Rotating Ads

These advertisements take the form of either banners or text, and are seen by both members and non-members. Their great advantage is, they cost you virtually nothing (there are no members to pay), but you can charge advertisers for displaying their ads in these positions.

Several different ads are made to rotate by the software, i.e. a different ad appears each time the page is loaded, hence you are not restricted to one advertiser per ad space.

Top banner position: At one time, the top banner was considered to be the crème de la crème of advertising positions, but these days it has largely been superseded by text ads, which can be rather more subtle in their approach. Nevertheless, they can give good results if the advertising is in the context of the site.

Right hand or left hand side bar position: Skyscraper type ads, i.e. those that are taller than they are wide, are best suited to this position. Smaller buttons also work well here.

Depending on the template you are using, you may have a left hand sidebar, a right hand one or both. Some templates feature single-line advertisers' site links in these positions instead of banner ads, and some include a mixture of both.

Customizing Ad Positions

If you follow the Cash Crusader instructions for creating extra rotating ad areas, you can make optimum use of the space you have available for advertising that can be sold, and/or used for your own affiliate programs. Scripts-R-Us will customize the ad positions for you for an extra fee.

To add a rotating ad position for 468 x 60 banners on the home page (let’s say just under the MEMBER and ADVERTISER benefits), all you need to do is open index.php for editing via your web control panel, and once you have located the position for the banner in the html portion of the code, simply enter the following:

<? getad("PUT_GROUP_HERE");?>

Just replace PUT_GROUP_HERE with the name of the ad group you are creating, for example index_banner.  In the code above, don't forget to include the single space, just after the first question mark and before the "getad" portion.

In Admin, whenever you wanted to show a banner in that position, you would put index_banner (or whatever you chose, without quotes) as the ad group name when creating the ad.  Here are some examples that I have implemented on my site…..

Below the paid to click ads: This image shows an additional rotating banner area that you can add to your Paid to Click section, at the very bottom of the page:

Rotating banner under Paid to Click ads

This is a valuable ad position, because when the member has finished doing their daily clicks, the sponsor ad in this position will be the last thing they see before they leave the page. Do remember to add a dividing line and a message stating that it is not a paid ad, otherwise you will receive complaints from irate members, saying that they were not paid for the last ad on the page!

Below the inbox area: I also added a rotating banner position to the site inbox page ("inbox.php"). It is located just below the list of sent paid e-mails, so that when the member has read and deleted all the messages in his or her on-site mailbox, the ad slides up into view (members have the option to receive e-mails via their normal e-mail client, via the on-site mailbox, or both).

Here is how the page looks before the mailbox is emptied……

...and after the mailbox is emptied…..

Enter.php: An obvious candidate for extra advertising space - this is the page all members see when first entering the Members' Area. On my site I removed everything on this page, and instead put in an instruction to select an activity from the Members' Menu, leaving space for a sponsor banner right in the middle of the page.

It sounds a little mercenary, but on a site like this, people expect to see advertising, so you should take advantage of the space if you can. You can overdo it though, so stick to one banner or semi-display ad, or some relevant text ads.....

Using the enter page as extra advertising space

Text Ads Near the Top of the Page: I created three text areas along the top of the page (just under the long menu bar) and these have been given the reference names adbox1, adbox2 and adbox3 (just 1 and 2 are shown here)....

Text ads under the top menu bar

As they use text only, you create these ads in Cash Crusader's resident Rotating Ads section (not through Auto Ad Manager plug-in). They are seen by everyone who visits the site, they appear on every page, and they are popular with advertisers. True, it takes a little longer to create each ad as it is sent in, but it is worth the extra effort in terms of how much extra ad revenue they generate.

Account menu: This is a superb position for placing one or two text affiliate links, just below the text links to member activities, as it can be made to look like an extra money-earning opportunity in the existing list, as long as it is relevant. For example, the last two links before "Logout" in this list are links to an external paid referrals site and a survey site respectively:

Pricing Rotating Ads

The pricing of rotating advertising is not as critical as the paid ads, because the ad space costs you very little, consequently any revenue they generate should contain a good profit margin. That said, you should not under price them, as it gives the impression that the site is cheap or that the webmaster is desperate for custom!

To get some idea of current pricing for rotating ads, you should look up several PTRs, go to their advertising pages (which are accessible to non-members) and check out the rotating ad packages, bearing in mind that some webmasters may be operating at a loss to attract new advertisers.

A good tip is to start the prices at the higher end of the spectrum, and lower them later if you need to attract more advertisers. You can easily lower prices, but increasing them is just asking for trouble.

NEXT: Affiliate Links