Blog Tipz

One of the main problems with advertising on blogs still remains in the fact that you have to place dozens of ads on your site in order to break even. There are only a few sites on the web (getting millions of visitors daily) that are able to attract a single advertiser to sponsor entire pages/posts, and it still remains impossible to get the most value when you focus on this single sponsorship model – some visitors won’t agree with this, and will leave upon seeing who you “deal with.”

The Main Problems

Even though some of my claims won’t be true for everyone, they are generalized and are true when you look at the larger sense of advertising and the way that it is conducted.

1. Advertisers seek out the sites that offer them the best price to traffic rate, and they are often the highest-visited sites on the web.A
2. As you move up the chain of more popular sites, they sell advertising more frequently on monthly rates, so the advertiser is trying to get the most out of the ad as possible. Instead of using flashing “lights,” their products are promoted more through ads that may fit into the site it is featured on.
3. With “ad blindness,” people often avoid ads that are smaller, and these larger ads may be more appealing, offering interactive features.

Examples

In the following example, The NY Times uses several forms of advertising, including this huge ad within the sidebar, which likely cost a hefty fee and might only run for a day or just a few hours.

Pertaining to Your Site

Even small blogs can carry out the same methods that the larger blogs use to generate revenue while maintaining a sense of pride for the space that you have to offer to both your advertisers and readers. Think about the way that you look at the sidebars and around an entire site. No matter what you may think, you are naturally drawn to some of the ads – they are images offset on a background of text.

Your readers are exactly the same way. If an ad relates to what they may be interested in, or draws their attention, they are likely going to click on it, landing on the advertiser’s website. This is what you want to see happen! The more legitimate clicks you can get to go to your advertisers, the higher the chance that you’ll make money if you are running them through a PPC program like AdSense or if they pay based on impressions/clicks, based on a decision at the beginning of the campaign.

A Few Reasons Large Ads Work

• Large ads are often less distracting, than let’s say eight 125×125 ads. As your site grows, you can simply increase the cost of the single large ad, which will see demand increases as your traffic increases.
• By promoting the single sponsor, you can run your site more efficiently. A large ad will call less times to the server(s) than a multitude of ads.
• Your visitors only have one place to leave your site through. Even though many people do not think about it, many people only click-out of your site through one ad. When you have a large number of ads, they may go to one ad over others, resulting in a bias towards one advertiser (created naturally).

Other Important Factors

Like I already addressed, this technique does not work on all sites nor can it be used when you want to generate the largest amount of income. Naturally, you need to diversify your streams of income, or you’ll likely face periods where you have few to no advertisers on your site. When seeking out spots to advertise on, advertisers move towards areas that get the most page views and the lowest cost per click/highest earnings per click. Placing so many ads that they begin falling below the traditional “fold” in the screen can hurt both your brand, but also your advertisers.

Another piece of advice is that if you do decide to implement this on your site, you have to constantly ensure that it is effective. Before you publicly launch this spot to the public, test traditional (125×125 ads) to the “new,” larger ad. Which receives more clicks, and use some type of click map program to determine whether the trend is to click in the same relative areas.

Receive few to no advertisers on your blog? Then, use this technique to promote your affiliate program(s), creating a larger, more descriptive ad that helps explain why your visitors should be clicking the ad to purchase the product, effectively making a donation in your name. It can be effective, as you are really devoting most of your resources (physical blog space) to the campaign, holding all faith in it working.