Many website publishers are tired of these ad networks involved in fraudulent reversals of earnings, fraudulent account terminations, and unlawful practices against their own users. This digital slaughterhouse has been running for years. As we know, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other websites rely on subscription services to make money beyond ads. This form of income is stable, and you don’t need advertisers. There are many ways to allow advertisers to directly advertise on your website, you can set up a paywall for your website where your advertisers can sign up for an account. That enable advertisers to directly support you via paid memberships, and that’s the experiment what I’m currently doing.
Using the “Paid Memberships Pro” WordPress Plugin
This plugin enables you to create membership levels. If you had a dedicated install of WordPress; and you used it to enable advertisers to post ads; you may need to implement subscriptions to cover costs of hosting ads yourself. All you have to do just set up memberships for your advertisers. If you have the highest plan; you can set the price to the highest point. For example: Ultra $200.00 monthly. This is necessary for your website to stay at float. Advertisers as members is one solution, but you have to keep creating new content on your website.
This is an only format what you can use to get advertisers to support your website without ad networks.
If you wanted to implement this feature, follow these steps:
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Create A Subdomain For Your Website For Your Ads To Be Hosted
Go to your hosting control panel, and create a new subdomain, or if you were using Google App Engine; you need to create a bucket, and give it a subdomain for your hosted ads. Give the subdomain a name “ads”, and give your folder a name for your ads subdomain. This is necessary for your ads to be hosted there. Why this is necessary because, you needed a dedicated install of WordPress to run. This is common for some users who always host their own ads!
Optionally, create folders for dedicated media for your ads posted by advertisers, but don’t create any files.
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Install WordPress
Give your database a name for your new WordPress site. A database user must be created,–so your website can work properly. Go to wordpress.org to download their software. If you use WPEngine; check with their hosting features to find out if they have this feature available for you to create multiple instances.
As you install WordPress within your ads subdomain, give your website a name such as: “Sitename Ads”. Give it a brief description to describe your website.
After installing; do an initial setup of your site. Be sure to install the following plugins:
- Disable Blogging – This plugin disables the common blogging feature such as posts, and RSS feeds,–and comments. This is useful to create a static websites. That will also enable you to only create pages that are informational.
- WPAdverts – This plugin enables you to allow users to post ads as members on your website. This is useful if you wanted to have a “members only” ad submissions. This is useful to lock down your classifieds section, but the public can see the ad listings.
- Contact Form 7 – This form is needed to enable advertisers to send special instructions to you.
- Paid Memberships Pro – This is the plugin what you need to install to enable memberships. If you chosen to use stripe to receive membership payments; you can easily pay for your hosting costs. This is useful if you wanted to support other countries. This is a free plugin, but most of the other plugins are paid plugins, and it requires you to have an account by a developer.
- Contact Form 7 PayPal & Stripe Extension – This is necessary to enable non-members to pay for an ad placement on your website.
- Contact Form 7 Honeypot – Keeps bots from abusing your form.
After you installed these plugins, configure them.
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Activate Disable Blogging
You need to disable blogging on your website in order to make it a static website. This is a simple plugin. Just activate it, and configure it. Once blogging is disabled; your site is a static site.
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Turn On Paid Memberships Pro
Activate the plugin, and choose a payment gateway. I use Stripe because, you can get your payments on a fly,–almost cutting off the middleman off your earnings, but they charge a small fee per transaction. Unlike PayPal, people stay on your website, and they can get instant access to their account after checkout. COOL isn’t it? The drawback is; you need a valid SSL certificate installed on your website. Let’s Encrypt is the known SSL provider who care about online security. You can request your host to install them for you.
With Stripe; you can use API keys to integrate your website, and you use webhooks to fully integrate stripe with your website! No need to do all of the manual coding. And unlike PayPal, you can enable people to subscribe to your advertising service without a worry. I heard a news about people who criticized PayPal for limiting their accounts, or freezing them without a cause. Years ago I stumbled on this website, paypal-sucks.com/, a website written by an unhappy PayPal customer. And that’s when Stripe came to the rescue. Freedom of speech, and criticism developed by users rely on this service to keep their website like this going. However, I still use PayPal for paying my hosting bills, and receiving funds,–if I can support a payment via this gateway.
i chosen to name my membership plans that are fun and unique, but I’m still experimenting on which format should I take.
Once your plans are set, test, and confirm if your integration is working, then switch it to live to receive real payments.
Bye ad networks!
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Activate Contact Form 7 and 2 extensions
This is the trick to receive instructions from advertisers to post ads for them. While non-members can pay for placing ads.
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Turn On WPAdverts
Just activate it, and set the “add” page for members.
If You Use Advert
Advert by norths.co is a free alternative to OIO Publisher, it works on your multisite network, but it hasn’t been updated for a long while. Maybe this developer hasn’t received enough donations to keep the development of this plugin active. But you can still use this plugin, but you have to experiment with it to make it work.
When using this plugin, you can use third party ad code, or have advertisers post their own ads directly on your website. This is common for some users who have advertisers supporting their website,–their way.
You can have it your way! Just like the first method of getting advertisers.
This Plugin universally supports PayPal, a popular payment gateway what we use everyday. The payment gateway is officially supported, but you can add other custom gateways to it. Advert takes out the middleman out of your blogging business, and you can get custom ads with your way.
If You rely on PayPal Sell Link Ads
These ads are placed on a sidebar of your website, and this is a simple way to enable advertisers to subscribe to your service by posting sponsored links, you can also make money your way! This plugin also requires a PayPal account to work, and you have to configure it correctly,–in order for this plugin to work.
Links do expire, but they’re easy to renew, or replace. And unlike ad networks, you can control your ads. This is useful to keep spammers out of your website.
If you use Other Means Of Hosting Your Own Ads
You may need to check with your host to find out if you can find other software to run your own ads, or use any of the proprietary software available for your website. Alternatively, you can use a reputable ad host who will host your ads for you.
If you’re still not sure to choose how to advertise on your website, consider setting up a paywall, or implement a donation button.