Like the title right! Well recently Simon was explaining to me on how he wants more users to benefit from such a powerful plugin. I have been speaking about OIOPublisher for quite sometime and I myself use it and enjoyed it. I even change some of the code a little, very little. But Simon proposed a nice idea on trying to get more people to purchase OIOpublisher, tease them.
Simon created a nice little plugin for users who want to grab OIO for free but of course with some limitations. OIOPublisher's free version only allows you to sell links and not banners or inline ads. This gives the opportunity for the skeptics out there about what OIOpublisher is about. They can easily try it and start selling links if needed, but can not sell banner ads or inline ads, video ads, etc.
The pro version, which I have, automates almost everything. OIOPublisher even allows users to sell digital products, securely! This was a new feature added on which he did for JohnCow and it proves to be worthwhile. I also provided Simon with feedback and he in turns put them into great ideas.
Here is a snapshot of what to expect from OIOPublisher Free version.
There is also another ad service that has sprung about, ShowYourAdsHere - great name by the way and I can not believe it was not already bought. Mark from 45n5.com has put together a great concept on a central location for banner ads and rotation! I was one of the many few to have a chance to view it first hand and provide him feedback, before sending it out to his list. Already his marketplace is growing and continuous to grow on a daily basis.
The main concepts of ShowYourAdHere are:
- Free Hosted Ad Server, which you can serve up affiliate banners and purchased banners
- Instant Payment when someone purchases an Ad
- Geo Targeting! This is a never seen ad service!
- Manage multiple ad zones
- A eBay like feedback system - very powerful and great way to network
- Do not have to sell ads, use it for personal banner rotation
I bought an ad space to just play and test his system. There were some drawbacks that I did not like and I let Mark know of what my opinions are. For example the purchase process was straight forward but I would rather have uploaded my banner then pay instead of pay then upload your banner.
Another issue was I was unable to hot link to banners. When I bought an ad space, I wanted to use an affiliate product. With the affiliate product I should have been able to hot link to their banner. Instead I downloaded the campaign with the images and uploaded the ones I wanted to show. This is cumbersome especially for an affiliate marketer. I hope Mark has that in the future giving the buyer an option of uploading or hot linking an image.
Now the questions come to how good are both services?
I like both concepts, especially the GeoTargeting! But I will still be using OIOPublisher Direct Pro because of its versatility. ShowYourAdsHere is strictly banner ads and does not support basic featured links. But I really want the GeoTargeting - I may use ShowYourAd here for banner rotation so I can centralize my banner placements instead of using a php random script to rotate my current banners.
I explained about GeoTargeting earlier and how helpful it will be especially for ad rotation. You want to show Dutch ads or affiliate ads to readers in Denmark and Chinese Ads in China, if you do not you are potentially losing money this way. I find this feature very powerful with ShowYourAdHere.
There really is no comparison for both projects, since one concentrates on strictly banner ads and rotation while another is for blog monetization. Hence both has the same concept of earning money online via selling ad space within your website. If you do not have a WordPress blog, I suggest ShowYourAdHere but if you do grab a free version of OIOpublisher.
