Adult Webmastering 101: Using Hosted Thumbs In The Sidebar Of Blogs

[Sarah_MaxCash]

For the past year or so, I have ditched a lot of the banners on my blogs and replaced them in the sidebars with hosted thumbnails from sponsors.

There are a number of reasons for this but the main one is that I have found that that my blog surfers simply don't click banners all that much. They are far more likely to click on text links or pictures. I suppose that makes sense because that is the general make up of a blog post - pictures and text links.

I took out most of the banners and started sticking in thumbs and hosted thumbs in the sidebar and I found that my surfers started clicking.

It really is amazingly easy to start using hosted sponsor thumbs in the sidebars of your blogs.

The first thing I need to do when I decide to put hosted thumbs in my blog sidebar is to decide which site I am going to promote with these thumbs. In this example I will be working as if I am using these hosted thumbs on a ebony themed blog.

So, I log into my Max Cash account and go to the hosted gallery section. Once I am there I use the pull down menu to decide which of the ebony themed sites I want to promote. I have decided to promote Ebony Porno on this blog.



Once I am on the page that lists free hosted galleries for Ebony Porno I can see that each gallery has a matching hosted 88x88 thumb. This is the size of hosted thumb I am going to use in the sidebar. I simply take a look at a few of those thumbs until I find three (or whatever number you are going to use) I like the best.



Then I just leave it open in another tab so I can have easy access to the url of the hosted thumb for Ebony Porno.



Then I fire up Wordpress (that is the program I use and the most common) and go to the 'add link' area. For this example, please forgive the name of my category as I using an existing blog just to demonstrate.

I then go grab my linking code for Ebony Porno and put it in the URL field on the "Add A Link" section of the page.



Then I scroll down the "add a link" page to the advanced section. Once I am there I go back to the tab where I have the thumb open and copy and paste the url of the hosted thumb into the image url field. Then I click the 'Add Link' button.

I then repeat this two more times until I have put all three of my hosted thumbs up on my blog.



When I then load the main page of my blog the three thumbs look like this on the sidebar:



You do have to play around with how these look in different wordpress themes because it looks better on some themes than they do on others. I also tend to maybe break them up a bit so rather than having all three in a cluster I might have two clusters of three in different link categories so that it doesn't just look like a wall of thumbs.

You could link the hosted thumbs to the matching galleries but I bypass that and link directly to the paysite. Max Cash is fine with the hosted thumbs being used on their own like that and as blogs are my sites and I don't have to follow any outside rules. So, I don't feel bad about putting up a few blind thumbs like that and getting them to my sponsor.

[@zrael]

realy nice tut thanks
i never thaught of using hosted thumbs instead of banners

[SleazyBear]

Not to burst your bubble, but I did a post on this in the blog forum a few months ago, but I dont use just one sponsor, I use remote thumbs and use a lot more sponsors, Webmasters should never limit thereselves to one sponsor, or even one niche when it comes to side bar thumbs. This is common mistake webmasters make. Now I know you work for maxcash, and you and maxcash do a kick ass job, But in all fairness you have to webmasters, you have to be deversified..

[PornFactory]

Really nice tut and nice ideas, as always from you... thanks!

[Sarah_MaxCash]

I don't think that just because a sponsor is used in an example anybody will think they are not allowed to use a similar technique with other sponsors.

I will say that on blogs I like to limit them to two or so sponsors per blog but that doesn't mean anything other than that is what works for me.

It just makes sense for me to use Max Cash tools as an example because I do work for them and also I have the most access to them. So, I don't really know what bubble you would be bursting.

[Sarah_MaxCash]

I also didn't see that post..I don't read the blog forum as much as I should do, I know. It is simply something I have been doing on my own blogs.

[mikesinner]

I wrote about this like two years ago but yes it can be very affective.

[Hoogoo]

Yes, you're true... Anyway... Good tut

[Sarah_MaxCash]

Originally Posted by mikesinner

I wrote about this like two years ago but yes it can be very affective.

Well, yes..like it says 'webmastering 101'. Just like last week when I was talking about table ads..it isn't exactly new stuff but people forget that not everybody was around two years ago and even those that were may not have been following a particular side of the industry such as (in this case) blogs.

I don't know why but I sort of feel like hitting my head on something today

[DutchTeenCash]

125x150 is the way to go, everyone uses those as blog potds not the 88x88 theyre way too small - we got them but also solarcash phil-flash felixflow cassieleanne and many others... and I can see them being used a lot on blogs

[finike]

I use the thumbnails from POTS (pictures of the day) on the sidebar of my Teens Blog. So I have daily changing additional content.

[ScreaM]

Thanks for the post Sarah.

[Sarah_MaxCash]

Originally Posted by DutchTeenCash

125x150 is the way to go, everyone uses those as blog potds not the 88x88 theyre way too small - we got them but also solarcash phil-flash felixflow cassieleanne and many others... and I can see them being used a lot on blogs

I have found that for me different sizes work better on different themes. 88x88 has worked fine for me on a good number of blogs and I haven't really noticed a click difference with sizes.

[Sarah_MaxCash]

Originally Posted by finike

I use the thumbnails from POTS (pictures of the day) on the sidebar of my Teens Blog. So I have daily changing additional content.

yup, that works well too..I often mix it up between static and a potd thumb ..makes sense to use what you can

[gothic]

I use POTD's, saves me the trouble to update or have a rotating script myself.

Also different sizes (on 1 blog or sidebar of any site) are OK, I mean they don't all have to fit exactly on the same line, ugly sells too

[Sarah_MaxCash]

Yup, I like mixing up sizes too and I have always found that ugly sells too. Which is a good thing since I am not a designer by any stretch!