Banish Low Balling Ads To Earn More With Your Blog

Making money with your blog is easy and actually almost automated once your blog gets a bit of age and ranking. This is mainly due to the fact that most blogs die a lot sooner than traditional websites and advertisers view them as “more volatile” investment but once you have proven that your blog is here to stay - You Got Yourself Blog Income Potential!

In fact I get nearly several requests each week for advertisements on pages of my blog. They come in multiple shapes and forms but have couple things in common, which we will get to in a bit. What I want to discuss here is YOUR blog goals, because it will help you identify which ads will stay and which will be declined!

What Are You Trying To Accomplish?

A core question you should ask yourself and one you need to answer honestly.

Is your blog designed to get subscribers?
Sell Your own product?
Sell affiliate products?
Monetize via AdSense
Or simply deliver content you are passionate about?

And while I understand that multiple monetization options are and should be deployed at every blog - I’m sure you can identify one that works for you the best. That is the one that should become the center of attention - Your Main Goal.

And once you have established the main goal it becomes easier to understand what is one action you want your visitors to take and how to distribute other monetization options on your blog to not interfere with that action, not distract from it.

External Advertisement simply becomes one of those options and for some might even become The Goal, which will change the priorities but you will have to evaluate it for yourself! In case of this article I’m talking about external ads as an “additional income stream” and nothing more!

Put A Price On It!

Now that you have a clear understanding of your main goal - you need to evaluate your blog:

How well does it lead people into taking an action toward Your Goal
Do you have enough of the “Calls to Action” for your goal or do you have Too Much?
Do secondary goals, which could be ads or subscription or just about anything you define, interfere with your primary goal or do they coexist nicely and perhaps even add to it?

Once you have that understanding - you know how much extra space you can dedicate to secondary goals or as is the case with my blog - affiliate ads and external advertisement!

This exercise just helped me to identify How Much Space I can Allow For Secondary Ads!

One other thing I still need to determine is how much blogs similar to mine and with comparable traffic ask for their advertising space, taking into account number of ads they have available and number of ads I’m willing to allow.

Nothing scientific here but simply understanding that if a “Blog A” charges $25 a month for a 125×125 banner on their blog while giving room for 6 ads - I can safely increase this price to $35 a month if I only provide space for 3 ads because with comparable traffic I offer HIGHER visibility to advertisers.

One last thing to consider is by doing this exercise on several of comparable blogs and coming up with a Ad Value or Price on my blog. It is my blog space to sell but I have to be competitive OR Not Participate At All!

Stick To Your Guns!

Now that we have the understanding of how much we value ad space on our blogs - we need to stick to that value, if it doesn’t sell well - we might have to re-evaluate it but still stick to it!

Create an Advertise page on your blog where you clearly explain how much it costs to advertise on your blog and options available. Your choices can be just about anything you are willing to offer and I’m not here to give you any ideas - just have a look at what options offered at the blogs evaluated previously. Craft your offer to be competitive!

One thing I see time and time again is that when people contact me for advertisement opportunity - they will try to low-ball the price, completely ignoring the guidelines on my page.

I guess some people might think I’m desperate for the money to accept the price a lot less than what I set.

Well, guess what…

External Advertisements are just a sidekick on my blog and its either my way or no way at all. In fact I have just removed the row of 125 banner from my sidebar to achieve my other objective - more important to me than selling ads space - offer people subscription to my eZine, which pretty much reduced advertising options on this blog to NOTHING but its OK with me…

My Main Goal Is Not Selling Ads Space!

Sticking to my guns in this case is not only a matter of getting the right price but also delivering a consistent message from the pages of my blog. I’m not hiding anything - I’m an affiliate marketer and I earn by providing relevant reviews on this blog, but not too often.

Main blog content is about sharing what I know and love and proving my right to speak on the subject. And once I have accomplished it and managed to deliver the content my readers come to expect - my goal is to sell the prime product I offer - Expert WordPress.

And to be quite honest - enough people take advantage of the offers provided for my product that I don’t need to sell Ads Space because my main goal delivers what I need!

Conclusion…

Oops, looks like I got a bit emotional in writing this post but it delivers the main message and hopefully shows Why and How to make determination of the basic ad value on your blog. I also tried to make a point that you Do Not Accept the low-balling ad offers!

You have worked hard to create content optimized for search engines and written for people.
You have spent time to bring the visitors to your blog
You have invested effort into getting higher authority status for your blog

…don’t sell it off for pennies to “wannabe advertisers” who try to low-ball you. One click on their ad and you are loosing a visitor you have worked so hard to bring to your pages!

Know the Value You Present and Demand its Worth!

FEATURES, VIEWS & REVIEWS

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Banish Low Balling Ads To Earn More With Your Blog

What Are You Trying To Accomplish?

Put A Price On It!

Stick To Your Guns!

Conclusion…

YOUR COMPANY NAME © MMIX