In case this is useful to anyone else, you can get $100 worth of free ad clicks when you open up an account with MSN adCenter for $5. Unknown expiration date, may expire at any time.

http://www.startadcenter.com/lcoff/?afsrc=1

I just did this for my http://OneMansBlog.com site and it seems cool. I mean heck, I don't really need any advertising, but for $5 I'm willing to buy $100 worth of ads.

John

A curious sort of "free" that involves giving money to Micro$oft. And you don't need ads, but your paying for them anyway? Perhaps I should work on my business model a bit...

I do use ads (Google and Yahoo), but I seem to remember that when I looked at M$'s offering it was simply *impossible* to use unless you have an M$ $etup, which I don't plan on. So not very helpful in terms of "Making the Web accessible to all."

Well, I figured that for the $5 registration fee I'd try out the MS process and see what the results look like. I also figured that I could share that feedback with the community here. Consider it $5 in the "education" expense column.


Well, I'm not sure what you saw previously, and I'm also not sure what you are referring to when you say "MS setup" (are you talking about the desktop operating system? Or referencing the MS wallet?) but when I signed up last night it was painless - so I wouldn't say there is any accessiblity issue to speak of here.

• You need to answer the standard questions about who you are, your credit card info, etc.
• You choose a login / password combo.
• You then have to go through their system to launch a "campaign".

I went through the process of building an ad to run and it was pretty easy and painless. Quite uneventful really, and no more difficult than with Google or others I've tried.

Here are a couple of screen shots from the site:


I understand that some people do not prefer to use Microsoft products or services, but I guess I'd look at it two ways:

1. If you really don't care for Microsoft, you can get them to pay for $95 worth of advertising for your site and then stop using the service.
2. If you do advertising on your site anyway, then why not explore all available options?

To me, the point of purchasing ads is to reach an end user. And those people who choose to use MSN Search are no different from those who search with Google, Yahoo, or any other provider.

Anyway, its $95 worth of free advertising for anyone who wants it... while it lasts.

John

Oh, I almost forgot to mention... even though I entered the order last night, the ad has not yet started to even run, so I'm not sure what's up with that. I'll report back after I see some results.

John

I mean that (at least as I recall), it was not possible to access the site for managing MSN ads unless you use M$ exploder, which I don't, and which requires an M$ operating system. (I don't believe I have a "Microsoft wallet" - is that required too?)



You can? Who do they pay it to?

Anyway, the MS version of PPC ads is no doubt effective, and I'm not particularly averse to using it, but I was pointing out an accessibility issue. Or since MS obviously have no interest in fixing such an issue, an abuse-of-monopoly issue. (But then, they pay the EU 2 million euros a day in fines at the moment, and appear to regard it as the cost of staying in business.)

Not sure about the past, but I just logged into the site using both Firefox and Opera. Each worked fine now. And nothing else is required.

As another side note, it's now been 24 hours and my ad has still apparently not been approved so it's not yet running. I have no idea how effective it is yet.

John