Monetize that Dormant Site
Posted by Jon Lee in Offtopic, Reviews, tags: advertising, bucks4banners, money
This is an advertising “network” I came across last week. First off, I am in no way endorsing it but since I have a few sites with some content but almost zero traffic, I figured I might as well give it a shot.
This “network” I speak of (and I use the term loosely), is called Bucks4Banners.net Money4Banners.com. I’m not sure why they couldn’t get a .com domain name with a name like that.
How it Works
The idea is simple, they pay you 5 pounds (~$10) a month for putting their banner on any three of your pages on a domain. This doesn’t sound like a lot but it does earn back that registration fee and helps pay for hosting. However, there is an approval process you have to go through.
I submitted my brother’s really crappy dress-up site which gets close to zero traffic and surprisingly, it was accepted. Apparently they will accept most sites regardless of traffic, as long as it’s been around a while. I put their advertisement code on the submission page, the Contact page and one content page — all pages that get very very little traffic. After sign-up, you can add an unlimited number of domains for approval which I intend to do once I receive my first payment from them.
They also offer a sign-up bonus of 10 pounds and a referral bonus of 10 pounds for each person you refer. So for the first month, it’s at the very least an easy $30.
Is it a Scam?
Buck4Banner’s site itself is quite buggy in terms of layout and appearance and even their advertisements don’t seem to display properly – none of which is very reassuring and potentially points to a scam. On the bright side, they don’t ask for any financial information so I figure there isn’t much to lose in signing up.
Payment can either be in Amazon.co.uk gift cards or cash (I’m assuming paypal). I haven’t gotten paid yet but I’ve read that other people have — albeit very slowly. So I wouldn’t write it off as a scam just yet, if anything, it’s just a poorly implemented ad network.
Security Concerns
They have two ways of inserting ad code, static HTML or server-side code. The PHP server side code involves using fopen/curl to fetch a file from their site. This could potentially be dangerous if they put up malicious code so I’m sticking with static HTML for now and it appears to be working.
Conclusion
If they do pay out 5 pounds per site as they claim, I probably wouldn’t hesitate in putting up 3 static HTML banners on my dormant sites (Contact page, about/FAQ page, disclaimer page) or maybe even my active sites as well. If you have 10 sites, that’s $100 of easy passive income per month!
The good news for you is I’m taking the risk first so I can keep you updated on whether or not I actually get paid. In the mean time, if you want to give them a shot, feel free to sign up using my referral link.
Edit: Follow up to this post – Bucks4Banners changes name and actually pay out!
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