One of the best ways to get my attention is to link to me, or link to some of my content. Actually linking to my content and using a trackback is more likely to be seen than a blogroll link, because I actively check out trackbacks just in case something slips through Spam Karma which shouldn’t, or there is some interesting conversation to respond to.
That is one of the reasons I have been writing about how to do trackbacks on blogger, because it is much harder to get attention of a busy blogger just by linking.
Openads got my attention by something as simple as adding me to their blogroll, and I noticed the link in Technorati.
What is OpenAds?
OpenAds used to be phpAdsNew and I have been meaning to play around with this for some time.
It is a script you can run to provide full control of your advertising inventory, both for yourself and your advertisers.
OpenAds is an opensource platform, just like Wordpress, and is in very active development. Currently they are looking for beta testers for OpenAds 2.3 which adds lots of new features though they have suggested in the announcement post on the OpenAds blog that you should have a fair degree of technical competence.
Currently on most of my niche sites I use PHP Includes for the advertising, and just upload changes to a standard set of files. It is not ideal, but it also does allow me to migrate to other options such as using an advertising management system, such as the type OpenAds provides.
Expect a full review in a few weeks time, but I thought I would drop them a mention here in advance.
10 Comments
thats pretty funny that they simply got a review by linking to you. pretty nifty scheme if you ask me.
It is not quite so simple:-
In this particular case they are highly relevant to my audience, and they have been brought up in comments here in the past, and in conversations elsewhere.
It is no secret that the best way to get influential readers is to write about the same subjects, link through to others and give interesting opinions.
It helped a huge amount that they recently released a new beta version and were looking for people to give it a test.
Very interesting, I was just looking at different options like these available out there… Do they provide any kind of customer support for those less technically advanced?
They seem to have very active and extensive forums
Hey Andy,
I may head over and see what has changed on this latest beta. We’ve had nothing but challenges with openAds since the change over from phpAdsNew (which seemed to work flawlessly for us :| )
Plus, I’ll keep a close eye on your thorough and indepth reviewing process. Maybe if I get up the courage, I might even install the latest offering and communicate my experiences with you to help your review process.
We are very close to relaunching our website and have the ability to do all the (seemingly) amazing things openAds is “supposed” to be able to do would be invaluable.
The admonition that one needs technical wherewithall is probably a bit overstated. I’d say it just needs someone that has the ability to sort through the powerful offerings of openAds and “see” how to effectively use the system.
As you might gather, there is a good reason I called it a preview, and not a review.
Hi Andy
Thanks for writing about us. We’re really excited to hear you’re going to check out Opeands. Perhaps you’d like to try out the 2.3 beta once it’s publically released.
Tell me if you’d like to talk with anyone to find out more about Openads. Our Product Owner, Simon Bailey, would be happy to talk you though what we’re doing and the new features we’ve added to the soon to be released beta. Also, The developers live on IRC and are always happy to chat. In truth anyone here at Openads will gush at you, we’re really excited about this release.
cheers,
Oliver George
Community Project Manager
Openads
http://www.openads.org
OpenAds is a much better name.. I’ve heard good things about this so I’ll definitely be checking it out – love opensource software!
Oh .. hadn’t heard of OpenAds. Will check them out. Thanks for the pointer
Hi Andy
Openads 2.3 beta is out now. We’d love to hear what you think.
http://blog.openads.org/07/openads-23-beta-released/
cheers, Oliver