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

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.

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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.


Top 10 Search Terms:

• advertise here banner • advertise here

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75 thoughts on “5 Things To Keep In Mind While Selling Banner Ads On Your Blog”

  4. 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 =-.

    1. Yup, really. The blog has received huge support by advertisers from last many months and the end result of that smartbloggerz most of the ad-spots have been purchased.

            1. 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.

    1. Obviously you will have to pay before placing ads..You won’t find someone offering ad placement where you can pay after the time period of ad is over. Payment is mostly prefered by paypal by everyone.

      1. If the advertiser and publisher comes from same country, bank transfer can be alternative. But yes, mostly is using paypal.

        Anyway, since we can buy EC point, can we treat EC as payment method? (Pay with EC point, of course :P).
        .-= akira07´s last blog ..Make or Break – Website Review =-.

    1. You are right. But I would also like to point my finger at something. Everything has it’s limits and nothing is good if it’s too much. I think advertising on new blogs is ok (with google ads or affiliate 125×125 banners) as long as you don’t spam the hell out of it so that the person reading the blog has to find your actual blog post with a shovel.
      If you know your limits, it can be pretty decent. After all, you are providing good content for FREE, the least your readers can do to “thank you” is scroll through an ad or two and not think less of the blog because they did.
      .-= Gordon´s last blog ..How I Got 300 Twitter Followers Without Mass Following Others =-.

  7. 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.

      1. Yes, I agree. Pop-ups are annoying, no reader or visitor would love pop-ups! Use other method, there are lots out there surely.
        .-= Jenn´s last blog ..MOVED! =-.

  9. 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 =-.

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