Weebly, the WYSIWYG website designer, has introduced integration with Google’s AdSense API that will allow its users to easily monetize their pages. The site is also introducing new ‘Pro’ accounts, which will give paying members access to increased privacy and other features.
After selecting a desired ad size, users can place their AdSense widget by simply dragging onto their page in the Weebly editor. From there they can modify its appearance without having to muck with CSS or HTML. The site has also eliminated a few steps in the AdSense application process, but it hasn’t been able to do away with it entirely (users will still eventually have to enter their contact and required financial information, but Weebly won’t make you do it immediately). Users will split revenues from their site 50/50 with Weebly.
Weebly’s new Pro accounts introduce new features like embedded audio, increase file size limits, and the ability to customize or remove the Weebly footer. A year costs around $60, while users who sign up for two years will get a discount.
Weebly’s AdSense integration is sure to be a hit with people looking to quickly monetize their sites with as little hassle as possible (though Weebly might have to educate some of them on what AdSense is). Some more tech-savvy users might balk at the prospect of having 50% of their revenues paid to their hosting site, but Weebly isn’t really made for this kind of user in the first place. The Y Combinator-funded site has seen explosive growth over the last few months, and has seen its usage double in size since February, from 300,000 to over 600,000 users (you can see a graph below).
There are a number of other players in the WSIWYG page creation space, including Jimdo and Synthasite. For those that aren’t using page creation software, Triggit allows users to embed AdSense ads into any site using a line of JavaScript.
I love weebly, its so easy!
That is some crazy growth rate. Their graphs on alexa and compete look very solid
How many have this incentive of giving users to embed ads worked out? 0 times. What makes them think it will better this time.
@Niche Affiliate Marketing:
We didn’t implement AdSense as an incentive for users to sign up or create sites, we set it up so that people are able to generate revenue from their sites who were never able to before.
From our point of view, this is opening up a world of possibilities for people who aren’t quite technical enough to figure out how to go through the AdSense set-up process and place the code on their site.
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Sounds exactly what I need for my website over at http://www.creditcard-debtsolutions.info and seems like it is adaptible to any website.
Ted
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ya its so easy! Thanks
These guys are killers. They need to take some time off in Vegas!
We love Weebly too!
I wonder if we can do custom CSS with the PRO account.
I’ll have to check this out. Usually WYSIWYG web editor means a lot of poorly designed sites and adding ad sense means to add advertising clutter on top of that. But a lot of people seem to be fond of this, so I am willing to learn.
can someone give examples of sites that are designed by weebly? i mean, has it been really used, sucessfully?
Looks like an interesting tool. I am looking to launch a few subsites from my main pf blog - http://www.savingtoinvest.com - and this could be a good tool for that. Will check it out in more detail over the weekend.
I second sd’s statement. You may be able to build a website fast, but what about a good looking website for a business? From what I’ve seen, the Weebly templates are so basic and blog like. The professional design community pans instant web builders because they are so poor at delivering respectable design.
Look at the example sites they tout at Weebly.com - they’re a joke.
I see that many of you are complaining about how basic weebly’s templates are. You guys should try out webepags, which is a better alternative that gives you more freedom of the design. YOU are in total control of the design of the page. You can embed ads from any advertising network you would like to use in the html blocks.
When you are done, you can also build a custom database.
Check out our review here:
http://www.killerstartups.com/.....e-builder/
Go here to build it
http://www.webepags.com
Click on “Register to build a custom web page” and follow the instructions from there.
Congrats to the Weebly guys, this is hard to do. Jason, it would have been great if you had mentioned Triggit in your post as well. We launched drag and drop Adsense into ANY web site about a month ago at the Web 2.0 Expo Launch Pad. It was quite a crowd favorite and helped us win best in show for the Launch Pad. Now we have over 4000 publishers using Triggit and dragging and dropping Adsense into their websites. It is great to see the guys at Weebly joining us in the quest to make online advertising easier for publishers.
Zach
Is Webepags serious? I mean that site makes Weebly look like Google.
Interesting, i saw this on hubpagescom as well. Google is opening up their adsense API to select publishers.
We would not degrade the other sites and vendors. However, we still recommend you to check-out our yet better solution and service in the same domain. Please visit http://designpal.bluepal.com/ and give your email for early Beta access. We are sure you like it.
Thank you
What about raising the bar? This space has such a bad name because there are so many bad products out there.
Here are links to some well made Weebly sites:
http://katarokkar.weebly.com
http://gamdop.weebly.com
http://peterboroughbusiness.weebly.com
http://ripplingpond.weebly.com
Great effort by weebly but IMO they have a ways to go to catch up to webepags in terms of functionality and ease of use.
I have just created a weebly website which looks pretty good if you don’t mind me saying. I put my own domain name on it http://www.redfoxmarketing.co.uk . My problem with Adsense is that it makes your website look a little tacky. What do people think about this?
I know what you are talking about Craig. I don’t really want to use Adsense on my site either for the same reason. By the way your website at http://www.redfoxmarketing.co.uk looks amazing! Are you sure the created it using weebly?
This AdSense feature is so Boss! I’m gonna score tons of cash.
I have recently created a website at http://www.groobersgallery.weebly.com like Craig in the post above I was unsure as to adding Adsense for the same reasons, anyway I added it on the Before and After Photo Page to give it a go, what do you think? By the way Craig your site looks great very professional. Also does anyone know what happens when you add the adsense, can you track, how do you get paid etc (sorry I have no clues about adsense any help would be great. Thanks
I wanted to call out another easy-to-use tool to create dynamic web sites without requiring any HTML or CSS knowledge that isn’t mentioned here. Webon, from Lycos, gives users drag-and-drop tools to create their own web site while giving people complete control to express themselves through an engaging, well-designed, original site. Web 2.0 elements including blogs, RSS and Digg feeds, maps and more, can be easily incorporated. Check it out: http://www.webon.com. Full disclosure – I work with Lycos.
hi!…i’m a jazz pianist and composer who created my site on Weebly recently…still trying to figure some things…what have you guys been doing to optimize it for search engines and stuff??…also, trying to figure out the best way to put nice galleries in it…pull in photos from my picasa web albums….want something snappy which will show thumbnails….trying to figure out how to do this without being able to upload stuff to a webserver is tricky….any hints??…looking into Sproutbuilder right now, which may turn out to be a way to do it…not sure yet..here’s my site:
http://www.tonyfostermusic.com
…feel free to send me comments/suggestions!
one other things…wondering if other Weebly users have figured out how to put counters on their site and that sort of stuff??
Thanx!
Weebly is great! I used it with my organization and have had very few problems.
Hey everyone. Love techcrunch. Always some very solid information. I really used to like weebly, but wanted to mention what is, in my opinion, a much more user friendly service that works similar to weebly, that launched about 2 weeks ago. I think maybe they got their idea from weebly. Whatever the case, they seem have a lot more features. They also have the Adsense feature, but it’s not revenue sharing. The site is: http://www.blinkweb.com Just my 2 cents.
I LUV WEEBLY!!!….CHECK OUT OUR SITE!!!!