Ask HN: What are the best ad services for low traffic sites?

9 points by apotheon 16y ago ↗ HN

I'd like to know some of the options for ad services -- specifically, those that provide ads so I can generate a little revenue from a Website (preferably at least enough to pay for the hosting). I'm looking for things in the same vein as Google AdSense. What are the options? What do the hackers who frequent Hacker News use?

Note that:

1. Services that don't work until some advertiser specifically picks out a given site don't work so well for fairly low-traffic sites, because nobody will ever want to spend money to advertise there.

2. I'm not interested in the kinds of ad services that essentially require me to either write ad copy as site content or to post ad copy written by someone else on the site and pass it off as my own words.

2 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 12.2 ms ] thread

briancary 16y ago ↗

I think you're looking for something like OpenX Community Hosted. http://www.openx.org/ad-server

volomike 16y ago ↗

Consider also posting this on WickedFire forums.

But off the top of my head, consider VideoEgg.com because the owner of Twitpic.com (on the Mixergy.com website's interview with that owner) said that he didn't start earning serious ad revenue until he switched to VideoEgg.

And then there's also CPM banners with ValueClick Media.

You'll want to Google the terms CPM, PPC, and CPA in regards to affiliate marketing.

But in general, you should probably try the shotgun approach. Sign up with several highly recommended ones, use a PHP script to do split-testing with them, and see which ones give you the highest returns for your particular niche. There might also be an open source split tester you can download and try out, or just build one yourself.