[wp-hackers] Advertising on plugin pages

[Glenn Ansley]

>In my ever ongoing quest to find a way to make some money with all my plugins while still keeping them under the GPL and not charge for them, I was
>wondering how the "community" (as in you hackers and the ppl from Automattic) would react to advertising on plugins settings pages. I'm talking about adding
>one 125x125 ad spot to the top right of my plugins settings pages. Any thoughts?

As a WordPress blog admin, I probably wouldn't mind this and probably
have the CSS / JS / PHP skill to remove it if I really needed to do
so. If I don't want it and can't remove it myself, I can probably send
you an email, pay someone $25 bucks to remove it, or find another
plugin.

As a WordPress plugin developer, I have considered this before and
would most likely implement it on a per plugin basis after it reaches
enough downloads to warrant approaching and advertiser. At this point
I would probably approach a specific advertiser with an intended
audience that meshes well with my plugin. One interesting way to pull
this off might be to have those advertisers "fund" a specific release
/ feature set for your plugin. You could even map out your projected
development / release dates for the next year and bounty for them off
via advertising. eg: Company A is funding the development for version
1.5 which will contain the following features and be the current
release for 3 months. As a result, their ad is displayed for this
period. After that, Company B is funding the development for version
2.0... etc.

Glenn Ansley
WordPress Plugin Development
http://fullthrottledevelopment.com

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Nathan Rice <ncrice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why would the ad have to be dynamic? plugins get the auto-update now, so if
> you ever wanted to change the ad, just change it.  I don't see any harm in
> that.
>
> However, if we start talking about dynamic includes and javascript, then
> that would worry me, to an extent, only because if the author's ad server
> gets hacked, there's no telling what the hacker could do with that
> capability at their fingertips.
>
> My Website
> http://www.nathanrice.net/
>
> My Twitter
> http://twitter.com/nathanrice
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Matt Walters <mwalters8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Right, because that is EXACTLY what I was saying.  I also think butter
>> knives should be dumped into the sea since they could be used to stab
>> someone.  I don't care if you like butter in your mashed potatoes.
>>
>> Let's not go there, it does nothing for the conversation and is a
>> silly counter argument. Concern over scripts being inserted into the
>> users admin area are entirely valid in my opinion, no "not
>> necessarily" about it.
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> Matt Walters
>> e: me at mattwalters.net
>> p: (804) 591-1096
>> w: http://mattwalters.net/
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Mike Schinkel
>> <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net> wrote:
>> > "Matt Walters" <mwalters8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> That's not how all ads work ... the original point/concern
>> >> is very valid.  While your solution would largely lay it
>> >> to rest, the potential problem is still there.
>> >
>> > Yes, you are right ads can have many permutations, not there's no reason
>> that Joost's or those deemed "okay" by the community would need to have
>> those problem.  That objection is much like saying "Some people drive cars
>> recklessly so let's ban all cars."
>> >
>> > That said, I'm lukewarm on the idea but feel it does a disservice to the
>> debate to use assumptions that aren't necessarily valid.
>> >
>> > -Mike Schinkel
>> > http://mikeschinkel.com/
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>> >
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