Blog Tipz

Getting your blog’s address out to other bloggers who may be interested in your blog can be a difficult process, especially if you are on a limited budget.  Correctly approaching other bloggers about advertising on their blogs is one of the steps that may bloggers do not go about correctly.  When you are marketing your blog, price doesn’t tell the whole story about the quality of the advertisement space you are “renting.”

The main reason that advertising your blog may appear so difficult is due to the vast variety of blogs available to advertise on (especially if your blog is in an extra-crowded niche), page views/visitors per month, subscribers, and interest rate/click-thru rate of all visitors to the blog.   With all of these factors put into consideration, it is no wonder that many blogs that could bring new subscribers/sales to your website are left without advertisers.

Advertising Networks 

This post will guide you through some of the steps and includes tips to help you make the most out of your advertisement, by combining several tools to your advantage.

1. First, as in most lists of how-tos in the act of blogging, you will want to define your goals and what group of people you want to target.  It may involve looking at your competition – where they are advertising and if their traffic levels increase after running an ad on a particular high-traffic blog (potentially resulting in more conversions at your site should you advertise there).  Keep in mind that designing a good ad (textual or image-based) will be another important consideration when you try to compete for the best results.
2. Now is time that you will want to do some more “comparison shopping” on the web, making sure that you are really getting the best deal for your ad deal.  In a sense, all advertising space is the same – you are renting a 125×125/768×60/etc. sized space to place an image on another website for a particular time period.  However, when it comes to traffic/subscribers/community/etc., no sites are equal in return levels.
   At this step, it would be a good idea to examine what traffic the sites you have narrowed down get.  Some tools (do not base traffic figures off any single site/stats) include Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, and Google Trends for Websites, or figures the site provides upon request or on their advertising page.
3. Based off the statistics you have gathered, find a site that continues to be at the top of the list you have created, then go about finding prices for each site.  Typically, advertisements will run for one month, but some are for one-week time intervals.  It is important to keep this in mind when selecting your site, otherwise you may select an add that costs a monthly price for a single-week ad.
4. Once you have determined the particular site to advertise on, use popular blog ad marketplaces, such as BuySellAds, Performancing Ads, and Text Link Ads, to name just a few.  The blogger may be located on these sites, offering either a lower or higher price.  In addition, you can easily compare the prices of ads vs. other metrics on these sites, as they tailor to blog advertisers on a budget.  Text links generally are cheaper, but don’t quite deliver the same results, as they are placed beneath image-oriented ads on the site.  If your budget is higher, you could even promote your blog for a potentially lower cost/higher return with Google AdWords (site and search-targeted), with results appearing in search results and/or AdSense areas.
5. Before you go on, if the blog advertiser has a contact/advertising page, use this to gain insight into what is being offered, potentially as a package you can take advantage of – extended deals or cheaper rates for smaller ad formats.  Contact them to negotiate a potentially lower deal.  Please Note: Doing this may result in your ad being denied, as most bloggers have set their rates as low as they can go, however some will be flexible, especially if they are looking at growing their advertisers or creating extended advertising deals.  Generally, don’t negotiate more than 10-20% off the initial cost, especially at rates lower than $50.  You must take into account that bloggers have real expenses that must be paid – personal/family and website hosting/advertising fees of their own.

Negotiating an advertising deal on smaller blogs may appear easier, as the blogger may not be looking to create a whole lot of cash on their blog with rates set at between $5-20 per month, so this may be the main area to target, although there really isn’t much flexibility in the form of savings here.  Transferring views to larger blogs, the advertising networks in charge of advertising are typically set in stone, so there is little you can do to persuade them to lower prices, however it is always worth a shot.

Disclaimer: You will not always be able to get an advertising deal for cheaper, as implied above, but it can be an opportunity to cash in if you are able to.