How to Get Advertisers for Your Website or Blog
You can’t visit very many websites online and not come across ads. As a newbie online entrepreneur, you might be wondering how you can get paid for advertising on your website or blog as well. Here are some tips:
1) Build your credibility. Too many online entrepreneurs put the cart before the horse by worrying about selling ads before having built a positive reputation. No one is going to buy from ads and no one is going to buy ad space on your site until they know more about you. So your initial focus should be on providing quality to your visitors. Do through great information on your site and positive, engaged social media.
2) Build traffic and followers. Along with providing information and resources people want, you need to build the number of people visiting your site. Many advertisers are going to want stats such as the number of unique visitors, email list subscribers, social media followers and possibly page rank (PR) and/or Klout score. They’ll also want to know about your audience demographic such as gender and age, which you can get through Google Analytics.
3) Use other advertising options initially. Ad networks such as Google Adsense and affiliate programs will provide revenue when clicked on or visitors buy from the link. Using alternative ads shows other where ad space is available on the site. Just be careful not to over do it. You don’t want potential advertisers to feel like their offer would be lost in a sea of other ads.
4) Create an advertising information page. Make it easy for potential advertisers to get information about your website and ad rates. On your ad page, have your website statistics, ad options, rates and availability, and advertising policy, if you have one. You can even include a link to a payment processor so advertisers can buy right away. At the very least, have a contact form so they can get in touch with you.
5) Offer discounts for multiple or long-term advertising. You can put together special packages and offer them on your website advertising page, or you can make the offer individually to advertisers you want to work with.
6) Be kind to advertisers. If you make a mistake in an add run, fix it and offer a bonus. For example, once I accidentally took an ad down early. To make up for it, I put the ad back up to finish the run it missed and added an extra month. I once had an advertiser wanting to run an ad for the same offer another advertiser was running. This would dilute both their ads, so I suggested running the ad in a place that wouldn’t compete with the original ad.
Great list Leslie. I started out with affiliate advertising and as credibility and traffic grew advertisers started contacted me. In alignment with a few of your points, I am pretty proactive with my advertisers, especially ones who have been with me a long time. If my traffic or their click throughs are up or down significantly, I let them know I am aware of it, so we can negotiate a proper price for the next couple months. Keep it fair, and advertisers are more likely to stay/renew after their initial run is finished.
And of course, as you say, focus on quality before making money.
Hi Cory, It’s great that you keep your advertisers in the know of what going on and work to keep them happy! Thank you for posting!!