Written on 1/20/2012 at 12:00 am by

What’s the Secret to Monetizing Social Media?

Filed Under: Social Media 16 Comments

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.

Have you been able to make money from social media? Has your effort and time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your own blog paid off?

If you’re like most bloggers, you probably realize it’s not so easy. However, no matter how difficult it seems, it’s not impossible.

Just like Darren Rowse of Problogger, there are people and companies out there who are turning a profit with social media. Let me introduce them to you and show you how they do it.

Step 1: Build brand awareness and traffic

I love what Gary Vaynerchuk says in this interview when asked, “How do you monetize social media?” His answer: the same way you monetize any other media.

Vaynerchuk says that from newspapers to magazines, to blogs and commercials, advertising has been the backbone of social media monetization. However, he points out that you shouldn’t even be thinking about monetization until you’ve built up traffic and brand awareness.

Fortunately, when it comes to traffic and sales, the news is good for you. In a study done earlier this year by HubSpot, they discovered that blogs with at least 51 posts see 53% more traffic than blogs with fewer than 50, but more than 20 posts.

Furthermore, you’ll see three times the traffic if your blog has over 100 posts. Two hundred or more posts? You’ll see almost 4.5 times the result.

So, your first step to monetizing your blog is to drive adequate traffic to it, which as the HubSpot report showed comes down to consistently producing good content, whether it is interviews, podcasts or useful copy on a daily basis.

Step 2: Build audience engagement

Social media is all about conversation. Companies who think that the conversation is one-sided and do nothing but pump out sales promotions tend to look at social media as a necessary evil. In addition, they don’t tend to be as profitable, which just re-enforces their bad attitudes about social media.

But running an effective social media campaign is all about creating engagement with your audience. If you don’t have that engagement, then trying to monetize it will not work.

One company who is doing social media right is PETCO. They have a really strong presence on the social web with their Facebook page and YouTube Channel. Both these channels generate a lot of comments and discussions.

PETCO is generating all of this engagement by asking their audience specific questions about their pets, their pets’ diets and other concerns pet owners might have. Why are they going through all this effort to engage their audience?

Well, as you get to know your audience, you can start to give them more of the content they care about. As you give them the content they want they become more engaged. And it’s a whole lot easier to promote a product to an audience that is engaged.

Step 3: Monetize with online advertising

Once you’ve built consistent traffic to social media sites and built up your brand and credibility through meaningful conversations, you can start thinking about making money with advertising.

The most basic form of advertising is simply to put ads on your website. According to the 2011 Technorati State of the Blogosphere, of the bloggers who put advertising on their blogs, 60% use self-serve tools, while 50% have affiliate advertising links on their site.

Want an example of what this looks like? This is the Problogger sidebar:

If you don’t like the idea of displaying an ad across your website or blog, you could offer an advertiser a page devoted to their product or service.

Still another way you could make money is to charge for a membership into a teaching series, club or software, like SEOMoz and Copyblogger do.

Or do it like Darren Rowse does and create information products that people buy, like his popular 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Of course these options only work if you have highly engaged, consistent traffic coming to your site, so don’t jump the gun. Get the traffic first, the trust second, and then sell your audience something.

Step 4: Monetize with applications

Another monetization, traffic-building trick is to offer apps.

Some people generate income through their social sites by building software apps to sell. But if you think about, providing free apps is a great way to drive traffic to your blog or Facebook page.

The best apps are those that have a purpose or solve a need. For example, ROI calculators and keyword research tools are popular apps that solve meaningful problems. People will come to your site to use them.

A lot of well-known companies use apps to interact with their loyal customers. For instance, through Gucci Connect loyal customers used their smart phones and tablets to see a Milan fashion show from the comfort of their homes. They could watch runway footage live and behind-the-scenes videos. Live chats were included through Facebook and Twitter. Throughout these experiences Gucci exposed its audience to offers, making money off of all that traffic.

Wordstream uses its AdWords Performance Grader application to drive traffic to their site and capture leads. This app promises a week’s worth of analysis in less than 60 seconds. The goal is to get you to come to their site, use the free tool and then consider buying their PPC management software.

You can also give away basic plans for applications to drive traffic and capture leads, like Survey Monkey and KISSinsights do. These limited plans drive traffic to their sites through social media, leading to future sales as they send promotions to these users.

So whether you give away the app to build traffic that can lead to sales from other products or sell the app itself, software applications offer you the opportunity to monetize your social media. Let’s look at another example.

Step 5: Offer special promotions

Some companies monetize social media traffic by tweeting deals to their audience. An operator of luxury hotels in California called Joie De Vivre  tweets exclusive deals every week to their Twitter. These followers only have a few hours to act on these deals. How well does Joie De Vivre do with this strategy? They typically books about 1,000 rooms that might remain vacant.

Even large companies like Virgin use social media effectively. For example, the fourth-highest sales day for Virgin America came when they tweeted, “$5 donated to KIPP Schools for every flight booked today.”

Offering special discounts is really easy to do. Here are some ideas:

  • Post on Twitter and Facebook that you’ve dropped the price on your ebook to 99 cents for the weekend.
  • Go on a guest posting spree teaching people how to use web analytics … offering half your consultations fee in your byline.
  • Build an email newsletter list that promises special discounts on the products that you sell to subscribers.

Can you think of any other ways to share special promotions via social media?

Step 6: Retain customers through social media

Finally, while social media is really easy to monetize once you’ve got the engaged audience, don’t forget that you should also use social media as a customer service tool. Just because you’ve closed the deal doesn’t mean your job selling is done.

See, it’s also about keeping all those people who are buying your products happy after the purchase. It’s about keeping them loyal … and you do that by retaining and increasing mind share of your brand through good customer service.

In fact, notice the top three interactions users want from social media are incentives, solutions to their product problems and to give their feedback on your business:

In other words, people expect you to use social media to answer customer service questions.  In fact, according to Debbie Hemley and Heidi Cohen, you can actually enhance your customer service through social media in 12 ways:

  1. give business a human face
  2. listen to what customers are saying
  3. proactively engage with prospects and customers
  4. provide additional product-related content
  5. answer product-related questions
  6. supply alternative contact channel
  7. give customers a channel to talk to each other
  8. share customer feedback
  9. celebrate your customers
  10. show customers behind the scenes
  11. make special offers
  12. create new purchase options

When you provide an excellent customer service experience through social media, you will continue to build traffic to those sites as people go from being prospects to customers to rabid fans. Monetizing your social media will only get easier.

Conclusion

In the end, you can make money from social media when you have an integrated strategy that includes building traffic to your site, developing your brand, choosing the right products and advertising channels, offering promotions and enhancing your customer service.

What methods and tools are you using to make money with social media?

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Written on 11/17/2011 at 8:21 am by

Make it Easy for Your Readers to Participate

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Blog Tips 25 Comments

At Blog World Expo this year, I was in a great session on using Facebook pages by Amy Porterfield. The session was very helpful on many levels, but one thing that Amy said that I immediately put into action—within a few seconds of her saying it, in fact—was to ask simple questions of readers to generate discussion.

Amy had been working with a client on their Facebook page and the client had suggested a discussion starter that was quite open ended and which required a long answer from readers. Amy switched the question into this format:

“What’s one word to describe…?”

This question lowered the barrier of entry for anyone considering responding to the question. Instead of having to write a few paragraphs in response, all that was required to participate was a single word. Amy reported a much higher than normal level of comments.

I immediately asked my own photography community a “one word to describe” question on my photography Facebook page.

367 comments later…

The same principle applies to generating comments on your blog … or any other attempt at reader engagement, for that matter. Make it simple to participate!

Another example of this was recently when a sponsor ran a competition on my photography blog. Initially, the sponsor wanted our readers to fulfill four requirements to enter the giveaway. They had to follow the sponsor and our site on Facebook, tweet something, and then leave a comment of 500 words explaining why they wanted to win the prize.

I pushed back—four hoops was more than I suspected most of our readers would jump through. The sponsor decided not to run the competition with us and I later saw them do it on another blog. The result? Three entries!

The same lesson again: make it simple for your readers to participate on your blog!

Written on 11/16/2009 at 12:33 am by

Does Your Blog Look Like NASCAR?

Filed Under: Advertising

In this post, Jack Gamble from Babeled talks about ad placement and the risk of overdoing it.

nascarAre you responsible for a website that has so many ads that it looks like Dale Earnhardt Jr. should be driving it in circles at high speed with a strange aversion to right turns?

That is because your advertisements are out of control.

Like all things in life, with advertising you need to know when to stop. If there is one thing that drives me crazy, it’s arriving at a blog and being bombarded by a mess of Goggle Adsense, pop-ups, and 125×125 banner ads. All of these are ways to bring in some cash for your hard work, but at what point does it become counterproductive?

Here’s a hint: if I need to scroll down to get to your content because you have nothing but ads above the fold, then I am never coming back to your site. I will not click your ads. I will not subscribe to your feed. I will not download your e-book. I will not tell my friends about you. Are you getting the point? Too much advertising on your blog is simply insulting to your readers.

You need to come up with some simple guidelines for your ad campaign and stick to your guns. I’m not going to tell you that this ad is good and that one is bad. But I will tell you that there is certainly a point where the next ad you put up will cost you money.

Try testing yourself. Click on any post in your blog and scroll down to an arbitrary point in the post. Now take stock in what you see. What percentage of the screen is dedicated to advertisement? If the number is too high, then you’re readers are not happy (if you have any left).

So what percent of space should you dedicate to displaying ads?

Let’s look at the other popular media outlets our there. In television for example, the average 1 hour show has about 44 minutes of programming and 16 minutes of commercials. That is an ad/content ratio of just over 26%.

Print magazines are far worse. The average magazine has an ad/content ratio on the order of 40%! This doesn’t exactly demonstrate a devotion to reader satisfaction. Could this be part of the reason that print magazine circulation has fallen more than 10% since 2008?

So what can we take away from these numbers? For starters, you need to get your ratio down as low as possible. Certainly the 40% magazine standard is a failing number, and in my opinion, the 26% TV figure is not much better.

All the ads in the world won’t do you any good if there is nobody there to see them. If your blog has been sitting idle with no growth in earnings, subscribers, or traffic then try removing some of the ads. You will find that a user friendly site with solid content and a few small ads will consistently outperform a confusing cluster of banners.

So unless your blog has a world class pit crew and can do more than 200 miles per hour, you better do something about your ad/content ratio. My challenge to you is get your ratio down to 20% or less. Your readers (and your revenue) will thank you.

Image: aarmono

Written on 3/7/2009 at 12:01 am by

5 Ways to Make Money Blogging (Once You Have Traffic)

Filed Under: Advertising, Affiliate Programs, Blogging for Dollars

This is the last post in our series of tips for bloggers who have gone through their launch phase and want to grow their blog to the next level. In it we’re going to talk making money from your blog.

Making Money From a Blog – Moving Past AdSense

While it is possible to make some money with a blog of any size – your chances of earning income from a blog do generally increase as you increase your readership numbers.

Many bloggers start out monetizing their blogs using ad networks like AdSense. While ad networks like AdSense can still earn you a nice income as your blog grows (many large blogs use them) – an increased audience will also open new opportunities to you as a blogger.

1. Direct Ad Sales

One thing that becomes possible as your readership grows is that you can begin to attract your own direct advertisers. I’ve written on this topic numerous times before so rather than writing a long tutorial on the topic let me point you to some previous posts:

2. Ad Representation

Many bloggers struggle to sell advertising on their own blogs. Most bloggers are not experienced in the area of ad sales, don’t have contacts in the advertising industry, are unaware of how much to charge or even what technology to use to serve ads. Most of us also are passionate about writing content and building community – the admin of finding and interacting with advertisers can often be a distraction.

One alternative once you have a reasonable amount of traffic is to outsource your ad sales. Some blog networks and ad networks will handle this kind of thing for you once you have enough traffic. Generally you need a fair bit of traffic for them to look at you but in these tough economic times I suspect we’ll see more and more services to do this.

3. Start Your Own Ad Sales Network

One thing that I’ve been hearing more and more bloggers doing is joining together to sell advertising as a collective or network within a niche. You might not have enough traffic to attract a top tier advertiser alone – but what if you joined with 4-5 other medium sized blogs in your niche and approached advertisers together?

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can work on blogs of all sizes but once a blog has an engaged and loyal readership it can really pay off. Readers that have tracked with you for a while are more likely to buy something that you recommend than a one off visitor – so this is a particularly useful strategy if you have built a ‘community’ rather than just a blog that has a lot of search traffic. The key is to find products to promote that are of a high quality that you can genuinely recommend and that have high relevance to your readership.

Further Reading: 5 Tips for Making Money with Affiliate Programs

5. Sell Your Own Product

Another monetization strategy to start thinking about once you start seeing growth in your readership is your own product to sell.

Whether that product be an e-book, a membership area, a real hard cover book, training (online or real life), consulting, merchandise…. once you’ve got a loyal readership who trusts you and sees you as an expert in your field you’ll find that they are increasingly likely to buy something that you sell.

You’ll also find it easier to get other blogs in your niche to promote your product once you’ve build a blog with profile. I’m seeing more and more bloggers doing this and suspect that as advertising budgets get smaller in the current economic climate that we’ll see more and more of this type of approach (I’ve previously called it ‘indirect income’) by smart bloggers.

Further Reading: Making Money BECAUSE of Your Blog – Indirect Methods.

Written on 2/19/2009 at 12:23 am by

5 Ways to find Direct Advertisers for your Blog

Filed Under: Advertising, Featured Posts

It is the goal of many bloggers to move from monetizing their blogs with ad networks like AdSense into selling ads directly to advertisers. But getting into this game can be difficult – particularly in the early days while you’re still growing traffic.

Below are 5 ways that I secured direct ad deals with sponsors in the early days of my first blogs:

1. Type your blogs topic into Google

What advertisers come up above and to the right of the search listings? These products and services obviously have budget for advertising online and are looking for exposure and could be open to a direct relationship.

2. Visit other blogs, forums and websites in your Niche

Who is advertising on them? These advertisers are targeting sites on a similar topic to you and are more often than not willing to test new sites that have relevance to their industry.

3. Identify Affiliate programs in your niche

Some affiliates will also be interested in an advertising relationship with your blog. This may or may not be in your best interests to pursue depending upon whether your readership converts with affiliate products.

4. Hit the Classifieds

When I first was looking for advertisers I looked at what local photography businesses were advertising in magazines and papers here in Australia and I got on the phone and rang them to see if they’d be interested in placing an ad. Most had never done anything online before and quite a few took the step in buying an ad.

5. Online Stores and New Sites

This is another tactic that I used early on also with some success. It involved googling the keywords associated with my topic and not just looking at who was advertising (as in point #1 above) but looking at what businesses were listed in the search results, particularly those below me in the rankings. I paid special interest in online stores who had a direct revenue from their sites and contacted them to see if they’d be interested in advertising – quite a few did. I also noticed that new sites who were still getting established were also sometimes more willing to buy advertising.

It should be said that when you have a blog with relatively low traffic that none of these methods are going to earn you a fortune. You’ll need to be willing to price your ads relatively cheaply until your traffic grows – but securing these types of ad deals is better than no income for your blog and means that you already have relationships with advertisers to grow as your traffic increases.

Written on 2/16/2009 at 1:18 am by

5 Ways to Make an Empty Ad Slot on Your Blog Work For You

Filed Under: Advertising

Yesterday I published a guest post here on ProBlogger that gave 7 Reasons to not have Empty ad Spots on your Blog. Today I want to build on this post and give you 5 alternatives to simply removing an empty ad slot from your blog.

Removing the ad is one valid option (especially if you already have a lot of ads) but it isn’t the only option. There are other ways of using the slot to either to earn an income or do something else to build your blog.

When I have an empty ad spot on one of my blogs I generally do one of these five things:

1. Put up an ‘advertise here’ Ad

As Ben says I would only want to have one of these showing per page. Too many of them looks a little desperate. However having one of them shows you’ve got an empty spot and calls potential advertisers to action. I link this ad to an ‘advertise with us’ page that outlines how people can purchase advertising on the blog.

2. Run an Affiliate ad

Just because you don’t have a paid advertisement doesn’t mean you can’t monetize the position. I recently had a spare ad spot on my Twitip Twitter Tips blog (the sidebar one which is now sold) and instead of an ‘advertise here’ ad I slotted in a large ad for a resource that I’d previously recommended on the blog called the ‘Twitter Survival Guide‘.

I was a little dubious about whether it would convert as I usually find affiliate programs work best within a post (as I’ve written in this post on affiliate programs) – but at the end of the month realized that the affiliate program had earned me about 80% of what selling the ad to an advertiser would have – it was a great way to earn something from the position while I negotiated the next advertising deal.

3. Run an Ad Network Ad

Another way to make at least some money from an empty ad spot is to consider placing an ad from another ad network. I generally start with AdSense or Chitika – depending upon the blog and then will begin to experiment with other ad networks to see what converts.

While these ad network ads might not earn you as much as a private ad sale (although they might) they can actually be quite worthwhile using because they’ll give you information on how well an ad spot works and what it earns. This information can actually be helpful in selling future ads in that spot.

Picture 8.png4. Run an Internal Ad

Another option that I use quite a bit is tocreate my own ad for a section of my blog that I want to drive traffic to. For example – currently here at ProBlogger in my sidebar I have an empty ad spot halfway down the page. If you scroll down there you’ll see that at the moment I’m putting an internal ad into the slot for the ProBlogger Job Boards. In effect I’m advertising my own site (or a section of it) to my own readers. Other internal ads that you might run would include:

  • Ads for your blogs newsletter
  • Ads for your RSS feed
  • Ads for a category
  • Ads for a ‘sneeze page‘
  • Ads for a forum area
  • Ads for one of your best posts
  • Ads for a competition you’re running
  • Ads for your business or a service that you offer
  • Ads for a series of posts that you’ve run
  • Ads for an e-product or resource that you’ve developed
  • Ads for your Twitter or account or some other social media connecting point

Essentially any important part of your blog is a good place to drive readers to – particularly if it is something that will drive revenue or increase reader stickiness /loyalty.

5. Swap Ads with another Blogger

I don’t do this one these days but another option is to do a deal with another blogger and arrange for them to show an ad for your blog in their empty ad spot and for you to show an ad to their blog in your empty slot. This way you’re promoting another blogger in your niche and hopefully expanding your readership by the traffic that they send you. This would work best when you do it with a relevant blog to your audience.

Another variation that is a combination of this and option #4 above is to do it with another of your own blogs (if you have more than one). Many blog networks do this – they run ads for other blogs in their stable of blogs in the hope of cross promoting and driving traffic from one blog to another.

What do You Do with Empty Ad Slots?

I’m certain that these are not the only 5 things to do with empty ad slots and am keen to hear what you do with them?

Written on 2/15/2009 at 12:21 am by

7 Reasons not to have Empty Ad Spots on your Blog

Filed Under: Advertising

This is a guest post written by Ben Barden, developer for the CMF Ads advertising network, which offers low cost, no-nonsense advertising.

Blog advertising is an excellent way to reach a wide audience without breaking the bank. It can also make money for your own blog. There is a mistake that quite a few blogs make – using a lot of empty ad spots. There are a few reasons why I think this is a bad idea.

1. It devalues the ads.

If nobody is buying ads on your site, perhaps the ad price is too high for the traffic your site receives. This suggests your site doesn’t provide value to advertisers. Who wants to be the first to buy an ad when there are 5 empty spots?

2. It makes you look desperate.

I’ve seen sites with a whole row of empty ad spots – to me, this looks like the blogger is begging for money. Let’s face it, a lot of people want to make some money from their blog – simply saying “I have ad spots for sale” isn’t enough of a reason for most advertisers, unless they already know your site.

3. It’s a negative lifesign.

It’s like seeing 0 comments or 0 views on a post. If you come back and see the same thing again, the blog is probably dead. Don’t leave empty ad spots on your blog for long.

4. It’s a waste of space.

Some blogs like to put a lot of widgets on the page. But how many of these are worth having? If you have an empty ad spot that just isn’t getting filled, could you put something more valuable in that spot?

5. It puts a limit on the number of ads you’ll accept.

If you have empty ad spots, it suggests there’s a maximum number of ads you’re willing to display. So if you have 6 empty spots, you might not sell more than 6 ads. But if you have 2 running ads and no empty spots, advertisers can just contact you about buying an ad on your site. Also, if you get a very generous offer to advertise on your site, you may want to consider pushing the limit. This is less likely to happen if you limit yourself with empty ad spots.

6. It makes it harder to promote different ad placements.

If a site has different ads running on each post, this suggests the blog is open to flexible advertising. If you use the same “empty ad” image for every ad spot then this doesn’t give the impression of flexibility, as it suggests you can’t buy ads on specific posts. However, you can get around this by using a different “empty ad” image for each zone, or specifying the available ad spots on your Advertise page.

7. It limits you to certain ad sizes.

If you have loads of empty 125×125 ad spots, advertisers may not realise that you offer different ad sizes. Empty spots can show advertisers where their ads will appear, but this could be done just as effectively with an image of your blog, highlighting the various ad spots.

Is one empty ad spot acceptable?

Sometimes it helps to have one empty ad spot if you don’t have any ads up yet. This shows you accept advertising. It’s just better not to have a lot of empty ad spots.

What you should do:

Create an Advertise page that specifies what you allow and what you don’t allow. Advertisers can contact you with their requirements and you can decide if you wish to accept their ad request.

That’s my opinion – what do you think? Do you have empty ad spots on your blog? Why/why not?

Note from Darren: Thanks to Ben for this post. Tomorrow I want to follow it up by sharing 5 things that I do with empty ad slots on my blogs – alternatives to simply deleting them. Watch the Problogger RSS feed for this post.

Written on 12/24/2008 at 12:01 am by

How to Secure an Advertiser for Your Blog

Filed Under: Advertising

How do I sell advertising on my blog? It is a question that I’m asked a lot so when Brandon J. Mendelson asked if he could write a post on this topic as someone who has sold a lot of advertising online and in TV I thought it’d make a great guest post.

Putting together a media kit for your blog is an excellent start; However, unless you know how to navigate the competitive waters of advertising, the media kit will be useless.

What’s Your Story?

Everyone has one. Do you know what it is? Can you describe your blog in under a paragraph? Two sentences? Seven words? If you cannot, you are not ready to sell advertising.

Take a few moments and condense your blog’s description into:

-A paragraph, which you can use in your media kit

-Two sentences, which you will use in your pitch email

-Seven words, which you will use for your pitch’s email headline

Wait, Email? Shouldn’t I Call?

Here you need to figure out what sector of the market you are looking for and what level the company finds itself at (local, regional, or national).The size of the company will determine the method of contact.

First: Think of natural fits between what your blog is about and what product might best serve your audience. Today, it is not about advertising but adding value to your user’s experience. Advertisements are a reflection on you as much as they are on the advertiser, so choose wisely.

Second: How big is the company?

Emailing a local store for advertising is a waste. You need to go in person or make a phone call. Small business owners do not have time to wade through sales emails; They need convincing when it comes to using their limited marketing dollars.

A regional company may be more open to email, but most regionals started small and likely still posses a small business mindset of wanting to meet people first to gauge interest.

A national corporation or international corporation? Don’t bother walking through the front door or making a phone call. Locate the marketing department’s email, which can usually be found by making a subtle, non-sales query to corporate communications, requesting that information.

How Much Information Is Too Much?

You want to use as little information as possible in an initial sales inquiry. This is who you are, this is what you do, this is what you are looking for. Are you interested? Include your contact information and move on to the next pitch.

Volume is key, but automation will kill you since each letter must be personalized. You need to master the ability to effectively communicate with a minimal amount of effort and do it often to increase your odds of making a sale.

The same goes for phone conversations and stopping in person. You need to see if there is interest in what you are selling before proceeding.

In person or on the phone, you want to follow-up on interest by scheduling an appointment at a time that is convenient for the store owner. Call first, stop in second (if the store is local or regional), and email third.

Once you know someone is interested, then you can send your sales kit and other collateral. All of which should be kept brief. The odds are, if a party is interested they have already googled you and visited your website.

Make sure your sales information is available on your website.

Wait, Won’t My Competitors See?

Yes, but if your competitor is any good, they will already know what you are charging. Charge what you think your services are worth, the only time your competitor’s rates matter is when you are first starting out. When starting out, you should see what your competition is charging and offer your services at a discounted rate. This will allow you to break into tight markets and get your name out there.

How Do I Know What To Charge?

Only you can decide how much your time is worth. Do not rely on Google Adsense or other online forms of measurement. Look at what the competition charges, ask yourself what an acceptable rate would be for your time and stick with it. Make sure to stay competitive by using stealth, but legal, methods to find out what your competition is charging.

Think of it like this: There are no rules about sending a sales inquiry to your competitor or calling them to see what their rates are.

When Can I Start?

Advertisers will come to you when you average 30,000 unique visitors a month without much drop off Until then you should factor:

How many subscribers do you have for your RSS feed? How many people follow you on Twitter? What is your Google, not Alexa, page rank? How often do you come up for key search terms for your niche? What your unique web traffic is?

You can go into the market and start charging for a new product at any time, but unless you have some sort of cross media access, it is best to firm up these numbers first.

Contracts And References

It is important to develop strong relationships with smaller advertisers who can vouch for: 1) Your character and 2) Your ability to deliver.

Character is key. If you are not trusted, kiss access to bigger paydays goodbye.

Get everything down on a sheet of paper that explains who gets what, when, and for how much. Deliver on what you promise, and serve as a resource for your advertisers.

By serving as a resource, you build credibility and positive relationships. These relationships are critical when it comes time to chase corporate sponsorship and they ask you to provide references from previous advertisers.

Be prepared to be open as your business’s financial success to larger prospective advertisers. The more money on the line means more scrutiny.

Demographics

Who uses your website? When do they access it? How long are they on? What else do you know about your users? Marketing and demographic data is the linchpin of your entire sales kit.

Corporations operate using systems such as Six Sigma to track department results in terms of their performance in utilizing resources (re: money).

The demographic and marketing information alleviates any concerns and allows for your advertising pitch to advance because marketing can show their superiors the resources are being allocated according to the corporate mission.

How do you do this? Surveys, soliciting feedback, conducting online focus groups are some examples to help compile this information. Read up on different qualitative and quantitative analysis methods to show that you know how to interpret the information.You do not need a consultant to do this for you.

Even the simplest survey can tell you critical information as long as you know how to analyze it. This may sound daunting, but trust me, you will pick it up fast.

Deliver

How do you know when to start advertising? When you are confident in your ability to deliver an acceptable amount of business to justify what you are charging.

Test ads on your site before you sell them, ask for reader and user feedback on how to best implement them, see if you can get a high click through ratio or high awareness of imaginary post sponsors first.

Use this information in your demographic data to share with advertisers and show them you can hold up your end of things.

If you are going to put up an advertisement when you say you are, do it. You are now responsible for someone’s money, and if you cannot hold up your end for just one client, you can expect others to find out quickly.

Good luck, tread carefully, and be nice to everyone as you go through this process. It is easy to lose allies and resources than it is to make money.

Brandon J. Mendelson is a graduate student attending UAlbany and a published American humorist. You can follow him on Twitter and help him kick breast cancer’s butt at The Brandon Show

Written on 12/17/2008 at 7:12 am by

5 Tips for Making Widget Ads Perform Better on Your Blog

Filed Under: Advertising

In my last post I talked about 4 Widget Ad options that bloggers should test in the lead up to Christmas – in this post I want to give a few quick tips for beginners to keep in mind as they test and optimize these types of ads.

1. Keep Ads Relevant to Content

To make any kind of product ad or affiliate program work the product that you advertise needs to match what you’re writing about as closely as possible.

Most of the widget ad units mentioned in the last post allow you to choose what product (or at least category of product) that will be featured in the ad – so make sure you choose products carefully to match your blog (and individuals posts) topics.

2. Position Prominently

These Widget Ads work best when your readers see them. Now there’s an obvious statement if I ever heard one – yet I see so many ads on blogs that are likely to go unseen. Make sure your ads are in a part of your blog that will be seen by readers.

This means putting them above the fold, as close to content as possible or perhaps even underneath posts (people pause at the end of a post and look for something to do – an ad can work well there despite it being low on the page).

Avoid putting them in sidebars unless you have no other option to do that.

3. Multiple Ad Units Per Page

A logical way to increase the earnings of these types of ads is to show more than one per page. If you have one high on the page include a second one lower on the page also.

Don’t fall into the trap of stuffing your blog with too many ads – but don’t be afraid to have more than one on a page.

4. Blend Your Ad Units

Each of the widget ads can be customized in terms of size and design so don’t just let the ads sit on your page in their default appearance.

I find that ads that blend into your blog’s design a little work best. Try making the colors of links in ads the same color as links on your blog, remove borders (or at least make them the same color as your blog background) and where given the choice use fonts for the ads that don’t clash too much with your blogs font.

5. Track Your Results

Most of the widget units mentioned in the previous post have the ability to be tracked in one way or another. Utilize this and work out what works best for your blog. You will find that some ad positions, design and products will work better than others – once you work out what works best stick to it.

What tips would you ad? What have you found works best with Widget Ad Units on Blogs?