***Update*** – I’m now using BuySellAds as my advertising network which is nearly the same thing as Beacon.
Some very exciting news has just been announced! BeaconAds, the premier advertising network for faith-based websites, blogs, and more has just been acquired by 8BIT, one of the places where I work!
If you’re not familiar with BeaconAds it’s really quite simple: It’s a fully-automated system for bloggers to sell advertising on their blogs. You can quickly sign up and start selling ads within a few minutes of time.
We do have some internal requirements for website traffic and site size (to keep the value of the pool as high as possible) but if you’re hitting 250 visits per day you’re probably pretty safe and can join immediately.
But the most exciting thing about this acquisition is that I know what it takes to be successful as a blogger, especially as it relates to monetizing a blog well and strategically. And, you can guarantee that I’ll be posting some specific strategies for leveraging BeaconAds to it’s utmost in the days to come!
So, feel free to sign-up for BeaconAds and start working through some of the Blog Post Series I’ve already laid out!
Let me know if you have any thoughts, comments, and/or suggestions! Would love to hear it! Beacon (and myself) are here to serve you!
Congrats! Exciting stuff!
thanks adam! we’re pretty stoked!
Excited with y’all at 8BIT
thanks ben. it’s an exciting time to be with this team.
Congratulations! I thought at one point that you’d recommended OIO Publisher? Is this a similar service? (I don’t mean to put you on the spot with that question – just confused.)
Oh, never mind, dumb question from a person who doesn’t understand adjectives. I read “faith-based websites, blogs…” as “faith-based websites, and then blogs of all sorts,” because I read too fast and type before thinking. It’s been the key to my online success.
i did, for those that want to keep 100% of their earnings. still a good service.
the point of recommending many different services is that I want to give people options. i try to stay as far away from dogmatism on implementation of people’s blogs as possible!
i believe in the freedom of choice…… and good research to boot!
Cool. I’ve been with Beacon ads for a month now (since the migration of my blog from wordpress.com to self-hosted) but I haven’t really had any success. I’m sure that with the new acquisition and your insights, that will soon change.
sweet! thanks so much for being a part of it! what do you think is “not working” with your efforts right now?
Since the blog recently migrated, I haven’t yet regained the traffic I was generating at the wordpress.com. Plus, the old one is still showing first in Google (even though all the posts have been deleted. Also, I’m not yet listed under the children’s ministry channel, which means good advertisers probably aren’t seeing me yet.
If you have any greater insight into why I might not be getting much interest, please share, but that’s what I can figure.
hmm. you didn’t use their service to redirect traffic, etc?
email me here about your issues: john@beaconads.com
i’ll look into getting you in the children’s channel.
Wow, that’s sweet. Two of my favorite blogging entities have joined into one!
Sigh… 250 visits a day… someday….
Hi Brian,
I remember feeling like you… 250 visitors per day seemed like a dream coming through… Don’t worry… Do the home work. You will get more than you expect…
Thanks for the encouragement, Yohan. I’m mostly just impatient.
you’ll get there…! these are some internal guidelines but we accept lower trafficked blogs if they serve good niches.
We went with an extremely targeted niche, which means initially less traffic. I just need to be patient and produce great content, I guess.
Embarrassing.. just over 20 unique visitors per day on average.
not embarrassing.. it’s where you started! only up from here!
Brian,
I checked out your blog because I was curious about your niche. I’m thinking I can learn a lot from it, so I added to my Google reader. If you keep producing great content, you’ve just earned yourself a regular reader.
awesome!
I love Beacon Ads – I use them on my blog.
And I am excited for what y’all do with it!
Me too…
thanks blane!
Very exciting news! I submitted my site. I’m a bit low on visits, but am gaining ground daily. My visits are up 75% from last month.
Well, I got rejected. They didn’t really say why, just a generic “It could be one of the following seven reasons.” My guess is that my impressions are not high enough. I’m getting quite close to 250 visits per day, but I’m only getting 2.3 pages per visit, which comes to about 17,000 pageviews.
The rejection email said they want 50,000 impressions. Yikes. Are impressions the same as pageviews? If so, how about a blog post on increasing page/visit?
I will reapply when my total pageviews are higher.
what is your total traffic right now? and your growth? let’s talk and perhaps I can get you in. no guarantees. we are trying to grow right now, so we need as much publicity as possible.
Congratulations! That is really awesome to hear!
I have noticed Beacon Ads on several high profile websites. Nice to see you and 8-bit are going to take the reigns and make it even better!
that’s our goal!
Pretty sweet man. I joined about a month ago.
nice! and how has it worked for you so far?
This is great news! Excited to know you guys will be the ones working behind the scenes on it.
thanks ben!
Ahem… Any idea how this will affect the existing customers of Beacon Ads…
it’ll only get better!
I love me some Beacon Ads as well. Just sold my first recently. Pretty sweet.
awesome! congrats! doesn’t that feel awesome?
Glad to hear a company I loved is now run by guys I love.
Congrats team!
aw, that’s awesome!
I just took Google ads off my blog the other day (less than a week ago) because I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting enough of a return for the amount of space they took up. People rarely clicked on them, and they just made my blog ugly. With this news about Beacon Ads, I’m already reconsidering putting ads back on, using the beautiful slots of Beacon Ads.
chris, would love for you to join us!
I love Beacon Ads! I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is so easy to use.
As you develop this platform, I’d love to you offer support for:
- Sponsored posts
- RSS feed ads
- In-post, text or graphic ads
Thanks, John. And congratulations.
I was just thinking the same thing about RSS feed ads as well. Sponsored posts would be a great addition. Side note: Michael, thanks for being willing to not only engage on your own blog but come and engage on others as well. You’re living what you teach, and that’s fantastic.
he is legendary on those things!
michael,
we’re definitely looking into these things. we might ping you for beta testing?
I would be happy to do that. One other request: I’d love to be able to upload an affiliate add in a space I can’t sell. Thanks.
Beacon Ads are awesome, but I never qualified. Hopefully, I can get my visitors up and qualify. So right now, I have started to give away 2 free ads away on my site every month to my commenters. I choose them randomly for random.org and it has worked great!
what is your visitor count right now?
This is good news! I do have a question, though. I’m at Blogger, and from the stat counters I have (Extreme, Sitemeter, and Google), none match. Extreme will give me stats for unique and reloads, the other two are just unique. Even doing the math, they don’t match. Is there something I am not doing, or that I am doing to cause this discrepancy?
i’d just use google and forget the rest to be honest. and you need to get on wordpress!
Ok. Submitted my site and was approved. Now in the instructions it says to install some code after the tag. Using Standard theme, but I have went so far as to copy and paste each category in the editor to word so I could search for the body tag and it’s not there. Where am I supposed to put this code?
Lost, as usual
.
no, you should put it in the header file. let me know if you get it.
Seems to be working…..kind of
. Have 2 zones, but only one is showing and it’s sitting on top of the search bar. Tried to it…didn’t work.
Thanks for the help!!
sure thing toby!
awesome news John, congrats!
thanks bryan!
Nice… and congrats!!
thanks dustin! we’re excited!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told my husband, “Tentblogger is a genius.” Brilliant
ah. thanks lacey! i’ve just got my head down and trying to make a difference, that’s all!
Congrats!
thanks daniel!
dude – that’s crazy! well done.
i got approved with beaconads last year, but still haven’t set it up.
this is another reminder to do so!
get on it! ;0
Congratulations to you and your team!
thanks dewitt! it’s a big step for us as a business!
Think it is ever possible to get that kind of traffic on a personal blog?
of course! there are a few examples of that in beacon!
Awesome! I’m not quite there yet but hopefully if i keep trying i will get there eventually.
one day… one day.