Comments on: Blog Tip: Hire someone for ad sales

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 03:28:25 +0000

Jeremey, not at all, especially since I hired someone to do ad sales for me :P. Besides being a little hypocritical, I’m sure someone else can do a better job at it. Not that I don’t like to sell things, but I don’t have a rolodex that is up to the task (yet).

I just think it will be a pretty good gig for sales people tired of working for “the man”. It’s hard work, you have to go get the clients, but I think it can also be lucrative.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:57:24 +0000

Jon, are you volunteering? I’d give you 30% ;-)

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 07:03:13 +0000

I think this might be a lucrative position over the next few years. Selling for 5-10 medium (500-1000CPM monthly) sized blogs could net a nice wage. (Let’s say $5K/monthly per site, which would make 30% comission be $1500 or $7500-$15000 monthly for the sales guy.) It really depends on the site if it can be monetized well.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:45:58 +0000

I’ve started approaching sales folks for Ensight. Haven’t found anyone I’m 100% satisfied with (yet). Still looking :)

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 17:26:26 +0000

Most individual sites like ours aren’t going to provide a full time income to a sales person, so they will work for multiple parties. Look at some sites you respect (probably not in the same area as yours) and see who they use. Personally, I use BlackInc Ventures, known best for working with Gawker Media.

By: Josh Hinds

Josh Hinds — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:29:09 +0000

Where in particular would a person look to find qualified sales folks? I know they are out there, but where do you suggest starting the search? Would it be places like, elance.com, etc.?

By: Bondi Tram

Bondi Tram — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:41:25 +0000

True I think Jon’s advice only applies to popular blogs (how many page views per day would make one popular? 5000? who knows?) My only thought is that people running “professional” blogs are probably professionals and probably already do this. I’m sure Gawker et al already had figured this out. This is maybe a useful tip for a blogger whose blog has become popular but who never thought it would be so and who wants to monetarise that popularity. Hey! that’s my first comment on this blog.

By: Tony E

Tony E — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:29:33 +0000

I think what Jon Gales was pointing out was aimed at popular blogs, that get lots of page views like his excellent mobiletracker blog. Readers should just take note of his point while trying to reach that level. His ad strategy made sense to me.

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:28:15 +0000

I’m not talking about hiring someone for sales for your cat’s blog–I’m talking about for a site you run as a business. If you’re trying to do something professionally, there are professionals to do ad sales. Simple as that. If you can sell ads as well as they can, you’re probably in the wrong biz (unless you’re writing a site like AdRants).

But you’re right, it’s not for everyone. There is a divide.

By: Scott Randolph

Scott Randolph — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:14:23 +0000

I think that was the “good” in good professional. I’d love to have someone who was commission only who was good at selling blog ads. Even better, they could manage my transactions, contracts, etc…and just send me a check each month!

By: David

David — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:05:58 +0000

Also, who would you hire? Traditional advertising marketers/sales people might not be as effective on the web for blogs. It is a great theory, but in practice it is probably not very good for most people, as Heat already pointed out.

By: Heat

Heat — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:13:42 +0000

The question is: can you allow yourself to hire someone like this?

1. Alot of blogs don’t get enoug traffic to get advertisers.
2. Alot of blogs don’t have enough income from their blogs to invest in a good, reliable agent.

Allen Heat