14/08: Blog Advertising And New Wordpress Plugins

I've been away from the keyboard for a while (when the beach calls, you have to answer) so it's time to knuckle down and catch up on some of the things I've missed whilst soaking up the sun :-)

On the advertising front it seems that Kontera have secured further funding of around $10.3M which will ensure their continued operation for the foreseeable future. There was a time when you needed to be a very high traffic site to be able to participate on Kontera's program, but judging by their increasing presence on a wide range of blogs, those restrictions have certainly been relaxed somewhat. If you've never tried Kontera just because you don't qualify according to their terms, why not try it? They can only say no after all, but if you have a blog of reasonable quality, you should stand a chance of being accepted. 

I know some people hate the Kontera ContentLinks, but to my mind the pop-up ads are far more efficient than traditional PPC ad blocks. They allow the reader to completely ignore them if they so choose as they will only display on mouse over of one of the double underlined links in the text they are reading. I think this gives more power to readers, rather than less - what do you all think? I've been running them for a few months now and although results have not been outstanding, I intend to persevere with them for a good while yet. If you hate them, I'd like to know.

Still on the advertising front Ad Engage are enouraging publishers to sign up and use their successful PhoText Ads. AdEngage enables publishers to set a price for advertising on their pages and wait for interested advertisers to contact you. You have a reasonable amount of control over what kind of ads you will or will not accept and for those just getting started in selling advertising space, they are an easy starting point. Be realistic with your prices and you could soon be selling ads and generating some of that much wanted blog revenue. Alternatively, Text Link Ads are proving to be a great success story, although you may find it difficult to find interested advertisers if your blog is only small time.

On a completely unrelated subjecct, I posted over at TheCaymanHost.com a plug for Network Solutions who are currently offering a discount deal on their SSL Certificate services for online merchants. If you are selling your own products or services and need to accept credit cards you will understand the need for your own SSL security measures, and if you've been considering it, this offer might persuade you to get it done now while this time limited offer is  running and save yourself a bit of money. More details here - 10% off any SSL Cert/Seal purchase. Coupon code: AFF0000045. Offer valid from 8/13/07 - 9/13/07

OK, that's the commercial bits and pieces out of the way so I'll move on to some other interesting snippets. Firstly, another new Wordpress Plugin has been launched by Stephen Cronin of the More Than Scratch The Surface blog. This is another RSS Feed related plugin called DualFeeds and allows you to give your subscribers the choice of either a full or partial feed. As it's always a matter of debate which option is best for bloggers, this should solve the problems by allowing the readers to decide. Neat. Find out more about the DualFeeds Wordpress Plugin and downoad it at Stephen's blog. 

Advertising and Wordpress plugins - leads me neatly into the next item, which deals with both subjects. The OIOPublisher Direct Wordpress plugin has been designed to enable Wordpress bloggers to sell advertising on their blogs, directly, without the need for a middle man taking his share of the pie.  This idea is barely out of the wrapper yet, so it's not likely to show  results immediately, but if you like the idea and have a self hosted Wordpress blog you might want to take a look at what it can do.  There is also a hosted option for those unable to use the plugin and both are free.

Finally I must mention Dane's excellent article over at Blog Strokes on Wordpress Security which highlights a potential problem I certainly didn't even know existed, not being a tech minded person. Worth a read.

Before signing off, there are a couple of things I'd like to mention. One, I'm still looking for feedback on my post about blog donations and plugins here so please drop by and vote/leave a comment as I'd really like some more meaningful numbers and opinions.

I would also like to apologize to commenters for the lack of HTML functionality in the comments area of the site. This is a Nucleus issue and  there's not much I can do about it. So, if you wish to leave a link in the comments field, just type in the URL and it will be clickable, but  there is no facility for anchor text links. Sorry.

TCH

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