I've never offered or managed paid/sponsored banners or links on my sites before, but I've started to get some requests, and I don't want to ignore them. Of course, I'm afraid of the penalties that come from it (unless it's nofollow), and I don't want to make it a chore to manually check a calendar to see when a term is up, and pull the link off my site if the customer doesn't renew. Is there a service that would be right for me in this case? For instance, a 3rd party applet that I can install in my sidebar, where someone can purchase a spot, and the applet manages the payment collection and closes registration when the term is up? (doesn't Adbrite do this?)
thanks! Can you use Adbrite to "reserve" a spot on a certain area of your site, or does it simply rotate through all advertisers or random ones?
The ads are static. So you setup an ad zone for each banner you want to place. (i.e. if you want a grid of 4 banners in 2x2 formation, you would create 4 ad zones). Adbrite will give you the code to put into your site and they manage the rest. If nobody hasn't bought the space, it shows a nice "Your Ad Here" banner with links to the buy page to make it easy. Advertisers can buy the spot for 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month at a time, and they get that spot for the entire duration (which is why you create 4-6 zones side by side usually).