Hi all, I'm hoping this forum is not JUST for PPC advertising on the web I have written a Windows desktop application and instead of selling it, I'm thinking of giving it away. However, I was hoping that there would be a way for me to make a small amount of cash from it and so was thinking that an embedded advertisement 'section' might be a good idea. I know that different apps over time have come and gone with this concept, but anyway... does anyone know off the top of their head any advertising networks that allow you to embed advertisements into an application? Any links, leads, suggestions or what-have-you would be appreciated...
Meaby you would try to put your own adversiting in each of downloaded software? Which will be automatic changing when you wish that
Hi Ritu: Thanks for replying. I'm actually trying to avoid that as that would mean that I need to find, bill and overall 'manage' advertisers. If I could find a network that will allow me to embed ads, I wouldn't have to worry about any of that To be perfectly honest, I would almost rather just give the program away than try and do all of that managing stuff myself!
great idea, but could you please kindly tell us what's your desktop applications is about?.. maybe you should see a network advertiser that is based on banner..because banner could easily adapted to a desktop apps..
I'm not sure how effective this would be. Maybe you should give the application a trial period and then after ask for a subscription fee?
Hm, i would like to do this as well. Adding a few links to my applicarions that are paid. I made a chat for my school that supports: - well... chatting.. - userlist - Message Of The Day - "slash"commando's like /clear / savelog etc - when a user sign on or off it will play a sound. - and some other minor features I'm planning to sell the sourcecode but i'm guessing adding links would be better. screenshot:
Thanks for the thought, checksum. I guess part of me just doesn't want to have to go down the licensing route, to be honest That is to say, I don't want to have to worry about signing up with some licensing firm and dealing with libraries and so on (knowing full well that I wouldn't want to implement it myself). There were (possibly still are) some other companies that did this with their products (Eudora is one that I can think of) but I assumed they managed their own advertising...
I'd also like to know about this. I made a few small apps in the past that were used in schools and universities, with a one of payment by the school. I can't be arsed to go down the shareware route, and I think my users would prefer a full product with ads, rather than a time limit or demo option. And I'd like an endless stream of income rather than a one off payment.
Hi all: just an update. I've been contacting various companies in the last few days and finally got a (very quick) reply from a (seemingly) upstart ad company. Until I know for sure what the deal is going to be I don't particularly want to broadcast all of the details but for those of you who wanted to know how it all went, here's what I'm thinking... PM me your email addresses. If this goes through, I can send you the details. If it doesn't go through, well we can at least discuss various other approaches. While I was waiting to hear back, I registered a domain that is related to this kind of 'operation' so if things fall through, I'm going to bite the bullet and set it up myself. Things will be slow to begin with but if you're interested in helping me get it off the ground (later rather than sooner if the current talks end up positively) then we can discuss that off-forum, too.
Good luck, but I still think the trial/donation route is the best way to go for a fuel economy calculator. How long is someone going to keep a program like that on their computer if it's serving advertising? Not very long.
checksum: to be honest, I don't really know If it's only showing a single ad in the application (no rotation) I would hope they continue to use it. Whilever they're adding more data to the program it continues to become more accurate (in theory!) plus there are features such as "how much have I saved?", graphing and "if 'Premium' fuel is $1.00/L, knowing the efficiency of each grade for each vehicle, what is the breakeven point for each of the other types of fuel?". That is to say, functionality that will continue to be useful in the future. Donationware may work, but I think it would be hard for me to find a decent 'timeframe' for a trial: they would need to see that it is useful before registering and by that time, the only functionality they're paying for is the 'bonus features'. Normally I would agree with you but when each user is going to need such a different time span, I think I'll just screw it up, no matter what timeframe I pick I'm still considering the donation path... I'm just playing through all of my options right now.