WP Text Ads Website I just stumbled across a slick looking plugin (WP 2.0.x or higher) by Alex Choo which allows WordPress bloggers to sell text link adverts directly on their blog and cut out the middle man. Since I’ve been using a combination of Text Link Ads and a manual in house system for some of my blogs, this plugin definitely struck my fancy.

WP Text Ads is a WordPress plugin that lets you sell text link ads directly to advertisers, so you get paid instantly and pay no commissions.

Contrast that to existing solutions where the middle men earn their commissions immediately, pay you weeks later and give you little freedom to decide how to style, position and price the ads.

The plugin comes in two flavors: free and paid ($127/license). Although the free version of the plugin has all the same features as the paid version, going with the free version means that you’ll be limited to two ads, which may be perfectly fine for the hobby blogger.

The benefits of using this plugin should be obvious — higher profit margin for selling links on your site — however, the downside is that you will need to actively find advertisers unless you already have an existing advertiser base.

Using the plugin is simple (upload and activate) and even comes with widgets to make adding the advertiser blocks easier, however, it doesn’t integrate payment processing. You need to send out the invoices and check to make sure they’re paid before activating the advert — not a deal breaker, but it would be nice. Once I’ve had a bit more time to play around with the plugin on one of my sites, I’ll come back with my thoughts.

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