Considering putting Ads. Advice?

[kuroi_hitsuji]

It's time I fixed up a new layout, and the layout I have in mind might have a good blank space where some ads might fit...


But I don't know anything about online ads and how they work.
I was wondering if anyone who does use adspace in their webcomics to make money could give me some advice?

Some info on what I want and stuff:

1.) Ads wont require LOTS of payments. I know I'm a small site and I don't have that much traffic (On updates I get 70 to 100 visitors on average, and outside updates I can get like 20. Pageviews are about 500+ per update, but about 200 on non updates) so I need to be able to use an ad service/ advertise in a way that I only make a few small payments that are likely to at least pay themselves out each time, if not earn a little.

So based on this, a Pay-per-click thing is also probably not a good idea (unless I click it myself a jillion times. Does that work? lol.)

2.) Something that maybe I can choose a filter for ads? I don't wanna advertise like condoms or Viagra popping out unwillingly. :< I'd prefer one where I can use some kind of 'tags' type of ad if there is such a thing...like advertisers who fit the genre I'm in line with can place their ads up there.

3.) No popups (I don't want popups good lord. no one does.)

4.) Trackable and secure. I wanna know how much I'm earning of course...I think anyone would, and I think most adsites would make this clear and available, but just in case, I wanna make it known this is also important. If I wanna do this, I'd probably have to open a paypal or something, so actually it'll probably be the first time I'll use any 'online commerce'. I'd have to convince my parents that it's a secure business and I wont get hacked and cheated out of money or something....and that it can do me good.




Any advice? Or recommendations on places I should go to for this service? I'm a total noob at this and honestly business and money talk confuses me since pretty much the only economic awareness I have is of my bank account and my wallet... (I don't even use my credit card...It's more like an Emergency Money + Airport lounge card.)

[Alexis_Royce]

I use http://www.projectwonderful.com on my comic, and they work just fine. Easy to use, you can keep NSFW content off your site, no pop-ups or sound ads. They're legit, and used by a lot of the webcomic community.

[kuroi_hitsuji]

Oh, yeah I think I've seen those before...

Hmm...

What do they use for the transactions? Credit cards or bank accounts? Paypal? :0 *cant seem to find info of it on the site*

[eishiya]

They use Paypal. The money you earn stays in your PW account and you can use it to bid on ad space elsewhere, but if/when you want to withdraw it, you can do so through Paypal. You have to withdraw a minimum of $10, and any time you withdraw, Paypal takes $1 (even if you withdraw $200! so it's not so bad a deal and I recommend letting your money sit there until you really need it).

I also recommend PW. It doesn't bring in as much as some of the more traditional networks, but the ads are much better-targeted, you have fine-grained control (if you don't like a certain ad or a certain website, you can forbid them from advertising on your site), and you basically set it up and forget about it. The tracking is pretty good, it keeps track of every transaction (ads are billed every half an hour), every ad bid, bid cancellations, etc. It also keeps track of impressions (views) and clicks, but the impressions count seems to be exaggerated and meant more for potential advertisers than for you.

PayPal is as safe as things can be online, and I hear of people getting screwed over by PayPal's policies more often than by their security. If you're using PayPal just for PW stuff, you're not going to run afoul of those policies though.


Now, as for how PW conforms to your criteria:
1. You don't have to pay anything to use PW. I don't even think you need a Paypal account to start, I think that's only for when you want to withdraw the money to use outside of PW.
The ads are not pay-per-click, they pay for the time they spend advertising on your site.

2. You can opt to not allow ads for NSFW sites on your site, but other than that there isn't really filtering. You can also opt to approve every single advertiser by hand if that strikes your fancy (and at the start, you won't have many). However, PW screens all the advertisers, so you're not going to get condom ads or anything like that. Also, although there isn't a genre filter for advertisers, they tend to self-filter since it benefits them to bid mostly on similar sites. I've never had completely left-field ads on my PW box. Many of the ads were for webcomics, although most of them were of different genres. Not really a big issue, I think.

3. There are no popups, and you can choose whether you display "active content" (meaning flash-based ads) and animated ads. Although I've opted out of animated and active ads on my box, from what I've seen elsewhere, even those are usually pretty nice and not disruptive. PW doesn't seem to allow ads that expand to overlap content or start blabbing at you.

4. I covered that near the top of this post.


Some other notes: PW uses an auction system, the highest bidder pays his bid and is the one that's shown in the ad box. There's no rotation, so the ad will only change when it's outbid, runs out of funds, or gets cancelled/paused.
PW has a feature where advertisers can run campaigns that automatically search for suitable sites and bid on them. Although you might get some of your bids from your site's visitors (especially as your comic grows), most of your bids will come from campaigns, so make sure you keep your ad box included in campaigns! The downside is that the campaign bids tend to be more off-topic than individual direct bids. Fortunately, even campaigns tend to filter on keywords, so if you're not overzealous with the keywords on your ad box, you should be fine.
You can always forbid an ad that's currently showing, even if you choose not to screen every advertsier.