One of the best ways to make money with your own blog, is to sell direct advertising. At the same time, one of the hardest parts about making money with blogging, is finding advertisers that want to advertise on your site. For the non advanced blogger, you may also run into issues on how to track your ads, rotate banners and process payment.
I’ve always sold my own banner advertising directly, but have recently moved a few of my network blogs advertising over to BuySellAds.com. The major reason for BuySellAds’s success is that they have one of the best (if not the best) market places for selling blog advertising. If you have the traffic and are in the right market, it’s likely you will sell a few spots on your blog within a reasonable amount of time. You also have to factor in pricing and rates within your niche.
I was reluctant to use BuySellAds on my network of blogs at first, simply because they take 25% commission on all sales. At the same time, BuySellAds handles everything, you just need to place a few tracking and placement pixels on your site to show where you want your ads to be. The bottom line is, BuySellAds has the advertiser base that I am looking for and continually sell out my ads.
With that said, I just added SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com to the BuySellAds marketplace. During the process, I realized how important it is to fill in all optional information for your blog, as it will grab more attention from advertisers and legitimize your blog.
Here’s a quick run down on changes you can make to your BuySellAds marketplace listing to improve sales.
Generic Site Information:
The web site url, title, description and keywords are all kind of obvious. Fill these in as best as you can, while making them quick and to the point.
Hide Other Sites
This option will hide your current site from “Other Sites from this Publisher”. I would say not to select this option. If an advertiser is going to buy ads on one of your sites, it’s likely they would buy from your other sites as well. This would apply even more if they continually renew month after month.
Feedburner URL, Twitter Handle , Facebook Profile
All of these fields are optional, but it would label them as requirements. If you don’t have a Twitter or Facebook Fan Page for your site, make one! These are nothing more than new ways for people to find out about your blog, and virtually free traffic and promotion. At the very least, set these two paths up and create auto updates using your Feedburner feed.
Blog Screenshot:
By default, BuySellAds will create a screenshot of your blog for the sales page in their marketplace. Sometimes these images are blurry, distorted or appear with lightbox or popup windows. It’s important to look your best during an advertiser’s decision process. Take five minutes to open an image editor and upload your own high quality screenshot of your blog.
Favicon (Big and Small):
BuySellAds does not create a favicon for your listing. If you add a favicon, your marketplace listing will stand out that much more.
Related posts:
- Is Your Blog Targeting Too Broad of an Audience?
Written by Zac Johnson of
ZacJohnson.com
Posted on September 3rd, 2010 in
Resources
Yup, ultimately they can make more than what adsense does, including the cost of the commission they take – which, in my opinion, is fair since they handle payment processing without any other fees for both publishers and advertisers.
Cheers for the article Zac,
Sergiu @ BSA
Great comparison. A lot of people are willing to run Google Adsense because they don't put a number in your face about the commission they are actually taking.
Why not sell the ads directly ? That's what I do using Google DFP and I pay absolutely no commission. It's cheap and easy.
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Direct ad sales is definitely the way to go for a growing number of publishers. You're right that rounding out your info for advertisers is key – people gotta know what they're paying for.
There are commission free services out there, like http://www.isocket.com. Can keep a lot more of the money you've earned.
Great post!
A key difference between BSA & a service like iSocket or OpenX is that BSA actually works to sell ads for you. Any service that doesn't take a commission has zero incentive to actually sell ads for you. So, it's all a matter of how you look at it. Sell more ads and give up 25% commission, or sell less ads and get 100% of the sales.
This is Todd @ BSA, I assume you're from iSocket – hence not leaving a real name or a link
Yeah, but Buy Sell Ads doesn't mean exactly ad sales. You'd better post an advertising page on your website and use an in-house system to sell the ads. This way you will pay no commission. You should Check Google DFP or OpenX
My recent post 8 Things Digg MUST Do
Nice post Zac. I guess the extra info provided by you lead to more targeted traffic from buysellad
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Its well worth the time to make a few minor changes to satisfy your advertiser.
I have worked with BuySellAds, and I can say that I am MORE THAN HAPPY. They really take care of you, and increase sale volume on new sites. You are getting the advertiser marketplace that you can't get without them. Every time I have a question, I get the answer promptly.
No other ad marketplace is as good as this one.
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Great Article I learn you gave me some nice ideas. Thanks again.
Ron