If you’ve ever visited Engadget or any of the other Weblogs Inc. blogs, you’ll noticed that they all run a cool little stripe ad at the top of their blogs. I always thought that was a cool advertising feature because it’s highly visible (it’s the absolute first thing readers see) and not that intrusive. Now, MaxBlogPress has ordered a review for a WordPress Plugin that lets you create your own stripe ads.
Enter “Stripe Ads”, a new non-obtrusive way of displaying a single line of advertising message, a special note or other information right at the top of your blog, just like this:
As WordPress Plugins goes, MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad is pretty complete. There are tons of options to control the look and feel of your ads. Installation is also very simple – just download the Plugin, unzip, upload to your WordPress Plugins folder and activate. All the Plugin controls will be located in the WordPress Options section under MBP Stripe Ad.
Unlimited Stripes Ads
Entering ads is as simple as entering the title and the link. MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad gives you the option to open the link in a new window and apply weight which helps determine how often the ad will appear. There’s also an option to disable a link in case an advertiser doesn’t renew. Global settings includes the ability to stick the stripe to the top of the page at all time, hide the close button and disable all the ads.
You don’t have to use MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad for selling advertising. The Plugin can be used to promote anything on your blog. From highlighting a feature articles to announcing a contest to telling everyone you’re getting married, the Stripe Ad is a great way to get attention.
Complete Control Over Ad Appearance
MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad offers really good control over the look and feel of the ads. There are options to set the front style, color and size. You can also control the background and border color. Additional options include how many time you wish the ads to show up on your blog and a field to enter your Clickbank ID (MaxBlogPress has an affiliate program).
The only thing I don’t like about the Plugin is the “Powered by MaxBlogPress” that appears on the right side of the Stripe. There is no option to turn it off. It would be nice if MaxBlogPress offers a paid professional version without the link. I’m sure many bloggers would be willing to pay for an unbranded Stripe Ad. The link does carry your Clickbank ID (if you have one) so it may make money for you, but I rather pay to have it removed. The powered by link is the only thing stopping me from running the stripe ads (that and the blog is too top heavy already).
For bloggers looking for a new advertising revenue source or a way to plug features on their own blog, the MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad plugin is a pretty good solution.
*Update – Well, that didn’t take long. Interest in the stripe ad has been so great I sold four ads already! If anyone want to buy a Stripe Ad, the price is $250 per month. Only five spots are available. Four have been sold already so if you want that last spot, get your order in now.
Payment for the Stripe Ad will be by PayPal subscription. Once payment has been made, email your ad description and link to johnchow@johnchow.com.
*Update 2 – Ads are sold out.
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I’ve been wanting this for a looooong time…was even considering hiring someone to create this plugin. Thanks for the heads-up!
What a great Wordpress plugin. I’m sure the first two advertisers will get a ton of traffic.
Great plugin. I love the weight function and customization. You said we can see the “powered by…”, by I can’t see it. I just see the ads itself. Its very clean and simple.
I removed the powered by link.
I just wish they did not print the div within the head tag but inside the body….apart that it is lovely plugin
Actually, I was looking for such a plugin two days ago and am using it as we speak, great find
Alan Johnson
Yeah, me too. I like the plug-in!
BTW… John, did you know that your blog is nominated for the 4th international blog cup? Yours is competing against Best Week Ever, voting (1st round) will last until Jan. 7 only
Current scores
You – 56
Best Week Ever – 55
Here’s the link to the voting page: http://iblogcup.com/blogCup4/main.php
Nice creating it, useful.
It’s an interesting concept John, but I’m not sure I like the look of it. I’ve seen a few ads of a similar kind around the blogosphere. I agree though that they should offer a paid option with out the “powered by ____” section.
Keep up the good work.
I dont Know bout you but this is awesome—nice john!
It’s pretty cool. I like that the visitor to the site can click the ‘x’ to get rid of it. I also noticed that it’s the first thing that loads on the page (At least for me)
It seems lots of people are interested in the paid version with “Powered by MaxBlogPress” link removed.
I am planning to release a paid version soon with the “powered by” link removed.
- Pawan Agrawal
http://www.maxblogpress.com
I think it’s going to be too little too late on that front. You don’t have any licensing info anywhere to be found and since you’re distributing it for free, I’m guessing you won’t get many people paying to take off something they can already take off.
I agree, if you didn’t want people to remove the message you could have easily created some terms in the first place.
Alan Johnson
I don’t think any other terms would apply anyway. Using the WordPress admin and quite a bit of the default code means that the plugin would inheret the GNU GPL that WP uses, even if the plugin creator HAD created other terms or licensing.
This looks like a great plugin, but I wouldn’t use it for exactly the same reason you have mentioned above.
If they offered a pro version with no links in it I would buy it.
That actually looks really cool. Now that the New Year is here, I am looking to expand the different ways that I monetize on my blog and I think that having that ad up on the top might actually make for a bit of an increase in my monthly earnings. Thanks, John, for pointing this out!
This looks like a great plugin, but I wouldn’t use it for the same reason you mentioned.
If they did offer a pro version, I would buy it.
Nice Plugin..i really need this one
in a perfect world, we’d be able to remove “ads by google” too
So so so True!!!
I don’t see why Google Ads get to display that line of text with no function to remove it.
Someone needs to tell Google theyre lucky to get ad space on our sites as it is, never mind displaying the crappy “ads by Google” as well.
It just comes with the territory when you’re the biggest player out there
Alan Johnson
Looks like it’s licensed under GNU GPL to me (it’s got a readme.txt that’s for the official WP Plugin repo, which all plugins in there must be GPL). So just open up maxblogpress-stripe-ad.php, and replace lines 297 and 299 with:
$powered_by = '';It’s perfectly legal if it is licensed under the GPL, which it appears to be, although doesn’t specifically say anywhere.
If it`s GPL or other public license you can do that, witch would be great.
Btw. i think with a little tweak you may be able to use it as a corporate header.
Thanks a lot for that, I would have probably not used this plugin if it weren’t for the possibility of having that message removed (or I would have waited for a paid version).
Alan Johnson
No it’s NOT licensed under GNU GPL. We are using that format of readme.txt as most people are familiar with that.
It’s illegal to remove the powered by link without notifying me about that.
- Pawan Agrawal
http://www.maxblogpress.com
I just read all the readme.txt and the blog post about the plugin and there is nowhere specified that you can not modify it.
Liviu,
If the author don’t say it explicitly then it simply means that “you can’t modify” or copy it.
Most of the softwares/script are usually provided as it is without any information about modifying/copying.
This applies same for blog and websites too. If you can’t find “you can’t copy” information in the blog/website then it doesn’t mean that you can copy everything from there.
- Pawan Agrawal
http://www.maxblogpress.com
Actually if you don’t explicitly state what licensing you are using then yes, it does mean you can copy/modify it. You as the author have to protect your rights and if you fail to do so, it’s your own fault.
You might wanna tell John Chow that
Unfortunately it IS licensed under the GNU wether you want it to be or not. Trust me, many years of working with phpBB, designing templates and such have me up to speed on this.
#1 – it contains standard wordpress code, the control panel for example only works with the wordpress control panel, and as such must fall under the same license wordpress does. You agreed to that by using wordpress.
#2 – The unique code, aka the code you are saying isn’t GNU, isn’t “set apart” from the generic parts that are inherently GNU. Its all one package, your unique code isn’t seperated from the GNU wordpress code.
#3 – Notwithstanding #2 – You did not specify which license it was released under, and being that wordpress is GNU some parts of the code CANNOT be made anything but GNU, the license wordpress falls under. You need to follow some steps in order to accomplish this, they are described in the GNU itself.
Furthermore – by trying to impose restrictions on the use of the open source portions of the code you forfeit your right to use or distribute your works because you’ve broken the terms of the GNU attached to the code you used.
It’s not all bad news though.
- You CAN sell this product, you simply cannot stop the buyer from doing whatever they want with it, including re-selling it if they wish.
- You CANNOT have your name and info removed from the “changelog” or main “.txt” file as being the author of the work BUT you must put back the original wordpress credits for whichever parts of wordpress code you used. A text link appearing on a screen is not the same as author credit given within the code.
- You CAN still seperate your code from any wordpress code, make it work independantly from wordpress, and license it in any manner you want to. It’s not until you combine your code with an open source application that you run into any licensing laws. Open source (GNU) = free for everyone, all the time, without limitations, with right to make changes and distribute, without the right to limit these rights on anyone receiving distributions.
To sum this long comment up – the rights you have to be using the code in the first place MUST be passed along in full. I’ve checked and this “plugin” does not meet any of the requirements to impose another type of license over the existing one. I’d suggest pulling it from the market now if it’s intended to be copyright.
Additional points – i’m not a lawyer, the above was only my learned opinion. Also, this product was created long ago for multiple platforms and is/was already copyright before you created it.
It’s a great plugin, don’t get discouraged, its going to need some work (a lot of work as it stands) if you want to make it fully copyright by anything but the GNU though.
ATV hit the nail on the head. Just because you don’t want it to be GNU GPL, doesn’t mean it isnt.
All coders should learn how to protect their work BEFORE releasing it to avoid lessons like this one.
This is excellent. I am excited to start fiddling around with it and see what can be done for my site. Thanks for bringing the to my attention.
I hope the plugin author is reading this, all this talk of a “pro” version. It does look like a striking, but unobtrusive ad.
Not sure if I’ve have it though, it smarks too much of the blogger banner though which I want to get away from
If the plugin is actually GPL, he can’t sell a pro version. The GPL does let you charge a transferring fee though…
GPL doesn’t mean you can’t sell a pro version, it means that when someone gets it they can do whatever they want with it.
From GPL v2:
So how long before we see this as an advertising option on JohnChow.com?
It’s running now. $250 per month for a spot.
wow that’s a great deal for such a position on your blog. I’m usually ad blind, but that yellow bar really stands out. I wonder how well it converts lol.
For some reason I don’t think it was showing for me when I read the post. I see it now though. $250 sounds like a good deal for that level of visibility.
We’ll see! I’ve decided to give it a go. I’ll post details on my blog after I see some results.
Is worth if you want it to be famous.
This is really good info you have given us. Keep the up the goood work John.
That will come in very handy! very good plugin.
I’ve been waiting this for something like this to come out. Been searching around for a good plugin for adverts and found nothing.
Cheers John!
hmm, cool, I’ve seen that on quite a few blogs already, but, how much can someone make from it in average?
thanks!
Thanks John, great find, just installed it.
I actually saw something similar to this yesterday on one of the blogs, and it is a great concept, except, it gets annoying when you scroll down, and the bar follows you down. Not sure if it is the same plugin.
Also, a bit strange that neither John Chow or Maxblogpress are using that plugin on their sites as of this writing.
Just noticed it on Keiron’s site, it does not scroll down with you, which is great!
imagine if someone made a plugin that displayed an ad that followed your mouse…
You can have it scroll down or remain fixed at the top of the page. Really good tool!
That may be the same plugin. It has an option to make the stripe ad always visible even if you scroll or to make it appear at the top top only.
- Pawan Agrawal
http://www.maxblogpress.com
The great thing about it is that users who do not want to have it displayed can always close it using the button found on the top-right corner of the screen.
Alan Johnson
Looks stupid, but for $250 bucks id put it on my site too.
Thanks for pointing this out. I like it!… May put it on my blog to highlight stuff instead of ads. Where is the “Powered by MaxBlogPress” line? am i missing something as I don’t see it in the ad at the top of the page.
Also John, just to point out a typo… your paypal link says “Bye a John Chow dot Com Stripe Ad”. I think you meant “BUY” instead of “Bye”.
The line is located at the top right corner of the screen, John has removed that message and you can do it as well by finding the “$powered_by =” code and removing the link (thanks again Matt for pointing that out
).
Alan Johnson
Alan,
It’s illegal to remove that “powered by maxblogpress” link without my permission. If you are interested in removing that link then please wait for the paid version which I’ll release soon.
- Pawan Agrawal
http://www.maxblogpress.com
Pawan
What kind of “illegal”? Breach of contract? I can’t see anything in the readme or on the site that creates that contact term?
Or are you thinking of criminal law, in which case which one do you think applies?
Cliff.
Exactly, he’s in here bitching and moaning that it’s not licensed under GNU GPL and we aren’t supposed to modify it but there is NO licensing information in the plugin or on his site.
Sorry to break it to you Pawan but that makes it free game.
Actually, it’s not, since there were no terms specifying that removing the message is not allowed when I have downloaded the plugin.
Alan Johnson
John,
this plugin messed up your theme!
Both firefox and safari are not showing your navigation menu because of the strip ad!
I guess you should check it, navigation is still more important than $ 250 a month!
Francesco
I’ll have to get that fix. You can turn off the stripe by hitting the X.
Yes, in Firefox the menu isn’t available anymore! I guess it should go be on top of that menu not over it!
Yes, in Firefox the menu isn’t available anymore! I guess it should go on top of that menu not over it!
For my version of FireFox it’s hanging the entire page!
John, did you already remove that bit? I’m not seeing the “powered by” part either.
Ya, I removed it.
Matt has explained how to remove it a few posts back. Basically, all you have to do is find the part (two places actually) where “$powered_by =” appears and remove the link.
Alan Johnson
Cool, i love it and i am putting it on my blog.
hey john, you might consider adding an extra strip at the top of your blog the same width as the ad stripe, that way you don’t loose the options at the top of your blog. i’m sure you don’t want to lose an affiliate sale from the making money section.
I fixed it by locking the stripe to the top of the blog. This has the add benefit for the advertiser. The ad is always visible, unless the reader X it off.
i actually did the same thing as well after about a half hour of trial and error…having it blog some of the options up top, especially on your theme just kills the look
Cool. I was just about to go look for it after, seeing it on John Cow’s blog, now I don’t have to after you kindly gave the link of the plugin
That’s a really cool plugin. You can alert people to contests and stuff!
So what’s the verdict? Yay or nay? Is it messing up other people’s navigation?
I’m using it on my blog as we speak and everything seems to be working perfectly both with firefox and IE.
Alan Johnson
I still am having problems with John’s site hanging up. I guess I’ll install it and see what happens.
Very cool. Although, I think I would only use it if it worked in with my header. Otherwise changing the header around to work with the plugin. Like others said, I don’t think it’s worth it if the menu is covered up at the top.
JohnCow added a bar above his header. The problem is, once you exit the ad, the header looks kind of crappy with a space at the top. Guess it just depends on what you have at the very top of your header.
Now that John added a strip to the top, it looks good. JohnCow needs to do the same….just take the border of the blog and put it on the top, rather than having a green strip.
In my case, all I had to do was lock the bar to the top and editing my header using the theme editor was no longer necessary.
Alan Johnson
Hi John its look nice on your blog
What is up with the whole thing just to get the plugin? takes a while
Downloaded the plugin, will try to use it now 
What agereat find .. thanks for being on top of things yet again.
I see the advertising possibilities but I’m getting it first for a RSS subscription campaign and also to finnly getting around to trying to promote older posts … which is a proven way to increase revenue, when you can actually get new readers to “see” them.
Actually, I take that back. It’s really annoying! :S
Of course, making a bit of cash out of it isn’t going to affect what I think about it, but by goodness the floating aspect is tricky to love.
Will this be available for blogger too?
I actually do not like it very much. It reminds me of that annoying popup blocked or missing plugin message that pops up when something is wrong. I did however immediatly notice it when I came in from the RSS feed but again I just though it was a blocked popup notice.
However I have read SEObook, and it is actually a really good ebook on how to get started with SEO. While I do not believe the author is divulging his complete knowledge on SEO I think he touches base on some good common SEO practices. I am just not sure if you employ everything in that book it will guarantee top results on anything but long tail terms and low traffic driving keywords.
John John John…more money..again!?
-Mike
There is nothing wrong with monetizing your website as long as you provide value to your readers. Also, this type of ad is not obtrusive and can even be turned off.
Alan Johnson
John, maybe you should colour code it to your website ? instead of the default colours.
Useful now, may prove to be annoying the future,
Fabien
Yea, the stripe ad will get annoying soon.. I’m kind of annoyed already. This will eventually affect pageviews and might lower visitors. IMHO why not integrate a small banner at the top that looks like it is a part of the website instead of having a stripe ad. I think the stripe ad is priced cheaply since you can see it even if you scroll down (which is very annoying). The price is just right if you just add a small banner at the top so you can’t see it when you scroll down.
Hey John, why don’t you donate all the money you make from this new method of advertising to charity?
Unobtrusive perhaps, but very annoying.
You can easily close it using the “X” button in the top right corner. As far as I am concerned, it is a great way to monetize your blog or simply make important announcements regarding your website and be sure that your readers see them.
Alan Johnson
Doenst stop it being annoying and giving me the option to x it on every page refresh isnt much of an option really.
Good monetiser and an easy $1k but having that banner follow my every move down the page is annoying. Plus it seems to glitch out and gets stuck in the middle of the page sometimes and i have to wait for it to catch up.
Great plug-in …. will have a look and see how it intergrates now.
Interestingly the first thing i did when i opened this page was x-out that bar, then i read the post .. hmmm, maybe its not so great?!
Neil, I purchased one of the spots here and I’ll be posting about my results when I start to see some. I figure if I can sell 4 of my theme’s, I’ll make a profit on the deal.
John, do the links pass page rank? Or are they automatically no follow?
The links are not nofollow (in my case, it doesn’t matter, since I am linking to a page within my website).
Alan Johnson
Very nice plugin, just annoyed I didn’t think of it first…lol
But Im working on a nice plugin myself… watch this space
I think talkfreelance has something very similar, but there bar resembles that mozilla popup blocker that appears at the top.
I really hate those frames… They are the first thing you notice when you enter a site, but they’re really annoying and ugly to me. Please don’t take it the wrong way, I really love your web but I think it would be a mistake to keep that bar there…
Awesome plugin!
Great plugin. Nice information John.
Love the plugin. I just downloaded it and will install tomorrow. I’ve been wondering how that was done.
Okay, I’m in favor of ads anywhere, all the time. (I’m in the ad biz as a Creative Director.) My only issue with the stripe ads — at least the ones on John Chow — is that they don’t look like something you should click on. They look like headlines or informational/helpful mini-page headers that give you an advance heads-up about what is on the page below, to be read while you’re waiting for the page to load. I think you have to make sure the wording of the link is really obvious, so that the viewer realizes s/he should actually click on the stripe ad.
It is definitely important that you write a message which makes people want to click: a special offer or an important announcement regarding your blog.
Alan Johnson
Wow this is great
Now only if they made a good ad purchase page for it.
That’s a great plugin!
Yet another way to monetize by blogs, without using much of the space. Cool!
Cool plugin! I might have to use this type of deal for sitehoppin.
Hey John,
I think I just bought your last spot!
I will send you an email right now…
Thanks! Great plugin! I have installed it on one of my wordpress projects!
Great plugin!
I’ve just downloaded it. Thank you very much, John!
the stripe is a very good idea
gr8 new feature for wordpress
i loved it
I hate it (right now) because it needs some work.
#1 – kill the floating down the page, it needs to stay static up top because it’s annoying as anything when you scroll around a little. If you want a floatie, park it at the bottom please!
#2 – brand it, it needs a logo on the left side, easily done with a proper image floated left.
#3 – add more functionality, like a dropdown menu on the right side. (note: an html dropdown will get spidered, phpBB forums have done this for years – see phpBBhacks.com for an example)
#4 – this plugin will negatively impact SEO, specificaly the description text google auto generates if you don’t provide it. Prominence takes a hit too BUT if you add a dropdown it has added value at least.
#5 – nah, no number 5… I don’t hate it that much. It’s funny to read about john chow accidentaly squeezing and extra 1250.00 out of the blog when 99%+ of its readers can’t get that monthly in total.
ATV Style, can you please contact me from my website’s “contact us” link? I have to talk with you on some matters.
Woah, that is cool. I’ve been thinking of some none-intrusive advertising options for my new forum http://www.affiliatetalk.org and something like this should do nicely. I wonder if there is a phpBB version available.
You mean you sold 5 ads after this post.
Holy crap
I hope AdBlock or NoScript will block this sack of shit of a plugin. To be true this “stripe” goes on my nerves and no i will not accustom to it.
Thank you for this information. Even though I dont have a blog in word press. I am thinking that it is a great task.
does it affect seo? i’m reffering to:will google index the ad in the stripe?
cheers,
Tom
I think it would be better for the stripe to appear at the bottom of the page and scroll with the viewer. This way nothing at the top is blocked. The ad still displays above the fold at all times… There must be a way to edit the code to do this.
- Charles
I like the idea but that was bar none the most annoying download experience I’ve had in a while. First I had to register, then read through a three mile long landing page, then enter a password to access the download page, which of course hung and resulted in a blank screen. After several tries and fails, it finally downloaded.
I’m fairly confident though this plugin will be just as stable as the developer’s blog was.
I totally agree, is there another plugin available to do the same type bar? I visit engadget daily and like the one they have.
Thanks for this tip and for the Clicktale tip. They were exactly what I was searching for!
One suggestion I’d like to make is that if visitors close the strip ad, it should STAY closed for the duration of the visit, not reload every time you visit a new page. That should help reduce its annoyance for a few readers.
you can do that using a block cookie
That would also reduce the effectiveness for advertisers. Usually I don’t care but I decided to advertise this time
Guy’s at Adblock Plus pointed to block #div(id=mta_bar). I was lazy so i did not check out what it was about, now i see it’s a CSS hack and it’s annoying.
Hopefully it is not any more in my sight, sorry John but this chap can’t stand pop-uppy shit.
Cheers
great plugin, i hack my theme to make like this. but i want to try it, very simple plugin.
I’m just glad there is an X button
Pretty annoying ad, although I read most articles in my RSS reader anyways.
~ Dave
I find it quite intrusive :S
Looks cool and I am going to try it at my blog.
I got it installed, up and running on my blog. Thanks for the recommendation.
I’m having trouble getting it to show up. Benny, did you have any trouble with it or did it show up immediately?
LOL, another $1,250 just like that!
I find it annoying. I actually thought it was spyware on my browser when it showed up. Then I saw this post about it. At least don’t make it follow you as you scroll down.
John now that you have removed the ‘powered by’ link, it has left the text looking off centre.
Yeah, I noticed that as well… Anyone know how to fix that?
Could somebody post a download link to their plugin. I don’t want to provide my email address since I don’t know what he’s using it for.
Don’t mean to take away Maxblog’s thunder but
for some reason this plugin wouldn’t download from the site so I made my own plugin in about 5 minutes.
It doesn’t support rotating ads but that’d probably take another 5 minutes when I need it.
Here’s a simple howto for those who like to hack:
http://zedomax.com/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_ad_an_nice_looking_ad_stripe_to_the_top_of_your_blog
Check out http://zedomax.com/blog for a customized look to it.
@Max:
Cool one Max..
I’m sure with more time, this small basic code can be tweaked similar to actual one
@Chow:
And thanks for increasing our awareness and effective use of wordpress with such plugins. Thanks John!
- Wakish -