Once you start getting a decent amount of traffic you can start selling your own ads. Simply putting an ad box up saying “this space for sale†or “advertise here†will not always do it. If you know of a company or site that will benefit by advertising with you then contact them and let them know your rates. You can even offer free advertising for a month so they can see what the conversion rate is. Be proactive about finding your advertisers!
One more thing about advertising your advertising spots… try not to make it look like an ad wasteland! One box saying “advertise here†should do it. If you place six boxes advertising ad space it just looks like your site is not worth advertising on! Put something else in its place. You can always put a button from one of your affiliate sites (I will discuss affiliate marketing in more detail next week) there instead of another “advertise here†button.
Getting people to advertise on your site is the goal, but you need to have something to convince them that your site is worth the cost you are asking. Here is where media kits come in handy. A media kit is a document you send to potential advertisers outlining information about your site and what their advertising options are.
There are many things that you can include in your media kit. Think of it like a resume for your blog. You need to include:
- Stats. What are your average monthly page and unique views. You may also want to include your twitter number, email subscription count, number of RSS subscribers, and number of facebook fans for those advertisers who are looking at in post advertising or if you are willing to use one of those mediums for advertising.
- Significant affiliations and awards for your blog (news programs, awards, collaborations with other sites, etc).
- Demographics. You can find this information with prgrams like quantcast and the alexa toolbar tools.
- What sort of advertising options you have. Do you only offer one size of button? Do you accept text ads? Will you write a post about a topic/blog?
All of this information should be put into a pdf file so it is easy to send to potential advertisers. If you want you can link to it on your blog or you can just email it out to people who inquire about advertising.
Once you have all that you are ready to go except for one very big question. How much do you charge? Generally button and text ads are based on the number of page views you get each month. A normal charge is $0.15 per 100 page views per month. So if you average 1,000 page views each month then you should be charging $1.50/month for a 125 x 125 ad space. If you average 10,000 page views each month then you should be charging $15/month. If you average 100,000 page views each month then you should get $150 a month.
TASK – Create a media kit for your blog.
Monday we will discuss using referral programs to earn income with your blog.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you soooooo much for your post! We are only a two month old blog, and your post about charging for ads was just what we needed! We are at 5,000 hits a month, and we are thinking of offering ads with bi-weekly blog posts. What should we charge for blog posting with an ad? Please check out our website and let us know what you think! Thank you again for your awesome blog!
What size/type ad?
There are many ways to tweek advertising or offer more to entice advertisers to give you a shot if you are new and a post with the ad is a great idea!
I love the colors on your site by the way – it is so bright and cheery!