Sunday, April 13, 2008

Plug Boards - Worth the effort?

All About Plug Boards:

It seems like everyone on Etsy is getting a plugboard for their store or blog. I recently posted in the Etsy forums about Plugboards and got a lot of questions. So, here is an overview on Plugboards:

A Plugboard is a free ad serving service that allows you to create ads to place on other people plugboards and likewise, allow users to add their advertising banner themselves onto the plugboard on your website or blog. Their banners remain on your plugboard until they are bumped off, in which case, they can return and plug their banner again. This creates traffic for your website as the users keep coming back to your website to see if their banner is still there.

Using plugboards is very, very easy. Users just need to enter two pieces of information into the two clickable boxes on the bottom of your plugboard. They enter their button or banner URL and website or blog URL and then click "PLUG". Their banner is then added to your plugboard.

Here is a leading provider of plugboards that you can install on your site or blog (but not on Etsy - not allowed there) http://www.plugme.net/

Most plugboards house 88x31 size banners. Each plugboard can hold upto 60 buttons. However, this can be adjusted so your plugboard can hold more or less buttons. You can change the "Buttons per row" and/or "Number of rows" of buttons in your settings. 10 buttons are archived at any point in time so if you need to delete a button then you won't have a blank hole in your plugboard.

Each plugboard can be easily customized and controlled through a simple easy to use control panel that you can access on the plugboard website. You can edit and control who uses your plugboard by deleting buttons you don't want, ban users IP's you don't like, and ban domains. There is also a "Flood control" feature that holds the specified seconds between plugging times to help prevent spammers. You can also set you account up so that you are email notified when someone plugs on your board. You can even decide what background color you'd like to use for your plugboard.

I hope this helps!

5 comments:

nina kuriloff said...

How interesting!

I hadn't heard about plugboards before!

Thanks.
:)

Lucky Girl said...

I plugged! Good luck with this--I rarely plug any more, but the plugboard on my blog still brings traffic.

Grizzly Mountain Arts said...

Congratulations on your new blog! I enjoyed reading it :)

AlasMyDear said...

great info! thanks for writing this...i'd wanted to know what all the buzz was about and i'm *so* not a techie.

welcome to blogdom!

Kim Bagwill said...

Thanks for explaining this! I always wondered what a plug board was.

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