Take control of your blog advertising with OpenX Adserver

Just do the math and you’ll quickly realize that managing your own adserver will bring in more money then using affiliate networks. In my blog math posts, you can see that it takes a ton of traffic to make anything with Google adsense. This doesn’t mean pay-per-click is bad, it’s just that you will make a lot more by selling your own ads on a CPM or time based model.

I use OpenX adserver to manage ads. It a free and open source product that allows you to manage ads for multiple websites, multiple advertisers and multiple campaigns. Openx has a hosted version if you don’t want to install software on your server. But installation is a breeze. If you installed WordPress, you can install Openx, since it has a web install interface. Just provide a database and the rest is self explanatory.

Since Openx adserver is open source, you can tweak it to do many things, which is what I like to do to everything. It also comes with an API that allows you to easily set up hands free banner sales from your blog or website. Of course, it’s up to you if you want to allow people to place banners on your website unmoderated.

There are cons to managing your own adserver. There is a learning curve when managing multiple advertising accounts with multiple banners. There is a language that advertisers use when managing advertisers and campaigns. You’ll have to learn terms like remnants, contracts, channels, etc… Luckily we have Google, and the Openx forums.

I’ll be blogging a lot about Openx, but in general here is why I like it.

• You’re website will remain the same. Set up default campaigns (Google adsense) to be displayed until you get an advertiser to buy ad space.
• Target keywords. Allow advertisers to target keywords so they don’t waste impressions. Remember, keeping your advertisers happy and you’ll generate repeat business. You will also display more relevant ads to your readers.
• Multiple websites. I’m sure you have huge dreams of owning a network of profitable websites. Openx can manage all of them from a single location and provide hands free sales on each… more on that later.
• Great stats. Easily discover what is working and what doesn’t. Combine this with Google analytics and optimization and you will have a very high conversion rate.
• Adservers open you up to all kinds of new advertising models. Make your own banners for clickbank products, Ebay programs, Amazon products or sell local ads using geo-location ad serving.
• Stop giving half your revenue to affiliate networks. This is a no brainer. Of course you have more responsibilities and risks, your return will be much higher.
• Educational. You will learn a lot about selling ads. It’s good to start early and get a leg up before your websites get popular.

If this sounds like something that would help you make more money, then go download it, install it and set your personal blog up with it. It’s simple to install. If you are using a shared host, I recommend making a subdomain called adserver.yourdomainname.com.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, I’m happy to help.