There are several ways to monetize a blog, most small time bloggers use Google AdSense or some form of direct advertisements as the primary source of income for their blogs. Those bloggers who have a good amount of traffic can switch to direct advertising as it is way more profitable for the same amount of traffic. Usually when you don’t use a 3rd party advertising company ( AdSense, BuySellAds), you save money by keeping their commission with you.
Advertisers are always looking for good niche blogs to advertise on, but there are certain things they look at very closely while deciding which blog to advertise on next.In this blog post, we will look at those criterion which the advertisers see before paying for direct ads on a blog.
How an advertiser find a good blog to advertise on:
Usually big companies deal with big advertising or media selling company to run ad campaign for them, and these ad agencies contact individual bloggers or content companies to run advertisement for them. Many online businesses (eBook, Software product) direct contact bloggers to run their ad on the blog. Here I will be sharing some of the big factors that helps advertiser to decide a blog for advertisement.
Blog popularity:
Popularity of blog is one of the biggest factor for these advertisers to find a blog for advertisement. They usually follow lists from blog directories to find popular blog in particular niche. This is one reason a blogger should try to get themselves into top blog directories in their niche. Usually such lists are not very reliable, but again for an advertiser this is one of the first place they start their search from. So, if you have not submitted your blog in the top directories (Ex: AllTop), you should go ahead and submit your blog.
Read also:
- How to know the Best Affiliate Product to choose for Your Blog
- Starting up With Affiliate Marketing?
Traffic Stats
Advertisers are more interested in the numbers, that is the traffic stats, basically if you have tons of traffic coming to your site, you are bound to get some or the other advertiser looking to advertise on your blog. This is the foremost criterion they look at, which means without good amounts of traffic, direct advertisers will not contact you nor will they listen to you when you pitch an ad campaign for them. Though there is an exception, when you have a little traffic but a strong communoty around your blog.
Niche (Advertisers and Blog must have same niche)
Advertisers want targeted traffic, traffic that can convert for them, that is traffic that suits their niche.For example, a web hosting company is more likely to advertise on a web hosting reviews site or a blogging site rather than on a tech blog or a news blog.
Niche is really important, advertisers want value for the money they spend. If a web hosting company advertises on a pets blog, do you think they will get much clicks and eventual sales? NO!
This is the reason why most advertisers make niche as a very important criterion while looking to buy ad slots on blogs.
Quality
Quality of a blog is not the biggest criterion for a company looking for an advertisement spaces to buy, traffic and niche are more important. Having said this, direct advertisers will not advertise on your blog unless you do have some brand value and your blog is not known to be spammy. They want at-least a decent site that has good quality articles and decent brand name in their niche, otherwise it will be difficult to find advertisers.
Followers
The more the number of followers a targeted niche blog has, the better it is for advertisers as these followers trust the blogs which they follow and will be inclined to buy services that have been suggested by that particular blog.So advertisers look to take advantage of blogs that have a decent following. Blogs with a lot of subscribers can even charge higher fees than those with the same stats but lesser followers.So the basic formula is more followers = more advertising revenue.
Ad Clutter
Even if your blog has all the above criterion but your blog is already filled with a lot of other ads, new advertisers will not like to buy ad spaces from your blog as their click through rate would reduce drastically due to other ads, which means they are not getting their moneys worth. A workaround for this would be to reduce number of pay per click ads such as AdSense or to decrease fees of new advertisers so that they become more willing to advertise on your blog.
Do remember, online buying is usually spontaneous, and if you want to create a first good impression in front of possible blog advertiser, you should work on all the above mentioned points, and create a blog worth advertising on. You will be amazed with the amount of money you can earn from direct advertisement, rather than AdSense or other AdSense like ad networks.
