CrowdA - A Practical Guide
On Habré already published an article introducing webmasters with CrowdA - a new system that allows you to effectively distribute revenues for advertising on the site between the site owner and content authors. The philosophy of such a system and its validity is a separate topic for conversation, which is hotly discussed on the links mentioned. The specific goal of this publication is to provide technical guidance for working with CrowdA for webmasters who still decide to try working with it. From myself I’ll add that attacks, according to the system, are incorrectly aimed: CrowdA is no more than a tool for a webmaster who has decided to reward authors for content. If someone does not like this idea, then it is necessary to turn discontent to webmasters, and not to the CrowdA system.
So, in order for your platform to work with CrowdA, you need to perform several simple steps that we will now demonstrate: registration, several stages of integration and subsequent monitoring of our activities.
check in
Integration, Part A (zone definition)
Integration, Part B (profile definition)
Integration, Part C (embed ad code)
Integration, Part D (registration of authors)
Monitoring
Authors accounts
')
check in
Go to the site CrowdA , click on the green button and register as the owner of the site, writing the address of our site in the questionnaire. Later, the system will allow us to register other sites on the same account, but at this stage at least one site is required for CrowdA support service to make sure that the site really contains author's content.
Within 24 hours we get an answer that the site is registered. Go to the account.
The main functions of the system will not show us anything interesting yet, because we have just begun work. Nevertheless, let's go through these functions to get a general idea of the system. So, the menu:
Configuration → Contributors
list of registered authors working on your site. While the list is empty. Authors will be sent from your site (below will be explained how).
Configuration → Profiles
list of income distribution profiles. The system allows you to quite flexibly determine how many percent of advertising revenue, to whom, and for what you are ready to deduct. By default, the system starts working with a standard profile, advanced users will be able to change this profile later.
Configuration → Sites
list of sites registered under your account. In the beginning contains only the site you entered during registration. Here you can add new sites.
Configuration → Zone s
list of advertising areas (zones) participating in the distribution of profits. With the definition of such a zone, we will begin the next stage.
Report → Contributor Earnings
Profit report given to authors. So far, unfortunately, is empty.
Publisher integration
technical guide for integration with the service. In fact - what you read now, but in a concise form.
Settings
setting up your account.
Logout
Sign Out.
Please note that in the upper right corner are your username and CrowdId, your unique identifier in the system. They will need to use during the integration, see below.
Integration, Part A (zone definition)
The initial approach is familiar to the pain of working with advertising networks - we get an advertising code and place it on the site.
The idea is this: for each advertising space (zone), with which we are ready to share the income, you need to create a corresponding zone in CrowdA, generate its advertisement code and inject it on the site instead of the advertisement that was there before. After that, CrowdA will monitor ad impressions on this zone and distribute revenue from this ad to your users. You have at least two natural questions:
Question: How does CrowdA know to which user exactly the income is due?
Answer: In the process of integrating the code into your website, you will provide this information to CrowdA, which will be described below.
Question: What if I want to share only half the income of the zone?
Answer: When you define a zone, you define its default code in the system, i.e. it is the very code (your, original) that CrowdA will call in cases where the proceeds go to you, not to your authors. Thus, CrowdA allows you to deduct revenue from a part of the hits to the authors, and in the remaining shows to twist your advertisement.
So, in order to create a new zone, we go to Configuration → Zones , click on the New button and enter all the characteristics of the new zone:
All fields are clear enough, but nevertheless explain:
Name
the name of the zone for your convenience, then to distinguish between zones
Site
zone site address. You may have several sites recorded, so you need to select the one on which the zone is located.
Size
zone size
Status
default active (enabled)
Default ad code
default advertising (discussed above). Most likely, here you will copy the advertisement that runs in this zone before integration with CrowdA.
Press the Save button, save the zone. Now that we have a list of our zones, the button Get ad code gives us the CrowdA code, which we should integrate into the site.
Integration, Part B (profile definition)
This part of the integration is optional - if you completely miss it and move on to the next, then everything will work, and later you will be able to go back and fill in the lost. Nevertheless, following the correct logic, it is appropriate to determine the deduction profiles right now. Each profile determines what percentage of the income you are willing to deduct the authors and for what content. For each author, you can specify as many profiles as you like, and CrowdA will choose the one that corresponds to the parameters of the current ad display (content type, profile exclusivity). By default, the default profile is used. To define a new profile, we go to Configuration → Profiles , click the New button and fill out the profile form.
Name
profile name for your convenience, to distinguish between profiles later
Content type
The type of content that is associated with this profile. You can choose from a list of predefined content types (blog, picture, video, etc.). In fact, the value selected in this field is intended solely for you. Below, in the subsequent integration, we will inform for each display of advertising which types of content are present on the page. Having received a certain type, the system will search for a profile corresponding to this type. And how exactly it is called, or what is on the page of the system does not matter.
Percentage
The percentage of earnings deducted to the author under this profile.
Default
If this flag is enabled, then if there are several profiles corresponding to a specific content type, this particular profile will be selected
Exclusive
If this flag is enabled, then if there is a page with several types of content and, accordingly, several profiles, the exclusive profile will be selected automatically.
Status
default active (enabled)
Please note that the system has already defined one standard profile for default content. You do not need to wash it, it will allow you to work with the system before you thoroughly determine all deduction profiles for your needs.
Integration, Part C (embed ad code)
Now we need to learn how to tell CrowdA during each advertisements, which of our users is the author of the imperishable content, to which income is due. There are two ways to do it: light and heavy.
Easy is if your site runs on a well-known CMS platform. For popular platforms, CrowdA has already prepared plugins - contact customer support (tech@crowda.com) and you will be sent a plugin and instructions. There are currently written plugins for phpBB, vBulletin, WordPress, MediaWiki, etc.
The hard way is to write the integration yourself if you have a self-made website or a platform for which there is no plug-in. It is not necessary to be afraid, the severity is relative - a few lines in JavaScript. Let's get started Our task is to inform the code that you recently copied to the site who exactly is the author of the content on this page. Perhaps there are several authors if, for example, there are materials from different authors on the page, or if you are willing to pay for the article to its author and for the comments to everyone else.
You must put on the page before calling the ad code CrowdA (which we generated in the first part of the integration) code in accordance with the following example:
For each author receiving a percentage of advertising on this page (in the example, there are two of them), it is required to add an array of three fields to the contributors variable.
Explain each of these three fields separately:
Crowdaid
The unique identifier in the system CrowdA your author (not yours!). As a rule, this field remains empty, since you do not need to keep it at home, we write simply “”.
ContentType
the type of content created by this particular author. In the example above, the first author wrote an article and the second wrote a blog. Variants of content types can be taken from the list of profiles that we described above.
Username
username author in your system.
Attention: the first and third parameters are interchangeable and it is enough to inform only one of them. Your task is to identify your author in the CrowdA system and this can be done in two ways: pass in the first element of the array its unique CrowdAId (how it will receive it, will be described below), or transfer in the third element its unique username on your site. The second method is much simpler, because then you do not need to store the CrowdAId of your authors anywhere.
Having finished working with the advertising code, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Our ad unit now looks something like this:
We are almost there. The last thing left is how your authors will start receiving long-awaited earnings.
Integration, Part D (registration of authors)
If the site works at this stage, then the advertisement will safely pass through the CrowdA system, but all the money will go to you, because the system will twist your default code without finding your authors among its users. Therefore, the last stage of integration is to notify the authors about the new service and give them the opportunity to open an account in the CrowdA system. Here, too, the creators of the system tried to do this with the slightest difficulty for the authors themselves. And we have to work a little bit. First of all, we post on the main page, or where you prefer, the information that our favorite resource is now working with the new CrowdA service; young and old can earn money and explain the principle of work. Now, in order for the author to register in CrowdA, we must give him a link where he can do it. But this link is not simple, but golden. Clicking on it, your author does not just get on the main page in CrowdA and takes a long turnip, thinking what to do there. This link contains all the information that the author came from your resource and his username from you, so the system will automatically link it to your site after he has entered his personal data. We can get this link from the CrowdA system using the following standard HTTP GET call:
The values of the parameters are given for example, we will explain each of them:
publisherId
your (site owner) ID CrowdAId
publisherUsername
your username (e-mail) in the CrowdA system
publisherPassword
your password in the CrowdA system
Your username and password are required to identify you in the system. Otherwise, the attackers could generate such links supposedly on your behalf and get the money of your authors.
site
site from which the request is sent (in case you have more than one site)
localUsername
your author's username on your site
Obviously, in order for the last parameter to be known, the author must be logged in to the site. This is logical - the link is unique to it and apparently should be accessible from a personal profile page or a similar one.
By sending this request to CrowdA, we receive in response a unique link for our author, which we place in a convenient place. Authors will read about the new service, click on the link and register.
This is the end of the process - we have placed the CrowdA advertising block on our website, set the distribution profiles of advertising profits and allowed our authors to register on CrowdA and start making money. Having spent an hour or two on integration, we have achieved a good deal, allowing us to distribute the income between us and our authors. Returning to what was written in the beginning of the article, if such systems as CrowdA have the right to exist, the process of connecting to it is quite simple, given the nontrivial tasks facing it.
Monitoring
After completing the technical integration and watching the crowds of satisfied authors rush to make money on your site, you can monitor the process using reports provided by CrowdA. Logging into your account and clicking on Contributor Earnings you will receive the following report:
By default, the report shows the total daily shows and earnings of your authors over the last week. You can get the same report for the last month, year, etc., as well as get a breakdown by authors or by sites.
Authors accounts
We described in detail how the CrowdA service looks like from your side - from the side of the site owner. The last topic, which we will briefly cover, is what the service looks like from your authors. After visiting the CrowdA website using the link that you placed on the personal page of your author, he reports personal data and gets access to the system. From this point on, all the earnings that are deducted to his account and which you see in your report (previous topic) become visible to the author in a similar report. If the author enrolls at several sites working with the service, then in the reports he will see the earnings for each of the sites and the total earnings. In addition to earnings, the author sees the display of their content on the site.
At that moment, when the author’s total earnings exceed the stipulated amount (minimum salary, in other words), which is currently defined as $ 10, the author may demand payment of money. Payment is made at the moment through three payment systems - PayPal, WebMoney and Payoneer debit cards.
This concludes the description of the technical manual for working with the CrowdA service. I will be glad to answer questions, leave comments. Successes!
So, in order for your platform to work with CrowdA, you need to perform several simple steps that we will now demonstrate: registration, several stages of integration and subsequent monitoring of our activities.
check in
Integration, Part A (zone definition)
Integration, Part B (profile definition)
Integration, Part C (embed ad code)
Integration, Part D (registration of authors)
Monitoring
Authors accounts
')
check in
Go to the site CrowdA , click on the green button and register as the owner of the site, writing the address of our site in the questionnaire. Later, the system will allow us to register other sites on the same account, but at this stage at least one site is required for CrowdA support service to make sure that the site really contains author's content.
Within 24 hours we get an answer that the site is registered. Go to the account.
The main functions of the system will not show us anything interesting yet, because we have just begun work. Nevertheless, let's go through these functions to get a general idea of the system. So, the menu:
Configuration → Contributors
list of registered authors working on your site. While the list is empty. Authors will be sent from your site (below will be explained how).
Configuration → Profiles
list of income distribution profiles. The system allows you to quite flexibly determine how many percent of advertising revenue, to whom, and for what you are ready to deduct. By default, the system starts working with a standard profile, advanced users will be able to change this profile later.
Configuration → Sites
list of sites registered under your account. In the beginning contains only the site you entered during registration. Here you can add new sites.
Configuration → Zone s
list of advertising areas (zones) participating in the distribution of profits. With the definition of such a zone, we will begin the next stage.
Report → Contributor Earnings
Profit report given to authors. So far, unfortunately, is empty.
Publisher integration
technical guide for integration with the service. In fact - what you read now, but in a concise form.
Settings
setting up your account.
Logout
Sign Out.
Please note that in the upper right corner are your username and CrowdId, your unique identifier in the system. They will need to use during the integration, see below.
Integration, Part A (zone definition)
The initial approach is familiar to the pain of working with advertising networks - we get an advertising code and place it on the site.
The idea is this: for each advertising space (zone), with which we are ready to share the income, you need to create a corresponding zone in CrowdA, generate its advertisement code and inject it on the site instead of the advertisement that was there before. After that, CrowdA will monitor ad impressions on this zone and distribute revenue from this ad to your users. You have at least two natural questions:
Question: How does CrowdA know to which user exactly the income is due?
Answer: In the process of integrating the code into your website, you will provide this information to CrowdA, which will be described below.
Question: What if I want to share only half the income of the zone?
Answer: When you define a zone, you define its default code in the system, i.e. it is the very code (your, original) that CrowdA will call in cases where the proceeds go to you, not to your authors. Thus, CrowdA allows you to deduct revenue from a part of the hits to the authors, and in the remaining shows to twist your advertisement.
So, in order to create a new zone, we go to Configuration → Zones , click on the New button and enter all the characteristics of the new zone:
All fields are clear enough, but nevertheless explain:
Name
the name of the zone for your convenience, then to distinguish between zones
Site
zone site address. You may have several sites recorded, so you need to select the one on which the zone is located.
Size
zone size
Status
default active (enabled)
Default ad code
default advertising (discussed above). Most likely, here you will copy the advertisement that runs in this zone before integration with CrowdA.
Press the Save button, save the zone. Now that we have a list of our zones, the button Get ad code gives us the CrowdA code, which we should integrate into the site.
Integration, Part B (profile definition)
This part of the integration is optional - if you completely miss it and move on to the next, then everything will work, and later you will be able to go back and fill in the lost. Nevertheless, following the correct logic, it is appropriate to determine the deduction profiles right now. Each profile determines what percentage of the income you are willing to deduct the authors and for what content. For each author, you can specify as many profiles as you like, and CrowdA will choose the one that corresponds to the parameters of the current ad display (content type, profile exclusivity). By default, the default profile is used. To define a new profile, we go to Configuration → Profiles , click the New button and fill out the profile form.
Name
profile name for your convenience, to distinguish between profiles later
Content type
The type of content that is associated with this profile. You can choose from a list of predefined content types (blog, picture, video, etc.). In fact, the value selected in this field is intended solely for you. Below, in the subsequent integration, we will inform for each display of advertising which types of content are present on the page. Having received a certain type, the system will search for a profile corresponding to this type. And how exactly it is called, or what is on the page of the system does not matter.
Percentage
The percentage of earnings deducted to the author under this profile.
Default
If this flag is enabled, then if there are several profiles corresponding to a specific content type, this particular profile will be selected
Exclusive
If this flag is enabled, then if there is a page with several types of content and, accordingly, several profiles, the exclusive profile will be selected automatically.
Status
default active (enabled)
Please note that the system has already defined one standard profile for default content. You do not need to wash it, it will allow you to work with the system before you thoroughly determine all deduction profiles for your needs.
Integration, Part C (embed ad code)
Now we need to learn how to tell CrowdA during each advertisements, which of our users is the author of the imperishable content, to which income is due. There are two ways to do it: light and heavy.
Easy is if your site runs on a well-known CMS platform. For popular platforms, CrowdA has already prepared plugins - contact customer support (tech@crowda.com) and you will be sent a plugin and instructions. There are currently written plugins for phpBB, vBulletin, WordPress, MediaWiki, etc.
The hard way is to write the integration yourself if you have a self-made website or a platform for which there is no plug-in. It is not necessary to be afraid, the severity is relative - a few lines in JavaScript. Let's get started Our task is to inform the code that you recently copied to the site who exactly is the author of the content on this page. Perhaps there are several authors if, for example, there are materials from different authors on the page, or if you are willing to pay for the article to its author and for the comments to everyone else.
You must put on the page before calling the ad code CrowdA (which we generated in the first part of the integration) code in accordance with the following example:
For each author receiving a percentage of advertising on this page (in the example, there are two of them), it is required to add an array of three fields to the contributors variable.
Explain each of these three fields separately:
Crowdaid
The unique identifier in the system CrowdA your author (not yours!). As a rule, this field remains empty, since you do not need to keep it at home, we write simply “”.
ContentType
the type of content created by this particular author. In the example above, the first author wrote an article and the second wrote a blog. Variants of content types can be taken from the list of profiles that we described above.
Username
username author in your system.
Attention: the first and third parameters are interchangeable and it is enough to inform only one of them. Your task is to identify your author in the CrowdA system and this can be done in two ways: pass in the first element of the array its unique CrowdAId (how it will receive it, will be described below), or transfer in the third element its unique username on your site. The second method is much simpler, because then you do not need to store the CrowdAId of your authors anywhere.
Having finished working with the advertising code, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Our ad unit now looks something like this:
[ CrowdA ]We are almost there. The last thing left is how your authors will start receiving long-awaited earnings.
Integration, Part D (registration of authors)
If the site works at this stage, then the advertisement will safely pass through the CrowdA system, but all the money will go to you, because the system will twist your default code without finding your authors among its users. Therefore, the last stage of integration is to notify the authors about the new service and give them the opportunity to open an account in the CrowdA system. Here, too, the creators of the system tried to do this with the slightest difficulty for the authors themselves. And we have to work a little bit. First of all, we post on the main page, or where you prefer, the information that our favorite resource is now working with the new CrowdA service; young and old can earn money and explain the principle of work. Now, in order for the author to register in CrowdA, we must give him a link where he can do it. But this link is not simple, but golden. Clicking on it, your author does not just get on the main page in CrowdA and takes a long turnip, thinking what to do there. This link contains all the information that the author came from your resource and his username from you, so the system will automatically link it to your site after he has entered his personal data. We can get this link from the CrowdA system using the following standard HTTP GET call:
adserver.crowda.com/api?publisherId=ca-943244439-73216&publisherUsername=publisher@my_site.com&publisherPassword=p1ssw3rd&site=my_site.com&localUsername=JohnThe values of the parameters are given for example, we will explain each of them:
publisherId
your (site owner) ID CrowdAId
publisherUsername
your username (e-mail) in the CrowdA system
publisherPassword
your password in the CrowdA system
Your username and password are required to identify you in the system. Otherwise, the attackers could generate such links supposedly on your behalf and get the money of your authors.
site
site from which the request is sent (in case you have more than one site)
localUsername
your author's username on your site
Obviously, in order for the last parameter to be known, the author must be logged in to the site. This is logical - the link is unique to it and apparently should be accessible from a personal profile page or a similar one.
By sending this request to CrowdA, we receive in response a unique link for our author, which we place in a convenient place. Authors will read about the new service, click on the link and register.
This is the end of the process - we have placed the CrowdA advertising block on our website, set the distribution profiles of advertising profits and allowed our authors to register on CrowdA and start making money. Having spent an hour or two on integration, we have achieved a good deal, allowing us to distribute the income between us and our authors. Returning to what was written in the beginning of the article, if such systems as CrowdA have the right to exist, the process of connecting to it is quite simple, given the nontrivial tasks facing it.
Monitoring
After completing the technical integration and watching the crowds of satisfied authors rush to make money on your site, you can monitor the process using reports provided by CrowdA. Logging into your account and clicking on Contributor Earnings you will receive the following report:
By default, the report shows the total daily shows and earnings of your authors over the last week. You can get the same report for the last month, year, etc., as well as get a breakdown by authors or by sites.
Authors accounts
We described in detail how the CrowdA service looks like from your side - from the side of the site owner. The last topic, which we will briefly cover, is what the service looks like from your authors. After visiting the CrowdA website using the link that you placed on the personal page of your author, he reports personal data and gets access to the system. From this point on, all the earnings that are deducted to his account and which you see in your report (previous topic) become visible to the author in a similar report. If the author enrolls at several sites working with the service, then in the reports he will see the earnings for each of the sites and the total earnings. In addition to earnings, the author sees the display of their content on the site.
At that moment, when the author’s total earnings exceed the stipulated amount (minimum salary, in other words), which is currently defined as $ 10, the author may demand payment of money. Payment is made at the moment through three payment systems - PayPal, WebMoney and Payoneer debit cards.
This concludes the description of the technical manual for working with the CrowdA service. I will be glad to answer questions, leave comments. Successes!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/66169/
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