Pros of blog advertising There are several advantages to using advertising for blogs, which make it an attractive option for your website. These are:

Your blog earns. The revenue generated by advertising allows you to perform improvements on your blog. You can spend for maintenance, pay for better website design, buy a bigger storage space, pay for faster bandwidth, etc. This allows you to grow your blog and attract better traffic.

Advertising gives your blog credibility. Visitors see your blog as something reliable since you have advertisers sponsoring you. Most professional bloggers have advertisers, which means you will also be seen as an authority in the field of your choice. The partnership with a known company will indicate that you offer quality content.

Advertising offers visitors access to relevant products and services. Since ads will appear on the same web pages as related content, your blog’s visitors will be able to view any product, service or information from your advertisers that they may actually be interested in.

You’ll be inspired to maintain a quality blog. Only strong blogs attract advertisers. As a result, you will have all the reasons in the world to make sure that your blog offers quality, useful content. You will be more careful with your choice of topics and subjects. As a result, your writing is much more improved and your blog will become a reliable source of information. The result: increased traffic, a more targeted audience and more advertisers.

Cons of blog advertising Blog advertising can affect certain aspects of your blog in a negative way. Some of its disadvantages are:

It dictates the type of content you will publish. Once you have advertising on your web pages, you’ll have to work extra to make sure those ads are noticed and are considered relevant by visitors. This forces you to modify your content just to adapt it to what will attract your readers and entice them to click on your ads. Sometimes, you’ll find that you will have to sacrifice meaty content just to write posts that will promote your ads.

It takes up space on your web pages. You’ll notice this after a while, when you have multiple sponsors and running several ads in one web page. As sponsors buy more ad space, that will take away from the available space usually reserved for meaningful content. As a result, you’ll have to control your content more just to give more room to your ads.

Maintaining advertising on blogs is time consuming. Having enough ads on your blog should allow your site to pay for itself. However, it won’t run all on its own. Now that you have advertisers and sponsors depending on you, you will have to make sure that your blog is worth it.

This means you will have to spend enough time in optimizing your blog so the ads get the audience they need. You will also have to constantly be on the lookout for other advertisers and be ready to negotiate. Other than that, you will have to manage payments and monitor the necessary statistics to make sure that your blog remains competitive. Blog advertising may pay for your blog but it doesn’t take the work away from you.

Earning an income from your blog is not just about the extra cash – it’s also a practical means to reward yourself. Plus, you could use your earnings to provide better support for your site, whether technical or administrative.

But not every advertising opportunity available might work for your blog. Certain factors do affect how well an advertising type works depending on the nature and content your blog has.

Learn to choose the best web blog advertising that will promote your site and maximize your earning potential.

Types of web blog advertising you can use: Pay-per-click or PPC PPC advertising is easily the most basic form of advertising a blog can use. It works simply: place a PPC ad on your blog and the advertiser will pay you for every click generated by the ad. Every time a visitor points his cursor on this ad and clicks, you earn money. The cost per click will vary, depending on the type of ad that will run, the value of the keyword/s or who your advertiser will be.

Pay-per-action or PPA The PPA is sometimes preferred by advertisers because it translates to having your blog visitors perform a desired action. This action can be different things – a visitor could subscribe to the advertiser’s newsletter, sign up for membership or buy merchandise.

Pay-per-impression or PPI An advertiser using PPI with your blog will pay you for every opportunity his ads appear on your blog page. This will require some sort of clever strategy on your part but if you know how to use this type of blog advertising, it can work in your favor.

Choosing web blog advertising The three types of web blog advertising mentioned earlier can work with different types of ads. These ads include:

Contextual ads The type of contextual ads you will be carrying will depend on the content found on the page where these ads will appear. The key here is to ensure relevance. After all, if you’re talking about plasma TVs on your blog, what sense would an ad about home loans have on the same page?

Contextual ads work best for you if your blog’s content deals with a specific topic on a regular basis. This often means that you have traffic that is highly targeted and will likely find your ads interesting.

Text link ads Text link ads appear on a blog page based on the texts that appear in that page’s posts. It attempts to capture the visitors that read that page for the specific content found there.

If content in your blog varies from page to page, text link ads provide a good earning opportunity for you.

Affiliate ads If you want a slightly bigger take, a good choice would be to place affiliate ads on your blog. This means partnering with a company’s affiliate program and providing links on your pages to products or services offered by that company. This is how eBay and Amazon affiliates earn.

Affiliate ads work best if your blog deals with topics that are relevant to a product or service being offered by partner companies. If your blog deals with tips on coping with stress, for example, you could place a link to an affiliate ad promoting a popular book on stress management that your visitors can buy from a partner company’s website.

Direct ads Direct ads are a form of web blog advertising that lets you work independently and directly with the advertiser. You simply sell ad placements on your site and negotiate directly with the company or individual who buys them. These buyers will be called sponsors from then on. This is a good choice for your blog if you have a good number of traffic and a strong niche market. Pricing and the method of payment will depend on your agreement with your sponsor.

Promote. Instead of just leaving possible banner ad locations blank, let advertisers know that they are up for grabs. Use ‘Advertise Here’ or ‘Your Ad Here’ texts to indicate their availability.

When advertisers click on these areas, they will arrive on a page where information about buying ad space will be provided. Make sure that there is a webpage that will be used for this purpose specifically. This page may either contain information about your terms or it could be a link that will allow your advertiser to send you an e-mail.

Seek out advertisers actively. Other than openly promoting your blog for ads, you could also find blog advertisers by targeting them. That way, you get to choose who will place their ads on your blog. A standard letter of approach to advertisers should contain:

• a brief introduction about yourself
• a short explanation of the purpose of your e-mail
• a short explanation why you’re soliciting their

sponsorship or ads

• a concise explanation of the benefits of placing ads

on your blog

• details regarding your advertising terms (type of ad placements, industry to which your advertisers belong, maximum number of ads in one webpage, cost, method of payment, etc.)
• important details about your site, such as your subject matter, audience, number of traffic, etc.

Offer sponsorship. Blog sponsorships are fast becoming a trend online, as the number of businesses utilizing blogs as an extension of their marketing efforts increases. Through sponsorship, you will be working closely with a company (your advertiser) and promote their products and services through your blogs. Your web pages will also carry that company’s name, brands and logo.

You could also come up with a sponsorship deal wherein specific parts of your blog’s content will be sponsored by the advertiser. This type of blog advertising works well if your site is quite popular already and has a considerable number of visitors.

Do a keyword search. There are many companies and individuals using Google Adwords who might be interested in an arrangement with you. Do a simple keyword or key phrase search regarding major topics on your blog. Then seek out sponsored links and find out about the companies that pay for them. Get in touch with these people and offer your blog for their ads.

Take advantage of links. Blogs and other sites that link with your blog are potential advertisers. If they find your blog interesting enough to link with, they might be open for negotiations regarding advertising. You might want to send them an e-mail to let them know your blog is available for advertising.

Tap people who use your forums or leave messages. Another way to find blog advertisers is to offer your ad spots to people who leave comments or messages on your blogs. Seek out people affiliated with a company, group or association. They might be interested to buy ads on your blog.

Traffic and popularity Blogs thrive on the number of traffic that visits their sites and on the subsequent popularity this generates. This is also a major consideration for advertisers. More traffic simply means better exposure. Targeted traffic means you’ll be selling to more people who are likely to buy.

Between a blog that has only 50,000 page views and another that has 100,000, who would you choose? The latter obviously offers a wider market and more potential buyers.

The mille matters. Traffic or the number of page views a blog page receives also determines the cost of advertising on a particular blog. If a blog generates about 100,000 page views monthly, for example and it’s fairly new, you might have to pay as little as $50 a month for a 125 x 125 sidebar ad.

To understand how the price of ad spots is computed, consider the mille. Bloggers will generally use the unit cost-per-mille or CPM. One mille is equivalent to 1,000, a unit you will be able to use later to compute for the cost of placing an ad based on the number of page views it generates.

Bloggers will consider the number of page views their blogs receive and use that as a basis for coming up with the cost of advertising. As a result, a blog with a higher amount of traffic will charge you a higher price than a blog with a lower number. That means placing your ad on blogs with sufficient traffic can range in cost from about $50 to a whopping $10,000 a month. The bigger number, of course, means your ad will receive millions of page views.

In conclusion, remember that to determine whether a particular ad space is worth paying for, consider the cost of the space versus the traffic it will receive.

Size of the ad The bigger the ad spot you require, the higher the cost of advertising on a blog. A 125 x 125 ad spot, for example, will be cheaper than a larger 300 x 250 ad. Placement will also affect the ad price. Header ads, for example, will cost more than sidebar ads or footer ads. Below the fold ads will cost considerably less than those that will appear above the fold or integrated with the blog’s content.

Test periods You might want to consider saving a few bucks by asking the blog owner if he/she is offering a test period of ad runs. If your ad will be placed on test period, that means the blog will display it for a limited time but won’t charge you for it.

After a specific period, you can then decide whether to continue with the placement (at which point you’ll have to start paying) or to pull your ad, depending on how well it performed in the blog. This usually works on blogs that are relatively new and are still building momentum.

Look for blogs that offer renewable ad placements you can pay for on a month-to-month basis. This will help you manage the cost of advertising on blogs and help your bottomline in the process.

Popularity means income It’s a sad fact and rather prejudiced against blogs that are just starting out but to make advertising work on a blog, that blog has to have enough traffic. Without sufficient traffic, the ads found on that blog will just not find an audience and therefore will not earn.

Now to build traffic, your blog has to have a strong niche and targeted content. Finding a niche for your blog can be tricky, especially if the topic you’re offering is obscure and not that easily relatable in terms of advertising. Tricky, of course but not entirely impossible. You’d be surprised at the number of targeted ads some little known topics generate.

However, your best bet and the surest way to make advertising work on your blog is to promote a topic that is highly targeted or one that speaks to a niche audience. By building a following, your blog will gain enough popularity to be trusted by advertisers.

Advertising on your blog The way advertising works on a blog is simple: advertisers want to promote their products and services, your blog provides the platform with which their ads can gain exposure, mainly by being the site where their target market frequents. If your blog is about shoes, the people who visit your blog are those who want to know more about shoes. From the shoe advertisers’ point of view, these people are a gold mine, more likely to buy their shoes based on the interest they have shown.

There are two ways you can make advertising work on your blog: by providing ad space on your own or by relying on an advertising server to do the work for you. Selling ad space on a blog is fairly common, particularly on blogs that target a niche market. You simply set the rates, actively contact advertisers and agree on the terms. Or, the advertisers can contact you, after seeing the potential of your blog.

How you get paid is simple enough: once the ad has been placed on your blog, your visitors will click on it. Depending on your agreement with the advertiser, you could earn either through the number of clicks the ad receives or the type of action solicited by the ad, such as a purchase or a subscription.

If you’re fairly new to the blog universe and would rather build your reputation slowly by providing quality content, you might find yourself too busy to actively negotiate and communicate with advertisers. If this is the case you can choose to work with an advertising server. One such is Google’sAdsense, although there are others that work just as well.

An ad server looks at your blog and determines the best ads that relate to your content. You simply take the code, put it on your blog and let it go to work. You simply have to collect your earnings using your account. This is a rather passive approach to letting advertising work on your blog but it can earn you a little. Of course, if you want higher earnings, you need to actively put in more effort and seek out higher paying ads with the right combination of keywords that work best for your blog.

With blog advertising, there are no set rates. It is up to the blogger to design the correct ad payment scheme that attracts advertisers and allow him to generate a reasonable income at the same time.

To help you determine the right advertising rates for your blog, it’s important to consider doing some research first, particularly about similar blogs and to consider your traffic and perform some simple experimentation using your site.

Playing with figures If you think that setting your ad rates at low prices will attract more advertisers, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Your $300 a month rate may not stand against another blogger’s $600 a month rate if you only have 50,000 page views monthly and he enjoys 600,000 page views.

An advertiser will look at the ratio between the cost of advertising on your blog against the amount of traffic that your site generates, the same traffic that will potentially click on the ads.

A good ‘constant’ to consider when determining ad rates is the CPM or Cost-Per-Mille – mille being equivalent to 1,000. Let’s say a blog receives 150,000 page views monthly. For a 125×125 sidebar ad (usually the most common), the blog charges $250 monthly. Divide $250 by 150 (that’s 150,000 divided by 1,000 to come up with the CPM) and you’ll get $1.66 CPM.

The same arithmetic is used by some of the most popular blogs, including JohnChow and Copyblogger. For your blog, you might want to consider how much traffic you generate and the number of genuine page views you get. These figures will help you evaluate your blog and come up with the appropriate ad rate.

Since these blogs are well established, you could start at far lower rates if you’re still building traffic. Consider a starting figure of about $0.5 CPM, which is friendly enough to your advertisers and good enough for you. Raise this rate gradually as your blog becomes more popular and as more advertisers and sponsors buy ad space from you.

Size and location Advertising rates also vary depending on the size of the ad and where it will appear. Larger ads and those that will be placed in prime locations or ‘hotspots’ will cost more. Ads will also be more expensive if they will appear along with content or on your blog’s header. Cheaper locations will be those found on the page’s footer and the area located after the fold.

Factors that influence ad rates Not every blog can enjoy strong advertising support. That’s mainly because not every blog has the right amount of site traffic, the right visitors, market demographics or niche. These are just some of the factors that affect your eligibility for ad placement and the rate you can charge on your blog.

Blogs, by the way, do not pass through the same channels as traditional print media. The cost of providing information in blogs is low enough that bloggers can offer low advertising rates and still earn a profit.

Is your blog succeeding? The key indicator that you’re probably doing something right with your blog advertising is when you’re actually succeeding. You get the traffic you want, you earn for a few simple efforts you made and keep your advertisers happy.

But don’t get carried away by your success. You might think that placing many ads on your blog can help you earn exponentially. What it will do is earn you a spot on your advertiser’s black list. Advertisers have guidelines about how many ads you can place on one web page. Generally, this can range from 3 to 5, depending on the sponsor.

If you don’t want to break the good will that exists between you and your affiliate or advertising program, learn what the policies are and respect them.

Is that a blog or a splog? One of the worst labels your blog can be slapped with is ’splog’. That’s a blog that contains spam. If your blog is nothing more than just pages upon pages of advertising and little content, you’d probably be better off publishing a fashion magazine.

Too many ads on a blog can bury your content, distract your visitors and even frustrate them. Some, such as the very wary ones, will leave your blog in a hurry. If your blog resembles an infomercial, forget it. It will look annoying and take away from the good reputation you’re trying to build.

Too many choices Another challenge you will be facing when it comes to blog advertising is persuading your visitors to pay attention to the ads long enough to actually do something with them. Otherwise, these ads will be useless.

The problem with a blog that has too many advertising units is that it can confuse the visitor. When they’re confused, they’re less likely to click on an ad, much less subscribe or buy anything. That leaves your advertisers – and you – empty-handed.

There are several ways you can advertise your blog on other websites without paying a single cent. The trick is to find these channels and determine which ones will work for you. Here are just a few techniques you can use:

Advertise on other blogs. You could build a reciprocal relationship with other bloggers, particularly those whose content are related (but not necessarily similar) to yours. If your blog is about gadget and industry news, for example, you could advertise it for free on another blog that offers gadget reviews.

By becoming partners with a non-competitor, you take advantage of his market for the right type of exposure without alienating anyone. It’s fair, it works and it’s for free.

Use social media. Social media revolutionized many aspects of the Internet, particularly because it presents a new way of communicating and sharing information. It broke many barriers, allowing people from across the globe to build and join networks, both for personal and business purposes.

Social media are sites that can be used to advertise your blogs for free. Nearly all types of businesses that exist on the Internet use social media for promotional activities. The demographics here are clearly defined, people can communicate in a more personal manner and since social media is an accepted platform for marketing, people who read your ads regarding your blog are more likely to be receptive to it. Best of all, advertising your blog on these websites is free.

Use a network. To build buzz and gain momentum in the blog universe, you need support from likeminded individuals. Bloggers don’t really advertise themselves actively against other bloggers. Instead, they compete with one another by ensuring they have better content and easier to use sites.

Although simply maintaining a good blog will help attract other blogs wishing to link up with you, you might also want to actively pursue associations with other popular blogs. Many of the best bloggers around are generous enough to give you a bit of support and will gladly mention your blog in one of their posts. Best of all, a network helps you increase your reach for the same amount of effort.

Use article databases. Article databases are repositories of write-ups that bloggers and site owners use. If you choose this route, know that this is a rather indirect way of promoting your blog. It is quite effective nonetheless, particularly if you want to build buzz regarding your ability to provide useful information.

Try to search out a specific topic online and chances are, you will find an article written by blogger in an article database. Read this article. At the end, you will notice that the blogger had included his/her name, a short description of himself, what he does, the name of his company and a link back to his site.

Sometimes, a blogger might even include a few links to some of his write-ups within the text of the article. This is to entice the reader to click on the link and find related information on the writer’s blog. Using links in this manner allows you to advertise your blog for free on a separate website.

There’s no cost involved here, particularly if you wrote the article and performed the submission yourself. If you prefer to spend a little bit, you could also use copywriting and submission services for a reasonable cost. While this isn’t free advertising for your blog, you still get to expand your presence using another website.