Making the Switch to Passionfruit Ads

I announced a couple of days ago (on Twitter) that I have officially made the switch to Passionfruit Ads, and I have been asked quite a few questions about it.  I thought that sharing my experience with Passionfruit (so far) may be helpful for a lot of you-- some wondering what's now going on with my sponsor page, and some maybe looking to use Passionfruit for their own blog.

I previously had a very wonderful ad manager who took care of emails about sponsorship and posted the ads (which was so nice having that taken care of), but it was time for us to part ways (amicably, of course) and I found myself with a big question mark floating over my head.  What do I do now?  I had read a post over on Harper's Happenings a while back about a new company called Passionfruit that was designed to help bloggers with ad management.  I am a very skeptical gal when it comes to these sorts of things, so I decided to let some friends try it out first and observe how it seemed to be going.  Hey, I was just being cautious.  ;)

After Holly had it set up for about a month and seemed to be liking it, I decided to pop over and read up on some more details.  It seemed easy enough, so I signed up and began the process.  I first set my ad sizes and prices, and then I pasted a little bit of code into my sponsor page.  There.  Now I had the option for sponsors to purchase directly from my sponsor page instead of being invoiced or being redirected to my Big Cartel shop.

Once I had Passionfruit set up on my sponsor information page, it was time to update my sidebar with the Passionfruit coding.  There was a little more work involved with this part, but nothing too major--  I had to upload all of my existing sponsors and links into the system, but after that job was done I just pasted a little more coding into that sidebar and it was smooth sailing from there.

Okaaaaayyy... I will admit, I got a tiny bit lost in the middle of setting things up, but Jason was there for live chat and got me all straightened out.  That has been the biggest thumbs up so far with this company-- the customer service isn't just friendly and great, it's immediate.  That's good for someone like me who is NOT terrific at this sort of thing.  I understand only a tiiinnnnyyy bit about blog coding and I am very intimidated by most of it.  Jason was (is) terribly nice and extremely helpful.  A++

The biggest change for me is going to be the missing rush of emails at the end/beginning of each month.  With Passionfruit, once the ad is approved and there is space for it, it posts immediately.  That means sponsors can purchase a spot at any point in the month and it posts immediately (as long as there is room in the sidebar at the time).  If there isn't room at the time of purchase, the ad sits and waits in line, and it shows up as soon as there is space for it.

I can't say much more since this is my first time using Passionfruit, but I will report back here in a month or two and let you know how it's going.  Ads are officially for sale on my sponsor page, and if you'd like to purchase one, I'd love to have you aboard!

**As I was writing this, I was live chatting with Jason about a few details for this post and he filled me in on a big announcement that I get to share with you!  Passionfruit will now only be taking a fee of $1 + the Paypal fee per ad (instead of the previous 10% including the Paypal fee).  So, not only is Passionfruit making my ad life simpler, it just got cheaper.  Waaaahoooooo!  My experience so far has me to recommending Passionfruit to anyone interested.  :)

**This is not a sponsored post-- just a little bit of info about a company that I am loving so far!