12 Ways to Sell More Ads on Your Website

elling Ad Space to advertisers is one of the best ways to make money from your website or blof. There are many ways to make money from your website including Google Adsense, commission from the sale of affiliate products, and text links. However selling Ad Space to advertisers has one of the highest earning potentials. It commands one of the largest shares of income on many profitable websites.

Methods such as Google Adsense work well to start with, however you will soon realise its limitations for earning significant amounts. If you want to earn 6 figures sums from your website or blog, you will need to implement additional revenue channels including the sale of Banner Ads. Popular blogs like Techcrunch can charge up to $10,000 per month for a single banner Ad Space.

Who can sell Ad Space?

You need some traffic to your blog before you can start selling ads spaces. Although leading blogs boast of millions of users and page views every month, you start thinking about selling banner ads on your blog once you’ve reached 20K page views per month or more.

The following techniques can help you to sell more ads on your website by attracting potential advertisers.

1. Dedicate an independent “Advertise Here” page

Simply having a contact form or a link is not sufficient to attract advertisers. Dedicating an independent page, with a clear link from your main menu or banner increases the chances of attracting advertisers.

If you are using WordPress, create this as a page and display a permanent link from your menu instead of creating a post.

Some blogs only include an enquiry form without dedicating an independent page. This page should highlight the benefits and offer detailed information on your advertising options.

2. “Advertise Here” Banner

Placing an ‘Advertise Here’ banner on your website is equally important for improving conversion rates. For best results, use one of the Ad Spaces set aside for advertisers. Create a simple “advertise here” banner and link to your ‘Advertise Here’ page discussed earlier in this post. The banner will complement the ‘Advertise Here’ link in your menu.

3. Use Standard Ad Formats

It is better to offer standard ad formats as they are commonly used and tested for conversions. Some common formats include  468 x 60,  234 x 60  (the half-banner),
120 x 60 and 125 x 125 (button size)..125×125 Ads are most common format on blogs.

Top blogs such as Tech Crunch can charge up to $10,000 per month for an Ad Space.

4. Set appropriate prices

Keep prices lower to start with. You can always increase as your blog grows in popularity. It is a common practice to calculate price of a banner based on monthly page views your blog receives. This also enables you to compete effectively with other more established blogs. E.g. let’s say a more established blog with 500k page views per month is charging advertisers £400 for a monthly banner. By offering similar Ad Space for £60 per month if your blog has 100k page views; you are actually offering a better value to advertisers. Of course other factors come into play and there are no hard and fast rules, offering a CPM of approximately $1.5 to advertisers is fairly competitive. Moderately popular blogs like John Chow charge up to $500 to $1000 per month for an Ad Space. This amounts to a CPM of $1.5 approximately.

You can use a similar logic for pricing your Ad spaces. Be flexible with your prices. If there are no sales, consider lowering the price.

5. Special offers or promotions

Everyone loves a free offer. If you are new to selling Ad Space on your website, you will need to go that extra mile to attract customers. Special or introductory offers can encourage prospective clients to advertise. You can offer an extra month free or even a no obligation trial period. When offering a free trial period, make sure to provide advertisers with statistics on clicks or impressions so they can see the benefits of advertising on your website.

You can offer a full package. Along with displaying banners on your site, you can offer additional promotion through your email newsletters, social media channels or RSS feeds. Perhaps you can offer to write a free review on your blog to promote the advertiser’s product or service.

6. Create a Media Pack with Rate card

A professional media pack can make you look more professional and appealing in front of potential advertisers. A media pack can be a simple PDF document with information on advertising on your blog that customers can download from your ‘Advertise here’ page.

Your media pack can contain information helpful for Advertisers. It can include information about your site, statistics, advertising options, price and benefits. It can also include your rate card and payment methods.

7. Use all your Ad spaces

If you are new selling Ads on your website, the chances are most of your ad spaces are not sold as yet. Rather than leaving your Ad space empty or filling it with multiple ‘Advertise Here’ banners, fill the space with other banners advertising your own or your partners services.  You can even use the space to promote your e-book or another website or blog owned by you. Filling all Ad space with relevant banners will encourage others to advertise. After all, if you don’t find your ad spaces useful enough to promote product products yourself, how can you expect your advertisers to find it useful?

8. Use Relevant Statistics to Support Benefits to Advertisers

Statistics play a vital role in selling Ad Space. Before advertising on your site, potential advertisers will want to know how many unique visitors, hits and impressions you get. Even if you are new to selling ad space on your site, there may be statistics you are proud of.

Don’t worry if you don’t get million page views per month. There may be other statistics that you can use in favour of your blog. You can use Technoratti Authority, Google Page Rank, Alexa traffic rank, Traffic statistics from Compete.Com, Number of newsletter or RSS Subscribers. Some advertisers advertise for back-links and faster indexing of their website. As such the number of back-links, etc to you site can also prove beneficial for advertisers.

You should use any favourable statistic that will convey the benefits of advertising on your website. Your traffic may be lower that more established blogs but you may have a much higher click through rate on Adsense or other ads you support.

9. Limit the Ads displayed on your blog.

No one wants to advertise on websites that display too many ads. Too many Ad units on your site like Adsense, Amazon or Chithika can make your blog appear less valuable an appealing to advertisers. Try to keep the ads to a minimum to improve the value of your Ad spaces.

10. Use Ad Networks and Ad Brokering Services

There are many Ad networks and third party ad brokering service that connect bloggers with advertisers. They charge a small commission in return for ad placements. In addition to finding advertisers, these services also make it easier to manage your Ads. Detailed statistics and tracking is available for your Advertisers.

Well established websites may wish to sell all Ad space directly however Ad networks can be very helpful for starters as well as established blogs. BuySellAds for example is one of the leading Ad networks used by many popular and profitable blogs especially from the creative industry.

11. Market your Ad Space

Like any other product or service, you will need to promote your Ad Space. You can market your Ad Space using a number of techniques. You can use traditional SEO techniques. Write a press release advertising your Ad Space. Use social media to promote your Ad Space. Use the author box of your articles and link back to your ‘advertise here’ page. Promote it in your email newsletters.

In addition to getting more exposure for your Ad space, you will build back links to your website. The more you promote your Ad space, better are your chances of acquiring new advertisers.

Another good trick, provided you have the time, is to contact potential advertisers pro-actively. There are many ways to find those who are already advertising on other ad mediums such as Google Adwords or Facebook in your niche. A simple search can reveal this.

12. Continue to build traffic, readership and authority

The fee you can charge advertisers ultimately depends on your traffic, readership, subscribers and your overall reputation and authority within your niche. As you continue to focus on these areas, your authority will increase. This has a direct impact on how much you can charge for your Ads.

Continue to focus on publishing quality content, social bookmarking, syndicating your content and other methods to make your blog more popular in your niche.

Summary:

Selling advertising space is one the most effective means to generate income from your company’s website or blog. If you already receive a steady stream of traffic and have some authority in your niche, it can be easy to sell ad space directly to advertisers. Otherwise you can start with other third-part ad networks and services.