I just quit my job @ Microsoft to help you make money from your website's empty space

Hello everyone! My name is David Parkinson, and I just quit my full-time job at Microsoft to be an
entrepreneur and work full-time on emptyspaceads a new ad format that lets you turn your website's empty space into cash.



The idea with emptyspaceads is that your site's empty space isn't providing you any value beyond simple aesthetics. Firstly, the ads only appear when when your user's mouse is in the empty space of your site, and they only appear within your site's empty space. So for some users, they'll never see the ads.

I just launched officially a couple week ago, so I'm really looking for honestly brutal feedback that helps me improve this product to make you folks happy. company blog posts) tend to get ignored by users because they learn to ignore standard ad formats and placements. Finally, you can have your cake and eat it too by letting you keep all of your existing ad units, as well as website design. Oh and our first users are reporting nearly 10X the CTR of AdSense.

You can create your own TextAds, ImageAds, or even HTMLAds. These allow you to drive users to content on your website or blog that you monetize well (a CafePress store for example), or behavior you'd like to encourage (like more RSS subscribers). (See our blog for an example how we use emptyspaceads to get more RSS subscribers to our blog by embedding the feedburner chicklet). Or our Sample TextAd, ImageAd, or NetworkAd... or check out our demo.

I know this product isn't perfect, but I want to improve it, and I'd love your help in letting me know what it is you'd like to see from us. I want to make it as useful as possible to publishers like you.

 

two question:
1 # can i use it with Adsense?
2 # Can I use it in proxy site, especially in proxy page?

 

To (1) I'd say no as of right now. Doing creative things with your AdSense units is currently against the AdSense TOS but obviously we'd LOVE to be able to work with them eventually... we just need more publishers to sway Google.

And to (2)... Yes absolutely! We have (or used to have) a proxy operator running our ads.

 

Is there any referal program? I found nothing in your site about it

 

That sounds pretty interesting. I will wait for some more feedback and maybe join this program.
Don't forget to say hello to Bill, tell him he still owe me $10 and I accept PayPal

 

We don't have a referral or affiliate program for folks you refer to emptyspaceads.... but I've seen several requests for it now... and it's something that we'd be looking to add soon. We can however promote your product or blog on our front page of our website and/or blog (if you run the ads) as a sign of good will until we get the referral program up.

Even though we don't have a referral program, ShoppingAds still does. So if you're running emptyspaceads (with shoppingads inside them) and a user signs up for ShoppingAds by clicking your ad... you get a 5% of what they make for the first 6 months (I'm pretty sure this is right).

One important call out is that 50% of the time we request the ads from ShoppingAds with our own publisher ID. This means that if the user clicks and signs up for ShoppingAds this % of time... we'd get credit for the referral to ShoppingAds, not you.

 

does it accept warez sites?
does it pay via paypal?

 

There are currently no restrictions on what types of you can use emptyspaceads on.

As far as payment... it's best explained with a quick jog over to our how do I get paid section.

Keep the questions coming!

 

Repped you for the reason :: You Quit the microsoft job

 

Ok I am absolutely exhausted but took the time to sign up. I will work with it tomorrow night and see how it goes.
It's worth a try as it is different and we need something different.
You need to hook up with someone like CJ or Chitika however they may just "borrow" your idea.

Is it just RON? I mean if I advertise do I select a specific site?
Sorry too lazy and tired to read right now.

Gl, and nice idea!

 

Good call on CJ and Chikita... those are networks I've heard desired from other publishers.

With respect to RON... I think you're talking about run of the network ads if I'm right. We're a little different in that we allow you to create your own ads (to promote your blog, your products, your services, or anyone else's)... in addition to serving ads from ad networks. We want to work with all ad networks to get their ads appearing in your website's empty space. Today that list is admittedly very short (just ShoppingAds). However, we want to expand this list based on the valuable feedback that you and other publishers provide.

 

I meant if I were to sign up with shopping ads as an advertiser are the ads RON or can I specify the sites my ads appear on etc.
I jsut went to shopping ads and didn't see a place to sign up as an advertiser. Where are the advetisers signing up from?

Thanks
John

 

Not a bad idea. Good luck with this.

 

Does it work fine on blogger?

 

We currently don't allow advertisers to buy ads... yet. Rather we work with ad networks to deliver their ad inventory in our format. Thus we don't have explicit relationships with advertisers yet.

 

Absolutely! I think examples work better than me talking about it. Check out this blogspot (Blogger) blog that is running emptyspaceads and "loves it".

 

Hey I thought about things a bit.... and I was thinking of the following affiliate program. Say you sign up someone to serve emptyspaceads. We could offer you a % of the ad impressions they serve. Here's how it works.

(1) You sign up as an affiliate. You also sign up with ShoppingAds.
(2) You refer people to the site.
(3) For each person you refer that runs ShoppingAds within their site's empty space... we would request the ad from ShoppingAds a certain % of the time with YOUR publisher ID. This means YOU would get credit for the click/impression/purchase.
(4) Right now we have a 50/50 revenue split with the publisher... I would want to make sure the publisher always gets 50% and that the affiliate % takes away from our % take.

Does this make sense? If so, I'm curious about:
(1) What should the % be?
(2) What time length should the % override be?

Thanks very much in advance!

 

Hats off to you. Fantastic idea.

 

Sounds interesting.

Anyone who has used this new advertising medium please feel free to supply any feedback to the board