Running a blog can be a great way to earn some extra income online, while having a lot of fun too. Some blogs are made specifically with the intent to make money, and others are started out purely for fun. Regardless of how your blog started, you are likely looking for ways to make some money off of all the work you’ve put into it. There are, of course, many different options to choose from ranging from promoting affiliate products to using AdSense or other ad networks.
There is no right or wrong option when it comes to making money from your blog, and in almost all cases, you don’t even have to pick just one method. One great option for successful bloggers, however, is to sell advertising space to individual companies. This is typically done on a monthly basis, and has the potential to bring in a lot of money. If you’re thinking about making money with private ads, read on to see how to maximize your success.
Start with Traffic
You’ll never get anyone to advertise on your blog until you have a steady stream of people coming to your site. At the earliest stages of any blog, your best bet is to focus on adding content and marketing your blog. If you really want to make a little money, you can put AdSense up and hope to make a few dollars. Your main focus for now, however, should be on building traffic. Once you get to about 1000 people subscribed to your RSS feed, and a good amount of search or social traffic, then you can start looking for private advertisers.
Don’t be Desperate
You’ve likely seen many sites that have a bunch of small boxes which say “Advertiser here” or “Your Ad Here” on them. In many cases, people will fill up all their ad spots with those types of images, hoping that potential advertisers will click and pay to have their site displayed. This is a huge mistake, for a number of reasons, including the following:
- They Know You Have Inventory – When you have more than one of your ad spots clearly available, the potential advertiser knows you have lots of inventory available, so they can negotiate a very low price.
- You’re Not Making Money – These types of spots don’t make money. You’re much better off filling them with affiliate offers or AdSense ads rather than just begging for advertisers.
- You Look Unprofessional – Having a bunch of these types of things on your site just looks unprofessional, and can actually drive away potential advertisers.
- You’ll Appear Unwanted – If people see that nobody else is advertising on your site, they may wonder why and just avoid taking the risk.
It is a good idea to have one of these spots letting people know that you have open advertising, but never more than one, or you’ll just look desperate.
Don’t Fill Your Site with Ads
Another thing to avoid when looking to pull in good paying private advertisers is to avoid adding too many ads. This is mostly a problem once you become more successful, and there is the temptation to keep adding more ad spots as you get more advertisers. It is, after all, difficult to turn down potentially thousands of dollars a month. The fact is, however, that if you overfill your site with ads, your visitors will eventually stop coming to your site because it will just appear spammy. Without the visitors, all your advertisers will quickly jump ship. While some ads are good, it is a fine line before you start to overdo it.
Setting Prices
Now that you know what not to do, it is time to look at how to get some good private advertisers to buy spots on your site. The first thing you’ll need to do is set your prices. You don’t want to go too high, for obvious reasons. You also don’t want to go too low, or you won’t make enough money. The best way to figure out prices is to find other sites with similar traffic in a similar niche, and see how much they are selling spots in the same area of the site for. The prices should be based largely on the amount of traffic your site gets. Remember, experiment with different price points to see which ones turn the most profit per month.
Finding Advertisers
Rather than just waiting for advertisers to reach out to you, you should always try to contact potential advertisers to offer them space on your site. You can start by finding businesses in a niche that could benefit from being in front of your audience. Reach out to them, and see if they are interested. If you have a good amount of traffic, you can also hire a marketing firm to find good businesses to advertise on your site.
Once you get to a certain level of traffic, however, you’ll never have to go out and find advertisers, as they will come right to you. Until that point, just try to make sure the right businesses are aware of your site and that you can help them by providing high quality advertisements.
Offer Deals and Specials for Long Term Contracts
No matter where the potential advertiser comes from, you should always try to negotiate the best deal possible. In some cases, that will mean the most money per month. In most cases, especially when just starting out, however, it will be more important to try to keep your ad space filled than it is to squeeze every possible dime out of the advertiser.
Offering special pricing or other benefits to advertisers who sign up for multiple months at a time is a great way to fill up your ad space, and get some good money. For example, offering a 20% discount for signing up for two months, rather than just one, is a great strategy. Just remember, however, you don’t want to negotiate deals that are too long, as your traffic is likely to go up over time. Typically, the most you want to sell is 3-6 months into the future before renegotiating.
Be Confident
Finally, not matter what your price point for selling, make sure you are always confident that you are providing something of value to the customers. Too many blog owners mistakenly think that their site is not worth as much as it actually is. The advertisers need the traffic just as much (or more) than you need the money, so never forget that. Try to make as much money as you can based on the traffic, and other factors, of your site.
