.
• Google. Consult the One Site to Find Them All™ and look for companies in your niche, or neighboring fields. While you’re doing that, keep an eye on the sponsored results to the right of the results. Maybe someone who advertised there would interested in buying an ad on your site.
• Check some other ad networks. Who’s buying ads through them?
• Ask around on forums. Some, like the Digital Point Forum, have places dedicated to advertising the ad space you have available.

Keep a list of prospective advertisers (and their URLs) as you look.

Approaching Prospective Advertisers

Once you have a list of people to contact, outline what you want to say to them. Include details such as your pricing, your statistics, and plenty of information about your blog. Next, email them one at a time. Send them a professional email. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown formal letter, but don’t put in any LOLs or anything else that could be considered unprofessional. Some tips:

• Mention why you’re contacting them. Do you like their site? Do you think it would be of value to your readers? Where did you find them? If you just send them a boilerplate message, you may not have the best results.
• Offer them a deal. Give them a free trial run of their ad, and tell them how many clicks it got.
• Keep notes of who you’ve contacted, so you don’t accidentally send more than one message. You don’t want to come off as a spammer, do you?

Keeping Track of Things

• Create a spreadsheet to log who has advertised on your blog. Add columns for the date the ad went online, the date it should be taken down, how much was paid, and anything else you may need to know in the future. I even have fields for the advertisers’ email and URL.
• Use calendar software (I use Google Calendar) to help keep-up with ad expiration dates. Set email alerts for the days that ads need to be taken off, so you can remove the ad and send an email thanking the advertiser, and asking if they want to renew their ad.

Further Reading

• Are 125 x 125 pixel Ads Right for Your Blog?
• How to Find Advertisers for Your Website: The Ultimate Guide
• How Much Should I Charge for my Advertising Space?
• How To Sell Ads On Your Blog Even With Hardly Any Traffic – A Step-By-Step Guide
• How do You Find Private Advertisers for Your Blog?