» Blog Ads

If you look around for plugins that relate to “ads” for the Wordpress.org platform, you’ll find quite a few to pick from. I’ve used a few before and while they do what they intend, it’s really not worth it unless your blog has massive amounts of traffic. And if you do have massive amounts of traffic, the last thing you really need to make money are some text based ads from Google, Yahoo, etc. So where does that leave the rest of the blogging community, which is about 99% of us? Well, glad you asked!

A new plugin for the Wordpress.org platform has just been released which is entitled “Seach Ads” plugin. Unlike the other plugins that perform a similar task, this one is mildly different and more suited towards traditional smaller blogs. The really neat thing about this plugin is that the displayed ads not only are relevant to your blogs content (no more ads for cat litter on a sports blog, etc) and the ads ONLY  display to visitors who reach your blog from search engines. That way, you wont continually annoy your recurring visitors or dedicated blog readers with massive amounts of ads.

In addition to what search engines you’ll allow this plugin to work with, you can also set it up to work with social networking websites such as Myspace.com, Facebook.com, and Twitter.com. In other words, any type of website (or search engine) where you can be found by mass amounts of people works perfectly with this plugin.

Once you’ve installed the plugin, you simply need to paste the adcode you want to use (from whatever source you might have…most people use GoogleAdsense) into the supplied box, include the domains you want to use such as Bing.com, Google.com, Yahoo.com, Facebook.com, Twitter.com into the “Traffic Sources” text box and you’re all done. Your ads should be live within a few minutes.

A very cool and innovative plugin.

To download the plugin, click here.

So, we all start our blogs for fun, and entertainment value but there comes a point when we realize we could actually be making some money from this, right? What’s better than doing something you enjoy, and also getting paid for it? Not much!

There are a few ways that we bloggers can make money, which, I will breakdown below. Some methods do take more work than others, but like anything in life – nothing valuable is achieved without a little effort.

The first method of making money (and the best, in my opinion), would be to sign up for Paid Posting Services. Paid Posting Services (also called Blogging Firms) are companies than act as the middle man between you, the blogger, and a potential advertiser. What you’ll need to do is submit your blog to said company, and then wait for the opportunities to roll in. Each company has their own standards and rules which differ, so it’s up to you to see what company you feel you would fit best with. My personal favorite would be www.BlogDistributor.com – as they are set up to deal with large quantities, resulting in more opportunities for us as bloggers, and the ability to make more money in the end. Working with Paid Posting Services has the potential to be the most lucrative money making opportunity on your blog.

Another popular method to making money on your blog is Google AdSense. Most sites qualify for Google AdSense, though the range in payments is quite drastic. If you’re a popular site, with the potential for a lot of traffic, you will get paid more as opposed to being a small site, which won’t get paid as much money. However, small or big site, this is a great thing to use simply because it takes little work on your part. Simply install the Google AdSense ads on your blog, and let it make money for you. Over time, you’ll forget about it, log in one day, and see a large sum of money sitting in your account waiting to be cashed out. It is well known that blogs that do product reviews do make considerable amounts of money using Google AdSense.

When it comes to blatant advertising, Advertising Campaigns and Affiliate Programs are another great way to cash in. As far as Affiliate Programs, here is how they work. A company lets a website owner place a link or button on your site promoting the company’s product. When one of your site visitors clicks on the link or button, the visitor is taken to a landing page where visitors can buy something. If the visitor buys something, you get a commission from the company. Sometimes the commissions are for leads, but most often they are for completed sales. Now, as far as blatant advertising, you can do this a variety of ways, via banner ads, 125×125 ads, etc. Simply create available space on your blog as a “billboard”, and allow advertisers to buy those “billboard” spots. You can promote your blog yourself, and hope that advertisers contact you directly, via a contact form on your blog (or an e-mail address on your blog), or you can sign up for a blog advertisement company such as BlogAds or CrispAds, and they’ll sell your ad space for you and take commission from it.

One other easy way to make money is to place a “donation” or “tip jar” on your blog, which allows your blog readers to donate to your cause. You can do this by opening a PayPal account, and then by placing a Paypal icon on your blog, which will allow your readers to send you money or donate to you because they like your blog and the hard work you put into it. In all honesty, I’m not sure how well these work, but, it doesn’t hurt to put one on your blog. You never know who might be reading your blog…

In conclusion, if you work hard, your blog not only can be a form of recreation and fun for you, but also a money making tool – and one that can really provide a nice, steady stream of income. The more people that visit your blog, and the more content you provide, the more money you’ll make – it’s really as simple as that. Will these tips make you rich? Most likely not – but, follow these easy steps above, and you’ll be making a very nice side income in a very short amount of time.

Do you ever wonder how much you should be charging for advertising? It’s a tough question we bloggers face. How much is too much? What is too little? Again, the always helpful ProBlogger.net chimes in with their thoughts on advertising prices.

As soon as a blogger decides to play with direct advertising, the question of “how much to charge” emerges. If you charge too much, you might end up with no advertisers at all. If you charge too little, on the other hand, you will be leaving money on the table.

Unfortunately, as Brian wonders, there are no standard pricing structures across the Internet. You will need to take a look around, do some research, and experiment on your own site to find the rates that will maximize your revenues.

That being said, that are some methods that you can use to draw an initial price tag, and some specific places where you can look to cross check the numbers. Below we will cover them.

Defining the metrics: The CPM

Notice that talking about advertising prices in absolute values is useless.

Suppose there are two blogs. One charges $500 monthly for a 125×125 banner spot above the fold, while the other charges $1,000 for a similar spot. Could we say that the first blog offers a much better deal for advertisers?

Obviously not, because the value that the advertiser will get for its money depends on a myriad of factors, above all the traffic that each of the two blogs receives monthly.

If the first blog generates 100,000 monthly page views while the second generates 500,000 monthly page views, an advertiser would be better off by purchasing the advertising space of the second blog for $1,000.

As you can see, the answer to our question comes from a very simple ratio: cost of the advertising space divided by the traffic that the ad will receive.

Several metrics could be used to define traffic, from unique visitors to visits and page views. Most publishers tend to use page views though. Moreover, it is a common practice to measure page views by the thousands, so one should talk about cost per 1,000 page views or impressions. CPM is the term for that, and it stands for Cost Per Mille (Mille being the Latin word for 1,000).

Just to conclude our example, if you do a small calculation you can see that the first blog has a $5 CPM while the second one has a $2 CPM.

Now, we are not suggesting that you should tie your ad rates to the number of monthly impressions of your blog. Offering a flat monthly rate to advertisers is usually the best (and simpler) way to go. Just keep the CPM numbers in mind because they will enable you to compare your prices with those of other bloggers.

What do other bloggers charge?

Like it or not, the Internet behaves like a giant market place, and all websites are subject to the laws of supply and demand. In other words, if you set a price that is significantly higher than the one used by other blogs on your niche, the advertisers will go somewhere else.

The first thing you should do, therefore, is to take a look on blogs that sell advertising space to evaluate what rates they are asking.

The format of the ad (e.g., 468×60, 120×600, 125×125) and the position (e.g., header, sidebar, footer, blended with content) are factors that will directly influence the final price, so in order to be consistent through out your research you should pick a format and position that is popular.

Among blogs selling direct advertising space the 125×125 button ad on top of the sidebar is arguably the most used format, and it should fit our research purpose.

Let’s see what popular blogs on the online marketing sphere are charging, for instance. If you visit the Advertising page of Copyblogger, you will find that the blog generates over 1,000,000 monthly page views, and a 125×125 spot on the sidebar costs $1,500. Divide $1,500 by 1,000 (remember that 1,000,000 is equal to 1,000 times 1,000 page views) and you get a CPM of $1,5.

Similarly, if you visit JohnChow you will find that the 125×125 button add costs $500 monthly, and the blog generates 300,000 page views. Again just do $500 divided by 300 and you get a CPM of $1,66.

As you can see a CPM of $1,5 for the 125×125 buttons is a good average. Even TechCrunch charges a similar rate ($10,000 for 6,5 million page views monthly, converting to a CPM of $1,53), so let’s keep that number as a starting point.

To see the rest of the article click the link below:

Resource: ProBlogger.net

This is a great post from DailyBlogTips that helps us bloggers find the much needed advertisers. I suggest we all check it out and get a better understanding of how to find the right advertisers for our blog.

Direct advertising sales is arguably the best method to monetize a website. Finding advertisers for your site and actually closing the deals, however, is not as straight forward. Over the past 6 months I had more than 10 high profile companies sponsoring Daily Blog Tips, and through out this article I will share what I have learned along the way.

The Pros

• More money: The first advantage of selling your own ads is the fact that you will cut the middlemen out, increasing your revenue potential. Suppose you sell text link ads on your sidebar through a certain company, and the text links sell for $50 monthly. Since you are using the company network to sell the ads, they will eat 50% of the price, and you will end up earning only $25 monthly for each text link. If someone is willing to pay $50 for a text link on your site, though, it means that they are getting $50 of value out of it. Why, then, should you share that with someone else?
• Independence: Sure, large advertising networks have access to a wider pool of advertisers, and they have more credibility to close the deals. But if you have all the requirements in place (see the section below) and spend some time looking at the right places, I am sure that you will be able to sell your own ads just as efficiently as the larger networks.
• Flexibility: The third advantage of selling direct advertising is that you will have much more control over where and how the ads will be displayed (i.e., you can avoid intrusive advertising). Google Adsense is nice, but unless you blend it with the content – annoying some of the readers – you will get terribly low click-through rates.
• Credibility: Finally, having sponsors and direct advertisers on your blog might help your credibility. Even small and poorly crafted blogs can stick some Adsense units here and there. Having established companies that are willing to partnership with your site, on other hand, can signal that your content has quality and that the site is somewhat professional.

To see the rest of the article click the link below:

Resource: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-to-find-advertisers-for-your-website-the-ultimate-guide/