ASPAlliance Ad Network Member Policies

Membership Requirements

The AspAlliance Ad Network is made up of ASP, ASP.NET, and .NET related websites. The network has a fairly strong preference for content sites, as opposed to directory sites. If you have a site you would like to add to the network, please contact us. Member sites participate in the review process for candidate member sites, and any member site can usually veto a potential new member site.  The ad network management does reserve the right to make all final decisions regarding membership, however. In general, we expect member sites to have content that is of value to Microsoft web developers.

Once a site has joined the network, they are listed on the members list. Member sites can withdraw from the network at any time, but 30 days' notice is appreciated.

New Member Setup

As a new member site, you should expect to receive a welcome letter from the ad network which will include your member id number and instructions for setting up the ads on your site. These instructions will include several options, including using some ASP.NET web controls or using HTML snippets with some minor alterations. New member sites are expected to have their ads running within 30 days of receiving this welcome email. All member sites have access to a private mailing list, hosted at AspAdvice.com, and should subscribe immediately upon receiving their instructions for signing up in the welcome letter. If you did not receive these instructions, or have difficultying signing up for the members list, please let us know.

Member Benefits

Member sites receive a number of benefits, including direct financial benefits and indirect promotional benefits. Member sites receive two forms of direct compensation for their activities in the ad network. The first form of compensation is in the form of advertising commissions, which is based on the number of ads the site shows. Advertising commissions are paid at a rate of 50% of the gross value of every advertisement shown on the member site, multiplied by each advertisement's share of impressions that was shown on the member site. These calculations are made following each calendar month. An example will illustrate this.

Member site ASPisCOOL.com shows 234,000 impressions of an ad for SomeGreatWebHost.com, which had a gross value of $1000 for the previous month. The total number of impressions shown for this ad for the whole network was 1,000,000. Thus, ASPisCool.com's share of this ad's impressions for the month is (234,000 / 1,000,000) = .234. ASPisCool.com's advertising commission for this particular ad would therefore be 50% of the gross value of the ad for the month ($1000) times its share of .234, or $117. These calculations are repeated for every ad shown by the member site that month.

The second form of direct compensation for member sites is sales commissions. Sales commissions of 25% of gross value are paid to member sites for sales that occur as a direct result of the member site's referral. Once a member site has established a contact with a potential advertiser, that member site becomes the Point Of Contact (POC) for that advertiser, and other members may not approach that company without the permission of the POC member. Sales commissions are paid out monthly as the ad is shown. An example will illustrate this.

Member site ASPisCOOL.com, from the previous example, referred SomeGreatWebHost.com to the AspAlliance Ad Network, and was integral to the sale as SomeGreatWebHost's Point of Contact(POC) within the AspAlliance Ad Network. The campaign purchased was $1500 for 3 months worth of ads. ASPisCOOL.com's sales commission of 25% would therefore total $375. This would be paid out at a rate of $125 per month, assuming the campaign began and ended at the start and end of the month.

All commissions are calculated monthly, for the previous month. Payments are made by check NET 60 from the end of the month in which the commissions were earned. Thus, payments for commissions earned in January would be sent out no later than the end of March. As a rule, members are only sent payment when their total balance exceeds $100. Members may request payment of balances due which are less than $100, or request that payment be made less frequently. Generally, any balances outstanding at the end of the calendar year are paid out at that time to clear the books.  Please note that payments can only be paid directly to member sites, and will not be sent to third parties or intermediaries.

In addition to earning commissions, member sites also enjoy some non-monetary benefits. Each member site is permitted to run one advertisement in each of the 458x60, 125x125, and 100x30 ad positions as a benefit of membership. These should follow the ad media guidelines , and run at 1/50th of the weight of paid slots (to ensure they never significantly detract from paid advertisers' campaigns). Member sites are also encouraged to list all member sites, with links, to help promote all members of the ad network. You'll find links to all member sites on the main navigation of this site and AspAlliance.com. Finally, member sites are promoted along with the ad network when the ad network markets its services to potential customers.