I know that not every blogger wants to monetize their blog, but I believe there are far more who do. And why shouldn’t they, there’s nothing wrong with making a little money while doing the thing you love. Those who do decide to monetize their blogs normally just place Google Adsense or Chango ads on their blog and they then sit back while waiting for that elusive click.
Others will set up a spot on the sidebar with an ‘Advertise Here’ heading but all you see are empty spaces. They sit there scratching their heads while crying rivers of tears over their keyboards because no-one’s buying any ads. Well cry no more guys because I’m here to tell you the top 5 reasons why no-one is advertising on your blogs.
- Your Blog hasn’t been around long enough!
- Honestly, if you’ve just started your blog you really shouldn’t monetize it straight away. Your best bet is to build up a good readership first and only then worry about selling advertising space. Don’t be disheartened if things start off slow at first because if you’re willing to put in a lot of hard work into it then it won’t be long before you can build up a respectable readership.Take Patricia of lavenderuses.com, her first post, About Me: All Things Lavender, was posted on March 27th! Yet in only a few short months she has built up a large readership and the amount of comments she gets could leave some probloggers shaking their heads in disbelief.
- You Don’t Have A Contact Page!
- Come on people, it’s not rocket science you know. An advertiser can’t contact you if there’s nothing on your blog that allows him to do so. There are may plugins that will allow you to do this. Personally I use Mike’s Fast Secure Contact Form.
- You’re Not Selling Yourself
- Most people who may want to advertise on your blog will need a reason to do so. You need to sell your blog to them. I constructed a special page that I called Advertise Here just so I can encourage advertisers to drop some of their hard earned cash into my waiting wallet.This is your virtual sales page, where you will list all the reasons why someone should advertise on your blog. You may want to mention your PR and Alexa rating. You could even stress that you are a consistent poster and how this had led to a large readership. This page should be so good that they can’t help themselves but to contact you for an advertising spot. Oh, one last thing, you’ll also want to mention what it will cost them for an ad..
- Your Not Automated
- Let’s face it, we live a busy world where time is money. There are times when an advertiser doesn’t want to go through all the hassle of contacting the blogger and discussing prices. Some will want an automated system that will let then place an ad automatically.This is where OIOpubliasher comes in. This plugin is a professional ad manager that will save you and the advertiser time, and I can vouch that it works. I have some advertisers that subscribe to a monthly rate and some that pay for months at a time. The best thing is that I don’t have to keep track of when they expire because it’s all done automatically! You can get $10 off this month if you use the following coupon XMASGIFT-WASSUP.
- Leaving Empty Ad Spaces!
- At the beginning of the post I mentioned those blogs that have all those empty ad spots waiting to be filled. Now why would someone outlay good money on your blog when he can see as plain as day that no-one else is willing to? Your solution is simple, fill those spots up with affiliate ads, heck you may even make a sale or two from them. If anything just leave one spot with an advertise here link as a juice bait..
Naturally there are other things like increasing traffic to your blog as traffic is a great sweetener for any advertiser. One of the reasons for me purchasing Market Samurai is so that I can build traffic to my niche sites.
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Tagged with: Advertising • Alexa Internet • getting ads • Google Adsense • Market Samurai
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Hey Pete!
Yeah, I think a lot of new bloggers (and some seasoned ones that really should know better) have this idea that they set up a WordPress blog and the advertisers will be clambering all over themselves to give you their money.
If you want to get advertisers interested in you enough to part with some dollars you need a couple of key things IMO…
o Loads and loads of targeted traffic
o Be well established with a good history
You only get those things from putting out stellar content over a long and consistent period of time.
A couple of pieces of constructive criticism for you, mate…
You might like to play around with the padding on your 125×125 button ads there. Some whitespace to the left and on the bottom (to centre the group of buttons) would do wonders to improve how that looks. It’d just be a matter of surrounding it in <div style=…></div>
The other thing that I wanted to mention is that if I were a prospective advertiser looking at your site I’d want to see some more stats. Things like: how many visitors per month do you get, and some demographics of your audience. (the stuff you can access on Alexa is probably perfect for this).
Anyway, mate, I’ve raved on for long enough. Oh, just give me a yell if you need a hand with that padding thing I spoke about up there.
Kind regards,
Steve
Twitter: AussieSire
Nothing wrong with constructive criticism Steve. Those button ads are actually a plugin by OIOpublisher and I it had a centering option so that’s now fixed.
As to the stats I could easily pull that out from Alexa like you’ve suggested. This blog also does very well on the search engines so I may even include those stats as well, once I get down to it. :tongue_rolleye_ee:
Thanks for popping in mate.
Sire recently posted…It’s Time For A Little Link Luv
Buttons look heaps better. Can you get a little whitespace top and bottom too? Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a fussy bastard. :-)
Twitter: AussieSire
That you are :tongue_rolleye_ee:
Sire recently posted…DoFollow NoFollow War Compared To The Toilet Seat Saga
Hi sire
firstly thanks for the mention. I had forgotten when I set up my blog cos it took me till the end of June/beg July to start blogging seriously. That was after I did a small biz management course.
For me, ads are not in tne plan for the moment. Instead I do my product reviews as blog posts and so far that is working for me. Eventually I may introduce a few but only related to my niche or with relevance to blogging.
I heard that some advertisers look at Alexa and PR rank before agreeing to advertise on some sites! Must be why so many people discuss these two subjects so much lol
Patricia Perth Australia
Twitter: AussieSire
I knew that Patricia but I used you as an example because you’d be an inspiration to any new blogger. I used that first post so that they could see how much you have progressed in such a short time.
It’s true that advertisers look at PR and Alexa, most want the PR because they want to increase their own. Personally I would go for high traffic sites as there’s more potential for a sale there.
Sire recently posted…Procrastination And How It Can Cost You Money
It shouldn’t matter if you are not around long enough if the advertiser wants to target exactly the content you are publishing. You can always start with very low ad publishing rates and increase your rates over time along with your traffic.
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate Andreas. As an advertiser I would want value for every dollar spent and I know I wouldn’t get it from a blog who has only just started and hasn’t developed a following yet.
Sire recently posted…Learning How To Use Market Samurai
Your blog is pain killer for me. I was really frustrated due to same problem but you have really cool down my mind. Now I’ll follow your tips and I hope it’ll work for me.
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m sure they will.
Sire recently posted…Be Creative- Be Innovative- Be Positive When Blogging
Other things that it can be;
Your blog is not a special in anything – no niche – no readers.
No special or popularly keyword in the title and the text so nobody found your blog.
You write to little text and not so often, no interesting blog to read.
So you must work hard and long time before result comes.
Twitter: AussieSire
Actually this blog isn’t a niche blog and it does quite well
Your other points are quite valid though.
Sire recently posted…Learning How To Use Market Samurai
Certainly these are all reasons why advertisers won’t place advertising on your blogs. One thing that comes into my mind aside from these reasons is the price a blogger is charging. You have to be in “reality” mode for people to advertise on your blog. I have seen many people putting their tags way too high and this is also one reason why advertisers won’t give doodle for your ad space. Another thing I learned is that advertisers in general are very targeted and they look for something specific. For example, I was approached by someone asking for in-content link on an archived page. Why, because that specific page ranks #1 in Google, regardless of any other stats or metrics.
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Twitter: AussieSire
That’s exactly right Di Tesco. One thing many advertisers want above everything else is exposure and a high traffic post will do just that.
You also have to have faith in your blog and know what it’s worth. Asking too high a price will mean no takers but asking too low would mean a loss in revenue.
The contact page is very important as it allows you to bargain with the advertiser. Just recently I managed to more than double what was first offered me for some ad space.
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Hi Sire,
Great tips, that should definitely help other to optimize their blog/website for selling ad space.
I would also add one more thing. You should explicitly tell people that you are selling advertising space on the blog and even promoting that you are selling. Because there might be lots of advertisers out there looking for ad spaces to buy but they just don’t know you are selling.
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Twitter: AussieSire
That’s for sure Alex, which is why I have the Advertise Here page
Sire recently posted…Twitter Is More Fun And More Profitable When You Follow The Right People
Nice points listed out. Any advertiser would certainly look for higher PR and traffic so that he not only gets good linkbank but also exposure to large audience. And the “Advertise Here” link really worked for me for my previous blogs.
Twitter: AussieSire
Good to see your doing the right things to target your advertisers Rajesh.
Sire recently posted…Procrastination And How It Can Cost You Money
Sire,
I agree with the point “I don’t advertise my own blog”..
So far, i haven’t put that adverts box yet, but might apply it soon in my blog.
Thanks for the idea.
PS. I can’t read your reply comment as it has brighter background than the font..
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Twitter: AussieSire
Sorry Kimi, I was just playing around with the Theme.
As to the ads, I’m sure you’ll do fine when you decide to implement them on your blog.
Sire recently posted…Be Creative- Be Innovative- Be Positive When Blogging
The debate I seem to be having is whether I’ll allow the link to be dofollow instead of nofollow. I get lots of requests to advertise on my finance blog, but I’ve been hesitant to allow dofollow on it. So, I’m priced right, but that seems to be a stopping point. And I’m not sure I want to give it up either.
BTW, me being me (and us being us), you might want to look at this entire post again. Not only a lot of mistakes (you using voice recognition software?), but there’s only 4 points and you said you were giving us 5. Don’t be cheating me now!
And, to the rest of you who think I’m picking on Sire, we do this for each other so we can both be as perfect later on as we can be, so there!
Mitch recently posted…The New Adsense Interface
Twitter: AussieSire
Honestly Mitch, as long as the link’s not going to an objectionable site, and if it was you wouldn’t accept it anyway, I don’t see the problem of allowing a dofollow link, especially if you blog is dofollow to begin with.
Man, you’re not kidding there were mistakes , that just goes to show why you should proof read your posts before going live. It was pretty shocking. I think I got them all,
I even reworded it some to give it a better feel.
Thanks for pointing them out Mitch, I know how much you enjoy doing that.
Sire recently posted…Learning How To Use Market Samurai
Yup, you got it there!
As to the other, I’m still unsure about the paid links thing. I’ve done a lot of reading, and there are lots of sites that get de-listed for the paid ads thing. Of course, one thing they worried about was people having paid links that had nothing to do with the content, but it turns out there’s also a “rat” report where, if someone sees a link they think could be paid, they can go to Google and turn you in.
So, I’ll have to think about that one a little bit more.
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Twitter: AussieSire
Last I heard you could lose your PR for accepting paid links, I’ve never heard you could be de-listed for it. I’ve found two articles by Matt Cutts. The first one is about reporting paid links to Google in which Matt Cutts has the following to say
Which also links to the second article.
It seems to me that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links whose main intention is to generate traffic, only if it’s trying to leach PR. The second article shows examples of the types of links that Google frowns on.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/hidden-links/
Sire recently posted…Twitter Is More Fun And More Profitable When You Follow The Right People
Interesting stuff, that last bit. I’m going to think about it some more.
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Hi Sire
An informative article from an experienced blogger. There is a general opinion that blog gives money without work – but blogging has become a more time-consuming, challenging, creative and productive hard work.
Regards
Alex Papa
Twitter: AussieSire
That’s true, unfortunately the road to wealth or happiness is usually filled with hardships of one form or another, one just has to persevere until they attain their goals.
Sire recently posted…DoFollow NoFollow War Compared To The Toilet Seat Saga
Great post Sire!
I actually never thought of creating a specific ‘Advertise Here’ page, I always pointed the links to my contact form.
Will definitely create one now
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m glad I was able to give you some useful information Amr.
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Hey Sire,
I really enjoyed reading through your post. This is definitely going to be very helpful to those who are suffering from having no one to advertise on their blog pages.. I am also glad you mentioned OIOpubliasher. This seems to be a very good plugin.
Eric
Eric Graham recently posted…You Don’t Need to be Alone Anymore
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m glad you liked it Eric, and you’re right OIOpublisher is an excellent plugin. It’s allowed me to get publishers that I would otherwise have missed out on.
Sire recently posted…Why The List Hater Has His Very Own List
Right on target Sire!
You pigeon-holed me right off in that most of my blogging efforts are quite new and have such a small following that trying to entice advertisers would be pointless.
The one blog that does have a good following has been running for 5 years, but not set up to sell anything. In fact, it was set up as a service for those who already bought something; this photo-intensive blog allows them to watch as we build their furniture. Over the years lots of other folks have started dropping in because they “like to watch” and a major woodworking magazine shunts folks to us as a subscriber resource. I often link back to the sales site so visitors can go see what the finished piece is supposed to look like (and buy one if they like), but I don’t try to advertise anything else there.
I did take an oh-so-scientific poll once (I e-mailed everyone in my contacts file) and asked how they feel about advertisements on web sites. The vast majority responded that they rarely even see the advertisements, they’ve learned to tune them out. I’m the same way.
I’ve read the blogs written by people who claim to be making a vast fortune from monitizing a blog, and I wonder what flavor of snake oil they’re selling.
Just pop me in the skeptic bin.
How do I expect to get wealthy with this approach? I don’t. I’m a freelancer; I sell my work to brokers/magazines for cash money. My blogs serve as a resume… for now anyway. In time I hope to build enough of a following to offer e-books or member sevices. Maybe when traffic is impressive enough I’d consider tossing in some advertising, but it would probably be paid advertising not AdSense. I’m something of a control freak and would want to be sure the advertising displayed would be something my readers would have an interest in – if they even see it!
Sorry about the long yammer! I didn’t intend to run off at the fingers like that!
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Twitter: AussieSire
Hey Allan, how about a link to that site you mentioned, it sounds really interesting. Also if it does get a lot of visitors you may consider letting others advertise on it. With OIOpublisher you can even leave a note as to what advertisers you will allow on that site. In that way you can stipulate you only want those in the same sort of industry.
You don’t even need OIOpublisher to do that, you could actually include it in your Advertise Here page.
Sire recently posted…Procrastination And How It Can Cost You Money
Sire,
While I totally respect what you’re saying, could it also be possible that some people simply aren’t interested in cluttering up their site with ads that may or MAY NOT result in a payoff?
Also, how relevant is the subject matter you write about in determining your financial success as a blogger? There are some blog posts that simply don’t interest me and I see them loaded with ads and TONS of comments.
I will say I am glad I found you via Mitch’s blog.
Beverly Mahone recently posted…Responding to Criticism Part II
Twitter: AussieSire
Hi Beverly, I think perhaps you may have misunderstood the post. I say this because the ads I’m talking about are the ones where you get paid by people to advertise on your blog. Therefore by accepting the payoff is instantaneous.
This blog isn’t about me making money, it’s more about my experiences in life and any other topic I find interesting. Sure I have ads and as long as they bring in some cash I see no reason to take them off. Besides, they’re not there for my regular readers as I know, for the greater part, they’re not interested, and I reckon most of them are oblivious to them.
May I ask which post are loaded with tons of ads, because usually they only contain the adsense unless I’m writing about a particular affiliate?
May I also say that I am glad you found me
Sire recently posted…Why The List Hater Has His Very Own List
Hey Sire,
I appreciate your being upfront right there. You have made things even more clear. Thanks a lot and thank you Beverly for bringing that one up.
Eric
Twitter: AussieSire
Glad it’s all cleared up for you Eric.
Sire recently posted…A Collaboration Of Bloggers- The Synergy Of Blogging And Business
Thanks for your advice.
I must admit my ignorance regarding blogs, and I must thank you because it is only after reading this article, I have added a page of contacts in my blog
ps: I know that this post is old,but I’ve found 2 errors
(1) The secure contact form is labelled as secure “comment” form
(2) Your Chango affiliates link return a 404 page
ps2: you can delete this two post scriptum from my comment,just after reading them
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Twitter: AussieSire
Thanks for picking those errors up Albert. I corrected the contact form link and I’ve contacted Chango to find out what is going on.
That last tip about the empty ad spaces is good! Having a separate ‘advertise here’ page is much better
Twitter: AussieSire
Which is why I’ve got one