In the beginning, when you’re just getting your site off the ground, don’t place ads on your blog. Initially you’ll have relatively little traffic, so the chances of earning anything substantial from ads are immensely slim. On the other hand, the chances of putting off your early visitors are substantial.
Tip 25
Content, not ads, should dominate the page.
As a general rule of thumb (and depending on the economic goals you’ve set for your blog, if any), don’t place ad units until your site is established and receives at least 10,000 pageviews per month. However, I would think twice before placing ads in your feed even at that point, as they’d be going out to your most valuable readers, the people you want to maintain and not annoy (with ads) the most.
Also keep in mind how well defined a niche your blog is. A targeted audience will generally perform better ad-wise than the audience of a general blog. In the case of contextual advertising through programs like AdSense, the ads that are shown will be more relevant and interesting to your audience, who will then be more apt to click and, in turn, generate more revenue for you. Use a tasteful number of ads (e.g., one or two per page) once you’ve managed to attract a decent following and have established yourself somewhat in your niche. Don’t consider ads to be your main source of income for your blog, because they likely won’t be. Instead, ads can be one source of revenue in a diversification strategy that includes multiple sources of income (as you’ll see in Section 10.6, Case Study: My Monthly Income, on page 196).
Tip 26
Diversify your sources of blog income.
Finally, don’t place ads on your company blog. Your main objective with a company blog shouldn’t be to make an extra $100 a month by filling your blog with ads. Your primary product, whatever that is, has far more potential to earn you real money. Putting off readers or sending them away from your site when they click an ad doesn’t make sense from a business perspective.
10.3 Make Money with Sponsors
Conceptually not far from ads, sponsorships are an excellent way to make money with your blog. The basic idea is that you find companies that are relevant to your niche and then contact them about sponsoring your blog. In exchange for a monthly fee, you’ll provide them with high visibility to your blog’s readership.
For example, the popular blog Daring Fireball makes a substantial income by offering RSS feed sponsorships.6
Before you approach potential sponsors, though, you should have detailed information about your audience, which is easily obtained from Google Ana- lytics. Prepare a page on your blog or as a PDF that you’ll send by email with the details of your demographic as well as with details about what you’re 6. daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors
offering. If you are good with graphic design, make your presentation appealing and be sure to include lots of attractive graphs. Eye candy sells. Key information you should enclose in that page or document:
• Site usage statistics: The average number of unique visitors and pageviews per month, as well as your subscriber count. Include trends if your blog is growing rapidly.
• Geographic information: Where are your visitors from? Include the top ten countries and the percentage of traffic these locations provide.
• Demographic information (optional): If you’ve run surveys and know about the profession, age group, income, and other demographic information about your visitors, include these stats, too.
• Relevant keywords (optional): If the majority of your organic traffic comes from keywords that are relevant to the sponsor, consider including the top ones in the information package you send out so as to show that your blog has the right audience.
• Your offer: Detail exactly how much you’d like potential sponsors to pay for the sponsorship and what you are offering in exchange. Clarify whether you are offering sole sponsorship or cosponsorship of your blog.
Traffic stats aside, what really seals the deal is an appealing offer. You could offer any or all of the following perks to potential sponsors.
• A banner advertisement in a predefined format and position on your blog (a so-called media buy). Link to the sponsor, of course, but opt for a nofollow link (i.e., rel="nofollow"). This way Google won’t think that you are selling links for PageRank purposes. In your offer, let the sponsor know that such links will be nofollow to comply with Google’s policies. Specify if you are limiting the offer to the frontpage (unusual) or throughout the blog (more common).
• A thank-you note and backlink at the bottom of your posts. For example, “This post was sponsored by Acme, the best solution for all your cartoon explosion needs.”
• A periodic thank-you post that includes a shout-out to your sponsors, links to them, and a brief explanation of what they offer your readers. If your sponsor turnover is not significant, this kind of post can become annoying for your readers, thus you’ll want to keep them infrequent (e.g., once per quarter).
• Interviews, guest blogging, and other content-based arrangements that benefit both the sponsor and the readers. Always disclose your affiliation. Don’t hide the fact that you have a sponsor from your readers.
• Trials, giveaways, and special offers that are useful to your reader and great marketing for your sponsor.
If you don’t have any companies in mind, do some research to see if there are companies in your niche that are already sponsoring other blogs. It’s far easier to convince them to also sponsor you than it is to approach a company that has never heard of blog sponsorship before.
Tip 27
Make it easy for your sponsors to say yes.
You can also have an Advertise page in your navigation bar as well as a Your Ad Here banner or button in a spot that you’re offering to sponsors that links to that page. Making a post in which you explain that you’re accepting sponsors is also an aggressive but legitimate way to go about it.
There are companies that facilitate the whole process so that it’s virtually identical to selling ads through a network, but part of the benefit of sponsor- ships is that you deal with a handful of companies only, one on one, for months or even years at a time. So once your initial agreement is set up, there isn’t much work to do on your part except for collecting payments. You may as well cut out the middleman, establish good professional relationships with companies, and keep all the revenue for yourself.