WordPress.com recently announced a partnership with advertising giant Federated Media. Now that’s borne fruit for the hosted service’s users – you could soon be able to carry ads on your blog, and take a share of the revenue.
WordAds, announced today on the WordPress.com blog, won’t be open to everyone. Carrying premium display ads from known brands, the service will only be available by application. It’s open to publicly visible blogs with custom domains, and factors such as level of traffic and engagement, type of content, and language used will factor into whether a blog gets accepted.
There’s a simple application form for anyone interested in taking part. You simply select the blog you wish to submit, pick the topics it covers, and enter a PayPal address, indicating that this will be the payment method for any revenue you accrue.
With 50,000 new WordPress.com blogs coming online every day according to the company, it’s perhaps surprising that this is the first time we’ve seen revenue-sharing ads available as an option.
As Jon Burke writes on the WordPress.com blog:
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“We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.”
Ouch.
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