Selling ad spaces on a blog/website is the best ways to make money online, when your blog is young and has low traffic you can use some advertising networks, but once your blog has high traffic and good page ranks it is not wise to depend on 3rd party advertising networks to monetize your site. I’ve seen many blogs which have text ads on their side-bar, they sell it at $50 a month, but that blog gets only $25. The above example would have made it clear to you that ad networks eat away almost 50% of your traffic.
Many big bloggers make a five figure income by selling ads on their own, but none of them ever sit and sell ads manually for their clients, they either have a sales team for large transactions or use a software, but servicing is just a part of the problem. There are many other problems publishers usually face while selling ads directly to advertisers.
An alternative to get full earnings from your site is direct ad sales. This means you sell your ad space without any brokers, this form of monetization helps you keep your full ad earnings and results in online freedom, but when there is something to gain, there is something to loose. I have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of direct ad sales below,The reason why most bloggers do not consider direct advertising is that it is not safe for them as some advertisers may ask for a refund and that may cause some disputes.
Advantages of Direct Advertising
- Choose your own formats and adspace – One of the first advantages of diret ad sales are you are free to choose your adspace and formats. If you are using a broker, the location of you adspace changes the rates and you won’t have any options on the formats of your ads. Some advertisers may ask for minor changes and you may have to agree for that, but make strict rules against the type and quality of advertisements as you don’t want to loose readers while pleasing your advertisers. One thing I can say is that you’ll definitely have more advantages with this than by using some ad networks.
- Set your own rates – Not all brokers allow you to set your own price of your adspace, so direct advertising helps you set your ad rates according to your sites traffic and click – through rate. Most blogs with more than 10000 monthly pageviews charge upto $100. This does not mean that advertisers will be ready for any rate, as you must show them your traffic stats including conversion rates. The method used by most bloggers for a 125*125 ad spot is total number of pageviews * $0.50.
- Direct relationships with advertisers – Sometimes when your advertiser seems very impressed with the click through rate and the popularity of your blog, he may want to establish long term ad arrangements. Which are very benefitial , as an advertiser may pay for 3 months at once. To impress your advertiser try to give discounts for long term ad sales, try to build a good relationship with your advertiser and impress them to invest again.
Disadvantages of direct advertising
- Disputes with advertisers – These are the most common things when your selling ads on your own, this happens mostly when your advertisers get very less click throughs and want a refund. When you feel that an advertiser is right, just give a refund or else you may have some negative publicity. Its not wise to give back everything he paid you so just see the benefits he had and refund him according to that. Sometimes many advertisers ask for a refund even when they receive great conversions from their ads, in such situations don’t hesitate to back answer.
- Finding advertisers – One advantage of using ad networks is that they have large number of frequent advertisers. If you are selling ads directly finding advertisers is pretty tough. That is why I said in the beginning that direct ad sales is for blogs with high traffic. There is only one advertiser in every 10000 users, so make sure that you’ve got everything ready to impress that one advertiser. Keep your ‘advertise here’ page well written and visible, give a link to it below every ad and promote it on forums.
Should we consider direct ad sales
If you ask me, the answer is yes. Direct ad sales has much more benefits than ad networks. It gives you full freedom over your content and you have what ever you sell. Ask any blogger who has sold ads directly on his site and I’m very sure he would prefer it much more than ad networks.
The disadvantages are always there, but you’ll have to deal with them as there is always something to loose, when there is something to gain. In all non-web businesses it is give and take, but on the internet it is give – give and take 
Above I have made it very clear about the advantages and disadvantages of direct ad sales, so now it is up to you to make the decision. I have given ways to deal with the above problems below,
Above I have made it very clear about the advantages and disadvantages of direct ad sales, so now it is up to you to make the decision. I have given ways to deal with the above problems below,
Finding advertisers
As I mentioned above the biggest challenge you’ll face is finding advertisers, the easiest way is to make advertisers come to you through your blog and then they might get interested in the ‘advertise here’ page, but this process is really slow and can’t generate high amounts of revenue.
Another way is that you go look for advertisers, you can do this by visiting other blog in your niche and contacting their advertisers with your ad card, find as many companies as possible in your niche and ask them for sponsorships. You won’t have any success if you directly contact big companies, so start off with small and medium sized companies. The key doesn’t lie in your price, placing or traffic, but the way you present and promote your ad space.
Using an Adserver
Adservers are hosted or self hosted servers used to serve ads on web pages, using this it will be easy to serve ads on your site without any tussle or any sales team. Some adservers include Openads, Shinyads and Zedo. If your ready to spend a bit of money then I think OIO Publisher will be the best, it costs $47, but trust me its really worth it. A wordpress platform makes it easier to sell ads as there are many free plugins to automate this process.
Using an alternative ad network
When you have difficulties in finding advertisers, your site may not be monetized, so to avoid this you can use some ad networks with adservers and the ads from these networks appear when there are no ads running on your site. This way you can be safe from any sorts of losses. I recommend this even if your using some other ad network, as it might help in monetizing every part of your inventory.
Maintaining a sales team
This might be very expensive, I had to think twice before writing this as it is not affordable to small bloggers and only big shots can afford it. It takes $50000 to maintain a sales team in India, but once you grow your blog and it receives plenty of advertising orders you can opt to this. Even if you do get plenty of orders, its not really recommended that you maintain a sales team as know it can be done with automated softwares with a small one time cost.
On to our readers
Direct advertising requires the skill of marketing and power of negotiating, which I’m sure everyone will get with a bit of practice, so once you make a few sales I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Its a new step for many bloggers including me as many aren’t confident enough, but the tips above will help you promote your ad space.
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nice post. thanks.
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It’s really well done! Respect to author.
It’s really well done! Respect to author.
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