Advertising Modules

I go to snowcovered at least once a week to check out the latest modules to see whats new. To me that is the place to check out first if I am looking for somethng. I think you would be a top ten seller in no time with all your great modules.

If I don't find it on ventrian.com first, I go to snowcovered :)

The cross-promotion with other DNN celebrities seems like an effective tool- an ActiveForums/Ventrian Systems relationship seems like it could be mutually beneficial... and a Snowcovered advert seems like money well spent.

I have a vague recollection of someone recently expressing some dissatisfaction with the results brought by their banner ad on The Mothership, though.

Here's wishing you lots of success at any rate.

I get alot of email and now, phone calls at times from people asking me about modules and developers and things like that. I have found that I seem to get into a pocket for a while - eg.. looking for specific solutions for a project, then when it's done another site comes up and another solution required so I think I've built up knowledge that way- and not always by choice.


I look on Snowcovered, but I guess now I have a circle of contacts who keep me posted on what's going on since some of us are looking at 3 years in this space.


It's an interesting question topic, but I hardly go to snow any more. I doubt I'll have anything on the DNN site - mainly because I don't feel I cannot manage my own listing, and not sure how the whole thing works, except you have to have your work certified, which I'm not sure I will bother with either since my free work already meets the criteria and more, so why bother adding in more hours of paperwork submitting skins / modules.


The problem I see with advertisements is they are all about revenue generation. So, you can have a crappy module for sale by way of advertising on the mothership, because you paid for the ad, but you can't get a good one on there, unless you pay to have it reviewed.


Not everyone is as fortunate to have the contacts as established dnn people, but now I've partnered with a few people, I think the abilty to get information out to the pubic will be easier in the future.


The DNN directory is a good place to look at modules - and so is Cathal's website - http://www.cathal.co.uk/ also has a good listing.

Nina Meiers
Nina Meiers

It's so strange - I am involved in the poker world and the DNN world and they are so different. In the poker market eveyone trades links and adverts and it's cutthroat - in DNN no body advertises and few people trade or care about SEO or Google results. For example, I have offered a text link on the Smart-Thinker home page (Page Rank 6) for $10 a month of the last 6 months with no takers. Considering it gets seen by 250 unique DNN users a day this really suprised me. In the poker market you can sell home page links on a PR5 for $25 a month and banners for $200 a month - this kind of competetion and vibe does not exist in the DNN market...

I set up the DotNetNuke Directory to try and address this problem, but yes, exposure is still an issue.

Well that is an interesting comment and I do care about SEO listings and rankings, but xd.com.au is my personal site, where I don't have any google ads, I really don't like them on personal sites to be honest and the reason it's become a personal site, rather than a business site, is because of the changes to the information that really are specific to DNN and that happened more by accident than planned.

I've been offered money to on my newsletters, money to be in my blogs, money to promote modules, money to sell people's modules in my work, but I've not had the time to provide consistency in delivery, but that has changed now since I've formed some formal partnerships with other developers to help consolidate some of the ideas we have but not been able to handle individually.

I guess what we're finding is alliances being made, some through wanting to get better exposure, others realising the power of 1 really is hard work and very hard to sustain.

I'm pushing nearly 60,000 members on my sites now, so the numbers are quite substantial and the growth is now happening at a much faster rate,but it has taken me close on three years of consistent work to get to this level, and I hope to also work with other developers in getting their names and products known, since I understand just what you're saying.

DNN is somewhat fragmented in some areas, but it is getting better over time.

Nina Meiers

Hey Nina,

Yes, I you've done well with that userbase (Smart-Thinker reaching 5000 = hard work ;)

I know a couple of people are aware of the power of Google and SEO - I am just amazed at the difference in the 2 markets - I've been trying to apply some of the tricks I have learnt in the harsh poker world ($10 for the keyword "home poker tournament" ;) to the DNN environment. I also know that a lot of developers (not you Scott ;) treat their websites as something trivial, where in this is their interface with the world and the buyers.

I go to some sites and I am appalled at how they look, and even though the developer may be a genius, I am put off by the UI and design of the site and would not give the modules a chance. Developers (definitely myself included) are REKNOWN for leaving the UI and visuals for the last moment and DNN business suffers as a result...

I do go to Snowcovered quite a bit. Mostly because of the variety of modules offered. The first module I bought was ActiveForums, and was my only purchase for quite a while.

I then got a host subscription here, and just recently purchased my 2nd year here. There is alot of value in the Ventrian Subscription. Not only with the modules themselves, but the outstanding support and community you have built here.

When I first started using DNN, I needed a forum, and ActiveForums was the only module worth using, so I bought it.

The Ventrian Subscription was a little different. There were several News and Gallery modules already out there, but what sold me was the value, and the level of support for your products. You are also a core member, and there is a level of trust and confidence that goes with that. Maybe you can use that to your advantage, or at least make it known in a positive and more visible way on your site.

While I use DNN as my main business product, and have been doing so for the last two years, I have used other products before... And there is one that I have not been able to take over to DNN. And it is BANNER EXCHANGE. While DNN has nice Vendors module which is built in and provides rotating banners there is no equivalent to the free phpAdsNew application - an excellent banner exchange system which allows for a simple yet efficient cross-advertising on multiple websites. In summary the features are:
1/ Advertise - put in your advert/banner and have it displayed on other sites - you choose which ones by checking them oof a list given to you;
2/ Publish - publish ads from other people (or from GoogleAds if you wish) on your site - again check them off a list, you do not have to display your competitors banners.
All standard banner sizes are supported - the exchange automatically matches the sizes, so there is no "distortion" of pubishers websites by wrong size of banner.
In a way I think the module developers are not competitors as everyone develops different modules.
I'd be happy to put in a bunch of DNN banners into my system if there was something in it for me :-) In fact even better - module developers could be both publishers and advertisers and cross-promote each other...!

Just saw it now.
Why don't you create your affiliate program?
1. Starting with a "build in option" to display a link (kind of "A venterian module") which your (gold) members will be able to display some where in the module ? the link will contain a code/cookie/whatever technology to pay commission to the linker, same terms like snowcovered.
(you will get 1000's of links to your site that way, by the way.)
and there are more affiliates kind of ideas...
2. Google "snowcovered". See who is linking to them.
Top 20.These are good sites for you to advertise at ,I think.

You really need to use SnowCovered. Their advertising and google ranking is very good, and it never hurts to piggy-back on that.