Most of us desire to monetize our websites in some form. If your blog is not funneling visitors toward a store, e-book, or personal product, you will almost certainly want to open up your blog to outside advertising. In this article we will discuss five ways to improve your ability to fill advertising space on your blog or website.
Advertise Your Site
Someone has to place that first ad. Let it be you.
You want advertisers to see how their ad will be placed on your site. Take your time with this. Make a slick graphic design in the exact dimensions you will be accepting ads for. Use it to promote something of your own. You want the ad to be appealing and have a good call to action. Demonstrate that your blog can handle professional looking advertising.
What you choose to promote is up to you. It could be another area of your blog or website. It could be another website you own. Or another website which you have a financial interest in, such as an affiliate program. Keep the ad on topic with the rest of your blog. If your blog is about travel, don’t advertise your affiliate program for buying red worms for fishing.
Promote your Advertising Space
This is a no-brainer. Create a banner which calls advertisers to action. Put the banner near the top of your site, almost always above your blog posts.
This is one of your most important graphic designs. If you can’t get it right, outsource it to someone who can. It should be professional looking and eye catching.
Clicking on it should bring the potential advertiser to another professional looking page. Here you will lay out prices, discuss the benefits of advertising with your blog, and promote visitor demographics.
Promote Site Statistics
Once the advertiser clicks your banner to find out more about advertising, be prepared to show them the statistics they need to make their decision. Be 100% truthful, but don’t be shy about your successes.
Page impressions are very important to advertisers. The longer someone clicks around your blog, the more opportunities they will have to click on advertising banners. If you have a strong time spent on site statistic, be sure to quote it.
Total and unique visitor statistics should be listed. You might consider Page Rank and Alexa data too. Most advertisers won’t recognize Moz Rank, but it will probably be well received by those familiar with search engine optimization.
Stay Focused
Don’t jump around from topic to topic. This rarely works.
The same rules you use for attracting your audience apply to attracting advertising. If your blog is supposedly about NFL football, and you are writing about your latest vacation or other unrelated subjects in a lot of posts, advertisers won’t have much confidence in your ability to keep an audience engaged.
Advertisers need you to be dependable with your content, so you can provide them with a dependable audience.
Always be Professional
You can be controversial and be successful, but it rare that you can rant and rave without scaring away advertisers.
Being professional also means quality control. Use a spell checker. Proof read your articles multiple times before releasing them to the public. Enlist friends and family to look them over too.
Use quality photos in your blog posts. Unless you are a professional photographer, consider utilizing stock photos. Creative commons are another option, but stock photos are so inexpensive these days that it seems silly not to pay a few dollars for images which will impress your readers and potential advertisers. If I can pay a few dollars to attract a $50 ad, you bet I am going to do it.
Never take images from the internet without first getting permission to use them. Not only is this a good way to scare away advertisers who have little faith in your character, but it could land you in hot water with the copyright police.
Follow these simple tips and you should improve your success in attracting advertising to your blog.