Ads & earning guide
Ads, paid listings and commission on bookings, and which suits your site.
Which way to earn suits you
Ads suit any site with visitors: sell a spot to a local sponsor, or paste code from an ad network. Paid listings suit a directory: businesses pay you to stand out. Commission suits travel content: you earn when readers book a hotel or tour through your links.
Simple, at the top of Ads & earning, shows only what you need to start. Advanced shows every option.
Ads on your maps
1. Ads & earning → Ad banners → Make an ad. 2. Choose where it shows: over the maps, above the cards, on listing pages, on blog posts, or somewhere else (it gives you a code to paste there). 3. Choose what kind of ad: a card, a listing spotlight made from one of your listings, an in-feed card, a billboard, your own banner picture, a text ad, or code from an ad network such as Google AdSense. 4. Fill in what it says, and if you like the dates it runs. The preview beside it shows how it looks as you go. Save, and it is on your site.
Each ad opens with Edit and shows its own preview in the list. Under Advanced you can make separate ads for computers and phones, change their order by dragging, and run a site takeover: the only ad anywhere while it runs. The switch at the top of Ad banners turns every ad off at once without losing them. Ad clicks are counted under Statistics.
Paid and featured listings
A featured listing has a bigger, ringed pin, comes first in its section with a “Featured” label, and leads “Also nearby”. You can feature any listing yourself from its Map location box.
Letting businesses pay (in beta: make a test payment first): with WooCommerce, add each package, such as “Featured listing, 30 days” at £49; Pinscribe makes it a hidden product and the listing is featured as soon as the order is paid. With Stripe, make a Payment Link in Stripe, paste it in, and add the webhook shown. Card details never touch your site.
Each listing’s post can offer “Own this venue? Get it featured”, and the suggestion form can offer it too. A refund or cancellation takes the days off again.
Business owners see both offers on their account page: Get featured, and Book a takeover, which features their listing and makes it the only ad across the site for a time. The takeover appears once you give it a price and a link (or WooCommerce makes its product) under Paid listings.
Commission on stays and things to do
1. Sign up free with a partner: Stay22 (sends each reader to whichever site pays best) or Booking.com for stays, GetYourGuide for things to do. 2. Paste your partner ID under Stays & things to do. 3. Every listing, tour stop and route stop gets a “Stays nearby” and “Things to do” button.
When a reader books through them, the partner pays you a share, at no extra cost to them. The links are marked as sponsored, as Google asks. Clicks show under Statistics; earnings show in your partner’s own dashboard. Needs Pinscribe Pro.