July 15, 2008
Does your Blog have the potential for paid Advertisers?
Below are some questions you should ask yourself before you start shopping around for advertisers. (We’re talking monthly flat fees of $500, $1000 or even $5000 here.)
- Does my blog have a niche focus? A focus is very important. Take a look at your current blog and the tags or categories you are blogging about. If you are all over the map, you don’t have a clear enough focus.
- What type of companies would want to advertise in this space? This is a question that you need to be really honest with yourself and think, why would any company want to advertise on this blog? If you are blogging about ‘making money in your spare time as a prostitute’ or ‘Angry work commute’ you need to think, “Who would really want to advertise there?”
Are there other blogs in this space with current paid advertisers? Check out your competitors? Do they have paid placements? If so, then you too can get them to advertise on your site.
- Do I blog about any products or services? If your blog focuses on products and services, then your readers are more likely to make purchase decisions than reading news stories which is much more attractive for potential advertisers.
- Do I have any real traffic? If you want to start selling ads on your site you should have around 250,000 page views a month. Minimum range would be about 100,000 page views a month, anything less than that it will be pretty hard to deliver results to an advertiser.
- Do I have an audience? Personally I think should have about 5000 feed readers before you really consider that you have an audience worth someone paying to get in front of. 1000 with a super niche might be possible, but still a stretch.
~Chad
July 16th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Interesting post….my site is a very specific niche that I do make some advertising money with yet I don’t have nearly the traffic you talk about. I’m wondering how specific niche sites are compared to general sites. More specifically 80% of my traffic is organic search to a very specific niche.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Hi Todd,
The smaller and more focused the niche, the less traffic you will need to start getting advertisers. But those niche guys will usually be smaller too, hence want to pay a lower amount. I’m also referring to direct paid advertising, and I’m guessing that you are making money off adsense from your site? Nice site though and home renos is a hot niche for $$$
July 17th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I’m making money off of Adsense and direct advertisers…..several hundred per month…not bad…it’s growing each month….i’m close to 18,000 unique visitors each month.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I am in the process (started off slow) of increasing my page views to become a more reputable blog in order to sell “real” advertising space. I have some advertising income currently, but really minimal. Recently I have increased my page views to approx. 4,000 per month…but I have just recently been blogging more frequently. The absolute key is to blog frequently, personalize to your readers, and write content that someone actually wants to read! Hopefully I can accomplish all of my lofty goals. Patience is a virtue (one that I don’t have!)