Advertising is the one revenue stream that does not depend on your members paying you. It depends on them being there. That makes it the first thing that works on a young site — and the thing most likely to quietly ruin an older one.

Three ways to earn from ads on your site:

Ads and paid services pull against each other. A site covered in banners looks cheap, and on a site that looks cheap nobody pays to highlight their profile. You can lose more in memberships than you earn in advertising, and the loss will not show up as a line in any report.

The way round it: sell an ad-free experience as a paid service. Members who pay see no banners; members who do not are the ones generating ad revenue. Both groups earn for you, and neither feels cheated.

Whatever you do, keep ads off the pages where people make decisions: signup, payment, first conversation.

Services > Customize your service > Orders > Banner ads (/admin/banners) in the Passion version.

In Oasis and earlier versions: /admin/banners/index/.

Passion version:

Oasis and earlier — short video:

1. Click Add new banner.

2. Give it a name and choose a place. Places are fixed in the system — you pick from the list, you do not draw your own.

3. Choose the type — HTML or image.

For an HTML banner, paste the code into the HTML field:

For an image banner, add the link it points to, alt text, limits on clicks and views, and upload the picture. Make the image as close to the banner size as possible, otherwise it will look wrong.

For every banner: clicks and views, by day, week, month and year.

Statistics update on a schedule, or immediately if you click Update stats.

Use these numbers when you sell. An advertiser asking "how many people will see it" needs a real figure, and this is where you get it. Without numbers you will be selling on guesswork and pricing too low.

All site pages are divided into groups (/admin/banners/groups_list/). Pages visited more often can cost more. This applies to banners bought by members.

Click Edit group, set the price, save.

The places editor (/admin/banners/places_list/) shows where banners sit on a page. For each position you set rotation time, how many banners share it, and which page groups it covers.

Rotation lets you sell one place several times over. Three advertisers in one position, each shown a third of the time, usually brings more than one advertiser paying for the whole slot.

/admin/banners/settings/ — the activity period of each banner, and the email address that gets notified when a member uploads a banner for review.

Set that email and watch it. A member who paid for a banner and waited three days for approval will not buy a second one.

Members can pay to place their own banners. This is the easiest advertising money you will make: no sales calls, they come to you.

1. The member goes to Account > My banners (/users/account/banners).

2. They give it a name, pick a place, add a link and alt text, upload the image.

3. The banner goes for approval.

4. You review it in Banner ads > Banners > Users banners (/admin/banners/index/user).

5. Click Edit banner, choose which page groups it may appear on, click Approve.

6. The member picks the page groups they want and pays. The banner goes live.

Moderate these properly. Members will try to advertise competing dating sites, paid chat services and worse. Approving one of those costs you more than the banner earns.

These are add-ons, bought separately.

Google adverts — automatic ads, you are paid per click. No sales work at all, but it pays little until you have real traffic. Worth switching on once you pass a few thousand visits a month.

Ads in your mobile apps — the same idea for app users.

Pop-up banner — appears over any page. Earns well and annoys well. If you use it, show it once per member per visit, never during signup.

Current prices are on the pricing page and on each add-on card.

How much should I charge an advertiser?
Start from your view numbers in the statistics section rather than from a figure you have seen elsewhere. A small dating site with an audience in one city can charge more per view than a large scattered one, because the advertiser is reaching exactly the people they want.

Can I show different banners to different members?
Not individually. What you can do is set page groups: banners on the search pages, nothing on the messaging pages, for example.

Will ads hurt my paid memberships?
They can. Sell an ad-free experience as a paid service and the problem turns into a second source of revenue. See paid services.