So you have an awesome social network developed with love & care using the spectacular EasySocial extension from the StackIdeas team ? Congratulations ! Now its time to take the network to the next level & start earning some money from it.
Some of the great things about Social Networks are that they are extremely engaging & users spend a huge amount of their time online on one or the other Social network. In addition if you have managed to find a specific niche either in terms of 'Localness' or a specific interest group, your network is all the more valuable for Advertisers. Advertising on the Internet is way better in terms of tracking than conventional Ads on TV & Newspapers & such but still many a times it can be like throwing straws in the wind.
As advertisers seek to gain more & more ROI from their advertising investments, they are getting more picky about who they want to reach out to. And they are willing to spend much more on targeted advertising than on 'Straw in the wind Ads' since the chances of conversions are much higher. With your Social network for a specific niche, you can position yourself strategically in this very lucrative space.
Your Value Proposition
The first thing you need to pitch to the advertiser is what you can offer them. Prepare your data well. Daily number of Visitors, Time spent on site, Visitor Demographic & Geolocation Data, Past success stories get it all together & present a nice Advertising Page on your site. Tell the Advertisor what you can do for them.
Setup the Infrastructure
Hoepfully you will have picked SocialAds as your platform of choice for delivering Ads on your site ;). With a powerful Ad server that can deliver Ads on the same site as well as Remote Ads on other sites you control as well Ads via Email; SocialAds provides you with the maximum advertising real estate to maximise your revenues. Be strategic & create Ad positions that look nice & jell well with your site. Don't go overboard & maintain some exclusivity.
Make sure you use the flexibility of SocialAds in terms of setting up Zones & showing Ads in any Module position. Also setup Email Ads & Ads on other partner sites if you can. The more space & reach you can offer, the more you will sell !
Special Ad Positions for EasySocial
Where you place your Ads has a huge impact on how much attention they will recieve. The better placed positions, the more success your advertisors will get which obviously means more buisiness for you in the long term. Its critical that when you plan your Ad positions you do so tastefully & also consider how the Ads would look in a responsive layout which most are nowadays.
EasySocial comes with a host of Module positions within its own layouts. Some of these make for really excellent positions to show Ads. Detailed documentaiton on EasySocial Module positions is available on the StackIdeas website here.
You can also discover module positions on any component specific page by appending '?tmpl=component&tp=1' to your url string. Configure your Zones in the best sizes that fit. The Main area can take text or media ads which have larger widths.. while the Side bar can have facebook style Text & Media Ads.
Instream Ads for EasySocial
This can be easily achived without need for any special extra code. You can simply use the module position that is called betweeen stream iteams to show a 'InStream Ads' Zone to show Ads there. All the SocialAds features like targeting, layouts etc will work just as well there as well ! The screenshot below demonstrates how the EasySocial Page has been used to show various kinds of Ads.
Demographic Targeting with EasySocial Fields
Offering targeting options to your advertisors to better segment their Ad audience adds immense value. Setup Social Targeting for EasySocial and offer your advertisors the choice for reaching out to specific parts of your site audience. Make sure you are selective in mapping only fields that are extremely relevant to advertisors as targeting fields. Too many fields can put people off.
If you want even more, you have the option of using the Profile Types Targeting Plugin thats available for EasySocial. The choice of targeting means a lot to the advertisor. That way he can control his advertising Budget better & he is sure to respect you for allowing that.
You can also switch on GeoTargeting & Contextual targeting in addition to add even more value !
Start Earning before you sell your own Ads
SocialAds supports Affiliate Ad code which includes Google AdSense. So now you dont have to wait for your own Advertisers to come & buy Ads on your site. While you wait for them, you can start showing Google Ads or any other Ad Network Ads. These are always shown on a lower priority than your own ads which obviously earn you more money.
We also recommend you setup some Alternate Ads for each Zone on your site so that you have something showing till you get real Ads. These can be Public service Ads or Ads of your own site or products. Once you get paying ads, these are automatically not shown.
Setting these up makes sure your Social Network is alive with Ads. This also helps attract the 'real' advertisors.
Reports, Automated Emails & much more !
SocialAds has extensive reports for Advertisors as well as Admins with awesome visualisations & Dashboards. Plus you can also setup automated weekly reporting emails to report Ad performance to your advertisors !
A Super easy Ad Designer & fast checkout process means your advertisors get the best experience. In fact our Ad Preview looks so nice that Advertisors just want to Advertise !
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Why Wait ? Get it now !
SocialAds is one of the most powerful advertising systems available for Joomla & comes with a ton of features. We suggest you go through our documentation & explore the demo to know more. The best way to explore is to get a subscription. We are offering a extended 30 Day money back policy on SocialAds. So you can buy & try out SocialAds easily !