Among the various ways to make money online, you should know that one of them is to sell your ad spaces or virtual property online. There are many networks out there that offers services of “brokering” your virtual properties and one of my favorites is BuySellAds (BSA).
When I joined BSA, it took me a while before I got approved. Their selection process (manual) is probably one of the strictest amongst networks. Once you get approved though, you will most likely find it very rewarding as they excel in their services and one of the most reliable networks I am proud to be a business partner with. They are good at what they do and never cease to amaze me. As an example, I requested for a cashout (withdrawal) some 15 minutes ago, and I have just received a notification from PayPal that my money is now in my account. That’s got to be one of the fastest payments systems I have ever encountered.
BSA helps online advertisers and publishers buy and sell ads (banners). That’s their thing. By all means it is not a free service and it will cost you 25% of your advertising revenues. However, they will only charge you this fee once they sell your virtual property. This is actually pretty much industry average. You might say that this is expensive, but unless you can do it on your own, it is just a matter of setting up your prices and having a better exposure. BSA, will not suggest prices for you, except the minimum. That’s for you to decide.
Anyway, BSA recently added to their network, another type of ad which they call “Social Media Properties”. Essentially, this is just but “sponsored tweets” where advertisers can now use this ad type to relay their messages. You can love it or hate it, but since it was released (a month ago), it is selling like hotcakes. As with everything on BSA, you can automate the approval of your ads, but I strongly recommend you use the “manual” process, just to be on the safe side. Tweets are set to a minimum of $10 and if you have a good amount of followers (10K plus), there is a strong chance that you can use this ad type towards your benefit, should you choose to go this route. Just remember that these are sponsored ads and filling your stream with them could annoy your followers. FaceBook next?
Another fresh from the oven (3 days ago), is the announcement of BSA’s new ad type: RSS Feeds. Right now, I can’t tell you whether this ad type will be interesting or not. RSS is still pretty much alive and just similar to AdSense for Feeds, the idea is that advertisers can choose this medium to extend their reach. What do think? If you are a subscriber of an RSS feed, will it annoy you to see an ad within a feed? Maybe, maybe not, but for advertisers, this is probably a good way for them to use for brand awareness. We’ll see.
There you have it. BSA is a good choice in case you are looking for ways to monetize your ad spaces, tweets, and now, maybe your RSS feeds. You can not access the new ad types though unless you are an approved publisher first, so that’s that. Sadly, they don’t have an affiliate or referral program, otherwise.. LOL.
Dennis Edell@ Direct Sales Marketing
Ads within feeds are the same as ads within posts, as long as it doesn’t disrupt the read, I don’t really care.
I hear you Dennis. In a way you got a point there. Ads within a post and within a RSS is pretty much the same. After all, the feed comes from your post, right? Thanks for your input.
Dennis Edell@ Direct Sales Marketing
Not all ads in posts seem to come through the feeds squeaky clean though…code issues maybe?
Not sure Dennis, but it is still new, so I guess there might some bugs of some sorts. I am sure that they are on to it. We’ll see
Dana
So, the BSA business has been growth from the last time I used the service. It is a good news I think.
Hi Dana. Oh yeah, BSA has grown a lot the past year and this year they are releasing new ad types that are great for publishers. I guess this is their answer to some of the advertisers calls. BSA is one of my top performers and if there is any chance that you (or anyone interested) can use them, I think it is an excellent choice to sell ad spaces.
On a side note, there is one ad network that is also very young but very promising. I also use and recommend Puxee.com, in case you want to give them a try.
nazimwarriach
Hi DiTesco,
Do they offer other payment options except PayPal or not i.e. Western Union, Wire Transfer, Prepaid Cards…
Any how, Social Media Advertisement is a good choice for those who have follow-ship.
Hi Nazim. As far as I know they also offer other payment methods. Aside from PayPal, they also can pay you via check or wire transfer. Prepaid cards and WU are not available.
Great post.But my blog is not approved by BuySellAds.I’ll give a try again.
Hi there. I can understand that it could be frustrating to get approved by BSA. If you think that they have not been “fair” to you, you can always write to them directly and tell them why you think your blog should be approved. I did that for one of my other blog and they approved it, right after saying that it was not qualified. You can always try puxee.com and advertisespace.com. They have the same banner advertising program, but no RSS and Twitter (yet).
Tracy Ingram
DiTesco I knew about network ads for monetizing your blog but this information certainly helps out. Most of the things I’ve done in the past where affiliate commission and Adsense based. I’ll have to see if I can get approved!
Hi Tracy. Reason why I like these type of programs is that you do not rely on “selling” anything or hope for clicks. AdSense is a great program but requires certain circumstances to actually make a decent money out of it. Obviously I totally recommend AdSense, but having additional revenue streams is also important and if you have “what it takes”, the money is good.. π
John Glover
Good stuff. I’ve often wondered how else I could use my blogs RSS feed to my advantage and you have shed a ton of light on that.
I’m going to put these things into play and see how it goes.
Hi John. RSS feeds can be monetized in various ways. The most utilized is AdSense for feeds, but this new product from BSA can be interesting too. Go for it and see how it works for you. Never know, although I think that it is a good alternative is you already a good subscriber base and post regularly π
Suresh Khanal@SEOMMOTips
Hi DiTesco,
I am not using BSA yet. I applied for it some months ago when my SEO MMO Tips blog was fairly new. It was disapproved at that time and never tried again.
I hope they will approve now? Guess its time to apply again.
Regarding RSS ads, I found it is very less earning in Adsense, don’t know how it will perform with BSA.
Hi Suresh. BSA is strict and will likely approve a website that does not meet their minimum requirements. If you have submitted your site months ago, maybe you should give it another shot and keep trying until they do. That’s how I got it π As for the RSS, although similar to AdSense is different in that you expect clicks from AdSense and BSA is a flat rate you set up and get paid for it regardless. Just don’t know yet if advertisers will like to use it as a means of marketing their products or services. We’ll see. Thanks for stopping by.
Suresh Khanal@Bivori
Oh! then it appears it is more attractive to publishers and less for advertisers π But it might work if price is set a bit low.
Imran@Shariffdotorg
Hi DiTesco,
I have got rejected twice by BSA, though BSA is good and more advance compared to other direct ads providers. Working hard to increase traffic of my blog with good alexa ranking. will give a try some time later.
Well Ads in RSS is good but the income is too low I tried google adsense but ended up removing them all..
Hi Irran. That sucks! Well you know what they, the third try is the best π Yeah, work on your Alexa and maybe a month from now you can resubmit your blog again for approval. Good thing about them is that they don’t set limits. Meanwhile you can try either Puxee.com or advertisespace.com (if you are not already). Their requirements are less than BSA.
RSS feeds for AdSense is really not performing well for me either and I might just take it down. The difference with BSA is that it is a flat rate so you don’t have to worry about clicks. Thanks for stopping by
Satrap@ Make Money Online
I would have to agree that ads in feed are basically the same as ads in your posts. Like you said, the feed comes from your posts anyway.
I signed up with BSA a long time ago, but never got around to using them. It seems like they are growing fast and I think its the innovative thinking and business ideas (like the sponsored tweets idea) that helps them to stay in the game.
HI there. I agree with you, BSA has been growing fast and coming up with new forms of delivering ads. Hopefully they can come up with something innovative under the in-content and image areas soon. Could be interesting. Any particular reason why you have not used BSA yet? Thanks for stopping by
Jane | Blogging Tips
Hi DiTesco,
I was curious about BSA once, but then I lost interest in it and started selling adspace directly on my blog. To be honest, I was just busy to set it up. I will give it a try now. The RSS ads are promising and I am sure we can make them un-obstructive as far as possible not to annoy readers.
Thanks for the nice ideas.
Cheers,
Jane.
tonyknuckles @ 113tidbits
When I grow up and learn to kiss BSA’s butt I think they will approve my site. I’ve tried a few times to get indexed into their network and they shoot me down for having ads on my site…lol
Hypocrites!!
I know. That’s what happened to me. What I did one of of my other site was removed all the ads, and then re-applied for BSA. Once they approved it, I put them back up π
I will have to try and give this service a try now that I crossed the 10k follower mark a few days ago.
Congrats Justin. That is really cool! If you want a suggestion, I set up my price on the initial minimum and I got over 20 opps in three weeks. Not bad. I did set it up a notch but no luck. good luck.. hope you get many opps
Stewart
Very nice article DiTesco, thank you. We just implemented BSA on our entertainment network site… All original content… So I’m reading up as much as I can about SEO and advertising and found you! The only annoying thing is the empty spaces on our site; how long have you seen this go on for before someone bites? And can you have both ads you sell directly AND buysell on your site at the same time? Thanks again for your article!
Hi Stewart. I really don’t remember how long it took for “advertisers” to take the first bite. I do know that it happened fairly quickly once I reduced the price slightly. Started it that way and then gradually increased the spots. Another thing that I did was not to show more than one available spot. I place BSA to display together with other ads to make potential advertisers believe that that was the only spot available. When tat was sold, I added a new ad zone. As for showing BSA ads with other ads at the same time, I don’t see any problem, provided they do not “occupy” the same space π Good luck!
BTW, just checked your site. Clicked on the 468X60 advertise here. Is this right? You have 5/5 available spaces for $50 each. You do know that if I purchased that space that it will rotate if someone else purchased that space. If the whole slots are sold, that means that my ad will only be served 25% of the time. You might want to reconsider that price and the total available spaces. Just a friendly suggestion π
Hesham
Nice write up buddy!
I haven’t yet being on RSS advertisement, I think my blog is not ready for that yet!
But I love the sponsored tweets, and thanks for the advice you added earlier into my blog post!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Ehmad
I have approved buysellads for my blog
After create a ad space by mistake click on de activated website π
What can i do now??
Hi. Sorry about that. Guess you will just to contact their support and tell them what happened. They have a history of your site, so if it was approved and you just accidentally deactivated it, you should be OK. good luck
Ehmad
DiTesco thanks for your suggestion