Advertising: Tips for Bloggers - part I
Hello everyone! In this first article I'll be answering questions that concern those of you who may be interested in or might already be using your blog to host ads. Next week I'll be covering the other side...questions posed by those of you who'd like to know more about advertising on blogs for your business. But first I'd like to start out by saying:
- Please know that I am not a trained professional in the area of advertising and marketing. I have learned quite a bit since I first began offering ads here on Creature Comforts, so that is the knowledge I will be sharing with you.
- This series will be more beneficial to all of us if everyone takes part by leaving comments, questions and feedback from their own experiences as each topic is addressed. It's okay if you are just starting out and are feeling a bit behind. I believe that there is no such thing as a stupid question, so please ask away.
Sooo...let's get started with the nitty-gritty, sometimes confusing and important world of advertising shall we! Let's begin with some of the more commonly asked questions:
"I'm thinking about offering advertising on my blog, but I don't really know how to get started or when the right time is to begin."
Well, I personally waited to offer advertising here on Creature Comforts until I felt that there was enough incoming traffic to provide a worthwhile service to potential advertisers. I had also begun receiving quite a few queries regarding ad placement, so I decided to take the plunge. I don't think there is a specific science to this... you really need to do what you feel is right based upon what you know about your blog and your readers. Be prepared to offer in depth information regarding your statistics to interested advertisers as well as provide assistance to advertisers who need extra help when it comes to ad design, etc.
Additional things you may wish to consider:
- Offering advertising changes your blog from a pastime into a business. Are you able to devote the time needed to keep it functioning at it's current volume? Will this change be an asset to your life or an unwanted stress?
- Advertisers reply upon consistent content to drive visitors to your site where their ads will be featured. Will you be able to deliver this consistency over an extended period of time? What will you do in case of an emergency or other unexpected event? How will your blog function at that point in time, and how will that decision effect your advertisers?
- How will you respond to advertiser interest? Will you put together an ad sheet that outlines your rates and stats, or will you simply copy and paste that info in your reply email?
- As a business owner you will need to pay taxes on the money you earn. Be prepared to apply with the proper agencies and keep careful records on your earnings for tax purposes.
- Do you have a method for accepting payments? I use Paypal and have found it to be very useful. If you don't have an account set up, you may wish to do so before you offer advertising.
"I'm not sure how much to charge for ads on my blog."
There is a basic formula that can be applied to help you determine the range that your ad rates should fall within: $.01 per page view per day for a basic ad. Note: your number of readers is different than your number of page views (it will be lower), so be sure to calculate using the correct number. Using this formula, if you have 10,000 views a day your ad should be priced at about $100 for a standard monthly ad. That being said, pricing is completely up to you and in many ways will be determined by the content you feature and the sorts of advertisers who are interested in your blog. For a reference point - I have intentionally priced ads here on Creature Comforts well below the industry standard. A large reason for this is my desire to make advertising affordable for the independent artisans that I feature. Were I to strictly feature high-end products I would be capable of charging more, but that isn't something that I personally choose to do.
Another route would be to contact other blogs with a similar demographic as yours and request ad rates from them. This will at the very least give you a good place to start. Ultimately you will just nee to use your best judgement and if necessary test out different rates to see how the response is.
"I've been offering advertising, but so far I have had little interest or none at all. How can I get people to advertise with me?"
It can definitely be disheartening when you first start out. Try to keep your chin up...you can turn your blog into a profitable business with some hard work and planning. The first two pieces of advice that come to my mind are:
- Be consistent. Keep a consistent level of quality in the content you post.
- Blog often. The more you post, the more visitors you will have. That being said, quality does tend to outweigh quantity in terms of gaining loyal readers. So try to keep both of these rules in mind simultaneously and you will build interest and trust with your readers and potential advertisers.
To break the ice you might try a limited-time special for ads on your blog, or host a giveaway with the prize package including free advertising. I also highly encourage ad trades with other businesses/bloggers who share similar interests as you. To do this, you can either approach the bloggers who you have a rapport with and offer to do a trade, or announce your interest in trading on your blog or other social media site such as Twitter and Facebook. I would suggest limiting ad trades to just a few, and select from those that are the most relevant to your blog.
"What sorts of businesses should I accept advertisements for on my blog?"
Again this will be entirely up to you to decided based upon your personal aesthetic as well as your reader's interests. It can be tempting (especially at first) to take on anyone who shows interest, but ultimately it won't do much good for either you, your readers or those advertisers if their products are not a good fit with your site.
"What size should the ads be?"
You can offer ads in whatever size you want. Keep in mind that they will need to fit inside of one of the columns on your blog. If you don't know what size your column is, do a search on your blog host's help database... they should have info on this for you. An easy way to check on the size of an ad or image on the web is to use your mouse and right-click the image (or control click). This will open up an info box where you will see a button titled "Properties." Click this and you will see the size of the image. The image size is measured in pixels. An ad should be at a resolution of 72dpi (dots per inch) to make it web ready - anything higher will slow your site down.
So that's it for now. I hope that some of the information here was helpful to you. If you'd like to print this article for reference and printer friendly version is available throught the link below. If you have a question not answered in this post please feel free to leave a comment below or in the message board and I'll try to answer it as well. Remember, your personal experience and insight is valuable for all of us and I'd love for you to share any thoughts you might have with us. Thanks for reading! xo Ez
Thursday, June 3, 2010 
Reader Comments (27)
This is such good info. Bookmarking for future reference. Thank you!!
Thanks for taking on this huge subject, Ez!
I get emails with questions from readers and feel silly answering because I feel in the dark, too.
It's nice that I have an informative post here to point them towards.
Advertising on blogs is such a tricky subject sometimes-I appreciate your honesty and willingness to share.
I definitely think that regular posting is *super* important-you are right on the money.
I look forward to your blogging tips :)
Ez, I knew you'll make up a great post! And although I don't have any advertisers on my blog yet, I'll take notes and consider your advice absolutely the most valuable and relevant for my further blogging experience! Thank you so much! xoxox
Wow!
thank so much for this post, I find this info very helpful :)
Wonderful post Ez. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I don't offer advertising on my blog but it is something I have thought about down the line. Thanks for the food for though.
such an interesting read! i just started so i'm not quite here yet, but i've bookmarked for the future! thanks!!
So excited for this series, thanks for addressing these issues! I can't wait to see what's next. :)
great article.
thanks for the handy hints, EZ. :)
Thanks so much for all of your kind comments everyone! I've been so nervous about starting this series, but you've all made me feel world better. Thanks a million. I'm really looking forward to sharing more with you as the weeks go on. Until then...xo Ez
This is such a great post, Ez! Super informative and helpful, and also really accessible which is so nice. I'm so looking forward to what's to come!
Great article Ez!! Good point about the whole reality behind offering advertising and how it will significantly change your outlook and life as a blogger. I just wanted to add that in my opinion, google analytics is a great free (and easy to integrate) service that will allow you to start tracking your monthly statistics that all advertisers expect you to provide (page views, unique visitors etc). There's a bunch of information available out there (online and books) on the differences between page views, page loads, unique visitors, tracking monthly v. daily - as bloggers, I really feel it's our responsibility to learn & know the differences and provide the most accurate and current data possible to advertisers if you want to start charging for ads. Do stats make you wanna break out into hives? Maybe you can recruit a very nice friend or partner to be in charge of that side of your blog? As an editor of a blog, it could get sticky handling both advertising and unbiased content. Some advertisers may start expecting you to post about their shop or products or you may feel obligated to give 'em a shout out or something... so it could be very useful to have someone else deal with advertisers and you stick to what you love. Sorry for rambling! Anyway, thanks for sharing this info. (gosh you spoil your readers!), really useful information - looking forward to following the series!!
This is such down-to-earth advice. I really like the advice you've given beyond page views. There really is quite a bit to consider in terms of obligations to advertisers. Thanks Ez!
This is very helpful.
I'm wondering...would Ez or anyone else who offers ads be willing to share the stat that pushed them over the edge to decide they had sufficient traffic to launch an ad program?
Those are all great tips and thoughts Marichelle! Thanks so much! I will definitely be including more in the area of stats, and managing your blog in the coming weeks. You've given me some great things to go off of! xo
@ Brigitte: I honestly can't remember what my stats were at the time when I first started, but I looked back as far as I could and think that I was getting between 700-1200 page views a day when I decided to start. Hope this helps.
Hi Ez - Thank you, specifically for the formula to use for setting a fair price for advertisers. It is great to know there is such a thing when the time comes!
For others just starting out, I've been running Google AdSense ads on my blog for about 7 months now, and I'm happy to share how that's been. (I finally made my first $100!) Just let me know if there's interest and I can post about it.
Thanks again!
Charissa
THE GIFTED BLOG
Thanks so much for this post, Ez. I'm not quite there either, but it's really helpful to know the approximate number of page views I should be shooting for before I get there.
Yes - very helpful! Thanks!
the majority of e-mails i receive from other bloggers is how to run advertising on their own blog. i'm so glad you're talking about this out in the open and i'm going to start directing people to these posts. thank you!
Very interesting- def bookmarking. I am thinking about starting to over advertising on my blog. I came up with some rates/specs for an info sheet but haven't put it all together or started promoting yet. I didn't reailze about the taxes thing... how does that work?
Thank you!
Great series...I can't wait for the rest of them! Thanks so much for sharing what you know!
Great post, I can't wait for the rest of the series. As a new blogger I'm still trying to figure out what I need to try and figure out. I appreciate all the work and time you put into sharing this information for all of us!
Cheyanne
Thanks Ez! Looking forward to all your posts. About stats... could you address blog readers? When people read your blog in a reader, does it show up in Google Analytics and is it included in your page views?
That is such a helpful post! Thank you!! For some reason I think most bloggers (including myself) don't feel very comfortable discussing this subject and I am so happy to have most of my questions answered in this post and in the comments above. I know it is silly and that's why I decided to write a comment even if I it is just to say "thank you" :) I haven't still gotten to the point where I feel I can offer something really good to advertisers but I hope this happens some time in the near future.
This is so enormously helpful. Just for clarification.... should I not even think about offering advertising until I have 10,000 hits a day? Yikes! I'm in conversation with a potential sponsor now, and its a pretty major one. Unless I'm in that neighborhood, I'm afraid they won't take me seriously.... thoughts?
Hi Salina! I'm so glad you asked this question. I personally decided to wait until my readership was at a specific level, but if you are receiving interest on your site then I say go for it! The choice is totally yours to make. Here's to great new things for you and your blog.
xo Ez