In my last post I talked about how to make your blog more attractive to advertisers. Although the post you’re about to read is similar to the last one, it is a little different because I will be explaining how blogs with minimal traffic get advertisers. You have to put some work in, but in the end I believe you will be ecstatic with the results you get.

Your problem is that you are a rather new blog with low traffic. You realize that you do like blogging, but you really wish that you can make some extra cash every month for the hard work you put in. You’ve looked on many different blogs that are supposed to be about helping you make money by blogging, but haven’t found any real help. You sit there wondering why contextual advertising isn’t working for your new blog, but you should know that contextual advertising shouldn’t be put on a new blog.

You then decide that maybe you should try to make money through private ads or so-called direct ads. However, you realize you’re not a marketer so you do not know how to go about that. Then when you start to think about having ads on your blog more, you persuade yourself out of it because you do not have very many readers. So what you do when you don’t have very many visitors or subscribers?

Steps You Should Take to Get Advertisers

Make sure you have room on your blog. I talked earlier in this miniseries about making sure to leave enough room on your blog design for ads later on. If the time has come that you want to put advertising on your blog, then I sure hope you left room on your blog.

Put together an advertising page or advertising package. I hit on this in my last article. If you are wondering why you need an advertising page or advertising package when you know people currently do not want to advertise on your new blog, then remember that once you finally find a subscriber they will want to know the kind information you have write on this page. Compile your stats, rates, advertising options, reader demographics, and any other relevant figures into a professional looking document or a new page in your blog. Of course leave your contact details. Always add any testimonials you might receive from any of your visitors or readers. You can always ask some of your readers to get give you one also because a testimonial is a persuasive technique. When you have a new blog you have to persuade people into advertising.

The main way you will be able to get advertisers on your blog is by tracking advertisers down.

• Go to the more popular blogs in your niche and see who is advertising there. Make a nice list of companies that are currently advertising on other blogs in your niche. You can also find other bloggers in your niche that have a fair amount of subscribers that could possibly be an advertiser. Write these companies down with the other ones.

• Next you are going to have to pitch your blog to them. Offer companies a free advertisement on blog for a month. Send them an e-mail or call the company’s that you will be giving a free ad. All they have to do on their part is send you the size of the ad you are currently accepting. Send them your ad package document or send them the link to your advertising page to get all the information they need. Links are clicked less when they come in an e-mail. I recommend just adding all your advertising information at the bottom of the e-mail. Make sure to explain to them that you are trying to get noticed and that your blog is a great target for their potential customers. Be completely honest with potential advertisers. With that being said, you can leave some things out such as that you’ll be wanting them to advertise on your blog the next month for a fee. Instead, just wait til the end of the month when they’re free ad is about to expire and pitch them for a paid ad.
• Let your advertisers know that they’re free ad on your blog is beneficial to them. How do you do this? Setup a way to track how many clicks and impressions they are getting from your blog. Keep them updated on this information so they realize that they are benefiting from having an advertisement on your blog. There are many plugins for WordPress that can track clicks and impressions on ads you put on your blog. Note: If you do not get a lot of clicks and impressions, then you probably do not one to provide this information to a potential advertiser.
• Now of course you always have to close the sale. Right before the one month is up, send a summary report to the potential advertiser. If the report doesn’t look good then do not use the information when you try to make the sale. You should ask them if they’d be interested in purchasing a spot on your blog for a very low rate. Make sure to stick with the rates that you put on advertising page or ad package. If you didn’t include this, then this would be the time to decide what would be the best price to make the sale. Each price might end up being different if you think you can get more money out of one advertiser than another. Of course make sure the top ad placement on your blog goes to the highest payer. Be persuasive by including testimonials that you’ve got from your readers and subscribers. Then at least give them five to 10 reasons why they should advertise on your blog.

Other Tips to Make the Sale:

Don’t provide your ad rates until right before you try to make the sale. Go to their blog and see how much you think they would be willing to pay to advertise on your blog. Since your blog is newer, you should probably try to settle for a little lower than what you think they would be willing to pay to advertise on your blog. Getting as many advertisers as you can is beneficial to you because then you have a better chance that you’ll have an advertiser the following month.

Keep in direct contact with advertisers. This will allow you to negotiate pricing so you can make a sale much easier. Even if they’ll buy an advertisement right away keep them updated on any new information that you are able to include on your advertising page or package.

Have as many pay options as possible. Many advertisers only make payment through one specific method like paypal. The more options you have the better chance that you will find someone to pay for an ad unit on your blog.

Already have advertisements on your blog. At least put affiliate advertisements so that it looks like your blog is a place for advertising. It is just another way to persuade an advertiser to buy an ad unit on your blog without you even having to say anything.

Other Ways to Find Potential Advertisers

There are many webmaster and affiliate marketing forums that have marketplaces where you can sell ad space on your blog. The marketplace is very competitive so a lot of times you’ll have to offer a cheaper price to make a sale. But if you do not have any other advertiser on your blog then a lower price would be worth it.

Go to other forums that are in your blog niche. Make a new thread asking for advertisers for your blog. This is just like making a pitch through e-mail or phone. Use the tips I included above.

It does take a lot of work to find advertising for a blog that is new. However, if you put the work in to sell your blog as a potential place for advertisers, then you can get private advertising or direct advertising. This concludes my miniseries on private ads. I listed all the articles below just in case you are not able to read any of them. If you have any questions make sure to just contact me.

Private Ads Miniseries

1. Should New Blogs Have Ads
2. Ad Placement
3. Ad Sizes
4. How to Make Your Blog Attractive to Advertisers
5. How Do Newer Blogs Get Advertisers?

This is part four of my private ads miniseries. I have talked about whether or not new blogs should have ads, where you should place your ad on your blog, and advantages and disadvantages of different ad sizes.

Your overall social popularity or size of a blog is one of the most important things to advertisers. You want to have the ability to influence a certain group of people because that appeals to advertisers. Usually advertisers are looking to promote themselves to a specific target audience. But what if the problem becomes that you do not have a high social popularity or a huge size of a blog?

That is the question many bloggers ask. Blogs are becoming more popular everyday and so that makes traditional media gain interests in advertising on them. There are many steps that you can take to make your blog appeal more to advertisers.

How to Make Your Blog Attract Advertisers

Consistently contact advertisers to try and look for ad buyers. Don’t limit your ad selling potential by relying on advertisers to contact you.

Create an advertising page on your blog so that people that are interested can find out more information. You want to try to keep this above the fold and try to make it a graphical image or tab. This makes it an easy way for people to click and get advertising information. Plus it’s an easy way to contact you for more information and rates.

Make sure to keep your ads specific to your blog. If your blog is about electronics don’t try to sell pet products. I know this is common sense but just a little reminder. It may make you look like you’re an amateur when it comes to putting advertisements on your blog and could scare away advertisers.

Make sure you have the mind of a business person. Try to improve your site’s perceived income value. You could create a store to go with your blog or anything else on the side to make it seem as if the popularity of your blog has allowed you to go in different directions than just writing articles. You can always include a job board also. Adding these things can improve your site’s perceived income value which is important to many advertisers.

You can always get guest bloggers to write for your blog. Perception is everything when you are trying to sell yourself to advertisers. At least try to make it seem as if you are a community blog or are trying to build a community. You want to become an online publication or community blog because advertisers like that.

You can always throw up a free bonus ad for advertisers. If a company realizes that they are getting traffic from your blog to their web site then they may decide to advertise for you later on. Once you take them off as a free bonus ad they will realize that they have lost traffic which was from your blog. They might also just feel like they should advertise because you were so kindly allowing them to have a free advertisement running on your blog for a while. Just make sure to make it a direct URL without tracking tags or affiliate tags.

Social proof indicators are also another way to persuade people to advertise on your blog. As much as they can be incorrect at times, most advertisers widely accept them and would more than likely check them out even if you don’t show them yourself. So why not use means of social proof such as your RSS feed subscribership, Twitter readers, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and others. Be as truthful as possible so that if an advertiser would research your social proof indicators themselves then they would find exactly what you proposed to them. Once you have the trust of an advertiser, you have a better chance to make the sale.

Make sure to show them all the banners they can pay for. If you do not have any paid placements on your blog at the time then throw in a free bonus ad, house ad, or partner ad. You want your potential advertisers to be able to see how their ad might look and where their ad will be seen on your blog.

Make potential advertisers think your blog is good for ads. You want to make sure the advertisers perceive your blog as “allowing them to get traffic from advertising”. If you currently do not have any advertisements on your blog then it will be difficult to make a sale. If you need to throw up free bonus adds to make it look like your blog is advertiser worthy, then do so. It really is a good to do anything you will give you that much better of a chance to make a sale.

Focus on a specific topic and try to become an authority figure. Try to spread your opinions and research by contributing articles to blogs, newsletters, online magazines, and other things. Try to get interviews by other bloggers. You want to prop yourself up on a pedestal so that you look worthy of having advertisers on your blog.

Building a community around your site is one of the things that every blogger should absolutely be doing. Bloggers need to make sure they’re actively engaging in dialogue with other bloggers in your niche. Allow users to generate content for your site, engage in dialogue on forums, comment on blogs that are in your niche, and be active on social media sites.

Show your statistics on your blog. Make sure to go in more depth about your statistics so advertisers can get as much information as possible. You can include this on your advertising page. This is more than your social proof indicators that I talked about above. Show your monthly unique visitors and total number of impressions. You could easily get your statistics for your blog if you are using any sort of stats plugin in WordPress.

Use demographic information to give potential advertisers a better explanation of who your audience is. Potential advertisers want to know more about your blog than just the basics. Being able to give them the most information possible is a plus so try to figure out what your demographic information is to give you the potential of getting a large amount of advertisers. Try to find out you’re male or female percentages and your average age of readers. You can also find out information about single/married, number of kids, geographic, etc.

Make sure to include an about us section. Advertisers will of course want to know as much information about who you are and what your site is about. They will of course want to know why you an authority figure on what you are writing about. I talked about becoming an authority figure above. It’s not really if you are one, but it’s an advertiser perceiving you as one.

Keep your blog professional. Try not to talk about yourself too much. You do not want to scare your advertisers away. They’re looking for a blog that is for a specific topic or industry. That means they want you to talk about it otherwise it will not feel like they’re advertising on a blog that really has a topic or goes within an industry.

I went over many ways to make your blog more attractive to advertisers. There are countless ways to do this but you can just take a couple hours out of your day to fix the ones that you can do right away. Other ones will take time but in a couple of months of doing them you should see all of your hard work pay off.

Running private advertising on your blog is still one of the most trendy ways to make money. I have talked about whether or not new blogs should start with advertising and what are superior ad placements. For part three of this miniseries, I will be talking about numerous ad sizes you can utilize on your blog.

The quantity of ad sizes continue to grow. Some companies are now offering nonstandard ad sizes as well. You know the right places for ad placement on your blog, but choosing the proper ad unit size can be the difference of making $50 more or less a month. More than likely you will want that $50. You’re going to have to experiment with ad placement and with ad sizes. Every blog is different so grow to be an experimenter on private ads.

One thing that I am proud to be is a researcher. I understand a lot of things that work with private ads and a lot of things that do not work with private ads. However, I made sure to research as much as possible on this topic so that you could benefit the most from this article. What I have found in my research is that by far leaderboards (728×90) and wide skyscrapers(160×600) are the most popular advertising sizes. I want to remind you that this is the all web pages not just blogs. So this may not pertain to all of us bloggers. However, most of the Internet web pages are becoming blogs so these statistics will be relied on more and more by bloggers.

The point to be made here is that if leaderboards and wide skyscrapers are the most popular ad sizes on web pages, then more than likely large banners are what advertisers usually yearn for. To maximize your potential of getting advertising you may want to allow the most popular sizes of advertising available on your blog.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Large Ad Units

Advantages:

• These are the most popular size of ads currently on the Internet. This should allow you to enhance your chances of getting an advertiser.
• More noticeable which may give you a higher click potential for the ads. That is why most companies like to advertise with a larger size because they get noticed easier.

Disadvantages:

• The problem with these ads is that they take up a lot of space on your blog. If you can get someone to advertise on your blog with this size of ad then go for it. However, sometimes you can make more money off of three little ads then one large leaderboard or wide skyscraper. A lot has to do with what advertisers you can find (Which I will talk about later in this series).
• They do not leave very much spacing on your blog. They take up a entire block of space and can make your blog design look dire. You want to make sure not to scare away your visitors because of the size of the ads you have on your blog.
• Also, the size of the ads are really recognizable to people. More Internet marketers are recognizing that Internet users are becoming more immune to these ad sizes.
• Having large advertisements on your web site can also send a message to your visitors that you are all about making money. First impressions are very important when you have a blog so don’t scare away your visitors because of your ad sizes.

Mid-Size Ads are Dead

Unless you are running affiliate advertisements, mid-size ads for blogs are dead and buried. It is likely that they will not be coming back and if they do it won’t be for a while. You will want to make sure to stay away from these for private ads.

Advantages:

• Internet users appear to be less immune to mid-size ads. This is likely because as I said they are dead and so they’re not seen as much on blogs.
• They work well for creating your own advertisement for a company you are an affiliate for. But that is a whole different kind of advertisement than private ads.
• They are good because you can fit them in a lot of different places. 160×160 wide skyscrapers can easily be placed right next to your content which is a placement that has become incredibly popular. That ad size would suit a left sidebar splendidly (a sidebar like Tyler Cruz).

Disadvantages:

• If you are a smaller blog than it will be tricky to find many advertisers that use this size of ad.
• Internet users may not be immune to this size of ad but they may also not click it because they are not use to this size of advertisement being an actual ad. They might think it is a picture or something else.

Smaller Ads Are Becoming Highly Popular on Blogs

It seems like just yesterday that small square ad sizes were becoming popular. These ads are exactly 125 pixels by 125 pixels. More bloggers are using this advertising size because it is currently seen on so many other blogs. Nearly all of the top blogs are using them now such as Copyblogger, Problogger, Dosh Dosh, Tech Crunch, and others. There are many advantages and disadvantages with theses size of ad units.

Advantages:

• One of the most preeminent things is that it gives you the option to sell many ad units in a space that is usually taken by a large skyscraper or rectangle ad. Like I talked about above, many times you are able to make more money selling smaller ad units then selling one big wide skyscraper or larger ad.
• Needless to say they can easily fit in your sidebar. Usually bloggers put them in one single vertical line like Tyler Cruz or put them side-by-side like Copyblogger.
• Larger companies like to advertise using bigger ad sizes. However, smaller companies have a tendency to like this size of advertising because it is cheaper and they can have their ad on many blogs for the same price as a larger ad.
• The design of your blog will look a lot better with this size of advertisement. It allows you to have better spacing on your blog so it doesn’t seem so cluttered. When you have the bigger ads they can make your blog look a little imperfect because the size of ad really doesn’t equal the size of anything else on your blog. With a 125 pixels by 125 pixels advertisement, you will typically have more than just one ad which makes your blog look more organized.

Disadvantages:

• Mainstream advertisers are still preferring the more traditional ad sizes. They are also not set up to pay for anything other than the traditional ad size. So it’s common that you will not be able to get a lot of money for a private ad on your blog because large companies tend to not pay for this size of advertisement.
• Each industry has really developed its own preference when it comes to ad unit size. Like I said before, you will just have to experiment with your ad sizes and ad placements. All industries are not the same so if you can find a top blog that is in your industry or blog niche, then look at what size of advertisements they are currently running.
• The problem that most people will have with this ad size is that it takes more work to sell three to six ads than had just one large one. Even though you can make more money selling smaller ones, it will take you more time and energy to make a sale. If you are only able to sell one or two of the smaller ads on your blog than it could make you feel discouraged. You can always make it easier by using an advertisement plugin like OIO Publisher.

Obviously, I have went through a lot of information in this article. You may want to reread it to take in as much as possible. Like I will say many times in this miniseries, experiment, experiment, experiment. All industries on the Internet are different and you will have to try and figure out what is best for your blog. Look at other blogs in your industry that currently have a lot of visitors and readers. Try to see what kind of private ads they are offering. Take a couple hours of your day and just research what advertisement sizes are currently working with those blogs in your industry and then act on it.

When you are setting up a blog one should always consider that their blog will have to be ready for advertisements. You may not want to have advertising on your blog right away but sooner or later you’ll want to consider it. That is if you are going to want to make money. You need to know where you would place these ads.

One thing you are going to have to think about is ad placement. There are only so many places you can really put your advertisements on your blog otherwise it may make your blog look messy. Let’s talk about the places that are best known for people to click.

You really want to make sure your ad placement is in a sweet spot. You want visitors to click as often as possible so usually the rule of thumb is to get your advertisements as close as you possibly can to your content.

Right Sidebar Advertisements

Most people are right-handed and that usually means that they will more than likely look on the right side of your blog. So obviously you would want to put advertising in your right sidebar. This is one of the most popular places for advertisements on blogs and bloggers usually use 125×125 ads. The size of advertisement fits well in a sidebar and you usually can fit two columns of ads. These advertisements are also close to your content which will make it more likely that people will be click on them.

Left Sidebar Advertisements

You can also fit them in on the left sidebar if you choose to do so. They are not known to get as many clicks, but if you do them like Tyler Cruz then you could easily make it work. He has one column of ads in his left sidebar and it is right next to all of his content. Since he makes it only one column, the advertisements continue down the page so it is more likely you will click at least one of the ads. Like I said above, most the time people people have two columns of ads with and three rows in their right sidebar. It does look nice but once people scroll down your page they will no longer see advertisements. So Tyler Cruz does have the right idea when putting only one column in his left sidebar so they go down his page as people scroll.

Inline Advertisements

Another sort of advertisement that is quite popular are inline ad spots. Most people use Google Adsense that is placed within the text post. If you do this then you want to make it so your advertisement doesn’t look like an advertisement. Too many times people use Google Adsense on their blogs but do not use it the correct way. You’ll learn from Joel Conn, Adsense Secrets, that you’ll want to make your advertisement look like normal writing and links. So the color you use for your links on your blog will also need to be the color of links on your Adsense. It will just make it more likely that people will click because they know that it is a link. Using the color blue for your links will also work well because it has become the universal color for links. Be sure all of your other text is the same color as your content text. One last thing, make sure you remove the boarders so that it just looks like it is naturally part of all your blog post.

Ads Between Post and Comments

Another nice spot for advertisements is directly between text and comment fields. If people are going to read your article then they will see it once they get to the end of it. This is usually good for advertising that is a lot bigger than what would fit in your sidebar.

Right-Side of Logo Ads

Adding a rectangular advertisement on the right side of your logo in your header is also a nice place for an advertisement. Most of the time people will not even stay on your blog very long so atleast you’ll get a chance that someone will click on your advertisement. People are immune to normal advertisement sizes so using an awkward advertising size by your header will make it stick out more. Of course I say to put the ad on right side of your logo because it looks more natural if your logo is on the left side of your blog design.

Above Header and Below Footer Ads

You should not place your ads above your header or below your footer. These are the worst spots for advertisements to get any sort of clicks. Below your footer has to be one of the worst places to put an advertisement. If you are going to put an advertisement below your footer then just make sure that it is an affiliate link so you do not make an advertiser mad when they realize that they did not have very many clicks. It is said that above your header is a bad place for advertising. There has been many case studies done on advertising placement. Most people that are Internet users are immune to advertisements above the header but if most of your traffic comes from places like StumbleUpon you will find that you may get quite a bit of clicks. People that use web sites such as StumbleUpon may never scroll past your advertisement and your header.

You can see there are many places to put advertisements. One thing you have to remember to do is experiment, experiment, experiment. You will learn the best by experimenting on your blog yourself. You know where the best placements are for your blog. All blogs are different and experimenting is always one of the things that you should constantly be doing if you are looking to make the most money from your blog.

I wrote an article about how to make money on a blog a few days back and many people didn’t seem to like it because they’ve read the same basic ideas on other moneymaking blogs. I think the most popular way to make money on blogs is by having to private ads. So I have created a miniseries on just private ads itself to hopefully help you make the most money possible.

The first question people usually ask is if a new blog should have advertising? Well the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. I can’t directly give you an answer unless I can see your blog but I think you can answer the question yourself. However, after saying that I do believe that all blogs should start out with some advertising!

Here are my reasons why:

• You can make some money. Many people would say that making money on a new blog by private ads is very difficult . But making some money is better than making none. You can always use some money when you have a new blog because there are many things you can use that money for (Especially blogging needs).
• Having ads later can mean you have to redesign your blog. This is one of the worst things for a new blog. Many people think that they shouldn’t have ads on their blog, but when they decide to add advertising they find that there isn’t anyway to add them to their current blog design. I wrote earlier about how a redesign can get you more readers, however it won’t this early in the game though. Why not just add the advertising right away and make sure that everything will fit.
• Don’t change your mind down the road. If you decide not to go with advertising then you probably shouldn’t decide to add advertising until your blog until you have built up a readership. If you only have around a hundred subscribers then don’t go and decide to add advertising because you may lose half of those. For someone that has 5000 subscribers, they don’t really have to worry about losing only 50 of theirs because they can afford to do so. But someone with just a hundred really does have to worry about that.

I think all of you bloggers will find that adding advertising right away is the easiest route. No one will care if you take advertising off of your blog, but they could care if you decide to add advertising. Just remember that all blogs are not suitable for advertising. Those are bloggers that are not trying to make money though. However, some bloggers use their blog as a way to advertise their product. One good example of that is Tim Ferris. He is a blogger but mainly he is just pitching ideas out there and hoping that you will decide to buy his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. And trust me, it were like a charm for him. Hope this helps and tomorrow I will try to help you even more with having private ads on your blog.