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5 Things To Keep In Mind While Selling Banner Ads On Your Blog

By Typhoon On November 5, 2009 Under Make Money Online, Sell Advertising Space

In Blogging, Selling Ad-Space directly rather than using any 3rd party services like Google Adsense could be a great way to make money blogging. Advertisers love advertising on blogs since the content is keyword rich and generally people trusts bloggers more than any e-commerce sites.

There are many reasons why selling Advertising Space for Banner Ads is a better alternative to Adsense or any other ad-networks. Here are a few of them:

  • You have complete control over who advertises on your site and when.
  • You don’t lose a chunk of your profits to commissions. Ad networks charge anywhere from 20-50% for placing ads automatically on your blog page/s.
  • You can Sell Ad Space based on time and not rely on clicks or impressions to get paid.
  • Since Ad Networks have an oversupply of inventory (Ad Space) to sell, they discount your space to advertisers up to 90% according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. That means less revenue in your pocket.

But there are 5 Crucial Factors which one should keep in mind when making their blogs available for private banner advertising.

advertise_here

1. Searching Advertisers

Are You Confused How are you going to find sponsors/advertisers for your blog? You can either carry out this task yourself or can place your Advertising Space for sale on other websites.

Finding advertisers yourself:

  • Probably you will get advertisers whose products, services etc. directly corresponds to your target audience;
  • The sites that are advertising with your blog competitors or related blogs are a good start to get advertisers. You can contact sites that are advertising on these sites and ask them if they wish to advertise on your blog.
  • You will need to contact each potential advertiser, one by one with a professional looking e-mail asking if they are interested in buying advertising space on your blog. The email must include an attachment or link to a page which includes analysis (statistics), prices, testimonials, a description of your blog etc.
  • Personalize the email stating where you found the website and why you believe they would wish to advertise with your blog. You won’t get a favorable response to a a standard and impersonal email.
  • Keep a record of who you’ve contacted and their response.
  • Remember to follow up on an email and offer some great deals to get noticed.

Advertising Space For Sale:

  • Sell Ad Space at an auction website to save yourself from the trouble of searching individual advertisers, one by one;
  • Such kind of websites enables you to list your ad-space together with details of your blog and analytics. You can either set a specific buy-out amount or put the Ad Space up for auction.
  • Potential buyers are able to contact you directly and can make you offers.
  • You can create a page which displays all the Advertising Space your  blog has, standard information about your blog, your acceptance policies and ad specifications in short Terms & Conditions, analytics, testimonials and anything else you desire.

Here, I would like you to read my article Selling Advertising Space On Your Blog = Huge Income in which I reviewed some popular banner auction sites.

2. Positioning, Quality & Quantity

Mostly advertisers look for:

  • Ad-Positions above the fold i.e where their Banner Ad will be displayed without viewers needing to scroll down to see it.
  • Larger Banners (the bigger, the more you can charge for it).
  • Wider Ads like 768×90 px or 468×60 px are more readable and tend to perform better than vertical Banners which take too much space and people need to scroll more for it.
  • Not too many competing Advertisements on the same page (large area of space taken up by other advertisers on your blog takes away their quality).
  • Your traffic is only one indicator of the value for money when advertising on your blog. Many advertisers looking to reach a specific target audience in their niche would rather advertise on a directly related site than a site with huge traffic but irrelevant to their product which is a kind of obvious thing.

3. Ad Specifications

Before placing the Advertising Space for sale, you should consider the advertisement requirements and creative specifications, including:

  • Ad dimensions;
  • Maximum file size;
  • Preferred/allowed format(like: jpg, png, gif ;
  • Animation restrictions (example: loop maximum, maximum animation time,maximum number of frames);
  • Flash requirements;
  • Appropriateness of content (example: no adult and illegal material).

4. Costing Method

How should you charge? Below are the method of how to charge for Ad Space:

  • Pay Per Click (PPC) – the advertiser pays you the agreed amount each time a viewer clicks on their advertisement(popular bloggers like Darren Rowse provides such kind of advertising on his blog);
  • Cost Per Time – this is the most favorable method of costing for private Ad sales. Sponsors simply pay to have their ad displayed in your slot for an agreed period of time like for a week or a month period.(I am Using It!)
  • Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) – an amount is charged for each thousand times the Ad is to be displayed on your website(Mostly seen on Forums rather on blogs).
  • Pay Per Action (PPA) / Cost Per Lead (CPL) – payment is made each time the Advertisement is clicked and the customer undertakes some type of approved action (such as registering, subscribing or making a purchase);

5. Analytics

You should prepare a .pdf or image file of your website analytics. It should consists some important blog statistics, like:

  • Daily/Monthly New Visits
  • Daily/Monthly Page Views
  • Average Time on Site
  • 3rd party rankings like Alexa, Compete, Google PageRank
  • Countries from where people are visiting in percentage distribution form
  • Blog Achievements

Conclusion

There are several aspects to selling advertising space. With many choices, some blog owners just take the easy way and put their space in the hands of an advertising network, where the profits are quite low and sometimes the inventory is sold for scraps because of overabundance in supply. When done effectively, selling Banner Advertising Directly can be very profitable and worthwhile.


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Article written by Typhoon

Yo! I am Typhoon a.k.a Sushant, a 16 yrs. old blogger from India and the owner of SmartBloggerz. Here I try to share useful Blogging related articles which would help a blogger to succeed. You can connect to me on Twitter.

Typhoon has written 316 superb article(s) on this blog

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71 Comments Add yours

  1. Vishal Sanjay

    November 5, 2009
    9:51 pm

    Great post sushant, once again it was worth reading your posts. I think that finding advertisers myself is a great way as i get to keep all the revenue, but if your blogs traffic is low then their are rare chances of you to make a sale. And I also think that as bloggers we should concentrate to writing and promoting our blogs instead of looking for advertisers, i would prefer doing this once my blog starts generating good sales from affiliates and third party networks and i should be able to hire a staff blogger and seo expert.

    Thanks
    Vishal Sanjay
    http://www.dumblittleblogger.blogspot.com
    Vishal Sanjay´s last blog ..Top 30 richest internet entreprenuers My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
    • Typhoon

      November 6, 2009
      3:35 pm

      Glad to see that you liked this post. O agree that if are newbie blogger, then you should first and most important thing is to build it a better blog and you will rather see advertisers coming automatically and purchasing your ad space.

      Thanks For Commenting.

      Reply to this comment
    • Senthil Ramesh

      December 26, 2009
      11:15 pm

      Yes Vishal, when I started looking for advertisers I just dropped ideas to blog. I think they are eating my time and started to concentrate on money. But I prefer it not to happen and would like to kill at the budding time. So, stopped looking for adverts and waiting to know if someone come to by themselves.
      Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

      Reply to this comment
  2. Matt Savage from Plenty of Fish

    November 5, 2009
    11:38 pm

    Direct advertising does seem the way to go eventually but I really don’t see it as a good strategy in the beginning. Direct sales takes up a heck of a lot more time and effort than using ad networks and you can really only sell effectively until you’ve got high enough traffic to substantiate direct ad sales.

    I suppose it’s a trade-off like anything else and best used depending on the blog.
    Matt Savage@Plenty of Fish´s last blog ..10 F*cked Up Online Dating Stories My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
    • Typhoon

      November 6, 2009
      3:37 pm

      Yup, direct ad sales are mostly seen on blogs with traffic. You will hardly see any advertiser buying banner ads on a blog with merely 50-100 page views a day. In such type of blogs, giving your ad space to 3rd party services like adsense is the best to generate revenue.

      Thanks For Commenting.

      Reply to this comment
    • Senthil Ramesh

      December 26, 2009
      11:19 pm

      We have only two options, either direct advertising or contextual ads like adsense, chitika. I think we don’t earn much and we aren’t sure of how much we can earn by them. But direct advertising gives us a certain value we can earn definitely. Both the methods of advertising has pros and cons.
      Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

      Reply to this comment
  3. Marg Elmendorf

    November 6, 2009
    2:28 am

    This is really a good idea. I am going to copy this post so I can go over it and figure out how to do all this. Are those square ads at the top of the right column your ads that you get paid for???
    Thanks for this good information.

    Reply to this comment
    • Typhoon

      November 6, 2009
      3:39 pm

      Ya, Those ads are directly sold by me to the advertisers for specific period of time and it’s working perfect for my blog.

      Thanks For Commenting.

      Reply to this comment
  4. Biodun from Webmaster Forum UK

    November 6, 2009
    3:33 am

    Intersting post i don’t really buy the idea of ads before the community on your blog is there, I feel that they have a negative impact on the growth of your readership.
    thansk for the post!
    Biodun @ Webmaster Forum UK´s last blog ..Using 301 Redirects My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  5. Tycoon Blogger from Make Money Online

    November 6, 2009
    7:37 am

    Great post and you are so right that it is better to sell ad space directly but it is very difficult and time consuming to reach out to advertisers. I have been running some affiliate banners from sponsoredtweets and adgitize and am doing better than adsense but not as good as if I had a “real advertiser”.
    Tycoon Blogger@Make Money Online´s last blog ..Twitter Follower Management Tool – Tweepi Review My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
    • Typhoon

      November 7, 2009
      7:47 pm

      Statistics speaks about how popular a blog is from an advertiser points of view. It’s strange to see that your blog is having such nice statistics even then you are saying advertisers are not coming. I think you should try to check on the rates if they are high or you could try asking advertisers on other blogs if they would like to buy ad space on your blog.

      Thanks For Commenting.

      Reply to this comment
    • Senthil Ramesh

      December 26, 2009
      11:24 pm

      But I mostly depend on forum to get the advertisers and to know how much are they charging for the ads.
      Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

      Reply to this comment
  6. IndianCashMaker

    November 6, 2009
    7:29 pm

    i love selling ad space on my blog but still to get my first advertiser…this is the best way of advertising in my view
    IndianCashMaker´s last blog ..Blog Life Cycle Day 2- Essentials Required Before You Start the Blog My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  7. Gordon Cindric

    November 7, 2009
    6:26 am

    This is a great post! Nice job, it really help me get perspective on eventual ad placements on my blog in the future. It seems that there are a lot of people that make mistakes and shove a bunch of ad placeholders on their blog or website the next day after it goes online.
    Gordon Cindric´s last blog ..How to Spice Up Your Product Presentation My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
    • Typhoon

      November 7, 2009
      8:01 pm

      Glad to see that this article helped you.
      It’s true that if you don’t have a community then you don’t need to place ads on the blog before you build it. It really doesn’t makes any sense of placing banner ads where only search engine robots visits.

      Thanks For Commenting.

      Reply to this comment
    • Senthil Ramesh

      December 26, 2009
      11:37 pm

      Yes all due to lack of patience. People wish to make money and get the investment back immediately. Rather than placing ads I can see people not bidding the right price. They charge it more or at a mountain price for which would not even value a smaller money.
      Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

      Reply to this comment
  8. Melvin

    November 7, 2009
    4:53 pm

    This is a good post. A lot of people wanted to jump into direct banner sales but know little to no knowledge at all. I wish people can read this post so to have a good idea of what to expect from it.
    Melvin´s last blog ..Cooking Something *new* For This Blog… My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  9. ANSH from adult party invite

    November 7, 2009
    6:56 pm

    Selling Banner Ads is one of the best way of internet marketing. So here you have posted very nice article about the Selling Banner Ads, i like your tips and i will follow all those when i will do this.
    Anyways keep it and keep sharing.

    Reply to this comment
  10. Alan from Glass Pipes

    November 8, 2009
    5:06 am

    Great post. I think this is the way a lot of bloggers should go. If you have enough traffic and are bringing in new members each month, then it is a very attractive idea. I would love to advertise my business on such a site because you know that you are getting a better quality ad which is not competing with many other text ads. Also, by taking the middleman out, as you said, the blogger makes more money and the advertiser often gets better ROI.

    Reply to this comment
  11. Tinh

    November 8, 2009
    7:00 pm

    Well, frankly you are right but I have a strict requirements on flash banner. Many hosting does not support and hacker can use it to implement Dos. It can also slow down blog loading time too. So, no flash!!!
    Tinh´s last blog ..Why You Should Pay More Attention To Small & New Blogs? My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  12. EarningStep

    November 9, 2009
    9:06 am

    this is perfect…look like i need to learn so much to get more advertiser for my blog.. thanks for the tips buddy
    EarningStep´s last blog ..How to get higher price per click from Google adsense – Earn more money from Google adsense My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  13. chandan from work at home

    November 9, 2009
    11:46 am

    Nice advice bro. Well I am also trying to selling ad space on my blog and I am searching advertiser on digital point forum and v7network. I think selling advertise space on blog is one good blog income source.
    chandan@work at home´s last blog ..Top posts on work at home opportunties My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  14. Lee Ka Hoong from Make Money Online

    November 10, 2009
    6:30 pm

    Selling banner ads is a very good way to make money out of our blog, especially niche blog. I believe that the only thing that advertiser concerns is the traffic, they will surely check on your Alexa ranking, PR and also the traffic. Also, the price you set must be reasonable.

    Typhoon, I’m sure you have made quite some sales right? :)

    Regards,
    Lee
    Lee Ka Hoong@Make Money Online´s last blog ..What Is Blogging And How Do People Make Money Online My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  15. scheng1

    November 17, 2009
    3:05 pm

    What is the payment mode? You get them to pay before putting the ad or after putting the ad? What if they refuse to pay?
    scheng1´s last blog ..Reflection on China Yuan and US Greenback My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  16. Calvin from Body Health

    November 22, 2009
    7:13 pm

    Selling banner ads is a good way to make money with our blog, but I think it’s not the right time to monetize my blog as my blog is new. I’m going to feed my blog with more quality content before monetizing it.

    Thanks for the tips Typhoon.

    Calvin
    Calvin@Body Health´s last blog ..Bladder Cancer – an early detection can save your life! My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  17. Prajakta from Party invitations

    December 2, 2009
    5:56 am

    Hi
    One of the most popular and most profitable website monetization options available today is banner advertising.Banner ads have come a long way with many different options and variations on creatives. On a related topic, if you’re more interested in implementing pop up/under ads as a means of generating income.

    Reply to this comment
  18. Eric B.

    December 3, 2009
    6:12 am

    These are some excellent tips here.

    Remember to not put them in a position that is too obtrusive, as they get in the user’s way and might even send them away.
    Eric B.´s last blog ..Designing an Effective Admin Back-End My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  19. akira07

    December 8, 2009
    3:58 pm

    There is some site which can sell their ads space for a thousand dollar per month, do you believe it? It’s a kind of portal website (providing news), the ads is cost about $4000. I want to build blog like that. But yes, it’s need effort to attract advertiser since my blog is have no (+) point :P .

    Well, thanks for the tips. It’s a start for us to think about direct ads selling business.
    akira07´s last blog ..Make or Break – Website Review My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  20. Senthil Ramesh

    December 17, 2009
    6:20 pm

    Thats a good info. You have mentioned sites like peroformancing ads like auction sites. Are they so? I think they r jus like ad approval sites. Isn’t it?
    Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..7 Questions You Should Answer Before Blogging My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  21. Jenn

    December 19, 2009
    8:02 pm

    Good post but I have a question.. I wonder how the web owners put price in the ad space? For example, the web owner has a free ad space on his sidebar and said that to get advertise there, you must pay $5.. How did the web owner knew that the price there is $5? Is it depends on the web owner, or there are standards to follow to assign prices in it? If so, what are the standards?
    Jenn´s last blog ..MOVED! My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  22. Senthil Ramesh

    December 26, 2009
    11:54 pm

    Hey Typhoon, I would like to ask one more thing here. How will you get the money from them. I meant whole pay upfront? Also if one gets the spot for 6 month, do you sign any contract so that he wont ask his money back and stop advertising with you?
    Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  23. kepler from tricksntips

    January 2, 2010
    12:02 am

    I never knew about this many advertising options. I have currently adsense running on my blog. How can I know which advertiser pays less?
    kepler@tricksntips´s last blog ..Happy New Year! My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment
  24. Typhoon

    December 27, 2009
    2:12 pm

    I have been earning with direct advertising from past one year even when I was using blogspot.. Just hit me mail and I will help you in deciding the rates.

    Reply to this comment
  25. Senthil Ramesh

    December 27, 2009
    4:30 pm

    Sure, Typhoon. But were you using adsense or similar things before. i am not sure they can give us profit at the beginning stage.
    Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Win $180 Cash Prize and more at SmartBloggerz My ComLuv Profile

    Reply to this comment

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