Create your own “Advertise” page

There are many advertising networks out there connecting content publishers (i.e. bloggers) with advertisers. The advantage of those networks is that they can tap a wide range of advertisers, something that would be very difficult for a small blogger. Secondly they also have economies of scale to deal with thousands of ads monthly and consequently a higher credibility.

That said, such networks also have a huge drawback, they usually eat half of your money. Text-Link-Ads, for instance, places simple text links on your site. You can decide the amount of links you want to put on your blog, and based on a couple of parameters (traffic, topic, pagerank, etc.) they will calculate a monthly price per link. Suppose the price is $50 monthly per link, this means that an advertiser will pay $50 dollars to put the link on your site, but you will receive only $25 and Text-Link-Ads will eat the other $25.

Subscribing with advertising networks can be an option if you don’t have time to sell advertising yourself or if just want to make a couple of bucks to pay your hosting bills. If you are serious about your blog and if the traffic is starting to grow steadily, however, I highly recommend that you create your own “Advertise” page to deal directly with potential advertisers, cutting out the middle man.

You can customize your advertise page in whatever way you prefer, but a good way to structure it is to divide the page in three main paragraphs. On the first paragraph you need to describe what topic your site deal with, who are your readers (age, geographical locations, profession, or anything else that describes them) and what kind of traffic or exposure the site is receiving. Notice that the more precise you get the better.

The example of the first paragraph for Daily Blog Tips would be:

Daily Blog tips is generating over 120000 page views per month, with a very targeted audience composed of bloggers, site owners and web designers. The site features daily tips on blog design, promotion, web tools, and more. If you have a website or product that is focused on blogging or online marketing in general Daily Blog Tips is the right place for you.

On the second paragraph you want to specify what kind of advertising you are looking for, preferably including the price and graphical specifications. A possible example would be:

There are two ways to advertise on Daily Blog Tips:

• sponsored link ($30 monthly)
• sponsored graphic ($120 monthly) *Graphics should be 125×125 pixels, without animations

Finally, on the third paragraph you should include general information about the advertising deals and how the person could get in touch with you in the case he is interested. An example for the third paragraph is:

Daily Blog Tips reserves the right to approve sponsoring sites. Advertising plans are agreed on a month-to-month basis where either party may terminate the relationship on 15 days notice.

If you are interested or need more information please send an email to [email protected].

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