Monetization is something everyone will consider at some point in their blogging life. Why not make a few extra bucks through advertising as your virtual “tent-making”?
So you decide to create the spots on your blog in your sidebar or directly in your content. Now, you wait.
Nothing.
You start to feel self-conscious, insecure, and awkward. Do people not like you? You start checking your analytics to see if people have abandoned wholesale your site now that you’re offering sponsorship and advertising. More than anything you’re asking the question: “Why aren’t people buying the spots?”
Here are 5 tips that may give you some direction…
1. Your Price is Too High
This perhaps is the easiest thing to correct. It’s a simple game of mathematics: You’re asking for $100.00 and your potential advertisers think it’s worth $10.00.
My suggestion is that you completely low-ball your first venture into advertising simply to help you get acclimated to serving them (and for your readers as well). Your goal is to get that first one, learn something from it, streamline your advertising mechanics and process (if you have one) and grow from there.
So what if you’re only charging $5.00 when you think it should be 10 times that? If it sells it’s $5 more dollars than you had a few minutes ago, right?
Try experimenting with your prices, and don’t be afraid to go too low.
2. Perception of Value is Unclear
Typically the most successful blogs, especially in terms of advertising revenue, are ones that have a very focused content coverage. In other words, it’s obvious to the readers and advertisers what you’re blog is about.
What naturally occurs is an understood perception of value; people know who the audience is going to be and targeted advertising always works better than a shotgun-approach to marketing.
What is required, then, is for you to be very clear about what you’re content is going to be and what it won’t. Sometimes you have to go the extra step and create advertising sheets with infographics, data, metrics, to prove this, but I think this is often just a waste of time.
Why make your advertisers do more work? If it isn’t obvious to the advertiser the types of content and audience that’s being generated it may be hard for them to make the purchase.
3. Educate via Your Statistics
Although advertising is nothing new in the world of marketing it is still new to a lot of businesses. You’re going to have to spend a little time educating your audience and potential advertising partners on what your site can do in terms of providing them a return on investment.
Sometimes this is as easy as showing your statistics publicly and easily for them in an understandable manner. Sometimes this means actually explaining what these statistics mean. I’ve seen some also great examples where sites compare their stats with other sites within the same industry and sector.
Spending time here and clearing the path can help you in the long run, and thankfully you won’t have to change this much after you create it the first time.
4. Make Terms and Conditions Simple and Obvious
It amazes me how complicated some content creators make advertising (especially when they preach simplicity!). Make your terms and conditions to advertising easy, obvious, and idiot-proof.
Are they securing spots for 30/60/90 days? Are there opportunities for bulk-purchase? Discounts? What about content, size, types of ads (Flash, .gif, animated, etc)? What about cancellation fees and other promotional campaigns?
Make it simple and you’re advertisers will thank you (by buying a slot).
5. Making the Purchase Easy
Sometimes the purchase path and experience of buying an advertisement is all that’s stopping people from actually committing. Is the process easy?
There are a lot of ways to sell advertising and typically they fall into two categories: Request for more info and Self Service, the latter being 100 times easier.
I used to force people to inquire and have them do a lot of work to get through to the purchase path. They’d request information, I’d send them a nice price sheet, they’d have to review and then send me another email.
Sad. That didn’t last too long, especially since it took way too much energy from both our perspectives. I ended up choosing a self-service web service that does all the work for me.
Voila! I’m happy and the customers are too.
There are a lot of other plugins and services that help ease the pain of buying an advertisement. I’d strongly recommend doing some research and looking into it!
Kyle Reed says
Here is something I have been wondering about…when can you start advertising?
Is it when you hit a certain number of page views a day or unique visitors a day?
human3rror says
This is a great question. I'll address this in a post. Thanks Kyle!
bondChristian says
Yes, I'm interested in this as well. While I'm not in a position to start advertising yet (at least I don't think I am… maybe the future post will change my mind), I'd like to start to get a feel for how it's done BEFORE I need to jump into it.
Also, while we're on the topic of post ideas, maybe a post about the best way to go about selling your own products through a blog or website…? (I mean the actual transaction part of process, not the sales part)
Looking forward to the coming posts,
-Marshall Jones Jr.
human3rror says
Marshall,
You mean the technology to sell? Or…?
Ricky says
I am yet to monetize my blog. I am getting 7000 visitors per month, is it a right time>?
human3rror says
sounds cool to me!
very neat! you're already doing it anyways.
;0