How are you keeping track of advertisers across your sites

[jdk]

I have reached a point where it is hard to keep track of advertisers and when their ads expire across all of my sites. How are you keeping track of your advertisers to ensure on-time payments and links being removed when payment terms expire? Any suggestions?

 

[Johnn]

Excel Spreadsheets unless you have 2 million advertisers.

 

[jdk]

Excel Spreadsheets unless you have 2 million advertisers.

I just hit 1,048,577 so I have maxed out in Excel 2010. I am growing by 500k per month of new advertisers, so let me know what Excel version you are using that allows up to 2mil and I will buy it. It will buy me a couple months

 

[Johnn]

Use quick book (accounting software) and set them up as customers where you provide services and set the billing terms: monthly, quarterly or yearly with due dates.

I am not sure if you can export the customers from Excel to quickbook!

 

[jdk]

Anyone use mysimpleads? I have used it in the past for my personal sites, but never to manage campaigns for advertisers.

 

[Theo]

Yes, I use it on DomainGang.com

 

[Charles Sweeney]

With 1,000,000 advertisers and $500K per month...hire someone to write a script for you!!!

I wrote a script that automatically deleted ads when they expired and also emailed the customer to let them know it expired (which more often than not resulted in a repeat sale). This is hugely trivial. The ad details, including the expiry date and the customer's email address are in the database. A script running daily by cron picks out the ads that have expired, then deletes them (or marks them inactive...depends how you're doing it) then emails the customer.

I also had a service that was paid by PayPal subscription. If a payment isn't made or a subscription is canceled, you get a notification from the PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification). Again, hugely trivial to delete a record or mark as inactive.

Seriously, there is nothing to this, and with your numbers, a "no brainer".

 

[Theo]

Charles, Doug was jesting about 1 million advertisers.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Charles, Doug was jesting about 1 million advertisers.

LOL! Seriously?! Mind you, now that I come to think about it, 1 million advertisers and 500K revenue is pretty cheap advertising!!

Still, for a dozen advertisers (as I had) or a million, I would still do the same thing!