You finally have enough traffic to test your hands at selling direct advertising. What do yo do now? The first thing is the create an advertise page. Many bloggers think an advertise page is to get leads to follow up on. I believe an advertise page should get the sale.
Unless you have a sale staff to keep busy, the last thing you want to do is take time away from writing content so you can go make ad sales. By spelling everything out in the advertise page, you weed through most of the advertisers who just wanted to get a price. Here are the elements that should go into a blog Advertise page.
Your Blog Stats
The blog stats are what advertisers are most interested in and should be placed at the top of the advertise page. Information to include are page views and unique visitors, target audience, PageRank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank and anything else you can think of that would impress an advertiser (maybe a picture of the office building).
The key here is to establish your authority and trust. You may want to show screen shots from Google Analytics or link to your Alexa or Technorati page so advertisers can see you’re not inflating your numbers.
Show All Your Advertising Options
This blog offers seven different advertising options but most people looking at the blog for the first time will think I only accept banner and button advertising. It is the job of the advertise page to explain all these additional options. This is also a good time to get creative and see if you can come up with new options for advertisers.
With the release of the new theme, I have revamped my advertise page to show all the options available to my direct advertisers.
Include Your Ad Prices
I include the price of the ads because that eliminates a lot of the sales time. Some publishers think it is better not to do this and to ask advertisers to email you for prices. The reason being someone might see your rates and decide that they are too high. However if they have to email you to get your rates, you are engaging them in communication and even if they still think your rates are too high you have the opportunity to try to change their mind or drop your price.
I say screw that! Your job is to produce content, not sell ads. Why would you want to engage in communication with an advertiser who thinks your rates are too high? Spell it all out in the advertise page and save yourself a lot of time and headaches.
Include a Few Advertiser Testimonials
A few testimonials from past advertisers can go a long way towards getting you a sale. Advertisers are like normal people - they generally hate to be the first to try something. When they read the results others have received, it helps to put their mind at ease.
You Can Succeed Without Ad Networks
John Robinson wants to prove that you can succeed without the help of any ad networks. He has removed every advertising networks from his Site Fever blog and is trying to sell all ads directly. So far, he’s doing really well.
It’s only been four days, and we’ve already had more income in-house than we’ve had from the ad networks over the past 6 weeks! Here’s a breakdown:
Sitewide header banner (1 month): $250
In-content text ad sales: $180
Sitewide 100×40 sidebar banner: $35Total income: $465
Four hundred sixty five dollar from a PageRank 2 blog with only 134 RSS readers. That is a great accomplishment. Site Fever’s goal is to hit $1,000 a month from private ad sales.
While the idea of selling all advertising directly maybe appealing, I prefer a combination of direct and ad network sales. Ad networks have access to a huge customer base and I wouldn’t want to kill that off. This is why my link sales are still handle by Text Link Ads and why reviews are done through ReviewMe.
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That is impressive for a PR2 blog. I’ve been long awaiting a PR update so my newish blog gets some rank.
Same here! I need better rankings!
-Terra
http://www.BetterForBusiness.com
We’re looking to boost our rankings too.! First up is a contest to win the geekiest USB flash drive out there - a 2GB mimobot Darth Vader
–
Enwikopedia - The paid encyclopedia
Yeah, PR is pretty useless these days, but it looks good to your advertisers
Yeah it is quite impressive. I’m also waiting, and I’m getting a little tired of waiting.
Well, apparently not everyone is buying ads for PR…he receives 300+/- daily uniques on his blog which is not bad at all, but for the rates of his prices…to be honest, I would rather advertise 1 month on John Chow instead of 2 months over there (but thats just me, and thats just because i value more the traffic the site can bring me instead of the link juice), and SiteFever’s blog is a proof that the traffic has more values in advertising terms than PR.
Funny. I made over $200 in text link sales in *one day* and my site is PR ZERO!!
You must feel special… but I know your blog probably gets a significant amount of traffic, much more than the 300-500 daily uniques mine gets.
That’s true. Does 500 a day even count as getting traffic?
yes it does, you can make decent money off of 500 visits a day.
I don’t know. Seems like a pretty small amount of traffic to me.
Cash, the jerk approach has been done plenty (remember the Rich Jerk?) so try something else. If you don’t realize you can make plenty from 500 uniques a day you’ve got a lot to learn.
Yeah no need to stick it to people who don’t achieve 500 a day - congratulations you do so, but no need to make fun of people who don’t.
Yeah, sometimes being able to sell is a more important, it helps you convince advertisers of the quality of your product.
I guess its proof that there’s life outside of pagerank… There is more to a blog (or any website) than a number Google gives you.
As long as you have other numbers to back up the price your asking like rss readers, alexa, tech,etc
I agree with you on that, the more numbers one has, the more he can raise the price of the ads. But i prefer the site/blog statistics numbers more
All the same I’ll wait to for the next PR export before trying anything direct from my blog. Not long to go now.
When does Google update? Is it monthly?
Up till now its been quarterly though we are a little passed due for another update .
Glad you’ve updated your advertising page - needed doing.
Think youre out of my league now though, youre an expensive site to get advertising on now….congrats.
I don’t think Alexa is worth beans unless you’re up in the top 5,000 or so. Anyone can spend $5 for 500,000 fake hits on their site and up their Alexa by 100,000 in 24 hours.
Alexa is too easy to manipulate.
Sweet - let us know where you can manipulate Alexa - I have been challenging people for years and no one has been able to show me proof.
Order one of those (beep) traffic redirecting services and ask the owner to send you all the traffic within 2 days instead of to send the traffic each day of the month. Challenge yourself before you challenge others, and what will cost you for this test is only $20 i believe for like 10k (so called, uniques) visitors.
I call BS on this - I have been offering $100 reward to anyone who can prove it to me for years over at DigitalPoint and no one has even come close to being able to manipulate Alexa. If you honestly think you can do it for $20 - I will give you the website - you manipulate the Alexa - and I will pay you $100.
Step 1: Install Alexa toolbar for Firefox and enable it.
Step 2: Make your own website your homepage (if its not already).
Doing this made my ranking drop by about 20,000 in 2 or so days.
Weird… my details didnt go through then. Just blank.
Anyway, you dont need to refresh on your site or anything, just normal websurfing will do it.
I will contact you after the weekend.
Excellent - I look forward to it.
So what, you think Alexa is right on? What about all the examples people have posted about their site getting more traffic than some very popular site according to alexa?
Yeah, I was never too impressed with Alexa stats myself either.
That’s rather impressive from a PR2 site. By my reckoning I should be on $930/month!
Interesting with your adsite you say things like “Paypal me $500 and send your banner to the same address.”. With my direct advertising, people say to me “How much would it be to advertise on your site? What do I do?”. I don’t think my advertising page is hard to understand, and highlight how much it’ll be.
Do you get clueless advertisers?
That is a “Call to action” If you don’t have one, you lower your chances of getting a sale.
ABC - Always Be Closing!
Well, shit, if Site Fever can do it, I certainly can.
So get up and do it! That’s what separated the successful from the not so successful. The unsuccessful talk about doing, the successful do.
That’s pretty good to be honest. I can only imagine how much he’ll recover once his page does hit PR5 (whenever Google updates their PRs). Gives us little guys some inspiration.
john, how do you manage your banners placements. is it straight coded html in the theme that you have to change out once monthly or do you use some sort of ad server.
Better yet, I think some wordpress coder should code a plugin to allow you to serve ads directly from your wordpress back end. when that happens, let me know. plus i want the credit for it.
a wordpress plugin that allows you to serve your own ads and manage them from within your backend. awesome idea i must say.
any takers? the person who makes that , if it already isnt made, will be famous. so many plugins for adsense management. ugh, none that allow you to be your manage your advertisers easily.
“plus i want the credit for it.”
I only hope I missunderstand it and you don`t want credit for an idea is operational since ages ..
Average coder is able to implement any of plenty of (free) ad management scripts are outthere. And is not necessary to be a wordpress plugin for an ad management script or any tool to grab statistics.
i searched and couldnt find any plugins that allow me manage any direct ad sales from my wordpress backend.
if someone knows of one, please let me know. the plugin would be an easy to install plugin that lets people upload advertisers images/or img URL and landing page, plus keeps track of impressions, clicks, etc., if payment was made or not, subscriptions, what date the ad is to expire, all from within the backend. it would allow you to add advertising areas/blocks on the blog so that you only needed to mess with the html of the theme or blog one time, you would also be able to specify what kind of blocks , i.e. text or banners.
I`m affraid that that you may not find as free plugin.
Pay a coder to do it.
The closest thing to your needs is http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce
yet far enough from what you request above.
yeh, thats not it. i did manage to find one plugin that i think i can get the coder to manipulate. this isnt only for me, its for all wordpress using bloggers to get their hands on to be able to easily manage direct ad selling from within wordpress.
We have several sites with custom coded banner systems. It’d be easy to get it changed to a wordpress script, we just haven’t had the need.
Hey Dave, do you think you we can work on getting that as a plugin?
The sponsor ads buttons are hard coded. The 300×250 and 468×60 ads are served through the ad server.
i thnk john uses his own ad server from his other site, but not an easy to install plugin that lets people upload advertisers images/or img URL and landing page, plus keeps track of impressions, clicks, etc., if payment was made or not, what date the ad is to expire, and things like that.
Great post and advice, John. I definitely agree that the price should be listed straight out on the page. Dealing with advertisers could potentially take up a lot of time, and it’s better not to just haggle and lower your prices anyway. Take it or leave it!
A session at SES Toronto one of the companies that gathers information on the net did a survey and something like 80% of users said that a lack of prices was their biggest complaint about buying something b2b online.
john you misspelled RSS on the advertising page “RRS Sponsorship”
RRS
Very useful information. I’ve just started my blog not long ago but haven’t add an advertising page because of not enough traffic yet. But when I do I’ll take your advice into account.
@ John Chow
Questions :
A: Why rss readers`s number is or should be a sign of good traffic ?
B: Why any and all gurus recomend testimonials, while testimonials are or could be so easy fake, while 99.99% of testimonials are only positive, while majority of them are imposible to be checked as real.
To support doubts from second questions, here`s a couple of testimonials.
I really badly want an answer to both questions.
RSS is a sign or a loyal reader base. This is why you should try to increase it.
When using testimonials, I always link to the post where the testimonials was made. This prove I didn’t make it up.
1- RSS readers are one who give you a number of loyal readers, yet it ain`t give you :
- visits on other pages
- feedback (as comments)
- feedback (as behaciour)
Unless you have also discovered how to check, see, find, control rss resders feedback (as behaviour), the ree figure is plain just a figure good to make impression on advertisers but else exactly the exception to the “figures don`t lie” theory.
RSS reader is just another wheel in mechanism of automating human life, while human is not a machine. If rss readers is one of tools making one or another be rich, then I`m happy being poor while I count more on real visitors (readers-commenters). After all, the meaning of a blog is to be into a community of people, not necessarely to lead them …
2- testimonials are also tools to automate humans, indulging them the false impresion that others have allready made the thinking for them. Obviously, testimonials may be sometime real, but are 99.