How To Sell Direct Ads And Find Advertisers

On the June income report post, a few people ask me how to sell direct ads and find advertisers. I been a bit busy with so much other stuff, so I am finally writing this post 2 months later. It is always better to be late than never at all. So I just want to say sorry I am late with this post. I am sure it will help those whom asked about it.

How To Sell Direct Ads

There is 3 types of direct ads to sell. Text, Banner, and Paid Posts/Reviews. Knowing the prices you going to charge is very important. You want to make sure you are getting the maximum amount you can get but still make sure that the advertisers are getting a really good return on investment (ROI).

Text Link Ads

The way I come up with the price for text link ads is based upon what type of advertisers would be looking for them which always seems to be people looking to raise their pagerank (PR). Of course getting this type of advertiser you will need to sell “dofollow” text link ads. Warning: google doesn’t allow this. I sold dofollow text link ads because each of the advertisers bought year long link space. (Only 2 or 3 bought 6 months) For this type of time these links are going to seem normal and not paid links. So I seen no reason to apply the nofollow tag. Most likely I am going to forget their paid links and leave them there for 1 to 3 months extra before I real their paid links.

My point is make sure you know what you want to sell nofollow or dofollow.

So you know the way I came up with price was pure PR. I can careless about PR but I do care about leveraging other peoples feelings to make a profit. So I thought about how much money I would like to get per link space for a year. I picked $150 even though I knew I could get more because of the niche my blog is in. $150 breaks down to $12.50 a month. Now that seem like a lot to some and nothing to others. For me it was quick cash to better my business.

Lesson: Keep the price within your niche demand for links.

Banner Ads

There is 2 ways to pick the price for your banner ad slots. Both ways relay on traffic.

1) You base the price of your banner slots on the amount of your pageviews. First you pick how much you want to get paid per 1,000 views. Normally you want to pick between $0.50 – $5 for Cost Per Thousand (CPM) then figure out how many pageviews you are getting. I recommend tracking this with google analytics.

2) I personally like this method as you know your advertisers will keep coming back month after month. First you will need to place products that you recommend in your banner ad slots. Track the ads for a month and see how many clicks each ad slot received. I recommend tracking clicks with OIO publisher. Base your price on cost per click (CPC) I recommend keeping it between $0.05 – $0.25 so you know your advertisers are getting a great deal.

Lesson: Care about how your ad slots perform for your advertisers to keep them buying monthly.

Paid Post/Reviews

Selling paid posts/reviews are very easy. I do mean EASY. I really like doing paid posts but really hate doing paid reviews. They can be quick cash. First I want to say if you offering paid posts and not doing at least 1 per month. Your price is too high for your blog. If you doing more than 1 paid posts a week you need to raise your price.

Paid posts/reviews are based upon your blogs PR, traffic, and readership(number of subscribers). Some bloggers don’t care about their readers they just after the cash so they do as many paid posts as they can no matter if the price is $5 or $50. That’s not the way I do business and that’s not the way any of you should do business.

For example, I got an email from socialspark last month saying my blog qualified for an opportunity. The opportunity was an $100 paid post. I didn’t do the paid post as it was unrelated to my blog. I know some of you will be like WTF I would have did it. I care far to much about my personal brand than $100.

I recommend adding a paid post section to your advertise page with a price you happy with and wait for advertisers to buy paid posts. When you start to do more than one per week then raise your price by $25 each time you raise your price. You don’t want advertisers running away but you want to slow down the orders.

Lesson: Be careful doing paid posts. You don’t want to bother your readers.

How To Find Advertisers

There is 3 ways to find advertisers for your blog. I have used 2 of them. 1 of them is my main source of income for one of my blogs. Which will be again for another blog in the same niche.

1) Finding advertisers offline. I have never done this but Doug at makingmoneyonline has for one of his blogs/website. Calling business owners to advertise on your blog is a great way to sell ad slots. The thing is, your blog must be a local blog. For example, lets say you stay in small town outside a big city. (Like I do) You make a blog all about your city. A lot of people in your city visits the blog everyday, week, and/or month. Business owners want their business, so they pay you for ad slots but you must connect them so they know advertisement space is available.

2) Finding advertisers online by contacting companies via email. I have done this a few times. A close friend of mine is only focused on making money this way. His ad slots are always full with advertisers paying premium prices every month. First know your niche and what companies are best suited for your readers. Then contact them all via email or phone until your ad slots are full!

3) This is where I make the bulk of my income. I go to webmaster forums and niche webmaster forums. I make a ad thread on the forum with full details of PR, traffic, readership, ad slots available and prices. One thing I leave out though, the url to my blog. This forces the advertisers to contact and keep the window shoppers away from wasting your time.

Lesson: It’s far more easier to find advertisers than you thought.

As a professional blogger, you should know how to make money from your blog. Now that you know how to sell direct ads on your blog the story is complete. You can now make money every month from your blog.

I hope that you enjoyed this post, learn from it, and again I want to say sorry for taking so long.