How do you sell banner space on your website or blog? This is a common question that is asked by people who have relatively new blogs and want to generate some extra cash with it. On my blog, I sell banner ads for a good amount of money which generates a nice passive income stream for me. That blog is almost an year old and it gets some decent traffic, so it was only natural for me to try to monetize it.
However, when I first started off, I had no idea how to sell banners on my blog. I didn’t know where to start, whom to contact, if anyone would be interested at all or even how to price them. These questions are not easy to answer, so I’ll give you a guide on how to do it. Hopefully, it will help you sell banners on your own blog or website.
Why Banners?
There are many ways in which you can monetize your blog. Banner ads are a very good start especially for blogs that are relatively new and starting out. Banner ads bring a guaranteed income, unlike other monetization methods like affiliate marketing. If you want to promote your affiliate marketing products, you will only be paid when you make a sale. This is not easy for new blogs to accomplish. Also, the blogger might prefer a steady income stream instead of the possibility of getting paid. It might also happen that the blog or website is in a niche that is not really well suited for affiliate marketing.
Banners are sold directly to advertisers and thus they usually bring in a higher revenue than cost-per-click programs like Google Adsense. On my blog, I make about 3-4 times selling ads directly than through Adsense. This is not surprising because I negotiate a deal directly with my advertisers and they find value in what I have to offer.
If your blog gets a decent amount of traffic, you can always negotiate a deal with an advertiser and provide them value.
How to Find Advertisers
This is perhaps the biggest challenge that bloggers and site owners face and also the main reason why they don’t advertise using banners. So what is the solution? There are many ways to find companies that might be interested in advertising with you. Some of the techniques that I use are as follows –
- Search for Google Advertisers: Do a quick Google search for your niche and a few keywords that you are targeting. You will find sponsored links which shows which sites are advertising on Google Adwords. Now, you know a few companies that have the cash and the inclination to advertise and you can now contact those companies directly. Do the same with other ad networks as well.
- Look for Similar Blogs: If you go to blogs or websites in your area which have more traffic than you get, you might see some advertisers putting their banners. You can contact them directly to see if they would be interested in advertising on your blog as well.
- Find New Companies: If there are companies that are starting out in your industry, they would like to gain more exposure and they could be very well interested in advertising with you, so they can reach a wide relevant audience.
Is it Easy?
Truth be told, it is not. You do need to work your way through many emails and contacting many companies before you can land a good deal. It is definitely going to be more work than say putting Google Adsense code in your blog. That being said, you will reap long term relationships and rich dividends in terms of making money from your blog right away.
How Much Traffic is Good?
It really again depends on the niche and type of blog or website that you own. If you command an authority over your readers, even if you have less traffic, you can bag some good deals. It is hard to give you an estimate off hand, but 50-100 unique visits a day should be a good starting point. Of course you should also price your banner in a relevant way. If you get 50 unique visits a day, you may just make $20-25 per month (again, really depends on the niche and blog, but just as a rough estimate) so you might want to sell multiple ad spots.
In my next post, I will discuss pricing, how to write the email and what you can offer additionally to bag your advertising deals.
Great article – I have never got around to banners since I had no idea where to look for advertisers – but now I do, thanks to you. I like that you don’t under estimates the tasks associated with this – and tell it as it is…!!! I love honest writing and you certainly write very honest about it.
Keep up your very informative articles
And To your success
Tina
Tina,
Thank you so much! I am really glad that you find value in the article, and like honest writing. I know you document your own progress and it is always a pleasure to read your posts too.
Good luck with selling banners. Your blog does well and it has good traffic and followers, so if you go about it, I think advertisers should certainly be interested. I am hoping to write another article on how to price your banners, which could be interesting because really there is no answer!
Thank you for this post Sid.
I never considered putting other people’s banners on my site. Recently I’ve been contacted by several different people wanting me to include their banners on my site but their niche had nothing in common with my blog topic. I thought that was rather odd really plus they had never visited my blog before so I turned them away. I didn’t really think anyone would want to pay to have their banners on my site since my blog is still fairly new. Do you have any thoughts about that? I do get a lot of traffic but as we all know, that doesn’t guarantee sales.
Again, thanks for this information. You’ve given me some things to think about for in the near future.
Adrienne
Adrienne,
Thank you so much for dropping by my blog, and I am really happy you liked the post!
I think your blog gets good enough traffic for someone to want to pay a fixed amount of money per month. The good thing with banners is that you don’t need to convert to sales – it is usually just a fixed amount of money they will pay you.
From the point of view of banners my other niche of entertainment auctions is really good since I have advertisers pay good money for banners to get exposure. It also happens to be one of the better blogs in that niche.
I think you should contact advertisers directly, see what they say. You have several strengths that you can mention, including your comments and traffic. In the IM niche, there are plenty of blogs, so I am assuming it shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of some names. Perhaps you can also start with the bigger blogs like ProBlogger and see who advertise there. For a much lower price, they might be interested to advertise on your blog as well. May be you can start off with a little less and then charge more for the advertisers in the future.
Also, I think people will pay for branding and traffic. I sometimes combine some offers, like banner+blog post about them. May be you can give them some value in addition to a banner in a similar way, like writing about them.
Thanks again for dropping by!
This article contained great content. I’m a new blogger and I was wondering how I could make money with my blog.
Karin,
Thanks for stopping by. Making money as a new blogger really depends on what kind of a business you want for yourself. If you run your own business that you want to promote, it might involve a completely different strategy than if you were blogging for money, with the primary source of income being your blog and not another business. Banners are good but may not be ideal if you want to promote your business through your blog (you would be sending visitors to a competitor). Good luck!
monetize your blog is one way to make money from the internet through the medium of blogs or websites, you can join a variety of media both adsense amazon, or by using clickbank. post your article very interesting and appropriate to the theme of my website. and hopefully your article a lot of benefit, and always make a good article thanks for sharing
Well I have started putting banner advertising on my blog but I have no idea how much to charge those who are willing to place their ads.
Content is King. If you really want to earn money blogging then write super killer attractive, informative content. Selling banners on blog is good for earning but too much banners will make your site look bad and now Google does not allow you to promote too much ads on your blog. So it will be bad for search engine ranking.
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