Eat My Business

I have just set up a new blog using the sexy Hybrid-News Theme  (powered by Wordpress Version 2.7.1) .

Once it was set up, the first thing that I wanted to do was to add a Google Adsense plugin that allowed me to share the advertising revenue between the publisher (me) and the authors.

There are a number of ‘Adsense rotating’ plugins available that can do this job.

I chose the Author Advertising plugin because it:

• Did what I wanted
• Did NOT ask me to give away my Adsense login credentials - which I don’t give out to anyone.
• Had a clear record on Secunia

The Author Advertising plugin is not just for Adsense. It allows the publisher/authors to share advertising revenue from a number of advertising networks (Yahoo, Amazon, Allposters etc). Because of this, the plugin configuration interface is a little bit generic - (with no mention of ‘Adsense Publisher ID’ anywhere).

No worries:

• [UPDATE: added this line following comment from Harley] See full documentation with examples of how to set it up with Adsense, Amazon,  and for creating your own banner exchange (plus much more) - http://www.harleyquine.com/wp-downloads/php-scripts/AuthorAdvertisingPluginManual.pdf
•  See a great tutorial on how a publisher can set up Adsense using the Author Advertiser plugin.

But Where does the Author Set Their Adsense ID on Author Advertising?

The one thing that I could not work out was how the author could insert their Adsense Publisher’s ID.

Eventually I spotted it. Its at the top of the left hand side column, just under the link to the Dashboard - under “Dashboard > My Advertising”.
Instruct your authors to insert their publisher id into the Your Advertising ID field.

Start displaying the ads on the the right-hand column of posts

I found that a square 250 x 250 ad unit fitted nicely into the Hybrid-News Theme’s right hand column, so I inserted the code into “Author Advertising Widget” slot
at: Wordpress Admin > Settings > Author Advertising Config

Then I went to Wordpress Admin > Appearance > Widgets

Where a new  Author Advertising 1 widget had appeared. I simply clicked add to get it up and running.

I have not yet placed any other units on the site. I will give an update once done.

Are publishers allowed to offer a share of Adsense revenue/impressions with authors?

• I’m not Google so I cannot give a definitive answer.
• I recommend checking the Google’s program policies and LOCALISED terms and conditions for yourself. (Select your country from the T&C’s drop down)
• This issue has been briefly discussed on the Author Advertising site.
• The guys at Digital Point say they have had a thorough look through the terms and conditions and cannot find anything to suggest that it’s not allowed.
• Google, itself, seems to promote the idea of revenue sharing on blogs as they say on their site : QUOTE: “Keep in mind that participation in AdSense requires you to have a website. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for a free blog at www.blogger.com. “

Any tips - feel free to comment?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 2:43 am and is filed under WordPress Plugins, WordPress customisation, Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.