Bloggers may want to supplement their earnings from ad networks that are slowly allowing their blog monetization efforts tread the coveted realms of getting direct sponsors or advertisers.
If you’re one of ‘em I’m sorry to inform you that it’s not easy to get advertisers for your blog. How come?
It’s especially difficult to get companies or businesses to buy a spot on your blog to advertise on if:
1. Your blog is still a baby.
Whoever advised that one can get direct advertisers even though his blog is just a few weeks old is a fool. Ok, if you’re Britney Spears, Bill Gates, or John Chow or anyone who’s popular enough to get advertisers drooling for some spot even if they have just bought their blog’s domain name a few minutes ago, then, go. But if you’re an average Joe, it pays to get some traffic aflowing first. According to Yaro Starak Blog Traffic School newsletter, about 500 visitors per day is ideal.
2. You’re an egomaniac or just outright greedy.
If your blog is not at any rate receiving an Engadget-esque traffic and you still managed to make some company get interested to advertise on your blog, rejoice! Now ask for an advertising rate that’s Engadget-esque and your money-making days from direct advertisers will be doomed. Just ask for what your blog is worth.Â
How much should you charge your direct advertisers?
Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration proposed this method of deciding what rate to offer your direct advertisers:
While advertising rates may depend on lot of factors like site traffic, your niche, ad placement and even visitor demographics, we can use contextual advertising programs like Adsense / YPN or impression based programs like Adify or TribalFusion to estimate the advertising potential of our blogs.
Say you have a 125×125 space in the left sidebar where you are seeking advertisers. Run an Adsense campaign in that space for a week and track the performance using Adsense channels.
After a week, get the average CPM value for that space (this data is available in Adsense advance reports under eCPM).
Armed with the Adsense CPM figures, you can easily quote rates that are 20% lesser than Adsense.
[Adsense ads are contextual and therefore more relevant and enjoy higher click-throughs. On the other hand, static banners look the same across all pages and return visitors generally ignore them].
Here’s an example using the above model:
Your site receives 30,000 pageviews (or hits) every month. The 125×125 Google ad that you ran for 7 days returned an average CPM of $5.00.If your client is willing to advertise based on ad impressions, you may charge him $4 CPM. If he is interested in a monthly campaign, you can quote him 30*$4 =~ $120 per month.Also, you may charge a premium (50% or more) for ads that are displayed above the page fold near the most visible areas of the site. [CrazyEgg can help you here].
If your sponsor prefers a text link ad, you can use tools from text link brokering services like Text-Link-Ads Link Calculator  and Linkworth LinkPrice Lookup to see the going price of a text link ad on your site.
3. You’re clueless about your blog’s demographics and worth.
Aside from knowing how many pages, comments, and average traffic your blog has, proving how valuable your blog is using various ranking tools that aim to help appraise a blog will be very useful in getting advertisers interested. Although their accuracy is still debatable, many companies and advertisers rely on these measures to help them make an informed decision on whether to buy ad space from a site or not.
Here are some of these blog appraising tools:
- Google Pagerank Toolbar - checks your blog’s pagerank or how Google values your blog according to the number of inbound links that your blog has. The higher the pagerank the higher the blog value.
- Live Pagerank - checks your blog’s pagerank in all Google Datacenters.
- AlexaRank - ranks a blog according to traffic received. The lower the AlexaRank the higher the blog value.
- Technorati Rank – ranks a blog according to the number of blogs linking to it.
- Blog Juice Calculator - ranks a tool according to the number of BlogLines subscribers, Alexarank, Technorati Rank, and inbound links. The higher the blog juice, the higher the blog value.
- SEOMoz PageStrength SEO Tool - ranks a blog  according to its domain name’s age, DMOZ (open directory project) listing, inbound links, indexed pages from various search engines, etc.
- WeBuildPages Cool SEO Tool - it shows a blog’s placement for a certain keyword/phrase is searched.
Have a separate page that shows these information about your blog to make it easy for advertisers to start noticing your blog.
In summary, sure, it’s a very challenging task to monetize a blog through direct sponsors, but the important thing is, it’s not impossible.
There may be a host of better tools and methods to get advertisers knocking on your door. But if you want more bits of advice on how you can win direct advertisers for your blog, Problogger has a wide array of tips.
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