People are discovering AdBlocker Plus, so I figure it’s time to make it easier to insert ads that don’t get blocked into a Wordpress blog. I looked for a Wordpress Ad Plugin that let me create and insert a banner of simple text-link type affiliate ads into my blog, but couldn’t find what I wanted. Then, I realized I could write a “proto-plugin” in 30 minutes, so I did.
My current “proto-plugin” fishes out the affiliate ad key phrases out of the database used by aLinks and display them as text ads on each post. If you look to the bottom of this post, you’ll see my ads inside an orange box.
I figure this little plugin will help me promote these various products and display them on both my knitting blog and here. Currently, all the plugin does is: a) create a box, b) pull two ads from my database and c) displays them after the post content.
I’m planning to make this niftier (if only for myself). But, before I do, I was looking for suggestions. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Here are features I already plan (because I want them!):
- Let the blogger place the box where they prefer either inside their post, sidebar or between posts.
- Let blogger format the box size, color, border thickness etc.
- Let the blogger specify which group of affiliate ads they want to display (clickbank, amazon, general etc.)
- I don’t know.. what else seems important?
Make them blink?
I don’t want to have tooooo many options, but key ones that might make this attractive to bloggers who want to monetize would be useful.
Oh… and of course, if you know of a plugin that already does a good job rotating random text-based affiliate ads, let me know. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.
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Update: I’m fiddling with the plugin. Ads will appear, disppear and have “issues”.
Another really useful post – thanks.
The only rotating ad plugin that I use is called Got Banners
http://gotchance.com/got-banners-plugin/
Has its limitations but TechCrunch use it which led me to try it. I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for exactly, but still a useful tool.
I’m really glad you are looking into ways to defeat AdBlocker though
That could really accelerate your trip to the top of the blogging tree 
TDavid has a good post on his blog where he interviews an AdBlocker user if you’re interested.
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070914/4798/
Interesting article. I will also want to be adding banner ads for affiliate stuff. But I find it easier to integrate text links. So, I’ll be looking at all the different ways!
Oddly enough, I can’t get angry at people using adblocker. That said, I’d like to make some money. To do that, I need them to be tempted by the ads. (And as you can see from TDavid’s interview– the person who says he “never” clicks on ads, does, sometimes click on ads. A 1% click rate makes me much more money than a 0% click rate!
)
I don’t see any point in getting angry at users of these add ons either. (I do think that any publisher who advertises but blocks other people’s ads should look carefully at their actions, if indeed there are any who do).
I get a reasonable number of clicks on all sorts of ads even though I’m hardly a heavy traffic site, so I don’t think Adblocker is a particularly big problem …yet
It seems that a lot of readers are quite happy to click through on ads that interest them. That’s pretty much what I do myself.
As you say, anything is better than zero percent click through but even with Adblocker out there I think we can safely say we’ll stay above that for some time to come.
This is offtopic but I noticed you have an WP error at the bottom on your homepage. Here is what I have copied.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function pregmatch() in /home/XXX/XXX/XXX/wp-content/plugins/You_Visit_I_Visit.php on line 150
Just to let you know. ^_^
You may want to check out johnchow.com for some ideas. He is always testing little tweaks on promoting affiliate links on his blog and in his rss feeds. Some really great ideas. I think it is a cool idea for a plugin fwiw. I think the layout could use a bit of tweaking and don’t personally have a problem displaying links like that without some sort of “these are ads” line.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the comment.
I can easily make the “affiliate Ads” bit either optional or customizable. The “difficult” coding is going to be figuring out the best way to get ads to work in sidebars and between posts. I also want to get the little “image” out of the ad because I think that looks silly there!
I read John Chow from time to time, but in all honesty, I find it difficult to translate what he says into anything that can make me money! Do you have any links to specific posts with JC tips you found helpful?
Hi Lucia
Additional thoughts for anyone using affiliate networks such as CJ/LinkShare/Shareasale. ABPlus will block anything from affiliate network domains.
All you can do is to ensure that all images are hosted on your own server, and preferably, use a redirect on image/text links. ABPlus cannot then determine that they are affiliate links and does not block them. If you don’t do this, visitors will not only not see your ads, they won’t see any affiliate links/images either. It means a little more work than cutting and pasting affiliate links from the networks, but being lazy might be costly.