For many bloggers, advertising is a vital part of their blog, and in this post, we’ve got nine of the best and easiest ways to manage your advertising in WordPress. First, we’ll look at a couple of plugins then we’re going to move on to the more adventurous ways of showing adverts in WordPress.

1. Smart ads

The first plugin we’re going to look at is called Smart Ads.

The plugin has a great options page which allows you to automatically insert ads into posts, excluding posts with a certain word count, posts in a certain category or the like. The plugin is really easy to use and a great way of adding ads into your posts.

 

2. Author advertising

The second plugin is called Author Advertising. It’s another great plugin that allows you share your advertising revenue between all the authors on your blog. Again, an extensive options page lets you set things such as the percentage each author gets, who can change the advertising settings etc etc. A great plugin for those with multi-author sites and are looking to share revenue with said authors.

 

3. WhyDoWork Adsense

The WhyDoWork Adsense plugin allows you to really easily add any advertising code into your theme. Nothing really special there. Look a little closer and you’ll see some really advanced features such as inserting ads in the middle of posts automatically. Features such as this make the WhyDoWork Adsense plugin great for those looking to pop ads into their posts without the hassle.

Just like the other plugins, WhyDoWork has an extensive options page with room for ten different ads. You can also set where these ads appear – on certain pages, pages older than x days, a ton of options.

 

4. WP125

The final plugin and perhaps the most popular with bloggers is the WP125 plugin. As the name suggests, it’s designed for the popular 125×125 ad format, and in my opinion, there is no better plugin for managing 125×125 ads. Like all of the other plugins, it comes with a great options page and some great settings and statistics, for example, you can set an ad to run for a certain period and be notified by email when that period is about to run out. You can track clicks, the name of the ad that is displayed in empty slots, that kind of thing. For those of you looking to use 125×125 ads, look no further.

 

5. Widgets

Widgets are really great, not just for displaying text, but they’re also brilliant displaying ads. Create yourself a widgetised area and you can very easily now add in adverts. To create a widgetised area you’ll need the following code in your functions.php file:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
'name' => 'Advertising Area 1',
'before_widget' => '',
        'after_widget' => '',
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3>',
    ));

You’ve now added a widget ready area, to the theme, now to display it – add the following code where you want the ad to appear:

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Advertising Area 1') ) : ?>
<h3>Ad area 1</h3>
<p>This is your Adveriting Area 1.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

And with that, upload your ad and under ‘Appearance’, click ‘Widgets’, drop the ‘Text’ widget into Advertising Area 1 box and type out the HTML code for the ad.

 

6. Using shortcodes

I really love WordPress’ shortcodes – they allow you to add preset content into your posts with the [shortcode] format. Content you can add – crucially – includes adverts. The first thing you need to do is open up your functions.php file and add the following:

function advertising() {
    return '<a href="http://ad-link.com"><img src="/img-url/" alt="Advert" /></a>';
}
add_shortcode('ad', 'advertising');

What you’ve done there is create a shortcode which you can now use in posts (to display your advert) with [ad].

 

7. Within RSS feed

Another place you can place your ads is within your RSS feed, and to do so, you’ll again need to open up your functions.php file and add the following:

function insertFootNote($content) {
        if(!is_feed() && !is_home()) {
                $content.= "<a href="http://ad-link.com"><img src="/img-url/" alt="Advert" /></a>";

        }
        return $content;
}
add_filter ('the_content', 'insertFootNote');

 

8. Manually

Of course, whilst we’ve looked at plugins, shortcodes, widgets and the like, the one thing and perhaps the most obvious way to display your ads in WordPress is manually! For example, say you wanted to add and advert to your sidebar, open up the sidebar.php file and add the following code:

<a href="http://ad-link.com"><img src="/img-url/" alt="Advert" /></a>

And with that, you’ve added an advert. The simple ones are the best!

 

9. With BuySellAds

The final way to manage your ads we’re going to look at is with BuySellAds, a great advertising service. Once you’ve signed up, BuySellAds will display your blog on their site and you’ll display some code on your site. Advertisers then come along, buy an ad and it automatically gets displayed, minus ButSellAds’ cut. There’s even a plugin you can use!

Tags: advertising, tutorial, Tutorials, wordpress

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