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Version 2.0 of the Ad Buttons plugin has been released. Now, the plugin itself hasn’t changed much, but an exciting new feature has been added: Ad Buttons Ad Network Ads. The Ad Buttons Ad Network has been created for the plugin and allows you to show 3rd party ads on your blog. So, if you don’t know what ads to add to your site, let adbuttons.net handle it for you. The credits you earn by showing ads on your site can be used to finance your own ad campaign on the network.

Right now, adbuttons.net is still very limited, but functioning. I like to give people access to the system as early as possible, so I can extend the software based on feedback from the users. I’ve done the same with the Ad Buttons plugin and, based on your feedback, this seems to be a model that the users like.

Joining the Ad Buttons Ad Network is not mandatory, you can still use the plugin to manage your own ad inventory for your blog.

My Ad Buttons wordpress plugin just got a little better again. After a few updates that didn’t really add any new functionality, I’ve just released version 1.4.0 which now allows scheduling of the individual ads.

Ad scheduling is simply done by specifying a start and end date for the ad. When filled in, the ad will show in your admin panel with the appropriate status: scheduled, active or expired. I’ve received quite a few questions about ad scheduling, so there you have it!

To support scheduling, a few new fields had to be added to the database. They should be automatically added when you run the automatic upgrade process. If you want to update the plugin manually, make sure you disable and then re-enable it in your wordpress admin panel to make sure the database is updated for your installation.
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I like checking out other blogs for inspiration. Sometimes this brings new ideas that I can use on one of my own blogs, but I also see blogs that show you what not to do. I’m not going to point the finger at anyone, but there are some blogs that are just too horrible to visit. Here are a few things for you to think about when figuring out the layout of your blog (or any other website for that matter)

Readability
People come to your blog or website to read your content, so make sure they can read it. Some people like to use pretty background pictures that continue behind the text and make the content very hard to read. Use an even background color for your content and make sure your text has sufficient contrast to the background. Font size is another important factor to think about. Too big or too small makes text hard to read.

Video and audio
Video can be a great medium to communicate a message to your website visitors, but it shouldn’t start playing as soon as your page opens. Please let me decide if, and when, I want to press play. The same goes for audio, I don’t need to hear your favorite song playing when I visit your site.

Ads
Some people have more ads than content on their website. Ads should be subtly integrated into your website, if at all. All too often I see sites trying to sell their own product or service and show ads of their competitors. Do you want to sell your own stuff or make your visitors aware of the competition?

Plugins
There are a great number of useful plugins that you can add to your blog. Before adding them all, think about which ones would be useful to your visitors. I don’t care what the weather forecast at you place is. I’m also not likely to be interested in the current moon phase when reading a blog about cars. When adding widgets to your sidebar, try to use static ones. Flashy, animated gifs distract your visitors from the content.

If you don’t agree with the above advice, you are not alone. There’s a huge website with people just like you, it’s called MySpace.

I want to start by saying thanks to all the nice people that have emailed me with feedback on the Ad Buttons plugin! Meanwhile the plugin has been downloaded over a thousand times and seems to be getting a nice field test.

Thanks to your feedback, I could iron out a few major bugs and it gave me inspiration to continue development on the plugin. Some helpful features have been added since the initial release and today I have uploaded another update. Earlier today AdSense ads have been added to the plugin, after which I got quite a few questions regarding layout control.

After quite a few hours on the programming chair I’ve managed to integrate a really easy to use way of giving you control over the ad layout. You can now easily change the appearance of your ads. This latest update has just been uploaded to the wordpress.org plugin repository and should be available for download shortly is available for download. If you already have the Ad Buttons plugin installed, you should be able to auto-update from within your wordpress admin panel.

I’ve just uploaded a new Ad Buttons release to the wordpress.org plugin repository. This time it’s more than only some bug fixes. I have incorporated Google AdSense ads into the Ad Buttons plugin. You can now select to show an AdSense 125 x 125 ad unit right alongside the ad buttons. Clicks and views for the AdSense ads are not tracked by the Ad Buttons plugin, but you can create a custom channel in your AdSense account to see the detailed stats of the AdSense button.

AdSense ad colors can be changed right on the Ad Buttons settings page and an ad preview is shown for your convenience.

It’s nice to have a popular blog or website with many daily visitors and page views. Ultimately, most webmasters want to make money with their website. If you are not using your website to sell your own products or services, putting ads on your site can make you a nice return on all the hard work you’ve put into developing and marketing your website.

There are a number of different ad types you can use on your website and each has its own pro’s and con’s. I’ve discussed PPC ads before, today we’re taking a closer look at CPM ads.

CPM ads
CPM ads are ads that pay per ad view (CPM = Cost Per 1000 impressions) so it doesn’t matter if your visitors click on the ads. Your earnings are directly related to the number of visitors and page views you get on your website. A steady traffic stream will generate a steady income stream for you.

Different CPM programs offer different rates. A rate of, say, $2 CPM will not necessarily make you $2 for every 1000 page views on your website or blog though. The ad programs often pay different rates based on the location of the visitors. The $2 CPM offered might only apply to US based traffic, while visitors from the UK might only make you $1 CPM and Asian traffic could not be paid for at all.

If you want to optimize your ad income and the CPM ads you are running on your site are only paying for traffic from certain countries, it could be a good idea to only show the ads to visitors from the paying countries. The ad space could be used to display PPC ads to visitors from other countries. To do this you can use the free ip2nation database which lets you look up the visitors country based on their ip-address. A simple php program can then be used to display ads based on the visitors country.

Another thing to look into when selecting an ad publisher network to sign up with, is how exactly is the traffic measured. They might not count every page view, but only the unique visitors per day. A single visitor looking at 100 pages on your website could only count as a single view instead of 100. So, the ad network advertising with higher CPM rates might bring in less money than the one with lower rates. Have a good look at the details of the program you sign up with.

When trying to make some money with your blog or other website, there are a few different kind of ads you can use. But how do you choose which kind of advertising to publish on your blog? It’s hard, I would even say impossible, to give good advise on which type of advertising anyone should put on their site for the best possible return. There simply isn’t a best solution that works for every website.

Finding the best monetizing strategy for your website involves a lot of testing and tweaking. You’d be amazed, how a seemingly insignificant change in your ad placement, can suddenly double your income. Before we can start tweaking our ad settings, though, we’ll have to sign up for some ad programs. There are many companies in online advertising and finding the right partner can be a difficult task by itself.

There are four major types of ads you can place on your website CPC, CPM, CPA and direct selling of ad spots for a fixed price per month. Most online advertising companies specialize in one of these methods, let’s have a closer look at the first option.

CPC/PPC
Cost-Per-Click or Pay-Per–Click ads will make you a little money each time a visitor clicks on an ad. The pay per click is generally very low, but with enough clicks this can add up to a nice income stream. Looking through my Google AdSense reports, I see many clicks that paid only 1 cent, but also some that paid a few dollars. When I add up all earnings and clicks, for the 4 years I’ve been using AdSense ads on many different websites, the average pay per click is about 10 cents, with single site averages between 2 cents and 85 cents.

The average pay per click, however, isn’t really interesting. What you want is the best possible total income, which normally is directly related to the number of visits to your site. This brings us to the better ad performance indicator: CPM or cost per thousand impressions. PPC ad programs usually show you the realized CPM value in your ad statistics. This makes it very easy to compare how well your PPC ads are doing compared to a CPM ad program. Google doesn’t allow publishers to share their ad stats, but I can tell you that my different websites, that have AdSense ads running on them, have a CPM ranging from 1 cent all the way up to $43. So, replacing the Google ads with a $2 CPM ad program would make sense for some sites, but not for all.

While with the impression based CPM ads earnings can only be raised by a rising number of visitors to your website, PPC ad revenue can easily be optimized by trying different ad placements and color schemes. PPC ad networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network let you manage the color scheme and ad layouts for ads displaying on your website. While most sites benefit from trying to have the ads blend in with their content (i.e. using the same text and link colors as the main content of the website and not using a border around the ads) some sites make more revenue by using ads that are, well, less subtle.

Optimizing your PPC ads is an ongoing task. The ad settings that work best today might not bring in the most clicks next week, so it is important to keep tracking ad performance and try new settings regularly. The difficult thing with ad performance tracking is the interpretation of the results. Statistical data is only useful in big numbers. Tracking the ad clicks on 100 page views is hardly going to yield you any usable data. You need to look at the data for tens of thousands of page views. If your site isn’t pulling that kind of visitor numbers in, your ‘ad optimization’ is pretty much guess work.