Weebly Adds AdSense Support For Drag And Drop Cash
by Jason Kincaid on June 10, 2008

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.

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  • 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.

  • Ask a Debt Expert

    Sounds exactly what I need for my website over at http://www.cred...tsolutions.info and seems like it is adaptible to any website.

    Ted
    Ask
    a Debt Expert

  • 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.kill...b-page-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.

  • 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.redf...marketing.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.redf...marketing.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.groo...lery.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.

  • Hi people, I’ve been blogging on ZDNet UK for some while now. But I’ve always overlooked website creation, instead focusing on security and performance issues. However I heard about Weebly and spent the best part of a weekend creating my site ‘universal perspectives’ and I’m loving it! please feel free to pop by. you can also post on the forum page if you like! regards. Roger Andre.

  • Hey… I have been using Weebly for a while now… and using adsense in it, but off late i have noticed that when i edit the html code of the adsense… i see additional code added by weebly … why is this?
    usually the google adsense code ends with ”

    after this… weebly inserts an iframe ! Why?

    Is this because they want to claim a part of my revenue?

  • Hers a wonderfull website created with weebly , offers free screen capture software .

    http://www.hori...n33.weebly.com/

  • well there are some complications if you lost your google pass word then you have to star all over and well they realy need to have a log in page many people are still asking for that because then other people will have there own domain name in our website they can controle there accounts and have alot of fun with it it will be a dream come true.

  • have you seen my website

  • Gosh … i hate the fact that i have to split my share with Weebly…. am so furious….
    I worked my butts off with making my site popular using SEO techniques and got hits to my website and now i see that the revenue is being split….

    damn i used to atleast earn about 10 to 15 dollars a week and not its half…. its disgusting…. I hate weebly for this….

    I want to get back to blogger although its cumbersome!

    I got to do all the hard work again… damn

  • I’m glad I came across this site with useful reference to free web hosting sites. I have bookmarked them for later reviews. One of my sites is in Google Pages which is due to shut down, So I’m hunting for a free alternative, preferably one that allows a bit of html editing.

    Which free sites allow a bit of html editing? I’m an intermediate web site creator – i.e. between template/creator and added functionality with html coding…

  • To lost season

    Check out these great blogger tutorial sites that may help – It’s what I use, and all offer great advice if you ask;

    Amanda’s Blogger Buster (http://www.bloggerbuster.com/), tips for new bloggers(http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/), Peter’s blogger tips and tricks (http://www.blog...sandtricks.com/), and Vin’s blog doctor (http://www.blogdoctor.me/)

  • It seems Weebly is a good alternative for the soon to close Google Pages. Though I use adsense, the 50 % split revenue would hardly make a difference to the low adsense revenue that I do receive…

  • I emailed Weebly’s customer service, and they said that upgrading to pro package does not affect Adsense earnings, meaning I assume, they still take 50%.

    So if you’re a longterm web entrepreneur or commercial digital provider, you might want to consider that cost over the lifetime of your site. Plenty of other hosts that allow you to monetize 100% once you pay for the hosting. I mean, isn’t that the point? Why should you share Adsense or anything else with a service you’re paying out of pocket for?

  • Hi Lydia. I thought your site was very unique and original. If you like I can put a link in for you on my cool sites page.

    regards Roger Andre

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