Advertise Space - Blog Avertising » 2007 » May

OK, you’ve worked hard, blogged hard, have great traffic, a solid reader base and now want to earn some real money for your efforts.   So how do you get advertisers?  This is the single most common question I get.  Where do I find advertisers for my site?  Well the question is simple, but the answer is not.  The truth is, no matter how much traffic you get:  100,000 uniques a month or a million a month, you may never get any company to advertise on your site.  It boils down to your niche.   ‘Technology’ is a category, ‘Cell phone covers’ is a niche.  Business is a category; ‘viral marketing’ is a niche.  If you are blogging about very general stuff, your daily life or everything under the sun, it may not be specific enough to attract a potential advertiser.  
The questions you need to ask yourself are: 
1)     What’s my niche?  If you can easily answer this, give yourself one point.
2)     Do I really know what I’m talking about?  I mean do people really want to hear what I have to say?  Yes, add one point.
3)     Are potential advertisers already advertising on similar blogs to mine?  If yes, two points.
4)     Am I ready to get my hands dirty and contact the companies?   If yes, add one point.  If NO, deduct three points.
5)     Do I have any real traffic?  300 visitors a month is NOT real traffic.  If you have 50K+ a month, you should be able to attract some advertisers.  (Rule of thumb.  The narrower the niche your site is in, the less traffic you site need to attract advertisers.)  50K+ add one point, 500K+ add two
6)     Do I have the ad spots already displayed waiting for clients?  If no, deduct one point
7)     Do I have an ‘Advertise with Us’ section on my site?  If no, deduct one point.
OK, add up your total.
·         Less than 3 = make some changes or it will be a tough road
·         5 points or more = congratulations, you are well on your way to ad dollars!
Want to see the blog that inspired this post today? It is Emily Chang’s site ehub.  This is the correct way to start attracting advertisers.  She has the ad units up and ready to go, a few sponsors already in there, and an advertising information section.  Nice work Emily. 
Another example is Brian over at CopyBlogger  and also a site that b5 sells advertising for on his behalf.  So if you’d like to snatch up one of the last sponsor spots, please email me :)
***Updates***

So here is the hard part:  Where to look?

Step 1:  This is the obvious one, but have a look on other similar blogs to yours and if you see boxes or banners that look like they may have been purchased, click on it, and find the contact email and shoot them a quick email asking if they’d be interested in advertising on your blog as well.

Step 2:  Have a look at your own blog.  There are people advertising on it already.  Yes, odds are you have Google AdSense running on your blog in a few places, so take a look at the text ads that Google is already serving up for you and contact them.  Why not cut out the crook that is stealing all your money and go direct to the source?  P.S.  Click through from your own site, why not, everyone else does…

Step 3:  Have a look at blogs in general and start taking notice of who advertises where.  Companies who already advertise on blogs are going to be a lot more open to advertising on your then companies who have not yet dipped their toes into the great big world of blogs.  A lot of the ones that have not yet tried it out still think of the word blog as ‘person at home in their pj’s complaining about their sick cat’

Step 4:  Search on Google.com for companies buying keywords in your niche.  Heck if you are already buying similar keywords yourself then you already know what some companies are paying for keywords in your space. 

Step 5:  Well this is the hardest one.  Make a wish list of every company you would love to see advertising on your blog, and start contacting them.   You’re gonna get a lot of NO’s, but just like girls that shoot you down at a bar, one of them is going to say Yes…

Here is a great blog post with some additional great information over at Daily blog Tips

Good Luck.

 -          Level 1: Bottom Level = Google AdSense.  Yes, even though I strongly dislike AdSense, it can be used to soak up and remnant ad inventory that you have on your site.   Google, the biggest pimp in the ad industry world, will take any traffic they can get which includes the international traffic that most ad networks avoid.  Average CPM = $1
Level 2: Affiliate programs:  Either directly from the supplier or through a network like Commission Junction affiliate programs are still one of the lowest forms of revenue you can generate from your blog.   For example if you have a video game blog and you link to Buy.com to purchase a PlayStation it might get you the odd sale, but the best way to do it, is to do a blog post on a very relevant product to your site, with an affiliate link to the offer.  (Use full discloser that the embedded link is an affiliate link as well)
-          Level 3:  Ad Networks.  ContextWeb, ValueClick, AdOn and hundreds of others.   There are loads of Ad networks out there that will re-sell your banner inventory for you and everyone you speak to will ‘guarantee’ the highest CPM’s in the industry, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the ads they display on your site will be low quality and the fill rates may be only 25% - 50%.  Another thing about ad networks is most of them only want US traffic so they will push back any international traffic you get.  Average CPM’s $1-$2
-          Level 4:  Automated Text link Ads.  Yes, text link ads not only outperform AdSense, they blow away ad networks when it comes to eCPM’s as most text links are bought on a monthly fixed rate and not on a CPC basis.  The pure industry leader in this game is http://www.textlinkads.com  One thing is you should do is manually approve the links bought on your site to ensure that they are at least somewhat relevant.  The best part about TLA is the pure automation of it, set it and forget it.  And another wonderful thing is it will even continue to make money long after your audience moves on. ( A distant second in this field is TextLinkBrokers.com)  Average price $25 per link x 6-8 links
-          Level 5: Fixed Text link Ads:  These are the direct buys you get from someone contacting you about buying a fixed link on your site.  Don’t let Matt Cutts  find out your doing this J Average price $50 per link.
-          Level 6: Graphical Banner Ads:  Getting advertisers to buy ads on a CPM basis on your site that you yourself set.  Put together your own rate card and have it on your ‘Advertise with Us’ page. Anywhere from $5CPM to $20CPM. 
-          Level 7: Fixed Monthly Sponsors - Graphical or integrated:  The top of the food chain and the top of the money chain.  Getting a sponsor to pay a fixed flat monthly rate to have a graphical ad or an integrated ad on your site is the single highest paying and best option for your Blog.  Even one sponsor of your site, can potentially beat out all your other forms of revenue generations combined.  This one takes pounding the pavement and contacting relevant companies, but the payoff is sweet.  This is the Holy Grail…Good Luck.

I’m often asked this question:  Where is online advertising headed?   To answer this question, you must first contemplate what the web itself will be like in the near future.
 Here is my prediction…
o    Within the next 10 years, traditional search as we know it will die.  You won’t go to Google or Yahoo and do a search to find that article you are looking for or that restaurant you want to try.  It will all be about referrals.  Everything will be socially influenced.  Everything will be rated, tagged, and reviewed.  All of your purchase decisions, travel destinations, and even things you do for fun will be influenced by ‘your’ personal network.   Your circle of business and personal contacts.  The sites that you visit regularly will become very niche specific, more local, centralized and personalized to exactly your taste.   Personalized homepages will become the norm, but not necessarily browser based, mainly desktop and wireless device based.  You won’t always boot up your computer and open a browser window anymore.  Most things you use will be integrated into your PC already in the form of tools and widgets, the content instantly updated and information always on.   Everything will be a mash-up of multiple tools, applications will be open source and/or completely customizable to your personal specifications.  Almost everyone will have a ‘My Face’, 2^nd life or virtual identity, even if you don’t want one, one might be created for you.
o    So how will online advertisers get to users if they are no longer using search engines or even web browsers?    Here are a few suggestions:
§  Branded Customizable Widgets.   If users are circumventing your website via RSS feeds and desktop widgets you’re going to have to own the tools.
§  Social Influencer Advertising.  Yes, in the very near future, I see everyday people with sponsorships.   Forget Tiger Woods and Sidney Crosby indorsing AMEX, it will be people like Mike Arrington, Tia Tequila & Amber MacArthur getting endorsement contracts to use and promote products.  Forget regular rock stars, these people are internet rock stars.
§  Second Company.   Virtual worlds will be overrun with real life products, promotions and advertising of all sorts.  If your company doesn’t have a presence in a virtual world environment, it will be as if you don’t exist in the real world.
§  Branded Customizable Widgets.   If users are circumventing your website via RSS feeds and desktop widgets you’re going to have to own the tools.
§  Blog Advertising.  This will become more important as readers slowly trend towards reading more niche focused sites geared specifically to their interests and local.
§  Smart mobs.  When you have a group of random people who are mass buying individual products to get group discounts won’t be able to be marketed to in the traditional sense.  You might want to give away a sample product to the mob boss or perhaps even sponsor them?
Want to meet up and discuss this further?  I’ll be at the Future of Online Advertising conference June 7-8.  (Note* This post was not a paid placement or endorsed by FOOA, but in the future it may very well be… :)
~ Chad

OK We’ll first off, I should apologize, since I am a totally new to the blogging world, I now realize that if you are going to bash something you need to back it up better.  I got totally hammered over here at Problogger.net with my first (probably my last ;) ) attempt at guest blogging.   But one thing I am not new too, is the online advertising world and I believe this is the reason Darren asked me to do a post about “how to make your site more attractive to advertisers” in the first place.   I have been buying and selling online ads for over 6 years and being on both sides of the fence so I have a pretty good idea on what ads should cost and a sites potential is for revenue.  
As for my comment on Adsense it still stands; let me explain further.
First off, is there a use for Google AdSense?  Yes.   So I do agree with some of the comments made by Eric over at Memwg. He has some very valid points.  If you have really low traffic it may be in fact the only way to monetize your site, and it is good for ‘remnant’ inventory when you can’t sell any ads or get an ad network to give you a half decent CPM on the excess inventory.
Can you make money off AdSense?  Absolutely.  And I’m sure lots of you do already make, $100 or even $500 a month, which is fine, but what I’m talking about is REAL advertising dollars.   By real money, I mean  $10,000, $20,000 a month.    If you are making $500 a month in AdSense, then your site could easily be generating $5000 a month in paid graphical advertising!   Most people with great small niche sites really underestimate that value of what potential ad dollars could be on their site, and I know that a lot of this perception is skewed by getting a small pay cheque from Google each month.   You’re like, wow, $75 and all for doing something I like to do anyway.  Well how about finding someone  willing to give you $500 a month to run an ad in the same spot as that lame old Google box?    Just one advertiser would beat everything you are making now. 
If you have a Blog making several hundred a month in AdSense, you should:
A)    Start selling fixed graphical ads off your site directly to advertisers today either on your own or hire a sales rep to do it for you.
           or
B)    Consider joining a blog network like Federated Media or b5media.
Another reason that I hate Google Adsense is because I believe they are blatantly ripping you off!  What percentage of the ad dollars do they give you??  Well Google doesn’t tell you and there is only speculation.  Some theories are 70% or 80%.  Ha!  I call BS on that one.  Have you ever gone in a purchased a campaign yourself?  I’ve seen keywords at $10+ a click.  Have you ever got $8 for one click on YOUR site?  I don’t think so.  Maybe $0.80?  The numbers just don’t match up.   If they were in fact giving such a high cut to the publishers at 80%, don’t you think they would make that information public knowledge?  Heck, I would think that would be a great sales pitch for them.    But the fact is that they are making Billions of dollars off other peoples traffic and content.  Your traffic and visitors are worth more than you realize to advertisers.  I have personally sold single fixed monthly ads on sites with only ¼ of the traffic that Problogger has, for $100,000+ per year.  That’s to ONE advertiser, on only ONE niche site.   TechCrunch sells single boxes for $10,000/month and Mashable sells his for $1000/month, your site could be selling ads for $100, $200, $500 or even  $1000 a month too!  All that I’m really trying to say is; don’t underestimate that value of your audience.