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Finding  Advertisers For Your Blog

If you want to make money from your blog, you need to plan how you intend to do it before you begin posting. Most bloggers spend an enormous amount of time and effort writing and marketing their blogs without giving any real thought to how they plan to monetize their work. That’s a mistake that leads to frustration.

There are a lot of different blogging revenue models. Today, I’m going to show you how to create a blog that advertisers will fight to claim space on. I’ll also explain how to find those advertisers and whet their appetite.

Stick To Your Niche

Years ago, sponsors wanted exposure to raw traffic. If you could deliver enough eyeballs, they wanted space on your blog. That’s changing. Advertisers are realizing that blogs that are tightly focused on their core topic may deliver fewer eyeballs, but the readers are far more targeted. As a result, sponsors enjoy higher conversions. Pick your niche and stick to it.

Say Goodbye To Adsense

Adsense can be a fantastic way to generate income from your blog. Unfortunately, it can also become an obstacle to growing your advertising revenue down the road. First, it’s too easy to rely on Adsense as your primary blogging income. That makes it hard to wean yourself from it. Second, it lowers the perceived value of your advertising spots. A small 1-ad or 2-ad block may be fine, but multiple 4-ad Adsense blocks can make your blog seem unprofessional to potential advertisers.

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Targeted Search Traffic Is Key

Blogs are especially well-suited for attracting organic search traffic. Before you begin writing blog posts, identify the keywords that are being searched most often by your audience. Include those keywords in your titles, tags, and throughout your content. Once your blog begins ranking for them, you can show potential advertisers who want to reach your audience.

For example, suppose that you maintain a blog that is focused on mountain bikes. Let’s further suppose that, after some effort, you rank in the top 3 on Google for the keyword “discount hardtail mountain bikes.” Hundreds of businesses that sell hardtail mountain bikes would love exposure to that search traffic through advertising on your blog.

Create An Advertising Package

For potential sponsors who find your blog (as opposed to your approaching them), create a page that provides the information they need to make a decision. For example, list your available ad space sizes, advertising rates, traffic stats, and visitor demographic data. Include the number of RSS readers, notable search rankings, and even Alexa information. By providing these details, you’ll make it easy for sponsors to contact you to reserve ad spots.

Approach Smaller Advertisers First

If you’re just starting your blog, you probably won’t be able to attract the largest companies in your space. Start with the smaller companies and offer lower rates. Even though you’ll generate less advertising revenue in the beginning, you can raise your rates as your traffic grows. Over time, the smaller sponsors will be replaced by larger sponsors at much higher rates.

Don’t wait until you have hundreds of readers to plan your blog revenue model. Think about how you want to generate income as you’re creating your blog. If you choose to pursue the advertising revenue model, plan to attract direct sponsors in lieu of Adsense. There are many popular blogs which generate six-figure incomes through private advertisers. With time, effort, and planning, you can join their ranks.

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How to Make the Most of Your Online Advertising

Mention the word “advertising” and it sends a shudder down many online business owners spine. In order to be successful with online advertising there must be a number of key elements. A winning advertisement will appeal to your target audience, it will be positioned in a place where they will see the advertisement and it will have a measurable outcome.

Make the most of your advertising by appealing to your target audience. To appeal to your target audience you must invest time doing some research. To understand your audience it’s important to know not only what their problems are but what their fears, desires, and passions are. This means demographic and psychographic analysis. You can do this through keyword research or asking surveys to your consumers.

Once you understand your audience then you can craft a compelling internet advertisement which will address their concerns, needs, and desires. A successful online advertisement doesn’t need to capture your audiences’ imagination and sell them your brand image. What it does need to do is capture their attention, make a compelling promise, back it up with some proof or credibility and then provide them some means to act – a measurable call to action. “Purchase now.” “Visit this site to claim your free report,”

The second phase of online making - the most of your advertising is by placing your advertisement in a location where your target audience will see it. This involves both research and trial and error on your part. Locate sites that are complimentary in your niche to advertise on. Consider what your customer might do before or after they make a purchase from you.

Also look to find out where your competition is advertising. If they’re advertising on certain sites then you know you may have success there too.

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The closing element in making the most of your advertising is to make sure you can track and calculate results. The only way to know if your advertisement is hitting the mark is to make sure you have data to compare. One excellent way to make sure you have a call to action.

A call to action is a statement which tells your reader what to do next. It is the “call now,” “buy now,” or “grab your etc” command.

Couple that with the data from the number of people who have viewed the advertisement – this data is usually provided by the place you buy your advertising space – and you have a percentage to compare with other advertisements.

For example, if you place an advertisement in a internet marketing magazine with a readership of 100,000 and 500 people respond to the ad then you have a 5% response rate. Compare that to an ad that runs for 10 days on a website that has 10,000 views a day and 1000 click through or results in a 10% response rate. If the ads cost the same then you would likely repeat the website advertisement more frequently for a bigger return on investment.

Online advertising can be a huge way to build your income when it is approached strategically and you keep these factors for effective advertising tips on hand.