GET MONEY ON LINE
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A few years ago I ran a website for guitar collectors. It started getting popular enough for me to get occasional requests for information on advertising on the site.
But there was a problem.
The site wasn’t much more than hobby of mine. I didn’t really have time to make the changes required to manage ads. I also didn’t want to have to invoice advertisers.
I made enough money from AdSense and some affiliate marketing to cover hosting with a little left over. When Illinois lawmakers passed the unconstitutional “Amazon Tax” I lost a good chunk of revenue. Between that and a lack of time I finally pulled the plug on the entire site.
As a popular blogger you might find yourself in the same situation. You might be get interest from potential advertisers, but need a way to manage the hosting and billing of ads.
Enter Google AdSense Direct
Last month Google announced a new feature to AdSense aimed at the direct ad sales market.AdSense Direct allows website owners to manage ad inventory from their AdSense account.
In the past you used to needed to create contracts and invoices for every deal. Now this can be handled automatically through the Google AdSense platform. Your direct ads earnings are included in your AdSense payment cycle.
Google will take a 15% revenue cut of all direct ad sales managed through the service.
The process for setting up an AdSense Direct ad works like this:
- You negotiate and create a deal with an advertiser directly
- Create a new Direct Campaign in AdSense
- Get link to give to advertiser
- Advertiser uses link to upload ad and set destination URL
- Advertiser pays with Google Wallet
- You and Google approve ad and campaign is launched
The biggest benefit to this is that Google handles all the billing for the ad. It also hosts and serves the ad image for you. When the campaign has ended it reverts back to showing AdSense ads.
Limitations of AdSense Direct
If you use only one ad unit on your page, the Direct ad will be the only ad displayed during the campaign. Another drawback is that you can’t rotate between advertisers. Direct ad units still count against your limit of 3 ad units per page.
Another factor worth noting is that you can only bill per day. The advertiser will be charged the same regardless of the number of impressions of their ad. There is no option for CPM billing.
While the service is in beta, rejecting an ad image/url, or renewing a campaign requires you to create an entirely new campaign.
Is it right for your blog?
If you’ve been reluctant to sell direct advertising on your site because of work involved, or want to have control over what ads are displayed, Google AdSense Direct Ads might be the way to go. You’ll still be responsible for selling the ad space, but Google will handle the hosting and payment aspects.
