Some time ago I wrote an article titled “Are you marketing your blog?” where I argued that there is a myth around the Internet that bloggers and webmasters should not spend money on advertising. The myth comes in great extent from the success stories of people that managed to create popular websites without spending a dime on advertising or other paid promotion techniques.
The reality is that most of those successful websites were pioneers on their niche, hence why they became popular without spending money on advertising. Now a days the market is crowded and you have thousands of websites and blogs even for small segments. As a consequence paid promotional techniques are becoming an important factor of any successful marketing strategy.
Below you will find 7 ways to promote your website or blog with a bit of money. You can use them to generate raw traffic, improve your search engine rankings, gain visibility on your niche and so on. Despite the initial investment most of those techniques will pay off on the short to medium term. If you are expecting to make money with your website there is no reason to assume that you will not need to spend some as well, right?
1. AdWords: Google make billions of dollars every year from the AdWords-AdSense combo. Why is that? Because they work. Adwords is probably the most efficient method to generated raw traffic for your website. In order to get started you should create an account, add lots (by lots I mean hundreds if not thousands) of keywords that are related your site and set the maximum Pay-per-Click rate at $0.01. After that raise the rate by $0.01 every week or so until you start getting the desired amount of daily clicks. Notice that at lower bids the keywords will be reported as “Inactive for Search”. Do not worry about it, it just means that your ads will not appear on the search network (Google’s search results), but they will appear on the content network (websites of people that use AdSense).
2. Site-Specific AdWords: if you pay attention to the AdSense units you will see that most of them have a link titled “Advertise on this site”. This feature enables AdWords advertisers to create customized ads that will be displayed only on specific websites. Those ads work on a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) rather than a CPC (cost per click) basis, but they can generate a good amount of very targeted traffic since you will be in control of where the ad will be displayed and of the message. You can get even better results if you use some creativity when designing the ads, click here for some examples.
3. StumbleUpon Ads: StumbleUpon is a very innovative social bookmarking site that allows users to discover great websites by using a browser toolbar. When the user clicks on “Stumble” he will be delivered a website that people with similar interested rated positively. The user is also able to give positive and negative ratings to any website that he visits on the Internet. StumbleUpon also offers advertising campaigns, called StumbleUpon Ads, where you can deliver your website directly to those “Stumblers”. It costs $0.05 per page delivered, but since the websites that appear on StumbleUpon usually have a high quality it is very likely that part of that paid traffic will convert into regular readers.
4. Text Link Ads: if you are trying to increase your search engine rankings to leverage organic traffic you should consider buying some text link ads. While those text links can also generate direct traffic the biggest benefit you will have is an improvement on your search rankings, specially if the links are placed on authoritative and relevant websites. There are several places to buy text links, including specialized companies like Text-Link-Ads and Text Link Brokers or online forums like Digital Point’s market place.
5. Direct Banner Sales: most established websites sell banner ads or sponsorship plans directly. Those advertising deals usually are structured with weekly or monthly fees, regardless of the number of impressions or clicks that you will get. Despite this characteristic a banner placement can represent good value for money because apart from the direct traffic you will also create visibility and brand awareness. Readers of the website where you will display your banner will associate the message on the banner with your site or blog. Should they come across that banner or message two or three times it is very likely that they will get curious and decide to check what the buzz is all about. Another advantage of banner placements is the fact that people will unconsciously think that the author of the website endorses your content or product.
6. Sponsored Reviews: buying some sponsored reviews is a good way to kick-start a website. They will bring backlinks, traffic and RSS subscribers. There are many market studies confirming that “word of mouth” is the most efficient way to capture people’s attention, and that is just what you get with sponsored reviews. You can either pay a low price (sometimes as low as $5 per review) to get a large number of reviews from small sites or you can focus on large players (which can charge several hundreds of dollars for a single review) that are authorities on your niche. The best way to purchase sponsored reviews is through sites like SponsoredReviews.com, ReviewMe or PayPerPost.com.
7. Blog Networks: there are several blog networks founded around a traffic exchange principle. Basically you create an account for you blog and you earn credits by surfing other members’ blogs. Afterwards you can use those credits to make people visit your blog or to display your banners around the network. The interesting part is that most of those blog networks allow users to purchase credits with money, and the price is really convenient. You should be able receive hundreds of visitors or to get thousands of banner impressions for less than 10 dollars. Some blog networks that sell credits include Blog Explosion, Blog Soldiers and Blog Advance.
About Mark
Mark is an digital entrepreneur from New York City who recently acquired DBT. He started his ventures buying growing then selling several businesses and content blogs on Flippa. A perfect night for him constitutes pizza, wine, slow jazz and WordPress! He's an SEO expert and a growth strategist. When he's not working on his businesses he enjoys sharing his learned lessons with the DBT community.
Thanks for your guiding. I think your tips is very good for beginner blogger like me. I go against paying something for advertising my blog.
Very good! We have customers that do very well with social media but ultimately it is the sum of the seo and media experiences that make your online business a success.
Thanks – I took your idea and just set up an adwords account. Will wait and see how it does. Thanks for giving me permission to do this.
I think you have to mix it up. Use PPC plus doing SEO. What we like to do is do a test market on PPC and if the results are good, then Optimize the site.
I keep reading about Text Link Ads, but the costs theyre quoting blow me away can it possibly be worth it? Anyone with a solid experience with them? Thanks!
Good Article. However I think PPC is not olny good but also dangerous!! If we don’t use it right way, it can burn out of our cash!!
I use rss feedburner it makes my traffic down why ?
Great article. I’ve used some of these, and have seen some considerable traffic increases.
according my 3 months experience…..adword more competitive and too exvensive bid with the same keyword than yahoo ppc……. yahoo ppc more effesient
Good tips
I can trust it. Thanks for your tips&informations…
Really good information.Somebody like me will not spend mony to promote my blog,I will stick on quality content and maybe add my comment to porpulard blog that is related to my mine
Thanks for your tips. I think your tips is very good for beginner blogger like me.
All is very power full ways to promote and making popular blog, thanks
help….as beginner I still learn to use adwords….till this time no success, my ads having thousand impress…..but no click…..what should i do? thanks
Thanks for the heads-up on the blog networks. Im intrigued by the low ad rates at Blog Explosion. Just wondering if you, or any of your readers has personal experience with them.
What are some of the metrics to look for to know how well paid advertising is working? What percentage of visitors should I expect to come back, assuming of course quality content?
Thank you.
I tried adword and it works effectively for me.
A year after this was written, and still extremely relevant. Thanks for the stumble upon tip – hadn’t thought of that.
Great tips here, I have bookmarked them for future reference, thanks..
great article very useful and informative.
Thanks alot for these great tips!
really nice information
I had not considered advertising with Stumbleupon. In fact, I didn’t know you could do that. Of course I have tried to get some traffic from the site, which can be difficult–but buying ads may just be a good way to be more effective.
This web site is very useful and informative. Thank you for sharing knowledge info about monetizing websites.
I’d like to add one more ways to promote your site with no cost. Get listing at social bookmarking site. You could use this link of 150+ social bookmarking site!
…I go against paying something for advertising my blog. Simply because I don’t need to spend money to advertise it, since I don’t take any $$$ from my blog.
Very nice article and I try to follow your plan. Thanks for sharing.
These tip are amazing & now i got more traffic on my website.. Thanks again
Thanks for all those tips, much more help to improve my website. Thanks
sponsored post on related blogs is the best way to promote your web.
very good ideas and iam already use some of them
We use Google AdWords and it has worked pretty well for us, but I feel a more organic method seems to please the Google bots. I have a system of writing varied and interesting content and try and syndicate this out through other blogs to create a natural back linking campaign.
I am hearing good things about abcsearch.com
Will adword ad rank my site higher?
This are Great idea. I will put them to work. Thanks
topics #1 about adwords details is usable for me.
Adwords will certainly add traffic to a site. Lots more traffic actually.
I never hear about that but nice information have to be test
Nice article, alltough we need to pay a little to bring traffic. didnt know that stumbleupon has ads too.
Some great tips again thanks i am rather interested in trying the stubmle upon idea
StumbleUpon brings lots of visitors, but the problem is they are not very valuable. I don’t use it for long (maybe 1 month), but I already noticed the following: usually, the average time a user stays on my blog is around 40 seconds, maybe less or more (the blog is new), while the visitors who accessed my site via a StumbleUpon link only stayed around 3 seconds. I’m using Google Analytics to track my site. So practically, what happens is: someone finds a link to my blog, checks it out and quickly closes the session. I know you may argue that the content may be the problem, but how comes visitors from other sites stay even 1 minute or more (that’s enough to read a full article plus look a little around).
Thanks – I took your idea and just set up an adwords account. Will wait and see how it does. Thanks for giving me “permission” to do this.
hi my name is karen please vidit my blog thanks
All good tips, but buying text links is becoming a riskier business now – google have penalised many people recently without a second’s thought.
Nice summary of the services out there. I personally am a fan of stumbleupon ads as it also provides you with feedback and reader’s thoughts/reviews on your blog.
Hi,
Promoting your website is very important, and there is some great ideas in this post.
Spending a little money is the fastest way to advertise your site. I’ve got some free adwords with my hosting so I’ll make use of them.
Promote your site is the importance factor get more visitor.
Great tips. Thanks a lot.
Great post.